The activities of the southern representatives in Europe and China have achieved some results, and the top leaders of the south think that there is hope for success, but the reality has slapped the southern leaders in the face.

Just outside their capital, Richmond, was the besieging Northern Army, and a riot broke out inside the city.

The riot was not instigated by the spies of the North, it was a completely spontaneous act, because the citizens were really hungry, and the purpose of the riot was not to respond to the attack of the Northern Army outside the city, but only to get a piece of bread to fill their stomachs, so it was called a bread riot.

The Civil War has entered its third year, and the blockade of the southern coastline by the Union Navy has become increasingly tight, and life in the South, especially for urban residents, has become more and more difficult. The slave owners in the countryside with large plantations and poor whites with a small amount of arable land were able to provide for themselves, and all the food, drink, and clothing of the city dwellers had to be bought on the market.

The government's indiscriminate issuance of paper money to meet the huge expenses of the war caused severe inflation, the wealth of the city dwellers continued to shrink, even the wealthy began to become poor, and even the ordinary wage earners kept their jobs, and the poor salaries in the hands of knives continued to depreciate.

You even have to carry a basket full of bills when you go to the market, but you can put the things you buy in your wallet. Rents and basic necessities remain high, and workers' meager wages have not kept pace with skyrocketing prices and inflation. Even the cost of shoe repair can go up in half in a day.

What is especially serious is that there is a shortage of food in the market, prices are skyrocketing, and the price of staples such as flour and bacon is almost thirty or forty times higher than in 1861! A week's cost to feed a standard family of four, which cost $6.55 in 1860, now costs $240 to keep the family from starving. Hungry people can no longer tolerate the high prices of necessities.

In this case, it is impossible for a government not to take precautions, the Southern Union has long implemented rationing and other programs in the cities, the problem is that the luck is really bad, the blockade has made transportation difficult, and it is unfortunate to encounter a snowstorm. This past winter, Richmond was hit by a terrible cold. The inland city, which had been accustomed to mild weather, experienced more than two dozen violent snowstorms, with more than a foot of snow repeatedly appearing this winter, making the transportation of food and fuel extremely difficult.

Not to mention the United States in this era, it is China in the 21st century, in the event of a snowstorm of this magnitude, the power grid in the south will collapse, and the transportation will be paralyzed, so this is beyond the ability of the southern government. Public order in the city spirals out of control, burglaries and robberies are rampant, and hordes of gangsters are searching for prey. With spring in the spring, Richmond's predicament shows no better signs, with melting snow turning roads into mud and making it difficult for residents to get supplies they want to get here.

Southern President Jefferson Davis had no choice, he openly asked people to fast and pray! It made the hungry people angry, and even the executives who served the Confederate government felt that it was unreasonable to call on the hungry and cold people to go on hunger and pray on hunger and cold. A clerk at the Confederate Department of the Army wrote in his diary: "Fasting and praying in the midst of famine?!" May God save this man! ”

The hungry citizens couldn't stand it, and their anger was ignited, and they immediately launched a riot.

In fact, there were no casualties in this uprising, and there was not much real threat to the south. Because at this time, most of the able-bodied men in the city were pulled into battle. As a result, the main force of the riots was housewives, whose husbands or sons were forced to go to war, and some of them could never return. Life without the main worker of the family is extremely difficult, and they have long had enough of this lack of food and clothing.

The women in the streets, waving their bony arms and shouting the slogan "Bread or bleed", and holding sticks, axes, hammers, knives and even bayonets in search of targets in the streets, looked fierce, but few actually dared to do it. The target of their attack was not the Southern Army, but the government warehouses and all the shops. Food is the first target, followed by clothing and shoes. Grocery store owners could only watch as the crowd rushed in and snatched bread, flour, bacon, ham, clothing and shoes, and some shops selling jewelry and other luxury goods were ransacked by angry people.

President Jefferson Davis came out to persuade the women to leave quickly, and took out the change in his pockets and distributed it to the people, but in vain. The women slowly dispersed when he began to threaten to fire cannons on the soldiers of the Richmond City Defense Battalion. The riots lasted only two hours, and calm returned to the streets.

Although the riots did not last long and there were no casualties, they had a great impact on the southern government. Within a week, news of the "bread riots" in Richmond was on the front page of the Yankees' New York Times. Then, it quickly spread all over the world.

At this time, the North of the United States rejected the note of the European powers, and Bismarck immediately took advantage of this news and began to promote public opinion against the American Federation from another angle.

Bismarck issued a call for the peace-loving German people to help the innocent ordinary Americans, and he also offered to use all his savings since becoming chancellor to help the American people. It also took the initiative to support the newly established International Red Cross Society, hoping to help innocent people in the war through the name of the International Red Cross.

Many members of the International Red Cross, such as Nightingale, who supported the Red Cross, and other influential saints in the religious community, responded positively to Bismarck's proposal. They organized manpower and material resources, procured food from Europe, hoisted the Red Cross logo, and informed the U.S. government that they hoped that the Federal Navy would not intercept their ship, which was carrying only food and medicine, and no military supplies.

Under Bismarck's agitation, all countries petitioned or not, and officially expressed sympathy for American women who rioted due to hunger, and donated large quantities of food.

Isn't that a good intention, not starving to death in that war? When Germany was at war with Russia, it did not see Bismarck's sympathy for the hungry people in the Russian cities.

Everything is a political maneuver. As long as the United States, under moral pressure, opens the Red Cross's donation channel and allows international relief supplies to enter Richmond, then what about other southern cities, Charleston, Norfolk, and New Orleans.

If non-military supplies with gratuitous aid can enter the South, then non-military supplies that are not commodities can also enter the South, even if the blockade of commodities continues, those goods can also enter the South under a layer of aid skin, and the operation is not too simple, find a large company, let them send a large amount of supplies to the Red Cross, and formulate that the Red Cross can only be used for aid to the American people, the Red Cross will not refuse, and the European company will get a huge commission from a certain account, The business was done in the name of aid. So as long as the United States cannot withstand the pressure, then the blockade will be ineffective.

Once the blockade of the South is lifted, even if it is only for non-military supplies, the situation in the South will be greatly improved. Because soldiers are also people, they also have to consume non-military materials, Europe provides more living materials to the civilians, and the south provides less to its own people, so they can provide more resources to the soldiers, and at the worst, they can also free up a large amount of transportation forces to transport arms, instead of supplying civilian food.

If the United States refused, it would put a moral burden on the American Federation, and Bismarck had already pushed the suffering of innocent people in the South onto the discipline of the Northern army and the blockade of the North, shouting that the war should not make innocent people bear the high profile of suffering, as if he were a saint, but did not hold the war accountable. But the people are susceptible to this kind of high-profile demagoguery, they think that's it, yes, how can their people bear the pain of war, and of course the war should be kept away from them, but they don't know that it is people like them who start the war. Naïve people are always willing to cry out for victory rather than bear the pain of war. This naivety of theirs has been exploited again and again by politicians and has waged war after war.

Now the whole of Europe is full of this naivety, and they have suffered a lot of war over the years, and those pains have suddenly stirred up deep emotions in their hearts, and they have begun to lash out at the American Federation, demanding that their own government actively intervene, and the more leftist intellectuals are open-minded about this voice.

Anti-war trade unions, women's groups, and religious forces are calling for peace talks and a return to peace for the Americans.

Lincoln made the most wrong and no choice at this time, to continue the blockade, and to refuse entry to the Red Cross supplies, because Lincoln was a very sophisticated politician, and he saw clearly that as long as a gap was opened, European material aid would continue to flow into the South.

This made the reputation of the American Federation even more discredited, but there was no choice, and the last shred of moral support for the Lincoln Abolition Proclamation dissipated by Europeans.

At this point, Bismarck's public opinion preparations have been completed, and at this time, even if Europe forms a coalition to intervene in the American civil war, in fact, the conditions are already in place, but no European country is willing to shed blood for the south of the United States, Bismarck is not willing.

Therefore, Bismarck just took advantage of the situation to get the European countries to reach an agreement, began to carry out an anti-blockade of the northern part of the United States, severed economic ties with the northern part of the United States, stopped the export of arms to the United States by Britain and France, and banned the issuance of American northern bonds in Europe.

After that, it was to continue to wait, Bismarck thought that someone would not be able to bear the loneliness and jump out.