Rise of Rurik

A huge cavalry team stood at the mouth of the Lovati River, and a large city stood in front of Rurik.

The city of New Ostara has a thick wooden wall, and the city even deliberately extended the wall, simply creating a pass in the flat grass area by the river. This is the former southern gate of the Kingdom of Ross, but now the new "South Gate" has been pushed south to the Vitebsk stronghold.

The establishment of this stronghold was fundamentally the private act of the Duchess Carlotta. Her proposition was very radical, and in fact, it did make great contributions to the expansion of Ross.

It also brings great risks to Rose.

She's gone south with her troops, and only the gods know if she's just going to take direct control of all of Polotsk. After all, the area along the West Dvina River (Daugava River) is not only the hometown of those people, as long as they continue to go south, there will be more complicated situations and more residents.

Standing on the grassland outside the city, this is the largest lakeside grassland in the Yinlmen Lake District. Its environment resembles the highland meadow in the south of my hometown in Sweden, and it also has some characteristics of the lakeside grassland in the Central Asian world.

Any nomad can quickly adapt to this small world, and the flocks of sheep that can be seen roaming in groups are a wonderful feature here.

A young woman stands with her legs in the stirrups, holding the reins tightly with her left hand, while the whip in her right keeps urging the horse to run faster.

Her entourage was left behind and rushed like lightning towards Rurik, who was looking up at the wooden wall.

She happily called Rurik's name, and skillfully manipulated the horse to stop suddenly beside him.

"Rurik...oh, Khan. Why did you come here suddenly?" Beyahir raised her flushed face and couldn't hide her joy.

"Just to see you."

Rurik slightly hooked his head, his deep eyes stared at the cheek of the grassland princess.

Beja Hill shivered a little shyly, and murmured: "Just look at me? Am I really good-looking? It's so good."

"Of course. This city..." He continued to look up at New Ostara, "Carota led troops south, and it seems that the city has become a bit depressed. You didn't follow? After all, you are like sisters."

"I want to go, but I have my own business."

"What is it?"

"Of course it's to train more fighters. In fact, it's for you." She raised her chest with a proud face, clearly expecting a compliment.

Rurik was slightly taken aback: "Are you the instructor of Carlota's new army? Just right, I want to see your recruits too. Sooner or later they will go to the battlefield. Maybe, this time is not far away."

Beja Hill didn't understand the deep meaning of the words, she was eager to show that she was an extraordinary woman.

As a king's woman, it is true that she can have a very high status, but as a price, she must share a man with many sisters. Wang's energy is limited, he has done too much for the expansion of the king, and he will do more in the future.

The king not only governs this increasingly large country, he also has the obligation to lead troops to fight, and it is a matter of course for the royal conquest.

I have lived in Ross for several years. Although the customs here are very different from those of my hometown on the prairie, there are many essential similarities. Rurik behaved as if he was a steppe khan with infinite enthusiasm for expansion, and he was much stronger than his father and brother.

She giggled, and skillfully controlled the horse to wander around Rurik: "You are stronger. Wouldn't this crush me?"

Rurik really got it right, "Hey, it seems that you asked the king to stay here tonight. Carlotta gave you permission to do so?"

"Of course. I'm taking charge of the city now, as she asked me to. Come, Khan! Show you the recruits I'm training, they'll make good fighters."

Just like the descendants of the old Ross tribe with a rapidly expanding population, the population of the Ostara tribe who immigrated to the East is also rapidly expanding. The blood relationship between the brand-new Ostara and the old tribe has been very alienated, and a large number of people have come from the migration of local Slavs, becoming the new Ostara in the legal sense. In addition, the whole family of the Swedish Gran tribe joined, and they also enjoyed a new name. As in the past, the Gran tribe has always been a vassal of the Ostara people, and it is the same in the New World.

These people were included in the Principality of Austral and inevitably gave up their farming life in the past, and even the Austral people themselves were the ones who changed drastically.

As the first stop for grassland commodities and Kiev commodities, this city is not only commodities, but also life culture from the south. The city began to be permeated with a strong grassland culture, coupled with the inherent Swedish culture and Slavic culture, its cultural integration was more complex than that of Novgorod or Novorosberg.

The natural instinct of being a human being is to live a comfortable life. Many tents appeared in the meadow area, and the Pecheneg people living here settled here. These people are not ordinary people at all, their identities are Bejahir's bodyguards, there are as many as fifty of them, and many of them are married to local Slavic women.

This was deliberately requested by Beya Hill. She weighed herself. Although it is not a problem for her to ride a horse and fight as a female warrior, she is now living a leisurely and even boring life in New Ostara, and her subordinates must be equally boring. .

More importantly, what qualifications does a prairie princess marrying from afar have to really maintain a strong guard? The Duchess of Ostara is Rurik's nominal sister, and she also has the status of "Khan". Beja Hill actually took refuge in Carlotta. As a price, his guards became de facto Ostarans, and the children they gave birth to after combining with local women were pure Ostarans.

A group of riding slaves actually enjoyed their married life in the new world. They were loyal to Beja Hill, and ultimately Rurik himself.

They serve as a key reserve cavalry force. Rurik would have ignored the existence of these people if Bejasir hadn't reminded him. Today, these young grassland men have descendants of mixed blood. In a year, a brand new cavalry was born.

The horn sounded, and Bejahir ordered the army to gather.

Everything seemed to reflect the military build-up of the prairie tribes, and people on horseback filed out from tents, wooden sheds, and even the open city gates. At first they didn't understand why the assembly alarm was issued. It seemed to be another tactical exercise of "against the sneak attack of the Smolensk people".

This time they saw a tall warrior wearing a golden crown.

Is it His Majesty the King? Behind him stood a completely uniform cavalry, where Rose's flag with blue stripes on a white background was flying.

Rurik had been amazed at their existence ever since he saw the cavalry galloping, and now they had assembled into a colossus.

Rurik suddenly couldn't make up his mind: "Strange! I remember that the population allocated to the Ostara people was not large. Didn't many people be allocated to the Great Luki? Beya Hill... Could it be that the people your sister took away? Is there a lot?"

"Because everyone who can ride a horse must be a warrior? Your Majesty, we have as many horses as there are people who can ride a horse." She said with a smile.

"However, the population of Ostara should not be so large. Why do I think that you have at least 400 cavalry?"

"About this number."

Beyahir went to Novgorod for nothing, but she also heard that the king was training a new cavalry team. It is not surprising that the king has expanded the new army, but from her inherent prairie thinking, providing every man with at least one horse makes being a combat cavalryman as natural as eating and drinking.

She pointed out the maze with great interest...

The so-called gestation period of a mare is of course a whole year, and the foal will stay with the mother for about half a year. The mares must be bred again every other year after giving birth, and they can only give birth to foals in the third year.

The foals are fully rideable when they are only one year old, and the mares are fertile at two years old, at which point Pecheneg herders have begun deliberately impregnating the foals.

Horses mean everything to grassland people, and the value-added of horses is as important as the value-added of population. It represents wealth and also represents the fighting power of the tribe.

As the saying goes, there is specialization in the art industry. Ross and other Viking tribe immigrants came here by boat. They are best at sailing and shipbuilding. Although they know that horses are an excellent tool for land transportation, there are almost no real horse-breeding masters.

The Pechenegs are completely opposite, and the grassland horses they brought have extremely strong endurance and physical fitness. Since these horses have always lived in the bitterly cold southern Russian grassland area, the Turkic horse (Mongolian horse) The essence makes their reproduction speed naturally faster than that of Western European army horses, especially in the case of human intervention and maintenance, the advantages of reproduction are obvious.

Rurik knew nothing about horse breeding, so he outsourced the entire industry to the Pechenegs who had defected. After all, the Ross cavalry was largely "yellow-haired steppe cavalry."

The meadow area at the mouth of the Lovati River at the southernmost end of Inlmen Lake is the horse farm of the Ross Kingdom.

The captured Frankish stallions have done their best, and the local domesticated horses are still dominated by grassland Turkic horsetails, and because they have been breeding desperately under artificial intervention, they have imported five horses from Pechenegs and Kievs every year for several years. There are more than a hundred horses that have proven their strength through a thousand-kilometer trek and can be used immediately.

The horses that really became the active cavalry horses of the kingdom are all mares, and they are much more docile than stallions. But if they really become active horses, these horses will lose the qualification to breed the next generation, and there will be one team after another, and they will not increase in value.

New Ostara here is another scroll!

Rurik did not start to think about solving the Smolensk problem until the summer of 842. It was a big problem, and obviously it could not be solved overnight. Smolensk must be conquered, but is there really great wealth there? Hard to say. It is only obvious that through intensive intervention in the Frankish Civil War, Ross can not only earn real money, but also inexhaustible products.

The transplanted peas began to be planted on a large scale and bear fruit. Rurik is willing to classify it as a vegetable, and it is not very durable. Since it is not a grain, the tax on it is actually dispensable, but it can be eaten as a meal. , This is a kind of welfare for hundreds of thousands of people.

The fact that Rurik was sold out after the first batch of wine from Nassau arrived in the capital, from the frenzied buying of the people and the subsequent discussion in the city, he learned the main attitude of the people—the need to Go to Frank to grab benefits.

The actions of the expeditionary army were completely in line with the will of the people. Ordinary people didn't care about grand wars. They only cared about how much benefits the people on the expedition could reap, and looked forward to having their nephews participate in the next expedition.

The northern part of the kingdom has a growing desire for war to continue to cut flesh from Frank. In a small world in far Eastern Europe, people here are also pursuing war, but the situation in the north is completely different.

Bejahir didn't feel that a war was imminent, even if there was, Carlotta could easily defeat it with cavalry. She thinks that Rurik just overestimated those Smolensk people. When she trains thousands of reserve cavalry for the kingdom, and cooperates with the cavalry directly controlled by the king, it will not be easy to destroy those enemies.

She spoke with gusto, and then looked at the assembled soldiers. These guys were either wearing felt hats or a leather helmet decorated with horns. They generally carry a bow, even if it is just a single wooden bow, and some arrows are stuck in the leather bag at the waist. Apparently because it was too crowded, many people didn't even have saddles on the shore, they jumped on their own horses and led the reins.

Saddles and stirrups are actually not necessary. The former is to avoid damaging the hips when galloping, and the latter is to ensure that the fighters can move more flexibly.

An excellent prairie cavalry can hold a horse's belly with only his legs, and he can endure a lot of riding without a saddle.

After all, in Pecheneg, the saddle can be a simple thing made of felt. It is difficult for ordinary people to get metal stirrups unless they are captured in the war.

As a result, many of Beja Hill's guards were simply bow-legged, just because they couldn't show it because of the cover of their trousers.

One person is assigned one horse, and the horses are the result of value-added over the years, and the extra population is also Slavic men who migrated from nearby farms. After all, people who were forcibly removed from the forest may go to the lakeside to reproduce a farm, but they are forced to start reclamation on the spot, building houses and reclaiming wasteland. This is very hard work.

So some people simply joined the Principality of Ostara in the south of the great lake. At least the ruler here would not let them cultivate wasteland, and they could live by fishing and animal husbandry.

In this way, Carlotta was simply robbing Rurik of the population. Rurik ordered the clerks to count the population, and those clerks would never go to the Principality of Austala to do the statistics.

Without first-hand information, Rurik would not be able to know how many horses his southern vassal had, how many people he had, and how many reserve troops he had that could be put into battle in a short time.

His southward roaming had yielded a great deal, which he had neglected in the past.

He inspected the reserve cavalry of Ostara outside the city, and also learned from Bejasir that Carlotta led an elite force of more than 200 cavalry to the south, accompanied by the first cavalry commanded by "Bald" Fisk. A cavalry.

Five hundred cavalry are not all the troops that Carlota can control, because there are still some Pecheneg horses in the important southern stronghold of Great Luki, which was ordered by Rurik himself, and there may still be some horses there. Can pull out another hundred people who can ride a horse.

Because it is completely different from Frank's attitude towards cavalry.

All the men of the Pecheneg tribe are cavalry, and women also ride horses when necessary.

The Ross people are all too familiar with the fact that all people are soldiers. This is how Ross came here, but every man in the old Ross must be a "Marine Corps" who is good at sailing.

Since the composition of the steppe cavalry came from all the men of the tribe, the quality of the fighters varied. If a huge cavalry was really organized, Rurik would inevitably have prejudices—maybe a large group of horse-riding militiamen were trained by the grassland people and turned into mobs.

In the final analysis, it is necessary to build one cavalry flag team after another, devote all efforts to combat training China with a full-time attitude, and provide them with excellent weapons and armor.

Rurik felt that it was necessary to learn from the Franks in this regard. After all, this cavalry banner was directly loyal to the king.

At least he got great good news in New Ostara. The horse breeding industry continued to prosper. This time, Bejahir, who was the princess of the grassland, personally supervised it. Fifty new riding slaves were good at wool. Here, it is not just a quantitative increase that is given to the horse herd, but by-products from the horses such as fresh mare's milk, mare's milk and kumiss are also produced.

Finally, Rurik stood in the city of New Ostara, and accompanied by Bejacier, he entered the pure wooden palace of the Duchess.

The palace is now the residence of King Ross, and Bejahir is by Rurik's side.

The two sons, Hasal, who is almost two years old, were left in Novgorod to be protected collectively with the other princes, and should be educated after passing through the most dangerous childhood in his life up.

As a mother, she can't keep her son with her all the time, it seems just because the boy is too young. She is very sorry, but she is eager to have a child, but due to reality, it is not appropriate to leave the business at hand and stay in Novgorod every day to take care of the child.

Unlike Carlotta, as the duchess, she took her son Karl to launch a complete conquest of Polotsk. After all, the child was already six years old.

"Let's have another one."

At night, Rurik, who was sleeping in the palace, responded bluntly to Bejasir's shy gesture during the day.

Beyahir, who had been apprehensive all this time, waited for Rurik under the moonlight to say so, and he was very happy to hear that.

"It's just what I want. Hasal has a younger brother... no, two, three. They will all be your fighters! And, I really like you..."

Rurik has always had an oriental aesthetic, and Beyahir is just such a girl who satisfies her own aesthetic. It would be better if her eyes were bigger.

He had already made a clear classification of all wives and concubines, and Beja Hill was classified as the so-called third grade. Even Carlotta is at this level, and all wives and concubines at this level must be female nobles with titles and their own identities.

The first class is Queen Svetlana, and the second class is High Priest Rumia. The status of the queen must be the highest, and the high priest is the second. The former maintains the direct lineage of the royal family, while the latter maintains the faith of the kingdom. The two daughters are really of high status, and it is impossible to have a fief.

As for the third-class wives and concubines, many of them have become de facto feudal officials, just like Carlota who led the cavalry to start the expansion of Eastern Europe.

Bella Hill was very submissive ~www.readwn.com~ she just hoped so and enjoyed it a lot.

However, the happy time is short-lived.

Because Rurik has settled a lot of affairs, Novgorod, Novorosburg, and several cities in the north, the local governors can work step by step, and all the people enjoy a good life of peace and tax suspension.

As a king, Rurik is unwilling to be trapped by the power he possesses.

He actually has some hidden worries, and it's not easy to tell anyone about it.

The expansion of the so-called Principality of Ostara is a bit out of control. Carlota is a strong woman forced out by the dangerous environment, and her ambition is likely to expand due to the expansion of her strength.

"I must find her! Tell her! I am the real king."

How to implement it? After all, she is a woman, and she is still her sister in name. Over the years, Rurik felt that he owed her a lot. His son Karl was already six years old, and it was time for him to have a half-brother or sister.