People in the Middle Ages, draw cards to get promoted

Chapter 569 Rebel Army

survived.

Galio walked with some difficulty into his shabby house, which could not even be called a "home", and sat down on the ground somewhat powerlessly. Even now, his heart was still pounding.

Everything that happened tonight was simply a nightmare for him, an ordinary loader.

Whether it is those deformed werewolf monsters that eat living people.

Faris, the Frank wearing a horned helmet, saved him in a critical moment.

And after the knight left, the section of the city wall looked like it was paved with corpses.

and also…

And when he was allowed to leave.

The deformed werewolves had been almost completely slaughtered, with no resistance at all.

He lifted the water pitcher in the corner, took out a dry biscuit and ate it with the water, thinking, those Franks can easily defeat the monster army, is there anyone in this world who can stop them?

At this time.

There was a sound of footsteps outside the door.

Mr. Hussein, the most respected man in the neighborhood and the one responsible for sending him to the battlefield, was leading a group of residents in.

"Why are you back?"

"Gallio, what happened outside? Did General Jabri defeat the Crusaders?"

"Look at his appearance, he is in such a mess, could he be a deserter?"

"Yes, he must have been a deserter. Even if General Jabri won the battle, he still needed to fulfill his duty of defending the city instead of appearing in his doghouse!"

The slum where he lived could not keep secrets. Before he entered the alley, someone might have noticed his return. After all, the moonlight was very bright tonight and the citizens had no intention of going to bed early.

The crowd gradually filled the door of Galio's dilapidated house.

Someone shouted, "Whatever happens, catch him first!"

"This guy is a deserter and betrayed Governor Mahri. If we don't catch him, everyone will be implicated."

"Mr. Hussein, what do you think?"

"You want to arrest me?"

Galio, who was already feeling physically and mentally exhausted, perhaps because he had seen too many dead bodies tonight, felt even more angry. He grabbed the iron sword he had picked up from the pile of corpses with a somewhat ferocious expression.

He was forced out by these people to serve the neighborhood.

As a migrant worker, Galio is not considered a "citizen" at all, but a "commoner" at best. In this city, he can only do the cheapest manual labor and suffer exploitation by the guild.

I didn't get much benefit and almost lost my life.

The more he thought about it, the angrier he got. He pointed at the noisy figure in the crowd and shouted, "I'm just a stevedore. Do I have to be killed like a chicken by the Franks to be considered as having fulfilled my duty?"

"Everyone is dead, Jabri, Himiro, Fadlo - those big shots, the unlucky ones who were sent there with me, and those ruffians from the city defense team. The current Semanud City is no longer ruled by Governor Mahri!"

The young stevedore holding the weapon raised his weapon and said with a ferocious expression: "It is true that I ran away, but I am a Christian. What is wrong with not wanting to work for the pagans and those monsters?"

A stone stirred up a thousand waves.

No one cared about the anger of a small stevedore, but everyone cared about the news that the enemy had captured the city.

"Oh my god, the holy fire is above!"

“It’s a disaster.”

"No wonder the noise outside gradually quieted down. I thought it was General Jabri who defeated the Franks."

"What holy fire? It's the Heavenly Father!"

Smart people have already started making the sign of the cross in front of themselves, preparing to take out the holy icons and crosses passed down by their ancestors and place them in the most conspicuous places after returning home, and also hang a cross flag at the door.

"Traitor, you have betrayed the Holy Flame!"

Immediately, a citizen with strong faith stood up and accused the man: "Aren't you afraid that you will be damned in purgatory after death, with no hope of salvation in your eternal life?"

"Bullshit, I just pretended to change my faith. I will repent after King Saladin recaptures Semanud."

"Yes, little Hassan is right. We are only pretending to convert."

All the citizens said so, and no one cared about Galio, the inconspicuous loader.

Hussein coughed to quiet everyone down, and then said, "Little Hassan is right. Let's go back now and ask your wives to make flags with crosses embroidered on them overnight. No one should go out easily. If the Franks break in, don't resist."

After he finished speaking, he added, "Gallio, you have to leave here. You have become a pagan soldier. Who knows if you have killed any Crusader soldiers? If you continue to stay here, we might be implicated by you."

Galio was stunned.

His expression was very interesting, as if he was watching a funny pantomime, and then he burst into laughter.

This scene seemed too ironic to him.

Hussein felt a little embarrassed. With his status and position, he should never be ridiculed by such lowly commoners.

"Step aside!"

Galio picked up his weapon and said, "I will leave. I have to tell you that I did desert this battle and was almost killed by a monster from the Supervisory Team. It was a knight from the Crusades who saved me."

He sneered and said, "The knight promised to make me his squire, so from now on, please leave my room. I will leave here naturally after I have packed up."

"You are a deserter, so you should be my squire?"

"He's lying!"

"Tied him up and handed him over to the Franks!"

Hussein's face twitched, and after a moment he said, "Gallio, your time is limited. After you pack up, you'd better leave as soon as possible. I don't want to see you in this neighborhood again in a quarter of an hour."

No one believed that Galio would be valued by a knight.

What really made Hussein choose to retreat was the weapon in Gallio's hand and the look in his eyes that disregarded life and death - that was the manifestation of a person's transformation from a civilian to a desperado.

...

Governor's Palace.

Lothar is studying a map.

It clearly shows the distribution of various blocks, towers, and gang forces in the city of Semanude.

Now that the city of Semanude had been captured, the question became how to govern it.

Typically, cities were governed by the citizen class (respectable people and merchants from various craft guilds).

The owners of the city are often willing to give the citizen class autonomy in exchange for a considerable sum of money, or sign a tax system similar to that of a tax farmer, where they just sit back and wait to collect money every year without participating in city management.

In addition to citizen autonomy, there is also a tradition of enfeoffment of urban nobles.

The neighborhoods were divided into sections, each belonging to a certain noble. Sometimes, just by stepping into another street, you could find that the coat of arms worn by the guards, the color of their robes, and the shields hanging on the walls were all different.

Many cities are full of towers, which were built by the city nobles so that they could look down from a high place, detect the enemy's movements in time in densely built-up areas, and demonstrate their own authority.

Their internal fights often present themselves as gang-like street fights, which was also the source of inspiration for Losa when he designed the "Wolf of the Two Sicilies".

To be honest, urban nobles are generally the worst choice.

If the citizens govern themselves, they don't need to do any work themselves, and they can collect money every year and even recruit city militia to fight.

Of course, whether or not military service is required depends on the contract and the power comparison between the lord and the citizen class. Many free cities in Europe even defeated the local lords and forced them to give their "autonomy".

Such free cities often not only do not require military service, but even the money paid to the lord is very low.

In addition, urban aristocracy and citizen autonomy are not contradictory, and the two usually go hand in hand.

It is not uncommon for big businessmen and city councilors from the urban class to be granted the title of city nobles by contributing to their feudal lords and donating military funds.

Ultimately it is all about profit. As long as they can provide financial and tax revenues, the lords don't care who manages the city.

But Lothar is not an ordinary feudal lord. He considers more issues and is more long-term.

Coors then walked into the room with an opened letter in his hand.

Losa frowned and said, "Coors, you don't look very good. Is there something wrong?"

"Yes, my lord."

He handed over the letter.

"It is a letter from Baron Godfrey, who is at Damietta."

Lothar glanced at the letter and found that it roughly talked about a Gallic Crusader lord who defected to Richard the Lionheart and was killed by a united peasant uprising army.

"Peasant uprising?"

Lothar was not actually too surprised by this. Where there is oppression, there is resistance.

Some Crusader nobles began to exploit the territories unscrupulously as soon as they occupied them. On the one hand, they were really poor and had to do so in order to maintain their nobility's dignity; on the other hand, it was also to maintain military supplies.

Many of the impoverished knights who joined the Crusades had previously worked as bandits.

"Didn't the local lord send troops to suppress it?"

"This group of rebels is quite powerful, and they seem to have received private support from the Saracen lords. Not only were they not suppressed, but they used the terrain to kill the suppressing troops and seized a large amount of weapons."

When talking about peasant uprisings, most people's impression is nothing more than one word: "mob".

The peasants are undoubtedly the lowest and largest group of people in this world, but their power is also the weakest link compared to the nobles, clergy, and even the weaker citizen class.

The only advantage, "strength in numbers", could not be brought into play because most of the rebel leaders were illiterate and had a narrow vision.

Even if the peasant uprising army did not fall into internal strife, it would be considered to be of a relatively high level, not to mention that they were able to unite together.

Losa hesitated: "This matter"

To be honest, it's pretty bad.

It was not that Lothar felt pity for the tyrannical lord, but he was worried that the Crusaders in Damietta Province would be seen by the Copts as weak inside. After all, the population of the entire Damietta region added up to millions, which was dozens of times the number of the Crusaders.

If they all raised the banner of rebellion, even if they were just a mob, they would definitely inflict heavy damage on the Crusaders.

(End of this chapter)