More and more small merchants, such as the flour merchant Vixen, walked into the hidden side door of the church without knowing it, and the trend of falling food prices was getting faster and faster, like a river mouth with its embankment broken.
It didn't take long for the big businessmen who were struggling to support themselves to be unable to maintain a calm look in the face of the rapidly falling food prices-this indicates that if they persist, they will lose all their money, and at least part of it can be saved if they sell in time. But in this way, the alliance of East Berek merchants ceased to exist.
"But we have been betrayed a long time ago, do we still need to pay for the behavior of the traitor?"
A big businessman hoarding beer angrily accused those small businessmen who had quietly left without knowing when.
He cursed for a while, and finally, under the cover of twilight, quietly walked into the side door of the church.
A few days later.
The representatives of the East Berek merchants, who had lost a full three or four circles, could no longer tell how many days they had spent in the church. They had never felt such a difficult time before. The black bread provided by the monks can torture these fellows who enjoy their food on weekdays.
There is a stark, stark desire to overeat in almost everyone's eyes.
When the young archbishop with sharp eyebrows and harsh temperament announced that their "confession" was temporarily over, all the delegates cheered—their resistance won the final victory, and the queen will bow to them after all! Even Archbishop Rodri's still calm expression became a symbol of suppressed anger in their eyes.
"You want to stay and continue to repent?"
Archbishop Rodri closed the scriptures in his hands, and the sleeves of the black cassock pulled up with his movement, revealing his thin but powerful wrist bones.
No matter what the representatives were thinking at this moment, as soon as Archbishop Rodrik's words fell, they rushed out of the cathedral at the speed of fleeing for their lives. One of them ran so fast that he didn't even bother to pick up one of his own shoes.
"When the confession is over, the punishment really comes."
Archbishop Rodrik was the only one left in the nave of the church. He stood behind the podium and stared indifferently at the fleeing figures of those people. Behind him is a colorful mosaic saint in the eleventh century style. The saint inlaid with murals seems to be looking down at the world from a high cloud.
"My good gentlemen!"
The moment the released business representatives felt the warmth of the sun, their eyes almost burst into tears.
They couldn't wait to jump outside the iron gate and shouted at the people outside the gate:
"What is our food price now?"
What greeted him was a rotten egg flying over.
When the stench that irritated people's sense of smell filled the air, these unlucky representatives who were tortured by black bread and linen and were going crazy, finally found that the scene outside the church was completely different from what they had imagined: there was no heroic welcome. cheers, the people waiting outside the iron gate all looked angry.
"Wait! What's going on with you guys?!"
The delegates clutched their heads and tried their best to find their stewards and servants.
A lucky merchant representative finally found his butler outside the iron gate, and after he roughly figured out what happened during this period, he immediately shouted in surprise and anger: "You have betrayed us!!! How can you... how can you be the first to lower the price?"
His answer was a flood of boos:
"Look at your clothes before you talk!"
The representatives bowed their heads, only to realize that they were still wearing the simple robes with the cross provided by the monks of the church.
"It's over, it's over."
When most of the representatives were still angry and scolding the crowd, businessman Dan Luo murmured.
Countless people have defected during the time the delegates have been isolated from the outside world, and food prices have plummeted—below what they bought them for.
In other words, they don't even think about earning a single copper coin.
Nothing to lose.
The world was spinning, and the businessman Dan Luo sat down on the ground.
There was only one thing he couldn't figure out. The first batch of grains that rushed into the market definitely didn't come from representatives of merchants like them, but where did they come from
…………………
Elmia.
The answer is Elmia.
After Queen Roland signed a trade treaty with Gurion, the ruler of Ermia, the transport ships of Ermia transported a large amount of grain to Roland on the secret route opened up by the pirates. Most of them are used as guarantees for war, but some are stored in warehouses.
Until the Eastern Famine, Perik merchants carried on their speculations as usual.
In fact, the food during the war was too precious, and the batch of food left behind by the queen was not enough to really shake the monopoly of the eastern Berek merchants. And if the Berek merchants know that this batch of grain comes from the royal family, and try their best to swallow them together, then the next grain price will be dominated by them.
During the few days when Archbishop Rodrik arrived behind closed doors after he arrived in the Berik region, he was busy organizing the transfer of this batch of grain, so that the place where they appeared overlapped with the grain storage of the big merchants who were acting as negotiators.
It was not the power of the royal family that really brought food prices back to normal, but the merchants themselves.
If there were no small merchants who were afraid of taking risks, turned out to the royal family, betrayed the big merchants, and the big merchants betrayed their representatives, they thought they had made a "wise" choice and provided the royal family with enough food to hit the market in the eastern region.
"It turns out that there are really people who are so stupid that there is no cure."
Sitting in front of the candlestick, the queen lit the intercession letters sent by some eastern nobles—I don’t know what final benefits those merchant representatives offered, so that they dared to try to save the fate of the East Berek merchants.
She only read one pleading letter, and threw the rest into the fireplace, allowing them to be quickly reduced to a pile of ashes.
The unpleasant episode of the eastern aristocrats just passed, the Queen leaned back on the back of the chair, closed her eyes slightly, and continued to review the remaining letters after a short rest. After her slender fingers slid across the letters, she suddenly stopped and pulled out one of them.
The fire was burning in the fireplace, the queen leaned back on the high chair, half of her face was hidden in the darkness.
Her eyes paused on the letter for a few breaths, then pulled it out.
The letter flickered in the flickering light and shadow of the flames, and the letter was marked with a serpentine logo.
…………………
Heinrich sat at his desk with his fingers crossed.
Roland's army was divided into two parts, one led by Dalton and Abigail, and attacked Senglei Island. The other part, led by Heinrich, joined forces with the army of the Root Empire to block the route of the Yager Kingdom to rescue Senglei Island.
As the commander of this army, Heinrich, the room was dark at this time, and he did not light all the candles on the candlestick.
The only candle that was lit was flickering yellow flame alone in the room, and Heinrich's shadow was blurred and cast on the wall behind him. It was as thin as paper, and it was extremely inconsistent with his status as a great nobleman. . Rarely, Heinrich at this time was not wearing the coat with many decorations that nobles usually wear. The shadow of the candelabra fell on his white shirt, interspersed and staggered, like the afterimage of a rotten tree.
It's as if all the luxurious and complicated colors have faded from him, leaving only a tired skeleton.
Heinrich watched the candle flame in silence.
The flame gradually enlarged in his eyes, turned into a collapsed lighthouse, and then turned into countless flying crows... Then there was a nightmare-like mourning.
After a long time, he raised his hand, covered his eyes, and pressed his back against the cold back of the chair.
When the candle flame flickered, there was a dull sound coming from a distance.
The voice was as deep as thunder rolling on the sea.
At the same time, whether it was Heinrich who was sitting alone in the room, or the queen by the fireplace, even more people raised their heads and cast their gazes in the direction of Senglei Island.
It was the sound of cannon from Sengley Island.
The siege began.
……………………………
"Appointing Andret as the commander of Senglei Island must be the only wise choice for John VI."
Dalton stood on a higher slope, looking at the fortress not far away.
Out of the caution of naval commander Abigail, they did not land directly on the headland of Sengle Island, but drove around the island for a week, thus successfully avoiding the ambush of the defenders of Sengle Island.
In this detour, Dalton finally made a no-nonsense assessment of Senglay Island's defensive organization.
Before that, John VI put too much energy into interfering in the internal affairs of the free commercial city, an ally of the Yager Kingdom, and was busy extracting oil from the "City of Wealth". Gray provides sufficient supplies and manpower. By the time he realized that Roland and Root's offensive would come faster than expected, it was already difficult to get out of the quagmire of the conflict between the old and new churches in the free commercial city.
With extremely limited material and personnel assistance from Yager, Andret wisely gave up most of the island and chose to concentrate personnel and material resources to the northwest of Senglei Island.
From the map, the northwest corner of Senglei Island looks like the ribs of some kind of magical creature. In the middle is a peninsula protruding into the big bay, the main body is a highland, and on both sides of the peninsula are strange coastlines interlaced like dog teeth. After the soldiers commanded by Andret firmly held Fort Saint-Cyr at the tip of the peninsula, they strangled the entire narrow bay, and were able to stop Roland from attacking from the sea by pulling up the iron cables at the entrance.
After observing the terrain of the island with his own eyes, Dalton deployed a large artillery position in the northern part of the peninsula protruding into the Great Bay. Taking advantage of the terrain, he bombarded the Fort Saint-Cill below, and at the same time directed towards the two castles on the west side of the peninsula. Fortresses, small artillery positions were arranged to prevent the defenders in the fortress from crossing the narrow bay to support Fort Saint-Cyr.
"Bombard the triangular fort."
Seeing that the advance of the tunnel soldiers was blocked by the defenders, Dalton put away his binoculars and gave a simple order to the herald.
It is impossible to complete the queen's order to "take back Senglei Island as quickly as possible" by means of normal siege methods, unless...they make dangerous moves.
Dalton no longer stayed on the high ground, and walked through the thick smoke amidst the deafening roar of firearms.