The rebellion had just begun, and in the past six months, northern Italy was once again in mourning. 《

Pope Eugene I is gone.

After the city of Rome was slaughtered by the Min army into a sea of blood, this venerable old man fell ill and lingered in bed for less than a month, when he was called by the Lord and returned to the West.

It is said that before the death of the papal palace, Eugene still held the Bible and muttered to himself: "Lord, is it right or wrong that I have recruited these demons to Rome?" ”

However, although Eugene I was extremely confused about the merits of his life, his later life was very grandiose, with 500 pure Tang people wearing armor embroidered with a cross personally carrying his coffin, and more than 500 Christian monks solemnly celebrating his farewell mass in the renovated Roman cathedral.

And cardinals such as Rexinti, Sabinian, and Martin have a particularly high opinion of Eugene I.

During his reign, the Lombard Kingdom, which had always been an enemy of the Holy See, was wiped out, and the churches of all parts of northern and southern Italy were unified under the jurisdiction of the Holy See, and the Germanic kingdoms as far as Gaul, Spain, and the Baltic Sea all came to Rome for the first time.

Since its establishment in the first century C.E., the Holy See has never ruled over the Faith so widely!

Moreover, Eugene I finally converted the wealthy expeditionary force of the Min Empire to Christianity.

Although this group of expeditionary forces wearing carved cross armor are not so religious, many of them still wear Buddhist bracelets on their wrists, brahmin statues around their necks, and even a peach wood gourd around their waists, but on the whole, these people have been called knights of Christ, which is enough for today's Holy See.

As many as 300 choirs of handsome young men and women sang hymns in unison, and almost all the major families of Rome and the bishops of all parts of the Holy See arrived after the catastrophe, praying for Eugene I in ethereal singing, and the sound of sacred prayers could be heard even in half of the city of Rome.

After three days of mourning, Eugene I's Eucharist was hidden in a heavy coffin by the five hundred Christ Knights and carried to the Chapel of the Holy Sepulchre behind the Vatican Hill for burial.

Eugene I closed the coffin, in the past, this time was the most tense time for the Holy See, because the papal throne was vacant, and the status of the pope in Christianity was the most pious servant of the Lord who controlled the key to the gate of heaven, and if he could not enter heaven, Christians everywhere would panic.

In particular, the Pope has great authority in the entire Holy See, with a transcendent position and great power, and also holds the financial power of the Holy See. For example, Eugene I insisted on not removing Adéodatus from the position of cardinal because he was an upright man and did not want to break the law of the Holy See.

Often, this position was the target of competition among the major families of Rome, and before the Pope could be buried, the doorsteps of the major cardinal conferences were breached, and all kinds of political promises and liturgical threats followed.

But this time, unexpectedly, it seems that they have lost interest in the papal throne, such as Rexinti, Urban and several other Roman families have become less enthusiastic, and the other cardinals who have been waiting for several days have not come to the door, and finally a few old bishops can't help but urge, and it is only on the fourth day after the pope's burial that the synod of cardinals to elect a new pope is held in the Roman cathedral.

In fact, it is no wonder that after the chaos in Rome, the Pope was no longer the master of Rome, and was replaced by the governor of the Fujian expeditionary force.

Especially in the recent series of actions of the Imperial Palace, the spiritual power of the Roman nobles has been attracted.

First of all, the capital of Fujian set up Hongwen Hall in various places, selected the children of nobles to study Chinese etiquette, and promised to select the municipal officials of the cities of northern Italy after completing their studies.

In the past, the Roman aristocracy was born in the Roman Empire, after the fall of the empire, the Roman government fell apart, the barbarians controlled the Italian political situation, and the barbarians appointed their own nobles as officials.

It wasn't until Justinian the Great recovered Italy that some people had a direction to go to Constantinople as officials, but there were still many people who were worried that Constantinople was too far away and stayed until the emergence of the Min Kingdom.

The temptation to be an official near his hometown is not small, and several archbishops such as Rexinti even went through the back door before sending their family children to a Confucian family surnamed Changsun in the Hongwen Pavilion where the city of Rome began.

On the other hand, the energy of these Roman nobles was also wealth.

During this period of time, the expeditionary force had a firm foothold, and the merchants from Fujian also gained a firm foothold. Merchants are called merchants when they come and go, so these merchants began to row Italian specialties again, preparing to sail back to Fujian.

Indeed, after arriving in Italy, the Metropolitan Protectorate issued a large number of land estates to each chamber of commerce, but in fact, the vast majority of the handicrafts in Northern Italy were still concentrated in the hands of these Roman nobles, and the production was not enough to meet the export goods of the large market of the Min Empire, so they had to buy them.

When the big merchants of Fujian appeared in front of people such as Shylock the Fat the Fat with thick orders in their hands, these Roman nobles who had not seen the world for centuries almost went crazy.

These orders are dozens of times more than the commercial share they were robbed of, and when they got these orders, the presidents of the major guilds first reacted with laughter, and the second reaction was to cry.

In the catastrophe of the chaos in the city of Rome, they fired a large number of skilled craftsmen, and the workshop lost a lot in the war, and it would be good if the demand for orders could now meet a small half.

In the depressed and disdainful eyes of the Fujian merchants, the heads of the guilds were busy, and they transferred handicraftsmen from nearby cities in Rome, and they spent money to find connections to redeem the elite craftsmen who were punished for hard mining in the mines, and in half a month, the ruined city of Rome was once again revitalized.

In order to win over skilled craftsmen, the merchants of the various guilds also paid more salaries, and with wages, the craftsmen went to buy bread, clothes and other daily necessities, which led to the vitality of tailors, bakers and other industries.

The reason why even Europeans recognized the Middle Ages as a dark and backward barbaric era was because the vast territory of the Roman Empire was divided into small feudal territories, and the closed manor economy cut the original trade network of the Roman Empire in all directions.

Of course, this is also based on the new order established by the Fujian Expeditionary Force by force, otherwise there will be a danger of barbarians coming from the north every day, burning and looting, who still has the heart to do agriculture and business?

After some turmoil, it seems that with the death of the old pope, the page of chaos in Rome has also been turned over, and the ancient order that successive Roman emperors dreamed of has been restored, large public facilities have been built in the city of Rome once again, ancient collapsed apartments, congested sewers have begun to be slowly cleared, and even the public baths, which the Holy See has been doubly opposed, have begun to come back to life.

In particular, the Min people also brought Tang Wenhua, just like the later generations we like novel foreign culture, the Romans of this era are also interested in Chinese Tang costumes, fans, tea ceremony, the newly built Roman road next to the Tang teahouse, began to often see wearing Tang costumes and tasting tea, and from time to time spit out two sentences of non-standard Guanzhong, it seems that the rich children of the Roman aristocracy are very tall, and there are many Roman aristocratic women wearing bright and bright silk skirts to swagger through the market, and there are not a few unique open-chested clothes in the Tang Dynasty, The group of men who were peculiar to the Romans were even more drooling.

This also made the Fujian merchants who dealt in Tang goods make a small fortune, and they were even more eager to move Rome's local wines, marble statues and other specialties to the ship, looking forward to returning to the huge market of Fujian to make another profit.

In anticipation, after repairs, the Fujian Fuchuan fleet, loaded with a huge amount of goods, once again set sail to the sea, carrying the hopes of immigrants, and sailed towards Fujian through North Africa.

However, at this most profitable moment, Zhong Huang, the chief proprietor of the She Chamber of Commerce, the largest chamber of commerce in the Italian peninsula in Fujian, did not do business in Rome, but went east, stopped in a poor and barren fishing village on the Adriatic Sea, and then moved the valuable manpower and material resources that the Chamber of Commerce could have made a lot of money to this barren east coast like a loser.

About a hundred small islands large and small silted up in the sea make up this quirky little fishing village, and about a few thousand Roman locals who fled to this desert island group during the Vandals were clever in driving wooden stakes into the silt, and then erecting their houses on wooden stakes to support them, and using boats instead of boats and carts to shuttle through them, relying on burning bricks, drying salt, and big fish for a living.

The community of about one or two thousand people seemed to be quite vibrant, but with the arrival of Zhong Huang, the peaceful life of the locals seemed to be shattered.

In the early morning, in the shouting, a large number of flat-bottomed sand boats loaded with huge stones in Fujian Province fluttered and plunged into the water, lined up a large area of white waves, in the shouting, thousands of Lombard laborers hired by the Italian peninsula, Roman laborers shouted and stepped on the unique ship of China, boarded the small boat and rushed to the offshore area......