After circumnavigating most of Europe, Wang Jinghong, who set out from the Junbao and Suez regions, entered the Strait of Gibraltar through the Mediterranean Sea, and then rounded Cape Roca and the Bay of Biscay to enter the English Channel.

This was the destination of his trip, but he was not in a hurry, but chose to pick a small island in the Channel Islands at the entrance to the English Channel, stationed and observed the situation in the English Channel.

Wang Jinghong is not a general, and he is not good at marching and fighting, but not being in the line does not mean that he does not understand anything.

In any case, Wang Jinghong also fought, and on the third time he followed Zheng He to the Western Ocean, he accompanied the army to exterminate the Ceylon Mountain Kingdom that intended to ambush the ocean-going treasure fleet.

Moreover, it is not just about fighting, it is important to understand the situation before doing anything.

It's just that Wang Jinghong didn't expect that just when he had just figured out the situation in the English Channel and the supply and transportation time of the English, he received an order from Zhu Zhanyan.

This order naturally made him suspend his entry into the English Channel, because Yolanda was making small moves behind Zhu Zhan's back, which made Zhu Zhanyan dissatisfied.

Originally, after receiving this order, Wang Jinghong should have turned around and headed south into the Bay of Biscay, after all, it belonged to the Kingdom of France on the surface, and entering the southern part of the Bay of Biscay could also be replenished by the Kingdom of France.

Even if they didn't enter the Bay of Biscay, they would at most camp in the Haxia Islands or the Isles of Scilly, an archipelago at the entrance to the English Channel, waiting for Zhu Zhan's order.

However, Wang Jinghong made a decision that no one expected, and it was precisely because of this decision that he accidentally helped the Ming army in the Eastern European battlefield to relieve great pressure.

Through the map that Zhu Zhanqi gave him before leaving, Wang Jinghong keenly discovered that the European continent is actually a peninsula protruding from the land, but compared to other peninsulas, the European peninsula has reached a level that is enough to be called a continent.

After seeing the geographical distribution of the Kingdom of France, the Holy Roman Empire, and the Lithuanian-Polish Kingdom Alliance on the map, Wang Jinghong disobeyed Zhu Zhan's order for the first time and swaggered his entire fleet into the English Channel.

However, he did not stop there, and when the English were terrified, Wang Jinghong let the fleet continue to sail all the way to the Baltic Sea, and even fought the Danish Vikings along the way.

Speaking of Vikings, we have to mention the Nordic Union.

Vikings can be said to be known to everyone, even if they don't know their cultural history, but at least they have heard the name, and the myth of Odin in later generations is Norse, that is, the myth of the Vikings.

Odin, Thor, Loki, the god of lies and trickery, are all Norse mythology, that is, Viking mythology.

However, the heyday of Vikingism was in the 8th and 11th centuries, and the current early 15th century has passed the heyday of Vikings, and part of the people who once made the whole of Europe tremble abandoned their old belief in Odin, threw themselves into the arms of Catholicism, and integrated into Western European society.

Some of them began to embark on trade routes, not only in Northern Europe, but also in the Mediterranean and the Black Sea.

The last remaining part returned to their native land, where they were later included in the Nordic Union.

And the reason why Wang Jinghong clashed with them was because of this Nordic alliance.

At the end of the 14th century, the Nordic Union, known as the Kalmar Union, was established, which linked the kingdoms of Denmark, Sweden and Norway, as well as Iceland and Greenland.

However, although the Kalmar Union can be said to unite the whole of Northern Europe, the total population is actually only 1.5 million, of which Danes account for more than half.

Margrethe I, the founder of the Kalmar Union, was the Princess of Denmark and later the regent of the Kingdom of Denmark, Norway and Sweden.

As a Danish princess, Margrethe I married Prince Haakon of the Kingdom of Norway, who was fifteen years older than her, at the age of ten, but this seemingly union at the top of society was actually not so beautiful.

In the Middle Ages, the Kingdom of Norway was a poor country, and Margrethe I, the princess of Prince Haakon, almost froze to death at the age of seventeen after three days without firewood.

However, life has improved since then.

Prince Haakon's father was the king of the Kingdom of Sweden, and his father's maternal grandfather was the king of Norway, and the throne of both kings later fell to him, and he became King Magnus VII of the Kingdom of Norway and King Magnus II of the Kingdom of Sweden.

In the same way, Margaret became the princess of both Norway and Sweden.

However, Margrethe I was a very ambitious woman, and the status of the princesses of the two countries did not satisfy her.

When her father, King Waldemar IV, died in 1375, the woman saw the opportunity and returned to the Kingdom with her own children.

Through various means and operations, including promising that she would not be the monarch and exchanging land for power, she bought off the Danish aristocracy, excluded her sister's son, who was supposed to ascend to the throne, and put her son Olaf on the throne of Denmark.

However, Olaf was only six years old at the time, and Marigate I was rightfully the queen regent who listened to the government.

Later, her husband, Prince Haakon, died, and her son Olaf succeeded to the thrones of the kingdoms of Norway and Sweden.

At this point, Olaf, the son of Margrethe I, became the king of Denmark, Sweden and Norway, and she herself became the regent of the three kingdoms, and the Kalmar Union was born.

However, the good times did not last long, and Olaf, who had devoted his life to Margrethe I, died suddenly at the age of seventeen, and as the only son of Margrethe I, it also meant that Margaret I had no successor.

In desperation, Margrethe I set her sights on her sister's grandson, the son of the man she had once squeezed out of the throne: Eric.

Margrethe I adopted Eric and cultivated it, and Eric eventually took over the vast estate after Margrethe I's death.

However, Eric, who was carefully cultivated by Margaret I, was not a wise man, and he often waged wars with the counts of Holstein over the issue of dominance, which eventually led to the decline of his rule.

Eric's mediocrity was not only reflected in his lack of political ability, but also in the creation of various taxes, which greatly increased the burden on all classes.

One of them, a tax that was nothing in history, but is now the biggest reason for his rule.

Straits tax.

The Kalmar Union occupies the Skagerrak Strait, which is the only outlet from the Baltic Sea to the Atlantic.

Straits tax, as the name suggests, is a tax to enter and exit this strait, whether from the Baltic Sea to the Atlantic Ocean or from the Atlantic Ocean into the Baltic Sea.

This tax not only greatly hurt the business of the Kalmar Alliance, but also caused a conflict with Wang Jinghong's trip.

In the Kalmar Alliance, where the ruling power has not yet collapsed, even if there are complaints, no one will rebel against Eric in a short time, but Wang Jinghong is not used to you.

The treasure ship several times that of the ships of the Kingdom of Denmark, the powerful firepower suppression, coupled with the insoluble white phosphorus eggs, the sea fleet of the Kingdom of Denmark, which was not particularly strong, was defeated by the treasure fleet of the Ming Dynasty at the beginning of the confrontation, and even the island of Gotland was lost.

Wang Jinghong took advantage of the situation to occupy the island of Gotland, and carried out a very thorough cleansing of the people of the Kalmar Union on the island, making this island with an area of more than 3,000 square kilometers a place for the treasure fleet to rest.

However, the Viking lineage of the Vikings still exists after all, and there are still Vikings in places such as the Kingdom of Norway, the Kingdom of Sweden and Greenland, and this Danish kingdom will still be a problem after all.

However, Wang Jinghong can't take care of so much at the moment.

In any case, the sea is the main battlefield of the treasure fleet, and at sea, Wang Jinghong is confident that he will beat all European sea fleets.

When he received the news from the Teutonic Knights that the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and the Golden Horde were going to jointly encircle and suppress the invaders from the east, Wang Jinghong was confident that the Ming army would not lose on the frontal battlefield, but still occupied Königsberg.

Wang Jinghong's move not only gave the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, the Kingdom of Poland and the Teutonic Knights a strong sense of threat, but also made the Holy Roman Empire jealous.

Sigismund never dreamed that the Daming fleet, which should have nothing to do with him and should not have intersected in the short term, would unknowingly run above his head.

Constantinople.

Zhu Zhanyan looked at the secret letter in front of him, his brows furrowed, and his eyes revealed a deep incomprehension.

Sending a large number of soldiers to the battlefield in Eastern Europe was a game he set up, not only against the temporary alliance in Eastern Europe, but also against the Holy Roman Empire.

The current situation of the Ming army is actually not a secret, after two years of war, but also after large and small losses and supplements, now the soldiers under the command of Zhu Zhan can reach 200,000, of which more than 140,000 are Ah San.

However, this time on the battlefield in Eastern Europe, Zhu Zhan Yan and his faction directly invested 150,000 soldiers and divided them into three teams, led by Jian Xiao, Chen Mao and Zhu Sanfeng.

In other words, in the Central European battlefield that faced the Holy Roman Empire head-on, the Ming army had less than 50,000 men left.

With more than 60 percent of the enemy at once, Zhu Zhan Yan believed that Sigismund would definitely seize this opportunity to come out, because he needed a victory in the face of the successive losses of the middle and lower Danubes, and even the Holy See.

If he continues to lose, his reputation will slowly fall to the bottom.

However, Sigismund didn't move for a long time, which couldn't help but make Zhu Zhanyan a little puzzled.

(End of chapter)