Chapter 54: Turn Britain into India (I)

e: Fixed a small Bh chapter in the wrong order, the previous chapter "Honkai History" was chapter 53, and this chapter is chapter 54.

※※※※※※※※※※※※※※※※※※※

In September 1348, the capital of the Kingdom of England was London

The tall, sturdy Tower of London, a quintessential medieval castle, stands majestically on the banks of the River Thames, overlooking the city and wilderness beneath its feet.

At this time, the future famous Buckingham Palace was still 300 years later, and the Tower of London, the future royal prison and execution ground, assumed the functions of the royal palace, from the Plantagenet dynasty to the Steat dynasty, where successive kings of England were crowned and abdicated...... From the window of the White Tower in the center of the Tower of London, you can overlook the city of London, which is not yet large, and the River Thames, which has been flowing slowly for thousands of years.

However, the River Thames flowing through London at this moment is not only the kind of birds and flowers that it has been fully managed in the 21st century, but even more terrifying than the "sewers of Europe" that disappeared fish and shrimp in the era of the Industrial Revolution - the turbid river is filled with a terrible stench, and at a casual glance, you can see piles of dead people slowly rotting on the river beach, and between the slightly undulating waves, there are countless disgusting and deadly floating corpses Yes, on this Thames, there are rotting corpses everywhere, Most of them were human carcasses, but there were also cows, horses, and pigs. Many times, these bodies are washed up on the shore. Then packs of wild dogs will pounce on them, barking and fighting for a bite of filthy carrion.

Ominous crows perched on floating corpses in the river, "organic floating objects" that peck at their feet from time to time, and messy skeletons are piled up on the river beach. Some of them have only the white bones left, but some still have a lot of rotten flesh left. From the swollen abdomen of the corpse, colorful internal organs flowed out, scattered everywhere along the riverbank, attracting countless dogs to feast on it - this scene is like a city of death.

But the city is not really dead, and in the field of vision, there are still a few living people who can be seen sporadically, like walking corpses, staggering to the river to fetch water, right next to the floating corpses of those disgusting dead...... It seems that most of these living people are emaciated, unkempt, and more like ghosts than like people, but they are still alive, so that Miss Ma Tong is considering whether to slaughter them so that they can be freed.

“…… Hell, is this really London's Thames? It looks more like the legendary Ganges River full of corpses."

Standing at the window of the White Tower, Senior Sister Ma Tong covered her nose with a perfumed handkerchief, pointed to the smelly and disgusting river in front of her and said--It was the end of summer at this time, and even the temperature in London was very high, so the corpse decomposed very quickly. The Yu flow of the Thames River in front of him is in good condition due to the large amount of water and the width of the river, and the small tributaries that flow through the city of London have been blocked by corpses.

“…… No way, the Thames at this time, not only the largest open-air toilet in the whole of Britain, but also the largest open-air cemetery in the whole of the United Kingdom, is the same as the Ganges River in India at that time, or even worse - modern Indians still burn the corpses before they are buried in water......"

Wang Qiu shrugged his shoulders and replied, "Besides, according to Princess Joan, even London before the Black Death was almost the same stink—only in winter it was slightly better, so the royal family liked to go hunting in the wild forests in the summer...... Hey, the city is so filthy, and it's no wonder that the plague in London is so violent, and only a few people die in a month or two......"

※※※※※※※※※※※※※※※※※※※

Unlike the Italian cities that have inherited some of the heritage of ancient Roman civilization and know how to maintain environmental hygiene, London in 1348 was really submerged in garbage and excrement all the time, without any exaggeration or embellishment - London in 1348 had no sewers, no running water, not even street garbage bins and public toilets, and only a dozen to dozens of cleaners in the whole city who were often unpaid, so that London was drowning in an ever-increasing amount of feces and garbage all the time. And the only thing these cleaners can do is dump all kinds of garbage into the Thames - and there are no excavators, no railways and no trucks, so can they still haul the garbage far from the city and dig deep into it?

Therefore, any modern person who pays attention to the minimum of cleanliness is basically not able to walk on these muddy roads in the city of London, because it is covered with a thick layer of excrement and garbage. Every citizen seems to be in the habit of dumping garbage and excrement into the streets, and the horses pulling carts are also in the habit of defecating in the open. As a result, the pavement is paved higher and higher with all kinds of, and if no one cares about it, these paving piles, which are increasing every day, will flood the houses on both sides of the street, forcing people to move to the second floor and not laugh, even in nineteenth-century New York, before the automobile was clear, it was a similar situation. In particular, in some of the unattended slums of Brooklyn, the excrement on the streets was once piled up four meters high, so that the wheels of horse-drawn carriages became stuck in the dung, paralyzing traffic, and it was not cleared until the last years of the 19th century

In short, it is no exaggeration to say that the citizens of London in this era are indeed living in dung pits and living in garbage. Walking into medieval London, the most impressive thing must be the kind of stench that permeates everywhere, cannot be avoided, and makes people faint. Unless it snows heavily in winter, the city will be covered with a false white veil, temporarily covering its filthy and disgusting side. And in the summer...... Well, if anyone has a nose that can tolerate the stench of the city of London, then they can probably go to the French Western Front trenches of World War I to use hard anti-gas bombs.

However, the English of the Middle Ages had long since adapted to this filth and were accustomed to it. The rich and the aristocracy remained in this filthy city as if nothing had happened, feasting in the middle of a huge stinking garbage heap, for their bodies were as rancid and filthy as the city, and the church exhorted people all day long to pray and not to waste time on such mundane things as bathing - so that most people, from the princes and nobles to the common people, rarely bathed, and even did not bother to wash their clothes, so that their heads and clothes were always greasy. Because there were no sewers, there were few decent toilets even in the mansions of the aristocracy. As for the poor people, Yu Crisp often lived with humans and animals, and the family shared the same haystack with pigs, horses, and donkeys...... Well, even if there were a few more flea rats in the haystack, it wouldn't seem like anything strange.

And so, when the Black Death broke out, the filthy city was caught off guard and went to death and destruction with such an astonishing degree that the plague broke out so suddenly and violently in London that the Guildhall and the royal family were all over before they could take measures.

- When Wang Qiu and Doraemon opened the [Random Door] and let Princess Joan, who had just recovered from a serious illness but died of her fiancé, return to London, the capital of the Kingdom of England had been swallowed up by death, and the Tower of London, which was the royal palace, had also become a death purgatory filled with rotting corpses:

King Edward III of England died, Queen Philippa died, his rightful heir, Edward, the Black Prince, and his two younger brothers, the future Duke of Lancaster and Duke John (the founding fathers of the Wars of the Roses in England in the next century), also died.

The last remaining prince of England, the ten-year-old Lionel, was escorted by a noble minister, and Princess Joan's two sisters, Princess Mary and Princess Margaret, were hastily evacuated from London and fled to the supposedly quieter university town of Oxford.

Although it is not known whether the remaining members of the royal family left a few people who were not afraid of death to watch their homes before fleeing to Oxford for refuge, after the [random door] was opened, Wang Qiu and Doraemon led people to rummage through the entire corpse-riddled and rancid Tower of London, and only found one living person, a very unexpected guy - David II, the king of Scotland, who had been captured in the Battle of Neville's Crossroads the previous autumn

The noble prisoner, forgotten by all, was imprisoned in the highest spire of the palace, claiming that no one had come up to bring him food for a week, and that he had to survive by drinking the muddy rain from the windows, but he had coincidentally avoided the Black Death...... When Doraemon appeared on him, King David II was already hungry, with a lot of breath and little breath, but he had not yet been summoned by the Lord......

Not only has the Tower of London been occupied by the dead, but even the entire city of London, due to the mass exodus of the citizens, there are now only a few thousand living people left, all of whom have been tormented by the blindness of death to the point of mental breakdown and madness, so that it is difficult to communicate with them normally.

Searching all over London, it seems that only in the Venetian's merchant house did a relatively large number of normal people gather - when the Venetian was frantically searching for money to pay off Doraemon's debts, in order to make as much money as possible, the traversers once took the initiative to help the Venetian return foreign funds, and opened the [random door] to the Venetian's various merchant houses abroad, and then let the Venetian governor rush over with a large number of people, and ordered those expatriates to hand over all the working capital and valuable goods on hand for the "angels" As a kind of citizen welfare, Doraemon also vaccinated the Venetian merchants who were sent to the Venetian merchants, and the Venetian Mercantile House in London was no exception. So, when the Black Death broke out in London, most of these Venetians were lucky to survive, and it was from the mouths of these fellows that Doraemon learned that the remnants of the English royal family had fled to Oxford, where the King of Scotland had been imprisoned and knew very little about what was going on outside.

Then, Doraemon took Nobita and four other elementary school students to fly to the university town of Oxford wearing a [bamboo dragonfly], looking for traces of the English royal family along the way. Wang Qiu and others stayed in the Tower of London, following the members of the British mission who had fled from Bordeaux, as well as volunteers sent by the Catholic Church of Avignon to help, to clean up the palace full of corpses and try to make it more habitable.

“…… In any case, London is still a little stronger than Napoli, and at least a few living people can be seen, which is already very good. Looking down at this hell full of corpses from the Tower of London, Wang Qiu smiled helplessly, "...... I'm never going to set foot on a single street in this city anyway. Even in this palace, it's disgustingly dirty......"

In this era, the concept of "open urinating and defecating is a natural human right" seems to have been deeply ingrained in the marrow of every Englishman, and even in the Tower of London, which is the royal palace, piles of excrement can be found in the corridors from time to time...... Of course, there are even more disgusting decomposing corpses - due to the limited manpower, there is only time to burn and bury the rotting corpses in the palace, and as for the excrement and garbage that accumulate everywhere, we have to wait and clean up.

“…… Yes, even if it is because of the explosion of the Black Death, and the chaos of order is caused, it will not be dirty like this all of a sudden. Ma Tong turned to look at the corner of the wall full of feces and muttered in disgust, "...... Well, Doraemon they seem to be back? ”

- A moment later, the Doraemon Five, who appeared outside the castle window, jumped in one by one.

“…… Unfortunately, the situation in Oxford is as bad as in London, and Oxford University has completely collapsed. All the teachers and students who were able to escape fled, and those who remained were almost dead. The doors of the university were locked and the campus was littered with corpses. According to several survivors, at the beginning, the teachers and students also buried the bodies in the school garden. Later, the few survivors all hid in the house and cellar, and in order to avoid the plague, no one dared to bury the corpses, and there was a dead silence from morning to night. Throughout the Oxford campus, all you can see is all kinds of corpses slowly decomposing on the grass, in the houses, and in the library...... Shizuka Minamoto was originally looking forward to going to Oxford University in the United Kingdom as an international student, but after seeing Oxford University in this year, she felt that it seemed that she should study in Japan......

Doraemon drank the mineral water handed by Wang Qiu while talking about what they had discovered as they traveled up the Thames to Oxford, "...... The prince and the two princesses who fled to Oxford are also dead, and we find their bodies in an abandoned church, as well as the only coachman who did not die of illness or escape, and ask him the bad news...... Well? What does it smell like? ”

He suddenly frowned, twitched his round red nose and sniffed, revealing a look of disgust, "...... Ahem, it's so choking."

“…… Ah, that's the British burning all kinds of substances that can emit strong smells in the palace, such as hops, ** and sage, as well as deliberately wet firewood and dead leaves, to create smoke, hoping to use smoke to drive away diseases. Wang Qiu replied.

“…… Why would they do such stupid things? Haven't I already vaccinated each of them against plague? Doraemon said with a frown.

“…… Because the vaccine you gave is not useful, when I was searching the Tower of London and the nearby city, there was a knight who had been vaccinated and suddenly had a fever, and he couldn't get up after coming back and lying down. By the time others noticed that something was wrong with him, they reported it layer by layer, and finally by the time I rushed over with the [Encyclopedia of Magic] and the [Automatic Medical Kit], this unlucky guy had already lost his breath. Several of his colleagues also fell ill, but fortunately they were not seriously ill and were all rescued by me. Wang Qiu spread his hands and said.

“… It can't be," Doraemon cried, "...... Our plague vaccine cannot be a fake"

“…… This is normal, because he did not have plague, but influenza, and the others had malaria and yellow fever."

Wang Qiu rubbed his forehead and sighed, "...... Doraemon, due to the Venetian merchants' chaotic operation all over the world, the concentrated concentration of the fierce plague germs that you put in Jerusalem in retaliation has spread back to all parts of Europe, setting off a new round of compound plagues."

Tips: The new domain name "biquge.info" has been launched by Biquge, and the original domain name is about to be discontinued. Please tell each other, thank you!