This was only the first step in the flood to disrupt Europe, and when the capacity of Golden River Bay increased, large quantities of silk, tea, spices, and sugar would be transported to the port of Cape Town, and then transshipped to the Mediterranean. Venice? Lao Tzu will kill you without leaving a piece of armor, and when the time comes, he will be with the emperor, and then pull together the A\La \Bo, who had a good relationship with Friedrich II, and don't brag that no one in the Mediterranean is a child.

No matter how powerful the Franks and England were, they had to come step by step from the land, rushing to the terrain of the Italian peninsula, and Hong Tao could transport mercenaries by sea ships to land from the rear of their army in minutes, and directly wrap them all in dumplings. In the end, he didn't even have to pay for the mercenaries' military expenses, and caught those nobles and princes to ask for ransom, which Hong Tao liked to do the most.

After knocking down the traditional alliance of commercial cities such as Venice and Gena, it was the beginning of Hongtao's nationwide lending operation. Do you want to expand your territory? Want to fight or not? I'll lend you military money, and the more lively the fight, the better. Don't want to fight? You dare, if you don't want to fight, I'll lend money to your enemy and let him beat you! At that time, it was not silk and sugar that were brought in, but boatloads of plate armor and swords smashed by hydraulic hammers, all of which were loaned to the lords of European countries to fight and play. No one will rest, and there will be a few more crusades, but not to rob any holy city, but to Eastern Europe to fight the Mongol army for me. Hong Tao wanted to see what the strength of the main European army was, and whether it could confront the Mongol cavalry head-on. Let's give you a live proof, whether it is a mule or a horse that comes out for a walk. It also caused some trouble for the Mongol Empire, don't just think about how to invade the south. The expedition to the west will have to be in trouble!

Or maybe it's a man's guts. The emperor is also a man. The emperor who had money immediately judged the poor emperor to be like two people. For the next few days, the palace really felt a bit like a royal palace, with people on horseback coming and going. The lords and nobles loyal to the emperor nested in the tower all day long, thinking about how to make good use of the money, but Hong Tao, the God of Wealth, had no one to take care of.

In fact, he would not have gone to this kind of meeting if Hong Tao was asked to participate, and the emperor who could lead the crusaders on an expedition to Jerusalem and take part of the rights of the Holy City without a single soldier was certainly not a war waste. One of the emperors of the Hohensteffen family is that they were very good at warfare. Although it is not a hundred victories, it also has more wins and fewer defeats. It is better for them to solve their internal disputes by themselves, and not to mix with themselves as outsiders, which is thankless and easy to be hated.

In order to be able to hide behind the scenes and watch the excitement, Hong Tao only made a personal agreement with the emperor, and the money was not lent to the Holy Roman Empire, nor to the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies, but to Emperor Friedrich II himself. So why the emperor suddenly became rich, others are not clear. Even if they guessed that it had something to do with Hong Tao, it was just a guess. As long as the emperor doesn't say it, he doesn't say it himself, and it can't be counted.

What is Hong Tao doing these days? One word, play! Playing in the name of investigation, with family members and spending public funds! What to investigate? Of course, it is to examine where this special zone should be placed. The emperor agreed to build a special economic zone, but he has not yet found a good place to build Hongtao, he is not a god after all, what is the Italian Peninsula like, he only has a general impression in his mind, and the specific needs to be investigated.

But where is the right fit? Hong Tao didn't know either, so Karl reinstated the captain of the Malacca from Hong Salamander's nanny, and the two warships set off from the port of Palermo and traveled north along the western side of the Apennine Peninsula, exploring as they went. It is said that it is necessary to find a suitable place to build a special zone, but in fact, it is to probe the hydrological data of this sea area, and it is safe to navigate in such a bathtub with a shallow average depth and islands everywhere. The empire's nautical charts can only be a reference, and a lot of specific data has to be explored by himself, which is also Hong Tao's consistent style, every time he goes to a new sea area, he will find an excuse to find out this sea area before he has the bottom of his mind.

No one dared to stop these two big ships flying the Emperor's flag sailing along the coast of the Empire, and no one knew where they came from when they saw the Golden River and the Malacca. The situation changed when the two ships came to the port of Rena, and the alarm bell sounded in the harbor, and through the binoculars you could see that the people on the pier were running towards the city, and the army was gathering at the pier.

"This is the territory of the Lombard League?" Hong Tao didn't care about the movement in the port, he was kneeling on the floor of the stern, looking at the three maps on the ground and wondering about the location of the special zone.

To the north of it is the large city of Milan, the largest city in northern Italy, according to the imperial map. To the east is Venice, and needless to say, there is the most commercially developed region in the entire Mediterranean. To the west is the Hou Kingdom of Provence, which belongs to the Duchy of Burgundy, which is the southeast coast of what is later France, around Nice, Cannes, and Marseille, which is also currently part of the territory of the Holy Roman Empire. If the special economic zone is built in Rena, it can radiate from the northeast and west, and it is still within the territory of the empire, so it is also very convenient to guard.

"They are an alliance of cities, unlike those who pay taxes to the Empire, who have been secretly under the direction of the Church, and who have been fighting against the Empire for decades. There is a boat coming out, it is a pulp discharge boat! Warship! Karl had been watching with his binoculars all the time, and almost as soon as he and the lookout spotted the enemy, the alarm bell rang on the top of the mast.

"I think it's best to put the Special Zone here, it won't belong to any Lombard soon, go back and discuss with your cousin, I'll give him a big gift, and wipe out the entire Lombard coalition army directly in this port, what do you think?" How many people are there? Hong Tao didn't pay attention to the pulp discharge boats at all, they were still fighting for their lives five nautical miles away. Right now he was focusing on the topography of the port city, and seeing it reminded him of the port of Golden State, which was very similar to each other, so a bad idea popped up again.

"There are about two thousand men, or about four thousand if you count the mercenaries, and these forces are mainly inland to the east, and there are fewer here in the port. The empire did not have a large number of ships to transport soldiers, and in the past, it had to spend money to rent ships with these profiteers during the crusade. "The war between the empire and the Lombards lasted for many years, starting with the emperor's grandfather's generation, and the fighting never ended, both sides knew each other's strength very well, and Karl was naturally no stranger.

"If we make it look like we're going to land here, how long will it take for reinforcements from elsewhere to arrive?" Hong Tao put down the binoculars and felt that he had seen almost, and some specific data needed to be perfected below.

"It takes about a day to get there, the Roman road here is very well preserved and very easy to get around. Are you trying to lure all the Lombard armies into the harbor and then use naval artillery to solve them all at once? Karl kind of understood what Hong Tao was going to do, and the standard encirclement point was sent for reinforcements. It is only necessary to make an attack posture on the port of Rena, and the nearby Lombard army can quickly assemble it, if the two sides fight within the reach of the ship's guns, what will happen to the enemy army, Carl knows very well, this kind of thing he followed Hong Tao on Jawa Island to do a lot of work. The most important thing is that no one in the Europeans has ever seen this way of fighting, and it will definitely not be easy to use this trick to bully the Javanese again, but it is estimated that it can be used more than a dozen times to torture the Europeans.

"Isn't it good? This way, your cousin doesn't have to spend so much gold to find mercenaries and fight with them, we will do our best in one battle, and the harder we fight, the better. Not only to fight the Lombards, but also to give a warning to the other princely states, so that they can remember a long time and not come to provoke us in the future, how good is it to do it once and for all? Hong Tao didn't deny his idea, he actually had no better way to deal with the army than this trick. However, this trick has been tried and tested repeatedly, and it is a bit addictive, and whenever you encounter this situation, you will involuntarily remember that it is still a trick from Asia to Europe.

"Isn't that a little too cruel...... They were all knights, and many were hired from other princely states to fight, and it was just their job. Normally, most of them would not die in battle, even if they were defeated, they only had to surrender and let their families pay a ransom to return home alive. But under your naval guns, no more than half of them can go back, and you may become the public enemy of all knights, is there a way to be gentle? Karl rubbed his cheeks vigorously and voiced his concerns. He was a knight himself, and he had always regarded this title as sacred, and he didn't want to see this honor disappear under Hong Tao's naval guns.

"Nonsense, where are the undead in war! The point is that the person has to die meaningfully. I don't know how to play the kind of war you kids play games with, and I don't have the time or money to play with them. Besides, the Pope hated and hated Emperor Friedrich II and his knights. When you fight, you have to hang the imperial flag and your knight's flag, these two ships are leased by me to your brothers, and I have nothing to do with them, I am an outsider, and I don't interfere in the internal struggles of the empire, I think your cousin is likely to be interested in this method, or let's make a bet? "Hong Tao is not a knight, and he can't understand Carl's feelings of sympathy. When he got a crossbow himself, he lamented all day long that the knight's scenery was gone, just like he had seen the devil, and now he came to prevent him from using naval guns to settle the battle. He really shouldn't be a knight, he should be a pope, and he can definitely make Christianity flourish.

(To be continued.) )

PS: Guaranteed two