London, United Kingdom.

Britain was the first country to complete the industrial revolution and is known as the "factory of the world".

The British, in order to reverse the image of the British as a pirate inherent to Britain, for centuries, turned to trumpeting its "parliamentary democracy", the so-called progressive, civilized "gentleman".

However, the so-called democracy of the British is only the product of the peace between the capitalists and the aristocracy, and only the rich have the right to vote and be elected, and the voices of the workers, peasants, and vagabonds cannot reach the parliament at all.

However, with the process of industrialization, the population of the cities increased rapidly, and a new class emerged, that is, the working class, and the workers here were different from the craftsmen of the past, they often had no goods, and they would go hungry and become even poorer after a day of work.

At the same time, they have a stronger sense of organization and discipline than the peasants, and they are relatively centralized and easy to form organizations.

By 1838, Britain's urban population had reached 48% of the country's total population, and industrialization and rapid urbanization led to a surge of tensions between the poor and the rich.

In 1815, after the end of the Napoleonic Wars, mill workers walked an average of eight miles a day between machines, and by 1838, workers were walking an average of twenty-four miles a day.

You may not have any idea of twenty miles, 38.62 kilometers, during the same period, the Austrian army marched at a speed of 20 kilometers per day, and the forced march was only 30 kilometers ~ 40 kilometers.

By the way, when forcibly marching, people can die, which means that it is common for people to die by forcibly marching to death in this era.

In addition, some people will definitely say that it is not a normal situation to travel 120 kilometers in a day, and 99.999% of pure infantry armies in ancient and modern China and foreign countries cannot do it.

At this time, the daily working hours are also unbearable for ordinary people, 12~14 hours of work, and more extremely, there is a 16-hour work system, only you dare not think, there is nothing they dare not do.

As for the working environment, not to mention the coal mine and brick factory, which is a mortal place, is the textile workshop, which is also like purgatory-like torture, and the high temperature closed indoors in summer can reach up to 70 ° ~ 80 ° It is common for workers to suffer from heat stroke.

And the workers who fall will most likely never get back up, because most of the workers who are caught up in the machinery will die immediately, and the rest will die within a few months, and if they still do not die, they will most likely be sent to a workhouse.

The increase in the intensity and hours of work did not translate into an increase in income, and after the initial market dividends had disappeared, the factory owners began to squeeze the workers, who in 1804 received 15 shillings a week, and in 1838 the workers received only 10 shillings.

The more ruthless factory owners usually replace wages with goods, which are usually not the best-selling goods, but the defective products that are not salable.

There are even mine owners who stuff ore with no smelting value directly into the miners in lieu of wages, and the cost of smelting these ores is almost equal to their own value, but all this is legal in the UK.

As for child labour, half of the workers employed in factories are usually minors, as they are paid half the price of adults.

Some factories even recruit child laborers to provide three meals as bait, and when the child laborers accept the contract of two pence a day, they find that the so-called three meals are not as good as pig food, but a paste made of some weeds, wood chips and soil.

The streets of London are crowded with ragged workers crossing London Bridge, and the police and gendarmerie have been dispatched, but there are still not enough of them, because there are too many workers.

In the case of the workers' march in London, Palmerston advocated a complete crackdown, and the Viscount of Melbourne felt that the matter had to be resolved before it could expand.

Even the Iron Duke Wellington, who had long been semi-retired, was found, and the Viscount of Melbourne asked the Duke of Wellington to rally his troops and suppress the workers' uprising if necessary.

In order to prevent a vicious incident like that of Lyon, France, the Viscount of Melbourne had prepared for the worst, and he asked Palmerston to tell the Iron Duke Wellington.

If the workers started a riot, the cavalry had to disperse the crowd at the first opportunity.

Palmerston, on the other hand, demanded that the Duke of Wellington send troops to block the streets, and at all costs prevent the workers from continuing to advance to the Palace of Westminster, where the House of Commons is located, because once the workers reach the House of Commons, it will have a great international impact.

Because Palmerston knew what the workers were going to do, they demanded that the People's Charter be made into law.

The People's Charter was a petition to Parliament submitted by the London Workers' Association in 1837, which proposed universal suffrage for all men over the age of 21, that voting in elections should be held in secret, that restrictions on the property qualifications of parliamentary candidates should be abolished, and that Parliament should hold annual re-elections with an equal distribution of constituencies.

At this time, the People's Charter had been revised, but the spearhead was still directed at the nobles and those who were not benevolent to the rich.

Some factory owners even said that if the eight-hour work day was implemented, he would rather move the factory to France, and even change his nationality.

The leader of the workers also had a petition of great rebellion, which read.

"Your Excellency, as it is now constituted, is neither elected by the people nor by the people. It serves only the interests of the few, ignoring the poverty, misery and aspirations of the majority. ”

"Queen Victoria earns 164 pounds 17 shillings 60 pence a day, her husband Prince Albert earns 104 pounds 20 shillings, and millions of workers earn only two or three pence a day."

"Viscount Palmerston colluded with the Sassoon family to prepare Britain to fight for opium dealers, etc."

The most terrifying thing is that there are still 1.25 million signatures on this petition, at a time when the total population of the British mainland, excluding the island of Ireland, is only 10 million.

For the sake of Britain's face, this petition must not be made public, and Palmerston will do whatever it takes to do so.

Historically, the Duke of Wellington's troops, although they arrived at the Palace of Westminster before the procession, did not enforce the blockade order, and the relationship was very complicated, and the soldiers were reluctant to shoot at their own people, so the procession reached the Palace of Westminster.

The procession has already crossed London Bridge and is about to reach St Margaret's Street in the Palace of Westminster.

Palmerston had prepared for the worst, employing a few homeless men to blend in with the crowd and shoot when necessary to cause chaos.

If someone in the procession fired, the army had to return fire, so that his plan to start a war in collusion with the Sassoons would not be revealed, and he would remain the British foreign secretary.

At this moment, however, the procession suddenly turned around and went not to the Palace of Westminster, but to Buckingham Palace, where Queen Victoria lived.

In fact, many workers' leaders were very puzzled by this decision. But William Lovett, the de facto leader of the workers' association, the leader of the moralists, insisted on doing so.

William Lovett opened a letter with a letter from the "mystery man".

"This is the instruction of the mysterious man, do you still doubt it? The mystery man never missed, and without him, we would have been caught in the gendarmerie long ago. ”

Some of the workers' leaders knew the handwriting of the mysterious man, but this time the mysterious man used Latin, and many of the leaders could not read it, but fortunately, some of the workers' leaders had been pastors and understood some Latin, so that they could read it to everyone.

The leaders of the British Workers' Association still admired the mysterious man, but the mysterious man wrote in a different script each time, which was very difficult to read, and occasionally inserted a sentence or two in German and French.

Ahem, cough, cough, it seems that this topic can't be written more, and I didn't add more updates today.

(End of chapter)