After General Branas successfully carried out the Battle of the Villeades River and eliminated the rebel group in Isaac on the Southern Front, the tide of the war turned sharply. Pen, fun, pavilion www. biquge。 info

Burdin, who had been calm and relaxed in Fort Sophia, suddenly felt the pressure increase: now that Thessalonica, Thessaly, and Makenesia had all been captured by Gawain, this meant that the Branass Front could draw two brigades at any time and go north along the gateway to the valley, Pera, and stab him in the abdomen. And at this moment, if Trajan's five brigades of Merlot in the Tuntun attack him again, then the entire Dukrian army will encounter a pincer offensive, and it will be difficult to win!

Berdin scolded Isaac for his incompetence and stupidity, first he should not have attacked Thessaloniki City, and then he was determined to run around indiscriminately after abandoning Pera City, and the fate of being annihilated was purely self-inflicted, and even Berdin suspected, "Isaac is afraid that he has already colluded with Gawain in private, and is an undercover agent in our alliance, right?" ”

Suspicion is suspicion, and now we still have to try our best to save ourselves to maintain the front where cracks occur!

Berdin sent messengers from the coast of Ragusa, and then made a detour to Crete via Corfu, the port of Modon, and then the Cape of Horikat (Peloponnese), where he asked for an audience with Emperor John.

In the makeshift palace of Gandhia, John has just welcomed his wife, Piloska, who has been sent back by Gawain.

The Emperor of Crete sincerely confessed to his wife, and said that although the Patriarch had been captured by the enemy, he had forgiven him, and hoped that Piloska would forgive him, and promised to invite the local bishop in the city's Basilica of St. Titus to give Piloska an orthodox name, and from then on "willing to share bread and salt with her until the moment he entered the cemetery." ”

In the end, Piloska chose to forgive John, and she knew that what her husband needed was the support of her mother's kingdom. The week before the feast of the Feast of the Initiation of the Virgin, Pilosca put on a white bridal silk robe and held a golden iconostasis, and walked with John into the church of St. Titus.

The local bishop gave her the Christian name "Zoe".

Then John bowed down before the bishop's altar and confessed that he had "betrayed his wife by the seduction of the flesh," and the couple were reconciled.

Zoe. Komnenos prepared to write a letter to his home country, asking his people to form an alliance with John again to defend the true Roman Empire.

Before the letter was delivered, Berdin's envoy came.

Previously, John had learned about the collapse and erosion of the war situation on the southern front, and was even ready to abandon the Moria Peninsula and surrender Crete and Rhodes, but he also knew that now was not the time to be demoralized, if the Great Earth King Berdin was also defeated, then give Gawain a few more years, I am afraid that he would be able to land here directly and crush himself to death easily.

Why? For John knew very well that this Varyag barbarian was cutting and hoarding a large amount of fine timber in the four places of Mysia, Atalia, Tarsus, and Cyprus, and was in the process of drying it, and once it hardened in two or three years, Gawain would be able to mobilize countless men and create a large and strong fleet in a short time, and at that time, not to mention his own island nation, even Venice and Sicily combined with him, might not be able to gain the upper hand at sea.

All in all, Gao Wen, who owns the whole of Asia Minor and has changed the military and political system, is so powerful that he is not afraid of how big or how long he will fight with you, as long as he is the final victor, he will never stop, "Peace can only be given to the Quartet by my hands." That's one of his famous quotes now.

John was not reconciled, and immediately organized a fleet and a small army to brave the bad weather to prepare to attack the islands of the Holy Sea, but the team was defeated as soon as it reached the island of Respas.

The Re-Ducks resigned themselves at the piracy of Crete in order to keep their frankincense privileges, the Amalfi in order to keep their cotton (which had been introduced into cultivation) and wool in Misia, and the Pisbians in order to keep the alum and rice of Smyrna, and the three city-states were united in their hatred of the enemy, and they left a fleet in this sea area and defeated John.

Legend has it that one of John's dhows got lost while escaping at night, and drifted into a deep bay on the west side of the island of Respos, only to be sunk by a cannon shot from a new fort built on the headland!

Most of these new forts are held in the bay canals, half earth and half stone (it is said that they will be slowly renovated into full stone in the future, because Gawain's engineer Gedier thinks that in the long run, the all-stone fortress will be more economical and cheaper to maintain), and the inner belly is hidden with artillery, and there is a light perfume bottle cannon that can be tilted behind the top pheasant, which is specially designed to bombard the ships or pirates of the hostile countries that pass by.

Now a string of such fortresses has been erected or rebuilt at the Helliston Strait and the Bosphorus Strait, which have firmly guarded the Maramaran Inland Sea and tethered the northern bag-shaped Yukxing Sea.

Gao Wenfang's two messages of "coastal forts" and "large-scale shipbuilding" all shocked John's nerves, and even regretted why he didn't go to Moria to fight side by side with his uncle.

Eventually, John returned to the Grand Strategy Chart table, but he found what he could, and he hurriedly sent letters to Sicily, Venice, Rome, and Canosha, proposing several plans:

1. The separation of the popes of Rome and Tuscany should be brought to an end as soon as possible, and a congress of believers should be held to reunite the Holy See, after which the reunion of the Eastern and Western Churches could be discussed, in order to unite against the rising Gawain;

2. Sicily and the Pope should also make a modest compromise with Henry V of the Salian Caesar, temporarily recognizing the power of the other side in the north of the Po River and the autonomy of the Church of Germany, and allowing Henry V to withdraw his troops;

3. After the conclusion of the peace treaty, the Kingdom of Sicily should focus on going north, slaughtering the two pro-Gawain city-states of Amalfi and Bari, and cutting off Gawain's trade routes to deal a blow to them;

4. At the same time, Matilda should organize the squires and militias of Lombardy and Tuscany to attack the city-states of Pisa and Rela, which had betrayed the Pope;

5. Venice should assemble its main fleet and come to the Holy Sea to severely attack Gawain's lines of communication and strive to raid and seize the islands under his jurisdiction, and if Gawain loses too much blood in time, he will sit back at the negotiating table.

After writing these five points, John put them in a lead seal and handed them to Berdin's envoys, asking them to send their opinions to the Western world, and reminding Berdeen not to stick to Fort Sophia, but to resist the search for warplanes and fight against Gawain's weakened army in the rugged mountains and dense forests.

After John's reply was sent away, the snow-covered plains of Northern Thrace, the rebel general of Bolgar with more than 20,000 soldiers, had swept towards the location of the front army on the northern front of Gauvin.

This army was not the same as the usual enemy, as their cavalry and archers were especially fierce and formidable.