Chapter 916 Funeral
Chapter 78 Funeral
In fact, Queen Victoria and Prince Albert should not have been unable to detect the fishy things under their noses, but the former was busy making, raising, and walking babies, while the latter was busy creating spectacles.
Moreover, the loss of an entire Mediterranean fleet is too shocking. Never before had such a disastrous naval defeat occurred in British history.
The main reason is that no one will believe this kind of thing. After all, the French Navy has always avoided fighting before, and the Austrian Navy has simply lost its reputation driven by the British propaganda machine.
It only relies on sneak attacks and land forces to fight wars. What kind of navy is this?
In fact, due to Franz's influence, the Austrian navy often adopts the combat method that is most beneficial to itself.
However, this also left an impression that it was impossible to fight a tough battle. The propaganda machines of the British and French seized on this point to spread rumors.
Therefore, no one in the UK believes that the Mediterranean fleet will be destroyed. At most, it will be like a historical defeat, losing a few ships, or temporarily losing dominance in the Mediterranean, and that's it.
At this time, the news about the British royal family was not as closed as later generations. The Victoria couple really did not believe that this would happen.
And at this time, there was something more worrying for them in Britain. The Chartists demanded that the Queen fulfill her promise of an eight-hour working day.
The young girl who became pregnant for the first time did not flinch in the face of the surging crowd. She put on her formal attire, picked up the scepter that symbolized the power of the British royal family and walked onto the balcony.
Facing the morning sun and the crowd, the moment she appeared on the balcony, both the soldiers and the workers on the parade stared at Queen Victoria on the balcony and held their breath.
At that moment, the girl felt like she had a heavy burden on her shoulders, so she said those words easily.
"There will be bread! There will be butter! Everything will be fine. Thank you, it is you who have made Britain strong. Without you, there would be no Britain today. I, the Queen of England, Victoria, hereby swear that I will protect Your due rights, property"
Those words once won her countless applause, made those conceited nobles cast admiring glances, and made officials no longer dare to underestimate her.
However, it was not until now that Victoria became Queen that she realized the weight of those words and the price they had to pay.
In fact, it is a luxury to improve people's livelihood. Industrial costs, agricultural costs, and war costs will all rise.
The aristocrats opposed it, the politicians opposed it, the capitalists also opposed it, and everyone was dissatisfied. And these people can also protest, march, demonstrate, or even directly assassinate.
Victoria also struggled, but she soon discovered that she was as small as a drop of water in front of the vast ocean called profit.
So Victoria began to get married and have children, hoping to live an ordinary life.
During this period, Queen Victoria met her true love, Prince Albert, and the woman who fell in love no longer wanted to get involved in those annoying political affairs.
Prince Albert could not ignore the situation in Britain at this time. He had personally been to Ireland and he had seen the horrors there.
Although local officials tried their best to cover up, they deliberately sent Prince Albert to farms where famine did not occur, and even deliberately provided alcohol to the farm laborers.
The purpose was to show Prince Albert a group of hopelessly lazy farmers.
When Prince Albert visited the farm, he found that the crops here were growing better than those in England, and the farmers were lying drunkenly in the hayloft.
In contrast, local officials accompanied him to inspect the farm, sweating under the scorching sun.
A more "considerate" prince would have been moved by the hard-working spirit of these officials, and would have been disdainful of the lazy and drunken farmers.
However, Prince Albert is not a loser who has never seen the world. If those fat-headed officials worked so hard every day, they would have been covered in tendons instead of having to drag themselves forward.
Moreover, the officials endure hardships and stand hard work, while the farmers are lazy and drunk. This is obviously not in line with his common sense.
In addition, local officials deliberately packed Prince Albert's schedule, which also made him notice something unusual.
However, as an excellent politician and a nobleman who received aristocratic education from an early age, it is just a basic operation to keep his emotions and anger in check.
Before a grand banquet was over, Prince Albert secretly left with his guards.
In the countryside, he saw the true face of Ireland. The land was barren and overgrown, and the houses made of mud and weeds were full of cracks. Just a slight shake could destroy them.
At the head of the village, a woman with shriveled breasts was wandering on both sides of the road with her blackened baby in her arms, eyes blank, which made people feel both pitiful and weird.
The village is full of skinny men and women, almost all of them have goldfish eyes and bodies that would make even a ballet dancer feel too slender.
Piles of feces filled the streets, and the stench of bloated corpses was spreading. There were no wild dogs or vultures to dispose of the carcasses because they had already been eaten.
Prince Albert also saw a man covered in black cloth carrying a bucket to water the corpses. This strange scene was horrifying.
However, Prince Albert still walked up to the man after taking a deep breath. The guards around him had no choice but to follow Prince Albert.
"I'm sorry, sir. I wanted to interrupt you, could you tell me what you are doing?"
"Water." The man replied weakly.
"Why did you do this?" Prince Albert asked in confusion.
"I want them to come back to life." A glimmer of hope appeared on the man's lifeless face.
Prince Albert took a deep breath. He didn't know how to get the man in front of him to give up such a meaningless behavior.
"Who are they to you?"
The skinny man pointed at the swollen and smelly corpses with his slender fingers and said.
"My father, my mother, my brother, my wife, my son, my daughter, my dog."
Prince Albert was silent for a long time after hearing this, but he still mustered up the courage to speak.
"Sir, if you don't mind, could you please let me hold a simple and decent funeral for them?"
"ah!"
A hoarse and miserable roar came from the man's throat, and he fell to his knees with a roar.
The man wanted to say something, but his body was too weak and he was so excited that he passed out.
Prince Albert fulfilled his promise and invited a priest to hold a simple and decent funeral for the man's family.
However, the god of luck did not favor the poor man. On the day after his family's funeral, the man who watered the bodies of his family members in an attempt to revive them passed away from this world full of pain.
This incident greatly touched Prince Albert, but despite his status, he still could not persuade the government and Parliament to take substantive action against Ireland.