Great time travel

Chapter 5, The Haze of the Black Death

Just like the two ends of a symmetrical balance, when the British and French Hundred Years' War was raging in the countryside of Western Europe, far away on the northern shore of the Black Sea at the other end of the European continent, the southern part of the Crimea Peninsula, which is very important in geographical location, A very fierce offensive and defensive battle broke out.

——On the Crimea Peninsula in the fourteenth century, Italian merchants ruled a prosperous trading and colonial city called Kaffa.

As the eastern border of the Christian world in Europe and the Italian overseas colonial stronghold farthest from the mother country at this time, Caffa City has successfully accumulated a large amount of wealth through prosperous international trade, but it is also inevitable that it is often attacked by various aliens. Jealousy, voyeurism and attacks by believers.

For example, the cause of the Battle of Kaffa in 1346 was originally a dispute between a group of Italian merchants and Japanese merchants on the street.But for some unknown reason, this small-scale conflict quickly escalated. After suffering a loss, Mao Zedong turned to seek help from the Mongols of the Golden Horde. A Mongolian prince who coveted all kinds of wealth in the city of Kaffa, Taking this opportunity to brazenly send troops to besiege the city, they want to take this prosperous trading port as their own.

However, the strong fortifications of Kaffa City and the tenacious resistance of the defenders made it difficult for the notorious Mongolian army to win for a while.Just like the siege of the Port of Calais by the British army at the other end of the European continent at this time, the siege of the Port of Kaffa by the Mongolian army lasted for a full year.

However, unlike the British who had control of the sea in the English Channel, the Mongols, who were horsebacks, had no fleet at all on the Black Sea, so they could not block the Black Sea supply line of Kaffa City. Instead, the Mongolian army that besieged the city first fell into a shortage of food and fodder After that, the plague spread in the army. Hundreds of Mongolian warriors were covered with sores and black spots, and fell one after another.

Faced with such a desperate situation that cannot be overcome by manpower, the Mongolian prince was forced to decide to end the siege of Kafa City and withdraw his troops to stop fighting.But before he withdrew in disgrace, he decided to teach the Italians in town an impressive lesson.

——On the eve of the retreat, the Mongolian prince set up a trebuchet outside the city of Kaffa, and threw the corpses of soldiers infected by the plague into the air and into the city of Kaffa. The streets and alleys were soon filled with dead bodies, filled with a terrible stench.

However, His Royal Highness may never have imagined in his dreams that his act of venting his anger after breaking the city had created a record far superior to that of Jochi and Xu Liegu, and brought a far greater victory to the Europeans. The unprecedented destruction of any Mongolian expedition to the west!

Closer to home, looking at the dead bodies falling from the sky and the Mongolian cavalry who turned around and retreated, the defenders in Kafa City were puzzled at first, but soon, these carrion corpses thrown into the city began to pollute the air and poison the water source, making Kafa City The terrible plague also began to break out in here.

Because the skin of the patients after death was often black and purple, this terrible disease was named "Black Death" - people in Europe at that time did not know that it was plague, a severe infectious disease caused by Yersinia pestis.Within a few days, the citizens of Kafa within the city walls died one after another, and the city was full of dead bodies covered with sores and black spots, turning Kafa into a hell on earth.

After a year of offensive and defensive battles, Kafa City finally fell, but it was not the Mongolian iron cavalry that broke it, but the invisible and invisible disease!What's more terrible is that before the outbreak of the Black Death, many Italian, Greek and Japanese merchant ships that were forced to stay in the port due to the war had already lifted anchor and left the city of Kaffa, sailing to Europe and the Middle East. .After the outbreak of the Black Death, many people fled Kaffa hastily.

A "natural disaster of the undead" that made everyone fear and tremble, under the planning of fate, finally quietly descended on the heads of Europeans!

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After the city of Kaffa on the north coast of the Black Sea was swallowed by the disease, the first places to suffer were naturally Thrace and Asia Minor on the south coast of the Black Sea.With the outbreak of the Black Death, the population of Constantinople, the capital of the Eastern Roman Empire, was cut in half in an instant, causing another serious blow to the thousand-year-old empire.At this time, the Turks who had already occupied the Asia Minor peninsula were also dead and mournful in the face of the disease.Next, the plague followed in the footsteps of camel caravans and rats and spread to Egypt in the Arab world.At that time, Cairo in Egypt was one of the largest cities in the world with a population of 50, but at the peak of the Black Death, Cairo had an average of 7000 deaths every day!

However, compared with the unprecedented catastrophe that the Christian world is about to encounter, this little death and mourning of the Christians is really nothing.

For Europeans, the deadliest and most terrible nightmare came from a Genoese city-state fleet with a dozen merchant ships-they set out from Kaffa, passed Constantinople, and entered from the Black Sea. Mediterranean, and then back to their Italian homeland.

However, what these Genoese merchants and sailors did not know was that in addition to gems, silk and spices, they were accompanied by the culprits of spreading the Black Death-rats and fleas.Rats infested with fleas climbed the mooring cables, hid in the cargo hold, and sailed with the sailboat to the Mediterranean.The germs on them are like black-clothed gods of death holding scythes, ready to harvest millions of lives...

During the voyage, the bubonic plague kicked in, and the terrified crew threw their dead overboard, all the while desperate to get home.

Thus, in October 1347, with the arrival of these twelve ships of death, the port city of Messina in northern Sicily became the first Italian city to be captured by the Black Death—in less than a week Within, the plague, like a tsunami, overwhelmed the poor city.

Those who are infected start with a bump in the groin or under the armpit, which grows and grows to the size of a small apple or an egg.Doctors called this tumor "epidemic tumor", and it didn't take long for this deadly "epidemic tumor" to spread from those two parts to every part of the human body.After that, the symptoms changed again. Black spots or purple spots appeared on the patient's arms, legs, and other parts of the body. Sometimes they were sparse and large, and sometimes they were thin and dense.But this is the same as the initial cancer, a harbinger of death.After that, there was a high fever, festering, and stench. Some people even vomited blood, and there was often a bloody smell in their breath, as if the blood in their bodies was rotting.

Moreover, no matter how frightened the patients are, the disease is hopeless.This was an incurable disease in Europe at the time.All in all, there are very few people who are lucky enough to be cured of this disease, and most patients die within three days after the "epidemic tumor" appears.What's more terrible is that this black death is highly contagious. As long as a healthy person comes into contact with a sick person, he will be infected. The situation is as easy to burn as dry wood near a raging fire.Even as long as you come into contact with the clothes worn by the patient and the things you have touched, you are at risk of contracting the disease.

In the end, desperate people resorted to the harshest means of isolation. Since it was too late to isolate the sick, the survivors had to isolate themselves.They stored a lot of water and food, hid in the house and did not go out, just prayed to God day and night.But even so, the vast majority of them did not escape death, because the tireless rats would spread the germs from one house to another...

Faced with such an unprecedented and tragic catastrophe, the terrified Messina municipality was furious, and regardless of the danger of offending the Republic of Genoa, the hegemony of the Western Mediterranean, ordered the twelve Genoese merchant ships that brought death to rush to the sea. leave.

The Genoese sailors sailed silently, but the Messinians still had to wait for death slowly—the overwhelming death was still coming, swallowing up every street and alley in the city, nobles and rich merchants Fleeing, soldiers, clergy and municipal workers all disappeared without a trace, and the streets were full of uncontained corpses.Thousands of wild dogs roamed the deserted streets. They bit corpses, devoured carrion, and ate people until their eyes glowed red. They were as ferocious as hell three-headed dogs... Less than a month later, the entire city The city was completely destroyed. Under the bright autumn sun, the whole city was as silent as death. Countless mutilated corpses lay rotting quietly on the street, and the whole city of Messina also rotted along with it.

And the next thing to rot quietly was the whole of Sicily——in the autumn of this year, the haze of the Black Death swept over every city on Sicily, replicating the tragedy of Messina over and over again. The island has turned into a dark realm ruled by Death.

However, the story of the twelve ships of death is not over yet.

Messina and Sicily were at best the appetizers of this nightmare. As the fleet continued to advance towards the European continent, the God of Death first stopped briefly at the port of Pisa, and then quickly arrived at the fleet's home port, the Mediterranean Sea. Genoa, the pearl of commerce.

Due to the delay in the transmission of news, the unknown motherland welcomed these distant wanderers with open arms, but after a few days, they were forced to expel them in panic, and ordered the port to be closed in panic. They were all sunk—unfortunately, it was too late: Tens of thousands of Genoa citizens died in the following time, and the total population of Genoa at that time was only more than [-].

From then on, the unstoppable Grim Reaper started from the three bridgeheads of Messina, Genoa and Pisa, like a hurricane and a tsunami, quickly swept across the entire Italian peninsula. This Renaissance era was the most prosperous, richest and most civilized in Europe. , the most advanced place.

Back to the twelve Genoese ships of death: By this time, news of the death fleet had spread throughout Italy, and from the Alps to Sardinia, no port would accept them messenger.In the end, the fleet continued to sail north and arrived on the coast of France in January 1348-although the local municipal officials had learned of the plague and pulled up thick iron chains in the port, in the end, facing the Seeing the desperate begging of the group of Genoese lonely ghosts on the ship, without personally experiencing the cruelty of the Black Death, the Marseille port authorities, full of romance and tolerance, still accepted them and treated the Black Death A wolf has been introduced to France's doorstep.

When Knight Li Wei, the traverser who lived in the suburban manor, was stunned to learn of this, it was too late.

Although it was only a few days later, after personally experiencing the taste of the Black Death, heavily armed soldiers rushed into the docks of the port of Marseilles and forcibly expelled the twelve death ships.But the clutches of the Black Death have invaded the land of France: Although the French already knew to isolate sick sailors in advance, they couldn't stop the rats on the ship from sneaking into the houses and warehouses on the shore.And the fleas on these little things are more dangerous carriers of germs than sick humans... Reaper successfully slipped into the streets and alleys of Marseille Port, and started a terrible massacre!

After being forcibly expelled by the French garrison in the port of Marseilles, the journey of this death fleet is not over. Although the sailors are dying one after another, they continue to advance westward and drift tenaciously to Spain, on the coast of the Iberian Peninsula. Wanton sowing death... After that, they finally completely disappeared from the historical records. No one knows their ending. Maybe the sailors on the ship really died.

But the mission assigned to this fleet by the god of death has been successfully completed-they have successfully spread the plague to the entire continent of Europe!
On the land of France, the first person to be destroyed by the Black Death was Li Wei.The Port of Marseilles where the Bacon Knights live!