For these enemies of hundreds of years ago, the Kingdom of England actually intended to make peace.

In fact, if it weren't for the appearance of the Purple Horde, the Crimean Anglo-Saxon would indeed have a tendency to accept Zhao'an. After all, by this time, the Greek-dominated Eastern Roman Empire had fallen into decline and could no longer provide even the most powerful help.

Although there was a feud back then, at least everyone is English, so it is a fellow countryman, at least a little fate. If you can get the support of the Kingdom of England, you can at least have some confidence in the face of the Slavs and Turks who pose a direct threat to the surrounding people.

To put it bluntly, it has been reduced to this part, and any relationship is a relationship.

However, England is still too far away, after all. Although I was able to meet some clergy and businessmen, and some people were willing to offer some sponsorship, it was still a drop in the bucket for the overall situation in the area. Moreover, the Kingdom of England was busy at war with France, and had no heart to recruit them. Naturally, this matter will be over.

However, after the rise of the Purple Horde, the situation changed. The Kingdom of England was surprised to find that these people could threaten themselves by sea to the north.

In the past, Norse raiders often haunted the North Sea, sometimes raided England, and some settled here for a long time in the hope of conquering the area. However, after the Norman conquest of England, the Nordic power was in decline and there was little threat.

The French also tried to attack England proper. More than 100 years ago, the sailors of the two sides fought each other in the seaport of Sruiis. At that time, neither of them was very professional, and in order to compensate for this problem, the king also hired Genoese to help in the war.

However, before the war, the French commander had an idea and decided to connect all the warships with iron cables and use them as solid castles to compensate for the problem that their soldiers were not accustomed to water. The leader of the Genoese mercenaries thought that this would not work, but the French did not listen. Unwilling to accept orders, he left with his own boat.

As a result, the English sailors took advantage of the current to attack from the upstream, and the French sailors who were huddled together were almost completely annihilated. Afterwards, the French were very angry, believing that it was all the fault of the Genoese, and arrested the mercenary leader.

After that, everyone knew that the French could not afford to lose, and gradually no one was worried that they would be able to attack England itself.

Therefore, although they lost the battle at the beginning, there were still many English nobles who believed that the Purple Horde's offensive could succeed only because it was too unexpected—no one expected that someone would come to such a place that had been safe for hundreds of years.

When the Purple Horde was soliciting people everywhere, everyone thought they were too far away, and these actions must have only helped the French to shout out, so as to force the English army to withdraw and relieve the pressure on the allies. No one expected that they would come to the real thing in the end. In this mentality, there is no way to be attacked by someone.

But on the other hand, it does represent a threat.

The current situation in England is not as glamorous as outsiders see. King Edward waged war against France with the main purpose of preserving important economic areas and strengthening the prestige of the royal family. Although it has been relatively successful on the battlefield, the decades-long war has also had a serious impact on England itself.

Compared to the European continent, the mainland of England on the island is actually very poor and backward. The output of the island alone could not feed such an army large enough to confront France, nor could it meet the needs of the nobles. Therefore, the kings of England had to live on taxes and borrowing money on a daily basis.

The former put enormous pressure on the ordinary inhabitants of England, and by the late 14th century there had even been a nationwide rebellion - the peasants of England had rebelled, and it is of course possible to imagine what the economic situation had deteriorated.

The latter has saddled the kingdom with huge debts, so large that it is almost impossible to repay them seriously. As a result, the kings had to pay their debts several times.

Italian merchants suffered from this. The first few large multinational banks to emerge were all miserable in the end by England. In order to sustain the foreign war, Edward III relied on 900,000 florins from the Bardi Bank and 600,000 from the Peruzzi Bank, causing the two largest banks of the time to go bankrupt.

The operators of these banks are already the best businessmen at dealing with kings and nobles, but as long as the other party wants to repay the debt, there is still no way. Therefore, Guo Kang was able to get the patronage of Italian merchants, which did not surprise everyone in the Khan's court, because at any time, nobles who were willing to repay were very scarce resources. It's not surprising that people follow him every day.

And for the Kingdom of England, it was not a good thing to pay its debts.

This debt is gone, but it doesn't mean that it will be okay after that. The cost of internal and external wars was staggering, and the king still needed more money. However, because everyone knew that it was extremely risky to lend money to the king, it was necessary to open higher chips if you wanted to attract merchants to continue to give money.

Therefore, the interest rate of this type of loan is also extremely high, as opposed to the very high risk. Because they could not repay their debts every time, kings often mortgaged various taxes directly to merchants to repay them. In the early 14th century, Italian merchants had a near monopoly on customs duties throughout the country. Later, the privileges were sold to Low Country and Hanseatic merchants in exchange for their financial support. Even the right to appoint the mayor of London has long been contracted out.

This situation made the nobles quite dissatisfied, and felt that all kinds of sovereignty were about to be sold to the king. The dignified Britain has become the court of foreigners. With the support of the nobility and the country's merchants, the kings gradually withdrew these powers – much to the great offense of the Hanseatic and lowland merchants who had been operating in the region for a long time. They turned to support the Purple Horde, and to put it bluntly, these are the things that make a fuss.

So in the end, the kingdom of England was actually in a bad situation that could not be extricated from, and no matter how much the kings changed their policies, it was difficult to make the situation better. The only way to break the game is to fill these gaps through war and looting. In short, every battle must be earned, otherwise it is easy for problems to occur in the country.

In fact, in history, after the final defeat of the Hundred Years' War, the Kingdom of England did collapse very quickly.

In the tragic civil war, 25 of the 60 great noble families were cut off, more than half of the nobles above the baron level died, and thousands of small feudal lords perished in the war, so much so that the period after the war was called "bastard feudalism" - because the descendants of the traditional feudal nobility died too much. It's just that now, everyone can't imagine that this kind of thing is too scary for the old nobles.

Now, of course, they have not fallen to such a point, but it is not difficult for the rulers of England to see these red flags. Everyone is well aware of the perilous situation in which the Kingdom finds itself. In this case, even minimizing some risk factors is obviously a good thing to pay attention to.

To this day, in New Anglia, there are still a number of settlements called "London" and "York". In the eyes of the Purple Horde, this was a kind of overseas Chinese county. The English used this as a breakthrough to say that since the Anglo-Saxons still miss their homeland, then the two sides can talk.

This matter has been promoted by the English side with great fanfare, and Princess Jeanne should have known about it before. However, the high-ranking officials of the Purple Horde specifically mentioned this matter, which still attracted her attention.

"What does the English court want from this?" "They should be concerned about more than that," she asked. ”

Lu Shangshu nodded.

"You should have known it beforehand. Earlier this year, Henry IV died. He said: "The situation in England is actually more dangerous. ”

Princess Jeanne looked thoughtful.

Henry IV was an "unjust" king. This matter has also been known to the courts of various countries for a long time.

Of course, Zhu Wenkui doesn't seem to know very well......

"What's going on over there in England?" He asked curiously.

"It all started decades ago." Prime Minister Wang Zhongren glanced at the others and briefly introduced him: "At the beginning, King Edward III had several sons. The eldest son he values the most is the famous 'Black Prince' Edward. The black prince has military merits and a lineage, and was originally the best heir, however, he died before his father. ”

The old king was very sad and decided to let the son of the black prince succeed to the throne. Due to the early death of Edward of Angoulême, the eldest son of the Black Prince, the inheritance fell to the second son, Richard. However, it also aroused the covetousness of his uncles. ”

"When the little king succeeded to the throne, he was called Richard II. Edward III's fourth son, John, Duke of Lancaster, gained the power to act as regent. However, the king has always had a bad relationship with him, and has always tried to get rid of him, but his ability is limited, and his relationship with the parliament and other nobles is not good, so he has never succeeded. ”

Later, when John died, Richard, who had always wanted to weaken the great nobles, immediately ordered to strip him of his fief. However, instead of having an effect, this move caused a general panic among the great nobles. The nobles, who were afraid that they would have the same experience, rebelled one after another. ”

John's son Henry took the opportunity to launch a counterattack, successfully defeating Richard, taking him prisoner and usurping the throne. He is the same King Henry IV of England who ruled until this year. ”

Richard II was imprisoned. Henry IV assured him and the council that the deposed king would not be executed. But a few months later, he was accused of instigating his supporters to assassinate the new king. Henry IV used this as an excuse to execute him. ”

Although Richard was supposed to be dead, many people didn't believe it. There are various rumors among the people that he survived and escaped. Prime Minister Wang finally said: "On the Scottish side, it is also open to the public, saying that Richard has successfully escaped and is now living in the capital Stirling. Many people really believe this statement, and it is useless for the royal family to say anything. ”

"That's ......" Zhu Wenkui said with emotion: "They all boiled his fourth uncle to death, but the cutting of the feudal domain still didn't succeed." I really don't know how to rate ......."

"This ......" Prime Minister Wang Cheng really did not judge his family for anything, so he had to divert from the conversation and continue his topic: "In short, we believe that these circumstances show that the contradictions and discontents within England are very serious. At this point, there should be no suspense. ”

Zhu Wenkui thought about it and nodded.

(End of chapter)