Vikings: Lords of the Ice Sea

Chapter 71 Contest
After making his threats, Esserwolf gestured for his soldiers to execute the three Viking envoys.

Facing the cold, sharp blade, Gunnar showed no fear. "Kill me, and none of the captured nobles or priests will survive. Three lives for over a hundred lives, we've made a profit!"

At this moment, a county magistrate leaned over and whispered:

"Your Majesty, you must spare the lives of those prisoners. After defeating the Vikings, if you can gain their allegiance, you can convene a council of wise men and have them elect you as the King of Mercia."

"That's right!" Esserwolf slapped his thigh.

Tracing back to his lineage, one of his ancestors was a princess from Mercia who married into the kingdom, and he indeed had the right to claim the Mercian throne.

He raised his right hand, ordering the guards to postpone the execution, his mind racing:
"Leading an army to repel the infidels will greatly enhance my prestige. If we win this battle, I will be elected King of Mercia, and unifying the other five kingdoms will not be a pipe dream."

Esserwolf eventually changed his mind, ordered the Viking envoys to be expelled, and then wrote a long letter to the Pope himself.

First, he emphasizes the dire situation in Britain: Northumbria and Mercia were occupied by the Vikings, and the other four kingdoms were utterly incompetent. Looking across Britain, only Wessex seemed capable of shouldering the burden.

Then, Esselwolf wrote down the names of his ancestors one by one, pointing out that someone was a princess of Mercia. Now that the Mercian royal bloodline was extinct, he was qualified to inherit the Mercian throne after the reconquest of the land.

Finally, Esselwolf implored the Pope to send a special envoy to his coronation. In return, he vowed to strictly enforce tithes within his territory and to crack down hard on stingy farmers who refused to pay taxes.
Rubbing his aching wrists, he gestured for the county officials to check the wording. After several grammatical errors were pointed out, the king had no choice but to rewrite it and seal it with sealing wax.

"Remember, send it to the Vatican as quickly as possible, without any delay!"

The messenger responded loudly, "Yes, Your Majesty."

More than a month passed, and the ice and snow gradually melted. Esserwolf, who had been longing for a reply from Rome, received no response. Instead, he was greeted by an unexpected reinforcement.

When the messenger from Wessex passed through Paris, Charles the Bald, King of West Frankish, was horrified to hear that the Vikings had captured Tamworth.

For decades, the Franks had also suffered greatly from pirates, and if the Vikings occupied Britain, the raids would only become more frequent.

For the long term, "Bald" Charles sent a thousand reinforcements: six hundred conscripted peasant soldiers, sixty knights, and more than three hundred mounted squires.

Faced with the envoy sent by the King of France, Esserwolf was somewhat suspicious. "He made no territorial demands, nor did he ask for money?"

The envoy replied respectfully, "Yes, King Charles asks for nothing in return; his only wish is to wipe out the Viking barbarians so they can stop plundering our northern coast every day."

"Thank you for King Charles's kindness." Ethelwaugh was slightly troubled by these unexpected reinforcements.

Feeding warhorses requires oats, peas, and salt. One warhorse can consume the rations of 6 to 8 infantrymen. Four hundred warhorses are equivalent to the food consumption of more than two thousand infantrymen.

"There are too many cavalry; it would be better to send more heavy infantry."

Upon hearing these remarks, the envoy stood frozen in place. Compared to heavy infantry, light infantry, and archers, cavalry was the only force that could dominate the battlefield. Was the old king joking?
The envoy looked up in surprise, staring at Esselwolf for a few seconds, unsure what to say. Suddenly, it dawned on him: it seemed that Anglo-Saxon riders generally didn't have stirrups!
"Your Majesty, a rider without stirrups is not worthy of being called a cavalryman. When reinforcements arrive in a few days, have the knights practice their charge tactics. You will then find that the role of cavalry far surpasses that of other military units!"

Unable to resist the Frankish envoy's pleas, Esselwolf had a field fenced off as a temporary arena, where ten exceptionally skilled horsemen were chosen to compete against the Franks. At dawn, the air was thick with the smells of horse manure, rust, and ale. Each household's servants draped their warhorses in felt coats embroidered with their family crests, the metal bits clanging in the cold light.

Before the competition began, the ten Frankish knights who were going to fight gathered together and chatted. Most of them were young nobles around 20 years old, with blunt swords for practice hanging at their waists.

"I really miss my family's wine cellar, where even the mediocre wines were better than the Anglo-style inferior wines."

"Not only the drinks, but the Anglo-style food was also terrible. The roasted venison at yesterday's banquet had no flavor at all. Only the eel was to my liking."

"This place is incredibly poor. The land is barren (compared to the Franks), farmers generally use wooden tools, and there is a lack of water-powered workshops. The nobles have low tastes, much like the wool traders in the countryside."

The edge of the venue was crowded with people who had come to watch the spectacle. Monks held crosses and prayed quietly, a group of children climbed to the treetops to get a better view, and vendors hawked cured meat and ale.

At eight o'clock in the morning, Esselwolf and a group of nobles went to the stands, and after taking their seats, he couldn't help but exclaim in amazement.

Gods above, how could the Frankish warhorses be so robust, a whole size larger than the Anglo-Saxon warhorses?

"The situation is not good; my rider may suffer a crushing defeat."

Woo~
The first bugle call ripped through the sky, and the two opponents about to enter the arena climbed onto their saddles, taking shields and blunt swords from the soldiers.

Both sides were ready, and the referee in the stands waved his flag. Instantly, the two warhorses, urged on by their masters, charged towards each other. The Anglo-Saxon, unsurprisingly, fell from his horse and rolled several times on the ground due to inertia.

Seeing this, the defeated man's servants rushed into the arena and carried him off on a wooden plank to treat his injuries.

"Enough!" Esserwolf raised his right hand, announcing the end of the match. "The outcome is not determined by martial prowess, but by our respective warhorses. This is the end of it."

Upon hearing this news, the crowd inside and outside the arena erupted in boos in dissatisfaction. The Frankish knight, who was about to take the stage, rushed to the front of the stands, his face flushed, and shouted that he could defeat his opponent even in foot combat.

At the unanimous request of the crowd, the match was changed to foot combat. Both sides entered the arena with blunt swords and oak shields. There were no fixed rules, and the only goal was to take down the opponent.

After nine battles, the Franks won seven of them. Concerned about the dignity of their royal family, some Anglo-Saxons proposed extending the matches.

As time went on, the competition became increasingly fierce and bloody. By dusk, a Frankish knight named Maurice had defeated ten opponents, becoming the undisputed winner.

As night fell, the chaotic and bloody tournament came to an end. No one, including the old king, realized that this farce would have far-reaching consequences, later considered by historians to be the beginning of the tournament of knights.

In the years that followed, this bloody and intense "war game" gradually became popular throughout Europe.

　Thank you to readers t2377879 and Huang Hualin for their generous donations.

　　
　
(End of this chapter)