"I am the emissary of the Holy See, the supreme ruler of the whole of Europa, the emissary of the Holy See of Pope Innocent, the emperor of the world, you are so rude to sit in front of me without saying anything, is this the attitude that a believer should have?"

Randy shook his neck, stood up and looked condescendingly at the bishop, and asked, "Now that we're equal, what do you think?" ”

"You ......"

The bishop's face was so red that he couldn't say a word, and at last he was pulled by another deputy, a nobleman from the Papal States, and then he snorted and said nothing.

"Alright! Your Majesty, please settle down and let us get down to business."

The Bavarian emissary stepped forward and asked, "I would like to ask you a question, who exactly is your enemy?" Is it Frederick who is already dead? Or the entire Holy Roman Empire? ”

"Hehe......" Randy smiled slightly, knowing that someone who understood had finally arrived, so he stopped making a gesture and turned around and replied, "Of course it's Frederick, I have made it clear before, if it weren't for that, I wouldn't have allowed you to stand in front of me." ”

"So that means that our two empires can coexist peacefully?" The envoy then asked.

"Of course! As long as my demands are met, the two countries will naturally be able to coexist peacefully. ”

"But with all due respect, Your Majesty's request is really ...... It is too harsh, the Holy Roman Empire may be able to promise Your Majesty to let you control the so-called North Saxony, but Hesse, Brandenburg, and North Germany are the hearts of the Holy Roman Empire, and it is impossible to cede them, and the Dukes of Hesse and Brandenburg will probably not agree. ”

"Yes! Even though His Majesty is wise and powerful, he is not the Holy Roman Emperor after all, and it is really too much to want to obtain the imperial territory. The envoy Lucived next to him nodded hurriedly.

Randy pointed to the Bavarian envoy and asked, "Your name, I'd love to know." ”

"Foreign Minister Albrecht-Wallenstein." The bearded messenger bowed his head in reply.

Randy nodded: "Emissary, you are very good, I am not talking about your eloquence or wisdom, I am talking about your courage, what kind of position do you hold in Bavaria?" Title? If you are willing to come to serve in the Norman Empire, I can give you three times as much! ”

Baron becomes Count! Territories and fields are tripled in an instant! And the other party is a Norman emperor, and there is almost no possibility of deceiving himself, which is simply ......

Wallenstein almost agreed, but the Bavarian envoy paused for a few seconds, and the sharp nails of his right hand, which were curled up in his sleeve, pinched the flesh of his palm, and it took a sharp pain before he came to his senses.

"Your Majesty's graciousness! It's a pity that the foreign ministers are not blessed! ”

Wallenstein's head lowered, and at the same time he thought to himself: This is the emperor, but just two words can shake people's hearts, compared to that Albert is simply ......"

Wallenstein barely stopped himself from thinking any further, quietly waiting for Randy's next response.

"That's a shame!"

Unexpectedly, Randy just smiled playfully, and did not dwell on this issue, Wallenstein raised his head and looked at the Norman Emperor with a mocking expression, knowing that he was probably being tricked, he couldn't help but smile bitterly, took a step back, and no longer stood out.

"Anyway, the position of the Duke of Bavaria will probably not move, and the rest will be left to others."

After an unequal negotiation, the two sides did not reach any agreement, during which the emissary from the Papal States wanted to threaten Randy with excommunication, and then Randy said lightly:

"The Empire's offshore naval fleet has been deployed on the island of Malta!"

It is true that, according to Marshal Carter's biography a month earlier, the Offshore Fleet had landed on the island of Malta and had set up a temporary and rudimentary base on the central road.

At the same time, Marshal Carter also claimed that Malta Island has many natural harbors, and the terrain is easy to defend and difficult to attack, and if more money is invested, it can be designed as a strong fortress to become a wedge and base for the Norman Empire to be planted in the Mediterranean, laying the foundation for the Empire's next step in controlling the Mediterranean.

In fact, Randy thinks the same way, if the Baltic trade share is a florin coin, then the Mediterranean trade share is a piece of gold, and Randy often fantasizes about what a grand occasion it would be if he could monopolize the trade in the Mediterranean! When the time comes, don't say 20 million, even 200 million, 2 billion, he can take it all.

But it's a pity that the Norman Empire is in the north, but the Mediterranean Sea is in the south, the distance is too far, although you can enter the Mediterranean Sea by taking the Eastern European waterway, or bypassing the Strait of Gibraltar, but it still seems too far away, the Norman merchants and caravanserais, often suffer losses in this kind of trade, and the profit is not large, like Randy, an emperor who wants money and wants to go crazy, looking at the Mediterranean Sea so much real money and silver can not get his hands, that feeling is similar to the feeling of the opium ghost watching others swallow the clouds and spit, and he can only pound the wall on the side. Almost drove His Majesty the Emperor mad, this was also Randy's unusually tormenting order:

The reason for letting the entire offshore fleet go around most of Europe and occupy the island of Malta.

Of course, a very good location is not enough, and if Randy wants to gain an advantage in the Mediterranean trade, he must have a base closer to the Mediterranean, such as the Crimean Peninsula.

Randy's next goal is to integrate the forces of the whole of Eastern Europe to take the Crimean Peninsula, even if the war breaks out in the Eastern Roman Empire again, or it is best to fight to the death with the Eastern Roman Empire, and win them directly to gain the privilege of entering and exiting the Dardanelles, otherwise it is not worth the Norman Empire's effort to obtain an outlet to the Black Sea.

After the first day of the meeting, Randy handed over all these troublesome guests to the Royal Consulate and dealt with Talleyrand, who was the temporary head of foreign affairs, and Randy demanded that the poor official extort at least half a million gold coins, and then went headlong into the finance department to deal with the abacus plate.

Randy still made the decision to raise taxes!

Increase the toll tax, commercial tax, toll tax, turnover tax, seigniorage tax of the Öresund waterway.

That's right! The legend is the most terrifying, the most inhuman, the most headache, and there is absolutely no way to evade seigniorage.

To put it bluntly, it is to mix other metals into the gold coins and silver coins and even copper coins issued, the original gold coins issued during the Norman Kingdom were ninety percent gold, silver coins eighty percent silver, and the copper plate was a steel plate.

When the Norman Empire was founded, the Imperial Gold Coin was reminted with Randy's head on the obverse and a four-winged and three-clawed phoenix on the reverse, while the silver coin had an Artorian head on the obverse and the British Red Dragon on the north, and the copper plate was still copper.

It's just that the pattern is more beautiful, and the minting machine is becoming more and more advanced, but the gold content of the gold coin has dropped by one layer, and the silver coin is mixed with half copper, and the copper plate is not a copper plate this time, but mixed with two percent of lead or iron, although it does not look obvious, but in fact these coins are smaller than before, because the edges of the new coins are gears, and you can't see it if you don't look carefully.

"If you do that, your prestige will be basically nullified, and your reputation will be lost, and it will also cause a vicious event of inflation, host, are you sure you want to do this?" After Randy prepares a resolution to levy seigniorage, Enides asks again.

"What kind of society do you think I come from? It was an outrageous era of seigniorage, and the group of prisoners in North America immigrated to Protestants desperately printing waste paper, relying on their status as the world's currency to collect the world's seigniorage, what is the world hegemon? This is called the world hegemon! ”

Randy's final tax rose a lot, and his monthly income rose from 500,000 gold coins to 700,000 gold coins, and as a punishment, the buildings and prices in the country also rose a little, but all this was within an acceptable range, although there were also a small number of people with keen senses who noticed the changes in the currency of the Norman Empire, but the fact is that the mint used to mint money is now the only one with no semicolon, and the currency of the Norman Empire is still very good because of the characteristics of beautiful printing and uniform weight, although it has depreciated slightly, but the circulation situation is still very good.

Negotiations between the Norman Empire and the Holy Roman Empire eventually came to fruition.

After Talleyrand's arguments, the Holy Roman Empire finally bowed its head, expressed its willingness to pay 500,000 gold in war reparations, and recognized the dominance of the Loman Empire over North Saxony, and after Randy's approval, Talleyrand also proposed concessions from the Norman Empire, that is, to give up Swabian and North Germany occupied in the previous war, and to give up the revenge on the Hohenstaufen family, and allow the prince of the Hohenstaufen family, that is, Frederick's son Henry, to inherit the Dukedom of Swabia.

However, the Holy Roman Empire is not a rich country, and 500,000 gold coins must be scraped together with those few tools to make it up, and the Papal States acted as a guarantor and witness in this peace conference, and the annoying bishop did not forget to disgust Randy before leaving, and announced the result of the peace in public because of the Norman Emperor's awe of the Holy See, in the Catholic world, the Holy See is the ultimate emperor, the adjudicator, and the tone of the ruler almost made Randy tear up the contract directly, But Randy endured it eventually.

"In the future, if you want to die or live, it's up to me to take care of you." Randy swore in his heart, and decided to break away from the European political circle for a period of time, concentrate on managing one acre and three points of land in Eastern Europe, and when he became strong, he would set up another Holy See and send a navy to land on the Apennine Peninsula.

In May 1104, the war between the Norman Empire and the Holy Roman Empire finally ended!

The two sides concluded a truce, declaring that they would not engage in any form of hostility against each other for five years, and as a supplement to the treaty, the commercial treaty between the Norman Empire and the Holy Roman Empire was changed again, stipulating that Norman merchants in North Germany were exempt from tolls, low customs duties, low commercial taxes, and other preferential conditions.

At the same time, the Norman Empire also opened its market to the Holy Roman Empire, and gave the Holy Roman Empire preferential tax treatment, but in fact, the Norman Empire's various ordinary goods can be completely self-sufficient, and the price is cheaper than the Holy Roman Empire, and the Holy Roman Empire has no decent specialties, so the trade between the two sides has always been dominated by the Norman Empire.

Excluding these little things, this contract is relatively successful.

Randy temporarily gave up his plan to go south to Germany, and the states of the Holy Roman Empire were also busy with their own affairs, and neither side had any intention of attacking the other.

One day in June......

When Randy finally bows to reality for money reasons and drastically curtails the military reform regulations, the Norman Empire welcomes a very special group of guests.

They don't come from Europe, they don't come from North Africa and the Middle East, they don't come from the icy skies of Siberia or Central Asia, and they don't come from the vast grasslands and deserts, not even from India, the fabled land of spices.

They called themselves the Dons, declared themselves from the East, and their horse caravans crossed Central Asia and went to Constantinople instead of camels and horses, most of whom entered Constantinople and returned, and only a few continued north and west, into the Balkans, Eastern Europe, and the Crimea.

Of course, those who chose the Eastern European route were basically cut down by horse bandits or something, and this group of Tang people went north through the relative safety of Italy and Germany, and heard that there was a strong country in the north, so they continued to advance.

Originally, when the Orientals arrived in North Saxony and Jutland, they didn't want to move on, thinking that the Norman Empire was just that, but the Saxon garrison general Sulla persuaded them to continue north and change ships to reach here.

When Talelan, the clerk of the part-time foreign affairs director, told Randy, who was physically and mentally exhausted from accompanying Artoria to hunt in the forest, Randy was obviously stunned for a few seconds, and it was rare to say a few more words to the clerk of the city.

"What kind of people are they?" Randy asked.

"Their clothes are said to have been changed several times, and they are now wearing Persian-style clothing, of course, a few people of higher status seem to maintain the costumes of their own people, their sleeves are very wide, and the hem is very large, which is not suitable for combat, and of course there are some warriors among them, although they are not as strong as the empire in terms of equipment, but according to the knights of the guard, they are all good hands, and other than that, they are merchants, although their goods are basically sold along the way."

"So according to their descriptions, what is their country like?"

"Your Majesty, in their description, their country seems to occupy the whole of the East, but that was a long, long time ago, and these Tang dynasties now occupy some places in the western-eastern part of the East, but they still have a lot of territory, a lot of troops, a lot of wealth."

"Nonsense!"

Randy snorted lightly and said with a little dissatisfaction, "Which country doesn't say that when you brag to others?" ”

"Your Majesty is terrified!"

Although he said so, Talleyrand didn't seem to be afraid, and this guy was expressionless and businesslike all the time, so that Randy couldn't help but tell him some small reports about Talleyrand, such as when he took bribes from whom, or how many little wives he raised somewhere, and then see if this bastard was still so expressionless.

(End of chapter)