News of the alliance between Egypt and Persia was quickly transmitted back by Gutz via carrier pigeons, which flew to Italy, where the information was then transmitted back to the mainland by the Italian intelligence station in the North Sea States.

After receiving the information, Marin was half happy and half depressed. Why are you depressed? For the Egyptians competed with him for the horses of Persia!

It is true that there are many horses in Persia, but Egypt is in great demand. There were tens of thousands of Mamluk cavalry, and there was a great demand for horses. With a large purchase from the Egyptians, then it is not easy for Marin to buy the war horses of the Persians at a low price, and it will cost a lot of money.

Of course, this price is definitely much cheaper than the price of European war horses. You know, a good European knight's war horse costs as much as about 100 gold coins. This price is too expensive. So, it's good to be a knight. Not to mention the knight's martial arts, that is, to prepare war horses and weapons and armor, ordinary people have no conditions. You have to have a manor to back it up in order to be able to afford a knight.

At the moment, Marin was able to buy a large number of horses from the Crimean Khanate. However, the Eastern European Mongol horses of the Crimean Khanate (similar to the later Don hippos) were slightly smaller. Moreover, apart from the Mongolian horse's super endurance and ability to endure hardships, other advantages are not outstanding.

The Persian horse is different, don't look at the Persian horse in later generations, it is not very famous, that is because the religious Persia cut off contact with the outside world, resulting in their war horse breed not being valued.

In fact, the Persian horse was mixed not only with a large number of Arabian horses, but also with the bloodlines of the Central Asian horses. In terms of pedigree, although the Persian horse is a little mixed, it is very good.

And this mixed breed horse, although it is also a medium-sized horse, is larger than the Mongolian horse in Eastern Europe. And, passing on the advantages of Arabian horses, they are faster than Mongolian horses in Eastern Europe. After all, the Mongolian horse series has never been good at speed, only endurance.

For Marin, the best choice for a war horse is actually an Arabian horse. But the climatic conditions of the pure Arabian horse origin are very harsh, and the desert is everywhere, which is very unsuitable for livestock. As a result, the number has not been able to go up. Even if Marin wanted to buy it, he didn't have that much.

Therefore, he had no choice but to settle for the next best thing and buy a large number of mixed-breed Persian horses from Persia with more Arabian horse bloodlines. Even, the Mawari horse, which is a specialty of India, has a lot of Arabian horse pedigree. This is because the people of the northwestern part of India are basically green conquerors from Persia and Afghanistan. When they conquered India, they also brought the bloodline of Arabian horses to India.

Originally, Marin had every chance to desperately lower the price. After all, in the past, no one bought Persian war horses. But with Egypt, an agricultural powerhouse, on board, it's tricky. There are Egyptians there to make proofs, and it is difficult for Marin to lower the price. At least, it can't be lower than the Egyptians......

But Marin couldn't say anything, because, the Egyptian army was strong, and Marin was only happy. After all, it would be bad if Turkey had annexed Egypt, which had a strong agricultural economy.

Don't look at Egypt, just one Nile valley can be used for agriculture, and the rest of the region is desert. But it can't stand the fertile land of the Nile Valley, and the sun is abundant. In later generations, Egypt relied on the agricultural areas of the Nile River basin to feed more than 100 million people, which is very scary. Of course, that's because Egypt is overpopulated. But, under normal circumstances, the agricultural areas of Egypt's Nile Valley would not have had a problem feeding tens of millions of people. Now, with a population of only about 4.5 million, Egypt is far from the upper limit. What's more, the Mamluk dynasty of Egypt also controlled Syria, a traditionally agricultural region of the Middle East.

It was precisely because of the annexation of a large number of agricultural areas in Egypt that the original historical Turkey opened an era of terror with hundreds of thousands of soldiers. Without the agricultural areas of Egypt, Turkey would have dispatched a hundred thousand men at most, just for the little grain produced by the half-baked European farmers in the Balkans. No more, you can't afford it.

What's more, Egypt also controls Mecca in the Hejaz region on the eastern shore of the Red Sea, and also controls the caliphate, the supreme leader of the Green Church. If Egypt is finished, Turkey will not only be able to control Mecca, the holy city of the Green Religion, but also take the position of caliph and become the undisputed leader of the Green Religion. Originally, after conquering Cairo, the Turkish Sultan snatched the title of caliph and became the leader of the green world.

How big of an impact does this have? In later generations, Turkey has been reduced to a sling, and it considers itself the world leader of the Green Religion. Even, they also support the terrorist forces in the eastern soil of China, as if they are the boss of the Green Sect. And their theory is based on the fact that the Turkish Sultan has been a caliph for hundreds of years. Therefore, they believe that the whole world of green believers should listen to the local chicken......

Therefore, Marin was not in any case willing to take Egypt by Turkey, as well as the Hejaz region where Mecca was located. If Turkey really came to Egypt, Marin even planned to send troops directly to the aid of Egypt. Of course, this is in the event of a dangerous situation in Egypt itself. If it's just the loss of Syria, Marin doesn't bother to care. I almost forgot that Marin still has the title of "Duke of Egypt" of the Byzantine Empire on his head......

It's just that Egypt and the North Sea Kingdom are too far apart for Marin to take care of. Otherwise, he would like to take over this area with developed agriculture and an important geographical location.

……

In his letter, Guts mentioned not only the question of the alliance between Egypt and Persia, but also the development of the Suez Canal.

At the beginning, in order to regain the right to trade spices in India, at the suggestion of Marin, the Venetians joined forces with the Mamluk dynasty of Egypt to start the excavation of the Suez Canal in the Sinai Peninsula.

But how difficult is it to dig a canal that can lead to large ships without construction machinery? Although the Sui Dynasty dug a Beijing-Hangzhou Grand Canal that shocked the world, it lost the support of the people and drained its finances. Then, this Grand Canal cheapened the Tang Dynasty and created the prosperity of the later Tang and Song dynasties.

In short, in this era when digging canals is purely artificial, the process of digging canals is definitely not beautiful, but full of blood and brutality......

As far as Marin knows, this Suez Canal was paid for by the Venetians, and the Mamluk Dynasty of Egypt sent manpower to dig a canal regardless of casualties.

At present, about 100 kilometers of the 190-kilometer-long Suez Canal have been dug through. However, in order to dig the river, 100,000 laborers have died on the Egyptian side. On average, the number of deaths per kilometer is as high as thousands, which is higher than the original death rate during the excavation in the 19th century.

And because the death rate is so high, the Egyptian people have been very resistant to participating in the digging of the canal. In some places, armed riots have even taken place to obstruct the recruitment of people to dig canals. As a result, the excavation of the Egyptian canal has been forced to suspend at present.

According to Gutz, the Mamluk dynasty of Egypt was also anxious about this. If one is not done well, it may detonate a popular uprising.

Marin did not want to see Egypt given Turkey a chance to eliminate Egypt because of civil strife. After much thought, Marin finally decided to come up with an idea for the Mamluk dynasty of Egypt......

What's the idea? Wage war to capture foreigners and dig canals......

The Egyptians themselves refused to send them to death, so they directly dispatched Mamluk cavalry to plunder the population around Egypt and capture strong men to dig canals.

For example, the Tripoli region in the west, that is, Libya in later generations, although the population is not large, but if you send cavalry to sweep it, you can still catch tens of thousands of strong men back. Moreover, it can also take the opportunity to annex the land. If nothing else, it's no problem to get more war horses. After all, it also belonged to the Arab Empire, and there were quite a few Arabian horses. Although the local tribes also had cavalry, their opponents were inevitably vulnerable to the powerful Mamluk cavalry......

If you don't have enough people, you can also send troops to the Fingi Kingdom in the south to arrest people! The Kingdom of Fingi is located in the later Republic of Sudan and belongs to the black country. The characteristic of blacks is that they can give birth, and the population must be quite large. Moreover, the Sudan region is located in the middle reaches of the Nile River, and the natural conditions are excellent, and the population is certainly much larger than that of Libya. After all, Libya is just an arid barren land that the Egyptians bother to take......