Louis XIV soon left the Hurons and the black slaves behind, who were not first of all French, not his people, and secondly, neither the blacks nor the Indians, who were too far away from the king, who were now commonly used on the islands of the Caribbean, and who had nothing to do with most of the French, who had been holding banquets for months after the birthday party of the Duke of Montreal—for a reason, if you look for it.

It's just that Louis XIV's banquets are always accompanied by the rumbling of guns, the rebellion in Lorraine is accustomed to it, Amsterdam and Groningen are newly occupied, and the occasional stir is also within the scope of recognition, but Marseille - this ancient port city dates back to 600 AD, it was founded by the Phosians of ancient Greece and under the protection of Rome during the Roman Republic - Note, however, that for a long time afterward, it remained an independent city, and although it lost its civil rights due to the wrong side during the Roman Civil War, it is true that the Maasai have maintained their desire for freedom to this day.

King François I of France, the big-nosed king of France, had been shipwrecked near Marseille, so he built a huge fortress in Marseille, but it didn't seem to be of much use, whether it was against storms, enemies, or plagues. During the reign of Louis XIII, there was an outbreak of the Black Death in Marseille, which caused tens of thousands of deaths, so after Louis XIV came to power, he also specially sent officials to Marseille and other port cities to visit and inspect to ensure the safety and cleanliness of the port and reduce the recurrence of plagues such as the Black Death. Later, the king's doctors studied cowpox, and after Paris and Versailles, the people of the port cities were the first to accept the cultivation, after all, the port population was far more dense and frequent than the inland cities.

Thereupon...... Ironically, a clergyman believed that the king of France had been deceived by the devil, and that he was not trying to save the people of Marseille, but to consecrate them to Satan, and that once the cowpox liquid taken from the horned cows was poured into the human body, those who had received the planting would grow horns, turn into the face of a cow, or moo like a cow......

Of course, people with a little common sense and reason will not believe in the nonsense of the clergy, and if the cultivation of cowpox is to turn into cattle, then the present Paris and Versailles have not become the king's cattle farms? But the one who would believe such a lie is not a wise man, not to mention that the priest, in a public sermon, got two bribed men to show them the signs of cowpox planting on their bodies, and then, as soon as the priest's holy water was poured on them, they immediately rolled on the ground, screaming, and mooing like a bull.

The clergy took advantage of this opportunity to stir up the ignorant people.

The person who was sent to Marseille to deal with the matter was Jean Barr, the first graduate of the Military Academy, Shaw-Louis Héctor Villars, who was born in 53 years and came from a humble background. He was one of the exiles that the king had taken in during his exile, but fortunately they were no ordinary farmers or craftsmen in the first place, his father was a lawyer, and after settling in Versailles, with his almost negligible connections, he took a petty job in Paris, moved through the government many times, and finally fell under the Duke of Conti, with such a father, when Villars came of age, he naturally entered the army, although his father wanted him to inherit his own business. But what young boy at that time didn't want to serve the king with a sword and a gun?

Villar also entered the military academy as an officer after many years in the army, and of course, he and Jean Barr, as well as Louis Joseph de Bourbon, grandson of the Duke of Vendôme, were three of the three fierce generals who were famous in the rouge streets of Paris and Versailles, and unlike Jean Barr, he received more information from the court, almost no less than Joseph, and he guessed at the time of his appointment that this was the last test of the king and the veterans.

Because of the great plague eighty or ninety years ago, the population of Marseille has not recovered until now, and the riot has been tightly sealed under control by the governor of Provence, but the damage caused by the chaos caused by the riot must not be recovered - the whole of Marseille is in a state of serious stagnation, and when Villars arrives in Marseille, he is not even interested in cleaning and sweeping the city first - he is as stingy as Louis XIV, and he does a jaw-dropping thing in the face of the towering walls.

He found several ancient trebuchets and, like the Tatars had done with the Europas, threw several corpses that appeared to be infected with smallpox into the city of Marseille.

The Maasai people who were waiting behind the walls suddenly went crazy, but after a few decades, the memory of mankind was not so short, and the memories left by the survivors of Marseille, which had been mostly empty, immediately resurfaced before their eyes - although smallpox was not as contagious and lethal as the Black Death, the people of this era still could not understand and understand how the epidemic was transmitted - Just look at the protective suits of the Birdbeak Doctors, who feel that contact (even if it is stepping on the road that a patient has entered), talking and breathing, or muddy air, or even by looking at it, can cause a healthy person to be infected with the plague.

No one dared to collect the bodies of smallpox patients, they hung on the eaves, hung from the branches, lay among the gravel, quickly rotted and stenched, and people ran to the church, crowded around the clergy, scrambling to receive communion, hoping to escape the plague and the ensuing death—but all of a sudden, some had a fever, some felt pain, and some had pus...... The whole city was filled with cries and prayers, then curses.

Fires broke out in some parts of the city. There were also people who wanted to escape from the port, but Villar blocked it from the outside.

Within a week, the people of Marseille had opened the gates of the city on their own.

The governor of Provence could not help but look at pity on his face, "and if you do this," he said, "you may bring disaster upon yourself." ”

"What are you talking about," said Villar, "is smallpox so easy to get?"

"But the corpses?"

"Just criminals," said Villar, "I have a doctor who can make the vivid smallpox pustules with ointment." ”

The governor of Provence looked at him: "Fake?" He looked at Marseille: "But as far as I know, there really is someone who has smallpox." ”

"You can get a doctor to see you, and it's definitely not smallpox, not even the Black Death. Villar told a not-so-funny joke: "It's just a ghost who is suspicious." ”

Villar's family was once very wealthy, but after years of famine and the resulting riots, they were lucky enough to escape with their lives - exile was unbearable for a noble man like Louis XIV, let alone an ordinary family, and during the exile, Villar's father was impressed by the fact that a man who had worked as a doctor could irritate the skin with all kinds of poisonous fruits, leaves, and roots, causing ominous scars and pustules on the skin.

This made him seldom come back empty-handed when he went to beg, and people were not so much sympathetic to him as they were afraid and disgusted, and even if everyone was not doing well, they would not mind giving a handful of wheat or a bowl of beans when they encountered such a dangerous patient.

When their lives were settled and they remembered the events of that time, Villar's father told Villar, and Villar suddenly remembered this matter this time, so he asked the military doctor - there are really people who can do it, and this is nothing to the doctor, after all, the first thing the doctor knows is all kinds of poisonous herbs and berries, some of which can kill people instantly, and some can save people after weighing the amount.

Of course, the people of Marseille did not want to believe it, but the king's army, after entering the city, did not hesitate to clean up the corpses, and walked calmly through the streets and alleys, and even entered the houses, and they did not wear protective clothing or masks—here are two explanations, depending on which one they believe, one is that the king's soldiers have been planted with cowpox, and they have not become cattle, and they have not suffered from smallpox, and the other is that they have been frightened by several corpses.

Villar cared not in the slightest about what the Maasai thought, he was proud that he had taken Marseille without losing a single soldier, and the deceitful priest and his retinue were brought to him, remembering the information sent by the king's spies that the gentleman did not care when the Maasai were terrified, and at the thought of this, Villar shrugged his shoulders and stripped them of their clothes in the presence of the governor and the members of the Marseille city council, despite the angry roars and protests of the priests.

The priest's body was exposed to the eyes of the people, and because the cowpox had to be planted above the left arm, according to the king's request, for easy verification, so—they saw the golden lily mark at once— The doctors initially used a silver knife to cut open the wound, but that was not suitable for children, so later the king's chief physician, Lom, after inventing the beak suit, then invented the tool for growing cowpox, which works similarly to a dipping pen, with a hollow pipe connected to a pointed end, which pierces the skin and flows in the cowpox liquid.

In order to make people remember the king's favor, the pointed end quickly became a simplified golden lily pattern, and after the wound healed, the outline of the pattern became even more blurred, but it was still clear that this trace was actually quite fresh, and Villar laughed at a glance: "So you are also afraid of smallpox?" and did not even ask the doctor to change the tool.

The Maasai who knew that they had been deceived glared at the priest and their retinue, but there was a good thing about it, that is, the officials and doctors who had been sent to Marseille by the king were well kept in the dungeon, although they were depressed, but they were not tortured or died, but it was difficult to say if Villars were slower, the burner was ready, and it was only the priest who thought that a suitable day should be divined, so he came to a grand bonfire feast - in fact, he was only worried that the planting would not be successful or that the doctor had concealed some steps.

"Don't worry," said Monsieur Villar, who looked like a gentleman, with a smile, "the stake will not be wasted. ”

Although he was almost made into a barbecue, the doctor's moral bottom line was obviously higher than that of the average person, and when he heard that someone had smallpox, he immediately went to see him—and some of the doctors in the city of Marseille, who had been very supportive of the cultivation of cowpox, but the priest's words were stronger than theirs, and the people not only did not believe them, but also arrested them as spies and traitors.

After some discussion, they agreed that no one in the city had smallpox, and the result was puzzling, and if there was no smallpox in the city, what about the people with high fevers, rashes and pustules on their skin, and pain all over their bodies.

"I don't know," said Villar, "but Jean Barr told me that there is a punishment among pirates, where they hang a man upside down and hang him in a room with a black hole, and make a small cut in his throat, and put a bucket next to it, and tell him that his blood will drip in the bucket, and when it is full, he will die." He gestured, "But the dripping is just a skin, and if the pirate can hold out until the next day, he will live, and if he can't—Barr said that no one can, and the next day they will all receive a corpse that has died of horror, and strangely enough, it really looks like it has been bled to death." ”

"Didn't he die because he hanged himself upside down?" said the governor of Provence.

"It's a possibility," said Villar, "but he said that if he blindfolded a man and told him he would be burned with a soldering iron, then even if he put a cold piece of iron, he would be burned, red marks and blisters." ”

"It does happen. The doctor also said this: "Some people are so sensitive that they can scare themselves crazy, even if they just threaten them." ”

The Count of Provence didn't say anything more, there would certainly be the king's spies in the crowd, but he also knew that people often said that the devil is called, and the devil comes, and a person who often feels sorry for himself will not be in good health, and these Maasai people are originally frightened birds, and there will be people who regret their impulses - it is difficult to say whether those who claim to have contracted the epidemic are really unwell......

Needless to say, the priest and his followers were burned at the stake, "even if it was for the wedding of the eldest princess to King Karl XI of Sweden." Villar muttered, showing an innocent smile, he was only twenty-four years old, and he was handsome, and he could indeed pretend to be like this, but everyone around him couldn't help but send chills down his spine.