As the sun sets, winter on the Crimean peninsula is unusually cold. Ma De tightened the bearskin coat on his body, he from Guangxi couldn't stand the cold climate in the mainland, but Mo San, who was standing next to him, seemed more adaptable, although the northeasterner's nose was red from the cold, but he was eyebrow-to-eye, eyebrows and eyebrows with a young Tatar woman beside him. Ma De secretly rolled his eyes, Nima, this woman has such a heavy smell of sheep, you can bear it! If it weren't for the fact that this woman was the daughter of a tribal chieftain in the Crimean Khanate, Mader wouldn't even bother to make a false deal with her.

They were accompanied by a detachment of Sipahi cavalry stationed in Odessa, led by an officer named Suke, said to be a distant relative of Hassan, who was ordered to lead more than 100 cavalry under his command to protect the diplomatic and commercial missions from the Republic of China on the east coast of the New World. Speaking of this mission, in fact, it is only two people who travel through the crowd, Ma De and Mo San, and a few followers, as for most of the personnel of the mission and the person in charge, Gao Mo, who has now moved to Istanbul to meet with their old friend Nasukh Pasha and the representatives of the Hornisian family, a merchandise agent.

In December, Mader and Mo San arrived in Odessa, an important town in the western part of the Crimean Khanate, by boat and then on horseback, and then recruited Tatar herders who volunteered to fight in the Far East with a large bounty in the nearby area - with the approval of the Ottoman Empire in advance, and also gave some noble people of the Crimean Khanate a large gift.

The local Tatar herders were poor and fierce at the same time. They didn't trust outsiders, even if they were accompanied by Ottoman lords. The recruitment of East Coasters was stalled from the start. Fortunately, the two men were accompanied by four Tatar emigrated cavalry officers, which played a crucial role in bringing the easterners closer to each other. They had all been captured by the Poles during the war and sold to the east coast, but now they were very excited to have the opportunity to return to their homeland. However, after years of living in the New World, they have fully adapted to the East Coast lifestyle, and their families are also in the East Coast, so it is not unreasonable that they will say goodbye.

After these people spent about a month contacting their original family members one after another, the work of the East Coast people suddenly opened up the situation. The local Tatar herdsmen had to pay taxes to the nobles, and the Ottoman armies were responsible for supporting the supply of food and grass when they crossed the border. Life has been difficult. Misfortune is not a single line. The local Great Khans and nobles also fought against the Russians in the north, the Poles in the west, and the ubiquitous Cossacks, and the subjects of the Crimean Khanate had a hard time.

In such a situation, when the Tatar East Bank officers patted their chests to ensure a good life on the East Bank, and at the same time took out a large number of gifts and gold and silver. Start with their kinship first. One after another, Tatar herders came to Odessa. Accept the employment of the people on the East coast to fight in the Far East. The East Coast people have signed formal employment contracts with them, and it doesn't matter if they understand it or not, it is procedurally impeachable. The salaries of these men were slightly lower than those of the Polish veterans recruited at Danzig, who had fought for an average of more than a dozen years. However, some of the more skilled veterans will be paid one or two notches higher, on par with those of the Poles.

Even the two military laymen, Ma De and Mo San, could see that the technical and tactical level of these Tatar herdsmen was not as good as those Polish soldiers. You know, the oldest of the Polish soldiers even participated in the First Battle of Khotin in 1621, which defeated the Turkish sultan wolf Bèi, and did not lack skill, experience, or courage. These Tatars were much worse in comparison, and their riding skills were probably better than those of the Poles, and their fighting skills were not bad, but they were far less organized and disciplined, and their fighting spirit was not as tenacious as those of the Poles. In many cases, even the "free Cossacks" (fugitive serfs, as opposed to the "canonized Cossacks") who were outside the control of the Polish government were sometimes able to deceive them - but this did not happen very often, because objectively speaking, the Cossacks were not much superior in combat power, and they had a great numerical advantage.

On the east bank of the Odessa region, more than 300 Tatar herders were recruited, about half of whom had gone to Russia or Poland to burn and loot, and barely had some combat experience. Every year the Crimean Tatars went to Russia, Poland, Transylvania and other places to capture slaves, which they called the "harvest of the steppe peoples". This kind of raiding will naturally cause great resistance from the local population, and confrontation is inevitable, so those who have participated in these operations will have some combat experience.

But the remaining half of them are just ordinary poor herdsmen, and they are all very young. Most of them had nothing but a good horsemanship, and a few of them brought other gifts from their families, curved sabers, and then went to the temporary camp of the East Bankers in Odessa. After training them for half a month, the Tatar cavalry officers led them and accompanied by some Turkish officers on horseback to the port of Kaffa on the Crimean peninsula, which was also the destination of Mader and Mosan.

The beautiful journey was soon over, and Mo San gestured to the Tartar girl, and then laughed and galloped into Kaffa City with Ma De and the others. Just kidding, there are two tigresses, one big and one small, in the local family, and he only dares to tease and tease the girls outside. The Tartar girl glanced at the Turkish soldiers in high hats guarding the gates of Kaffa, and cursed a few words before walking away.

Although nominally part of the Crimean Khanate, the city was actually controlled by their suzerain, the Ottoman Empire, where the Ottomans built ports, mined iron ore, and traded slaves. Kaffa City was probably one of the few large slave settlements on the planet at this time. The Crimean Tatars sent plundered Russians, Poles, Lithuanians, Romanians, and Ukrainians, who then sold them to Anatolia, Rumili, the Middle East, North Africa, and even Central and Western Europe through Jewish merchants from the Guò Ottoman Empire. It is recorded that on the Black Sea and Mediterranean coasts of this era, it was common to see maids humming Russian or Polish lullabies and shaking their master's children. It can be said that in this era, perhaps the Crimean Tatars had the highest percentage of maids in the world - a country full of slave girls and children who had been taken captive.

Naturally, the people of the East Coast were very interested in female slaves. According to Gao Mo and others' estimates, between the end of this year (1645) and the beginning of next year, about 8,000 to 10,000 Ming people will come to the east coast, and it is likely that up to three-quarters of these people will be young men. This ratio is frightening, as it means that East Coasters need about five thousand working-age women to balance the gender ratio. At present, the Ottoman Empire collects 2,000 Bulgarian, Wallachian, and Moldavian women in the Rumili region every year and sells them to the East Coasters as "taxes", and the East Coasters themselves also import 3,500 people from Poland every year, and buy 5 or 600 Persian and Baloch female slaves from Muscat merchants, which is still a gap of more than 2,000 people.

This gap now falls on the famous Kaffa slave market. The slave market was huge, the slaves were numerous, and the focus was on women and children, both of which were of great interest to the people of the East Coast. Women who are fertile in particular are the most urgently needed "commodities" for the East Coasters - not only to satisfy the needs of the country, but also to the vast colonies of South Africa, New China, and Australia, according to conservative estimates of 4,000 to 5,000 potential singles. The business of the Kaffa slave market was so large that the Turkish officers who accompanied the people from the east coast privately revealed that according to incomplete statistics, over the past two hundred years, the Crimean Tatars had sold more than three million slaves to Turkey from this port. These slaves were sold around the world by Jewish and Armenian merchants who controlled the Ottoman economy, earning the Ottoman Empire a huge amount of money. It is a great irony that the Crimean Tatars, who took great risks to plunder the population in neighboring countries, did not improve their living conditions very significantly, but instead formed numerous grudges.

When the easterners entered the city, the Turkish soldiers at the gate did not stop them, because they saw the Sipahi cavalry guarding the easterners, which made them, ordinary big-headed soldiers from local troops, dare not act disrespectfully in the slightest, for fear of being reprimanded or scolded by these proud horsemen. But the soldiers were not embarrassed by the Tatars, Nogais, Greeks, or Jews who came to trade slaves or goods in the country. Although many of the merchants had already been closely inspected at the port docks, the Turkish soldiers guarding the gates carefully checked their wagons, goods, and luggage. The city of Kaffa has been attacked more than once over the years by armed Cossacks who have come in canoes, losing a lot of property and slaves. Many of the Cossacks had been mixed with the various ethnic groups who had come to trade, so they had to guard against it.

After entering the city, Mo San, Ma De and others decided to go to the accommodation arranged by the Turks to rest for a few days. Petrovich. The arrival of Hornisian. (To be continued......)