Vol 8 Chapter 375: Kingdom Assembly during the war (2)

Cornelius is old, his voice is not loud, or even a little trembling. It is impossible for the people behind the venue to hear it clearly, but there are several vocalists in front of him retelling his words with loud voices.
At this moment, he took out a roll of sandpaper from his arms, unfolded it carefully, and gave a small cough, and then began to read: "Dear distinguished elders of the Kingdom of Dionia! Dear towns and cities of the Dionia Kingdom Members of Parliament! I cannot attend the Kingdom Assembly, and I apologize for it! The war with Carthage, Rome and Samona was not provoked by us, but we You have to fight because it is about the life and death of the Kingdom of Dionia, and it is about the fundamental interests of each of our citizens!
Until now, this war has been going on for a year. In this year, our soldiers fought on the front line, and in the rear you worked hard to maintain the stability of the domestic order and spared no effort in preparing for the war. With a lot of materials, we were able to defeat Rome and Samona in succession, and they are inseparable from your hard work!
Some time ago, our Sicilian fleet and the Third Fleet almost wiped out the Carthage fleet. Just as I wrote yesterday, our army on the ground severely damaged the 100,000 army of Carthage in Celinus. Captain Carthage's military commander, Marco— "
Cornelius thought of it, paused intentionally, and as he expected, there was a thunderous cheering sound in the venue.
"That's great! Another great victory!"
"Win! Win! We won this war!"
"We won Carthage! We became the new Western Mediterranean overlord !!"
...
People danced and hugged each other, and joy filled with words. You must know that Carthage has dominated the Western Mediterranean for many years. Most of the people in the scene, including the elders, did not have much confidence in this war, but this was unexpected. The results surprised them exceptionally.
At this time, even the order officers responsible for the order of the meeting place smiled, and did not immediately stop the turbulence at the meeting place. After a while, they re-requested to keep quiet.
Cornelius then continued to read: "... We defeated Carthage's navy, and now we defeated Carthage's army. The Carthages have basically lost their ability to fight with us in Dionia. So they sent messengers and asked for peace talks with us.
Ladies and gentlemen, I know that this year ’s war has had a great impact on the kingdom. The treasury has almost been consumed, food prices have risen, a large number of young and middle-aged citizens have been drained, labor is scarce, soldiers have suffered many casualties, and some territories have been ravaged by the enemy. Urgent need to rebuild ... Many of you may wish to reconcile with Carthage after regaining some of the benefits and restore stability to the kingdom.
However, although the Western Mediterranean is large, we cannot tolerate two powerful nations. Do we want to see the severely damaged Carthage re-challenging us after the truce, learning lessons, self-cultivation, and restoring strength?
I think your answer must be ‘no! 'So we ca n’t stop at our current victory, we must continue to fight until we finally get the desired result we want, that is, we will have an absolute advantage in Dionia, so that Carthage will never be able to challenge, Let the Western Mediterranean always have only one overlord, and that is us-Dionia! "
Cornellus read it, his voice couldn't help but become louder, and everyone in the audience was staring with their eyes upright.
"... I therefore hope that you will continue to be united, make the greatest efforts, continue to appease the people, maintain the stability of the kingdom, and make every effort to provide the army with sufficient supplies until we win the final victory! ... This is what His Majesty wrote The contents of the letter. "Cornerus finished reading the letter and handed it to Lucias next to him.
Just then, someone suddenly shouted, "Your Majesty Davis!"
Let the venue live up again: "Your Majesty Davis !!!"
"Victory in the Kingdom of Dionia !!!"
...
Sitting in front of the venue, Pubulius was shrouded in this passionate atmosphere. He never expected that he felt the ambition of the kingdom on the first day he entered the temple of the highest power of the Kingdom of Dionia. -Become the only hegemon in the Western Mediterranean.
Although he was not as excited as everyone else, he felt a little more proud, and at the same time he breathed a sigh of relief: fortunately, he became a citizen of this kingdom in time!
At this time, Cornelis took the opportunity to say: "It seems that everyone has no objection to His Majesty's decision and is very supportive. In the next two days, we will discuss how to better complete His Majesty's proposal. But now, we first invite the heads of various departments to sum up the situation of the kingdom last year. Since everyone is interested in the military situation of the kingdom, we will first ask the Minister of Military Affairs, Hilos, to come to power. "
According to the previous procedures of the Kingdom Assembly, first, King Davers made a comprehensive summary of the situation of the Kingdom last year, and then the heads of the departments made specific introductions on the situation responsible for the department, but now Davers is out. , Steady Cornelis, Lucias, they did not dare to cross over and simply skipped the first link, and the speeches of various departments generally started from the finance department. After all, money is the issue that everyone cares about most, but now The military became the issue that everyone was most concerned about, so Hilos played first.
After many years of training, the mercenary-born military minister made a stop in the center of the venue. He had a calm and majestic style and attracted everyone's attention.
He spoke in a hurry and comprehensively and briefly the entire process of the war between Dionia and Rome, Samona, and Carthage from the occurrence, development, and status quo. He roughly spoke about Dai. The strategy and tactics developed by King Firth and the Ministry of Military Affairs for these three hostile forces, and also mentioned the contributions made by various legions and fleets in the war.
Even though everyone has learned about the fighting last year through various channels, Hilos's comprehensive and professional storytelling still makes them refreshing, so everyone is listening carefully.
For Pubulius, at this time he knew why Dionia dared to ignore the Carthage attack at first, and King Daphs first led the army to attack Rome. It turned out that they had seriously discussed and negotiated long ago. Deduction, made careful preparations, formulated a perfect plan, and Rome rushed to fight, how could it be undefeated!
Pubulius roughly felt the terrible aspect of the establishment of the Ministry of Military Affairs of the Kingdom of Dionia, letting a group of people with rich experience in war do nothing else, specializing in military affairs, only studying how to defeat the enemy every day, which makes peacetime A lot of time was spent on city-state affairs and foreign affairs. How could the Roman nobles who convened citizens and considered tactics before the war could match!
What's even more surprising for Pbulius is-a series of data in the mouth of Hilos: During the war of the past year, the Kingdom of Dionia used a total of eleven regular legions, one reserve legion, four With more than 700 warships in the cavalry regiment and four fleets, the army alone used 110,000 people (not counting the reserve soldiers that were added later). This is such a powerful military force that can make this powerful military The normal operation of the power for one year also shows that the kingdom of Dionia is powerful!
Pubius, who had been a veteran of Rome for many years and has been engaged in tedious government affairs, was aware of this, and now recalls it: The Roman Senate rejected the "hope they reached an armistice" with Dionysian's elders. It's ridiculous to demand and arrogantly scream "Don't be afraid to join Dionia in the war."
Of course, at the end of the lecture, Hilos also said with a serious expression: despite the great victory of the Dionysian army in this year's war, it also paid a lot of casualties. So far, there have been nearly 3 Ten thousand people have died and more than 40,000 have been injured (this includes the crew of the Navy, and they account for the majority of the deaths). The Ministry of Military Affairs will do its best to arrange the funeral of the soldiers who died in the war, send the pension to their homes as soon as possible, and properly resolve the livelihood problems of the families of the soldiers who were killed and wounded, so that the soldiers who are still fighting will have no worries.
When Hilos finished speaking, there were almost no questions, and everyone responded with warm applause.
The second person to come to the stage to summarize is the Finance Minister Melsis ~ EbookFREE.me ~ His speaking style is obviously different from that of Hilos, and he complained at the beginning of the war that the years of savings of the kingdom's treasury were brought to naught. The heartache expression was by no means pretended.
Throughout the whole process, he was mostly complaining that this war cost a lot of gold and silver, even though he also mentioned that he obtained a lot of spoils in the captured city states such as Rome, Syracuse, and The precious metals began to be mined from the mines in Corsica and Sardinia, which actually made up a lot of deficits in the treasury, but his tone and expression seemed to indicate that these were not worth mentioning at all. Stop the war immediately, and this year the kingdom will be in trouble because of lack of finances.
Publius knew from the whispers of the people: This is the usual style of the greedy finance minister of the kingdom, who will always complain about the lack of gold and silver in the treasury.
However, Pbulius was still taken aback by the words of Mersis: The Kingdom of Dionia had seven or eight hundred talients of monthly tax, which was close to 10,000 talientes this year. This is still because of the effects of the war, resulting in a significant decline in taxes. Even so, compared with the previous Rome, its income was only a fraction of that of the Kingdom of Dionia. If Rome still had some fighting power in the military, it would not be worth mentioning financially. Extinction may be expected.