“…… It's really unthinkable, we've done everything we can! This city must be cursed by demons! ”

A Turkish aristocratic official in charge of the municipal administration, sitting cross-legged on an Arabic blanket and sipping wine in defiance of the canons, complained so sadly: "...... All the filthy places in the city have been swept away, the gutters and canals have been dredged, the orders to forbid the sick from entering the city have been issued long ago, every conceivable measure has been carried out, and the pious people have repeatedly prayed to Allah, but the plague is still flooding! It's only been a few days, and the city is almost half empty! Now that the outside is surrounded by the Greeks, and there is no way to get out of the city, the corpse collectors have to throw thousands of corpses into the sea every day, so that the sea water in the harbor begins to stink, and everyone is afraid to eat fish! ”

“…… Yes, this plague is so terrible that a healthy person who touches the clothes worn by the sick or touches something will incur a fatal illness, and it will be like dry wood approaching a fire! Even if you lock yourself in a clean mansion and try to live a pure-hearted life, you will get sick inexplicably. And not only people, but also horses, cattle and sheep are constantly falling ill, and in just a few days, the cavalry of the whole city has been basically scrapped! And it seems that the plague of these animals can also spread to people!

What's worse is that no matter how you ask a doctor to take medicine, there is always no cure for this disease. Perhaps it was because the doctors in Bursa were too knowledgeable to find the real source of the disease, so they could not come up with appropriate treatments...... There are very few people who can be cured by luck. Most people breathe within a few days of the onset of the disease, and the symptoms vary, not knowing that there were several plague outbreaks at the same time! ”

A chubby rich businessman. He also wept and lamented with palpitations, "...... Since the outbreak of the plague, two of my three sons have died, and the youngest of them has also fallen ill and will not last more than a few days. I don't know who to pass on this family business to! ”

“…… In fact, it's not that there is no cure in the black market, it's just that it's not very easy to do, and the Venetian merchant is too black-hearted......" someone muttered vaguely. But when he saw that he was sitting in the mosque, he didn't dare to squeak again.

- Although the two camps of Christianity and Muslims have always been hostile, this does not prevent the flow of silk and spices from the East into the European market. It was also impossible to prevent the "holy water", "holy oil" and "holy bread" of Hagia Sophia from falling into the hands of the Turks.

After all, the straight-line distance from Constantinople to Bursa is only 113 kilometers, and it is still a sea route, which cannot be blocked at all.

Not to mention. In the midst of this, there are all the Venetian merchants who look to the money and thread the needle. Trying to make huge profits through disasters.

Even horrific deaths and great miracles could not stop the determination of the Venetians in their pursuit of profit.

Of course, for the Turks, it was possible but not to say that the purchase of Christian healing "holy relics" through black market merchants was something that could be done, especially when the Eastern Roman Empire army was gathering momentum just outside the city.

“…… Ahem, the situation in the city was already chaotic enough, and now the governor is dead. It's even more unattended...... The newly recruited army collapsed completely, and the officers fled. The soldiers became bandits, looting shops and raping women...... All discipline and decrees are null and void!

Even the sinners in the prison escaped and no longer looked at the law, swaggering all day long in the streets and alleys, because they knew that the people who carried out the decrees were either dead, escaped or fell ill. ”

An old man hurriedly diverted the topic, only to see him wrapped in a turban and holding a scripture book, which seemed to be the imam of this mosque, "...... The fleet of the Greeks did not block the sea routes, and there were Italian merchant ships in the harbor, so there were people in the city who fled by sea every day, and we could not stop them at all—who would want to stay in a city plague-ridden? Even if I continue to stay here, in my opinion, the most I can do is to see how many corpses are brought in to be buried, and there is no solution to the catastrophe. Not to mention that there are enemies to attack outside the city...... What the hell is to do now? ”

At this point, everyone fell silent.

When Sultan Mehmed II gathered a large army to lay siege to Constantinople, he drew almost all the garrisons of Bursa, leaving no decent regular army except tax collectors and palace guards, and taking with him most of the Turkish military nobility who lived there.

As a result, as soon as the news of the mysterious death of Sultan Mehmed II and the sudden destruction of his army of 140,000 arrived, the city of Bursa seemed to have collapsed: after the death of so many of the most courageous Turkish warriors in one go, there were not many young Turkish men in the city.

But even if Bursa is an empty city, no matter how desperate the situation is, it can't arm the ill-intentioned Greek Orthodox Christians, or let a group of veiled widows wear armor as soldiers, right?

If it hadn't been for the Governor of Bursa, who had not yet reacted to these potential hostile elements, he would have taken the initiative and expelled the Christians from the city in time, eliminating the unrest around them, otherwise a great riot would have broken out in the city!

Over the next few months, the city of Bursa recruited scattered Turkish nomads, and managed to pull up a new army of its own people, seemingly with some armed support, but a great plague brought it all back to its original shape, and the Greeks took advantage of it...... The foreign enemy pressed the border, the army was out of control, the people were panicked, and the only governor who could intimidate everyone unfortunately died suddenly, leaving the whole city without a backbone, and this situation is incomprehensible.

In fact, there was no shortage of soldiers in the city of Bursa at this time, nor was there a shortage of food, money and ordnance, and the sea route to the outside world was not blocked - the pocket fleet of the Eastern Roman Empire was barely enough to maintain their own supply lines across the Bosphorus, and there was no spare strength to run more than a hundred kilometers away to blockade the port of Bursa - but the problem was that the terrible plague not only killed a large number of people and livestock, but also destroyed all social order, It also seriously shakes the morale of the Turkish military and civilians: no one wants to stay in this hellish place and wait for death.

Now. The problem facing the city of Bursa is not that it cannot be defeated or defended, but that the Turks simply do not want to continue to garrison it.

And among the many magnates in the city, there was not a single person who had enough prestige to convince the people. You can lead everyone to organize a defensive battle.

Zuihou, or the imam who seemed to be the most prestigious, opened his mouth again and made a conclusion about the current situation in the city of Bursa.

“…… As it stands, we are powerless to save ourselves, and apart from praying to Allah, we have to hope for Turahan Pasha in the east, hoping that he will return from the Ankara front. Repel the Greeks and restore order to the city. If he can do these things, it makes sense to support him as a sultan. Otherwise. We can only abandon this cursed port city and return to our steppe homeland in the Anatolian interior...... May Allah bless! Don't let us be buried in this living hell! ”

However, while the Muslims in Bursa were in constant fear, Emperor Constantine XI outside the city also had his own troubles.

——————————————————————————

The golden sun pierced through the clouds. Countless scattered beams of light. Licking the earth moaning in blood and fire.

In the villages and towns outside Bursa, brutal massacres are unfolding, and there is no mercy, no mercy, only cruelty, bloodshed and tyranny.

Young men were hacked to death by the side of the road, women were hanged in the woods, babies were thrown to death on stone steps, and villages and towns where Turks gathered were plunged into smoke and fire. And the Jews and Gypsies also suffered.

Under the persecution of fanatical Christians, everyone spits on the Qur'an. Otherwise, they will be beheaded as infidels.

As was the case in Adrianople, before the offensive and defensive battles under Bursa broke out, Christians and Muslims were already fighting brutally in the countryside - in medieval Western Europe, there might have been knights spilling blood and sweat with each other, commoners and serfs sitting on the sidelines watching the excitement, and no matter which lord the land belonged to, it was the same labor, rent, and the tithe tax of the Catholic Church.

However, in Asia Minor, where the Christian and Muslim camps are intertwined, the methods of warfare are not so "civilized" - the Turks of this era are essentially a group of bloodthirsty warriors, willing to fight and plunder, and destroy civilization far more than it builds. On the battlefield, he always likes to learn from the advanced experience of the Mongols, and through the three-light policy, he created a large area of no man's land, from the elderly to the infants, all of whom were hacked to death.

After more than 400 years of relentless massacres, the entire ethnic composition of Asia Minor has been cleansed. The Aegean coast, which the Greeks had colonized for 20 centuries, paralyzed the road network, crippled the water system that the Greeks and Romans had painstakingly built, and turned the rich manor houses into empty pastures filled with people who spoke foreign languages...... All of this, which had accumulated in the hearts of the Greeks for four hundred years, was instigated and detonated, and the land was immediately plunged into the blood of religious wars.

The Turks wanted to save their lives, the Greeks wanted to take their homeland, and neither side had the slightest room for compromise but to fight until one side was finished.

“…… In the name of God and Rome, from now on, destroy all mosques and kill all Muslims at once! ”

Emperor Constantine XI commanded so murderously in his edict, "...... There is no need for heretics within the borders of the Empire! ”

If it is said that the Eastern Roman Empire, which ruled half of the Mediterranean in the early days, still had a certain tolerance in terms of faith because it still had the dignity of a great country, then the Eastern Roman Empire, which was oppressed to the brink of despair at this time, no longer had any "multicultural" capital.

-- The great empire of the past has shrunk into a small city-state, and it is in the midst of four wars, and there is no other way to survive the country's fortunes than to try to improve its internal cohesion. Any bit of internal "instability" has the potential to have catastrophic consequences.

The Muslims who had emigrated to the empire were clearly the greatest destabilizing factor.

The history of Islam is, in fact, a history of bloody conquests, which have been expanded by looting, killing, and forcing others to believe in religion from the day it was born. Before Muhammad waged war against Mecca in the seventh century. Christianity, as a faith throughout the Roman Empire, was dominant in shili and wealth. Its sphere of influence encompasses the entire Mediterranean Shijie, including the Middle East, where it was first born.

The Middle East is not inherently Muslim. On the contrary, it was through swords and swords, blood and fire that the Muslims gained the land.

The teachings of Islam originated from the ancient tribal mentality, and it is extremely xenophobic, and there is a deep hostility to new things and new ideas, and it is a relatively closed religion. It's the inside. There are also deep doctrinal and suzerain-master conflicts, which have lasted for thousands of years and still cannot be resolved.

What is even more frightening is that violence occupies a very important place in Muslim culture. Regardless of the country or era, Muslims have always put their faith above the law and have extreme disrespect for the interests and lives of others. Values only your faith - you dare to insult my Allah. Or maybe I just think that you have insulted Allah, and I will kill you, and kill you justifiably and without shame.

The most frightening thing is that most of these acts of violence are not actually "voluntary" by Muslims, but "subconscious" instincts. This brainwashing model, which has been developed over the centuries, is like an invisible hand that pushes Muslims through rounds of religious wars. As a result, Islam Shijie is always in serious turmoil, and it is difficult to maintain long-term peace and stability. Not to mention development and progress.

Think about it, how can a people whose core belief is to kill the "kafir" (pagans) accept the rule of an Orthodox emperor?

Although the Christianity of this era was also bad, from ideological imprisonment, witch hunting, hostility to science, to the sale of indulgence coupons for money, in some respects, it was not much more advanced than Islam. However, thanks to the historical experience of later generations, Emperor Constantine XI at least knew how to reform Christianity, and the bad habits of medieval Christianity were eventually corrected with the development of the times.

However, Islam has remained unchanged from ancient times to the present, and even if it wants to reform and amend, there are no successful examples to refer to.

And if you want to make an Islamic country accept the rule of a Christian king again, and completely eliminate the internal religious contradictions, the only successful example seems to be the Spanish Inquisition, as long as every Muslim is tied to a pyre and burned to death, there will naturally be no religious contradictions.

It is relatively easier to change the proportion of the population of a region with a butcher's knife than it is to help Muslims convert their faith.

For this reason, there is only barbarism against barbarism, and slaughter against slaughter – only dead Muslims are haode Muslims.

Therefore, in the eyes of Emperor Constantine XI, a genocide has become an imperative and imperative.

Of course, unlike Adrianople in Europe, the Turks in Asia Minor were more numerous and the Liliang was stronger. Even in the complete collapse of the regular Turkish army and the dying of the plague, the local Greeks instigated by the clergy, even if the emperor provided them with a sufficient number of swords and armor, and the priests encouraged them, were not enough to wipe out the Turkish Muslims in a short time.

To this end, Constantine XI had to send his mercenaries to join the purge campaign, blasting through the fortified fortresses and monasteries with artillery, cutting down any Turkish men who dared to resist with bows and steel knives, and driving Turkish women and children into wooden houses and burning them to death, or selling them to slave traders who came to buy them. In view of the power of those "black widow" human bombs in Chechnya, the emperor really did not dare to be half merciful in this regard.

Despite the terrible law and order situation in Europe's major cities in recent years, large-scale bloodshed and corpses on the docks and city gates, everyone has long been accustomed to this kind of life and death...... But it would be better to have fewer suicide bombings.

Although the emperor did not think that the primitive black powder of this year had such great power - even if he carried a barrel of gunpowder on his back disguised as a baby swaddling cloth, it was estimated that it could kill the meat bomb himself. There is also the question of how to detonate it – there are no radios and no cell phones these days.

Of course, those among them who are willing to turn their backs on Allah can naturally spare a life. The Eastern Roman Empire would be "merciful" enough to give them large quantities of clothing, blankets, and food impregnated with germs, and then selflessly deport them to the East, so that they could harm more infidels before they fell ill...... If there are Christians who are unfortunately affected, then there is nothing that can be done.

In short, in just a few days, the Greeks swept away the Turkish settler strongholds on the outskirts of Bursa, killed about 30,000 of the most recalcitrant Muslims, and expelled the same number of Turks, but also lost thousands of Greek militiamen, as well as hundreds of elite mercenaries...... Thankfully, inspired by religious beliefs and large amounts of booty, this loss did not hurt morale.

At present, the outer support points of the city of Bursa have been swept away, and the situation in the city is also chaotic according to the information from the inquirement, the heavy artillery and siege equipment have been transported in place, and in the emperor's opinion, the time is almost ripe for a general attack on the city of Bursa. (To be continued.) )