Disaster in Italy
As soon as the main force of the Imperial Army arrived outside Udine, the mayor of Udine came before the Emperor as a representative, hoping to negotiate with him.
After some discussion, the mayor was forced to agree to disarm the city's defenses and pay 80,000 ducats to the Imperial Army.
In addition, they also had to surrender all the large reserves of grain and fodder stored in Udine's city granaries to avoid the city being plundered by the Imperial Army.
Soon after, Udine, the most important city in northeastern Venice, opened its gates and surrendered to the Emperor.
After receiving the ransom, Laszlo waved his hand and distributed most of the ransom to the soldiers who participated in the siege.
This process was strictly supervised to ensure that every soldier received the full amount of gold or silver coins.
This immediately boosted the morale of the German mercenaries, who had been discontent due to continuous difficult marches and significant casualties.
The soldiers of the Imperial standing army also received rewards, and many praised the Emperor's generosity in their hearts.
Laszlo took the opportunity to announce that the army would not enter the city for rest.
He assigned a thousand-man army to garrison Udine and control the city, awaiting Albrecht's arrival with his army from Cividale.
The main force of the army rested outside the city for one night before continuing west to take the next important city, Pordenone.
He also dispatched messengers on horseback to Aquileia, instructing the forces besieging Aquileia to continue west immediately after capturing the city, advancing parallel to the main army, and finally meeting at Treviso.
The southern offensive did not encounter much resistance; Aquileia was a city of only two to three thousand inhabitants, and its defenses almost automatically disintegrated after the Venetians retreated across the board.
Although it was once one of the wealthiest and most glorious cities of the Roman Empire, it became very desolate after Attila destroyed it.
In 1240, Holy Roman Emperor Frederick II, the "Wonder of the World," rebuilt this city as one of the outposts for attacking Italy.
Later, Aquileia changed hands and was plundered several times during the War of the Neapolitan Succession, being occupied successively by the Duke of Anjou, the King of Naples, and the Pope, eventually falling into the hands of the Venetians.
The southern force led by mercenary commander Otto took this ill-fated city within a day, and the castle garrison abandoned resistance and surrendered to the Imperial Army.
The mercenaries attempted to loot the wealthiest church in Aquileia, Santa Maria Koremajo, but were stopped by the supervisor appointed by the Emperor.
Reluctantly, they could only turn to stripping the city's residents of all their belongings.
When Otto rode his warhorse swaggering into the city, wanting to see the legendary magnificent fountain with 99 spouts, he discovered that it had been completely destroyed by his unruly mercenaries.
Many ancient Roman ruins in the city were damaged to some extent, but no one cared about these; perhaps artists would be heartbroken, but mercenaries would not.
The mercenaries, frustrated at not having plundered much, received the Emperor's order to advance west.
Thus, on the land along the Venetian Bay, a four-thousand-strong Imperial Army began to charge forward relentlessly.
Otto knew that the remaining Venetian forces were all holed up in Treviso and had no power to stop their advance, so he had no qualms about the Venetians having to pay to avoid disaster wherever the Imperial Army went; if not for the Emperor's supervisor restraining them, they probably would have gone even further.
Unlike the relatively easy main and southern forces, the northern army led by Albrecht had a much harder time.
He led his army north along the Natisone River and soon entered the hilly terrain of the Alps foothills.
After several days of difficult marching, the Imperial Army finally arrived outside Cividale, and the watchtowers on the surrounding mountain peaks had already spotted their presence and lit signal fires.
As a border stronghold, Cividale had a standing garrison of four hundred Venetians, including one hundred crossbowmen and three hundred infantry.
Seeing that battle was inevitable, Albrecht immediately ordered his troops to prepare for the siege.
He ordered the main force to storm the main urban area on the left bank of the Natisone River, while he personally led an elite force to raid the urban area on the right bank.
In less than half a day, the urban area on the right bank of the river completely fell, and a fierce battle broke out between the two sides on the bridge connecting the two urban areas.
This bridge, a sturdy stone bridge, had been built only two years prior; the defenders could not destroy it and could only dispatch troops to block the bridgehead.
Albrecht bravely charged onto the bridge, wielding his longsword with powerful arm strength, personally slaying several Venetian defenders.
His personal guards closely protected against sneak attacks from Venetian crossbowmen, and under the leadership of the valiant marshal, they completely annihilated the defenders occupying the bridgehead.
The remaining dozens of desperate defenders were forced to surrender to the Imperial Army; they were all beheaded on the stone bridge, as a sacrifice to the soldiers who died in the siege.
Many residents had fled into the mountains with their valuables before the Imperial Army arrived; those who remained in the city witnessed the tragic state of the defenders, and from then on, people called this bridge the "Devil's Bridge."
In fact, there was a reason for Albrecht's urgency: the troops were fighting deep in the mountains, with limited men and insufficient food supplies.
Most of his men were infantry wearing half-armor, and they had to unload some weight to travel lightly, each carrying only a few days' dry rations.
If they could not quickly take Cividale, the entire army would starve to death in the mountains.
Fortunately, he successfully captured the city before their military provisions ran out, and after plundering the city, the army gained many supplies.
Just one day later, the Emperor's messenger arrived from Udine, telling Albrecht to lead his army to Udine first, and then to catch up with the main force commanded by the Emperor.
Albrecht was stunned when he saw the Emperor's order.
He had thought he was extremely fast and should have made it to the siege of Udine, but he never expected the Emperor to take it with such ease.
"Marshal, if my estimation is correct, His Majesty the Emperor should already be near Pordenone now; if you move a little slower, you might have to reach Treviso to catch up with His Majesty."
Hearing this, Albrecht looked up at the distant rolling mountains, feeling an indescribable helplessness in his heart.
The next day, Albrecht left three hundred men to occupy Cividale and led the remaining army on a rapid march along the Roman-era road to Udine.
Large swathes of Venetian territory were lost; in Northern Italy, they learned that the Emperor's army had already besieged Pordenone, and fishermen had even seen Imperial Army soldiers by the lake shore.
This news quickly reached Venice, causing widespread panic.
People were not worried that the Emperor could cross the lake and directly attack Venice, but if all land territories were lost, life in Venice would not be easy.
Territories in the Balkans were also successively lost, and attacks from all directions left the Venetians completely overwhelmed.
The only territories still under Venetian control were the besieged Spoleto, the naturally protected Corfu, southern Greece, and the Aegean Sea islands.
The Despot of Epirus, seeing that Venice, which had promised to protect him, was being steadily defeated by the Emperor, had already begun to tremble with fear.
He was afraid that the Emperor might one day remember him and send a force to swallow Epirus.
On the other side, Jean de Dunois and Jean Bureau's armies launched attacks on Milan from two directions, besieging Novara and Pavia respectively.
Like Venice, Milan's situation instantly became precarious.
Venice and Milan, who had fought a thirty-year war for dominance in Northern Italy, probably never imagined that the intervention of France and Austria would so easily destroy what they considered their "strength," and the fate of Italy was also enveloped by a terrible storm.