From Corsica to the Fourth Rome

"The situation is delicate? Western Mediterranean?"

After hearing this, Lawrence immediately frowned and recalled. In his memory, the area around Corsica in 1770 on the original historical timeline was considered peaceful, with no conflicts or tensions.

"It seems that it was affected by my butterfly effect."

Lawrence pondered silently, basically confirming that the delicate situation mentioned by Duke Choiseul had some of his own factors.

However, Lawrence was still a little confused. The area around Corsica, excluding France in the northwest, was Italy in the east, and it stands to reason that there would be no tense situations in Italy.

The Republic of Genoa in the north has been weak for two centuries, and now it has completely abandoned Corsica under pressure from France. It is completely out of date and can only survive in a few coastal cities on the mainland.

Although the Kingdom of Sardinia can be considered a rich and powerful kingdom in northern Italy, it is still not a country of the same magnitude as France, which borders France. It is also unlikely to provoke any disputes. After all, northern Italy is France and Austria. A feast that only the two great powers are entitled to enjoy.

Although the Papal State in the central Apennines was trying to encroach on the small countries in northern Italy to expand the pope's secular power, it would not launch an expansion war that even the Duke of Choiseul would take seriously.

The Kingdom of Naples further south is a vassal state of Spain. Although it has relatively high autonomy, it has no diplomatic or political sovereignty.

From this point of view, although the Italian region is broken into pieces and has many states, the overall situation is relatively balanced, and it is unlikely that any internal problems will occur.

"In other words, are there external forces involved?"

Lawrence nodded slightly to confirm his idea, and then asked in a deep voice:

"Is this situation related to the British?"

Duke Choiseul glanced at Lawrence in surprise, nodded repeatedly and said:

"Yes, how did you know."

"Wherever there is trouble in Europe, you will find the British." Lawrence shrugged.

"What you said is true."

Duke Choiseul couldn't help laughing, then immediately returned to seriousness and said:

"Yes, I received a report from the Mediterranean Fleet that the British fleet stationed in Gibraltar has been unusual recently. Not only has the number of permanent fleets increased, but it also often cruises to the area east of Sicily, seemingly for reconnaissance. "This kind of radical behavior was not common before."

"This is indeed a bit abnormal." Lawrence said with a frown.

"Humph, I also summoned the British ambassador for this matter, that Baron Bertula."

Duke Choiseul recalled his meeting with Baron Bertula and said with some dissatisfaction:

"In the end, he told me that it was just a normal escort fleet, protecting British merchant ships. Damn it, I have only heard of escorts with light sailing ships, but never heard of escorts with seven or eight third-level line battleships."

After all, Duke Choiseul had served as Minister of the Navy for several years, and he knew that Baron Bertula's remarks were completely nonsense.

Most of the warships used to escort trade routes are light sailing destroyers, just like the USS Constitution, the spiritual symbol of the Americans. These warships are only classified as fifth-level ships.

The powerful but relatively bulky third-level line battleships would never be used to fight against pirates and pursue privateers.

"I'm afraid this is also a unified rhetoric to the outside world. It is indeed a good excuse for people who don't understand the navy."

Lawrence closed his eyes and said while thinking:

"It seems like the British are indeed going to take some action, but it's also strange. Instead of focusing on their own colonies, the British went to Italy to join in the fun. It's difficult for their influence to spread to the Apennines. ”

"Yeah, I thought the British were worried about all that shit in their colonies."

Duke Choiseul said with approval:

"Their colonies in the Americas have been filled with public resentment recently. I think it won't be long before those colonial farmers will throw away their hoes and pick up the barrels of their guns."

Although it was only in 1776 that the thirteen colonies formally united to rebel against the British government, farmers in these colonies had begun to resist sporadically since the mid-eighteenth century.

This also made many politicians in history predict the outcome of the independence of the Thirteen Colonies, including the Duke of Choiseul and former British Prime Minister William Pitt Sr.

The Duke of Choiseul even sensed the resistance of the people in the Thirteen Colonies in 1765 and strengthened the deployment of military forces in the West Indies in advance.

The British government at that time could naturally anticipate the resistance of the colonial people. However, on the one hand, they overestimated their military strength and believed that they could suppress the rebellion with force; on the other hand, they also underestimated Louis XVI's willingness to sell iron to resist the British. Determined to aid the United States, I did not expect that the French even donated the king's small treasury to aid the Americans.

"Anyway, thank you for the reminder, Your Excellency the Duke."

Lawrence nodded, smiled and said:

"I will keep the Corsican navy on the lookout for the movements of the British fleet."

"No, apart from the erratic behavior of the British, there are also problems in southern Italy."

Duke Choiseul shook his head and said solemnly:

"To be precise, there is something wrong with the Kingdom of Naples."

"The Kingdom of Naples? What happened to the Spanish vassals?" Lawrence asked with a frown.

"famine."

Duke Choiseul uttered the word heavily and said slowly:

"Food prices are soaring throughout the kingdom. It is said that in some places, a florin gold coin can only buy ten loaves of bread. A large number of urban residents began to flee because there was no food, but the situation in the countryside was just as bad. Countless peasants abandoned their land and houses and joined the huge exodus. This famine is only the beginning, but it will not be long before it begins to spread throughout the Kingdom of Naples."

Hearing the word famine, Lawrence couldn't help but sit up straight, frowning and listening solemnly.

No matter what era or region, the word famine carries such a heavy weight.

When people's basic survival needs cannot be met, all civilization and order, morality and restraint will immediately fall apart.

The instinctive desire to survive will turn into a savage urge to acquire anything that can fill the stomach, no matter what it is.

Tragedies of cannibalism and human cannibalism were possible in every inch of land in southern Apennines at this time. Even the most loving couple might stab a dagger into each other's heart in a fight for a piece of bread.

After a brief shock, Lawrence immediately came to his senses.

Generally speaking, large-scale famines are caused by severe natural disasters, but Lawrence clearly remembers that in July 1770, there were no large-scale climatic disasters in Italy.

And given the geography and climate of the Kingdom of Naples, July is the time when the wheat harvest is coming to an end.

This is supposed to be the time when food reserves are most abundant. Why did famine occur at this time? !

“Something is wrong”

Lawrence frowned and asked:

"Sicily in the Kingdom of Naples is rich in food and can be considered as half of the European granary. How could there be a famine in a place like this?"

Sicily is the largest island in the Mediterranean, with an area more than twice that of Corsica, and is separated from mainland Italy by only a strait four to five kilometers wide.

Although Sicily's terrain is mainly hilly, its land is fertile and the climate is very suitable for farming. Therefore, agriculture is very developed and it has been the granary of the empire since the Roman Empire. The island's population is conservatively estimated at more than half a million.

"This is also my doubt." Duke Choiseul said in a low voice:

"And what's even more strange is that Sicily, the island with the most developed agriculture, was the core of the famine. It is said that tens of thousands of people have fled Sicily. Many poor farmers did not have money to take a boat, and they actually tried to escape from the northernmost tip of Sicily. If they swim to the other side, even if they carry their young children on their backs, they will probably drown in the strait rather than starve to death.”

Lawrence held his forehead and sighed and asked:

"What's the cause of the famine? Is it a natural disaster?"

Although Lawrence was asking questions, he was basically certain in his heart that this famine was definitely not caused by a natural disaster.

Duke Choiseul was silent for a moment, and then said a little irritably:

"The ambassador of Naples sent me a diplomatic note in which he mentioned the matter only briefly. He said that the disaster was due to the eruption of a volcano in Sicily. But my intelligence told me that the volcano in Sicily There have been no recent eruptions at all.”

There are indeed two volcanoes on Sicily, one active and one extinct.

"Zhufan Zhi" from the Southern Song Dynasty in China mentioned the volcanoes on Sicily:

"The country of Sgariya is close to the border of Lu Mei. The island is a thousand miles wide. The clothes, customs and pronunciation are the same as those of Lu Mei. There are deep caves in this country, and fires appear in all seasons. From a distance, there are smoke and fire at dusk, and when you look close, you can see the intensity of the fire. It is so fierce that the people of the country throw a big stone weighing 500 kilograms or 1,000 kilograms into the hole, and it will explode in a moment and break like pumice. "

However, Lawrence's memory and the Duke of Choiseul's intelligence both confirmed that the cause of the famine was not a volcanic eruption as claimed by the Naples ambassador.

"The Ambassador of Naples concealed the actual situation?"

Lawrence asked, feeling more and more strange that this great famine that suddenly broke out in the Kingdom of Naples did not exist in history.

It stands to reason that France and Spain are staunch allies. As a vassal state of Spain, the Kingdom of Naples should try to seek help from France after suffering such a disaster.

However, the Naples ambassador acted as if he was deliberately downplaying the matter, and did not want France to pay too much attention.

"I suspect so." Duke Choiseul said with a slightly gloomy face, stroking the beard on his chin:

"I have secretly sent people to the Kingdom of Naples to conduct an investigation, but it is estimated that it will take some time to get the results. And what is even weirder than this is that the Kingdom of Naples did not even ask for assistance from Spain. The reason turned out to be autonomy. . And King Carlos III of Spain has not yet responded to this rhetoric.”

Although the Kingdom of Naples is a vassal state of the Kingdom of Spain, it still has independent legal principles and a high degree of autonomy.

In this sense, the relationship between the Kingdom of Naples and Spain is very similar to the relationship between Corsica and France, and the autonomy of the Kingdom of Naples is even higher than that of Corsica.

After all, it had only been thirty-five years since the Kingdom of Naples returned to the hands of the Spanish Bourbons from the Austrian Habsburgs.

In 1735, Carlos III, who was still a Spanish prince, was crowned King of Naples. At that time, in order to take care of the resistance of the Italians, he promised the people of Naples their autonomy and promised that the King of Naples and the King of Spain would not be held by the same person.

This is why after Carlos III returned to Spain to inherit the throne in 1759, he passed the Kingdom of Naples to his son Ferdinando IV.

But now King Ferdinando IV of Naples has not requested assistance from Spain because he was worried about affecting his autonomy.

Although this truth can be barely justified, after all, if the Kingdom of Naples accepts aid, there will be corresponding additional conditions, such as reducing autonomy, increasing tax rates, recruiting soldiers in Naples, etc.

But in the face of a great famine that spread across the country, Ferdinando IV's rhetoric seemed very pale and weird.

Lawrence rubbed his dizzy head, sighed and concluded:

"In other words, the entire southern Italy is now in a state of famine, and the cause of the famine is not a natural disaster. The officials of the Kingdom of Naples are also very secretive about the famine and deliberately conceal it."

"That's right." Duke Choiseul nodded and added:

"And once the victims of the Kingdom of Naples flow north, this may affect the order of the entire Italy. Do you have any ideas?"

Lawrence closed his eyes to collect his thoughts, and after taking a long breath, he shook his head.

Although it has been speculated that this famine is very strange and not a natural disaster, Lawrence is still unable to determine what exactly happened in the Kingdom of Naples based on the current sparse intelligence information.

After all, there are many non-natural disaster factors that lead to a sharp increase in food prices. For example, after Louis XVI succeeded to the throne, he appointed Turgot to carry out liberal economic reforms and relaxed supervision of the food market, which led to a sharp increase in food prices around Paris. rise.

"The famine in Naples and the provocation of the British. Do you think there is a relationship between these two things?"

Duke Choiseul looked at Lawrence and asked seriously.

"Eighty percent of it is related. But we still don't know what the British want to do, whether they want to take advantage of the famine to make a fortune, or want to put pressure on the Spanish, or some other intention."

Lawrence affirmed:

"And it was more than a month later when I returned to Corsica. At that time, the situation in Italy was probably at its most intense."

"I'm afraid that's true. You'd better be careful not to let Corsica get involved in these things." Duke Choiseul reminded seriously.

"No"

Lawrence suddenly said firmly:

"I should take the initiative to intervene in the famine in the Kingdom of Naples."

"Huh? Why?" Duke Choiseul asked with a frown. He certainly didn't want Lawrence to put himself in danger. After all, he still wanted to use Lawrence to maintain his relationship with Prince Louis.

"I am also an Italian, and I cannot ignore my compatriots who are trapped in the quagmire of hunger." Lawrence shrugged.

Duke Choiseul narrowed his eyes, obviously not believing what Lawrence said, and said with a smile:

"I didn't know, Governor Bonaparte, that you were a pan-Italian nationalist?"

"All I believe in is profit supremacy and my puny conscience." Lawrence still shrugged.

"Profit comes first. What benefits do you see in the Kingdom of Naples, which is full of hungry people?" Duke Choiseul looked at Lawrence and asked.

“A land of plenty, and a heart waiting to be bought.”