Since the Accounting: A Chronicle of the Roman Khanate

Chapter 621 A Good Friend of the Roman People
After that, Zhu Wenkui and the others gradually returned to their daily lives. However, Guo Po Nu had given up the training of new recruits. When Tang Sai'er went to find her, she lost her temper and said that there was no point in working, so it was better for everyone to disband and she wanted to go back to Guo's house to lie down.

This will have a significant impact on the current plans.

According to the rules, soldiers going out to fight in the field would not be completely new recruits. Most of the soldiers came from local military regions, drawn from active garrison regiments and retired reserve soldiers. But Guo Kang's situation was special this time.

Many of the soldiers he planned to recruit into the legion were completely new. For political purposes, they had to be taken to the battlefield, but from a military perspective, the basic quality of the soldiers had to be guaranteed. If both were to be taken into account, they could only be trained in addition to the training provided by the court. This was also what everyone had been working hard to do before.

Now, those Russians who were planned to be incorporated into the legion under Guo Kang have finished their recruit training. At present, they have left the recruit camp and headed to the large military camp in the north of the city. There, they will conduct joint exercises at the legion level with other friendly troops, so that these people from different places and units can accumulate experience in joint combat, form basic coordination and tacit understanding, and prepare for future large-scale wars.

For this reason, not only the new recruits Ross, but also veterans like Captain Jessica and Master Hans who have fought in the battlefield many times, have to participate in training.

Captain Jessica told Zhu Wenkui that compared to the Romans' training system with clear goals and strict methods, even if they had some battlefield experience and learned some basic routines from the older generation of mercenary captains, they were just wild methods. So, he took all his men with him, saying that he wanted to let everyone see how a real army fights. Therefore, the veterans in the palace basically followed him to train.

In this case, Tang Sai'er also felt that in order to adapt to this place, she'd better take someone to learn. Zhu Wenkui could only stop her quickly.

The new recruit camp was already short of manpower. Although the court recognized Guo Kang's actions, it could not provide much help.

Since the establishment of the Purple Tent Khanate, the war has always been very tight, and it has always suffered from insufficient troops and officers. The front-line legions and local war groups are constantly in need of high-quality officers, and they have never felt that there are enough.

Not only that, local administration is also short of people, and according to tradition, retired officers and veterans are important supplements to local grassroots management personnel, so the states and counties are constantly asking the army for manpower. With the continuous improvement of administrative agencies, this gap has now widened. The Roman army has always performed well on the battlefield, but the speed of recovering the homeland has not been improved, which is one of the important factors.

Now, there are a large number of Slavs who come to surrender. Even if the Guo family has no shortage of resources, the part allocated to Guo Kang, minus those who have to go for training, is not enough to manage so many people.

However, although there are fewer people, there is no shortage of work. According to the plan, although there is no need for so many Russians to go to the battlefield for the time being, they must be trained and educated, develop basic discipline, and learn basic knowledge. In the future, when managing the north, more manpower will be needed, and these local people will be more useful. Therefore, it is better to be tired now than to stop. We still need to reserve as many people as possible. If we are slow now, we will be even slower in the future.

Therefore, anyone with some basic management skills was pulled over to help. Especially after the army training began, it was almost entirely supported by non-staff personnel.

Now, everyone knew that Guo Po Nu was in a bad mood, and they couldn't force her to work. Guo Kang was nowhere to be seen. He was the one who recruited the soldiers, and he was the one who drove them away. Everyone didn't know how to deal with it.

Finally, Zhu Wenkui had to come forward again and make the final decision for him, saying that the current situation was special and he could only trouble everyone to work harder and share the work left by Guo Po Nu. All the remaining people in the Wu Wang Mansion were pulled by him to work overtime to discipline the Slavs who continued to flock in after hearing the news, even the women.

The only advantage is that the Slavs generally have an incredibly low level of literacy and miss too many classes, so they don’t need particularly professional teachers, and anyone who knows a little bit is enough to supplement them with key knowledge.

The palace even specially gathered the families of the new recruits for simple training. Princess Ma, who had always been a recluse and thought it was not good to be in the limelight, personally went out this time. In the open space in front of the new palace, she led them to "left hand" and "right hand" gestures all day long, and taught them the most basic knowledge according to the new course formulated by Guo Kang and others, and then let them go home at night to teach their families. Even little Jeanna now led a group of children to teach them to recognize words.

In this way, another week passed before Guo Kang finally appeared again.

He explained to Zhu Wenkui and others that Theodora had taken him to a manor outside the city, and brought him back for a ceremony and a banquet, so it was difficult to find him at other times. Now, things were basically over and they could get back to work.

However, his mental state at the moment was obviously not very good. Zhu Wenkui and others thought that it would be better to let him rest for a few days. Anyway, the camp had basically resumed its normal teaching order, so it didn't make much difference if he started a few days earlier or later.

Soon after, they received an official notice from the Ministry of War, saying that the transport fleet had been assembled, and Guo Kang and Zhu Wenkui's troops would board the third batch of ships, first gather on Cyprus Island, then land in Syria, and after joining up with their allies, head to Egypt. Now the Purple Tent Khanate is fighting on all sides, and food and weapons are in short supply. However, the local forces in Syria and Egypt are very eager for this operation and have provided a large amount of material assistance.

At the same time, due to the changes in the situation in Naples, many Italian businessmen realized that the Apennine Peninsula, which had finally stabilized for ten years, was about to undergo a huge change. The city-states in Italy generally lacked military strength, so at this time, it all depended on who stood on the side with a higher level. Obviously, whoever could hold on to a bigger thigh and get more support could easily defeat the competitor and gain a monopoly position - this was exactly what the businessmen dreamed of.

Therefore, some powerful businessmen and chambers of commerce came one after another to show their goodwill, especially the wedding, which gave them a rare opportunity.

Everyone is not stupid, and they all know that whoever stands in line quickly and offers a higher price will get more rewards. At the beginning, Zhu Wenkui only knew that the businesswoman named Joanna was taking action, but soon, all the big chambers of commerce swarmed in. Even if they cannot completely side with the Great Qin for political reasons, they must try their best to bet on both sides, at least not to offend them or be beaten by their peers.

In order to show their sincerity, everyone was willing to spend a huge amount of money to purchase food supplies, or directly provide fleets to help with transportation. At present, with the help of their merchant network, a lot of food and even personnel have been mobilized from all over Europe and gathered at the logistics base in Cyprus.

Italian merchants have always been wealthy, and the scale of their operations is so large that Zhu Wenkui wanted to arrange an opportunity for Joanna to meet Guo Kang, but he was reluctant to ask for it. The previous trouble was the fault of the Wu Palace, and Guo Kang couldn't help to repay the favor. But if he didn't say that, Joanna's sponsorship would not be enough until now, at least not as much as the wealthy Venetians. You know, the Venetian representative is still queuing up. If she cuts in line, other merchants will scold her to death...

However, in return, the Khanate now began to express friendship. Merchants who sponsored more were rewarded by the kurultai; some of the most hardworking ones were even awarded the title of "Friends of the Roman People".

This kind of honorary title is quite old. It is said that it existed when ancient Rome was still a city-state. But others also told Zhu Wenkui that some people in the folks always felt that this title was not auspicious. After all, in history, all kinds of friends of Rome were either annexed or torn apart and eliminated. It has never been heard that they could last for long.

Even now, this name is not necessarily good. Because the kurultai often does not look at the past deeds of the other party, nor does it care much about his credibility and reputation. As long as you pay a lot of tribute, you can get one. As a result, many notorious merchants and nobles also got this title, advertised it everywhere, and even used the banner of the Khanate to scare others.

Fortunately, the Khanate and the Europeans do not seem to have a very high level of cultural knowledge in this area. So after posting so many, no one has questioned anything so far...

The current result is that Zhu Wenkui found Tuohuan through the back door and helped Joanna get the title of "Friend of the Roman People", which can be regarded as returning the favor. However, Joanna herself is still a little dissatisfied, but she can't care so much for the time being.

Soon, Zhu Wenkui organized his assistants to pack up the workshop, take the necessary equipment and materials, and transport them to the dock. There, Urban and others boarded the ship first, took the goods, and went to Rhodes with the baggage team. These things of theirs were difficult to transport, so they were not stored with other materials, but transferred to a large ship and sent directly to Syria. As for Zhu Wenkui himself, he set off with the legion a little later.

Guo Kang was originally going to be in the same legion as him, but before departure, Theodora insisted that she wanted to take Guo Kang around Cyprus to see her estate. After arriving in Syria, she also wanted to visit Jerusalem.

Many people in the army were a little worried about this. After all, changing the military action plan because of a woman was basically linked to defeat, no matter in ancient and modern times, at home and abroad. From Rome to Seris, there were too many examples. Treating an expedition as a honeymoon was not auspicious no matter how you looked at it.

But Theodora said that she was indeed going on a trip, not to fight, and was just on the way with everyone. Moreover, she would take the opportunity of the trip to collect the output of the manor and give some sugar to all the soldiers in the expedition team for good luck and to fulfill her previous promise. In this way, there was no opposition in the legion. The court also remained silent, tacitly approving her willfulness.

So, she took Guo Kang hostage and set off ahead with the first transport team.

Zhu Wenkui originally wanted to change his plan and go along. Now everyone is getting busier and busier, so he wanted to take advantage of the rare leisure time on the road to have a good chat with Guo Kang about the technical issues of artillery improvement. But Theodora said that Guo Kang had a lot of things to do along the way and couldn't take care of the artillery, so she declined his request to go along.

Zhu Wenkui always felt it was a pity, but Lady Ranna and the others also advised him not to follow. He had no choice but to give up this plan and decided to think about it on his own first, and come back later if there was anything.

(End of this chapter)