Chapter 247 The Mediterranean Sea Is the Inland Lake of Rome?

Since Consilio became king of all of Italy, Italy's economy took off with huge investment from the Chinese Empire, especially after the three 'famous' islands (Sicily, Sardinia, and Corsica) were all part of Italy, and Italy began to seek the glory of the Western Roman Empire in the past.

While France and England were at odds with each other, Italy had already completed its unification, and while Eastern Rome was reeling in victories over the Turks, Consilio had already set his sights on the coasts of Tunisia and Libya. In the days of the ancient Roman Empire, North Africa was the granary and treasury of the Roman government, and North Africa outside of the Nile River was not as barren and inhospitable as the people of North Africa were unexpectedly recognized. At that time, Carthage had the fertile arable land of Tunisia and a large area of fertile land along the coast of North Africa, so that it had the confidence to compete with the Romans. In most people's opinion, North Africa has nothing but oil, but in fact, North Africa has a lot of resources and business opportunities besides oil. Taking minerals as an example, in addition to oil, North Africa is rich in non-metallic minerals, natural gas and iron ores, and in the Astra Mountains there are also large amounts of lead, zinc, copper, manganese and phosphate.

Because of the expansion of the desert and the control of the subtropical high pressure zone, the hot, arid and rainy climate of North Africa, except for a few coastal areas with a Mediterranean climate, most of the inland is dominated by nomadic economy, and the production of camels, horses and livestock products is also quite quantitative and quality, and the high-grade leather produced in Morocco has always been an export fist product in short supply. Cotton, gum arabic, cork, olive, figs, dates and other agricultural products produced on a small amount of arable land have a good reputation and market, and can be exchanged for a large number of cereals and consumer goods from neighboring regions such as Sicily and Egypt, which are rich in grain.

From the point of view of the poor tenant farmers of Europe. Every nomadic family with a camel lived the life of an aristocratic lord, and North Africa has been in the midst of war and turmoil since leaving Roman rule. Vikings, Vandals, Arabs, and Byzantines occupied the land in waves. Production and cultural undertakings have not been able to develop steadily in peacetime, so they have lagged behind Egypt and the Iberian Peninsula, and there have been no cities and famous people comparable to the splendor of the ancient Carthaginian era.

For the sake of the overall situation, Italy could not expect to expand to the north like ancient Rome, and the Byzantine state in the east, which belonged to the same camp, was stronger and also limited to expand, so the emerging Italy could only expand south. The weak region of Libya has been a prime target for Consilio since the Fatimids moved their capital to Cairo. The power of control in Tunisia and the 'land of dragons' in northwestern Libya slowly declined, and as the chaos between the Mulabit and Muwahid dynasties in the west had no time to take care of Tunisia, Fatima was defeated by the emerging kingdom of Solomon in the east. Consilio planned to send troops from Sicily to conquer Tunisia and occupy this African land in perpetuity after creating a fait accompli, and upgrade the Roman Kingdom to a country spanning two continents.

After the end of the Roman era until the later Garibaldi era. Italy has never been unified. After the unification of the Apennine Peninsula by the Turin Dynasty, the nation-state consciousness was formed, and the territory of the ancient Roman era entered the minds of domestic hawks. Several Byzantine monarchs also tried to restore the glory of ancient Rome and turn the Mediterranean Sea into an inland lake, but unfortunately failed. After the unification of Italy, the most hard-line Comrade Mussolini also wanted to follow the example of his ancestors and turn the Mediterranean Sea into an inland lake, and invaded southern France, Greece and Egypt, but the Vichy government, Greece, England and many other opponents easily thwarted his attempts. And make Italy a laughing stock.

It is the consensus of the people that Italy cannot go out except to barely maintain a sovereign European state, which is indescribably poor and weak. After the Western Roman Empire was destroyed by the Germanic barbarians, Italy was left to the mercy of the human flesh for nearly a thousand years, and it had long lost its national blood and fighting genes, and the gap between it and the fighting nations of Slavic, Germanic, and Anglo became farther and farther away, and finally even the indigenous country of Ethiopia could not be handled. This is enough to see how hard this nation has been weakened by division and lack of progress. The equally divided Germany erupted in great power under the integration of militaristic Prussia, provoking two world wars, which shows that the Germanic fighting gene has not diminished in those years.

In addition to the pursuit of food and enjoyment, Italy has lost all its soft power to stand among the nations of the world. The love of the bloody and brutal gladiator games of the arenas of ancient Rome weakened into a passion for football, and the ambition for expansion around it degenerated into the status quo, compared to Austria, the main state of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, which took the initiative to inherit the territorial expansion borders of the nobility through marriage.

Had it not been for the power of the tide of nationalism and Garibaldi's uprising, Cavour's intrigues, no matter how clever they were, would have been able to unify Italy even beyond Bismarck. With the support of the Travelers, although he Consilio unified Italy, he could not compare with Octavian in ancient Rome, whether it was military or political achievements, not to mention the will and popularity of the people (the support of the senator family is the will and popularity of the people). Even if he holds military and financial power in his hands, it is still difficult to integrate the power in the kingdom and sit on the throne in a short period of time, so he urgently needs a breakthrough to consolidate his prestige.

Foreign wars can best reflect a person's level of leadership and decision-making art and prestige. As long as the foreign conquest is the victorious side, it will produce countless benefits, the hawks will raise their heads to control the right to speak, mobilize and conscript troops to improve the organizational strength of the state, obtain land and capital to solve employment and market problems, military orders to stimulate domestic demand and promote technological progress, divert internal contradictions, weaken opposition, buy vested interest groups, consolidate the centripetal force of the ruling class, concentrate manpower and material resources, and at the same time, concentrate financial resources such as taxation and personnel appointment and dismissal power with war needs.

No matter how bad the country is, as long as there is a motive, as the ruling class will always wage war to do these things, and the war of expansion will only stop when the negative income outweighs the benefits.

Consilio is a monarch who has been pushed up, at least he is worthy of the painstaking cultivation of the traversal, unlike the puppet monarchs of small countries supported by ancient and modern Chinese and foreign powers in the past. I won't name them here.

After Consilio put on the crown, like Kangxi, he wrote three words at the head of the bed, Quisque, Subortus, and Bellum. Rome, Naples (Naples), Milan, Turin, Florence, Pisa, Taranto, and Syracuse built universities and many primary and secondary schools spent 80% of the Chinese Empire's loans. Only half of the remaining 20% is used to build ports and bridges. The other half is used to increase military spending.

The amount of the loan can only be said to be less than the loan to the Eastern Rome, but more than the loan to Germany, this plan is not to look down on Italy, but that Italy cannot afford to borrow more, it simply cannot spend the money. There is no professional and technical personnel for road construction, the number of troops cannot be increased (limited national strength and resistance to conscription by local opposition forces), and arms procurement is limited (cold weapons are not worth it). No one knew how to operate the warships and cannons), and the burden of paying interest made Conceilio a poor man after being promoted from a wealthy Tuscan Grand Duke to the king of Italy. Italy's revenues were only three times greater than those of the Grand Duchy of Tuscany, while expenses increased fivefold. The taste of not having enough to eat and being bled has always made His Majesty the King very upset.

In order to open up financial resources and increase tax revenue. Consilio even once had the idea of the ancient Roman heritage and sold the Colosseum and the Pantheon to the Chinese Empire, but this crazy idea was naturally stopped by the Crossing Crowd. Finally, the Treaty of Taranto was signed, which opened up the import and export of agriculture throughout South Italy (formerly the Naples region) and Sicily. It was only after the whole of Italian agriculture was placed under the capital control of the Chinese Empire's plantation groups that it was guided by the Crossing Masses. The construction of a modern trade tariff system has tripled the central government's fiscal and tax revenues, barely reaching a balance of payments.

After solving the problems of trade and education, it seemed that Italy had a bit of the atmosphere of ancient Rome, and after the internal consolidation was slowly consolidated, Consilio, who had secured the throne, urgently met with the ambassador of the Chinese Empire to Italy and asked the Chinese Empire's attitude towards Italy's dispatch of troops to Tunisia and Libya.

For this barren land, the traversal did not pay much attention to it. But thinking about the oil in Libya, the ambassador replied to Consilio: 'Italy is the smallest of the Christian powers (310,000 square kilometers of modern Italy plus Corsica). and England (which has not yet annexed Scotland, but has a large area of France, more than half of its land area, with a total area of more than 350,000 square kilometers), France (the King of France is nominally the suzerainty of the King of England, then the land area exceeds that of England, reaching 600,000 square kilometers). Germany (the Kingdom of Germany became a unified kingdom after it became the sole central power of the Holy Roman Empire, and after the annexation of the various states, it lost its independent status, and pulled them into the Imperial Diet as Bismarck did, and became aristocratic councillors who received pensions. The Holy Roman Empire, which had an area of 450,000 square kilometers after subtracting the Netherlands, Switzerland, Italy, etc.), the Eastern Roman Kingdom (which had taken out Hungary and Moravia, consolidated its rule over Bulgaria, and recovered most of the Balkans except for the Colonial Empire of Salonica, plus the territory of western Asia Minor, which had already occupied more than 1 million square kilometers), was still relatively weak. The Chinese Empire, from the position of the allies, was very supportive of Italy's possession of terra nullius, and expressed its appreciation for Italy's plan to re-turn the Mediterranean Sea into an inland lake, and such military action was conducive to increasing trade between the two countries, expanding Italy's comprehensive strength, and enhancing the friendly feelings between the two countries...... 'Putting a high hat on Italy will not destroy relations with Eastern Rome, anyway, the most destructive church dispute has long since disappeared with the disappearance of the Papal States, Although Italy and Hellenistic Eastern Rome would not be as close as their ancient brothers, they were not far behind.

The biggest problem was that the Fatimid Egyptian dynasty was very unsupportive of the move to prevent the 'Romans' from reliving the work of their ancient ancestors and turning the Mediterranean Sea into an inland lake of Rome. It was impossible for Venice to instigate the Crusaders to storm Constantinople for the sake of trade, but trade with Fatima was still an important source of revenue for Europa. Although the Solomon Kingdom, which occupies the ports of Beirut, Haifa, Tel Aviv, etc., has replaced many of the role of Fatima in the field of European import and export, offending Fatima is also something that many traditional merchants in Italy do not want to see. Therefore, the domestic issuance of Southern Expedition bonds is not smooth. With the support of the traversal crowd, internal opinions can be ignored.

After receiving an affirmative answer, Consilio began to organize the assembly of troops in Sicily the next day. Prepare to cross the sea to conquer Tunisia and Libya (it is the standard for all puppet states not to act without the support of the Great Empire, and the Eastern Rome also took out its old enemies Hungary and Moravia only after receiving the support of the Chinese Empire).

Seeing that there is no harm in seeing Fatima's bad luck, Li Ji believes that severing the ties between Fatima and the Berbers of North Africa is conducive to reducing the influence of Islamic civilization on Africa, and is also conducive to reducing the dependence of North Africa on Islamic culture. This easily shaky characteristic is also conducive to the implantation and grafting of Chinese civilization. When Christianity and Islam were competing with each other in North Africa, it was easier for the developed modern civilization of the Chinese Empire to gain overwhelming material superiority and completely settle the problems of North Africa. Forever master this treasure land of oil production.

You must know that in North Africa, in addition to Egypt and Morocco, Tunisia, Algeria and Libya have a combined oil reserve of 45 billion tons, which is equivalent to more than 30 billion barrels, although it cannot be compared with the more than 600 billion barrels of oil in the Arabian Peninsula. But it's also a lot of money. What's more, this area is indeed a very good location to control the southern Mediterranean. It was here that the future famous Barbary pirates used as their base to wreak havoc on the Mediterranean.

As long as Italy occupies this land, it is impossible to keep it for a long time with its coercive nature, and it can only rely on the power of the Chinese Empire to maintain its occupation here, and the Maghreb region and Libya, which were semi-colonies in ancient Roman times, cannot escape their fate and become independent powers, and this region has been subordinate to the northern and eastern powerful neighbors since the destruction of Carthage. After the fall of the Western Romans, the rulers of the region changed like a marquee, but the Berber people's desire for a peaceful and stable life remained unchanged, and once the rule of the region weakened, pirates and horse bandits would plunge the region into chaos.

In order to reduce the obstacle to the south. Many of the indigenous elders in Libya have been bought off by Consilio, Italy's largest Belt and Road Party, and the Southern Expedition Command is full of defense maps and military intelligence as if they don't need money (modeled after the military system established by the Chinese Empire). There was also an efficient officer corps in Rome, which was in fact the General Staff Headquarters, which was formed by the outstanding talents of the Young Officers School trained by Conceilio.

Many indigenous tribes and city representatives who were dissatisfied with Fatima's increase in taxes and apportionments in order to fight Solomon sent personnel to contact the Southern Expeditionary Army, and in order to go down in order to go down as a force, Consilio followed the advice of the military advisers of the Chinese Empire, first released the news, let the Fatima defense force tense up, and then put a military show, withdraw the army after a few cannons on the seashore, paralyze the defense force, and then announce a formal declaration of war with Fatima after a few rounds. Half a year later, when everything was ready, he launched a general offensive and took the entire Fatimid territory in Libya and Tunisia in one fell swoop.

Traveling through the world before the crowd Italy is a tease, except for the neutral countries Spain and Turkey, the Mediterranean is only Italy is a strong country, but the result is too ugly to fight in North Africa and Greece, it is difficult to see that Hitler can't stand it, and the British army in Egypt, which almost fought back in self-defense, can encircle Tripoli, the central city of Italy in North Africa. The invasion of Africa more than 800 years ahead of schedule was quite smooth, and the heavy troops of Fatimid Egypt were concentrated in the Suez area on the border with the Solomon and could not be returned, so that Italy picked up a bargain, resulting in a fait accompli, Italy formed four African provinces with lightning speed, set up a governor and senate, absorbed the natives into the upper class and opened the market and trade to reduce the tax burden, wantonly invited people to buy people's hearts, and held a referendum.

Fatima had to concede the cession of the region to Italy through the mediation of the Chinese Empire, and obtained an armistice agreement promised by Italy that no troops should be stationed in the border areas. The fighting was extinguished less than two months after the Italian landing. Italy extended the boundary pillar southward to the southern border of the Sahara Desert, expanding its territory by 2 million square kilometers at once, enclosing all the deserts and uninhabited areas that could be enclosed, and suddenly becoming the largest country in Europe, surpassing Eastern Rome and Britain, France and Germany in one fell swoop.

Although this is only a map of the frontier, no one in this era knows how much wealth is under this land, except for the traversal. The Libyan Agricultural Reclamation Company, which is 100% owned by the People, bought more than 400,000 square kilometers of desert at the price of one florin gold coin per square kilometer. However, Italy, which received a huge amount of money, did not say much, and naturally both sides took what they needed and thought that they had taken advantage. (To be continued......)