Chapter 5: The Haze of the Black Death Like two ends of a symmetrical scale, just as the raging flames of the Hundred Years' War between England and France were burning in the countryside of Western Europe, far away on the northern shore of the Black Sea at the other end of the European continent, in the southern part of the Crimean Peninsula with a very important geographical location, A very fierce offensive and defensive battle also broke out.
In the fourteenth century on the Crimean Peninsula, Italian merchants ruled a prosperous trading colonial city called Kaffa.
As the eastern border of European Christendom and the farthest overseas colonial stronghold of the Italians from their mother country at this time, the city of Caffa, while successfully accumulating a large amount of wealth through prosperous international trade, was also inevitably often encountered by all kinds of aliens.
Jealousy, voyeurism and attacks by cultists.
For example, the cause of the Battle of Kaffa in 1346 was originally a dispute between a group of Italian merchants and merchants on the street.
But for some unknown reason, this small-scale conflict quickly escalated.
After suffering a loss, they turned to the Mongols of the Golden Horde to seek reinforcements.
A Mongol prince who coveted all kinds of wealth in the city of Kaffa took this opportunity to launch an army to besiege the city. , want to take this prosperous trading port as their own.
However, the strong fortifications of Kaffa City and the stubborn resistance of the defenders made it difficult for the notorious Mongolian army to win for a while.
Just like the British army's siege of the Port of Calais on the other side of the European continent at this time, the Mongolian army's siege of the Port of Kaffa also lasted for a full year.
However, unlike the British who had control of the English Channel, the Mongols, a horseback people, had no fleet on the Black Sea, so they were unable to block the Black Sea supply line of Kaffa City.
As a result, the Mongolian army besieging the city first fell into a shortage of food and fodder.
After the desperate situation, the plague spread among the army.
Hundreds of Mongolian warriors were covered with malignant sores and black spots.
They fell one after another and could no longer make the fierce and wild shouts of killing.
Faced with such a desperate situation that could not be overcome by manpower, the Mongol prince was forced to decide to terminate the siege of Kaffa City and withdraw his troops.
But before withdrawing in despair, he decided to impress a lesson on the Italians in the city.
On the eve of the retreat, the Mongolian prince set up a trebuchet outside the city of Kaffa, and threw the decaying corpses of soldiers infected by the plague into the air and into the city of Kaffa, causing the streets of Kaffa to tremble.
The alley was soon filled with dead bodies and filled with a terrible stench.
However, His Highness the Prince may never have dreamed that his act of venting his anger after the hopeless defeat of the city would actually achieve a record far better than that of Jochi and Hulagu, and bring far better results to the Europeans.
Unprecedented destruction of any Mongol Western Expedition Closer to home, looking at the dead bodies falling from the sky and the Mongolian cavalry who turned around and retreated, the defenders in Kaffa City were puzzled at first.
But soon, these rotting corpses thrown into the city began to pollute the air and poison the water sources, making Kaffa City A terrible plague began to break out.
Because the skin of patients after death was often dark purple, this terrible disease was named the "Black Death."
At that time, people in Europe did not know that this was the plague, a severe infectious disease caused by Yersinia pestis.
Within a few days, the citizens of Kaffa within the city walls died one after another.
Dead bodies covered with malignant sores and black spots were everywhere in the city, turning Kaffa into a hell on earth.
After a year-long offensive and defensive war, the city of Kaffa finally fell, but it was not the Mongolian cavalry that conquered it, but the invisible disease.
What's more terrible is that before the Black Death broke out, many people died of the war.
The Italian, Greek and merchant ships that were forced to stay in the port have weighed anchor and left the city of Kaffa, sailing to various parts of Europe and the Middle East.
After the outbreak of the Black Death, many people fled Kaffa in a hurry.
A "natural disaster of the undead" that made everyone fear and tremble, under the planning of fate, finally quietly descended on Europeans After the city of Kaffa on the northern coast of the Black Sea was engulfed by the disease, the first places to suffer were naturally Thrace and Asia Minor on the southern coast of the Black Sea.
With the outbreak of the Black Death, the population of Constantinople, the capital of the Eastern Roman Empire, was reduced by half in an instant, causing another heavy blow to the empire that had been surviving for thousands of years.
At this time, the Turks who had already occupied the peninsula of Asia Minor were also faced with the disease, and they were also littered with dead bodies and mourning.
Next, the plague followed the footsteps of camel caravans and rats and spread to Egypt in the Arab world.
At that time, Cairo, Egypt, was one of the largest cities in the world, with a population of half a million, but at the peak of the Black Death, an average of 7,000 people died in Cairo every day.
However, compared with the unprecedented catastrophe that the Christian world is about to encounter, our death and crying are really nothing.
For Europeans, the deadliest and most terrifying nightmare comes from a fleet of the Genoese city-state with twelve merchant ships.
They set off from the city of Caffa, passed through Constantinople, entered the Mediterranean from the Black Sea, and then returned Their Italian hometown.
However, what these Genoese merchants and sailors did not know was that in addition to gems, silks and spices, they were also accompanied by rats and fleas, the main culprits in spreading the Black Death.
The flea-infected rats climbed onto the mooring ropes, hid in the cargo hold, and followed the ship as it sailed toward the Mediterranean.
The germs on their bodies are like swarms of black-clad grim reapers holding scythes, ready to harvest millions of lives.
During the voyage, the Black Death began to attack, and the terrified crew members threw the dead into the sea, while becoming increasingly eager to return home.
Thus, in October 1347, with the arrival of these twelve death ships, Messina, a port city in northern Sicily, became the first Italian city to be captured by the Black Death in less than a week. , the plague was like a tsunami, flooding this poor city.
Those who are infected will first develop a sudden swelling between their groins or under their armpits.
Later, they will grow larger and larger, reaching the size of a small apple or an egg.
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Doctors call this tumor "epidemic".
It doesn't take long for this death-like "epidemic" to spread from those two parts to all parts of the human body.
After that, the symptoms changed again.
Black or purple spots appeared on the patient's arms, legs, and other parts of the body.
Sometimes they were sparse and large, sometimes they were thin and dense.
But these are just like the early stages of cancer, a harbinger of death.
Afterwards, there is high fever, ulceration, stench, and some people even vomit blood.
There is often a bloody smell in the breath, as if the blood in the body is rotting.
Moreover, no matter how frightened patients seek medical advice and take medicine, the disease is always hopeless.
This was simply 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.
Most patients die within three days of the appearance of the "epidemic".
What's more terrible is that this kind of black death is extremely contagious.
Healthy people will become infected as soon as they come into contact with the sick.
The situation is like dry wood close to a raging fire, which can easily burn.
Even if you come into contact with the clothes worn by the patient or the things he has touched, you are still at risk of contracting the disease.
In the end, desperate people adopted the harshest isolation measures.
Since it was too late to isolate the patients, the survivors had to isolate themselves.
They stocked up on water and food, hid in their houses and prayed to God all day and night.
But even so, the vast majority of them still did not escape death, because the tireless rats would spread the germs from one house to another.
Faced with such an unprecedented and tragic disaster, the frightened Messina municipal authorities became excited and ordered the twelve Genoese merchant ships that had brought death to leave quickly, regardless of the risk of offending the Genoese Republic, the overlord of the Western Mediterranean.
The Genoese sailors weighed anchor and set sail in silence, but the Messinians had to continue to wait slowly for death.
The overwhelming death continued to come, swallowing up every street and alley in the city.
The nobles and wealthy businessmen fled, and the soldiers, The clergy and municipal workers all disappeared without a trace, and the streets were littered with uncollected corpses.
Thousands of wild dogs roamed the deserted streets, biting corpses, devouring carrion, and eating people until their eyes glowed red.
They were as ferocious as three-headed dogs from hell.
Less than a month later, the entire city was completely destroyed.
Destroyed, under the bright autumn sun, the whole city was as quiet as death.
Countless mutilated corpses lay quietly rotting on the streets, and the entire city of Messina also rotted with it.
What was left to rot quietly next was the autumn of this year in Sicily.
The haze of the Black Death swept through every city in Sicily, replicating the tragedy of Messina over and over again, turning the island into a disaster.
It became a dark kingdom ruled by the God of Death.
However, the story of the twelve ships of death is not over yet.
Messina and Sicily are at best the appetizers of this nightmare.
As the fleet continues to advance towards the European continent, Death first stops briefly at the Port of Pisa, and then quickly arrives at the fleet's home port, the Mediterranean Sea.
The commercial pearl of Genoa.
Due to the delay in the transmission of news, the motherland, which did not know the details, welcomed these distant travelers with open arms, but a few days later, it forcibly expelled them in panic, and ordered the port to be closed in panic.
Any foreign ships that dared to enter the port would be Unfortunately, it was too late to sink them all: tens of thousands of Genoese citizens died in the following time, and the total population of Genoa at that time was only more than 100,000.
From then on, the unstoppable god of death set out from the three bridgeheads of Messina, Genoa and Pisa.
Like a hurricane and a tsunami, it quickly swept across the entire Italian peninsula.
During this Renaissance era, the most prosperous, richest, most civilized and most progressive place in Europe. place.
Back to the twelve Genoese death ships: By this time, the bad news about the death fleet had spread throughout Italy.
From the Alps to Sardinia, no port was willing to accept these messengers of death.
In the end, the fleet continued to sail north and arrived at the French coast in January 1348.
Although local municipal officials had learned about the plague and pulled up thick iron chains at the port, in the end, facing the ship, The desperate begging of a group of Genoese ghosts, but they did not personally experience the serious harm of the Black Death.
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The romantic and tolerant Marseille Port authorities still accepted them and introduced the evil wolf of the Black Death.
France's doorstep.
When Knight Levi, a time traveler living in a suburban manor, was shocked to learn about this, it was already too late.
Although it only took a few days, after personally experiencing the taste of the Black Death, heavily armed soldiers rushed into the dock of Marseille Port and forcibly drove away the twelve ships of death.
But the clutches of the Black Death have invaded French soil: Although the French already knew to quarantine sick sailors in advance, they could not stop the rats on the ship from sneaking ashore and entering homes and warehouses.
The fleas on these little things are carriers of germs that are more dangerous than sick humans.
The Grim Reaper successfully slipped into the streets and alleys of Marseille Port and began a horrific massacre.
After being forcibly expelled by the French garrison in the Port of Marseille, the journey of this death fleet was not over yet.
Although the sailors were dying one after another, they continued to advance westward and drifted tenaciously to Spain, on the coastline of the Iberian Peninsula.
After spreading death wantonly, they finally completely disappeared from historical records.
No one knows their ending.
Maybe all the sailors on the ship really died.
But the mission given to this fleet by the God of Death has been successfully completed.
They successfully spread the plague throughout Europe.
On French soil, the first person to be destroyed by the Black Death was Livy.
The Port of Marseille where the Bacon Knight family lives oshow7: