Chapter 358 The Beginning of Famine

Ohio, USA.

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

The worker immediately realized the seriousness of the matter, because the virus was contagious. Not only would the potatoes that had come into contact with the box rot, but all the potatoes in Ohio might not be spared.

But the employer obviously didn't care about this and teased him instead.

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

"Bobby, I'm not here to talk about this today. I want to tell you that you must burn all the grain, not just the potatoes, otherwise the germs will sweep across Ohio like the Black Death. And you can't transport it away. Wherever the germs pass, there will be no grass."

Bobby Stark's greasy face showed a look of disgust.

"Is that what you're saying? Then who will compensate me for my losses? Or am I going to ruin my future and live on the streets like you?

I don't have a good friend like you who can take me in and provide me with food and clothing, and now you can come against me!"

"You can apply for federal compensation." Steven Sipil's words were very unconfident, because he knew that it would be harder than climbing to the sky to get federal compensation through such a thing, and even if there was compensation, the amount would be much less than Bobby's loss.

"Damn it, you might as well pray to God to make this damn mold disappear from the world forever. I don't want to hear you scaremongering here. Listen! Steven, there are five dollars on the table, take it and shut up, and continue to be a loader. Or get out of here, it's your choice."

Bobby Stark was extremely disappointed with his friend. He was obviously a young master who was born with a golden spoon and had the protection of his ancestors, but he always stood on the wrong side and now he can only make a living by selling hard labor.

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

Bobby's farm products went along the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal and arrived in Washington, where they were waiting to be shipped to Ireland on the other side of the ocean.

In fact, Steven Sipil was not exaggerating. Potato late blight has been called a devastating disease until today. Infection with late blight can cause large-scale death of potatoes or a sharp reduction in yield, and this mold can not only be transmitted through contact, but also through water and air as long as the temperature and humidity are suitable.

Usually, as long as a crop infected with potato late blight is found in an area, the entire area will soon be infected. Of course, the degree of disaster will vary with the local temperature, humidity, and crop varieties.

And potato late blight loves rainy, cold and humid climates, such as Britain and Ireland

Queen Village in southern Ireland.

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

If there is anything special about her compared to ordinary people, it is that she can read and write. Yes, in Ireland at this time, as a Catholic, her ability to read and write is indeed a remarkable 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 had tried to land on the island of Ireland), so 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 led an expedition to Ireland, and the pile of corpses in Wexford alone was five meters high. Yes, it is to build landscapes, but 1688 is not the Middle Ages. At this time, the British have defined themselves as a model of the civilized world.

The Irish nobles were the first to surrender to the British. In order to be accepted by the British, they wore British clothes and British lifestyles, abandoned Catholicism, believed in the Church of England, spoke English, and were appointed by the British to manage the poor Irish natives.

But the British would not let them go. The way Britain chose to colonize Ireland was very primitive. First, it chose the "Enfeoffment Order" of the Han Dynasty.

After the death of the local Irish nobles, the land would be divided equally among all sons to ensure that there would be no big landowners on the island of Ireland.

However, although it was shameless at this time, it still did bad things under the banner of fairness.

Soon the British found a new excuse, that is, the Irish believed in Catholicism like the Spanish, so they believed that the Irish were collaborators.

So the British government began to slaughter the Irish openly and confiscated their property. Then they took the opportunity to formulate a series of punitive laws.

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

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.

In history, 182 O'Connell finally made the Irish qualified to receive education through the efforts of several generations.

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 the average Irish.

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 Scathach never worried about it collapsing because it was made of stone and covered with sun-dried hay, but unfortunately there was 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 this progress was particularly obvious in Vienna, the center of the empire.

Everyone seemed to be treated kindly, and hunger seemed to have gone away, because even during the great famine of 1838, there were no groups of people dying of starvation and freezing in Vienna.

Archbishop Rauscher was more concerned about Central America than Ireland. Archduke Franz's policy of replacing birds with new ones almost emptied the local indigenous people, and in order to fill this gap, the church had to transfer people from other places.

The situation in the Austrian Empire was very good, and few people were willing to leave. Even if they wanted to develop overseas, they would give priority to royal colonies such as West Africa. After all, almost all Austrians in the Neretania region were shareholders of overseas development companies, and working for themselves was of course more motivated.

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

Franz was a little dissatisfied. The charlatan in front of him clearly wanted to help the Armenians far away in the Ottoman Empire. Why was he so indifferent to the Irish?

"Archduke Franz, you mentioned a sentence Louis Pasteur said when he rejected 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 no choice but to do its best to help them.

But Ireland is in Britain, and the Irish are British. I am the religious leader of the Austrian Empire. It is probably not appropriate to use the donations of the subjects of the empire to save the people of the enemy country?"

Franz was very upset after hearing this. He thought Archbishop Rauscher was just a charlatan before, but now he knows that he is a charlatan who thinks he is smart.

"Archbishop, the church's obligation is not only to worship God, but also to spread the gospel to the world. This gospel can be God's, of course, it can also be Austrian, or the Habsburg family."

Archbishop Rauscher certainly understood Franz's words, but he still couldn't understand what was the point of showing goodwill to those Irish people? Could the Austrian Empire still cut a piece of land next to the British mainland?

In fact, Franz's approach is similar to the practice of treating prisoners of war well. After all, capital has no borders. If the capitalists lose the war, they can just run away from Britain to the United States.

However, whether it was World War I or World War II, the people who really fought to the death on the battlefield were civilians. They were either patriotic, or forced to do so, or to maintain world peace, or to plow land for their own country, or to establish the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Belt. In short, the rulers would get a high-sounding reason to make them feel that they were right.

What Franz had to do now was to fundamentally disintegrate the British's fighting power, and the Irish were the best breakthrough point.