Chapter 5: The Shadow of the Black Death

Like the two ends of the symmetrical scale, just as the noisy war between Britain and France was burning in the countryside of Western Europe, far away on the northern shore of the Black Sea at the other end of Europe, in the southern part of the Crimean Peninsula, which is geographically important, a very fierce offensive and defensive battle also broke out.

-- On the Crimean peninsula in the 14th century, Italian merchants ruled a thriving trading colony called Kaffa.

As the eastern frontier of European Christendom, and the most distant overseas colonial stronghold of the Italians from their home country, the city of Kaffa managed to accumulate a great deal of wealth in the thriving international trade of Tongguò, but it was inevitably often envied, spied on, and attacked by pagans from all walks of life.

For example, the Battle of Kaffa in 1346 began as a street dispute between Italian and Muslim merchants. But for some reason, this small conflict quickly escalated, and the Muslims turned to the Mongols of the Golden Horde for help, and a Mongol prince who coveted the riches of the city of Kaffa took the opportunity to besiege the city and claim the bustling trading port for himself.

However, the strong fortifications of the city of Kaffa and the stubborn resistance of the defenders made it difficult for the infamous Mongol army to win for a while. Just as the siege of Port Calais by the British army at the other end of the European 6 at this time, the siege of Port Kaffa by the Mongol army lasted for a whole year.

However, unlike the British, who had control of the English Channel, the Mongols, who were horsebacks, had no fleet in the Black Sea, so they could not block the Black Sea supply lines of Kaffa, and the result was that the besieging Mongol army first fell into a desperate situation of food shortage, and then the plague spread among the army, and hundreds of Mongol warriors were covered with sores and black spots, and fell one after another, and there was no longer the kind of fierce and wild shouting and killing.

Faced with such a desperate situation that could not be overcome by manpower, the Mongol prince was forced to decide to end the siege of Kaffa and withdraw from the battle. However, before he withdrew his troops in disgrace, he decided that he wanted to teach the Italians in the city a lesson that would be impressive

On the eve of the retreat, the Mongol prince set up a trebuchet outside the city of Kaffa and threw the corpses of decomposing soldiers infected by the plague into the air and into the city of Kaffa, where the streets of Kaffa were soon filled with dead bodies and filled with a terrible stench.

However, His Royal Highness probably never dreamed that his anger after the hopeless destruction of the city would lead to a far superior victory over Jochi and Hülegü, and an unprecedented ruin to the Europeans that far surpassed any of the Mongol expeditions

Closer to home, looking at the corpses falling from the sky and the Mongol cavalry that had turned and withdrawn, the defenders of Kaffa were initially puzzled by this, but soon the carrion corpses thrown into the city began to pollute the air and poison the water source, causing the city to begin to explode with the horrific plague.

Because of the black-purple color of the skin of the patients after death, this terrible disease was named the "Black Death" - unknown to Europeans at the time, the plague, a virulent infectious disease caused by the bacillus pestis. Within a few days, the citizens of Kaffa within the city walls were killed, and the city was littered with dead bodies covered in sores and black spots, turning Kaffa into a living hell.

After a year of offensive and defensive warfare, the city of Kaffa finally fell, but it was not the Mongol iron cavalry that broke it, but the invisible disease, and what is even worse is that before the Black Death broke out, many Italian, Greek and Muslim merchant ships who were forced to stay in the port because of the war had already anchored and left Kaffa City and sailed to various parts of Europe and the Middle East. After the Black Death, many people fled Kaffa in a hurry.

A "natural disaster of the dead" that made everyone fear and tremble, under the planning of fate, finally quietly befell the Europeans

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After the city of Kaffa on the northern shore of the Black Sea was engulfed by disease, the first places to suffer were Thrace and Asia Minor on the southern shore of the Black Sea. With the outbreak of the Black Death, the population of Constantinople, the capital of the Eastern Roman Empire, was instantly reduced by half, and the thousand-year-old empire was severely damaged. At this time, the Turks, who had already entrenched themselves in the peninsula of Asia Minor, were also full of dead bodies and mourning in the face of illness. The plague then spread to Egypt in the Arab world, following in the footsteps of camel caravans and rats. Cairo, Egypt, was one of the largest cities in the world at the time, with a population of half a million, but at the height of the Black Death, Cairo died an average of 7,000 people a day

But this little bit of death and weeping among Muslims is nothing compared to the unprecedented catastrophe that is about to befall Christendom.

The deadliest and most terrible nightmare for the Europeans came from a fleet of twelve merchant ships from the city of Kaffa, through Guò Constantinople, from the Black Sea into the Mediterranean, and back to their Italian homeland.

Unbeknownst to the Rayaya merchants and sailors, however, they were accompanied by not only precious stones, silks, and spices, but also rats and fleas, which were the main culprits of the Black Death. Rats infected by fleas climbed onto the mooring ropes, hid in the hold, and sailed with the sailboat towards the Mediterranean. The germs on their bodies resemble swarms of black-clad grim reapers, wielding scythes, ready to harvest millions of lives......

During the voyage, the Black Death began, and the frightened crew threw the dead into the sea, while the more desperate they were to return home.

Thus, in January 1347, with the arrival of the twelve ships of death, the port city of Messina in northern Sicily became the first Italian city to fall to the Black Death - and within a week, the plague was like a tsunami, which had overwhelmed the poor city.

Those who are infected will initially develop a lump between the groins or under the armpits, and then grow larger and larger to the size of a small apple or an egg. Doctors call this tumor an "epidemic tumor", and it does not take much time for this dying-like "epidemic tumor" to spread from those two parts to all parts of the human body. After that, the symptoms changed again, and the patient's arms, legs, and other parts of the body appeared dark or purple spots, sometimes sparsely and sparsely, sometimes fine and dense. However, this is the same as the initial cancer, which is a harbinger of death. After that, there is a high fever, ulceration, foul smell, and some people vomit blood, and there is often a smell of blood in their breath, as if the blood in the body is rotting.

Moreover, no matter how frightened patients seek medical advice, there is always no cure for the disease. This was an incurable disease in Europe at the time. All in all, there are very few people who can be cured after suffering from this disease, and most patients die within three days of the appearance of the "epidemic tumor". What's worse is that the Black Death was so contagious that healthy people contracted the disease as soon as they came into contact with a sick person, and it burned as easily as firewood near a fire. Even if you come into contact with the clothes worn by the sick person or touch the things, you are at risk of getting sick.

In the end, desperate people resorted to the harshest means of quarantine, and the survivors had to isolate themselves because it was too late to isolate the sick. They stocked up on water and food, hid in their houses, and prayed to God all day and night. But even so, the vast majority of them did not escape death, because the tireless rats spread the germ from house to house......

In the face of such an unprecedented catastrophe, the frightened authorities of Messina were furious, and despite the danger of angering the overlord of the western Mediterranean, the Republic of Renaia, they ordered the twelve deadly merchant ships to leave.

The sailors of Reyaya set sail in silence, while the Messinaites continued to wait slowly and slowly for death - the death was still coming, engulfing every street of the city, the nobles and wealthy merchants fled, the soldiers, the clergy, and the municipal workers all disappeared, and the streets were littered with uncollected corpses. Thousands of wild dogs roam the deserted streets, biting carcasses, devouring carrion, and eating people with red eyes, as ferocious as the three-headed dogs of hell...... Less than a month later, the whole city was completely destroyed, and under the autumn sun, the whole city was as silent as death, and countless mutilated corpses lay quietly decomposing in the streets, and the whole city of Messina was decomposing along with it.

And the next thing to rot quietly was all of Sicily, and in the autumn of that year, the haze of the Black Death swept through every city in Sicily, replicating the tragedy of Messina over and over again, turning the island into a dark realm ruled by death.

However, the story of the twelve ships of death is not over.

Messina and Sicily were at best the appetizers of this nightmare, and the Grim Reaper continued its march with the fleet towards the Euro 6, first stopping at the port of Pisa and then soon arriving at the fleet's home port, the commercial pearl of the Mediterranean, Renaia.

Due to the lag in the transmission of information, the unknown motherland welcomed these wanderers from afar with open arms, but after a few days, they were forcibly expelled in a state of panic, and in a panic ordered the closure of the port, and all foreign ships that dared to enter the port were sunk - but it was too late: in the following time, tens of thousands of citizens of Renaya were killed, and the total population of the city was only more than 100,000 at that time.

Since then, the unstoppable Grim Reaper has emerged from the three bridgeheads of Messina, Genoa and Pisa, like a hurricane and tsunami, quickly sweeping through the entire Italian peninsula, the most prosperous, richest, most civilized and most progressive place in Europe during the Renaissance era.

Back to the twelve ships of death of the Reyaans: by this time the bad news of the fleet of death had spread throughout Italy, and from the Alps to Sardinia, there was not a single port willing to receive these messengers of death. Eventually, the fleet sailed north and reached the coast of France in January 1348 - although the local city officials had learned of the plague and had drawn up thick chains in the harbor, in the end, in the face of the desperate begging of the ship's group of hot and lonely ghosts, and without experiencing the severity of the Black Death, the romantic and tolerant authorities of the port of Marseille accepted them and introduced the wolf of the Black Death to the doorstep of France.

When Knight Levi, a traverser who lived in a suburban manor, was stunned to learn of this, it was too late.

After only a few days, after experiencing the Black Death firsthand, heavily armed soldiers stormed the docks of the port of Marseille and forcibly expelled the twelve ships of death. But the clutches of the Black Death had invaded French soil: although the French knew to isolate sick sailors in advance, they could not stop the rats on the ships from sneaking ashore and into the houses and warehouses. And the fleas on these little things are more dangerous carriers of germs than sick humans...... The Grim Reaper managed to slip into the streets of the port of Marseille and began a horrific massacre

After being forcibly expelled by the French garrison in the port of Marseille, the journey of the death fleet was not over, and although the sailors were dying, they continued to advance westward, stubbornly drifting to Spain, spreading death on the coastline of the Iberian Peninsula...... Later, they finally disappeared from the historical record completely, and no one knew how they ended, and perhaps the sailors on board were all dead.

But the mission that the Grim Reaper had given to this fleet had been successfully accomplished - they had succeeded in spreading the plague throughout Euro 6

And in the land of France, the first object to be destroyed by the Black Death was Levi. The port of Marseille where the Bacon Knights' family lived

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