Rise of the 1630s South America

Chapter 2182 Full Push

Pompey's estate, Zakynthos, August 1692, 8.

This is an old manor, located in the fertile plain in the middle of the island, with a mild climate and rich products. It is one of the many plantations in the White Sea area under the name of the Morosini family. Lots of wine, olive oil, fruit and dried seafood.

In addition, it can also provide some additional "commodities" for the family, that is, all kinds of stolen goods and even slaves brought to the island by Catholic adventurers (actually pirates).These adventurers under the banner of religion, driving large and small sailing ships, intercepted and attacked the ships of the Ottoman Empire, killed the crew, and robbed the goods. At one time, the transportation in the coastal waters of Greece was completely stagnated, and even some of the troops on the front line of the Ottoman Empire Logistics supplies have been affected.

The stolen goods sold by the pirates were naturally extremely cheap.The Morosini family bought stolen goods on this island far away from Venice, so naturally they didn't care what others said.They only need to package these things a little bit, sell them back to the mainland of Italy, and resell them to get several times the profit.The profit during this period is not much lower than the wine and olive oil produced by the manor.

People on the east coast once placed orders for Italians on Greek offshore islands such as Zakynthos and Naxos (the island was reoccupied by the Italians), and bought a large number of cheap daily necessities and sent them to Bayin The Oirat Mongols in Guolen Port, so they already knew what the Italians were doing in this sea area.Therefore, when Cai Zhenguo, the East Coast Plenipotentiary Envoy to Europe, decided to start an important meeting with the Italians, Zakynthos Island became one of the most important choices.

Today, the face-to-face meeting with Special Envoy Cai was Alberto from the Morosini family, an old acquaintance.The elder brother of this gentleman (Leonardo Morosini, former ambassador of Venice to the East Bank) is one of the consuls of the Republic of Venice. Because of his considerable official background, the relationship between the Republic of the East Coast and the Republic of Venice Informal contact is basically achieved through their family.

Cai Zhenguo left for the Eastern Mediterranean three months ago.Because the situation in the Netherlands has entered a stable period, after dealing with the backlog of affairs at hand, he left Amsterdam and went to the Ottoman Empire to deal with a series of things here—the executive committee is rumored to be planning to set up in the Mediterranean area. A deputy plenipotentiary to deal with what happened here in a more timely and efficient manner, but before the deputy is officially appointed, everything will still be in charge of Cai Zhenguo.

Special Envoy Cai arrived in Zakynthos Island on a Navy "Jiqi"-class escort gunboat.On the way, he stayed in Spain for half a month and met King Carlos II of Spain in Madrid.Cai Zhenguo chatted with Carlos II for about two hours. During this time, he carefully observed and evaluated the thinking ability of the monarch who was in poor health, and found that he was a little more pessimistic than he imagined.

The monarch who ruled a vast country was sometimes silent, like an old man, and sometimes emotional, like a young man full of blood, in short, it was very confusing.King Carlos was somewhat dissatisfied with the East Bank in his words, but he seemed to have the last shred of reason, and tried his best to control himself from saying anything that was too rude.

Cai Zhenguo is a veteran of diplomacy, with keen observation skills, and is very good at all kinds of scenes and words.After his assessment, he felt that King Carlos II of Spain had resentment towards the East Bank, Leopold in Vienna, and Louis XIV in Paris.As for other countries, I feel that his attitude is rather chaotic, and there is no clear conclusion. From this, it can be seen that his mental state may also be very bad.

Cai Zhenguo also had a conversation with some Spanish officials who were familiar with the court, and he had a clearer impression of the attitude of these king's close officials.Generally speaking, these people are not against the East Bank, and some people are even quite friendly because of commercial factors. Cai Zhenguo got a lot of useful information from them, and judged whether King Carlos will "go out" for a while. What's going on?" Spain's policy toward the East will not "make any goofs", that's enough!

By the way, since the exchange of contracts between the East and the West and the completion of the La Plata land transaction, the Port of Cadiz in the Kingdom of Spain has successively received large quantities of food and other supplies.In particular, the wheat, corn and sorghum from the east coast played a huge role after entering the hard-hit areas of Granada and Andalusia in Spain, and many people survived as a result.And because these grains come from the east coast, the people of the two places have a sharp rise in the favor of the east coast republic, which has laid a good foundation for the two countries to carry out more in-depth cooperation in the future.

After Cai Zhenguo left Spain, he went directly to Zakynthos Island, and then lived in the Pompey Manor of the Morosini family as agreed in advance, and talked with Alberto about the formation of the Northern Italian Coalition.

This so-called northern Italian coalition has been looking forward to it for a long time, whether it is the people on the east coast or the Italian states.But the problem is that there are too many things going on between the Italians, and the two sides are constantly arguing, which has caused this grand plan to progress slowly.

As the proposers and promoters of this plan, the East Coast people are naturally very dissatisfied with the extremely low efficiency of the Italians.No, the local Ministry of Foreign Affairs has directly issued a document ordering Cai Zhenguo, the special envoy to Europe with full power, to "fully promote" the formation of the Northern Italian coalition forces, and regard it as a key task for the next year.

The local officials and gentlemen have said so, so Cai Zhenguo naturally dare not neglect.Therefore, he visited the states in northern Italy that were willing to join the coalition in a lightning speed, listened carefully to their opinions, understood their appeals, and then gave full play to his influence, either softly or hard. Coordinate interests as soon as possible and prepare for the formation of the Northern Italian Confederation - the first step is naturally to form a coalition.

Cai Zhenguo agreed with them to hold an interest coordination meeting in Milan at the end of this year.At that time, representatives from Genoa, Savoy, Lucca, Milan, Modena, Parma, Venice, Tuscany and other countries will gather together to discuss and solve any problems face to face.Even if it cannot be resolved for a while, a solution and timetable will be given, and every effort will be made to promote the formation of the Northern Italian Federation and the coalition forces.

Cai Zhenguo deeply understands that the French are attacking cities everywhere, and this is the time when the pressure on the Italians is the greatest—the Principality of Savoy suffered two disastrous defeats and was forced to cede land for compensation—if the Italians are not united at this time, next time they will If there is such a good opportunity, I don't know when it will be.The time window is running out!

After arriving in Zakynthos Island, Cai Zhenguo first talked with Alberto Morosini about investment in Xinhua Island and East Brazil plantations, and then went straight to the topic, discussing the issues based on Venice, Tosso Canna, Savoy three armies as the backbone, the formation of the North Italian coalition.

To be honest, there are many countries on the Italian peninsula, but when it comes to armies, there are still only two, namely Savoy and Venice located in the northwest and northeast of it.The former might be a little weaker, but this time he was beaten to the ground by the French, killing and wounding thousands of soldiers, which disappointed Cai Zhenguo, so he pinned more hopes on the Venetians.After all, their army fought the Ottomans in Crete for 20 years, and after 1683, they defeated the Turkish army several times on the Dalmatian coast, and their performance is obvious to all.

Last year, the Ottomans somewhat regretted ceding the Dalmatian coast to Venice-under the auspices of the East Coasters, Ottomans and Venice reached an agreement to exchange land for peace, but obviously after a sigh of relief , they repented - and sent another army to attack Split and other places, but were repulsed by the Venetians.Later, the Ottomans organized a second attack and fought with the Venetians. As a result, when the flanks were threatened by the German coalition forces, the Ottomans retreated unwillingly.

These two battles with the Ottomans made Cai Zhenguo appreciate the combat effectiveness of the Venetian Army.He felt that in the future, the navy of the Allied Forces of Northern Italy could be formed with Genoa as the backbone, and the army could be formed with Venice as the backbone, partly absorbing the strength of the Duchy of Savoy and Tuscany.The army formed in this way, if it is given strict training and the precipitation of time, it may not be impossible to become a military force that can be seen in the past-the people on the east coast do not need this army to be so brave, in fact, they only need them to maintain a certain strength. Deterrence is to make the enemy think twice about the casualties he may suffer before attacking.

There is no doubt that the formation of the Northern Italian Army with the Venetian army as the backbone, as far as the Republic of Venice is concerned, of course they support it, because it can obviously enhance their influence.It is to their advantage that other city-states must sacrifice commercial interests in order to obtain their protection.

But they also have a problem, that is, their army is still fighting the Ottoman Empire along the Dalmatian coast, and their navy is still attacking the Ottoman Empire's transport fleet off the coast of Greece. At the critical moment, he withdrew the main force of his army to the western front to guard against the French army.Of course, the French are no longer attacking the Italian region, but are the city-states in the west willing to give Venice financial, material and military assistance in order to hate the Ottoman Empire?This is all an unknown.

Moreover, the Venetians are also dissatisfied with the East Coasters.It was they who took the lead in getting Venice to conclude a peace treaty with Ottomans.At the time of the disastrous defeat just under the city of Vienna, the Ottoman Empire was extremely weak. The Venetian army saw the opportunity and divided into two groups to invade the Dalmatian coast and Greece, posing a serious threat to the Ottoman Empire.As a result, people from the east coast intervened at a critical moment, acting as a mediator between Venice and Ottomans, and finally succeeded in forcing the Republic of Venice to withdraw its troops from Greece. Although the Ottoman Empire ceded the Dalmatian coast according to the contract, to be honest, those places They couldn't keep it long ago, they just sold it for a good price before the fall.

In other words, this agreement is actually somewhat disadvantageous for the Republic of Venice.But they had no choice. The people on the east coast insisted on withdrawing their troops, and in the end they could only go home after making a small profit.Unexpectedly, after so many years, the Ottoman Empire wanted to break the contract after taking a breath, re-sent troops into the Dalmatian coast, and exchanged fire with the Venetian army.Angrily, the Venetians dispatched their navy to occupy some islands off the coast of Greece, and the war between the two sides escalated again.

Cai Zhenguo was also a little embarrassed about Venetian's complaints.He had to admit that the Ottomans were a bit too much in this matter, and the fact that they broke the contract and fought again really annoyed the Venetians a bit.In this regard, he can only express to Alberto that he will go to Istanbul to meet the Ottoman Sultan and the Grand Vizier after a while, hoping to reach an agreement on the resumption of the truce between the two countries.This is also good for the Republic of Venice. After all, wars always kill people and cost a huge amount of money. The finances of the Republic of Venice have not yet recovered, and it really cannot withstand a long-lasting war.

Alberto didn't care too much about himself, he knew that his country didn't have much bargaining power in front of the people on the east coast, and the future of their country's economic recovery depended entirely on this New World country.Now they are willing to mediate a second time, that would be great, but before the mediation is over, they must also seize the opportunity to occupy more Greek islands, no matter whether they are annexed by their own country or negotiated back to the Ottoman Empire in the future, it is not a bad thing.

As for the formation of the Northern Italian Allied Forces, Alberto Morosini gave a positive answer. After all, this is not harmful to them, on the contrary, there are great benefits. If the Ottomans ceased fighting, they would naturally be happy to see it happen.

At this point, Cai Zhenguo finally breathed a sigh of relief.Tuscany, Genoa*, Lucca, Milan, Parma and other countries have huge economic interests in the East Coast and overseas colonies, and the East Coast people have ways to put pressure on them.The only tricky point is probably the Principality of Savoy. There are not many people on the east coast of this country, and they are not very familiar with them, but they were recently defeated by the French. It is a time when people are panicking. The formation of the Northern Italian coalition should give them some help. As a safe haven, they should not strongly oppose it.That is to say, the possibility of success of this plan is quite high. The two special envoys on the east bank pushed forward with all their strength. I don't know how many difficulties they encountered and how much energy they put in. So far, they finally saw the dawn of success.

After the successful formation of the coalition forces, the next step is to allow countries to remove tariff barriers economically and implement a relatively unified policy. The unification of the market should also be put on the agenda.And after these two steps are completed one after another, the political unification of the northern Italian city-states will basically be a matter of course.

(End of this chapter)