"Go back and gather your vassals and soldiers, the German iron stream will once again crush every rebel who tries to block the car, the Eternal City of Rome must be back in the hands of the Pride of Heaven, and our goal this time is not limited to this!"

His Majesty Otto vented his anger, his tone changed, and he suddenly calmly issued a new war ******: "We will depart from Berlin in a month's time, and finally assemble at Freizin, when I will see the flags of everyone present fly behind my flags." ”

"But Your Majesty ......"

Henry, Grand Duke of Bavaria, who had not spoken, suddenly interjected, and Emperor Otto's eyes swept over him lightly: "The army of Richard, Duke of Normandy, must be rushing to Rome at this moment, and we may face a fierce battle with the Normans." ”

The young emperor stood up noncommittally and repeated his order in a loud voice before he said: "On this trip to Italy, we will continue to move forward beyond Rome, wash away the shame of the defeat of the former emperor by the Saracens, and let the torrent of German steel wipe down this group of vile infidels, our goal will be Cortrone, and then more powerful allies will join us to complete the great cause of Italian reconquest!" ”

None of them could have imagined that His Majesty would once again ****** war, and that he was still obsessed with trying to regain control of Rome and the Holy See, and although many people had their own small plans and were extremely reluctant to trek through the most majestic snow-capped mountains in Europe and shed their blood in foreign lands, the dukes of the five principalities agreed that they understood what the loss of the Vatican meant for the empire.

It is not only Italy's rich resources and dense population, nor the charming cityscape and endless taxes, but the voice of the whole Christian world, a spokesperson who can push to the forefront, once this advantage is lost, the enemies of Germany will take advantage of the situation, so as to stand on the commanding heights of justice and unscrupulously attack and slander the empire, this is the most terrible consequence, although the dukes do not want to admit it, but Italy has become an indispensable part of the German Empire.

Germany is once again closely united, the war machine is in full swing, in fact, the affairs of the empire to a greater extent, depends on the mutual compromise and agreement between the five principalities, as long as a few bigwigs have no objection to a result, then the rest of the things will be much easier, in my opinion of the traveler, the upper politics of Germany is somewhat similar to the later confederation, or the more advanced tribal alliance, a show of hands, the minority obeys the majority, the emperor has a veto in extraordinary times, and so on.

Germany started the war mobilization from top to bottom, leaving not a lot of time for everyone, especially those remote vassals, to return to the territory to gather soldiers and food and grass, must run non-stop back and forth to catch up with the progress, so as soon as the meeting is over, Berlin is full of attendants who have packed up their tents one after another, and scouts who are ordered to come out on fast horses, crowded on the dirt road that is not wide and pushes and scolds their mothers.

As a German count and a vassal of the Duchy of Saxony, I am obliged to recruit all the knights under my command to fight and provide a consolidated combat unit.

The so-called reorganized combat units really cost me my own life, not only need to recruit manpower, but also equip them and provide food and grass to throw in a lot of gold coins, because the soldiers are not vassal knights, they belong to the private army of the Count of Nijmegen, so their equipment, food and grass, as well as the consumption of battle damage, have to be paid for by me, the Earl, which makes me feel very painful for a while.

The basic composition of the army in Nijmegen was as follows......

The thirty knights and their attendants who were vassals were considered cavalry forces with considerable combat effectiveness.

The accompanying servants were incorporated into the infantry regiment, with a regiment of fifty heavy infantry led by the bull, and two hundred pikemen as auxiliaries.

The remaining servants, as well as the improvised Nijmegen peasants, were mainly responsible for transporting grain and grass, and replenishing the wear and tear of the pikemen if necessary.

Kohler led a hundred and fifty archers, who were relatively cheap in equipment and had many men who had mastered basic marksmanship, so it was easy to pull up a large team, and the only thing to burn was arrows equipped with iron arrows, at least five thousand to replenish, almost emptying Nijmegen's stockpile.

Finally, the Count's Guards under the command of Hans, all armored cavalry, but compared with the knights, they can still only be regarded as lightly armoured, but they have a stronger will to fight and discipline, and can do it as fast as the wind, like a forest, invade like fire, and do not move like a mountain.

These 500 men are already the limit of my troops, and in order to provide them with logistical support, I have recruited at least twice as many logistical peasants in Nijmegen to be more or less cannon fodder when the situation is critical.

I was at the Archbishop's residence in Mainz, in the Duchy of Franconia, and caught up with the Emperor's camp, and my army was like a trickle into the sea, instantly drowning in a torrent of ironclad figures.

From a distance, the entire legion waved its flags, and the shouts of the cavalry driving the horses converged into a loud sound that hit people's hearts, and all the ground that had been crushed by the army was basically barren, and the birds and beasts within a radius of more than ten miles were all frightened and fled.

The German war machine is still relatively powerful, in just twenty days, except for the Bavaria and Carinthia duels that have not yet arrived, most of the noble lords have been in place, the number of the legion is more than 15,000 people, although the number is much less than the last time it marched into Italy, but the number of knights has reached 2,000, and the combat effectiveness is not the same, if you count the peasants and civilians as logistics, the number of the legion will swell to 50,000, and it can definitely be called a behemoth walking sideways.

The army had completed its final assembly at St. Gal in the Duchy of Swabia, and the late arrival of the army of the Duke of Carinthia had delayed the start of the army by a day, and the nobles, who had been complaining in private, finally wisely chose to shut up when they saw the appearance of the Carinthian army, and His Majesty the Emperor inspected the army of Archduke Henry IV with great interest, and praised him for his ample preparation.

The most effective and feared of Carinthia's army was the Magyar light cavalry, which numbered 1,000 men, and the Magyars, who rode and braided their hair, are still the most common excuse used by German mothers to intimidate naughty children who refuse to sleep.

At the beginning of the establishment of the Saxon Dynasty, the Magyars from the Hungarian steppe, who had not yet accepted the Christian faith, were savage and efficient butchers, who defeated the imperial coalition several times like the wind, and their rapid mobility and unflinching archery were the nightmare of almost all Western European knights, and their iron hooves even stepped on the Gascones in France, and they once drank the Magalon River, and were known as the best light cavalry in Europe.

Since Otto I the Great decisively defeated the invading Magyars in the Lech Valley, these unruly riders like lynx have bowed their proud heads to Germany for the first time, and have gradually accepted Christianity half forcedly and half voluntarily, slowly reining in their edges and becoming more civilized.

Although there were many conflicts with the empire in the following decades, Hungary no longer posed a threat, but instead became a bridgehead against the invasion of the nomadic tribes in the east, and a relatively stable ally of the empire, so the Duke of Carinthia, who was close to them, could easily hire more than a thousand light cavalry to help in the battle, so that the grumbling nobles would no longer dare to chatter.

After the army was assembled, it coiled in Saint-Gall for a few days, waited for the follow-up food and grass to be in place and the scouts sent in advance returned to report the situation ahead, and then went straight south, taking a completely different route from the last time they entered Italy, and did not cross the Alps from the Beronne Pass in Bavaria, which was traditionally routed, but chose the Seni Pass, which was in relatively poor condition and tested the willpower of the army.

The average altitude here is high, and it is not the main passage through the Alps, and even the shepherds are almost non-existent, so there are fewer people, and the roads are narrower, which fully guarantees the suddenness and concealment of the march, but increases the difficulty of the passage of large troops.

After fifteen days of arduous marching, the large army, after paying some of the losses of horses and the necessary casualties, finally passed through the mountain pass completely, revealing the plains of northern Italy that suddenly opened up before them, like an unsuspecting maiden who did not know that the back door of her house had been lost.

According to the scouts, the only obstacle to the march ahead was the city of Milan, once the capital of the Lombard League, a wealthy commercial city built on a gentle plain, now an important stronghold for the resurgent Lombards.

His Majesty the Emperor did not give the army any time to rest or respite after crossing the pass, and he was probably afraid that this would make the march lose the suddenness of the blow, so he only left a day for the troops to tidy themselves up, to restore their horsepower, and to fill the stomachs that had been tormented by cold food for days of eating and sleeping in the open.

The logistics troops did not have even a day to tidy up, and the emperor sent his own guards to sack the nearby farms, replenish the looted beasts and the peasants who had been forcibly captured in order to ensure the secrecy of the troops, and then quickly march under the cover of the Magyar light cavalry, and set off before the main army moved, without wasting a minute or a second.

About the opponent of the first battle, Milan, I know only from my own unheard of knowledge, only the famous fashion capital of the later generations, often there are world-famous catwalks and fashion weeks, leading the pulse of the global fashion industry, with Versace and Prada ******** luxury brands familiar to the common people, and then there are two long-established teams in the same city, that touch of blue and black was once his spiritual home.

(End of chapter)