On May 23, 1679, Gao Wengang and his group, who were harboring at the port of Kajibey (now Odessa), finally arrived at a camp on the left bank of the Transnistria River after a team of Spasi cavalry guards, where Kara Mustafaaga was waiting for him.

The left bank of the Transnistria River has now become a large camp. If it is stationed, there will probably be tens of thousands of people. Among them are the world-famous Ghanisari Legion, Spasi Legion, and ordinary Ottoman soldiers. Of course, there are even more soldiers from the servant army from all over the world: Serbs, Hungarians, Albanians, Bosnians, Bulgarians, Romanians, Greeks, Arabs, Caucasians, Tatars, etc., all the ethnic groups in the Balkans or Asia Minor that you can imagine.

These people are not well-educated, have different equipment, and have very different training levels. Many middle and senior officers are even confused by how many people under their command. The Ottomans lack a good coordination mechanism and are simple and crude in command. This seems to be possible in the past, but at the moment when the war is getting more and more refined, it seems that there is a slight discontent with the trend.

Of course, we cannot ignore the fierce ethnic conflicts and religious conflicts in this huge army. Christian soldiers and Muslim soldiers dislike each other. There are conflicts among Christians who believe in Catholicism and Orthodoxism, not to mention the various sects whose internal conflicts within Muslims are extremely sharp. In short, it is too disharmonious. Fighting and fighting often happens. Many times, even middle-level officers will participate, and there is no one else.

These hodgepodge soldiers can at best fight a good fight. Once they encounter adversity, God knows what will happen! For example, the bloody drama of the chairman's commander's death during the Chinese Liberation War in later generations is simply common among the 200,000 troops of the Ottoman Empire. It would be nice not to cheat you. I still want me to save you and cooperate with you? Go dreaming!

Therefore, when the Ottomans fought, they were actually the army they brought out. As for the minion army, it required certain skills to use it. Being cannon fodder is barely enough, being an occupation force is sufficient, and shaking flags and shouting is very good, but remember that you cannot entrust important tasks, such as defending important nodes on the supply line, taking on the main combat force, etc., which may be a loss.

Kara Mustafa Aga is a veteran who has been marching for many years and is very clear about the virtues of all the troops under his command. Therefore, his station deployment is actually very interesting, that is, with the Ghanishari Legion as the core, the Ottoman army on the outside, and the garrison troops from all over the place were strictly divided, and the stations were assigned to patrol the crowd, for fear that these people would have conflicts and hurt the harmony. As for the Spasi Legion and the Crimean Tatar cavalry, they were equipped with some troops sent by Mamluk, the Egyptian lake.

Kara Mustafa is a typical Ottoman soldier, rude, bold and unrestrained, which makes Gao Wengang, who has never liked Qiu Ba very much, feel a little disliked. However, Mustafa was a nobleman from the Koprulu family, and his education level could not be as low as those of the lower-level officers. Therefore, when talking to Gao Wengang, he still restrained his wild and rude attitude and became slightly like a nobleman.

It was only when he came to Kajibey Port that Gao Wen had just received an emergency report from the merchant who opened a commodity wholesale company here (actually an agent of the State Intelligence Administration). He learned that the current in office, Fahir Ahmed Koprulu Davizi, was seriously ill and looked unrecoverable. As the adopted son of the Koprulu family, Kara Mustafa Koprulu, who has been leading troops all year round, is likely to be selected as one of the heirs of the Great Vizizi.

This important information suddenly changed Gao Wengang's pre-set attitude, making him more polite when facing Kara Mustafa Aga. At the same time, he also felt that he had come to Moldavia north and was right. It was a good thing to see when he contacted a possible candidate for Vizi in advance. Of course, he still didn't understand why the adopted son of the Koprulu family like Mustafa can also be listed as heirs and looks good. Could it be that his ability to lead troops to fight was valued by the family bosses? It seems that this is the only explanation.

Kara Mustafa invited many officers to have a banquet. At this banquet, pagans could drink openly. It can be seen that the religious tolerance of the Ottoman Empire was still very high (according to rumors, the Sultan himself was even addicted to alcohol, and indeed the rules and regulations were all aimed at the lower class). At least it was much better than the Catholics who sent you to the stake or fought the Thirty Years' War with disagreement. However, Gao Wengang did not choose wine like those Greek and Serbian generals. He drank coffee, a drink that was sometimes banned and sometimes banned in the Ottoman Empire.

"Did friends from the New World see our situation in Poland and Ukraine? The soldiers lack good weapons to fight against the enemy, resulting in many unnecessary casualties. Why don't you help us? It's been a long time since ships loaded with weapons and military funds arrived in the Black Sea. I think this is not good." When the banquet was in the middle of the table, Kara Mustafaaga suddenly asked Gao Wengang.

As he asked, many generals around him also turned their attention to them, especially the officers of the second-line troops. They used to use tents, ammunition bags, kettles, shovels, engineer shovels, sabers, spears, muskets and even artillery from the East Coast people. Now they suddenly stopped these things and replaced them with some substitutes produced by the Ottoman Empire, and they were not satisfactory in both quality and quantity (the only benefit was to reduce the loss of precious metals). How could this satisfy them?

Not to mention, just take the sabers exported by the East Coast people as an example. The durability and sharpness are quite good, and have always been popular among cavalry brothers. But now, because the country has no money, it can only reduce imports (equipped to the Spaswestern troops) and switch to self-produced inferior scimitars, which are called "return to tradition". Isn't this fooling people!

"Because your country still has a large number of weapons, the payment for military funds has not been settled yet. The earliest of them have been owed for four years. This has had a very bad impact on our military-industrial enterprises and has encountered great difficulties in operation. In fact, we certainly understand your country's desire for our high-quality military funds, but please be honest, it is difficult for us to continue shipping when the accumulated debt of more than 400,000 yuan has not been paid." Gao Wengang replied: "Our military-industrial enterprises also have their own troubles and cannot overcome the above financial difficulties."

In fact, what he said was quite tactful. As for the two large domestic military manufacturing companies, their factory leaders have already spoken. In the future, the Ottoman Empire will purchase military funds. In addition to the down payment, the remaining payments paid in installments need to be found with sufficient credibility or bank guarantees. Otherwise, they would rather not do business in this country, so as not to put their operations in trouble.

Of course, there is no doubt that this kind of thing is said on this occasion. Gao Wengang also knew the degree of financial difficulties of the Ottoman Empire (the economy of the important export targets in the past, France, Venice, and United Provinces is now in a bad state). He is afraid that he will no longer be able to purchase East Coast equipment in large quantities as before, which can be seen from their return to their previous self-production system.

Kara Mustafa was also a member of the Koprulu family and had some understanding of the current dilemma of the empire. Therefore, when he heard the "financial difficulties" mentioned by Gao Wengang, he suddenly seemed a little irritated. He stood up and walked around behind the desk. After a while, he said: "If we hand over some spoils to you, can you..."

"The noble Aga, through war, cannot support 200,000 troops." Gao Wengang reminded.

And this did not accidently make Kara Mustafa a little irritated, and he just heard him say, "Don't you need a population? Ukrainians, Poles, and even Russians, there is no problem. My army can give you, and what you have to do is continue to provide us with military funds, just like you provide Bekchisale."

"Considering the domestic population policy, the financial status of our business stations in your country and the limitations of ship capacity, we cannot open the introduction of the above-mentioned labor workers without restrictions. These are all fixed amounts because they may change the population structure of our country." Gao Wengang continued to answer slowly.

This answer really made Kara Mustafa a little angry. He had contacted Li Qing, the special envoy of the East Coast. That cunning guy would speak very tactfully even if he disagreed with your opinion, and rarely rejected the requests of Davizi or the Sultan in a positive way. But this Gao Wengang is really, how can he say it directly and hardly makes people feel stiff! In other words, the East Coast people dare to do this. Mustafa Aga felt that if the Grand Duke Moldavia stood in front of him and said such words, he might have been beaten up and driven out!

"We have encountered great difficulties in Ukraine. The Russians demanded that the Dnieper River be bounded and did not hesitate to resort to war for this. Moreover, the Austrians in Habsburg are now persecuting the Hungarians who are asylumed with the Sultan, which is at risk of triggering a new war. We need to hoard a large amount of war materials in advance to deal with wars that may break out at any time, so you must help us and cooperate with us." Kara Mustafa raised his voice and his face changed significantly. It seems that if Gao Wengang didn't know how to agree, he would anger the nobleman who was likely to be selected by the Sultan as the Great Vizi.

Gao Wen felt a little moaned when he heard this. It was not for Mustafa Aga's unreasonable request, but because of the Austrians and the Turks at risk of a full-scale war in Hungary. He was not sure if there were any factors that the French urged them (the current close relationship between the Ottomans and France is not low), but the French must have sufficient reasons to do so, so the people of the East Coast must be prepared to start three wars at the same time.

Once the Ottomans really do this, will the East Coast people intervene? Because if they do not provide real money to support them, the Ottomans operating in the third line will likely collapse (even if they really invest heavily in supporting the Ottomans, there is a high possibility of collapse), and they may not get any commercial benefits! After all, the Ottoman Empire maintains a stable and peaceful state, does not go out everywhere to show off and push the treasury to the bottom, and provides the East Coast Republic with a relatively stable market and a source of slave cannon fodder, which is the most in line with the interests of the East Coast.

Based on this consideration, once the Ottomans really go to war with the Russians, Austrians and Poles at the same time, in order not to let the capital, business network and other interests they had previously operated, they would have to spend a lot of money to sponsor it, and there was nothing else to do! Of course, the most ideal situation is to find a way to convince the Ottomans to conclude a peace treaty with Russia, break up the mess of Ukraine, solve their worries, and then find a way to face the threat from Poland and Austria.

It is impossible to get the Ottoman Empire to return the southeastern territory ceded by Poland, so Poland's hatred cannot be resolved. Similarly, the Ottoman Empire will not give up its ambitions for Hungary, so the struggle with Austria is inevitable. What's more, the truce period of the peace treaty between the two countries was about to expire. It is estimated that the Sultan of Istanbul had this idea in his mind, that is, once he was ready, he would attack immediately and swallow Hungary into his stomach.

Gao Wengang was not good at evaluating whether the Ottomans' idea was right or wrong. He just believed from a military perspective that the current Ottoman Empire had no advantage in front of the Austrians. Although the number of Austrian troops was not large, tens of thousands of elite troops could still be gathered together. He had accumulated a lot of experience in many confrontations with the French army, and his combat effectiveness was not weak at all. More than ten years ago, the Turkish army could not defeat the Austrian army at the same number, but no one paid attention to it at that time.

Now with the threat of Polish flanking, Gao Wengang only hopes that if the Turks really want to march into Hungary, it is best to stop when they are better and not fight, otherwise they may encounter an unpredictable crisis. Of course, it would be even better if the French could restrain the Austrians on the Western Front at the same time, although that might be just a luxury.
Chapter completed!