Crusade against the Pope

Chapter 303: Genoese Protest

The once prosperous Antioch declined during the long confrontation between the Eastern Roman Empire and the Saracens, but the city of Damascus remained prosperous.

The nearly two-week siege has added a lot of sadness to the majestic city of Damascus.

But those days were over, and Damascus was willing to surrender to the Kingdom of Jerusalem, abandoning their former master, Saladin.

Even Saladin expressed his willingness to cease hostilities in exchange for his rule over the remaining Ayyubid lands.

Neither Eden nor Gairis had any objection to this request. The military strength of the Kingdom of Jerusalem, even with the addition of the German Crusaders under Eden's command, could no longer continue to penetrate deep into the territory of the Ayyubid Dynasty to capture cities and plunder land.

For the kingdom, capturing Damascus was mainly about establishing a buffer zone for itself and preventing the Kingdom of Jerusalem from continuing to have direct contact with Muslim dynasties in the Middle East.

Now that Damascus has surrendered, Garys' goal has actually been achieved. As for whether Eden intends to seize more land, that is his personal interest.

Peace returned to this city, or rather, to the Middle East except Egypt. The Third Crusade of the German Crusaders ended with the capture of the city of Damascus.

For the citizens of Damascus, everything seemed to have returned to normal, except that the residents in the city had to accept the fact that their lord had become a Frank. Fortunately, the Frankish army did not directly enter the city and disrupt their lives, giving them a transition period to adapt to the change of their lord.

Eden accepted Gairis's suggestion. In the first three days after Adil surrendered, he did not rush into the city. Instead, he ensured control of the city walls and inspected the army outside the city for three consecutive days. During these three days, Eden used the gold in the Damascus warehouse to reward his soldiers in rounds.

At the same time, light cavalry were sent to investigate the villages and castles around Damascus.

If you want to build a kingdom, it cannot be just the isolated city of Damascus.

Those noble sons who followed Eden and stayed in the Levant were eager for this moment to come.

Their clan is about to take root in this strange land, and they themselves will become the founders of a brand new family. Fiefdom and wealth are waiting for them.

Of course, after seeing the Kingdom of Jerusalem, Eden did not think that the standard feudal system was perfect.

That is just the result of making do with the evolution of history.

When he was in Jerusalem, he often consulted Gairis about how to govern a country and how to build a combat-ready army.

The question that Eden was thinking about was how to centralize power in a feudal society.

Rewards must be given according to merit. If not, the troops under Eden's command will become disunited in an instant.

Unlike the standing army that Gellis built with currency, the officers and infantry under Eden lacked a stable salary.

What really attracted them to serve under Eden for a long time was their devout belief in religion and their desire for land.

Garys didn't say much or in detail to Eden.

After all, Eden only serves as a buffer zone for the Second Kingdom, and secondly, it serves as a source of raw materials and a market for commodity dumping.

Gillis simply mentioned the key points:

"I know your situation well. The nobles crave land, but your soldiers also crave land. Besides them, who else craves land? There are also the peasants, tenants, and slaves who lack land."

"I can tell you clearly that when you capture Damascus, whoever has a large piece of land is your enemy, and whoever wants to gain land through you is your friend, regardless of their beliefs, nationality, or whether they are noble or poor."

As early as half a month ago, Garys had made it clear to Eden the key point of Damascus, which was actually just one word - land.

The Crusaders came to Damascus for land, so their enemies were the local Muslim wealthy landlords who owned land.

But if it is in the name of the Crusades, or in the name of the Frankish nation, then the seizure of land will be intensified into ethnic or religious conflicts.

In terms of ethnicity, the German Crusaders had only tens of thousands of people, but in Damascus and surrounding areas there were hundreds of thousands of people; in terms of religion, the German Crusaders believed in Catholicism, and the local Christians were not on the same page with them.

Since the goal is to seize the land anyway, why not be decisive and just reshuffle the cards?

Transform ethnic and religious conflicts into conflicts at a more substantial level, and package Eden himself as the liberator of tenants and slaves.

The tenants and slaves will be united around Eden, and as long as they are given not too much land and freedom, they will be grateful to Eden.

Ordinary German soldiers could be transformed into peasant soldiers similar to the Eastern Roman military district system.

That is, they enjoyed tax benefits, owned considerable land and became small landowners, but if they wanted to pass the land on to the next generation, they needed to serve the king.

The aristocratic group refers to the aristocratic parliament system of the Second Kingdom.

Enjoying the hereditary status of aristocratic councillor at the central level and serving as an official at the local level, this was certainly not stable as time went by, but it was enough.

As Eden left Jerusalem and set out on the journey to Damascus, Gairis gave another piece of advice.

“Unite the majority and attack the minority. Only when you have many friends and few enemies can you seize the initiative.”

The military district peasant soldier system of the Eastern Empire was the main military and administrative system of the Byzantine Empire from the 7th to the 11th century. It largely supported the empire's defense system and shaped the military tradition of the Eastern Empire.

The military district system originated in the mid-seventh century, mainly to respond to the expansion of the Islamic Empire.

Due to the Arab army's offensive on the eastern front, Byzantium could no longer maintain its original professional army and border garrison system, so Emperor Constantine IV (and possibly Heraclius earlier) implemented a new defense strategy, dividing the empire's territory into military districts and granting land to local garrisons, making the soldiers hereditary peasants and exchanging land for a lifelong service obligation.

However, this system has actually collapsed in today's Eastern Empire.

One reason is that as local nobles continued to annex the land of small farmers, many peasant soldiers in military districts lost the land on which they depended for survival, and the size of the army shrank.

The second reason is that in the late Macedonian dynasty, the emperor gradually weakened the power of the military district chief.

Of course, the complete collapse of the peasant-soldier system, mainly due to the invasion of the Seljuk Turks, led to the loss of most of the territory in Asia Minor.

Facing Gailis's advice, Eden also fell into deep thought. Land is the foundation of feudal society. Whoever controls the land is the backbone of feudal society, and whoever controls the power to distribute land is bound to be the ruler of feudal society.

Even many of those in power do not have the power to redistribute land.

A great opportunity is presented to Eden, but whether he can seize it depends on his own ability.

They abandoned the name of the Crusades and instead started from more substantial economic contradictions, thereby gaining the support of local tenants and slaves.

This was not Eden's betrayal of his class, nor was it the subversion of feudal rule. It was just a reshuffle within the ruling class. Obviously, Eden was the winner, so he could throw out the losers' chips to win over the hearts of the people.

……

Now is the eve of Isabella's arrival in Jerusalem. Garys and his men are preparing to hold a second coronation ceremony in Jerusalem to announce the end of the war and the victory of regaining lost territory.

It was at this time that the news from Egypt finally reached Gailis's ears.

In the former Al-Aqsa Mosque on the Temple Mount, as Gairis listened to the Paladins' reports, he could feel the coagulated blood filling his nostrils, and it seemed that every breath of air was tinged with blood.

Their descriptions of the horrors of Damietta made those scenes seem to reappear before Gellis's eyes.

"What do you think Egypt will become?" Gellis asked Iraklore in the room.

"My Lord Prophet, isn't this something you have already decided? The Lord has already arranged the outcome of all this."

As he spoke, Iraq lowered his eyes slightly, making it difficult to see what was in his eyes.

Garys was silent and speechless. As he adapted to this life, he did not become numb, but became more sentimental.

In Garys' eyes, every person is a living being, a life, and an existence just like himself.

Human empathy becomes even more profound in Garys.

At this time, another document was delivered by Paladin.

This official document was submitted by Aka.

The main content is: The Genoese protested against the Kingdom of Jerusalem's complete abolition of slavery, which the Genoese believed was a preference for the Venetians.

The Genoese have reached the point where they can no longer tolerate this.

While noting the contents of this document, Iraklius also expressed some of his understanding of the Genoese.

"The Genoese needed slaves. As a newly emerging maritime commercial republic, their capital or resources were actually quite limited. The Venetians controlled the Adriatic Sea and had many colonies. They could recruit a large number of free rowers, but the Genoese could not do that."

"If they want to maintain their huge navy, they will definitely need a large number of slaves as oarsmen. Of course, slaves are more than just that to the Genoese. In those days, the commodities of commercial trade were actually limited. Although Northern Italy exported a large number of handicrafts and imported a lot of luxury goods from the Middle East, the slave trade was the focus of Genoa's profits."

"They bought slaves from the Crimea, collected slaves from all over the Mediterranean, sold them to Damascus and Egypt, and then bought luxury goods from Damascus and Egypt and shipped them to Europe."

But the people present didn't really care.

This was not the second time that the Genoese protested the Kingdom of Jerusalem's suppression of slavery.

However, since the Kingdom of Jerusalem unified the Palestinian region, the entire eastern coast of the Mediterranean has been under the rule of Jerusalem.

In the past, the Genoese could take a detour and go to Damascus to trade, but now... even Damascus is controlled by the German Crusaders, allies of the Kingdom of Jerusalem.

It can be said that as long as Jerusalem and Eden work together to suppress slavery, the Genoese will truly lose Damascus as a slave sales market.

"We don't need to care about them, right? Our next plan is to take back those extraterritorial rights from the many northern Italian city-states, right?"

What was the Genoese protest? Could the Genoese bring their ships ashore? If not, why should Gérice care about their protest?

As for organizing an army to interfere, that is even more ridiculous. Today, the most vibrant groups in Europe are concentrated in the wave of the Third Crusade.

Of course, what is more important is that taking back the extraterritoriality of various communities from many city-states in northern Italy was something that Gellis had planned long ago.

Not only the Genoese, but also the Pisans, Venetians, etc.

In the old Kingdom of Jerusalem, each class had its own laws, each ethnic group had its own laws, and each religion had its own laws.

This situation cannot continue for the Kingdom of New Jerusalem.

Gellis is already helping the Second Kingdom to formulate a new set of laws. That systematic set of laws is a hundred times better than those of the Old Kingdom of Jerusalem.

All the Paladins need to do is to promote the law and ensure that everyone is equal before the law when it is enforced.

"We still have to be careful. After all, our main task is to expand the market and bring in people from outside. The Genoese are the ones we cannot avoid in this process."

For the Kingdom of Jerusalem, the military operations have come to an end, and in the next few years, daily work will focus on economic development.

Today's Europe is not the Europe that discovered America in the 16th century. In the Europe of the 12th century, productivity development had just got on track and currency itself was extremely scarce.

The cost of developing such a market would be astronomical.

If Gellis wanted to save energy, his best option would be to engage in limited cooperation with commercial republics such as Venice and Genoa.

A commercial republic was needed to bring in people from Europe, to obtain raw materials from outside Palestine, and to sell the produced goods back to Europe.

Compared with those feudal lords, the commercial republics of today can be considered as partners for cooperation.

(End of this chapter)