After hearing the report, Roland V's heart sank.
He had made a name for himself, and under his rule, the Holy Roland Empire had flourished. Even compared with the previous emperors, his achievements were the greatest. So how had he ended up with such a bunch of useless allies?!
"Send someone to negotiate!"
Whether the negotiations succeeded or not, they still had to be held.
Looking on the bright side, what if they actually succeeded?
At the same time, he definitely had to prepare for the worst.
"Send orders to the troops stationed in the new territories. Avoid a head-on clash with the allied forces of Great Zhou and Copper Furnace Fortress. Gather up the troops and population, then withdraw."
After the Greenhide War ended, the territory of the Holy Roland Empire had directly doubled in size.
Faced with such a massive expansion, they had naturally needed to send troops to garrison the new lands. And after dispatching those troops, they had also needed to send laborers there for construction and development.
Judging from the situation at the time, the Holy Roland Empire had indeed been a great power with a large population.
Even so, after fighting the Greenhides for so many years, its internal population had continued to decline due to war casualties. At the same time, the lives of its people had been affected by the war, causing the birth rate to fall.
After the war ended, the birth rate could not possibly recover at once. It usually took several years to transition, and the children born afterward were too young to be of any value as laborers.
That was right—the postwar Holy Roland Empire had fallen straight into the same predicament as Great Zhou.
Its effective population had barely increased, while its territory had multiplied several times