While the French north of the Pyrenees were dying-out by floods, Spain was hit by a drought rarely seen in a century.

Successive extraordinary droughts dried up rivers and lakes, and the Spaniards, who had managed to end the war, took up arms again.

Water is scarce, crops are wilting, and people and livestock are dying from heat. In a country that is still predominantly agricultural, such a natural disaster is like the end of the world.

At this time, the Spanish Regency was composed of a group of merchants and a group of merchantized clergy, who were only concerned about whether the autumn tax could be collected in the face of natural disasters.

As for doing something, the Kingdom of Spain has been like this for hundreds of years, isn't it good to have a hot cup of coffee in the ice cellar?

The Queen Regent was only concerned with her lovers, and Isabel II, who was still a minor, had been completely brainwashed by the gods and became a fanatical religious person.

She was convinced of the idea of the "sacredness" of the monarchy, and whenever someone suggested something to her, Isabel II's first reaction was to put the other person to death.

The sanctity of the monarchy is in some ways more reactionary than the divine right of the monarchy, but such a monarch naturally enjoys the full support of the Church, but they choose to turn a blind eye to the suffering of the worldly.

In desperation, people began to run to churches to pray that God would help them, and officials also held various religious ceremonies to take the opportunity to get closer to the church, after all, the most sensitive creatures in the world are officials.

Perhaps the heavens were really moved, and suddenly there were large clouds in the sky, but there was no rain, and the sky was getting more and more cloudy, and later it was found that it was volcanic ash from a volcanic eruption

The Netherlands is the country most affected by potato late blight in the world, and because of its inheritance of the Belgian Flemish region, the whole country is plagued by the blight.

More than 95% of potatoes in the Netherlands are foul-smelling soaps.

(Potato late blight causes fruit rot and liquefaction.) ）

King Wilhelm II of the Netherlands, as the "merchant king", did not want to pay for it himself, so the unfortunate errand of disaster relief fell on the governor of Batavia, who was far away in the South Seas.

The new Enzo Matkfar, who was nominated by Caroline, was naturally to work for His Majesty the King, and his appointment greatly strengthened Dutch control over the Indonesian colony.

The reason why Enzo Matkfar was not thrown away by the landdoers to feed the crocodiles was largely due to the protection of Ambrera.

Of course, this is also indispensable to the support of the two foreign aids, Zhenla and Nanming, the Indonesian colony of the Netherlands is not bad, but their achievements in the past few hundred years are really lackluster.

Even if they were both backward agricultural countries at this time, the agriculture of Chenla and Nanming was much stronger than that of the Dutch East Indies.

The local Dutch are accustomed to rotten, not to mention the natives they rule. Many of the region's crops will become important strategic resources in the future, especially quinine, and if the area is not expanded, the Austrian Empire's progress into the interior of Africa will be hindered.

However, Franz also does not want to cheapen others, so he plans to lease Kalimantan, perhaps it is more appropriate to say that it is a joint development.

Anyway, the gold mines on Kalimantan were lost at this time, and the Dutch did not have much to remember, and those natives were more or less in the Dutch East Indies.

However, on the principle that there should be no waste, the Dutch in the Dutch East Indies negotiated with Franz on the condition that the Austrian Royal Development Company would pay the Dutch East Indies government for labor, and they would send the local natives to cooperate with the work.

But Franz didn't want the natives at all, and he was ready to change them all to Zhenla and Japanese immigrants.

In short, the locals he did not want, but fortunately the Dutch East India government did not want to give. You must know that the price of labor at this time is not cheap, a Chinese worker costs at least 100 pesos, and sometimes even sells for 500 pesos.

At that time, the Chinese workers were asking for the Eagle Ocean, that is, the Mexican peso, which means that a Chinese worker would cost at least 227 florins, and if it caught up with the bad year, it might even cost 1135 florins.

Therefore, the hundreds of thousands of natives on Kalimantan Island are treasures in the eyes of the Dutch East Indies government, but in Franz's eyes, the loss of natives is a good thing, after all, it can save a lot of unnecessary trouble.

Compared to the Dalits who were given away almost for free, the price of Japanese immigrants was not much higher.

During the shogunate period, there were many homeless people, and it was worth it in the eyes of the local daimyo to pick some young people and exchange them for goods from the Austrians.

If it weren't for the fact that Austria's merchant fleet didn't have that strength, the shogunate would have been eager to send millions of immigrants right now.

This was because the shogunate and local daimyo could use cheap goods from outside to attack the local Japanese market, so that they could regain economic dominance.

Faced with the attack of the two colonies of California and Hawaii, the Japanese merchants could not win even with all their might.

There were merchants who tried to eat all the goods on the market and forced the shogunate to give in, but the power of the international market caused them to sink directly into Osaka Bay.

During this period, the Austrian side actually earned more than the shogunate, but in the eyes of the feudal dynasty, domestic stability was the real thing.

Then, with the entry of foreign goods, a large number of artisanal workshops were forced to collapse, and the artisanal workers were unemployed, and they grew up the ranks of the displaced and marginalized.

However, the life of the daimyo and samurai classes was better, and not only did everyone have access to white rice, but also cheap clothes to wear, and cheap white sugar to make all kinds of sweets.

All sorts of bizarre foreign gadgets also entered the Japanese market, and the church didn't even have to continue to do things on the sly.

The shogunate directly abolished the long-standing ban on Christianity, naturally thanks to the flexible moral bottom line of the missionaries.

Matsudaira Haruji was shocked as soon as he typed the special edition of the Bible for the opening house, and the opening chapter clearly wrote "Loyal to the monarch and love the domain, and the monarch is divinely granted" eight big characters.

"Loyalty and misguided country!"

Tadayi refers to Tadayoshi Sakai, the main promoter of the ban on Christianity during the Tokugawa Hidetada era.

Matsudaira Haruyu was about to hang these eight characters in his room, and the shogunate's special edition of the Bible was specially designed for the Japanese region, and the precise targeted missionary effect was naturally not comparable to those primitive religions.

Matsudaira Harugaku was actually quite reserved, and many feudal lords joined in en masse with important ministers within the domain.

Franz also tailor-made a plan for the feudal lords to enrich the country and strengthen the army, although Japan is an island country, it is surrounded by the sea and rich in fishing resources.

As a result, the Americans, who loved to fish in the Sea of Japan, became the public enemies of the shogunate, and the American fishing boats could not even deal with pirates, let alone warships.

In addition to fishery resources, Japan's mineral resources are also good, at least more profitable than farming, but the most valuable of them are human resources.

In fact, these feudal lords were not stupid, they thought that if Japan became strong, it would stop trade with the Austrian Empire and continue its policy of seclusion and seclusion.

However, it is still possible to sell some of the surplus population once in a while.

(End of chapter)