One hundred and thirty-six, the auspicious world (II)

On the other hand, the pandemic, which has devastated millions of people, has not only caused changes in the number of people, but also caused far-reaching changes in the political map.

Prior to this, the two camps holding aloft the cross and the crescent banner had been facing each other in the West for nearly a thousand years.

During this long period of time, the two camps fought fiercely against each other, and the Shili range was constantly advancing and retreatingβ€”the eight crusades launched by the Christians were a strong counterattack by the camp of the Cross; And the fall of Constantinople and the fall of the Byzantine Empire represented the glorious victory of the Crescent Banner and the Desert Scimitar, as well as the "greening" of all of Asia Minor and part of Eastern Europe.

By 1520, the Turkish army from Asia had completely inherited the legacy of the Byzantine Empire, fought on the banks of the Danube River in Europe, took the entire Balkan Peninsula into its pocket, and marched directly at the famous city of Vienna in Central Europe, greatly reducing the living space of Christians.

Although the Kingdom of Spain also recovered the Iberian Peninsula from the Moors at the same time, and drove back the descendants of the Arab conquerors who had invaded Western Europe for 700 years back to North Africa, it was far from compensating for the huge losses caused by the fall of the Byzantine Empire in terms of land size and political influence.

As a result, in the early 16th century, the Europeans, who were under great pressure, were forced to retreat step by step in front of the Turkish army, and were repeatedly defeated; While setting sail to sea, he tried to expand his living space from other strategic directions, and accumulated enough liliang to fight the Turks.

In the original history, relying on the huge wealth flowing into Europe during the Age of Discovery, as well as the vast lands brought by North and South America, the Christians did stabilize the battle line under the city of Vienna, blocking the Turkish offensive momentum in the Austrian line, and successfully turned to the counteroffensive after the defense of Vienna in Zuihou in 1683, gradually compressing the European territory of the Turks to a corner near Istanbul.

But the problem is that in this time and space that has been greatly disturbed by the time-travelers, when the living space of Christians is being gradually compressed by the Turks, and the Europeans are stubbornly struggling and accumulating strength to fight back, this terrible plague that wiped out two-thirds of the population of the whole of Europe has completely hollowed out the human resource base of the entire European camp at once - it is as if a section of the seesaw has been pressed down to the extreme, and when it is about to rebound, the seesaw itself is suddenly cut off by someone...... As a result, the entire Christian camp collapsed irrevocably.

First of all, the Iberian Peninsula, where the Kingdom of Spain and the Kingdom of Portugal are located, naturally suffered the most brutal blows - Seville, Madrid, Lisbon, CΓ‘diz, and Barcelona all became ghost towns, and the ruling order of the Kingdom of Spain and Portugal completely collapsed, and it became countless independent small states with autonomy, and the entire Iberian Peninsula lost at least 90% of its population in the plague.

The Moors, who had just been driven by Christians from the Iberian Peninsula to North Africa thirty years earlier, saw their old enemy fall apart in an instant, and immediately took the opportunity to cross the Strait of Gibraltar again, counterattack the Iberian Peninsula in a big way, and easily recapture the whole of Andalusia, centered on Granada, which had been almost devastated by the plague and turned into a desert with little resistance from the Moorish army in North Africa, and then the Moorish army continued northward, They conquered all of Portugal along the Mediterranean Sea into Valencia, which produced oranges, and Lisbon along the Atlantic, thus basically blocking the sea route from the Iberian Peninsula to the Atlantic.

With the collapse of Spain and Portugal, many overseas trading posts and colonies established by the Spaniards and Portuguese throughout Shijie naturally became rootless duckweed, either disintegrating and falling on their own, or becoming independent small countries. …,

The more terrifying upheaval for Europeans was a new round of invasion by the Ottoman Turks - due to a terrible plague, the famous city of Vienna in Central Europe was almost a ghost town, and the Turkish expeditionary force led by Suleiman the Magnificent captured the unguarded Vienna in one fell swoop in 1529, swallowed almost all of Austria, and continued to slowly penetrate into the German region of Central Europe and the Polish region of Eastern Europe.

On the southern front, the Turkish army also launched a further attack on land and sea, and in one fell swoop destroyed the Republic of Venice, which had lost most of its population in the plague. Subsequently, Suleiman the Magnificent of Turkey sent an army across the sea to Sicily and southern Italy, which were also plague-struck, and took the important city of Naples, and finally joined forces with the Turkish army that conquered Venice in Central Italy, turning the Adriatic Sea into a Turkish inland sea.

Although the panicked Catholic Church recalled from Rhode Island the remnants of the medieval crusaders in Asia, the Knights Hospitaller, who were fighting in Asia, were unable to prevent the fall of southern Italy and Venice after a bitter battle.

As a result, the holy city of Rome, where the Holy See was stationed, was suddenly at the forefront of the struggle between Christians and pagans, and was surrounded on three sides, with only French reinforcements expected to cross the Alps. The poor popes no longer had to mobilize the crusaders to cross the sea with great fanfare, but could personally direct the holy war in St. Paul's Basilica in the Vatican - the Turkish crescent flag on the outskirts of Rome!

Against the backdrop of the collapse of the entire Christianity and the greatly reduced living space of Christians, under the persecution of the existential crisis and the inspiration of the righteousness of faith, the Europeans had to give up their dream of sailing to the sea and conquering the new world, and once again devote all their energy to the glorious mission of fighting against the pagans of the East and defending the European homeland. On the other hand, the drastic decline in population across Europe has also greatly reduced the interest of Europeans in overseas exploration - there is already too much land around them, so why spend a huge price to grab land in distant places?

Thus, the Age of Discovery for Western Europeans had only just begun, and it had to come to an abrupt end -- and history had since completely forked the road.

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Although the widespread "greening" of Europe and the aborted death of the Age of Discovery were very beneficial to the geopolitical security of the Native Americans at this time, it is a pity that the decline of a certain auspicious man is too strong and does not distinguish between friend and foe. So, after circumnavigating the earth for most of the world, his curse finally returned to the other side of Shijie and fell on the head of the traverser himself.

-- Specifically, because of a Spanish expedition that should have gone down in history, the "wrong" message of "the discovery of Chinese in the New World" came from the island of Cuba at the moment before the anchor was lifted...... As a result, the expedition that set out in the autumn of 1519, after rounding the southernmost point of South America, did not continue to cross the Pacific Ocean to the Philippines to complete the feat of man's first circumnavigation of the world, as recorded in a certain period of history. According to the special instructions of the King of Spain before sailing, all the sailing ships were diverted to the north, and the sailing ships sailed north along the desolate coastline of Chile, Peru and other countries in the future, driven by the cold current of Peru, and quietly approached Hope Port from behind......

However, whether it was Wen Desi, who was in Central America at this time, or Wang Qiu and others, who had returned to modern society, they all had no expectations for this.

A tragedy struck......