Of course, Louis could only have one result of interrogating the captives, and even if they pulled out all the intestines of the captives, they knew nothing else, only that these crossbows were exchanged for gold from a tribe of the Ayyubid Dynasty, and that they were made by the locals themselves.

"The Saracens will make it too?" Louis IX asked Karl so.

"It is very likely that I learned this craft from the Great Song Dynasty, which had traded with the Saracens for hundreds of years, and there was no reason why I should not teach it to them. Now I can't go back to the Great Song Empire, if I can go back, I can learn more useful weapons, much more powerful than this hand crossbow! "Don't look at Louis as a king, but in terms of knowledge, Carl turned a corner when his ancestors turned a corner. Whatever you want, Louis has never been there, and no one can provide detailed evidence, so he can say whatever he wants, and he doesn't need to make a draft to brag.

As a result, Karl received a new order to make a long-range and larger compound crossbow for the Crusaders. As for the excessive weight, too strong pull, and difficult to use, the knights of the Crusaders don't care, they have strength, and they don't care too much about the rate of fire, they only need range and power. Now Karl has made a fortune, and the whale baleen, whalebone, and whale tendon accumulated in his castle used to be tattered, and no one cares about it except rats, but now it is a hot raw material, and it is almost the price of a long sword.

In short, in short, with Karl, a spy and arms dealer with foreign knowledge, the Berbers were significantly more combative. Not only rely on these crossbows and throwing guns, but also on more advanced tactics and training methods. These were all learned by Carl from the Great Song Dynasty and Mongolia, but not including the Jinhe Kingdom, and Hong Tao could not teach him any knowledge of land warfare except for the navy.

What makes the war on the Iberian Peninsula even more confusing is the situation on another peninsula. Just half a year ago, Friedrich II finally couldn't bear it, and despite the fact that the Church was wholeheartedly engaged in the crusade to the west, and despite the possible negative effects, he resolutely marched north, vowing to drive the Papal States from the Italian peninsula, and nothing could stop his determination to unify the peninsula.

Of course, the army of the Papal States could not defeat the army of Friedrich II, and now the emperor was no longer a poor ghost, sitting on the trading port of Rena, as well as the surrounding city-states, and the annual tax collection alone allowed the emperor to support a large army, plus the funds he borrowed from his cousin Karl, it was enough to be considered a strong army. What's even more ruthless is that the emperor actually formed an army composed entirely of lepers, and the source of this inspiration was Hong Tao.

For this army, the emperor did not have to pay too much, only needed to promise to provide their families with basically equal living space, to ensure that they had enough opportunities to live on the Italian peninsula, and these lepers would repay the emperor's favor with practical actions.

They are not the highest in tactics and combat skills, nor are they the best in equipment and military discipline, and they are not even veterans of a hundred battles, and many of them are on the battlefield for the first time. However, compared to other armies, this small army is the most effective in combat. There is only one reason, that is, these people are not afraid of death, and it can even be said that many of them hope that they can die in battle as soon as possible, so that their families will be protected by the emperor and will no longer have to go to the desert island to fend for themselves.

"You may not believe it, but it took William only three months to defeat the Papal States' army, and more than a third of the cities were captured by this army of less than five hundred. When they were fighting, they shouted the names of their families and charged, and when they climbed the city walls, if one of them fell and lost their combat effectiveness, the remaining companions would chop up all his corpses, and then wrap the minced flesh in their clothes and throw it on the head of the city, even the internal organs, and hang all of them on their bodies to continue climbing. In the field, they often use their bodies as weapons, stripped naked, and only have a short sword, not even a shield. No matter how elite the knights are, when they encounter this army, unless they can kill them all at a distance, as long as they enter close combat, no one can withstand their charge and will collapse. They are not people, they are demons crawling out of hell, and they have taken your original title from you. Carl talked about his cousin's special operations unit, his eyes drifting, always wanting to see if there was any lightning in the sky that came down to cut him.

"Well, William is going to pay a great price this time! Let's not talk about whether the Pope can spare him, and I won't agree to it. I came up with this idea first, and it ended up being shamelessly plagiarized. Now I can't find those lepers anymore, they have all been snatched away by him, and he must compensate me for my losses! The more Hong Tao listened, the more angry he became, he had already seen how crazy Joseph's people were. If such an army can be formed in Central America, without lepers, only their families, and equipped with sufficiently sophisticated equipment, it will be a sweep, which can greatly reduce the difficulty of the Swann army, and let them go to the battle when they encounter a strong battle.

This time, he had wanted Carl to send another batch of leper families to Sun City, but now it seems that this job is a bit difficult to do. Those people were taken away by Emperor Friedrich II, and if he did so, the lepers of the nearby countries would surely regard the Italian peninsula as a holy place, and it would not be so easy to fool them into crossing the sea. Who doesn't want to live in or near their hometown, even if it's a little hard.

"Well, these devils from hell are giving William a headache right now. The first condition that the Pope agreed to negotiate was for him to burn them all, otherwise he would rather rebuild the Church in Paris than negotiate with William. But William was reluctant to dispose of these people immediately, he was the emperor, and he could not nullify his public promise so quickly, so that he would be discredited. If you can find a suitable place for these people, I think it is possible for him to give you the city of Re\Na\Ya as a territory. Carl knew that Hong Tao had taken a group of lepers with him, so he naturally thought of a perfect solution for his cousin.

"Don't you think! Your cousin doesn't think about it! I'm not picking up rags, and I don't need such a crazy army in my territory, Swan's soldiers are enough for me. Of course, Hong Tao didn't want to get involved in the affairs of the Europeans, let alone Friedrich II. The Pope and the monarchs of European countries didn't want to see themselves in the first place, and they played with their lives again, and they won't be mixed up in Europe in the future? Even if they can't do anything about themselves, but Jiang Zhuyi and Karl still have to mix here, Friedrich II can't even take care of himself, and he still has the kung fu to take care of others?

"No, no, no, it's not the whole army, you just need to take their families. There are less than 200 men left in this army, but there are 6 or 700 family members. William didn't promise them to return to normal society, only their families, but this amount of money can't be hidden for long, and sooner or later it will be discovered by the church. Carl was still trying to be a lobbyist for his cousin.

"What if I don't come back?" Hong Tao felt as if he had been calculated by these two brothers.

"Then we have to wait for the war to start, and if William can't beat them, I'll take him and his family to Karlburg, and hold on here until they break through it, and then take the credit for them." Carl didn't seem to have an impromptu idea, he didn't even think about it, and he told the final plan.

“…… You're using our friendship to William's advantage, and that's not fair! Besides, I haven't met William yet, so I'll talk about that when the time comes. If he can help me secure a piece of territory in the east, I think maybe my heart will be kinder and think more about the families of those people. Hong Tao first protested Carl's attitude, and friendship cannot be exchanged. Secondly, he did not reject Carl's suggestion, but put forward a quid pro quo, not with Carl, but with William.

(To be continued.) )