There is also a small episode in this......

Although Randy took out all kinds of food in the military supplies, which had made these dirt buns seem to be incredible to the Swiss mountain nobles, Randy still felt not very satisfied, and almost embarrassed to ask the chef to cook an Italian-style banquet for himself at the current level in a half-drunk state, and if he couldn't do it, he would cut down all those palace cooks.

Although it was very difficult in the southern and northern wars, in order to satisfy his appetite, Randy would still bring these cooks with him, which was also one of Randy's few hobbies, and when he didn't go to a new place, Randy would send someone to inquire about any famous snacks nearby, such as snail mustard, or braised toad, which sounded reliable, forget it, but as long as there was a suitable one, he asked the guard knight to buy two servings, one for himself to eat, and the other to the imperial chef for them to learn.

So the treatment of these palace chefs is very high, comparable to the royal knights, but the status is not too high, a king like Randy, everything that can endanger his life, pay special attention to everything, when the imperial kitchen cooks, there will be Norman assassins from the spy system to supervise, after the meal is ready, there will be special personnel to test the poison to ensure its safety, the status of the imperial kitchen can be imagined, and the ordinary serf is not much different, they are extremely humble and low-level, so what Randy said is all cut, The chefs didn't think it was just a joke.

The trembling chefs were terrified, and despite their superb knives and cooking skills, they could not distinguish Italian food in any case without raw materials, and just when the chefs were struggling, the intelligence director Nemulis came to the kitchen and asked why they hadn't started quickly. So the cooks put the problem to the respected intelligence director.

Nemulis chuckled and said that this kind of thing is very easy to solve, what His Majesty wants is not real Italian food, but Italian food that can make him face in front of the Swiss, you don't need to make it taste so good, just make it very gorgeous and look like that.

The chefs suddenly brightened up, replacing truffles with ordinary mushrooms, replacing this year's new wine with inferior wines, replacing lamb meat with goat meat, etc., and the final dishes tasted as you can imagine, feeling as if Nemulis said, Randy's prestige, and the extraordinarily gorgeous dishes made by the chefs, this shocking effect successfully deterred the group of turtles, and made a deep impression on the Swiss, this is the effect that Randy wants, as for the taste or something, anyway, the alcohol has anesthetized the tongue, there is no problem with what to eat.

After the New Year, the Norman army continued its march......

Most of the roads along the way are very difficult to pass, especially in unpleasant places like the Swiss mountains, which can be the most demoralizing of the army, although along the way, officers of all ranks, and even Randy continue to cheer on the soldiers, but demoralization is still inevitable.

But it all came to an end, and the local guide finally said:

"There's the border ahead, and you're crossing part of the forest and you're in Swabia." After these words, the Norman army, which was originally demoralized, broke out into shocking cheers.

On January 18, 1104, after nearly three months of marching, the Norman army of 80,000 bypassed Frederick's Alpine line and marched from the Swiss highlands, where it swooped down on the almost undefended city of Swabia, the capital of the Holy Roman Empire, while the army of the Holy Roman Empire remained trapped under the city of Hamburg and endured the seemingly never-ending harassment of the Pomeranian garrison.

The offensive and defensive forces are out of position, and what awaits the Holy Roman Empire will be the most brutal and tragic attack of the Normans.

In this battle, Frederick suffered a loss in intelligence work!

It's not that this guy doesn't pay attention to intelligence work, Frederick can mix to this extent, after all, there are some separate intelligence sources, these emperors and kings who seem to be neat and solemn on the surface, attach great importance to these things behind the scenes, so as an enemy, Frederick does attach great importance to Randy's intelligence work about Norman, and there are a considerable number of spies in the Norman army and the Norman capital.

But in terms of the transmission of information, it is still very inconvenient.

Leaving aside the Norman capital of Gothburg for the time being, these spies, disguised as merchants, outcasts, gangsters, and bards, followed the Norman army, and when Randy's army was activated, they sent men to deliver news to Innsbruck and Salzburg.

But this back and forth was more than ten days, and when they finished sending the information and the defenders of the two fortresses began to prepare for the defense work in full swing, the spies found that their preconceived understanding was wrong, and the Normans did not go to these two fortresses at all, but all the way to the west, taking the road of Genoa and Marseille.

This makes the Holy Roman Empire's agents very strange, after all, what they are good at is intelligence gathering, not intelligence analysis, and they don't understand why Randy is not straightforward and attacks the Holy Roman Empire, but turns west.

Do you want to return to Normandy on the route of last year's Crusade? Or do you want to attack France? Or do you want to attack the Holy Roman Empire somewhere along the border between France and the Holy Roman Empire?

Where exactly are they going? Where are you going to attack again?

The spies of the Holy Roman Empire naturally can't guess it, and even if they guess, they are not the ones who make the final decision, so they can still only pass on information, this time they can't send a letter to a border city of the Holy Roman Empire alone, they don't have so many manpower, and this kind of transmission of intelligence to places where there is no psychological preparation at all in the interior is likely to cause panic, if the other party really launches an attack, it's okay, if the other party doesn't attack, then this responsibility is not something that anyone can bear.

For several days, the spies tracked down and sent men around Innsbruck to deliver a message directly to Emperor Frederick, who was probably in North Saxony.

As a result, the messenger never returned, I don't know whether he ran away or encountered robbers, or encountered accidents, the leader of the secret agents was more responsible, and after a few days he still felt that it was inappropriate, and sent two more groups of messengers.

At this time, the Norman army had just left Marseille, and the destination was still unknown, so there was no change in the information, only the date of delivery, and the location of the Norman army.

It took more than a month for these two groups of messengers to finally find Frederick, who had failed to persuade Hamburg to surrender at the forefront and was besieging the city, and passed on this information.

Like the previous spy chief, Frederick began to mumble, not knowing where the Norman army would send troops from, such hesitation and distraction also led to the attack on Hamburg, although he had dozens of times the opponent's troops, but because of the wrong command, the attack did not go well, Frederick also understood that now was not the time to hesitate, no matter what the decision was, good or bad, he should make up his mind as soon as possible.

Unfortunately, however, Emperor Frederick has not been in good shape in recent times.

Insomnia, headaches, weakness, nausea, inability to eat anything, and almost all negative reactions related to his health can be found in him, maybe this guy is really old, and the years of fighting have made this eighty-year-old man really a little unbearable, and it took Frederick three days later to reluctantly come up with a decent idea.

He wrote letters, and pressed them with heraldic rings, ordering the general, General Johann Ceklavontilly, who was now stationed in the capital Swabia, to quickly concentrate all the forces that Bavaria could muster, to reassemble an army, and to support the Normans in any attack on any military point.

General Tilly was a veteran who had followed Frederick for a long time, although he was not a Bavarian, or even a member of the Holy Roman Empire, but after being hired decades ago, General Tilly showed extreme loyalty from beginning to end, strictly and meticulously carrying out every order of Frederick, so he was deeply trusted by Frederick, although in recent times, the old general has also shown physical inconvenience, but he is still entrusted by Frederick with the important task of garrisoning Bavaria.

Although the old general's troops were relatively small, only 1,500 men, if necessary, he could quickly organize a large army with his connections among the mercenaries, and the old general's brilliant achievements and generosity towards his subordinates made the mercenaries happy to fight under his command.

However, it still takes a certain amount of time to gather mercenaries to reorganize the mercenary troops, and Frederick also feels that it is a little inappropriate to rely on the mercenary troops alone to fight, and in terms of numbers, the mercenary troops are definitely not comparable to Norman's 80,000 army.

So after writing this letter, Frederick sent another letter to Albrecht, who was also the Grand Duke of Bohemia, the Grand Duke of Austria, and the first prince of the Holy Roman Empire.

Albrecht was also the only prince in the entire Holy Roman Empire who refused to fight the Normans and did not fight a single soldier, Frederick hoped that he would abandon his old suspicions and quickly mobilize the Czechs and Austrians to form an army to aid the Holy Roman Empire proper, and in return for his help, Frederick promised to elect him as the next Holy Roman Emperor.

Frederick believed that the price he offered would make the young and impatient Duke of Austria desperate for it.

By the time these two letters were sent out by the spies, the Norman legions had already crossed the Swiss mountains and over the forests, hoping for an unprepared Swabian attack!

Randy had already inquired clearly, the Swabian defender General Tilly had a strict style, and the combat effectiveness of the army under his command was high, and in recent times, General Tilly has also strictly enforced the curfew, restricting the entry and exit of Swabian personnel, and the soldiers guarding the city gate are also highly nervous, and will close the city gate whenever there is any trouble, so that Randy's plan to charge the hussars to capture the city prepared in advance is basically impossible to realize.

If you use a regular combat method, directly besiege the city, equip it with heavy catapults for several volleys, and use heavy infantry to siege the city, it will not take much effort, because there are indeed not many defenders in the city, but in this way, there is no deterrent power in the form of rapid, efficient, and assault that Randy wants.

So in the end, Randy chooses a slightly more cunning and very unethical.

He paid for the carriages of some merchants accompanying the army, and let the remaining more than 80 battlefield assassins in the army disguise themselves as merchants, take the opportunity to seize the city gate, and after success, he used the sound of the sound as a signal, and the professional hussars who received the signal were dispatched as fast as possible to attack the palace, military camp, cathedral and other strategic locations in the city.

In this way, in the early morning, when the Swabian gates were opened, the guards guarding the west and south gates spotted a caravan one after another.

It was no different from the usual caravanserais, the obscene merchants who spoke with Italian accents, dressed in tatters, but who looked serious but serious, and the apprentices who looked rubbish, and the partners who didn't seem to have traveled far before, the soldiers only checked them a little, asked what the goods were, and after learning that it was olive oil and wine, they extorted half a barrel of inferior old wine and a toll tax of dozens of gold coins, and then prepared to let them go.

"Hurry up! I'm afraid the market hasn't opened yet, so you have to wait a little longer, and besides, the tax collector of the market in the east has a bit of a conscience, and he can pay less tax if he goes there. ”

The soldiers yawned as they reminded the merchants.

Immediately afterwards, the soldiers felt a sharp pain in their necks and tried to turn their heads to look, but they couldn't.

"Kill them!" The leader of the assassins ordered in a whisper.

"Enemy attack!" The few guards who understood that they had come to the scene were wiped off their necks before they could shout, and the guards who were standing on the towers ready to ring the alarm were also killed by Sherwood archers.

The Assassins of the battlefield quickly slaughtered the defenders roughly equal to them, and Sherwood Marksman pulled out a special aerial arrow and shot it into the sky.

"The signal is coming, soldiers, it's time to do a big job, robbery! Robbery! The leader of the cavalry, who heard the signal, waved his scimitar in his hand with great excitement, and roared like a flood pouring out when a levee collapsed.

The war has been concluded from the very beginning!

The city defense force of only 1,500 people in total, after losing the cover of the city wall, will not be the opponent of the 80,000 Norman army in any case, although General Tilly can be called a good general, but in front of a ferocious, famous general with a human head like Randy, it is still a little unsightly.

However, I have to praise General Tilley's decisive ability to be very good, seeing that things are not good, he did not hesitate, and directly took more than 300 mercenary troops that he could still control, and ran out from the eastern gate of the city that had not yet fallen, and just happened to meet the Norman hussars who were about to intercept them, and the old general saw the opposing cavalry rushing over, and directly ordered the troops to disperse and retreat.

Seeing that the other party was divided into a small force of more than a dozen and dozens of people, the forward hussars were stunned, and chose two ways to pursue with a slightly larger number of people, the old general Tilly survived, and after more than ten days of refugee-like life, he finally rushed to Munich, another important city in Bavaria, and began to recruit mercenaries, recruit peasant soldiers, form an army, and fight against the Normans!

Of course, these were all later, and the Norman hussars didn't know that they missed an old general with a high status and how strong his combat effectiveness was, and the report to his superiors was:

"Small groups of enemy forces abandoned the city, partly annihilated, partly scattered."

Although I don't know where the other party went, since I can't find it in the city, and there is no indication that this guy is still in Swabia, this can only be the result.

"Cut! It's pretty fast. Hearing that he hadn't found the enemy commander, or anything like that, Randy flicked his horsewhip and entered the city with his own knights of the guard.

(End of chapter)