Mage Veigar

Chapter 551 Turning enemies into friends
Drive away the kingdom's army.

Captured the city of Kareni.

Foster's secret move successfully helped Vega kill two birds with one stone and became the biggest beneficiary in the entire North.

Now the city of Kareni and the northern hinterland, as well as the City of Ice and Fire in the north of the dynasty, are connected in a straight line. Both retreat and support are unimpeded, which is equivalent to opening up the Ren and Du meridians of this war, which directly means that the empire has lost control of the north.

Based on Kareni.

Now Veigar is the uncrowned king here.

But now he faced a huge problem, which was how to deal with the more than 300,000 imperial prisoners.

That's right.

At the end of the war, Clemens could not bear to see his soldiers being massacred, so he surrendered. He also died on the same day to apologize, and in his last moments he was still muttering that he had no face to face Foster.

Therefore, the number of deaths in this war was not large, only about 60,000.

Vega also directly obtained these more than 300,000 surrendered soldiers.

These surrendered soldiers definitely cannot be traded to the Imperial Army as before, because the war between the four countries and the Empire has not yet ended. Returning the surrendered soldiers now will only increase the Empire's manpower. Even if Vega wants to trade, other countries will not allow it.

As for directly killing the surrendered soldiers?

Although Vega had done this kind of thing before, he didn't dare to do it this time for both moral and logical reasons.

It’s not because of Vega’s soft-heartedness.

The real reason was that if there was no ultimatum before the war to refuse surrender, then killing the surrendered soldiers without authorization after the war would constitute a violation of international conventions. When the war was over, the other countries might use this as an excuse to deprive Vega of all the benefits he had gained. When it came to the distribution of benefits, the other countries would not care about Vega.

Second.

This time, Vega used the slogan of being persecuted by the Empire and intending to overthrow the Empire's corrupt regime to gain the support of the people of Kareni. Killing a huge number of about 300,000 imperial soldiers at this time will naturally result in the direct loss of support from Kareni from top to bottom, and the image that he has worked hard to maintain until now will collapse in an instant.

Then the problem is coming.

What should be done with these 300,000 surrendered soldiers?
Putting it aside, you will need to spend a lot of manpower to manage them, otherwise no one knows whether they will cause any trouble. In addition, the resources consumed by these 300,000 people every day is a terrifying number.

Although he had just acquired Kareni and the imperial army's supplies fell on his shoulders, these supplies were enough to feed 300,000 people for more than half a year, but who would think that they had too many resources and waste them on a group of useless people?

“Is this the pain of victory?”

Vega had a headache. He even wanted to send these 300,000 people to the Kalini Mountains to mine. It would be better than eating nothing here. But wasn't it a waste of resources to let a group of elite soldiers go mining?
Think about it.

Vega finally decided to recruit the 300,000 surrendered soldiers for his own use.

But it doesn't mean that you can recruit them for your own use. Although the people in the eastern part of the continent all speak a common language, there are essential physiological differences between the Dynasty people and the Imperial people. If you look carefully, you can basically see the difference with the naked eye. This made Vega give up the decision to break them up and mix them into the Dynasty troops.

If they are really mixed in, I'm afraid what will be mixed in is not combat effectiveness, but a time bomb. After all, nationality discrimination has always existed, and once the soldiers of the two countries are at odds, it will directly affect the combat.

So there is only one solution left -

That is to let the empire's 300,000 soldiers turn against the enemy while maintaining the original organization.

How would you describe the difficulty?

Vega believed that the difficulty was no less than that of conquering the city of Ropus, because Vega had personally experienced the Empire's recruit training, and the brainwashing courses were no joke. If Vega had not grown up under the red flag, he might have really fallen into their trap.

Therefore, it is definitely not an easy task to make them turn against you.

But things are in the hands of man. Vega was unwilling to leave 300,000 elite soldiers who could be deployed directly to the battlefield unused, and he believed that he did have a glimmer of hope to gain the loyalty of these 300,000 soldiers.

The reason comes from his identity as a former imperial brigadier general.

There is another most important thing, that is, Vega himself is not a dynasty person, but a native of the empire. If it weren't for these two identities, Vega might have really thrown these 300,000 people to the north to mine.

The premise is already there.

The next step is to rely on acquired efforts.

So Vega guided public opinion in the first week, first spreading the tragic image of him being persecuted by the imperial high-ranking officials in the army, and his loyal nature of being in the dynasty but with his heart in the empire.

The first step did not lead to much progress.

Among the 300,000 people, only a small number of Kaleri soldiers agreed with this. Soldiers from other regions did not believe Vega's nonsense at all. They would not ignore the fact that Vega was a prince of the dynasty.

Veigar didn't care about the failure of the first step.

Because he had never thought that he could gain the support of 300,000 soldiers just by taking the first step, but this step had indeed achieved Vega's goal, which was to win over a small number of soldiers who were willing to believe in Vega.

Unknowingly.

Vega gathered together those soldiers who were willing to believe his lies, and after careful counting, there were probably more than 7,000 of them.

"7000 people, that's more than I thought."

Vega smiled, and in the following week, he conducted special ideological work on these 7,000 people, eventually making them his loyal subordinates. Then, under the pretext of awakening the lost lambs, Vega dispersed these 7,000 people into the imperial army, making them spies and cooperating with Vega's next work.

Second week.

Vega began to give speeches and brag personally, which he learned from the politicians in his previous life. Bragging was tax-free anyway, so he made up a rather tragic and inspirational story for himself.

This story is of course more credible when told by the person involved.

Coupled with Vega's own reputation and the appeal of his speeches, he gained a large number of fans.

"Warriors of the Empire!"

"The corrupt government is no longer able to bring us peace, and even our parents are in danger."

"Please believe me!"

Vega made a promise to everyone: "Please believe me, I have the blood of the Empire in my veins. Everything I have done so far is to fight for the peace of the Empire and to work hard to rebuild a fair, just and open government. But I cannot do all this by myself. Now I need your help."

Vega looked at everyone with sincere eyes.

His voice echoed throughout the prisoner camp: "If you have ever had a patriotic heart, please swear allegiance to the new government. From today on, you will no longer be charged with the crime of surrendering. You are all warriors of the empire, warriors who fight for the revolutionary cause. As an officer of the empire, I pay you the highest respects—"

Vega saluted everyone solemnly: "Long live the empire!"

……

The audience fell into silence.

To outsiders, Vega on the stage seemed extremely embarrassed.

But at this time, the more than 7000 chess pieces planted by Vega began to exert their power.

(End of this chapter)