The news of the alliance between Egypt and Persia was soon transmitted by Gucci through carrier pigeons. Gucci's carrier pigeons flew to Italy, and then the intelligence was transmitted back to the local area by the Beihai State Intelligence Station in Italy.

After receiving the information, Marin was half happy and half depressed. Why was he depressed? Because the Egyptians competed with him for the Persian war horses!

It is true that there are many Persian horses, but the demand for this customer in Egypt is very high. They have tens of thousands of Mamluk cavalry, and the demand for horses is very high. With the large purchases of Egyptians, it will be difficult for Marin to purchase Persian war horses at a low price, and it will cost a lot more money.

Of course, this price is definitely much cheaper than the price of European war horses. You should know that a good European knight war horse is as high as 100 gold coins. This price is too expensive. Therefore, it is very good to be a knight. Not to mention the martial arts of knights, it is just to prepare war horses and weapons and armor, and ordinary people have no conditions. They must have a manor as a backing to support a knight.

At present, Marin can buy a large number of war horses from the Crimean Khanate. However, the Eastern European Mongolian horses (similar to later Don hippos) in the Crimean Khanate are slightly smaller in size. Moreover, except for the advantages of the Mongolian horse's super endurance and hardship, the other advantages are not outstanding.

The Persian horses are different. Although the Persian horses are not very famous in later generations, it is because the religious Persia cut off contact with the outside world, which has led to their war horse breeds being ignored.

In fact, the Persian horse not only mixed with the bloodline of Arab horses, but also the bloodline of Central Asia. In terms of bloodline, although the Persian horse is a little bit mixed, it is very good.

Although this mixed-blood horse with mixed bloodlines is both medium-sized horses, it is larger than that of Eastern European Mongolian horses. Moreover, the advantages of Arabian horses are faster than Eastern European Mongolian horses. After all, the Mongolian horse series has never been good at speed, only at endurance.

For Marin, the best choice for war horses is actually Arabian horses. However, the climate conditions of pure Arabian horses are very harsh, with deserts everywhere, which is very unsuitable for livestock survival. Therefore, the number has never increased. Even if Marin wants to buy, it is not that much.

Therefore, he could only settle for the second best, and bought a large number of mixed-race Persian horses produced in Persia with more Arab horse blood. Even the Indian specialty Mawari horses also had many Arab horse blood. When they conquered India, they also brought the Arab horse blood to India.

Originally, Marin had a chance to try hard to lower the price. After all, no one bought the war horses of Persia in the past. But with the addition of Egypt, an agricultural powerhouse, it would be difficult. With the Egyptians making a proof, Marin would not be able to lower the price. At least, it cannot be lower than the Egyptians...

But Marin couldn't say anything, because the Egyptian army was strong and Marin had to be happy. After all, it would be bad if Türkiye had allowed it to annex Egypt with developed agriculturally.

Although Egypt only has a Nile River basin that can carry out agriculture, other areas are deserts. But the land in the Nile River basin cannot stand the fertile land and is full of sunshine. In later generations, Egypt relied on the agricultural areas of the Nile River basin to feed more than 100 million people, which is very scary. Of course, Egypt's population exceeded the standard. However, under normal circumstances, it is not a problem to support tens of millions of people in Egypt. Now, the population of Egypt is only about 4.5 million, which is far from reaching the upper limit. What's more, the Mamluk dynasty in Egypt also controlled Syria, a traditional agricultural area in the Middle East.

It is precisely because of the annexation of a large number of agricultural areas in Egypt that Turkey in history opened the terrifying era of hundreds of thousands of soldiers. Without Egypt's agricultural areas, Turkey dispatched up to 100,000 people based on the little grain produced by half-baked European farmers in the Balkans. No matter how many, it would be impossible to support it.

Therefore, Marin was unwilling to Turkey to occupy Egypt and the Hechi area where Mecca was located. If Turkey really came to Egypt, Marin even planned to send troops to rescue Egypt directly. Of course, this was in danger in Egypt. If only Syria was lost, Marin would not bother to take care of it. Almost forgot that Marin had the title of "Duke of Egypt" of the Byzantine Empire on his head...

However, Egypt and the North Sea Kingdom were too far apart, and Marin really couldn't take care of it. Otherwise, he would rather want to take over this area with developed agriculture and important geographical location.

...

In Gucci's letter, it not only mentioned the alliance between Egypt and Persia, but also mentioned the development of the Suez Canal.

At the beginning, in order to regain the right to trade Indian spices, at the suggestion of Marin, the Venetians joined forces with the Mamluk dynasty in Egypt to start excavation of the Suez Canal in the Sinai Peninsula.

But how difficult is it to dig a canal that can be connected to a large ship without construction machinery? Although the Sui Dynasty dug a Grand Canal that shocked the world, it lost the people's hearts and exhausted the finances. Then, this Grand Canal made the Tang Dynasty cheaper and created the prosperity of the Tang and Song dynasties later.

In short, in this era when digging canals purely by artificial means, the process of digging canals is definitely not beautiful, but full of blood and cruelty...

As far as Marin knows, this Suez Canal was paid by the Venetians, and the Egyptian Mamluk Dynasty dispatched manpower to dig without regard to casualties.

At present, the 190-kilometer-long Suez Canal has been dug about 100 kilometers. However, in order to dig this river, 100,000 workers have died in Egypt. On average, the death toll per kilometer is as high as thousands, which is higher than the death rate during the excavation in the 19th century in history.

Because the mortality rate is too high, the Egyptian people are already very resistant to participating in the digging of canals. In some places, armed riots have even been hindered from the recruitment of Minzhuang to dig canals. Therefore, the excavation of the Egyptian canal has been suspended at present.

According to Gucci, the Mamluk dynasty in Egypt was also in a state of confusion. If it was not done properly, it might trigger a public uprising.

Marin didn't want to see Egypt give Turkey the opportunity to eliminate Egypt because of civil strife. After thinking about it, Marin finally decided to help the Mamluk dynasty in Egypt come up with an idea...

What's the idea? Start a war and catch foreigners to dig the canal...

If the Egyptians refused to die, they would directly dispatch Mamluk cavalry to plunder the population around Egypt and arrest the strong men to dig the canal.

For example, the Tripoli region in the west, which is Libya in later generations, although the population is not large, if you send cavalry to sweep it, you can still catch tens of thousands of strong men. Moreover, you can take the opportunity to annex the land. Not to mention anything else, it is no problem to get more horses. After all, this place once belonged to the Arab Empire, and there were also many Arab horses. Although the local tribes also had cavalry, facing the powerful Mamluk cavalry, the opponent would inevitably be vulnerable...
Chapter completed!