After a very comfortable and comfortable life as a lord, the third and final war ****** of the year finally reached my fiefdom.

After a month of preparation, His Majesty the Emperor could not wait to recruit troops into Italy to defeat the rebellious Chrysenti family and the rival Pope John XVI.

The Italian crusade has officially begun......

"After I leave, you will be responsible for all the affairs in the territory, and you can give orders on my behalf, and if I don't come back next spring, I must start spring plowing according to my previous arrangement, and the work of the paper workshop will not stop, and if the orders increase, consider expanding the scale of production."

I put on my armor under Hans's service, and said to Wangcai, who was standing on the side: "When the old liar Isaac returns, let him report the accounts in detail, take out the written bills, and keep a clear record of each income and expenditure, and go out to do business next time, so that reliable people will keep an eye on him, the old fellow is very unclean, and eats very well inside and out, and you don't know when he will bite you without thunder." ”

"Don't worry, sir."

Wangcai bent down slightly, since I had him, I was completely liberated from all the trivial things in the territory, and I had a lot of time to wander the world and enjoy life, which is the life state that a lord should have.

"By the way, if you have more funds after the beginning of spring, you will find a way to buy more ploughing cattle and come back, and by the way, recruit mobile homeless, the development of our territory needs many, many taxpayers, taxpayers, don't you know? It's the peasants who pay us rent and taxes, rest assured, according to my estimates, the population capacity of our territory is far from saturation, and you don't understand the population capacity? Forget it, there's no need to know so much, just do what I say. ”

I fastened the straps on my boots, confused and confused, and didn't understand what I was talking about.

This time, the conscription order was open to all knights who could bring their own arms, whether they were nobles with titles or freelancers without fiefdoms.

His Majesty the Emperor was ready to settle the Italian problem once and for all, and if possible, he would try to use it as a springboard to spy on Burgundy and Taranto and Brindisi, which were controlled by the Byzantines in the south of the peninsula, and in order to establish a holy empire that would last forever, Emperor Otto did not mind being an enemy of all of Europe, and his ambitions for conquest were endless.

As the Viscount of the German Frontiers, I was required to provide ten fully armed infantrymen in addition to myself, which made it necessary for the already small castle guards to accompany me on the expedition, as well as their own weapons and rations.

It's not easy to be a little brother to someone else, but fortunately, some hastily trained peasants and soldiers can still maintain local order, and after the heavy snow covers the mountains in winter, large-scale battles generally don't happen in theory, and the territory is safe throughout the winter.

His Majesty the Emperor summoned all the armed men who could be summoned, and even the mercenaries of the Slavs and Magyars, and after half a month of assembly, the army began to march to Italy, all the way to show off its might, as if they were conducting a winter field training, and the daily pleasure was to hold hunts in various camps, or to bully and bully peasant girls in the villages along the way.

Emperor Otto entrusted the affairs of Germany to his aunt, Mathilde, abbot of Quedlin Abbey, before setting out on his expedition, and granted her a title [Mattesia] that went beyond Otto's tradition.

This move caused an uproar in the imperial court, and most of the archdukes resolutely opposed the approach of His Majesty the Emperor, among which the Archduke of Bavaria quarrelled with Henry, but in the end, under the strong intervention and mediation of His Majesty the Pope, the court and China reluctantly agreed, and under the abbot Mathilde, Hildebad, who added the German magistrate Worms, also had the power to participate in political affairs and make decisions, which finally calmed down the dispute between the court and China, and achieved the ostensible common hatred and hatred within Germany before the expedition.

The army spent twenty days traversing the Duchy of Bavaria in preparation for crossing the Alps from the Brenner Pass.

It was the first time I stood at the foot of one of Europe's most majestic mountains, and it had been a millennium, and the mountains were still towering, but I had become a man of history, a rare opportunity to participate in the living history of a person's life.

Although I don't know what my march will say in the future, I really feel like a real medieval man standing here, and my history is in my hands, and I am writing it myself.

Entering the southern foothills of the Alps, Henry IV, Grand Duke of Carinthia, led an army to join the army against Italy, which made the expedition even more numerous to 80,000 men, and he also brought the latest news of Cresenti's defense in various places.

As the Elbe Slavs spent a lot of time on the conquest wars, which caused Germany to miss the best opportunity to put down the rebellion, Cresentie had gradually gained a foothold in Rome and its environs, and through continuous political collusion and heavy bribery, as well as the secret support of the Kingdom of France and the Byzantine Empire, the noble lords of Tuscany and Roth Comment raised rebel banners to join the rebellion against Germany.

As a vassal state of Byzantium, the Duchy of Venice maintained strict neutrality on the surface, but in fact secretly served as an important base for the logistics supply of the rebels, continuously providing military supplies for Crescenti, so that the rebels' power extended to Verona, controlled Mantua, an important strategic stronghold on the Po River, and seriously threatened the roads and logistics supply lines of the German army south to Italy.

The camp was crowded with people, and all the nobles with titles and fiefs were allowed to attend the battle meetings, making the already spacious camp seem crowded, and the distance between people was so close that it could even be felt, and the breath of the person standing behind him sprayed on his neck.

However, everyone was silent, and the atmosphere did not dare to breathe, and the atmosphere of the whole venue was very depressing and dull.

Emperor Otto lowered his head and fiddled with the holder of his sword, looking at the map of northern Italy spread out on the table in a daze, and the archdukes sitting around were also thinking about their own affairs, and they were in a daze in unison, and no one would say the first word.