Chapter 54: Turn Britain into India! (Part 1)
PS: Fixed a small BUG, the order of the chapters is wrong, the previous chapter "Have a Break!" history! " is the fifty-third chapter, and this chapter is the fifty-fourth chapter.
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September 1348, London, the capital of the Kingdom of England
The tall and sturdy Tower of London, a typical medieval castle, stands majestically on the banks of the Thames, overlooking the city and wilderness below.
In this era, the future famous Buckingham Palace was still three hundred years away, and the Tower of London, the future royal prison and execution ground, assumed the functions of the royal palace. From the Plantagenet dynasty to the Stuart dynasty, all dynasties of England Kings were crowned, ascended the throne, abdicated and died here... From the window of the White Tower in the center of the Tower of London, you can overlook the urban area of London, which is not that big today, and the Thames River that has been flowing slowly for thousands of years.
However, the Thames River flowing through London at this moment not only does not have the fragrance of birds and flowers and sparkling waves after comprehensive management in the 21st century, it is even more terrifying than the "European sewers" where fish and shrimp disappeared during the Industrial Revolution. ——The turbid river is filled with a horrible stench. At a casual glance, you can see piles of dead people slowly rotting on the river beach. Among the slightly undulating waves, there are countless floating corpses that are disgusting and deadly! Yes! The Thames was littered with rotting corpses, mostly human, but also cows, horses, and pigs. Many times, these bodies wash up on the shore. Then packs of wild dogs would pounce on them, barking and fighting over a bite of the dirty carrion.
Ominous crows rested on the floating corpses in the river, lowering their heads from time to time to peck at the "organic floating objects" at their feet. The messy bones filled the river beach. Some of them had only bones left, but some still had a lot of rotten flesh left. From the rotten and swollen abdominal cavity of the corpse, colorful internal organs flowed out and were scattered everywhere on the river bank, attracting countless dogs to feast on it - this scene was like a city of death.
But this city is not really dead. In the field of vision, there are still a few living people scattered here and there, like walking zombies, staggering to the river to fetch water, just beside the disgusting floating corpses of dead people. On the edge... it seemed that most of these living people were skinny, unkempt, more like ghosts than humans, but they were still alive, so much so that Miss Ma Tong was considering whether to kill them so that they could be freed as soon as possible.
"... Damn it! Is this really the Thames in London? It looks more like the legendary Ganges full of corpses!"
Standing at the window of the White Tower, Senior Sister Ma Tong covered her nose with a perfumed handkerchief, pointed at the disgusting smelly river in front of her and said - It was late summer at the moment, and even the temperature in London was very high. High, so the body decomposes very quickly. The main stream of the Thames River in front of us is in relatively good condition due to its large volume of water and wide river surface. However, the few small tributaries that flow through downtown London are simply blocked by corpses.
"...No way, the Thames River now is not only the largest open-air toilet in the UK, but also the largest open-air cemetery in the UK. It looks like the Ganges River in India at that time, or even worse - modern India Before people are buried in water, their bodies are burned after all..."
Wang Qiu shrugged and replied, "...Besides, according to Princess Qiong, even London before the outbreak of the Black Death was almost the same stink - it was only slightly better in winter, so the royal family was in summer They all like to go hunting in the wild forests... Hey, the urban environment has become so dirty. It is no wonder that the plague in London broke out so violently, and only so many people died in just a month or two... …”
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Unlike Italian cities that have inherited some of the legacy of ancient Roman civilization and know how to maintain environmental hygiene, London in 1348 was really submerged in garbage and feces, without any exaggeration or embellishment - 1348 London has no sewers, no running water, not even street trash cans and public toilets. There are only a few in the city. There are only a dozen to dozens of cleaners who are often unpaid, causing London to be drowned in an ever-increasing amount of feces, urine and garbage every moment. The only thing these cleaners can do is to collect all kinds of garbage. Dumping into the Thames River - there are no excavators, railways and trucks these days. Is it possible to drag the garbage away from the city and dig deep pits to bury it?
Therefore, any modern person who pays attention to the most basic cleanliness can basically not walk on these muddy roads in London because they are covered with a thick layer of feces and garbage. Every citizen seems to be accustomed to dumping garbage and feces into the street, and the horses pulling the carts also maintain the habit of urinating everywhere. As a result, the road is paved higher and higher with all kinds of excrement. If no one takes care of it, these paving dung piles, which are increasing every day, will submerge the houses on both sides of the street, forcing people to move to the second floor... ...Don't laugh, even in New York in the 19th century, before the invention of the automobile, the situation was similar. Especially in some neglected slums in Brooklyn, the feces on the streets were once piled four meters high, so much so that the wheels of carriages were stuck in the feces, causing traffic to be paralyzed. It was not cleared until the last few years of the 19th century. !
In short, it is no exaggeration to say that the citizens of London in this era are indeed living in cesspits and garbage. When you walk into medieval London, the most impressive thing is definitely the stench that permeates everywhere, making you faint and inescapable. Unless it snows heavily in winter, the city will be covered with a false white gauze, temporarily covering up its dirty and disgusting side. And in the summer...well, if anyone's nose can tolerate the stench of urban London, then he can probably go to the trenches of the French Western Front in World War I to resist gas bombs.
However, the medieval British had already adapted to all this filth and took it for granted. The rich and aristocrats stayed in this filthy city as if nothing had happened, having a banquet in the middle of a huge smelly garbage dump, because their bodies were probably as rotten and filthy as the city, and the church was all day long Advise people to pray and practice and not waste time on mundane things like bathing - so, from the princes and nobles to the common people, most people rarely bathe, let alone get haircuts, and don't even bother to wash their clothes. Hair and clothes are always greasy. Because there were no sewers, even noble houses rarely had decent toilets. As for the poor people, they often live together with animals and humans. A family shares the same haystack with pigs, horses, and donkeys... Well, even if there are a few more rats with fleas in the haystack, it doesn't seem to be surprising.
So, when the Black Death broke out, this dirty city was caught off guard and headed towards death and destruction at an alarming speed - the plague broke out so suddenly and violently in London that the City Hall and Before the royal family could take any measures, everything was over.
——When Wang Qiu and Doraemon opened the [Random Door] and allowed Princess Joan, who had just recovered from a serious illness but lost her fiancé, to return to London, the capital of the Kingdom of England had also been swallowed by death, and London, as the royal palace, had also been swallowed by death. The tower has also become a death purgatory filled with corpses:
The mighty King Edward III of England died, Queen Philippa died, his legal heir Edward the Black Prince died, and the Black Prince's two younger brothers, the future Duke of Lancaster and Duke John (Rose of England in the next century) The founder of both camps in the war) is also dead.
The last remaining English prince, the ten-year-old Lionel, was escorted by several noble ministers and took Princess Joan's two sisters, Princess Mary and Princess Margaret, withdrew from London in a hurry. Flee to the university town of Oxford, which is said to be relatively quiet, to take refuge.
Although it is not known whether the remaining royal family members left a few people who were not afraid of death to look after the house before they fled to Oxford, but after the [Random Door] was opened, Wang Qiu and Doraemon led people to search through the entire house. In the Tower of London, which was littered with corpses and filled with rotten stench, only one living person was found, a very unexpected guy - King David II of Scotland who was defeated and captured at the Battle of Neville's Cross the previous autumn. !
This noble prisoner, who had been forgotten by everyone, was imprisoned in the attic of the highest spire in the entire palace. He claimed that no one had come up to bring him food for a week, and he could only survive by drinking the turbid rainwater leaking from the window eaves. , but accidentally avoided the infection of the Black Death... When Doraemon found him, King David II was already skin and bones from hunger, with more air coming out and less air coming in, but at any rate Not yet called by the Lord...
Not only has the Tower of London been occupied by the dead, but even the entire city of London, due to the large number of citizens fleeing, there are now only about a few thousand living people left, all of whom have been tortured to the point of mental collapse and madness by the overwhelming death. , so that it is difficult to communicate with them normally.
After searching all over London, it seemed that only in the Venetian's shopping mall did a relatively large number of normal people gather. When they were frantically searching for money to pay off Doraemon's debt, the time-travelers wanted to make as much money as possible. I once took the initiative to help Venetian companies repatriate foreign funds, opened the [Free Door] to various Venetian business stores abroad, and then let Venetian companies withdraw funds from abroad. The Governor of Nice rushed over with a large group of people and ordered the expatriates to quickly hand over all the liquid funds and valuable goods on hand to pay the "angel"... As a sense of citizen welfare, Dora A Meng also vaccinated the Venetian merchants who were sent abroad against the plague, and the Venetian Merchant House in London was no exception. So, when the Black Death broke out in London, most of these Venetians were lucky to survive. It was from the mouths of these guys that Doraemon learned that the remaining members of the English royal family fled to Oxford - the King of Scotland He has been locked up in prison and knows very little about the outside world.
Then, Doraemon took Nobi Nobita and four other elementary school students and flew to Oxford University City wearing [Bamboo Dragonfly], looking for traces of the English royal family along the way. Wang Qiu and others stayed in the Tower of London, and together with the members of the British mission who escaped from Bordeaux, and the volunteers sent by the Catholic Church of Avignon to support them, they started to clean up the palace full of corpses, trying to clear out the corpses. It becomes a little more livable.
"...No matter what, London is better than Naples now. At least you can see a few living people, which is already good." Looking down at this hell filled with corpses from the Tower of London, Wang Qiu said He smiled helplessly and said, "...Anyway, I will never set foot on any street in this city. Even in this palace, it is already dirty enough and disgusting..."
In this era, the concept that "open defecation is a natural human right" seems to have penetrated into the bone marrow of every English person. Even in the Tower of London, which is the royal palace, piles of feces can be found in the corridors from time to time... Of course, There are even more disgusting rotting corpses - due to limited manpower, we can only burn and bury the rotting corpses in the palace. As for the feces and garbage accumulated everywhere, we can only wait and clean them up later.
"...Yes! Even if the outbreak of the Black Death caused chaos, it wouldn't be so dirty all of a sudden." Ma Tong turned around and looked at the piles of feces. In the corner, he murmured in disgust, "...Well, Doraemon and the others seem to be back?"
——A moment later, Doraemon's five-person team appeared outside the window of the castle, and jumped in one after another.
"...Unfortunately, the situation in Oxford is as bad as in London. Oxford University has completely collapsed. All the teachers and students who could escape have fled, and almost everyone who stayed has died. The doors of the university are locked tightly. , the campus was littered with corpses. According to the few survivors, at the beginning, teachers and students buried the corpses in the school garden. Later, the few survivors hid in houses and cellars. avoid To avoid contracting the plague, no one dared to bury corpses. From morning to night, the entire Oxford campus could only see various corpses on the grass, in houses, and in libraries. Slowly rotting... Minamoto Shizuka was originally looking forward to going to Oxford University in England to be an international student, but after looking at Oxford University these days, she felt that she might as well go to university in Japan..."
While Doraemon drank the mineral water Wang Qiu handed him, he talked about the situation they had discovered when they went up the Thames River to Oxford, "... Prince Lionel and the two princesses who escaped to Oxford also Dead, we found their bodies in an abandoned church, and the only coachman who didn't die of illness or escaped, and asked him the bad news... huh? "What does this smell like?"
He suddenly frowned, twitched his round red nose and sniffed, showing an expression of disgust, "...Ahem! It's so choking!"
"...Ah, that's when the British burned various strong-smelling substances in the palace, such as hops, frankincense and sage, as well as deliberately wet firewood and dead leaves to create smoke. Use smoke to drive away diseases," Wang Qiu replied.
"...Why do they do such stupid things? Haven't I already injected each of them with plague vaccine?" Doraemon frowned.
"...Because the vaccine you gave is not effective! When we were searching the Tower of London and nearby urban areas, a knight who had been vaccinated suddenly developed a fever. After he came back and lay down, he couldn't get up. Wait until others noticed There was something wrong with him, and reports came up layer by layer. Finally, when I rushed over with the [Magic Encyclopedia Dictionary] and the [Automatic Medical Kit], this unlucky guy had already passed away, and several of his colleagues were also sick. Fortunately, they were not serious and were all taken away. I rescued him," Wang Qiu said, spreading his hands.
"...This is impossible!!" Doraemon shouted, "...Our plague vaccine cannot be fake!"
"...This is normal, because what he has is not the plague, but influenza, and the other people are suffering from malaria and yellow fever!" Wang Qiu rubbed his forehead and sighed, "...Dora A Dream, because Venetian merchants are scurrying around the world through the [Random Door], the concentrated liquid plague bacteria you released in Jerusalem in revenge has spread back to all parts of Europe, setting off a new round of compound plague!"< br>