Time flies. Pen × fun × Pavilion www. ｂｉｑｕｇｅ。 ｉｎｆｏ

The year 1741 passed quietly. The year 1742 quietly came. As the year passed, the voices of Victoria and Briton urging William and the Hereford family to send troops increased. At the same time, William, through his intelligence system, also received the news that the Bretons had completed a new round of mobilization and organized an army of nearly 100,000 troops.

"The other party has completed the mobilization, but instead of taking the initiative to attack, he desperately urged me...... Hehe, the question is who is stupider than whom. ”

Naturally, William was unmoved by the pleas and pleas of the Britons in the face of their requests. And with the passage of time, the power of the emperor, who had already made a bloody investment, continued to increase.

New power comes from Lombardy. The small states of northern Lombardy, which did not listen to the announcement, once again felt the power of the emperor. They were so uneasy that they feared that the armies of the empire would go south, ploughing the whole of Lombardy as they had done in many previous wars......

However, the emperor had other plans. Compared to the bastards in the south who were soaked in wealth and rotted to the bones, the emperor still felt that the fierce rivals in the north were more dangerous.

So, under some coercion and temptation, the Lombards in the south finally made a decision to give money and people to support His Majesty the Emperor, so that His Majesty the Emperor could continue to fight against the powerful enemy in the north, and ignore such an insignificant place as the Lombardy in the south.

That's it.

"What the hell are those bastards thinking?" William felt bad when he heard about the Lombards' choice.

If it weren't for this group of bastards to make trouble, then with the strength of the Hereford family and the Briton army, how could they defeat the enemy by concentrating double their forces.

However, with the addition of these Lombards, then the situation is reversed again.

It constantly acts as a second-hand dealer between the Far East and the Middle East and the human world. At the same time, the Lombards, who took advantage of the abundant marine resources of the blue sea and engaged in seafaring trade and plantation in a warm climate, amassed an astonishing amount of wealth. Rumor has it that each of the Dukes of Lombardy was ten times richer than His Majesty the Emperor Kalman IV.

Although this kind of rumor is not too reliable, it is not completely unfounded by theory - the emperor manages a large territory, and there are many places that need money. These dukes, on the other hand, relied on small commercial city-states as their backbone. There's hardly anything to invest in with the extra money.

Coupled with the accumulation of the dukes' families, it is not impossible to surpass Emperor Kalman IV in numbers...... Especially in the present period, Kalman IV consumed almost all the resources and money of his domain in order to maintain his army of 80,000. At this time, Kalman IV's treasury was mostly empty enough to run rats, and it was not impossible to say that the dukes had the emperor's unlimited multiples of funds.

All in all, looking at the information sent by the Checa, William had the urge to lead a large army south to Lombardy, and cut down the members of Ferrara, Mantua, Modena, Tuscany and other small states. What the hell do these bastards think. Why should they oppose the Emperor who has always been at odds? Aren't they afraid that His Majesty, having won the war, will happily go south and plow all of Lombardy?

William's annoyance was justified by the fact that the small states of Lombardy did not give Kalman IV a little assistance. Several Lombard banks promised to give Kalman IV a loan of a fairly favorable amount. At the same time, the dukes were willing to raise donations for the emperor. The Church of Rome did not hide its secrets this time. A considerable amount was allocated from the vast endowment of the Holy See......

These amounts of money amounted to more than 10 million Imperial Gold. In this era when a single silver mark can be exchanged for half a pound of beef, eight pounds of wheat, or a shot with the blue pond of the docks. 10 million imperial gold is enough to hire more than 100,000 professional mercenaries to fight for a year - of course, because many mercenaries have already joined the army at this time, and they are in the midst of a big war. So the price has risen quite a bit. William didn't specifically collect the price and quantity required by mercenaries.

After all, a country like the Hereford family, which is reckless and repressive, has officially passed the era of mercenaries and is moving towards the era of standing forces...... A few years earlier, William had to recruit a small number of mercenaries to support his own troops. But now, William calculated the capital inflow and outflow. It doesn't feel like there's any need to hire those mercenaries.

He already has an army of 60,000 under his command. In addition to these 60,000 professional soldiers, there are as many as one million suitable young men who have received a small amount of military training and are waiting for conscription.

Unless the Hereford family was directly defeated by His Majesty the Emperor like before, as in the Battle of Franconia before, with the Heriford family's own hematopoietic function, there would be absolutely no need for additional mercenary troops.

Of course, that's a good thing, but it also depends on who the Hereford family is going to fight and what kind of war they want to fight - if the Bretons don't go to war at this time, and the Hereford family and the current Emperor Kalman IV go head-to-head, then William will definitely not hesitate to take out all his family resources, and hire as many troops as he wants, because this battle cannot be won without going all out.

It's still a possibility. If the South, the Ottoman Empire, which happily watched the civil war in the human world, did not make a move, and did not know what it was in mind, would have made a large-scale invasion, William would have contributed as much strength as he could.

But this time it's different. In the conditions of William and Victoria. William could only obtain a few small states in the central and northeastern regions, with a population of hundreds of thousands and tens of thousands of square meters of land. For the current William, it is indeed attractive, but it is not worth his strength to fight......

In comparison, these small imperial states were sandwiched between Jutland, Greater Moravia and Wende. It feels like some dispensable pathetic character. There is basically no population and potential. At the same time, the northern part of the empire is mostly plain. There are no too dangerous fortresses or mountains and rivers worth fighting for in these small states of their own. Although geographically it is about the same as Jutland. But the strategic value is not one-tenth that of Jutland.

"All in all, it's all tasteless and discarded...... Well, forget it, it seems a bit too much to say that, and it should be better than chicken ribs. William thought to himself.

That's it. His Majesty the Emperor was supported by at least more than fifty thousand recruits. At the same time, this is only the "first batch" of support. William wasn't sure that the bastard dukes wouldn't give him a second aid after he had beaten His Majesty half to death.

And the reason why those guys will give Kalman IV assistance. William thought about it for a moment, and "reluctantly" got some ideas.

That is, these dukes are much smarter than he thinks. Although the vast majority of people in this era were frightened by the strength of His Majesty the Emperor, his super-large army and huge territory. But it is clear that this group of Lombard dukes did not. They analyzed the balance of power between the two sides a little, and then came to a natural conclusion.

The emperor is strong on the outside and dry on the middle.

The Emperor could never be an opponent of the Britons.

In particular, the attitude of the nouveau riche of the Hereford family became more and more obvious, and when they were about to help the Britons for their own benefit, the dukes only thought a little and came to a conclusion.

Help Kalman IV.

Because of the help of Kalman IV, the two sides that are now at war can be evenly matched.

The main forces of the human world are evenly matched and each other, and these small characters hidden in the corners can relax happily and live happily.

Of course, in addition to this reason, the Lombards' hatred of the Britons is also one thing......

Before the Age of Discovery, the sea with the most human activities was the blue sea, and the Lombards on the Lombard Peninsula were naturally the best people in the human world at navigation and maritime trade.

It was also for this reason that the Lombards made a lot of money by trading with the dark elves of the Middle East and the desert nomads.

That's pretty much what this trade route looks like...... Spices, silks, porcelain, and other trade goods from the Dragon Nation and Indy, as well as desert folks and dark elves who reached the Middle East by sea or land...... Of course, desert dwellers and dark elves also produce different kinds of spices. These goods were sold to the Lombards through these desert folks and dark elves traders. The Lombards became three more dealers and sold them to the rest of the human race.

This very, very unfair trade route is not at all as great as some people think. Its essence is, to put it bluntly, the Far East, the Middle East plus the Near East. Almost everyone in the world combined, together happily pit the European continent. And in this process, the most pitted is, of course, the Ostrogothic Empire, which has almost no naval power.

The Empire, is a victim of this very unfair trade. At the same time, it also contributed to the dissatisfaction of the whole human world with the Lombard bastards - the Dragon Country, Indy, and the Spice Islands were the suppliers. The Dark Elves and the Desert Folk are the transporters. One of them supplied goods, the other used a large number of dhows, and the camel caravans transported the goods for ten thousand kilometers. One of them makes money by virtue of goods, wisdom and ancestral spirits (the origin of spices), and the other earns transportation prices and hardship fees.

And the Lombards make money, purely just changing hands. It's just because of their advantage in seafaring trade, and of course more because of their geographical advantage......

All in all, this group of bastards making money makes all the countries of the human world very unhappy. It's so unfair.

It is precisely because of this unfairness that contributed to the discovery of new shipping routes in the Age of Discovery, and after discovering new shipping routes, everyone found that they could happily bypass those middlemen and communicate directly with the original place of origin, so they did not hesitate to bypass those bastards and communicate directly with the Far East.

It is not known whether this exchange would lead to the decline of one of the middlemen, the powerful Ottoman Empire, and the Zoroastrian Empire. After all, at present, whether by land or by sea or land, these people still have a very strong force. You can still participate in trade and transportation.

Human intervention in these seas has brought challenges to the indigenous peoples of these seas, but it has also brought new life and vitality. New trading ports were opened, new shipping routes and new ships were opened, and the population brought new wealth...... All this chaos is still in chaos, and no result can be seen.

One thing is certain, however, that after the opening of the new shipping routes, a bunch of dukes, merchants, and noble councilors in the small Lombard states hated it to the bitter roots.

The opening of new commercial trade routes led to a collapse in Lombardy's position. The emerging Asturians, Frisians, Visigoths, and Britons expanded their naval and merchant forces to a point beyond the reach of the Lombards in a short period of time.

Compared to the vast ocean, the blue sea is nothing more than a calm bathtub. Lombardy began to inevitably decline......

Although, the rate of this decline is very slow. At the same time, in the industrial age, relying on a strong manufacturing industry, the Lombards were more or less able to get new sources of money, but it was still much worse than the good old days of sitting on the land and collecting rent. It is no wonder that the Lombards hate those emerging naval powers.

Therefore, in addition to allowing the war to continue to drag on, there is another important reason for them to continue to make money, which is to weaken the power of the Britons.