Treasure hunt begins in England

Chapter 59 Irish History

"Damn executioners—" After reading the letter, before Liang En had time to say a few words to express some of his feelings about that cruel war, Pierce cursed from the sidelines.

"This regiment participated in the suppression of the Dublin Uprising." Seeing the puzzled look on Liang En's face, Pierce took out his phone and pressed a few times, then opened a page and said.

"Look, these are all records." Although Pierce was British in terms of nationality, the other party always thought of himself as an Irishman, just like Liang En always thought of himself as a Chinese.

So for this group of British troops who participated in the suppression of the Irish Uprising in 1916, Pierce did not have much affection from the bottom of his heart.

Don't look at the Irish and the British are neighbors, and even almost speak the same language.But the relationship between them can be said to be similar to the relationship between Huaxia and RB.Various conflicts between the two sides have also lasted for hundreds of years.

The British rule over Ireland originated from the invasion and occupation of Ireland after Cromwell came to power in the 17th century. Under the butcher knife of the British, 150 people died on the island of Ireland, which had only 40 million people at that time.

After that, the British plundered on a large scale the most important means of production that originally belonged to the Irish: land.

At that time, the British confiscated and auctioned 2 million acres of all 1 million acres of cultivated land in Ireland, through this direct means of plunder.The British took more than half of the land from the Irish.

In addition, the other party initiated a large-scale land annexation as an invader. In 1648, Irish Catholics still owned 59% of the entire Irish land. By 1751, only 5% of the entire Irish land was left in their hands. %.

The evils that the British did in Ireland were not limited to land grabbing. Under their command, the Irish could not vote, employ more than two apprentices, study abroad, and apply for degrees and scholarships at universities.

You can't hold public office, jury, lawyer and teacher, you can't attend parliament, you are not allowed to buy land, and even the value of personal property is restricted. For example, you can't own horses worth more than 5 pounds.

Even the British completely controlled the import and export of the island of Ireland, forcing the Irish to export grain to Britain cheaply, while they could only eat potatoes with higher yields.

结果这种单一种植业造成了爱尔兰历史上最惨痛的饥荒，1845到1849四年时间爱尔兰人口从817万降低的655万，而如果按照正常增长的话应该是900万。

Of those lost on the island, 150 million emigrated to the Americas, while another million died of starvation.But in the past few years, the island has continued to export grain to the British mainland.

In this case, the Irish naturally launched many uprisings in response to the British invaders.One such example was the Easter Rising of 1916.

It is a pity that the uprising failed after only five days due to internal disagreements among the insurgents and lack of weapons.

At first, the Irish were not very supportive of the uprising.But then the suppression of the British gradually aroused the patriotism and nationalism of the Irish.

So in 1921 after the end of World War I, the independent Irish Free State recognized these rebels as the pioneers of the Irish independence movement. Of course, the British army that came to suppress them was naturally a brutal colonial army.

"Let's see what's in this tin box." After scolding the British barbaric aggression and colonial behavior, the two carefully opened the tin box.

Because the outside of the tin box is also covered with a layer of wax, and the interlayer of the pillar is sealed very well.So there is no rust on the tin box, and the contents of the box are naturally preserved to this day.

"This is—gold!" After opening a newspaper ball, a golden metal ingot the size of a gasoline lighter fell on the table, and made a clacking sound after colliding with the iron plate on the table.

It is not very difficult to recognize that it is gold. On the one hand, it is the hand-feeling of gold, and on the other hand, it is the dull sound made when this piece of metal collides with the tabletop covered with a layer of iron.

"Sure enough, those British robbers went wherever they went and snatched it." Looking at the gold bar covered with trachoma, Liang En muttered in his heart.

Soon, Liang En and Pierce opened the newspaper packets one after another. As a result, a total of 28 metal ingots were extracted from those paper packets.

However, unlike the imagination, only six of them are gold bars, while the remaining 22 are all silver bars that have begun to turn black.

However, whether it is gold bars or silver bars, they do not have the purity and weight imprints that regular precious metal ingots should have. Instead, they all look extremely rough, and some even have traces of jewelry or even gold teeth on them.

Presumably, in the chaos of the war that year, the number of such rough gold and silver bars should not be small.And the owners of these gold and silver are obviously unlikely to give these treasures voluntarily.

Pierce next to him turned ugly after seeing these precious metal ingots clearly. Obviously, he also thought of what these things represented.

"There seems to be something down here." In this embarrassing atmosphere, Liang En found that the box hadn't been cleared, so he quickly changed the subject.

After clearing out the paper balls wrapped in the precious metal ingots in the box, it seems that only the wooden board is left at the bottom, but one only needs to look at the depth of the inside and outside of the box to find that the wooden board is just a compartment.

It's just that there is also a layer of blackened wax inside the box, so the illusion caused by this color made the two people not notice the interlayer at first.

After prying open the wooden board, what appeared in front of the two people was a piece of green silk that still smelled of gunpowder smoke but had faded, with many bullet holes and traces of being torn apart by external forces.On top of this piece of silk is a small book bound in cowhide.

"This is a photo album." After dimming the lamp, Liang En slowly opened the book with his gloved hands.It turned out that there were a total of ten thin cardboard pages in this book, and black and white photos were pasted on both sides of each page.

These black-and-white photos all look a little blurry. After all, although cameras that can be carried around appeared a hundred years ago, the clarity of the photos taken at the technical level of the year was just like this.

"This should be the process of this regiment going to Dublin to suppress the uprising." Liang En muttered softly as he flipped through the pages of photos.

The black-and-white photos show Liang En and the others that brutal battle a hundred years ago. In the photos, there are British soldiers cooking food around a fire in the field, charging against barricades, and the burning wreckage of Dublin’s downtown buildings. Of course, there are also A group of people bowed their heads in silence before the white cross.

"War, war has never changed." Liang En looked at these old photos and shook his head, then read out the famous line.Because he felt that only this sentence could express what he wanted to say.

"This thing is—" After lamenting the cruelty of the war, Liang En also turned to the last page of this old photo album, and unexpectedly found some traces left by the head of the regiment.

(End of this chapter)