Chapter 137 Impenetrable Sardinia

PS: This chapter is a bit watery, forgive me......

Also, today I started trying to restore the daily update (.?'ω??) ……

———— Dividing Line————

In 1496, the Tyrrhenian Sea was the darling of history as Sardinia, the base chosen by Ferdinand. The population of the island was close to 140,000, and there were more than 13,000 garrisons, soldiers from Aragon, Valencia, Catalonia, and Castile, plus a few German mercenaries, stationed on this large and "hidden" island.

Behind the now-new, heavily regulated, pozzolant-covered port of Cagliari, the inner world of merchant ships could not be seen by the merchant ships, and the upheavals of this era were brewing and developing all the time.

And all this is exactly what one of the spies of the French Valois, François, may be about to see.

The word "probably" is partly because François was not necessarily (or, more accurately, almost impossible) destined to live to see something incredible, and still less necessarily destined to keep it in his head and leave.

On the other hand, François did not know what was mysterious about Sardinia, and he had not been sent to investigate the "strange state of affairs of lateness" – Charles VIII, who had returned to France in a state of panic, had no time to determine whether there was too much wheat flowing into France.

He had only arrived as had the custom of sending one or two spies here every few years - was it strange to send a spy around such a large Sardinia?

Although such dispatches began in 1455 when Aragon conquered Sardinia, for half a century they did not bring any valuable information. Little is known about the few garrisons in Aragon, and every few spies will never return—hanged by inland peasants or mountain dwellers on some unknown hillside or ravine, too late to complain about their bad luck.

Therefore, it is not surprising that Niederhogg has killed a few French spies in the past few years, and the French are only to be unlucky again. Of course, François's heart was cold when he thought of this.

"There's no point in coming here...... "François stands on the deck of a wide-body galleon from Marseille in the renovated port of Cagliari, "and it will always be so mysterious and desolate – impenetrable Sardinia." ”

The name "Impenetrable Sardinia" was not made by Ferdinand, but by Sardinia itself. Despite its size, Sardinia was squeezed far out of the Italian-Sicily-African maritime trade route and submerged in the sea due to its deviation from the main shipping routes. In the eyes of later generations, the Mediterranean Sea was rare and calm, allowing Emanuele and Mussolini's short-legged toys to stage classic scenes with the British Empire, and the occasional use of frogmen to do their backs, but in ancient Greece and the Middle Ages, when "you bypassed Cape Male and never wanted to return to your homeland", the two vast basins of the Eastern and Western Mediterraneans were large enough to bury most of the surfers who defied their experience and did not sail close to the coastline.

Due to the sparse inhabitation of the inland area behind the coast, the ports of Sardinia serve as indispensable water supply points and anchorages, attracting boats and fishermen to meet as an energy source, but few nearby cities can rise from the ground. The Capitano Plain had not been fully developed until Ferdinand's great dealings, and beyond the estates run by a small number of aristocratic landowners, there were undulating, fragmented, isolated and impoverished hills and hills, and the inner world of Sardinia was detached from wine and olive oil, and the economy of self-sufficiency had always been based on a primitive pastoral life and endless hard farming, in harmony with moody nature.

Even after Ferdinand's development, self-sufficiency hardly changed, on the contrary, Sardinia only became more isolated due to the need for secrecy.

Since the end of gold mining in the Middle Ages, there has been nothing in Sardinia that Italian merchants coveted. In recent decades, however, Sardinia, like all other Spanish territories, has flourished in animal husbandry, producing not so much Iberian wool as cheese, and galleons travelling to Marseille, Livorno, Genoa and Naples to visit this ancient site in the Tyrrhenian Sea.

François's French ship was the same French merchant ship that had come here to buy cheese, and boxes of cheese were loaded in the port, and François quickly slipped ashore, and the owner of the ship was not him, so there was no need to worry about losing some ducats.

The herders, who maintain their ancient customs, occupations, cultures, and conservative patriarchal traditions, are not good people to get along with suspicious outsiders, and François does not intend to find out what he wants, walk around, and slip away safely.

Unfortunately, at the same time, not far away, fisherman Alfonso was paddling the 50-ton sailboat "Matthew".

Since 1492 and the representative of the King of Aragon signed the "deed of sale", as a member of the "army of betrayal", Alfonso's ability and luck are very good, with the support of the kingdom's policy, successfully become the first to get rich in the group of people, of course, this does not mean that you can enjoy it, he has been drafted at present, will participate in the large-scale fleet of expeditions to the New World, this "Matthew" sailing ship is replaced after receiving a subsidy, this to the New World, auspicious and unpredictable, if he returns victoriously, he may leap into the ranks of local tyrants, If you are unfortunate enough to sink in the deep sea, you can only cry out in vain and feed the belly of a foreign fish.

Alfonso was as optimistic as he could about this, and in the last three months he has traveled as far as the depths of the Tyrrhenian Sea, or as far west as the Balearic Islands, or even around Lagulet, gaining some experience in voyages farther. Alfonso even considered sailing through the Strait of Gibraltar, but after thinking about it, he gave up, because the audit was very strict, and second, it was really troublesome, so he just waited until the time was full of boats and set off with the big fleet. At the same time, he fished hard for tuna and sardines, earning another handful before leaving.

Today will be the last time Alfonso will slaughter a poor school of fish off the coast of Sardinia, and in a few days he will join a huge expeditionary fleet and embark on a new route to "India", from which the Mediterranean has been rich for many years.

Tuna fishing didn't allow Alfonso to save much of a coffin, but when he noticed a sneaky figure, he was so excited that his blood boiled!

Leaving the sailboat behind, Alfonso headed straight for the newly opened port authority.

"Yes! Sir, I'm almost sure...... That guy slipped away! If you want to catch it, you have to hurry up......"

Alfonso said this with a trembling voice! He is keenly aware that this is the best time for him to turn over and counterattack! It must be God's blessing! This is his passport to really "get rich"! This is the stepping stone for him to step into the Zhao family's compound!

"That good man, may God bless you and never let me down!" Alfonso prayed repeatedly in his heart.

"You are my hope, you are my light! …… In the future, I will also be surnamed Zhao......"

Alfonso can't be blamed for such a gaffe, after all, for him that's almost a gold brick in human shape!

"You're worth five thousand ducats......"