Chapter 358 The Beginning of Famine

Chapter 358 The Beginning of Famine

USA, Ohio.

A strange odor emitted from a box of grain attracted the attention of a stevedore. When he opened the box with a crowbar, he found a pile of soft and brown potatoes in the hay.

The worker immediately realized the seriousness of the matter. Because this virus is contagious, not only the potatoes that have come into contact with this box of goods will rot, but even the potatoes in the entire Ohio may not be spared.

But the employer obviously didn't care about this and even teased him in return.

"Oh, Steven. Do you think you're a state representative? You're just a fucking, fucking stevedore now."

"Bobby, that's not what I'm talking about today. What I want to tell you is that you must burn all grains, not just potatoes, otherwise this disease will sweep across Ohio like the Black Death. You can't transport it away. , wherever this germ passes, no grass will grow."

Bobby Stark had a look of disgust on his greasy face.

"Is this what you want to say? Who will compensate for my losses? Or am I going to destroy my career and live on the streets like you?

I don't have that. You are such a good friend, you can take me in and provide me with food and clothing, so now you can turn against me! "

"You can apply for federal compensation." Steven Sipil's words are very unconfident, because he knows that it is extremely difficult to obtain federal compensation through this kind of thing, and even if there is compensation, the amount will be far less than Bao than the loss.

"Damn it, you might as well pray to God to rid the world of this damn mold forever. I don't want to hear your scaremongering here. Listen! Steven, there's five dollars on the table, take it and shut up and move on. Be your stevedore. Or get out of here, your choice."

Bobby Stark was completely disappointed with his friend. He was clearly blessed by his ancestors and was born with a silver spoon in his heart. However, he ended up on the wrong team every time, and now he can only live by selling coolies.

"It seems that people really shouldn't read too many books, otherwise they will become stupid." Bobby Stark came to this conclusion.

Products from Bobby's farm traveled down the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal to Washington, D.C., where they awaited shipment to ships across the ocean to Ireland.

In fact, Steven Sipil was not an alarmist. Potato late blight has been known as a devastating disease to this day. Infection with late blight can lead to widespread death of potatoes or a sharp reduction in yields, and this mold can not only be spread through contact, but can also be spread through water and air as long as the temperature and humidity are appropriate.

Usually, as long as crops infected with potato late blight are found in one area, the entire area will soon be infected. Of course, the degree of disaster will vary depending on the local temperature, humidity, and crop varieties.

The favorite disease of potato late blight is in rainy, cold and humid climates, such as the United Kingdom and Ireland.

Queens Village, Southern Ireland.

Scathach Jennings is twelve years old. Although she has the same name as the ancient Irish hero, she can neither use magic nor use a spear.

If there is something special about her compared to ordinary people, it is that she can read and write. Yes, in this era of Ireland, as a Catholic, her ability to read and write was indeed an incredible skill.

Because the British started a colonial plan many centuries ago, confiscating the property of the indigenous people of Ireland and planning to build a large number of plantations, just like the Anglo-Saxons did in North America.

The fate of the Irish should have been the same as that of the Indians in North America and the indigenous people of New Zealand and Australia. But fortunately, they chose to fight and received support from powerful countries on the European continent (Spain and France both tried to land on the island of Ireland). For this reason, the blood of the Irish did not stop even during the Glorious Revolution.

The Glorious Revolution was a non-violent coup launched by the British bourgeoisie and the new aristocracy in 1688 to overthrow the rule of James II and prevent the restoration of Catholicism. There was no bloodshed in this revolution, so historians call it the "Glorious Revolution."

But in fact Cromwell personally conquered Ireland, and the bodies piled up in Wexford alone were five meters high. Yes, it was about building landscapes, but 1688 was no longer the Middle Ages. At this time, the British had already defined themselves as a model for the civilized world.

The Irish nobles were the first to surrender to the British. In order to be accepted by the British, they put on British clothes and British lifestyles, abandoned Catholicism, believed in the Anglican Church, spoke English, and were appointed by the British to manage poor Ireland. Aboriginal people.

But the British would not let them go. The method they chose to colonize Ireland was very primitive. They first chose the "Tweening Order" of the Han Dynasty.

After the death of a local Irish noble, the land will be equally distributed to all sons, ensuring that there will be no big landowners on the island of Ireland.

But even though he was shameless at this time, he still did bad things in the name of fairness.

Soon the British found a new excuse, that is, the Irish were as Catholic as the Spanish, so they considered the Irish collaborators.

As a result, the British government began to openly massacre the Irish and confiscate their property. Then they took the opportunity to enact a series of punitive laws.

For example, Irish people are not allowed to own horses or donkeys, are not allowed to go to school, vote in elections, become public officials, own land, or own property exceeding 15 pounds, etc.

Some of these laws were still in place even before Irish independence.

Later, during the Napoleonic era, the British defined the Irish as allies of the French and repeated the same trick.

However, the interesting thing is that every time the British raised the butcher's knife, the Irish had not yet begun to call for help from their "allies", and their "allies" did not notice this.

There is a passage on January 23, 1799, when British Prime Minister William Pitt commented on Ireland.

"Ireland is possessed by an evil spirit. This evil spirit is deeply rooted in this people, including their moral character, manners and habits, as well as their intellectual deficiencies, barbarism, ignorance and backwardness.

Their religion and their hostility to the civilized world gave birth to a prejudice against the world and allowed superstition and cruelty to take root."

To put it simply, the British did not regard the Irish as their countrymen, or even as white people, but as black people, Indians, or whatever.

Historically, in 1829, Daniel O'Connell finally qualified the Irish to receive education through several generations of hard work.

Of course it was not an ordinary school, but a school specially established for Irish Catholics to prevent the English from contracting the plague of poverty and laziness.

But in fact, there are not many poor Irish people who can receive education on the island of Ireland, and Scathach Jennings is one of them, thanks to the fact that there is a priest living near her home.

At that time, Irish Catholics lived a miserable life, but these clergymen were not as miserable as they imagined. Although not as good as their counterparts in Europe, they can be said to be doing very well compared to ordinary Irish people.

But pure religious education also has great disadvantages, that is, the local people's knowledge level is as high as that of the Middle Ages. What we call common sense seems so "noble" or "deviant" in their eyes.

Scathach Jennings has an older brother, two younger brothers, and two younger sisters. Her family has two rooms, and a covered cabin is where her parents live, while the six of them live in one house. In a roofless adobe house.

(I haven’t found out the specific reason for this, but at that time, roofed houses were more advanced than roofless adobe houses.)

There was only one bed in the room, but Scáthach never worried about it collapsing because it was made of stone and covered with dried hay, but it had no bedspread.

Scathach's family farms ten acres (sixty acres), which is much better off than most of their fellow Irishmen.

Since the Irish could not own their own land, landowners rented it to them in small plots, often with only 3-4 acres for a family to survive.

(Some people may think that 3-4 acres is not too much, but the productivity of land at that time was far inferior to modern times. Grandpa Yuan is immortal. Moreover, landowners in Europe at that time were generally more ruthless than those in Asia. It was basically routine to take away 60% of the income. operate.)

In addition, Scathach's family also has three pigs, an old dog, and five chickens, including an egg-laying hen. This is the entire property of Scathach's family.

Their family eats potatoes for breakfast, potatoes for lunch, and potatoes for dinner.

However, they will not eat baked potatoes, fried potatoes, sauced potatoes, cold potatoes, or shredded potatoes, potato chips, and mashed potatoes.

In fact, the Irish at that time usually only had one way to eat potatoes, which was to cook them and eat them directly with some salt.

It is this monotonous food that feeds nearly 8.3 million people on the island of Ireland.

Just imagine what a horrific scene it would be if something went wrong with this food one day.

Vienna, Schönbrunn Palace.

Archbishop Rauscher didn't quite understand what Franz meant, including sending Austrian priests to the island of Ireland. He felt that if he wanted the church to help collect intelligence, he should disguise himself as an Anglican member and go to a big city like London or Portsmouth. City.

As for Ireland as a whole, cities including Dublin don't seem to be very important.

“Archduke Franz, if Ireland doesn’t want to eat potatoes, maybe they can choose to grow wheat, corn, sweet potatoes, rice and the like.

oh! Cassava is also a very good choice. Archduke Franz's cassava cultivation in Namibia was very successful.

When the local indigenous people saw that our people ate cassava without any discomfort, they believed that our gods were stronger than their gods, and the number of believers grew rapidly. Several major local tribes have converted to the church, and the total number of people has increased from 200 to 100,000 now."

It is obvious that Archbishop Rauscher is also not concerned about the life and death of the Irish. In contrast, he is more interested in the new indigenous believers in Namibia.

"Archbishop, the land on the island of Ireland is very tight. If we don't grow potatoes, we probably won't be able to feed so many people."

"Archduke Franz, you don't have to worry. When the time comes, they will go to mines, factories, or wherever they want to survive in other ways. As a smart person like you, don't you know that farmers want to survive through more than just farming?" Road?"

Archbishop Rauscher is not completely ignorant of the sufferings of the people, but his exposure to them in Vienna over the years has convinced him that there are always more choices than difficulties.

Under Franz's intervention, the economy of the Austrian Empire had made great progress compared with the same period in history, and Vienna, as the center of the empire, had made great progress.

Everyone seemed to be treated with kindness, and hunger seemed to be far away, because even during the great famine in Vienna in 1838, there were no hordes of people dying of cold and starvation.

Archbishop Rauscher cared more about Central America than Ireland. Archduke Franz's policy of replacing birds with cages had almost hollowed out the local indigenous people, and in order to fill this vacancy, the church had to transfer people from other places.

The situation in the Austrian Empire is very good, and few people are willing to leave. Even if they want to develop overseas, they will give priority to royal colonies such as West Africa. After all, Austrians in the Neletania region are almost all shareholders of overseas development companies. Of course it’s more motivating to work for yourself.

"Archbishop, you don't seem to care about your fellow Catholics in Ireland at all. I told you before that the British do not allow Irish people to do business, and there are not enough local factories to absorb so many people."

Franz was a little dissatisfied. The magician in front of him obviously wanted to help the Armenians as far away as the Ottomans. Why is there such indifference to the Irish?

"Archduke Franz, you mentioned what Louis Pasteur said when he refused your invitation. Science has no borders, but scientists have nationalities.

In fact, our church is the same. If those Irish people are on Austrian soil and are subjects of the Austrian Empire like us, then the church has a duty to help them and will do its best to help them.

But Ireland is in the UK, and the Irish are British. I am the religious leader of the Austrian Empire. I am afraid it would not be appropriate to save the people of the enemy country with donations from the subjects of the empire, right? "

After hearing this, Franz was filled with dark clues. Before, he only thought that Archbishop Rauscher was a magician, but now he realized that he was a smart-aleck magician.

"Archbishop, in addition to worshiping God, the church's obligation is to spread the gospel to the world. This gospel can be from God, of course it can also be from Austria, or from the Habsburg family."

Of course Archbishop Rauscher understood what Franz said, but he still couldn't understand what was the use of showing kindness to those Irish people? Can the Austrian Empire still carve a piece of land next to the British mainland?

In fact, Franz's approach is similar to the approach of treating prisoners of war preferentially. After all, capital has no borders. If the capitalists lose, the worst they can do is run from the UK to the United States.

But whether it was World War I or World War II, the people who really fought on the battlefield were civilians. They were either out of patriotism, or were forced to do nothing, or they wanted to maintain world peace, or they wanted to plow the fields for their own country. To acquire land, or to establish Greater East Asia and co-prosperity, in short, the rulers will get a high-sounding reason to make them feel that they are right.

What Franz wants to do now is to fundamentally dismantle the British's combat effectiveness, and the Irish are the best breakthrough.