The Pope could no longer procrastinate, and could only announce a rapprochement with the Italian government, accepting only the Vatican Territory. The French Janissaries, who protected the Pope, returned from Rome to France along a designated route under the watchful eye of the airship. However, upon arrival in France, the gang was immediately dispatched to join the French army, which was fighting against the Italian army, and the French had no intention of armistice and could not swallow this breath.

At the same time, Italy's provisional federal government began to organize a national referendum on the future state system, and used a mechanical computerized automatic vote counting system developed by IBM, which used an unprecedented "semi-anonymous method" in order to gain the trust of Italian citizens. After voting, the results are announced for each constituency with a detailed identification number, which is known only to the voter himself, so that he can clearly see that his vote has been placed in the correct selection. When everyone is able to confirm that their votes are not distorted, the system is perfectly credited. At the same time, it achieves the effect of anonymity, unless you don't care that your opinion is known by others, and you sue others for your own serial number.

After voting on the same day, you can see the results the next day, worthy of a country led by god-level industrialists, avant-garde and convincing. Switzerland, which has a direct democracy system with so many national referendums every year, was overjoyed when it saw this system, this thing is good, and it will not be overwhelmed, time-consuming, laborious and expensive by the referendum statistics in the future. The Federation of Japan expressed "rejoicing". The electoral ministries in both countries were quick to sprang into action, asking IBM if the system would be sold. Kogoro Katsura, a commissioner in charge of Japan's Federal Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications, acted even more quickly. Of course, they were answered yes, how could there be a reason not to do business?

Italians are not arguing about the state of government, but even the monarchy is under the law and the king is in parliament like the United Kingdom, so they all participate in the vote with a relaxed attitude. No one expected that the outcome of this vote would be decided by a small piece of news - Downing once said in Shanghai that if elected King of Italy, he would buy the Old Summer Palace.

This means that in this era of great colonization, the king of Italy suddenly caught up and bought the Garden of Ten Thousand Gardens of the Qing Dynasty, if the Qing Dynasty is not convinced, we Italy will get it, it seems that this is still possible, isn't this more beautiful than the Anglo-French alliance? Because Britain and France went around Beijing to buy 100 cultural relics of the Old Summer Palace.

Tang Ning really didn't expect such a mentality, when this kind of argument spread, it was too late for him to regret it, oh no, did he have to be forced by the Italians to buy the Old Summer Palace? Now the great Qing shape shì is very good, probably because the royal dignity is restored well, alas......

He had confidence in the republican system that Mazzini desperately promoted, but when the results of the Milan constituency came out, he immediately lost this confidence, and the imperial system actually prevailed!

Mazzini is very angry, can't he be tired? He immediately sent to investigate the ballot papers, and randomly checked the serial numbers of thousands of people, all of whom said that their votes had not been tampered with. (For the latest chapters, please visit wèn)

After research, Mazzini found that many people wanted the King of Italy to buy the Old Summer Palace on behalf of the country in order to make the nascent Italy look good, and he also reported the results to Downing. A Reuters poll had already found this clue, and after Mazzini's reminder again, Downing couldn't help but laugh dumbly, he was ready to accept the title of "first citizen" of the Italian Republic.

The Duchess was also very concerned about the referendum, and after learning the preliminary results, she was so excited that she chirped like a bird. Her father and mother are beautiful, and there are two queens of great powers, one is Austria and the other is Italy, which is really a prominent family of relatives.

The conquered Papal States wanted to maintain their unique status, and the Roman constituency was the only place where the federal system prevailed, although the king of the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies advocated federalism, but during the previous Naples earthquake, he received a lot of help from international natural disaster relief organizations that had nothing to do with Italy at that time, which made Downing very prestigious in the local area, so the imperial majority was still in the Two Sicilies. In Sicily, Garibaldi, the liberator who was loved by the local people, was not punished after the defeat, and was even invited to participate in the War of Resistance against France, but Garibaldi was disheartened and did not accept it, so the people of Sicily also had a good sense of Tangning, thinking that this person was righteous and would not be an emperor.

The republican system advocated by Mazzini lagged behind the imperial system by a large margin, sighed that the general trend had gone, felt very embarrassed, and considered whether to resign. Downing cordially invited him to stay in office, telling him that he could make the empire like a republic at the subsequent Constituent Assembly, and that he would have his support. This is a good reason, and Mazzini mustered up the courage to continue as prime minister. As prime minister, Mazzini had the responsibility to help make the emperor's accession to the throne more beautiful, so he called the pope to invite the new emperor to preside over the enthronement ceremony.

Although the Pope is the boss is reluctant, he has to agree, otherwise he will be surrounded in the city of Rome in the future, and others will not give you face, and that day will be even more aggrieved. It is better to be humiliated twice than once, and the wedding and enthronement of Emperor Jian Yì of the Ninth Emperor were completed on the same day. Downing agreed to this and informed the world that he would accept the appointment of the Emperor of Italy. The king is still the emperor, this is exquisite. The traditional status of the emperor is still above the king, and only those who have been approved by the pope can be called emperors, such as Napoleon the Great, although he snatched the crown and put it on himself during the ceremony, that is also accepting this ceremony. In the Christian world, only the Habsburgs of Austria currently have the official title of emperor, and the monarchs of England are only called kings and queens.

At this time, Downing's prestige reached its peak, and it was too subversive for an atheist to become the master of Rome, the master of Italy, the stronghold of Catholicism. Cavour felt the hope of the Italians for the future and the approval of the new emperor in Turin, and was kind to the new emperor of the previous states, and although he exempted them from royal privileges, he did not touch their property, nor did he see how much money the new emperor had.

Eventually, the liberal recognized the authority of the new emperor, and having maintained friendship with the French emperor, he took the initiative to write to Napoleon III and Empress Eugenie, saying that the war with the pope had been settled, and that he hoped that the two countries would cease fighting and live in peace.

The Italians are unprecedentedly united, and there may be no good fruit to eat if they continue to fight in Italy, and Napoleon III, who had no great talent, finally has a sense of powerlessness, or he should withdraw before the two sides have a fierce battle. Now the withdrawal is still face, because the Pope retains the Vatican, which can also be regarded as a concession from Italy. At this time, Mazzini commanded the Italian troops who had been training for a long time to assemble on the Italian-French border, with a posture of wanting to counterattack, and it would be too late if they did not withdraw. Finally, Napoleon III sent a telegram to Lincoln, saying, "Brother, it's up to you, I'll withdraw first, and then I'll look for an opportunity later, France will silently support your country's cause behind your back." ”

The casualties of the French army in this small-scale invasion were ten times that of the Italians, but there were not many deaths, because the French army was obedient, and the wounded were all sent to the Windsor hospital in the rear as soon as possible, and the civilian hospital became their military hospital, and the Windsor hospital in France did not receive instructions from above that French soldiers could not be accepted, so these wounded experienced a strange war, were wounded by the opposing army's army on the front line, and were full of resentment, and they had to rely on the civilian hospitals of the enemy forces to save their lives.

The situation in Europe had stabilized, and Downing was to go to Milan to preside over the Constituent Assembly, this time on the East India Company's "Air Force One" airship, and Prince Albert felt that his end was approaching without seeing him the next day, and expressed his accomplishment, and attended his enthronement and wedding by the way. The prince went, and the queen, who might not have much time left to accompany her husband, of course, had no intention of going to the government and went with her. As a result, the queen's family went.

After several years of trial operation of the cargo, the reliability of the airship has been proven, some minor problems have been corrected, and the runaway extreme wind speed and so on have been tested. At this time, Airbus announced the start of airship passenger service, the first phase of the route is mainly several international cities: London, Brussels, Luxembourg, Zurich, Munich, Milan, Windsor Port, as far as Mumbai, Kolkata, India, and as far away from Calcutta to Singapore, as far as Singapore to Shanghai, Tokyo.

With the advent of hydrogen fuel cells, airships have reached an astonishing 100 kilometers of cruise, taking only 40 hours to travel from London to Port Windsor, and crossing the English Channel and the Mediterranean Sea directly will save a lot of time for travel, while from Port of Windsor to Mumbai it is 48 hours across the great desert of the Arabian Peninsula. It takes another 48 hours to reach Singapore. The journey from Singapore to Shanghai is 42 hours and from Shanghai to Tokyo is 24 hours. Because of the supply, geography has not been explored, etc., if you go from London to Shanghai and Tokyo, it is not a straight line, but according to the above transfer method, the shortest time from London to Shanghai is 168 hours, that is, 7 days. Compared with the original sailing time of half a year or a year, it is already a world of difference, and the distance between the world has been greatly shortened.

The biggest feature of flying an airship is that it is comfortable and quiet. More comfortable than sitting on a 10,000-ton ship, the Beluga design makes the airship have a lot of space, even if it can only carry 12 people, but the distance between people is quite generous, the Prince of Wales, that is, the crown prince asked Tang Ning: "Why only open these routes?" This means of transportation should be widespread all over the world, it is too pleasant. ”

Downing said: "Now the cost can't be reduced, it can only be used as an international trunk line, and even the total number of airships for military use is only 20." Helium is a rarity and a bottleneck in the manufacture of airships, with up to six ships a year before Pennsylvania's natural gas was not efficiently extracted, and now there are only 12 ships. The Americans, knowing that their gas has a high helium content, are legislating against gas to restrict exports, which will go back to the size of one ship in two months. ”

Prince of Wales: "Is there no way to crack it?" I'm curious, what kind of thing is natural gas? Are there any theories in the scientific community now? ”

The question immediately attracted everyone's attention, especially when Downing answered matter-of-factly: "My personal suspicion is that the source of oil and gas is the same, the chemical change that occurs after the bodies of ancient marine paleontology settle down and mix with silt. （http：/／）。 Some of the social creatures in the ocean are clustered on a considerable scale, with millions of fish marching together, and these ancient creatures, which we don't know why, are so large that most of their carcasses settle into the mud before they are digested by microorganisms.

The first step in the carcasses and silt of paleontology was the formation of oil shale, a rock with low oil content but large scale, which was the basis for the formation of oil fields and a geological feature in the search for oil. Oil shale further produces oil in geological changes, and small crevices converge like streams in larger and larger voids to become oil, and oil changes again, rising to natural gas.

To solve the problem of the American helium-containing natural gas monopoly, of course, is to find new sources of natural gas, and the research team at the Port of Windsor is making efficient oil exploration equipment, or it will not be long before the American monopoly ends. ”