War Palace and Knee Pillow, Austria’s Destiny

Chapter 770 The British’s relief for work

Island of Ireland, Queens Village.

Scathach Jennings has lost a lot of weight, and the food in the cellar has been divided among the families.

She began to seriously consider going to the workhouse. Although she might be selected to be sent to Australia to marry a criminal, there was really no food to eat at home.

The two younger brothers were so hungry that they were skin and bones. Among the two younger sisters, the thirteen-year-old Ella was fine, but the three-year-old Holika was often too hungry to sleep. Her eyes were deeply sunken and looked a bit scary.

The eldest brother, Patrit, was away from home all day long, and all the farm work fell on his parents. Bandits began to appear in the countryside, and those people specialized in robbing poor people's villages.

After all, the landlord has dogs, guns, and bodyguards at home, but usually poor people do not have these, so robbing the latter is obviously much safer than robbing the former.

As a result, there are more and more poor people. At first, their village will try to provide relief, but as the food in the church cellar becomes less and less, they can only choose to sit on the sidelines because they themselves can no longer survive.

Finally, the robbers visited Queen Village, but fortunately there were guns and gunpowder in the church cellar. The men in the village took up arms and resisted desperately. After fighting for an unknown reason all night, no robbers dared to come to the village to cause trouble again.

In fact, villagers generally don't know how to shoot, and most of them have night blindness. If the bandits don't hold torches, the villagers don't know where to shoot.

In fact, the people who came to rob were also villagers from other villages. They just wanted to live and had no plans to fight desperately. If they were really desperadoes, they wouldn't only dare to rob poor villages. After all, farmers don't have much money.

However, the fierce fighting that night woke up all the surrounding landowners, and then they began to pay to hire children and women from various families to work in their manors.

Not only were they given money, but they were also given food, so the villagers were just hungry, but not starving to death or going to the streets to beg.

Of course, no one will take desperate risks, and both parties will always be in peace.

Scathach liked to clean dishes, tables, mirrors, and whatever else, because he had money for it, two and a quarterpence a day, and a bowl of wheat soup.

Although the mixed wheat soup is actually made from horse feed, it can be seen that the Baron is actually very reluctant to give up, always yelling angrily, or silently wiping tears.

But the Baroness is just the opposite. Mrs. Jasmine has no children, so she likes the children in the village very much.

And Mrs. Jasmine always warned the Baron that these wages and wheat porridge for the children are necessary if he does not want to be chopped up and fed to pigs one day, or buried in the ground as fertilizer.

Scathach didn't quite understand this sentence. After all, in her heart, the Baron was the most powerful person in the eight villages.

In fact, Queen Village did not continue to grow potatoes, but chose to grow other high-yielding crops. Although the yield was not as high as potatoes, it could barely satisfy their hunger. In addition, the laborers could get some money, so they could barely survive.

Franz's exhortation was successful to a certain extent. In fact, research on Bordeaux mixture for controlling potato late blight has also been proven to be feasible.

It's just that the industrial capacity of the Austrian Empire is limited at this time. Although there is no problem supplying the very small disaster-stricken area of ​​their own country, they may not be able to afford the price if they want to sell it to other countries.

Moreover, Bordeaux mixture is not a high-end industrial product, and it is very difficult to imitate, making it a piece of cake for the great powers.

Therefore, Franz is prepared to enjoy the technological dividends for a while longer and does not intend to let them spread prematurely.

Franz was generally disappointed as he walked through the land of Ireland. He saw almost no sign of resistance.

On the contrary, I encountered someone who dared to jump out and rob the caravan. In fact, anyone with a little knowledge would not take action against a caravan of this size.

This is not because the fleet is too large or the goods sold are strange, but mainly because there are too many people. After all, businessmen are driven by profits and usually do not employ too many people.

A large number of people usually means that the things above are very important, or the people are very important, which are not something ordinary robbers can deal with.

Generally speaking, as long as a few shots are fired casually, the robbers blocking the road will run away.

Franz also saw some public projects, which were very similar to those in Austria. However, they were expected to provide 10,000 jobs, but the actual number of people affected by the disaster was so large that the establishment could only be expanded again and again.

In the end, the number was expanded to 440,000, but the budget was not increased by a penny. The result is of course one can imagine.

What's even worse is that due to the crazy rise in food prices, the theoretical wage that is enough to support a family has become two pence, and in some areas it is even only one penny a day. This price can't even hire a child laborer in London.

Moreover, most of the power of the food-for-work projects is in the hands of bureaucrats and local councils. When they see that there is so much labor, they naturally expand the scale of the projects, which is the so-called intensification.

However, at this time, the vast majority of the Irish people had already been tortured by the famine and were malnourished and exhausted. These people were either skinny or bloated and simply could not bear the high-intensity physical labor.

As a result, a strange phenomenon emerged, that is, a work-for-relief project that was heavily registered and strictly censored eventually turned into a sit-in protest.

As a result, the British approach not only failed to solve the famine problem, but also led to a large number of unfinished projects in Ireland. Franz felt that it would not be long before these projects were unfinished.

After all, the project volume has far exceeded the government's budget, and the local government does not want to make up the difference.

Theoretically, this kind of wrangling should come to an end, but soon the entire UK will enter a greater crisis, a crisis planned by themselves.

"It seems the British learn very quickly."

Franz sighed.

"But they don't seem to have learned the lesson, and they don't seem to want to save the Irish.

Your Highness, look at the wheat, cattle and sheep outside the window. The British are fully capable of solving the famine problem in Ireland. Even the so-called famine should not exist in the first place.

There is absolutely no need for you to come here, it is the British who are to blame. If you deliver those grains parked on the dock to the country, the people will definitely thank you for your kindness. "

Archbishop Rauscher said earnestly, but Franz just smiled and did not answer.

It was true that the ship carrying grain was parked on the shore, but how could those hungry people with only a few pennies in their hands afford it?

In the past two years, the price of food in the UK has increased by 75%. In fact, the price of food in the UK has been rising since 1840. In 1844, it increased by 46% compared with 1840.

Although grain prices in the Austrian Empire fluctuated, the trend had always been downward since 1840. As of the autumn of 1846, prices had dropped by 5%.

Due to the fluctuations, the price of food in Austria is less than half of the price of food in the UK.

Continuing to send food from these colonies to Austria will not increase happiness. Instead, it will make the farmers of the Austrian Empire hate it.

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