"Brother, Mr. Jeffrey has a letter, it's urgent."

"Oh? Jeffery? John opened his eyes, and before leaving Gombrigne, John had given Epirus carte blanche to Jeffrey, and if it weren't for the big deal, Jeffrey wouldn't have let his attendants go all the way.

The empire is enjoying a long-lost peace, and even if the Ottomans still want to raid, they probably won't start with Epirus. In such an environment, an urgent letter is even more worthy of touching.

John read the letter word by word, and at the end, he handed it back to Sophia with a strange expression.

Jeffrey's report was about the situation in the occupied Serbian territories. After the partition of Serbia, the Mandate was imposed, softening the indigenous people of Serbia only by sending local bureaucrats and reducing taxes. This should be a relatively smooth means of transition. Coupled with the fact that Brankovich's own rule has caused the Serbian people to complain, all in all, Serbia should be the most stable part of the newly occupied zone of the Triple Alliance.

The letter, which was urgently sent to the Slou Garden, did not sound like an unusual matter, except that the taxes paid to the empire in parts of Serbia were falling every week. Since last month, there have been cases of disappearances of tax collectors, and Jeffrey has sent troops to investigate the area, but to no avail. According to the locals, the tax collector may have simply stumbled or died in the belly of a wolf while out on a safari, but this happened again and again, and it had seriously affected the Empire's jurisdiction over Serbia. Tax revenues in some areas, especially in gold-producing Kosovo, were a very important source of revenue, and the empire could not sit idly by for long.

If this phenomenon had occurred only in the controlled areas of the Empire, perhaps Jeffrey would not have been so aggressive, but the crux of the matter was that when Jeffrey got in touch with Jerj and Hunyati, they also had the same troubles. The problems of Hungary and Albania are even more serious. After all, the occupied territories of the empire were only a very small part of Serbia's territory. Albania and Hungary have undoubtedly eaten the lion's share. In this bizarre case of the disappearance of officials, the losses are also more severe than those of the Empire.

Jeffrey, who has a keen nature and has been immersed in the empire for many years, smells a familiar smell almost instantly—a prelude to a large-scale local rebellion. The Triple Alliance granted Serbia a high degree of autonomy, so much so that Serbia was even more like an independent sovereign state, with no excessive pressure on the local population except for paying taxes on time. But even then, Serbs are quite a dignified people. For their part, they would rather accept Brankovich's foolish rule than bow to the foreign invaders.

If you want them to really surrender, there will definitely be a lose-lose situation in the end.

"This matter really needs to be taken seriously, whether or not the Serbs are planning a large-scale rebellion, we must suppress this turmoil." John touched his chin and thought for a moment, and finally finalized the safest method, "Tell my father about this, the Fourth Army lacks training, and even the selection of the Supreme Commander has not been finalized...... Let them temporarily be stationed in Constantinople in place of the Holy See. Let the Holy See and the Phoenix Army go to the Kosovo region together, Angelo has been pretending to be dead for so long, and it is time to come out and move. Again, inform Hungary and Albania that they are ready to jointly suppress the rebellion. Once ignited, this rebellion is likely to turn into a prairie fire. Whether we can control it quickly is a big question. To make sure nothing goes wrong......"

It is not that John was so afraid of a peasant rebellion in Serbia, but compared to the peasant rebellions of the Celestial Empire, which changed dynasties at every turn, the peasant rebellions in this era, especially in the Balkans, posed little threat to the ruling class. Even in the so-called heart of Europe on the British-German-Apennine line, there has never been a peasant revolt of real scale and the overthrow of the rule of a single dynasty.

After all, the feudal system had a far-reaching impact, and in the minds of the peasants, the more profound concept should be to arm themselves and kill a certain bureaucrat or landlord who was pressing on their heads, and perhaps the contradiction would be raised to the head of the local governor, but very few peasant rebellions aimed directly at overthrowing the dynastic rule. The European rebellion was quite political and organized, and there was no reason to threaten the royal family. What John really feared was that some Serbian nobles and even royal families with ulterior motives would take advantage of this whole peasant rebellion and turn it into a vigorous war for the restoration of the country. Prompted Serbia to regain its independence from the control of the Triple Alliance and gain sovereignty.

"Serbia is now impossible to get the secret help of the Ottomans, they want to restore the country, it is much more difficult than resisting the invasion of the Triple Alliance at that time, how can they choose us to be peaceful, and start a rebellion when there is no foreign war?" Sophia was a little puzzled, "It stands to reason that even if they rebelled directly when the Ottomans invaded the port of Athens a few months in advance, it would be much better than now." ”

"There are a lot of things that they can't decide. If there were really nobles behind the peasant rebellion, at the beginning, the nobles who were deprived of the right to privately fund troops by the Triple Alliance would have to look at the eyes of the peasants. In fact, the most likely way is to incite Serbian civilians to resist the oppression of the Triple Alliance, to exaggerate the so-called patriotic fervor, and in the process, they have a great possibility to create a Serbian national hero in the eyes of the people through underground propaganda. And this national hero is likely to become a spiritual symbol of the entire rebellion. When the insurgency does take shape, we tend to take short periods of stress to allow the insurgency to grow on an uncontrollable scale. Serbs, it is still possible for us to rule over them. ”

Although John is quite reluctant to make his guesses come true, reality often coincides with his guesses.

Although Constantine XI approved and agreed to John's request as quickly as possible, and the Holy See Guard, together with the Phoenix Legion, rushed to Kosovo as quickly as possible, they were still a step slow when everyone reacted.

Serbia, under the control of a small group of nobles and army generals with ulterior motives, launched a rebellion against slavery and oppression in the presence of the Triple Alliance.