Louis XII sat on a stone, holding a letter that had just been opened.

He hadn't started reading the contents of the letter yet, but he could roughly guess what was written in it.

For the whole day of the 17th, the French army spent the whole day in fear, and even the slightest movement could make the entire barracks tense up instantly.

Although the enemy's encirclement was mainly concentrated at the north and south ends, the French did not attempt to break through.

This is due to the topography of the ruins of the city of San Girragnano.

It was impossible to break through to the north and south, so there were only two directions, east and west, but to the east faced the towering mountains of the Apennines, and for the French to retreat into the mountains seemed to be able to avoid a catastrophe for a while, but a little thought would have made it clear that perhaps this was exactly what the enemy wanted them to do.

The barren and desolate mountains would trap the French army between the steep and difficult valleys, and it would be a real suicide to kill themselves when they were starved of food and medicine and cut off from their back roads.

A retreat to the west was not a good option, as the shores of the Tirennian Sea were already blocked by the fleets of the Genoese aristocracy in exile entrenched in Sardinia, and retreating along the coastline towards Genoa would have to risk cutting off the front and rear roads at any time with the possibility of being cut off by troops arriving from the sea.

Trapped in the ruins of Giragnano, the only option for the French was now their only option, and their only hope was that the French troops on the Pisa and Montina sides would be able to move closer to them in time for reinforcements.

So Louis XII was puzzled but glad that the coalition had not attacked on the 17th, and now that he had received such a letter, he believed that things might not be so bad.

"Dear King of France and the French, I am here to pay you the highest respect, both for your identity and for your tenacity and virtue, and for your loyal and brave army......

Looking at this rather formal opening, Louis XII looked up at the nobleman named Eugène de Weaslaine opposite, and then he continued.

"I think we are all well aware of the situation, so I will not dwell on it, I just want to remind you that it is already a very important choice for you, you and your army have been surrounded, your army in Pisa and Montina is also suffering a heavy blow, so here I hope that you will be able to face the current situation with a frank and pragmatic attitude, so I hope that you will make a wise choice."

His Holiness tapped his fingers lightly on a broken table in front of him, on which were placed two tin plates containing a few pieces of bread and some dried meat, an open bottle of wine and a full glass.

Noticing the look on Eugène de Weaslain looking at the food on the table, the king made a "sit down" gesture to him, and then gestured to the food on the table.

Eugène de Weslain immediately sat down eagerly and grabbed the dried meat and bread and stuffed it into his mouth, then raised his glass and took a sip.

Although he had suffered nothing with the Neapolitans, he had not received any preferential treatment, and he had been hungry from the battle of the previous night, and after having stuffed a few things to feed his stomach, he was now hungry again after the whole night.

"The Neapolitans didn't give you something to eat?" Louis XII looked at the man and asked, "Or is there not enough food for them?" ”

"No, Your Majesty has a lot of food, but I only had time to eat a little," Weslaine replied vaguely, "I've been taking care of my brother, who is now in the wounded camp on the Neapolitan side. ”

"What about their casualties?" The king put down the unfinished letter in his hand and asked, hoping to find out from the man's mouth the truth of the enemy: "Tell me everything you know, even if it is something you don't know is true or false." ”

Weslaine, who was busy eating, paused for a moment, and saw that the king's eyes were slightly strange, and then put down the wine and jerky in his hand and swallowed the food in his mouth vigorously, and said to the French king very fixedly: "Your Majesty, the Queen of Naples seems to know that you are going to ask me these questions, so she allowed me to walk around her barracks as I pleased, and I did see a lot of things, but I don't know if I should report them to you." ”

"Oh? Why, "Louis XII was not angry with the words of this nobleman" because she saved your brother and did not cut off your head? ”

"No, Your Majesty, because I don't know what kind of impact these things will have on you." Weslaine shook his head, as if after thinking about what to say, before continuing, "I'll talk about their casualties first, maybe you don't want to hear that, but I have to be honest with you, their casualties are much smaller than ours, many of the soldiers are only slightly wounded, I see about a hundred people being treated, maybe more but not as good as us." ”

Seeing Weslaine glance at the wounded battalion that kept screaming in the distance, Louis XII nodded silently, he knew that this person was not lying, and the casualties of the coalition army were far smaller than those of the French army, which everyone knew, but it was not these things that made him care.

"You said you didn't eat much, so tell me their soldiers have food?"

"Some of your majesty, in fact they were congratulating on the victory, and I saw that the soldiers had wine, meat and bread, and even good fish," Weslaine recalled what he saw, "Their morale was high, especially the unit they called the grenadiers, which was said to be the elite of the Queen of Naples, and they were obviously loyal to the Queen, and when they were full they would sing, and it was a hymn to the Queen of Naples against the Ottomans, It is said that in that battle, the queen led the grenadiers to defeat an important Ottoman general. ”

Louis XII listened attentively, he was not annoyed by the man's praise for Josa, if it had been before, he might have thought that the compliments were too much, but now he thought that he should seriously re-examine this peculiar opponent.

Louis XII never imagined that he would one day meet a queen on the battlefield and be beaten by that queen, so he felt that he should reflect on his past hubris.

As for the moment, looking at the letter in his hand that only began with the beginning, His Holiness breathed a sigh of relief.

When Weslaine returned with the letter, Louis XII's tense spirit had relaxed, and although he had not yet read the contents of the letter, he knew that the queen on the other side was fortunately not a tendon.

Paranoid women are terrible, and he was really worried that the woman would be desperate to go crazy, but now that there are letters, it seems that things may still turn around.

“…… The Austrians have besieged Milan, the Venetians have joined in, your expedition has so far brought you nothing but failure, and I would like to tell you that there is a turmoil in your country caused by the devaluation of the gold coins of Ladia, the effects of which I believe you have heard, but believe me that you have not heard enough, and I can assure you that if you continue to fight in Rome, your troubles will not only be lost on the battlefield, but may threaten your throne......"

Louis XII looked at the letter with a gloomy expression, and no one in the vicinity dared to make a sound, except for the faint screams and moans of the wounded soldiers.

It was a letter of persuasion, and Jossa presented Louis XII with the conditions of surrender as a victor.

Disband seventy percent of the French army on the spot, surrender all artillery, and demand that the French pay 120,000 florins in compensation.

Looking at this number, the corners of Louis XII's mouth twitched, the total military expenses he brought with France was 170,000 florins, which was not a lot of money, because at that time, in addition to paying the soldiers' early salaries and purchasing various materials, once they arrived in Italy, they could use plundering to feed the war, and the richness of Lombardy was enough to support the cost of a large army, and because of this, 170,000 florins was actually enough.

The early stages of the war were as smooth as the King of France had expected, and the wealth plundered from Milan was enough for him to support the high costs in the early days, but now that Milan was besieged, much of the wealth plundered had been shipped back to mainland France, so Louis XII was now very strapped for money.

The ingenuity of the compensation figure proposed by Zhisa is that the remaining money is just enough to pay for the French army to go back after the dismissal.

Louis XII felt like a beggar who had been stripped naked and stood naked before his enemies, who knew exactly what he was doing, and even how much money he had left for him not to go back to France hungry.

Louis XII began to wonder if there were any spies of the anti-French alliance around him, but now was not the time to think about this, and the queen of Naples sent someone to send such a letter at this time, which gave Louis XII a glimmer of hope.

Lu XII believed that any war could be resolved through negotiation in the end, and perhaps it was possible to fight to the end with the infidels, but even the British and French, as feuds, finally resolved the troubles that had plagued both sides for too long at the negotiating table after the bloody Hundred Years' War.

And while he knew that Sharron and Bowicken might not be in a better position than he was right now, and while Louis still had some illusions about whether they would be able to reinforce him in time, it seemed that negotiations might be a good opportunity to stall for time.

But what His Holiness didn't expect was that just as he was beginning to think about how to start a time-delaying bargain with the other party, he suddenly saw a sentence at the end of the letter that made him jaw-dropping for a moment!

"Your Majesty, considering that you and your generals may not be aware of the current situation, allow me to formally inform you that whether or not you agree to my conditions, the coalition forces will launch a general offensive against your army at noon on July 18 until you send someone to propose an armistice, may God bless you and your army."

Louis XII looked at this passage in disbelief, he knew what it meant, but he could not have imagined that the Queen of Naples would do this.

Then he suddenly realized something and suddenly looked up at the sky.

The sun is scorching, and it's noon!

This was when Louis XII finally realized what was about to happen.

"Go and give the order, the enemy is attacking!"

The king slammed to his feet, knocking over the table in front of him, the food was scattered all over the floor, and his shouts caused a commotion among those around him.

Louis XII continued to shout loudly to warn the others, but his voice was suddenly drowned out by a violent explosion.

The explosion was so sudden that the king saw a huge curtain of earth on the camp in front of him.

And the curtain that could not be lifted moved in the direction of the king with the second explosion that followed after the first explosion had ended.

The artillery of the coalition forces at this moment began preparations for unprecedented heavy artillery fire.

"Don't skimp on shells, shoot them out, shoot them all!" On the Roman Thecian position, Gompati shouted to his artillery commanders, "Remember, I want you to dumb me their guns at the first bombardment, and if I see an enemy shell landing on the heads of my soldiers after the attack, I will put you in the chamber and shoot you." ”

"Your Excellency, the artillery may not be able to withstand it," said the artillery officer worriedly, "the artillery will explode, and even if the artillery can withstand it, what will we do if we can, if the enemy's reinforcements come, we will not have so much ammunition." ”

"If we win today, we can capture all the enemy's artillery, but if we fail, it's useless to keep the artillery, so let's get to work." Gompati slapped the artillery officer on the shoulder hard, then stepped on a ladder and climbed a branch to look in the direction of the French position in the distance: "Let's see what the French are doing." ”

The French are running for their lives, or rather, they are just running blindly.

The French army was completely blinded by the unprecedented heavy shelling, and they had never encountered such a blow, at least not this barrage salvo that seemed to be approaching step by step as if it had grown legs.

The French, squeezed in the middle by shelling from both the north and south, gradually gathered in the dilapidated streets in the middle of the ruins of the small ancient city, but this provided their enemies with more convenient targets.

"Shoot at those obelisks, yes, that's the place," said a few of the somewhat hastily Neapolitan artillerymen, hurrying to correct the firing distance of the artillery, somewhat unfamiliar with the strange tool in their hands, holding the concave goniometer with a scale in a triangle on a wooden plank, and the gunners mechanically flipped the firing tables full of various values.

"It seems that our soldiers need a lot of training," said Josha, frowning slightly as she watched the clumsy artillerymen from afar, but she knew how skilled Alexander was at using artillery in the first place, which made her wonder if she should ask Alexander to lend him that Gompati for some time to help train the Neapolitan artillery unit, "Tell them that even if they keep firing, I can now just defeat the French." ”

The generals next to him burst into laughter, and now they could easily tell the queen some jokes, and now they were thinking about how to win more beautifully.

"Your Majesty, do you want to wipe out the French army completely?"

A voice that seemed a little out of place at this time came, and Zhisa turned her head to look at Skop, who was not far from her, and she thought for a moment and asked, "Then what do you think should be done, Earl?" ”

"Your Majesty, if the French are completely defeated, and even Louis dies in this battle......" Skop lowered his voice, he looked at Jisha with some puzzlement, and felt a trace of doubt in his heart.

Skop always thought that the queen was an incredible ruler, even if there was a tacit understanding with Alexander, but it was the wisdom and courage of the queen that made him make the final decision when the Neapolitan army approached Rome.

But now he was a little puzzled, could the queen not see that with the defeat of the French, the former allies might become new enemies, especially now that the Duchy of Rome Thessia was just beginning, and that maintaining a delicate balance should be of paramount importance.

But now the decision of Jisha and Gompati seems to be contrary to this purpose, which makes Skop a little worried.

Skop's future territory is Parma, so that he knows his situation very well in the future, and his territory will become a buffer between the Duchy of Rome and Lombardy in the north, so it is the future situation of Lombardy that determines whether he will be safe in the future.

"I know what you're worried about," Josa said, looking at the ruins of the ancient city, "but any great undertaking requires risk, and it would be his fate if Louis died in this battle, but you must know that Rome, Thesia, and Naples have paid enough in this war, so only enough rewards can compensate for the previous efforts." ”

Skop looked at the queen silently, he knew that there was no point in dissuasion, and as Jisha said, the greatest price to pay so far in this war was the combined forces of Rome and Nesia, so now in order to get more compensation after the war, but also to deter new enemies in the future, this battle is obviously unavoidable.

The heavy shelling finally ended, trumpets and shouts sounded, and the coalition forces began to attack the already bewildered French.

Rows and rows of musketeers were at the forefront, majestic and murderous, followed by a forest of spearmen and compact sword and shield men, the Papal army and the Neapolitan army were like slowly closing iron pincers towards the enemy, and on the north side of the battle line, the Bohemian light cavalry began to penetrate the gaps of the French army scattered in the ruins, and they quickly divided the French army, first firing a burst of short muskets in the distance, and then slashing at their heads with their sabers.

The French army collapsed quickly, and as more and more troops began to leave the battlefield, the generals and knights finally gave up their last hope.

They saw the king's banner moving northward, and many French troops involuntarily began to retreat in the direction of the king's banner, and more and more officers and knights joined the retreating ranks.

In the distance, there was a singing voice, which seemed so abrupt on the battlefield, but the Neapolitan soldiers who heard the song first looked at it with envy, and then sang along with it.

This war song, which was originally called "Praise of the Queen", gradually spread throughout the battlefield, and this song sounded to the ears of the French army as if death was calling them.

The Battle of Siena-Giragnano was nearing its end, and the rout of the French army was already a fact.

"We have won Your Majesty." An officer's voice trembled with excitement, and if the victory of July 15 had established Naples' dominance in the southern part of the Italian peninsula, today's much shorter battle had given many people a different glimpse of the future.

"No, not yet."

What is surprising is that at this time, Ji Sha is not so excited, she seems to be waiting for something in the distance, and even seems to be a little apprehensive.

A cavalryman came running from afar, his sweat-soaked shirt clinging to his body, and when the guards of the Shosha warned him, the cavalryman shouted desperately: "Enemy, Frenchmen, they are coming!" ”

All of them instantly looked at Jisha.

Unlike the slightly nervous appearance of the officers, Tsusha, who heard the news, exhaled as if she had relaxed all of a sudden, and then whispered, "It's finally here." ”

On the afternoon of July 18, 1051, the main French army, which had suffered successive heavy defeats at the Battle of Siena-Giragnano, finally broke through the northern front defended by the Roman Thescian army and joined up with the French army of Charlon, which had retreated all the way to the south.

But what awaited the French army was another, even worse.

The Venetian and Ferrara forces appeared behind them, and the French retreat to the north was once again cut off.

That night, a Frenchman crossed the battle line to the Neapolitan camp.

Looking at this familiar Frenchman, Zhensha, who had already prepared a full costume, smiled at him: "I've been waiting for you for a long time, respected knight, I think now we can have a good talk." ”

Looking at the even slightly innocent smile of the Queen of Naples, Charlen let out a helpless sigh in his heart.

"Go and negotiate with them, whatever conditions they put forward can be negotiated, I want to leave this place as soon as possible, there is no honor and wealth to pursue here, only death and greater trouble, so as long as I can tolerate them, I can accept their harsh conditions."

Thinking of the king's entrustment before leaving, Sharon took a deep breath of the sultry night air.

"Your Majesty, we all know that you need a negotiation as much as we do, and we did pay enough price," Sharon bowed to Tsusha, "so please offer your terms, I don't think there will be any more cannons to disturb us this time." ”