Just as the autumn rain gathered, Ella continued to sort out the materials presented by her subordinates.

Paper, quill, relying on simple tools and key and complicated materials, she calculated all kinds of key data clearly.

It was a blessing to have a good accountant by my side, and Rurik participated in the whole calculation. What is the kingdom like now? From an economic point of view, Rurik has a deeper understanding of the country he created.

Just like the original plan, New Roseburg is the number one economic city in the Kingdom. Not only are there a large number of settlers, but also a considerable number of industries that various people are engaged in have higher added value.

This is exactly the same as Rurik's estimate, but thinking from straightforward data gives a deeper understanding.

Rurik had long planned to personally lead troops to intervene in the Frankish Civil War.

841 was almost a silent year, but the expeditionary force in 842 was bound to open up a situation.

"Is it true that as Erla said, sending 3,000 elite soldiers can achieve economic balance? Maybe."

The autumn rainy season lasted abruptly for two weeks, and the continuous coldness caused people to complain.

Now it has finally cleared up completely. Although the disappearing sun shines all over the land, the climate can no longer restore the warmth and comfort before the rain.

It was in the still wet and cold weather that every household was busy drying their clothes. According to the requirements of their families, the girls walked into the forest with vines and indigo.

They are basically not worried about wild animals still haunting them, because there are still hunters who plan to do a few more successful hunts in late autumn and early winter. The big animals in the area around the lake have been hunted down, and the remaining squirrels and ferrets have become walking purses.

The area around the lake grows the most people than straw mushrooms, but you can also dig better black pine

dew. Mushrooms are a key side dish, a special gift from the forest.

The mushroom picking army is almost all composed of young girls. They collect all edible mushrooms and purposely try to dig out the precious black truffles. They are not all enjoyed by themselves, but sold to the royal family for extra money.

After the autumn rainy season, all kinds of mushroom pickers appeared in the humid forest. Slavic tribes everywhere are doing this, and people in the Smolensk community are not immune.

But this year, the atmosphere in Smolensk is more complicated and tense.

The long and peaceful Dnieper River is like a poet, always hiding a sad and gloomy ballad.

Sunny after the rain, the world is rapidly fading green.

Standing in the world full of autumn, the cool wind keeps dropping the dead leaves, the grass on the ground is quickly withering and yellowing, the insects are disappearing, and everything is quickly entering the bleakness.

Ordinary people still feel desolate, let alone the soldiers who are about to go on an expedition.

An army is gathering at Gnezdovo in the Katyn Forest, the center of Smolensk's cult.

A warrior on horseback, wearing a fox fur cap, chain mail inside to protect his torso, and a brown bear fur coat, is reviewing his painstakingly trained army with a serious face. He is Vadim, and he is facing the soldiers who are loyal to him.

Those were young faces, and the fighters were all young people between the ages of fifteen and twenty.

They were all from Smolensk, the largest settlement, and many had infrequent experiences.

After all, Vadim is an outsider, and his legitimacy as a leader is insufficient, but the nobles need this person to lead everyone to defeat the relatives of Ilmen Slavs and the Ross people in the north.

Let's agree to be the leader.

The nobles are like this, but the attitude of the common people is different.

Ordinary people just want to live a peaceful daily life, and it doesn't matter who will be the big boss.

But it is said that the horse bandits formed by the Rus and their gangsters frequently attacked the villages and displaced thousands of people.

In the constant attacks, panic turned into hatred, which was aimed not only at the horse bandits, but also at the inactive local nobles.

Just at this time, a young noble from outside stepped forward!

"I can understand your pain! Your village was destroyed by the Rus, and my hometown was also destroyed by them. Many people were killed, and I always

I am thinking about revenge every moment, and you must be the same! Evasion can only be exchanged for the progress of the Ross horse bandits. Only when we unite and launch a counterattack can we defeat them. Hand over your sons to me now, and I will lead the warriors to victory..."

Vadim's remarks symbolized justice no matter how they sounded. As for whether this person was born in Smolensk and whether his blood was pure, perhaps only the nobles of the manors valued it.

One by one, the fleeing farms lost their homes and fields. They migrated to the upper reaches of the river and struggled in the brand-new wasteland. Even if they are also members of the Smolensk community, it does not mean that all villages have a high degree of alliance.

For the existence of the upper reaches of the river, these fellow villagers also belong to the "despicable outsiders". If these same clans occupy the fields of the village, the young and old will not hesitate to unite and expel them with confidence.

Therefore, they are Vadim's **** supporters in all villages that have suffered major attacks by horse bandits.

Because only Vadim gave the big

The family hopes to regain their lost fields and homes and restore their old lives. It is also a matter of course that the horse bandit killed his family and friends, organized an army to fight back, and seized the enemy's horses and weapons.

Five years have passed since the initial horse bandit attack, and most of the boys who fled in the past have grown into young adults.

Most of them are standing on the big altar in the forest, behind the chilling woodland, in front of them is the great leader Vadim who can lead everyone to revenge!

Look at these elite Smolensk infantry fighters!

Just like the name of the settlement - Smolensk.

Its original meaning is "the city of rosin by the big river", and the name refers directly to rosin, a natural resin that is extremely cheap and very important to life.

The people raise cattle on a large scale far better than they raise horses. All the rideable horses in Smolensk are a kind of horse imported from Eastern Rome, but there are not many of them until now. Each village focuses on raising cattle, so most of the leather used in life comes from these domestic cattle.

Although domestic cattle, they are not many generations behind the wild European aurochs ancestors. In fact, the cattle domesticated by the Smolensk people came along with them along the way.

People's ancestral homeland is in the upper reaches of the Vistula River, where there are still wild aurochs, and even the wild and unruly European bison that is far related to domestic cattle. People don't keep records of their past, and what ordinary people circulate is at most a hundred years ago.

In Smolensk only a handful of upper-class aristocrats vaguely remember that their ancestors came from the Roman Empire long ago. As for the sense of belonging to Rome, no one takes it seriously.

Ordinary people's self-awareness

It is very simple - we are Slavs.

Any metal utensils here are precious. Through past trade, Smolensk relied on the sale of cattle and sheep products and grain, in exchange for iron utensils and salt from the south. Even traded cautiously with Varyag merchants, and exchanged for some refined iron and amber from the north.

Without enough iron, it is impossible to make Roman-style wide-edged iron swords. Vadim's infantry has an iron spear about three meters long, which is the so-called poor way to fight.

In view of the fact that the Roman horse bandits and their infantry were widely wearing iron armor, these iron spears were deliberately made into a spiked state, and a wide blade was installed at the end of the spearhead, as if an extra pair of battle axes had been installed, making the spear more like a war halberd. It can stab, ram, peck and cut, it is really a multifunctional weapon.

Each warrior holds a round shield, and Vadim deliberately imitated his enemy in the making of the shield. It was a large shield resembling a Viking buckler, thick in the middle and thinner towards the edges. There are circles and wavy patterns drawn on the shield surface, and the drawings of each shield are very similar, which makes the infantry gather together to form a shield formation, which has a high degree of uniformity in shape.

As the saying goes, if you hate your enemy, you may live like an enemy if you are not careful.

Vadim had no intention of doing so, but after more than a year of conscription and training, his fighters became more and more like a large group of Varyag soldiers.

Because there are indeed a small number of Varyag mercenaries as guards around him, that is, Danish immigrants from the Gulf of Riga. These people live in Smolensk for a long time, and because they have a new life, they have lost contact with the Gulf of Riga. They don't know that last year

The entire city of Riga surrendered to the Kingdom of Ross, and the local Danish relatives turned into new

Ross people.

Vadim is training his soldiers in the way of the Varyags. The so-called old warfare has failed. The Varyag infantry tactics defeated his father and the army of the Pine Needle Manor. It is better to learn from the enemy and fight back.

"Why did we fail at that time? Our army has a large number of soldiers and horses. Most of the defeat was due to the lack of rules and regulations of the soldiers. The soldiers were extremely lacking in armor and clothing, and the use of bows and arrows was too little."

Vadim is good at summing up his failures.

Since there is a lack of armor, it is not too late to make up for it.

Compared with his destroyed hometown Pine Needle Manor, the living environment at that time was quite similar to that of Smolensk.

He attached great importance to pine gum, especially its military value.

A piece of cowhide was cut into thin slices of similar size and drilled, and the pieces were tied with hemp rope, and finally a set of leather armor was created in the Sarmatian style, although they did not know this set. The traditional armor art is learned from the ancient prairie people.

The cowhide is already hard enough, if each piece of skin is deeply soaked in fresh turpentine for ten days, and then taken out to dry in the shade, it will gradually harden naturally.

This is the original hardened leather armor. Due to the rich pine resin resources in the Smolensk area, it is possible to make hardened cowhide armor.

Deliberately delaying for a year before attempting to take the initiative to attack, Vadim was able to assemble an elite army and deploy newly-made hardened leather armor on a large scale to this team.

He has done experiments, and the iron sword can cut obvious marks on such leather armor, but it can't be cut at all, and the iron spear can hardly penetrate it in one blow.

As for the hard resistance from the ramming of the tomahawk and hammer, this cannot be expected. Vadim until even fighter Pei

The Daivarian-style leather helmet, which can hold the sword's slashing arrows, is rammed by a hammer without a blade. The hammer completely ignores the protection of the helmet, and the soldier's skull can be smashed. Even a long-handled wooden hammer made of hardwood, hitting a warrior in chain mail head-on, can break a muscle and bone.

Blunt weapons have their place.

Therefore, as the secondary weapons of soldiers, they carried iron weapons such as handaxes and daggers in their waists, and some people carried wooden sticks with iron nails on the end surface, which were used as blunt weapons in close combat.

The leather armor helmet that is enough to protect the face is decorated with furry fox fur. The soldier's torso, shoulders and neck are covered with hardened cowhide armor, and then a layer of leather clothing mixed with various colors of leather is put on to keep out the cold.

They stepped on thick cowhide shoes, and sackcloth foot wraps were wrapped from the feet to the knees.

They all wore trousers made of sackcloth, also hung with ordinary cowhide for protection on the thighs and crotches.

When accepting Vadim's inspection, the soldiers held a spear in one hand, carried a round shield behind their backs, and wore leather armor, each bearing similar skin losses.

In the past era, Smolensk has never seen such an army. The army is composed of local young people. Their eyes reveal the desire for revenge, and they hope for a victory.

Right here, Vadim gave another lecture impassionedly. The warriors were so powerful that they raised their spears and shouted, and their morale seemed to be able to swallow the Rosma bandits alive immediately.

But this is not all of the Smolensk Army.

To persuade the local nobles to send troops, Vadim, as the chief, must set an example with his family background.

He gathered all the riders of the comm, and fought

A cavalry unit barely enough for a hundred men was assembled. It was just a group of infantry on horseback. The horses they rode were usually used to pull firewood carts, but now they were used as war horses by the nobles to make up for Vadim.

On the other side of the parade field, the nobles who had discussed the plan to dispatch troops watched and emulated the elite soldiers that Vadim spent a lot of money on.

Like the leader of the Viadzic tribe who came from afar, as an ally, he never thought that his neighbor would actually come up with such a strong army.

"Damn it! Why didn't I know this kid Vadim's secret? They strengthened their army from this. If they beat me instead of the horse bandits, would I be able to stand it?"

On the surface, he wanted to accompany the smile even more, the leader Heda was very worried that the grown-up Vadim would raise the butcher knife to him.

After riding a horse and inspecting his warriors again, Vadim's self-confidence was beyond words.

He tightened his grip on the reins, and the horse "braked" suddenly among the nobles.

What a young general with a straight sword!

Such Vadim made the local nobles finally ignite their self-confidence, and also forced the leader of Viadzic to make supportive claims under military deterrence.

"What do you think? With this army, we can win a key counterattack. So...do you have any reason to delay sending troops?"

All the nobles looked at each other, and someone stood up and greeted with a smile: "If this is the case, you can be a qualified leader. I will send people to participate, but you don't expect me to have such powerful soldiers as yours."

"Me too." Someone stood up again: "Of course you can send troops, and I can also give you command. I will even send my son to lead troops to assist you, but you really can't expect that

My servant is strong. "

All the nobles agreed to send troops, which should have pleased Vadim, but all these old guys are old foxes.

"What?" Vadim, who was riding a horse and looking down at the crowd, winked deliberately, "Why do I feel that you still have some doubts?"

"Which of us would dare? After all, you are the leader. This is the altar that everyone agrees with and is still here to declare to God." Another old nobleman said this, with a hint of disdain always showing in his words.

"Uncle, you still don't trust me?" Vadim squinted his eyes and asked.

"I'm not eligible."

"No. You, and you..." He continued to look at the nobles, beating his heart with his right fist in public: "Give me your nephew and nephew. Gather an army of 3,000 people as much as possible. If you can gather more More, for example, 4,500 would be better. We will choose the current time point to attack the Ross stronghold on the West Dvina River, occupy there and cut off the caravan of horse bandits with absolute force..."

It repeated the strategy that had already been discussed collectively, the so-called occupation of Vitebsk, cutting off the "Amber Road" in the middle, and then forcing the Polotsk people to join them with geographical advantages (he didn't know that the Polotsk people had already been defeated) , and even forced the "Dubler League", jointly held by the Drigovichs and the Delevlians, to establish good relations with the Smolensk community.

He made a special oath: "If you don't succeed, you will succeed. If God abandons me, let me die in battle. Of course, I will win!"

Vadim's ambition is actually very big. He not only thinks about revenge, but even has the idea of establishing an official Slavic country in the process of taking advantage of the situation.

Think, as if to reproduce the historical process of the Principality of Great Moravia in the hinterland of Eastern Europe. The so-called all the big and small tribes related to the huge Krivich people were finally brought together in the national system centered on Smolensk, and he, Vadim, became the king of the new country.

Lineage is extremely important now.

In any case, the pine needle manor that Vadim originally belonged to was a small tribe of Krivichs who moved north, mixed with another group of Pomeranian immigrants, and was called "Ilmen Slavs" by outsiders. claim to be.

Just like the Smolensk people call themselves S, the people in the north call themselves Svne, just with a nasal sound at the end.

It's a pity that the close relatives in the north have been conquered by the Rus, and Vadim, who lost his own people, finally started his revenge in Smolensk and the first attempt to establish his own kingdom.

The entire Smolensk was fully mobilized after the autumn rainy season, and it was difficult for large settlements in remote areas to send troops. The leaders of distant settlements who came to the sacrificial center for a meeting handed over their guards as sponsors for Vadim's operation.

Almost all the soldiers came from the city of Smolensk and nearby villages, as well as the Yala (Yartsevo) settlement. Because it was very close to the big city, hundreds of militiamen decisively sent troops to assist. Because from the standpoint of the Yala village community, I am on the edge of the activity area with the Viadzic people. Although the two sides are safe now, who can guarantee that the Viadzic people will not make their own ideas? The village of Yala desperately needs military protection from Smolensk

, Now it's a big war, and sending troops to assist the big leader is really a vote of honor.

The situation is far better than Vadim's estimates

Three thousand people? No! The total number of militiamen participating in the battle has reached four thousand!

Because of the large number of troops~www.mtlnovel.com~ the people who participated in it became more and more confident. Bringing weapons to participate in the militia team to fight against horse bandits is full of justice, because it can be seen that the army composed of fellow villagers is too strong, so that from nobles to hunter farmers, they are not thinking about defeat and loss. The booty doesn't even stand a chance for soup.

The local nobles brought out their nephews to lead their families to fight, and batch after batch of middle-aged farmers participated in it, which seemed to be a fashion.

Just after the autumn harvest, Smolensk's food supplies are very abundant.

As if everything is under control, the balance of victory has been tilted towards Smolensk since the massing of the army.

Delayed until early October, when the army was assembled.

The muddy ground is dry again, and although the climate is getting colder, the first snow will not surprise the ground, and now is a good time to launch an early winter offensive.

Smolensk Army, attack!

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