Facts have proved that it is difficult to achieve great things with the ambition of conspiracy alone, and without the mind of conspiracy, the result is often self-defeating, not to mention that I have not even been able to read through the comic book Romance of the Three Kingdoms, and after completing the dirty power and money transaction with the papal envoy, I am faced with a thorny problem that is difficult to find a breakthrough, except for the helpless to pretend to be Ge You with my own hair, I really can't think of any constructive ideas.

Especially when the descendants around me are all simple-minded and well-developed militants, I feel guilty for what I have done, and I begin to miss Leonardo extraordinarily, and the old guy does everything, which is not so annoying at this moment.

But Leonardo quickly gave me a reason to hate him again, although the old guy swore before leaving that this trip to Italy would never interfere in decision-making, or remote command through his own internal line, and let me, who has been a marionette for a long time, very moved to reflect on whether his attitude was too harsh and hurt the loyalty of the old minister.

But the bloody truth is that the old guy still doesn't know how to understand and solve the problems I face, just like a parent who always goes to school to wipe the ass of a bad teenager who gets into trouble at home, and the whole process is easy to master.

He did not dwell on how to start from His Majesty the Emperor or His Majesty the Pope himself and ponder the thoughts of the two saints, but jumped out of the trap of people's conventional thinking about problems, and after years of immersion in the rivers and lakes, the old guy has his own unique way of analyzing and dealing with this kind of unclear problem.

He directly sent someone to use my name to find the red man next to His Majesty the Emperor, the next Pope's sure successor, the Bishop of Ravenna, Lord Rebel, to save the country, of course, also to give the other party a reason why the Count of Nijmegen could not appear, and he had to avoid suspicion at the cusp of the moment.

Bishop Rebel finally decided to give up his original idea of beating the water dogs and renovating the upper echelons of the Holy See after being suspicious of the mysterious comer, how much of this is due to the gold coins sent by Leonardo, I can hardly guess, in short, the bishop does not want to face a papacy with a mask of flattery, behind his back, and to tear down the stage everywhere, in order to realize the great ideals he has held since his youth, it is worth making the necessary sacrifices before he is fledgling, Even if it goes against his original intention of not going along with the world.

The final result of the matter was that Bishop Rebel found an opportunity to say a few good words in front of His Majesty the Emperor, which was enough to change the situation, and the young Majesty, who was busy cleaning up the Italian aristocracy, naturally did not want any deep hatred between his court and the church that could not be bridged, and his ultimate goal was to control the Holy See, so that it could become an obedient lackey and spokesman, rather than an unruly white-eyed wolf who always wanted to bite back.

As a Christian, the Church of Blood is not a good idea that can be accepted by oneself, and although those sanctimonious archbishops are all worthy of a thousand cuts, in the final analysis, Christ is Christ, and the Vatican is the Vatican.

Nijmegen has always been hidden in the shadows during the whole incident, people only know that it is Bishop Rebel, out of the consideration of his own future to persuade His Majesty to let the Holy See go, but do not know that the Count, who is not visible on weekdays, has become the main driving force behind the scenes, of course, the group of red-robed monsters of the Holy See, has not forgotten who is their real life-saving benefactor, and after thanking the thousand thanks, a royal decree stamped with the papal seal was sent to my house in casual binding the next day, and the efficiency of the work was unprecedentedly efficient.

The aristocrats who once lived here could no longer enjoy the warm and lazy afternoon sun of Italy, and most of them were implicated by their relatives and friends, or lying in the dark dungeons under the Colosseum where slaves were held thousands of years ago, and the tortured people did not look like ghosts, or became dried corpses of human skins swaying in front of the spa squares, and lonely ghosts wandering in the cold nights.

The first to be purged were the families of the die-hard rebels who had not had time to escape from Rome before the arrival of the army, most of them because they were reluctant to discard the gold coins piled up in their cellars, and had to transport them all, resulting in not only losing their lives, but also offering Germany for free the thousands of family fortunes they had accumulated for several lifetimes.

Of course, it is not excluded that some people in power take the opportunity to take the opportunity to kill their political enemies, as well as those Lombard families who are eye-to-eye with Paris, they are the most insidious lurkers, who have been holding on to the illusion of the empire and cannot wake up.

After a series of panicked massacres, the Shun people, who were still standing in the Imperial Palace, had all been replaced by nobles with German backgrounds, or the leading party with soft bones, and the mess of Italy was finally transformed under the quick knife of the Emperor, at least superficially united under the banner of Germany.

Then the convenience of arresting people everywhere, the grain and grass collected from all over Italy were quickly put in place, and in order to prevent his nobles, who had no intention of continuing southward because of the vast profits from the cleansing in Rome, the military campaign against the Saracens was put back on the agenda by the emperor.

According to the scouts who had completed their reconnaissance, the Eastern Romans, who controlled several cities in Italy, had no intention of intervening in the conflict between the two, and they said through special channels that they would not meddle in the matter at all, because Constantinople was being tortured to death by the brave Slavs of the Balkans, and as for the autonomous cities in the south, they sent secret envoys to state their intentions, and when the German army arrived, they would surrender the city, holding the key to the city gate, which symbolized the right to rule, and bread and salt. As things stand, the flower-paved singing and dancing kings will not be subjected to any organized attack, at least until the army reaches Calabria.

As for the Saracens, who were the targets of this time, they must have been busy crossing the Strait of Messina, where the Greek legend of the Witch was entrenched and often mirages, and just avoiding the countless reefs and whirlpools under the waves was enough for the best sailors in the Mediterranean to work for a while, not to mention that their only territory in the Apennines, Reggio Calabria, was just a simple castle surrounded by water on one side, and the hated ****** Christian nation on all sides, and the supply and maintenance depended on Sicily across the Strait for supplies and maintenance. The difficulty of defending can be imagined.

But the emir of Sicily, not wanting to give up ****** only stronghold in the Apennines so easily, used almost all his sea ships and asked the emir of the ****** for help, and sent troops and supplies to the other side of the strait day and night, gradually amassing a considerable number of troops.

The whole of Europe felt the urgency and smell of gunpowder to come to the war, especially those countries with a stake, and sent their own spies to pay close attention to the war that took place on the tip of the Italian boot, whether it was the ****** who had the right time and place to win, or the young emperor who was determined to make a name for himself and wanted to disgrace his father, everyone was waiting to see.

The German army was reorganized, and in order to facilitate command and coordination, the archers and cavalry were gathered under the control of Duke Henry of Bavaria, and the elite knights were placed under the command of the Duke of Carinthia, who would share the task of interspersing raids with the Magyar light cavalry, facing the army of camels driven by the Saracens' terrible black slave soldiers, many cavalry of the Western world, who had suffered defeats in front of these stinking desert continents, and the infantry were divided into different phalanxes according to the factions of the principality, Uniformly obey the orders of the emperor's camp.

The Normans were placed in the left front of the army, a position that allowed their fearsome heavy cavalry to break the enemy's position at any time, and to cooperate with the German cavalry to divide and encircle the Saracens, and with nearly 20,000 Italian cannon fodder, they were the only troops to rush to the front, in the words of His Majesty the Emperor:

"Twenty thousand normal men with sound hands and feet can beat two hundred Allah's warriors with their heads and masks like, right?"

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On March 5, 999, the German army was inspected through the triumphal arch of the Roman Thermal Forum, and marched majestically to the front line amid the enthusiastic cheers of the whole city and the flying petals of flowers.

I rode on the horse, put my hand into the underwear under the chain mail of the half-body, kneaded the little belly that had been raised by the comfortable life for more than ten days, and hummed comfortably in a tune that I didn't know what it was.

Italian cuisine is not exquisite, but at least it is much better than the German food that is simply dehaired and hastily roasted with condiments, and I could not find anything I could eat in all of Italy until the Venetian merchant Marco Polo stole the pasta from China and the Tomatoes that Columbus brought in from the New World.

Sadly, I'm not a food savvy either, and the chefs of Nijmegen have tried and cooked all sorts of exotic oriental foods countless times under my guidance, but after experiencing a fire that destroyed the kitchen and killed a terrifying monster crab in a ditch, they refused to continue to serve their lord, and if I had to choose, the black bean paste made by Wangcai's wife was temporarily at the top of the food list.

(End of chapter)