Rise of the 1630s South America

Chapter 448 Kafa ([-])

As the sun sets, the winter in the Crimea peninsula is extremely cold.Ma De tightened his bearskin coat. He was from Guangxi and couldn't bear the cold climate in the mainland, but Mo San standing next to him seemed to be more adaptable. Although the nose of this northeasterner was red from the cold, But he was flirting with a young Tatar woman next to him.Ma De secretly rolled his eyes, Nima, you can bear such a strong smell of sheep on this woman!Had it not been for the fact that this woman was the daughter of a tribal chief in the Crimean Khanate, Ma De wouldn't even bother to make false claims with her.

Accompanying them was a group of Sipahi cavalry stationed in Odessa. The leading officer was Su Ke, who was said to be a distant relative of Hassan. And business mission.Speaking of this mission, it’s actually just the two cross-travelers, Ma De and Mo San, and a few entourages. As for most of the mission’s staff and the person in charge, Gao Mo, they have already moved to Istanbul. Nasukh Pasha and representatives of the Hornician family, a commodity agent, met.

In December, Ma De and Mo San first took a boat and then rode all the way to Odessa, an important town in the west of the Crimean Khanate, and then recruited some Tatars who volunteered to fight in the Far East with high rewards in the nearby area. Herdsmen-this was approved by the Ottoman Empire in advance, and it was also a gift to some nobles in the Crimean Khanate.

The local Tatar herdsmen are poor and fierce.They did not trust outsiders, even if these were accompanied by Ottoman lords, and the recruitment of the East Coasters was in trouble at the beginning.Fortunately, there were four cavalry officers from Tatar immigrants among the entourage who followed the two, which played a vital role in bringing the people on the east bank closer to each other.They were all captured by the Poles during the battle and sold to the east bank. Now that they have the opportunity to return to their hometown, they are naturally extremely excited.However, after living in the New World for many years, they have fully adapted to the lifestyle of the East Coast, and their family is also in the East Coast, so it is not surprising that they will leave without saying goodbye.

After these people spent about a month contacting their original family and relatives one after another, the work of the people on the east bank suddenly opened up.Naturally, the effect of speaking out is not for nothing. The local Tatar herdsmen have to pay taxes to the nobles. At the same time, when the Ottoman army crosses the border, they are also responsible for providing food and supplies. Life has been very difficult.Misfortunes never come singly. The local khans and nobles often fought against the Russians in the north, the Poles in the west, and the ubiquitous Cossacks. The subjects of the Crimean Khanate have been very unhappy.

Under such circumstances, when those Tatar military officers on the east bank patted their chests to guarantee the good life and treatment on the east bank, and at the same time brought out a lot of gifts and gold and silver, starting from their relatives, Lu One after another, some Tatar herdsmen came to Odessa and accepted the employment of the people from the east coast to fight in the Far East.People from the east coast signed a formal employment contract with them, and it didn't matter whether they could understand it or not, anyway, the procedures should be blameless.The wages of these people are slightly lower than those of the Polish veterans recruited in Danzig-these people have fought for more than ten years on average, but the treatment of some veterans with better skills will be one or two grades higher, which is different from those of those Polish veterans. People are flat.

Even the two military laymen, Yima De and Mo San, could see that the technical and tactical level of these Tatar herdsmen was not as good as those of the Polish soldiers.You must know that the senior Polish soldiers even participated in the first battle of Khoting in 1621, which caused the Turkish sultan to flee in embarrassment. They will not lack in skill, experience or courage.In comparison, these Tatars are much worse. Their riding skills may be better than those of the Poles, and their fighting skills on horseback are not bad, but their organization and discipline are far worse, and they have no will to fight. Those Poles were tenacious.In many cases, even the "free Cossacks" (fugitive serfs, as opposed to "book Cossacks") who are outside the control of the Polish government can sometimes bully them - but this kind of thing will not It often happens, because objectively speaking, the combat effectiveness of the Cossacks is not much higher than them, but they have a great advantage in numbers.

A total of more than 300 Tatar herdsmen were recruited by the people on the east coast of the Odessa area, about half of whom had gone to Russia or Poland to burn, kill and loot, and barely had some combat experience.Every year, the Crimean Tatars go to Russia, Poland, Transylvania and other places to capture slaves, which they call "the harvest of the steppe peoples."This kind of looting will naturally cause great resistance from the local residents, and fighting is inevitable. Therefore, those who have participated in these operations will have some combat experience.

But the remaining half of the people are just some ordinary poor herdsmen, and they are very young.Most of them had nothing but good riding skills, and a few of them brought a farewell gift from their families - a curved saber, and then came to the temporary camp set up by the people on the east bank in Odessa.After the people on the east bank trained them for half a month, they were led by the Tatar cavalry officers, accompanied by some Turkish officers, and rode to the port of Kaffa on the Crimean Peninsula— It is also the destination of Ma De and Mo San.

The wonderful journey came to an end soon, and Mo San made gestures with the Tatar girl, and then laughed and rode into Kafa City with Made and others.Just kidding, there are two tigresses, one big and one small, in Native's house, so he only dared to molested and molested the girls outside to have a dry addiction.The Tatar girl glanced at the Turkish soldiers wearing tall hats guarding the gate of Kaffa City, cursed loudly, and left angrily.

Although the city of Kaffa is nominally the territory of the Crimean Khanate, it is actually controlled by their suzerain, the Ottoman Empire. The Ottomans built ports, mined iron ore, and sold slaves here.In this era, Kafa City may be one of the few large-scale slave distribution centers on this earth.The Crimean Tatars sent all the plundered Russians, Poles, Lithuanians, Romanians and Ukrainians here, and then sold them to Anatolia, Rumilia, and the Middle East through Jewish merchants in the Ottoman Empire North Africa and even Central and Western Europe.According to records, on the coasts of the Black Sea and the Mediterranean Sea in this era, people often saw some maids humming Russian or Polish lullabies and shaking their master's children.It can be said that in this era, the Crimean Tatars may be the country with the largest proportion of maids in the world-this country is full of a large number of plundered female slaves and children.

People on the east coast are naturally very interested in female slaves.According to the estimates of Gao Mo and others, from the end of this year (1645) to the beginning of next year, about 500 to [-] Ming people will come to the east coast, and among these people, there may be as high as three-quarters of them. People are young and middle-aged men.This ratio is horrendous, because it means that the East Coast needs about five thousand women of working age to balance the sex ratio.At present, the Ottoman Empire collects [-] Bulgarian, Wallachian, and Moldavian women every year in the Rumily area and sells them to the East Coasters as "taxes", and the East Coasters themselves also introduce [-] people from Poland every year. Muscat merchants bought five or six hundred Persian and Baluchi female slaves, and there was still a shortfall of more than two thousand.

Now this gap lands in the famous Kaffa slave market.The scale of this slave market is huge, the number of slaves is extremely large, and the main products are women and children, and these two "commodities" are exactly the commodities that people on the east coast are very interested in.Especially those women with reproductive ability are the most urgently needed "commodities" for people on the east coast - not only to satisfy domestic needs, but also in the vast colonies of South Africa, New China and Australia. According to conservative estimates, there are 200 to 300 women Potential bachelors desperately need to solve puzzles.The business scale of the Kaffa slave market has grown enormously. The Turkish military officer who accompanied the people from the east bank privately revealed that according to incomplete statistics, in the past [-] years, the Crimean Tatars sold a total of More than [-] million slaves.And these slaves were all sold around the world by Jewish and Armenian merchants who controlled the economy of the Ottoman Empire, earning a huge amount of money for the Ottoman Empire.Among them, the Crimean Tatars who took huge risks to plunder the population in neighboring countries, their living conditions did not improve significantly, but on the contrary they forged countless enmities. A huge irony.

The Turkish soldiers at the gate did not stop the people from the east bank when they entered the city, because they saw the Sipahi cavalry unit guarding the people from the east bank. These cavalry, who are like the proud sons of heaven, reprimand or beat them.But for those Tatars, Nogais, Greeks or Jews who came to sell slaves or goods locally, these soldiers did not have a good face.Although many of these merchants have been closely inspected on the port wharf, the Turkish soldiers guarding the city gate still carefully checked their carriages, goods and luggage again.Over the years, the city of Kaffa has been attacked more than once by armed Cossacks who secretly came in canoes, and lost a lot of property and slaves.At that time, many Cossacks rose up among the people of various ethnic groups who came to trade, so they had to guard against them.

After successfully entering the city, Mo San, Made and others decided to go to the residence arranged by the Turks to rest for a few days, and wait for their partner, John Petrovich Hornician from Armenia, by the way. 's arrival

(End of this chapter)