In the Middle Ages, people drew cards to be promoted to nobility.

Survived.

Galio walked into his dilapidated house that couldn't even be called "home" with some difficulty, and slumped on the ground helplessly. Until now, his heart was still pounding.

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

Whether it's those deformed werewolf monsters that eat living people.

Faris, a Frankish man wearing a horned helmet, rescued him in the critical moment.

And after the knight left, the city wall seemed to be paved with corpses.

besides…

And when he was allowed to leave.

The deformed werewolves who had been almost wiped out and showed no resistance at all.

He raised the water jug ​​placed in the corner, took a piece of dry biscuit and ate it with the water. He thought, those Franks can easily defeat even the monster army, is there anyone in the 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?"

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

"Looking at how miserable he is, he must have been a deserter, right?"

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

There was no way to hide secrets in the slum area where he was located. Before he even entered the alley, someone might have noticed his return. After all, the moonlight was bright tonight, and the citizens didn't have the inclination to fall asleep early.

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

Someone shouted: "No matter what, catch him first!"

"This kid became a deserter and betrayed Governor Mahli. 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 was used to seeing dead people tonight, felt a bit more angry in his chest. He grabbed the iron sword he picked up from the pile of corpses with a ferocious expression.

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

As a migrant worker, Galio was not considered a "citizen" at all. He was considered a "civilian" at most. He could only do the cheapest manual labor in this city and had to be exploited by the guild.

Not much benefit was gained, and he almost lost his life.

The more he thought about it, the angrier he became. He pointed at the noisy figure in the crowd and shouted: "I am just a loader. Do I have to be killed like a chicken by the Franks to fulfill my responsibility?"

“Everyone is dead, Jabri, Himiro, Fadro—their big shots, the unlucky ones who were sent there with me, and those ruffians from the city defense team. Now in the city of Semanud, it will be long ago. It’s not Governor Mahli who makes the decision!”

The young loader holding the weapon picked up the weapon in his hand and said with a ferocious expression: "It's true that I ran away, but I am a Christian. What's wrong with not wanting to sacrifice my life for the pagans and those monsters?"

One stone stirs up a thousand waves.

No one cares about the anger of a little stevedore, but everyone cares about the news that the enemy has captured the city.

"Oh my God, here's the holy fire!"

"This is a disaster."

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

"What a holy fire? It's from Heavenly Father!"

The smart people have already begun to cross themselves, preparing to take out the icons and crosses passed down from their ancestors when they return home, place them in the most conspicuous place, and hang a cross flag at the door of their home.

"Traitor, you have turned your back on the Holy Fire!"

Immediately, a citizen with strong faith stood up and accused the man: "Aren't you afraid of sinking in purgatory after death and never being able to escape forever?"

"Fart, I just pretended to convert. I will repent later when King Saladin recovers Semanud."

"Yes, little Hassan is right, we are just pretending to convert."

All the citizens said this one after another, and no one could care about Galio, an inconspicuous stevedore.

Hussein coughed at this time and asked everyone to calm down. Then he said: "Little Hassan is right. Let's all go back now and let your wives work overnight to make the flag embroidered with the cross. Everyone can easily Don't go out, and if the Franks break in, don't resist."

After he finished speaking, he added: "Gario, you have to leave here. You have become a soldier of the heretics. Who knows whether you have killed the Crusaders. If you continue to stay here, we may be attacked by you." Tired."

Galio was stunned for a moment.

His expression was wonderful, as if he had watched a funny mime, and he burst out laughing.

This scene seemed too ironic to him.

Hussein was a bit embarrassed. With his status, when would he need to be ridiculed by such humble civilians?

"Step aside!"

Galio picked up the weapon in his hand: "I will leave. I have to tell you that I did deserter in this battle and was almost killed by a monster from the supervising team. It was a knight from the Crusaders who saved me."

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

"You want a deserter to be your squire?"

"He's lying!"

"Tie him up and hand him over to the Franks!"

Hussein's face twitched, and after a moment he still said: "Gario, your time is limited. After you pack everything, 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 give in was actually the weapon in Galio's hand and the look in his eyes that didn't care about life and death - it was a manifestation of a man's transformation from a civilian to an outlaw.

…

Governor's Palace.

Lothar is studying a map.

It clearly marked the various neighborhoods, towers, and gang distribution of Semanud City.

Now that the city of Semanud has been captured, how to govern it has become a problem.

Normally, cities were run by the burghers themselves (respectable men and merchants from various craft guilds).

The owners of the city are often willing to grant autonomy to the citizens in exchange for a large sum of money, or sign a tax system similar to that of a tax collector. They sit back and wait to collect money every year without participating in city management.

In addition to citizen autonomy, there is also the tradition of enfeoffing urban nobles.

The neighborhoods are divided into sections, each belonging to a certain noble. Sometimes just stepping onto another street, you can find that the coat of arms worn by the guards, the color of the robes, and the coat of arms hanging on the wall are different.

There are many city towers built by this kind of urban nobles to be condescending, detect the enemy's movements in densely built urban areas in time, and to demonstrate their authority.

Their internal fights often take the form of street melees similar to gang patterns, which was also Lothar's original source of inspiration when designing the "Wolf Tribe of Two Sicilies".

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

If citizens are self-governing, they do not need to contribute their own efforts. They can also collect money every year and even recruit city militia to fight.

Of course, whether military service is required depends on the contract and the balance of strength between the lords and the citizenry. In many European free cities, their "autonomy" even defeated the local lords and forced them to grant it.

Such a free city often not only does not require service, but even the money paid to the lord is very low.

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

There are many examples of big businessmen and city councilors from the citizen class who were granted the title of city nobles by virtue of their contributions to the lord and their military contributions.

In the final analysis, it is still profit-oriented. As long as finance and taxes can be provided, the lords do not care who manages the city.

But Lothar was not an ordinary feudal lord. He had more and longer-term issues to consider.

Coors walked into the room now, holding an open letter in his hand.

Lothar frowned and said, "Kors, your face doesn't look good. Is there something wrong?"

"Yes, my lord."

He handed over the letter.

"It's a letter from Baron Godfrey, who's staying in Damietta."

Lothar scanned it roughly and found that the content of the letter was roughly about a Gallic crusader lord who defected to King Richard the Lion-Hearted and was killed by a coalition of peasant rebels.

"Peasant uprising?"

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

As soon as some Crusader nobles occupied the territory, they began to exploit it unscrupulously. On the one hand, they were really poor and had to do this to maintain the dignity of the nobles. On the other hand, they also wanted to maintain military supplies.

Many of the down-and-out knights who participated in the Crusades had never been bandits before.

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

"The strength of this group of rebels is not weak, and they seem to have private support from the Saracen lords. Not only were they not suppressed, but they used the terrain to kill the suppressing troops and seize a large amount of ordnance."

When most people think of the Peasant Rebel Army, the word "rabble" comes to their mind.

Peasants are undoubtedly the lowest level and the largest group of people in the world, but compared to the nobility, priests, and even the weaker citizens, their power is also the weakest link.

The only advantage of "power in numbers" cannot be brought into play because most of the rebel leaders are illiterate and their vision is not broad enough.

Even if the Peasant Rebel Army does not fall into internal fighting, it is considered to be above average, let alone being able to unite together.

Lothar hesitated: "This matter"

To be honest, it's pretty bad.

It was not that Lothar felt pity for the tyrannical lord, but that he was worried that the Crusaders in Damietta Province would be seen by the Copts as being strong on the outside and hard on the inside. After all, the residents of the entire Damietta region totaled millions. There are dozens of times as many people as the Crusaders.

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