Eagle Byzantium

When the coasts on both sides of the Red Sea began to narrow, Cursus' fleet, along with other ships, sailed into the "St. Stephen's Canal".

This canal was, of course, dug by Emperor Gawain.

Under the setting sun, dark seawater surged past, and in the distance was the endless desert. There were some tall trees on both sides of the embankment. Under the adjustment of the lock, the ship where Cursus' family, covered with windproof cloaks, was sent into the canal.

Of course, the premise for digging this canal was the fall of Fatima, which perished five years ago.

Previously, after King Baldwin passed away, it was Sambel and some dissatisfied lords who rebelled. They forcibly pushed out the elderly Count Stephen of Blois and his brother-in-law Curtis Robert to break the hereditary king system of Jerusalem and change it to the system of appointment by the Holy See. However, tens of thousands of elite Roman soldiers from Cyprus, Antioch and Tripoli taught them how to behave: Stephen and Curtis had no will to resist and knew that there was no possibility of victory. At the beginning of the battle under Acre, they surrendered to Andeodate's camp and offered their swords. Andeodate imprisoned them and then cooperated with Jocelyn, Dim and other troops to drive directly to the rebels' nest and quickly defeated them.

In the battle, Helena, the eldest princess of the empire, wore armor and rode a white horse to supervise the battle in person, leaving behind the reputation of "Princess General".

A year later, Helena and Gervi got married. The princess fell in love with Gervi, who inherited his parents' appearance, at first sight, and the two were very happy after marriage.

Maxianius then sent a letter to Constantinople, begging to be relieved of his status as a guard knight. Gawain and Christopher sympathized with him, so they appointed him as the commander of the attached cavalry count of the Gimages Brigade on the grounds of "participating in the pacification of the Egyptian war."

It is worth mentioning that in order to reinforce the rebels in Jerusalem, John of Sicily, Tuscany and Crete, who had not yet perished, jointly organized a fleet to sail eastward, but was intercepted by the new fleet of the Empire near Rhodes: the Empire's warships were not only equipped with plow-type rams (which could tear apart enemy ships), but also equipped with many naval guns on both sides of the cabin. More than a dozen coalition ships were sunk in one battle, and the Sicilian side was defeated.

Afterwards, after watching the naval battle, John's garrison on Rhodes Island surrendered in despair. Zahas, who was already in his seventies and guarding the fortress alone, was desperate and was eventually captured and executed. He died on land. His head was sent to the imperial arena for public display and was thrown on the ground and kicked around by the cuju thugs of the competition party.

Then the coalition forces of Rome, Jerusalem, Baghdad, and Aleppo quickly moved south. Out of caution, they did not choose to cross the desolate desert east of Cairo. Instead, they used the advantages of the naval fleet and the resources of Cyprus to besiege Damietta, the most important fortress in eastern Egypt, and launched a brutal siege under the city. The Roman mortar ships formed a circle and bombarded the city walls. The emperor and the queen personally went to the port of Fastagos on Cyprus to supervise the battle. The whole army advanced without retreating. Then the queen gave birth to the emperor's little princess while visiting the Temple of Beauty in Paphos, and directly named her Venus.

Six months later, Damietta fell, and all the tens of thousands of Fatimid defenders in the city were slaughtered.

Three months later, the important town of Bilbeis on the Nile Delta was also captured by siege artillery. The residents and defenders in the city were all slaughtered, and the bodies were piled up into a mausoleum.

The frightened Patriarch of the Coptic Church in Alexandria surrendered, and he and all the cardinals were poisoned by Andeodate on the grounds of heresy.

A month later, Cairo, which had no hope of survival, opened its gates: the Fatimid Caliph "The Longevity" instructed the eunuchs to assassinate Ashot of Armenia, and surrendered his head to the besiegers.

The emperor announced that the name "The Longevity" was very auspicious, and he could not bear to execute him, so he detained the Caliph on a small island in the Red Sea, giving him a living allowance of 5,000 tassos of silver coins every year, so that he could live out his life in peace.

Egypt was then torn into three parts. The southern Kingdom of Makuria was given to the Aksumite Empire, the eastern part was given to Jerusalem with the Nile River as the boundary, and the west was given to the Roman Empire.

So due to the territorial issue, Gawain was not able to dig the isthmus, not to mention that he was not able to carry out the scale of the Suez Canal at that time. However, he used an iron fist to semi-forcefully mobilize 80,000 Egyptian Coptic natives to dredge the Pharaoh Canal again - a canal that runs across the Red Sea and the Nile River, and renamed it "St. Stephen's Canal". The project took three years, and tens of thousands of native workers died on both sides of the canal, turning into piles of corpses.

"In this way, Western Egypt became a new colonial province of the empire." After Governor Kossos on the deck finished his narration, his little daughter looked at the countless simple tombs on the bank of the canal and fell into silence.

She also wanted to say to her father easily, as she did in Yellen, "This world is like this", but her mood was not relaxed at the moment, and she couldn't say it at all.

She had previously heard from a close friend in the imperial capital, a classmate who had studied together at the Resposis Academy, that the emperor had already started negotiations with the King of Jerusalem, who was also his son-in-law, and wanted the two countries to join forces to dig the isthmus...

It was normal for some people to hate such an emperor, because he seemed to never let his subjects really rest.

Unless he himself rested forever.

But at the same time, she also admired the emperor who was over fifty years old. She heard that he had obtained the power of the devil, so he was invincible. Moreover, the relationship between him and Basilisa was getting stronger by the day. "If I can get something like this in the future, My husband, what a wonderful thing that would be!”

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After the boat turned around the canal and sailed into the Nile River, the youngest daughter's attention was focused on the crocodiles crawling on the beach. After leaving the sea, she went to the port of Dumyat, then Jaffa, and then Tripoli. "It is indeed the back garden of the empire!" All the relatives on the ship became excited. , they saw on the undulating highlands along the coast of Tripoli, red, purple and white are all kinds of precious flowers, dancing in the wind, and manor actuaries holding files were shuttled among them in twos and threes, "The most beautiful flowers in the world." Nice flowers, fruits and trees are planted there!”

Later, when they arrived at the port of Seleucia, the youngest daughter ended her journey early. She carried her luggage and was protected by several followers, and walked towards the large medical school on the mountain outside the city: Now women in the empire can study medicine, mechanics, Rhetoric, etc.

When Kossos's ship finally arrived at the imperial capital, the emperor happened to make his triumphant return from the Sicilian front. The entire imperial capital was in a state of excitement and revelry. It quickly returned to a population of nearly 300,000, among which four Cuju courts were holding competitions for the emperor's victory. league, big The racecourse has also resumed its regular events. Monks and nuns are as crazy as ordinary spectators on the racetrack. They are jumping on their seats and shouting, waving their bare arms, pointing their thumbs at the obelisk of the racetrack, and shouting all kinds of things. of vulgar language.