Drawing Cards in the Middle Ages to Rise in Ranks

Chapter 882 - 106: Crusader Civil War (Happy New Year’s Eve)

The shrill-voiced Eunuch announced loudly as he led a Witch into the hall.

"Lady Eve has arrived."

The newcomer had a head of long hair like a nest of weeds, and she gave off an unpleasant smell; no one knew how many days she had been holed up in the library without taking a bath.

Even though Barcelona had long heard Anna’s Evaluation of this lady, she still felt her vision go dark for a moment.

Lady Eve clearly did not like dealing with outsiders. She looked around uneasily, fingers pinching at the hem of her skirt, wishing she could leave this splendid hall at once and flee back to the dim Empire Library.

Forcing down her discomfort, she said, "I’ve long heard that Lady Eve is wise by nature and unconcerned with trifles. Now that I see you today, it is indeed so. Now that the Latin Crusaders have betrayed their pact and joined hands with the Venetians, and Anna is not here at my side, I must ask Lady Eve to teach me a way to drive off the enemy."

"Ah, the Latins are attacking? When are we going to run? Ah, no, the Empire Library still has so many books. If we run, what will happen to those books?"

Lady Eve asked, looking a little at her wits’ end.

Barcelona only felt her vision go dark again. She had no idea why Anna had entrusted the heavy responsibility of defending Constantinople to this woman, but she also knew she could not stoop to bickering with this idiot, so she said:

"Lady Eve, the Empire now stands on the brink of life and death, but we are not entirely without trump cards. She has already persuaded the Crusader King of Egypt, the Limassol Military Zone General whom I myself appointed, to come to our aid, and reinforcements from the various Governors are already on the way. As long as we hold firm, once the reinforcements arrive, the situation will be reversed and victory will be ours."

Hearing this, Eve let out a light breath. "Losa is good, Losa is a reliable ally. With him there, there will definitely be no problem. But I... I’m afraid I can’t be of much help to you."

"Lady Eve, given the Frankish barbarians’ usual ways, once they break through Constantinople, they will burn every last book in the Empire Library to ashes. Are you really going to sit by and watch such a tragedy happen?"

"How could I!"

Eve reacted as if she had heard something utterly unbelievable. "Don’t tell me that the Latins attacking Constantinople aren’t doing it to seize the Great Library’s collection?"

"Franks are crude; how would they possibly understand the importance of those precious volumes?"

Eve’s face flushed bright red. No matter how timid she normally was, upon hearing that the ending could be so horrifying, she felt a surge of extreme anger.

"I... I will take charge of the Magic Array that Anna left behind. I will never let those Latins get even one step closer to the library!"

Ragaya, wearing a Golden Crown inlaid with more than two hundred pearls, warmly grasped her hand. "Then I must trouble you with this."

...

Losa rubbed his groggy head; he had just completed his promotion.

The process had been rather dangerous as well—he had taken part in the Wanli Korean campaign and got a good taste of the various bizarre Magic of Fusang Country.

But as before, wars that history had already decided as victories posed little difficulty for him.

"If it comes to a naval battle, Captain Hog really is a master."

Losa spoke with some helplessness. "I have no idea where Captain Hog has sailed off to. He was talking earlier about me sending some people to take over the Salasen Port on the East African Coast, as if I have any spare capacity to do that."

That fellow Hog had probably sailed too far, beyond the range of the Communication Badge Anna had given him. According to the information he’d sent earlier, he had rounded the coast of Madagascar Island and continued east all the way to Indonesia.

"Anna’s Communication Badge is centered on herself; the fact that it can link Sicily to the Horn of Africa is already quite impressive."

"The Communication Array Furin has been researching has a transmission radius of only fifty kilometers."

This was technology learned from the Texans in Yesterday’s Giant Ship World, but copying it as-is was no easy task, because they were also using telegraph technology.

"We’re almost into the Aegean Sea, yet we still haven’t run into the Venetians’ Fleet."

"Isn’t that normal? Venice isn’t even the main force in this siege of Constantinople."

Losa shook his head. "But the Venetians are the masterminds behind all of this."

The conflict between Venice and the Greeks had a long history, roughly traceable back to that member of the Komnenos Family, Alexius I, who drew the First Crusaders’ Eastern Expedition here. In order to obtain Venetian help, he granted them a series of tax-exemption privileges.

From that moment, the seeds of cause and effect were sown.

The Emperors who succeeded him in the Empire might have known nothing about economics or trade, but the ever-shrinking Money Bag of their own coffers was a pain they personally felt. No Monarch could tolerate that, so reneging on the deal became an inevitable choice.

It was just that these Emperors, obsessed with playing power games instead of walking the open and upright path, handled matters in too dark a fashion.

If Losa were the Emperor, although he would not have recognized Venice’s commercial treaties either, he would rather formally declare war on them and use a war to abolish those clauses, instead of allowing the Latin massacre to break out and stoking hatred between Greeks and Latins.

In the final analysis, the Empire was simply too weak,

...

Losa shook his head. "But the Venetians are the masterminds behind all of this."

The conflict between Venice and the Greeks had a long history, roughly traceable back to that member of the Komnenos Family, Alexius I, who drew the First Crusaders’ Eastern Expedition here. In order to obtain Venetian help, he granted them a series of tax-exemption privileges.

From that moment, the seeds of cause and effect were sown.

The Emperors who succeeded him in the Empire might have known nothing about economics or trade, but the ever-shrinking Money Bag of their own coffers was a pain they personally felt. No Monarch could tolerate that, so reneging on the deal became an inevitable choice.

It was just that these Emperors, obsessed with playing power games instead of walking the open and upright path, handled matters in too dark a fashion.

If Losa were the Emperor, although he would not have recognized Venice’s commercial treaties either, he would rather formally declare war on them and use a war to abolish those clauses, instead of allowing the Latin massacre to break out and stoking hatred between Greeks and Latins.

In the final analysis, the Empire was simply too weak.

Losa shook his head. "But the Venetians are the masterminds behind all of this."

The conflict between Venice and the Greeks had a long history, roughly traceable back to that member of the Komnenos Family, Alexius I, who drew the First Crusaders’ Eastern Expedition here. In order to obtain Venetian help, he granted them a series of tax-exemption privileges.

From that moment, the seeds of cause and effect were sown.

The Emperors who succeeded him in the Empire might have known nothing about economics or trade, but the ever-shrinking Money Bag of their own coffers was a pain they personally felt. No Monarch could tolerate that, so reneging on the deal became an inevitable choice.

It was just that these Emperors, obsessed with playing power games instead of walking the open and upright path, handled matters in too dark a fashion.

If Losa were the Emperor, although he would not have recognized Venice’s commercial treaties either, he would rather formally declare war on them and use a war to abolish those clauses, instead of allowing the Latin massacre to break out and stoking hatred between Greeks and Latins.

In the final analysis, the Empire was simply too weak,

...