Chapter 2019 Something Big Has Happened!

Between countries, the word profit comes first. The reason why the Teutonic state wants to regain control of Livonia is because of Moscow's huge market.

In recent years, although in the process of cooperation with Marin, the Teutonic Knights have completely controlled the salt trade of the Teutonic country, and can also export coarse wool from Eastern Europe to Marin. However, these profits are still a bit low, not comparable to the huge profits of Livonia's salt trade. After all, Livonia is the main salt import channel for the Grand Duchy of Moscow with a population of tens of millions. Even if the salt trade is not done by hand, the Livonians can get rich just by taxing the salt crossing the border.

And what about the Teutonic state? Now it has a population of just over 300,000, only one-third of the population in its heyday. Its land area has also shrunk from 150,000 to 60,000 square kilometers to more than 30,000 square kilometers.

The most depressing thing is that most of the territory of the Teutonic Kingdom is still surrounded by Lithuania, and it is separated from the Grand Duchy of Moscow, which has the same interests. Obviously, the Lithuanians would not allow the Teutons to do business in their country, especially the highly profitable salt trade. At most, some businesses with very low profits will agree to them.

The Livonian Federation in the north of the Teutonic State is connected to the Pskov Republic and can be connected to the Grand Duchy of Moscow. The salt trade of the Grand Duchy of Moscow was also imported through the two countries.

Although the Grand Duchy of Moscow, after conquering the Republic of Novgorod, obtained the narrow estuary on the east side of the Gulf of Finland, which is the place of St. Petersburg later. However, Muscovites have no connections in Western Europe. If you want to import salt, you can only rely on merchants from the Hanseatic League. Moscow merchants want their own merchant ships to go to sea to buy salt, and I am afraid that merchants from the Hanseatic League will unite and "kill" them at sea. Therefore, even though the Muscovites have a narrow estuary to the sea, they still rely heavily on the Hanseatic League for salt imports. The main process of importing salt is—first, the Hanseatic merchants in the German region transport the salt to the Livonian region, and then the Hanseatic merchants in the Livonian region transport the salt to Pskov, and then transport it to the Grand Duchy of Moscow...

It is worth mentioning that the table salt transported by Hanseatic merchants to Livonia was mainly mineral salt purchased from Lüneburg, the "salt capital". Now, the salt mine in Lüneburg has been controlled by Marin, and Marin personally holds more than half of the shares. Therefore, the salt trade of the Grand Duchy of Moscow also has the interests of Marin.

It's just that the price of Hanseatic merchants in Lüneburg is lower, which is only the price of salt in the German region. And they transported the salt to Livonia, and the profit was at least several times higher.

The reason why Marin supported the Teutonic country to attack Livonia this time is that, in addition to the relationship with Uncle Yule, the Teutonic country also promised to let Marin's merchant ships transport the salt sold to Moscow to Livonia in the future. reasons are included.

In this way, Marin will obtain several times the profit of transporting salt from Lüneburg to Livonia. As for the quarrel with the original salt carrier, the Teutonic State stated that it was up to them to prevent Marin from being the villain. After all, Marin and the Hanseatic League are still allies.

It is for this reason,

Marin did not hesitate to provide artillery to the Teutonic Kingdom and support them in attacking Livonia. After all, it was in his great interest.

...

On the other hand, Muscovites also know the importance of the Pskov Republic. Therefore, as early as the period of Ivan III, the Muscovites used force and economic means to force Pskov to submit to him. Even when Vasily III was a prince, his nominal fiefdom was Pskov.

At present, there are a large number of pro-Moscow nobles in Pskov. If there is a fight, Mrs. Psko must first suppress the pro-Moscow faction inside, and then she can fight against the Moscow army. Of course, in general, in order to ensure independence, most of the nobles in Pskov are still closer to Lithuania. Because Lithuania is relatively weak and will not seek to annex Pskov.

Of course, the ownership of Pskov has nothing to do with the Teutonic state. However, the affairs of the Livonia Federation are closely related to the Teutonic State. After all, decades ago, Livonia was still part of the Teutonic state. Now, it has gone out independently, but it is bigger and richer than the original suzerain country.

Fortunately, the Livonian Federation has many forces, and its interests have been dispersed to the hands of local churches, nobles, merchants, and Teutonic knights. Compared with the Teutonic state, although the Livonian Federation has a large trade volume, its financial resources are scattered among different forces, and it is not as centralized as the Teutonic state.

In addition, since the Knights lost control of the Livonia region in 1435, the wandering knights in Western European countries such as Germany and France are not very willing to go to the Livonia region, and more choose to go to the knight status Higher Teutonic state.

This is very important, because it means that the Teutonic Kingdom can get more powerful wandering knights. The wandering knights who went to the Livonian Federation were more likely to do business. After all, there are more business opportunities over there.

In this way, the Teutonic Kingdom has the confidence to gather more knights for the national war. In the Livonia Federation, there are fewer knights who can gather. Moreover, they are not of one mind with the Livonian Federation. After all, the members of the Livonian Knights must feel uncomfortable from the controller of the region to one of the controllers. You must know that before 1435, although the Livonian Knights were subordinate to the Teutonic Kingdom, they needed to pay taxes to the Teutonic Knights. However, it was the knights of the Livonian Knights who controlled the Livonian region at that time. The Teutonic state, on the other hand, will not send people to manage affairs, it only needs to receive enough taxes.

And the protagonists, nobles, merchants, and citizens who rose up against the Teutonic State and deprived the Livonian Knights of their absolute control over the Livonian region, the supporters behind them happened to be Lithuanians.

Therefore, even if the Teutonic state sells iron this time, it must help the Muscovites purchase enough weapons and armor, so that the Muscovites can defeat the backstage of the "rebels" who resisted the Knights in Livonia. In this way, the Teutonic state sent troops to retake Livonia, and no one interfered.

...

However, 50,000 sets of weapons and armor are really expensive. If they all purchased knight-level equipment, a set of gothic plate armor would cost dozens of gold coins. A knight sword also costs a few gold coins. It is estimated that more than two million gold coins will be needed to buy 50,000 sets. However, the surplus money accumulated by the Teutonic country over the years is not that much at all.

Therefore, after thinking about it again and again, Lev gave up the idea of ​​buying 50,000 sets of weapons and armor for knights for the Muscovites, and instead purchased weapons and armor for ordinary soldiers. Specifically, ordinary leather armor, ordinary spears with less iron, and ordinary iron knives and crossbows. In this way, a set is only a dozen gold coins. 50,000 sets, no more than 1 million gold coins.

In fact, the reason why the Teutonic country chose to purchase weapons and armor from Marin before was that apart from the high quality of the weapons and armor of the North Sea country, there was also the fact that they originally planned to pay Marin on credit and only pay part of the money, and the rest Pay after the war is over. After all, if the Grand Duchy of Moscow annexed the wealthy Pskov Republic, after some looting, they would have no money to pay the balance.

But Marin knew their plan and refused to sell weapons to the Muscovites. Therefore, Lev had no choice but to lower the level of weapons and armor.

Fortunately, even for ordinary iron knives, spears and crossbows, the level of craftsmanship in Germany is higher than that in Eastern Europe. The Moscow army used it, and it's not bad. At least, not worse than what the Lithuanian army uses. Moreover, the Moscow army has a numerical advantage. This extra army equipped with good-quality weapons and armor is absolutely crushing for Lithuania, which has only tens of thousands of soldiers and horses.

If they were singled out, the current strength of the Grand Duchy of Moscow would be enough to defeat Lithuania. However, Lithuania has the support of the Kingdom of Poland behind it, and the two countries can barely resist the pressure of the Muscovites by joining forces.

But now, under the influence of Marin, the Poles created the Polish hussars in advance, which made the power of the two sides a little out of balance.

At present, Sigismund I has established a 5,000-strong Polish hussars, and it is still a standing army. In addition to participating in the suppression of the Hungarian peasant uprising, this army was later transferred to the Lithuanian border to fight the Muscovites once, easily eating up a thousand-man cavalry from the Muscovites, which surprised Vasily III.

Therefore, the reason why the Muscovites asked the Teutonic country to help purchase 50,000 sets of weapons and armor this time was actually to fight against the Polish hussars.

Among them, 5,000 sets are leather armor, chain mail and sabers for cavalry. The other 45,000 sets were for infantry, including 5,000 crossbowmen.

Vasily III's plan was to use 5,000 light cavalry, 5,000 crossbowmen and 40,000 spearmen to fight against 5,000 Polish hussars. After all, the hussars only wore half armor, and the horses had no armor, so their protection was not good. Vasily III did not seek to defeat the Polish hussars, as long as the 50,000 people could withstand the impact of the Polish hussars. Among them, the existence of 5000 crossbowmen is specially used to shoot the horses of the winged cavalry.

Even, in order to fight against the Polish heavy cavalry, the Teutonic State secretly sent several Swiss mercenary officers originally employed by the Teutonic State to Moscow to help train the Moscow militia. Of course, it is impossible to train Moscow peasants into brave Swiss mercenaries. The main task of these Swiss mercenary officers is to teach the Moscow militia how to resist the impact of cavalry. After all, Swiss mercenaries started by defeating plate armor knights. Although the Polish hussars were slender and slender than the knights' lances, they were still a bit short in front of the five or six-meter-long Swiss spears. As long as they are used well, spearmen can also withstand the impact of Polish hussars.

But when Lev wandered around Nuremberg, Frankfurt and other handicraft cities in southern Germany to sweep up weapons and armor, an explosive news came from the west—the French made a big deal...

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