A few days later, Mehmed II proved once again that his father's preference was not the only reason why he was the heir to Murad II's heir could stand out from his brothers.

In the slightest dimming of the rebels' momentum, Muhammad himself led the Sultan Guards and the Sipahi cavalry corps to find an opportunity. Although his brother Ibrahim and Mustafa commanded more than twice as many rebels in the Balkans as Muhammad, they were also members of the royal family, and they would inevitably face an embarrassing situation of fighting for the throne after their successful usurpation, which doomed their combined forces to be invincible.

Moreover, Ibrahim and Mustafa have been troubled by the issue of the army's income for a long time. As a rebel, it was impossible to collect taxes reasonably on Ottoman land, and even if they had a large number of soldiers, it was unknown what the chances of winning a head-on battle with the elite troops led by Muhammad were poorly equipped and underfed.

It was not without their thoughts that the Anatolian army would be transported to the Balkans by navy, conquer the court of Edirne in one fell swoop, capture Mehmed II alive, and settle the problem of the throne first, but they found that the maritime supremacy of the Aegean Sea had been transferred to the Roman Empire and the Venetian merchants since the rebels were scattered and the navy was out of port. They didn't even have enough ships to organize a fleet to transport manpower.

Muhammad apparently understood this and left the city before the plague had dispersed.

Ibrahim and Mustafa were stationed in two fortresses separated by a distance, and in the face of the Sultan's throne, they naturally had their own calculations in mind. Joint defence work is like a decoration among the rebels. What made Muhammad sneer at the rebels even more was that in the midst of this rapidly changing battlefield situation, Mustafa and Ibrahim also tried to feed the army by forcibly requisitioning supplies from the civilian population, setting off numerous local revolts, and finally had to give up.

Late one night in late summer, Muhammad launched a storming of the fortress where Ibrahim was stationed.

The siege had lasted for two weeks, and Mustafa's reinforcements were still nowhere to be seen, which made Muhammad, who had been preparing to encircle the city, feel that he had overestimated the strength of the rebels.

"Your Majesty! Ibrahim is dead! ”

"Beautiful! Who did it? Mlleta? ”

"No, it's the captain of the Sipahi cavalry, General Lycaon!"

"Lucaon?"

……

"Can you move?"

"It really can!"

"Does it still hurt?"

"It doesn't hurt anymore!"

"That ......"

"Brother!"

Sophia pulled her hand out of John's clutches, and then ripped off the bandages that were wrapped around it.

"It's not a terrible serious injury, why didn't I see you go to the camp to take care of those powerful heavy infantry?"

"Ahem...... The princesses of the empire are not the same as the soldiers in the camp. John returned to the round table with some embarrassment.

However, Yustina had already been surprised to bring a new day's breakfast to the two "little children". John, who was fully satisfied with his feeding fetish the other day, officially ended his happy days.

"If these words are said in front of the soldiers, the Phoenix Legion will no longer want to be invincible." Sophia glared at John angrily, and then began to compete with the pan-fried fish fillet on her plate.

"The Phoenix Legion is also at your service, so there's nothing to worry about."

Since the reopening of Port d'Avil, clandestine mining of the Combrine gold mine has also been carried out. However, according to Jeffrey, increasing income through a large amount of gold in a short period of time will cause extremely serious inflation, which will also have a devastating impact on the empire's economy.

In order to prevent this from happening, John kept the mines of Combrigne strictly confidential and used some of the mined gold mines to expand the port of Javel. The rest of the gold mines were personally sent to the treasury of Constantinople by the Phoenix Legion and the fleet as reserve funds.

In Jeffrey's plan, the gold mines were a windfall that could not be easily used, and the quickest way to truly restore Epirus' tax revenues was to use Epirus' unique location to become a trading hub for the Black Sea, the Aegean Sea, and the Mediterranean. And take the opportunity to expand the export of goods to the riparian countries.

Although there was a strong capitalist flavor to it, John was not opposed to trading for hidden gains, including culture and ideas, in addition to capital.

With this step in mind, Jeffrey let go without any worries. Although he was more proficient in the law and the rule of the officials, this did not prevent him from having a unique way of thinking about foreign trade.

Coupled with the fact that he could always consult with Kinchi, the chief of finance and trade in Constantinople, and not to mention the trade of the three seas, within a year Jeffrey was confident that the port of Awehr would become the most important trading outpost on the Adriatic sea.

In addition to deliberately making the port of Aweier the heart of trade, Jeffrey also proposed a new experimental base tax reform in order to revive Epirus' tax revenues, in consultation with John.

Since there were gold mines covertly supporting the spending of the new government in Gombrigne, Jeffrey simply downgraded Epirus' income rating once again, thus attracting a large influx of people to Epirus. Even after the militia was stationed in the border forts, John opened the so-called "universal gates" on certain roads.

The Ottomans were plagued by war in recent days, and it was natural that there would be a large number of war refugees, and among them, as long as they still had the Orthodox faith and the heart of conversion to the Roman Empire, they could accept the "test" of the universal gate, and after successfully passing, Geoffrey would naturally provide them with a rudimentary temporary settlement, enjoying a tax system that was only slightly higher than that of the permanent citizens of the empire.

Of course, there was no such thing as a test of faith, and it was up to Sofia's Pedro to determine the identity of the Ottomans seeking refuge in order to prevent spies from getting involved.

If this new system had continued, Epirus' embarrassing demographic problems would soon have been alleviated, but with it problems of faith and national culture.

"Your Majesty, the messenger of His Patriarch's crown has arrived."

"Under the Patriarch's crown?"

John grabbed the cloth and cleaned up the food debris and asked Eustina to open the door.

Standing in the doorway was a tall, slender young monk who looked pale and weak. Covered in a black burqa, John couldn't see his true face.

"You ......"