Chapter 64: History has fallen into fog "The Black Death in history wiped out about 25 million of the 80 million Europeans at that time, and completely extinguished the war in all parts of Europe.
The reason was that there were not enough able-bodied men to supplement the army.
It brought many consequences to Europe.
Rare peace: although this peace is more terrible than war."
Standing on the corridor terrace of Ravenclaw Tower, looking out the window at the falling snow, Wang Qiu looked at the data stored in his smartphone and talked to Levi so eloquently, "Besides, this...
The catastrophe of the Black Death also brought great changes to the economy and politics of medieval European society.
It had a severe impact on politics, culture, religion, and technology, and had a huge impact.
Many scholars regard the Black Death as an opportunity for the transformation and development of European society.
Although it is painful, it is like the pupa of a caterpillar.
When it emerges from the pupa, it transforms into a gorgeous butterfly In medieval Europe before the Black Death, lords' lands were farmed by their serfs.
Serfs lived with their families in small villages made of huts made of reeds, turf and mud.
The ground inside the house is covered with leaves and hay, and a platform for bonfires is built with stones in the middle of the house.
Because there were no windows or chimneys, smoke from the fires was released through holes in the roof or open doors.
The furniture in the house is only a simple table, a few stools, a storage box, and beds made of several large wooden boards, or you can simply sleep on the haystack.
There is a small plot of land next to each hut, and there may be a chicken pen and a pig pen.
Ducks and geese are also raised in the nearby river.
Large farming animals such as horses and cattle were shared by farmers in the whole village.
This was basically the normal appearance of most medieval European villages.
Most of these medieval villages were built around a large area of land, which was owned by the lord and cultivated by serfs.
Lords lived in large manors or castles with defensive functions.
Serfs worked hard for their lords, and their food and clothing were uncertain.
The amount of annual taxes was sometimes determined only by the lord's whim.
The lords also dominated the jurisdiction of these poor illiterate peasants.
The church and lords monopolized most of the economy and force, and any resistance by the peasants was meaningless.
The lucky ones among them might be able to change their situation, such as gathering a group of thugs to knock down a certain manor, and then become the masters, but Nothing really changes for the social order as a whole.
Although some urban residents have gotten rid of the shackles of the feudal system, given the deplorable level of urbanization in this era, at least more than 80% of Europeans still live under the pervasive and complete control of the lords, repeating the same routine from generation to generation.
Living a hard life without any hope of change, they can only use religion to anesthetize themselves.
In fact, in rural India in the 21st century, the situation is almost the same.
This is a dull and lifeless society, like a dark quagmire.
Except for a few exploiters who enjoy the benefits, most people can only struggle in despair from birth to death, just to have a bite of food and survive.
You have to be as mean as a dog and as ignorant as a pig.
Social development has reached a bottleneck.
The pressure of population expansion has swallowed up the capital that can be used for technological progress, but those in power are instinctively hostile to any change.
If we want to push this stagnant society forward and break the shackles and shackles of the old era, we need an overwhelming red revolution.
However, in this ignorant era, there is no decent revolutionary theory, not even a revolutionary thinking concept.
However, the Black Death unintentionally replaced the role of revolution and changed everything that was mired in quagmire and stagnation.
With a considerable number of peasants wiped out by the Black Death, the lords had only two options if they did not want their land to be abandoned: hire labor at high prices, or rent the land to the surviving freemen.
Of course, European governments sometimes worked side by side with their lords and used laws to force farmers to work for free.
Just like the ancient Chinese dynasty forced peasants to perform corvées, but not only did they not pay wages, they even had to provide their own rations.
However, over time, as the number of farmers continued to decline during the plague, this policy could only eventually lead to riots.
The result would be either the collapse of the country and the fall of the dynasty, or the lords making concessions because they realized that without the labor force, they would Even the slightest income is gone.
When labor has become an extremely scarce commodity and is still shrinking rapidly, no coercive means can restrain wage increases.
As a result, the serfdom system began to disintegrate, and the feudal lords had to relax their personal control over the peasants and only asked them to pay taxes, turning the serfs into tenant farmers.
As disease and death further depleted the labor pool, sharecroppers were forced to recruit people to help with the work, drawn from landless refugees and survivors from the towns.
In this way, labor began to flow freely, and the feudal manor gradually came to an end.
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With labor costs rising rapidly as the die-off spread, farmers were reluctant to accept leases unless they were willing to provide additional benefits such as cattle, farm implements, and seeds.
In towns, too many craftsmen died, forcing the remaining bosses to think hard about how to replace manpower with tools and machines, thus creating the need for a technological revolution.
As the plague continues to reduce the number of guild members in all walks of life, guilds have to expand the scope of member recruitment, which means that the traditional rule of only entering the guild through blood, relatives and friends has been abolished.
At the same time, the apprenticeship period after workers joined the union was also shortened, and handicraft workshops began to transform into capitalist factories.
At the same time, the absolute authority of the Holy See has also been subversively challenged.
Discontent began to boil in the hearts of the people, and their desperate situation led to questions about Christ and God.
The resentment caused by the widespread inaction of the clergy sown the seeds of a series of subsequent religious reform movements.
In this way, under the impact of the wave of death, all the shackles that originally hindered the progress of society have become shaky.
On the eve of the Age of Discovery, although Europeans were still very poor, they had already completed their essential transformation.
They were just waiting to rush to every corner of the earth and plunder the world's wealth to fill their hungry stomachs and withered money. bag, you can get further take-off and sublimation On the contrary, China at that time was like a fat man full of encumbrances.
Although it had more wealth, the feudal dross that blocked its eyes and ears had to wait until the troubled times of the Republic of China before it could be replaced by blood and fire, shame and destruction.
Among them, they were completely swept away in the most violent way.
In short, because tens of millions of deaths formed enough lubricant, the wheels of European civilization were able to break free from the stagnation and move towards a new life.
After experiencing the Black Death, European civilization embarked on a brighter path.
The social transformation issue that originally seemed very difficult suddenly became smoother because of the Black Death.
It not only promoted the development of science and technology, but also helped break the status of the Catholic Church, exerting an important influence on the Renaissance, the Reformation and even the Enlightenment, thus changing the direction of the development of European civilization. " "However, our arrival has distorted all these trajectories, right?"
Levi interjected with a wry smile.
"Yes, first of all, we must make it clear that although we have been trying our best to save people since we traveled to this world, in fact, the people we saved are actually far less than the people we killed.
Doraemon was lost in Jerusalem Those jars of concentrated plague liquid are too lethal, but the Venetian merchants are using our random doors to spread the plague all over the world, spreading the plague faster than wildfire."
Wang Qiu nodded and replied with the same wry smile, "Even the cities that we have saved have suffered fires in their backyards, and the epidemic has resurged, and they are still in a state of distress.
And those rural places that we have not had time to go to are under our control.
Hogg who cast a healing spell Before the Woz students arrived, they could only hope for blessings from plague, dysentery, smallpox, diphtheria, measles, chickenpox, meningitis, cholera, typhoid, malaria, and influenza.
So many types of severe plagues broke out at the same time.
That's really going to bring about the end of the world.
The latest estimates based on satellite reconnaissance photos indicate that the plague has spread north to Norway and east to Moscow.
Even Poland and Milan, which were originally able to survive the Black Death, are now affected.
More than half of the current population of 80 million in Europe has died, and continues to die rapidly.
The scope of the Magic Encyclopedia Dictionary is limited.
If we place the props in London, then the effective range of the spell is greatest to the east.
You can reach Poland, and you can barely reach North Africa further south.
As for places further east, there is absolutely no way.
Now Egypt has completely turned into a country of the dead, and the holy city of Jerusalem has also become a dead city.
It is estimated that there will not be a few living people left in the Byzantine Empire.
If we say that the original Black Death, which reduced the population of Europe by 25 million, destroyed countless families and caused countless tragedies and tears, it was also beneficial to European countries in reducing population pressure and jumping out of Malthus.
The curse of civilizational stagnation in population theory.
But if the population is reduced from 80 million to 10 million, or even a few million, it is not about reducing population pressure, but the entire civilized society is about to collapse.
If it is not done well, it will degenerate all the way to the state of barbaric tribes.
Just like what is described in those apocalyptic novels In the history of human civilization, whether it was the collapse of the Roman Empire, the Five Husbands' Rebellion in China, or the Anti-Japanese War, there seemed to be no such high proportion of population decline.
If we must find a similar example, then it seems that only the collapse of the Mayan civilization occurred.
At that time, 14 million Mayans living on the Yucatan Peninsula in Central America, 12 of them died in less than a century. millions, thus leading to the decline and oblivion of entire civilizations Alas, even for the original Black Death, which killed 25 million people, it took Europeans two centuries of reproduction in history to restore the population to the pre-plague level.
Now this complex plague will kill at least 50 to 60 million people.
I really don’t know what will happen in the future.”
Having said this, Wang Qiu couldn't help but shook his head and sighed, "So, what if we retain those European cities?
Without enough rural population and surplus food to support it, no matter how developed the urban civilization is, it will only end in collapse and disintegration. .
In this great plague, due to the rapid and widespread death, the original administrative structures at all levels in European countries have completely collapsed.
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No king or lord can maintain order.
The social conflicts that have accumulated in the past have naturally exploded. come out.
There were riots and banditry everywhere, and it was only because of the large number of deaths caused by the plague that all this was temporarily covered up.
After the so-called divine magic suppresses the plague, we still don’t know what kind of chaos it will look like.
The countries of Britain and France, which have now taken shape, may be divided into countless tribes and kingdoms again.
Speaking of which, the Venetians have recently used our power to coerce a lot of kingdoms and city-states around the Mediterranean to sign various unequal treaties, as if they want to become the hegemon of the West.
But the problem is, when these city-states and kingdoms lose the support of the countryside and are all forced to be abandoned like the Mayan cities, and the citizens disperse into the wilderness, who will they turn to to fulfill these unequal treaties?
And the Venetian merchant fleet may also turn to them.
There is no one to do business with anymore.
In the end, we can only go back to those abandoned farms in the suburbs, grow our own food, grind flour and cook our own meals."
"In fact, there are already several cities that have been directly destroyed.
For example, London was burned before, and Constantinople was destroyed by us using Dragon Slash and Meteor Fire Rain.
I heard that in a few days Recently, a group of French first-year Hogwarts graduates were unable to control the epidemic in the capital.
The newly cured patients fell ill again within a few days, and even set fire to Paris in the same manner."
Li Wei touched his chin and added, "But don't think that the Venetians are so short-sighted.
They just didn't predict the horror of this plague at the beginning, and it would actually lead to the collapse of civilization.
Now, the Venetians are no longer Instead of doing those unnecessary things, we are desperately trying to find ways to collect labor from all over the world through random doors and restore agricultural production in the controlled areas of Northern Italy."
In order to cope with the labor crisis caused by the great plague, today's Venetians are creating a "Great Migration" movement that is considered to be the largest in the entire history of mankind.
With the help of the magical power of time-travelers like Doraemon, they are risking their lives Indians, blacks, Southeast Asians, American Indians, and all foreigners who have entered agricultural civilization have moved into abandoned farms across Western Europe to fill the positions left by serfs who died from the plague.
So far, more than 300,000 people have been imported, which is almost the same as that of later generations.
Stalin had a fighting chance.
"Yes, I also know that the Venetians have not continued to send Indian and African immigrants to the UK recently.
The reason is that they intercepted them themselves and settled in northern Italy."
Wang Qiu shrugged, "But this is good, we can let them Experience immigration in the 21st century in advance Problem.
The same is true for England.
If our Queen Joan solves it well, there may be no problem.
If it goes wrong, let alone whether Britain will become the overlord of the Seven Seas in the future, or even whether it will.
I’m afraid it’s hard to say if there is a unified Britain.”
One thing that many people have not noticed is that England, as a small and remote country, was able to defeat many opponents in Europe in fierce competition and eventually dominate the seven seas and the world.
In addition to the right time and place and the wise decision-making of its rulers, its internal Simplicity and stability are also extremely important capitals.
The famous scholar Mackinder once commented: "From the time of the Norman Conquest and the establishment of the Plantagenet dynasty to the time when modern industry was developed based on the coal fields, the structure of the English nation was almost incomparably simple.
In the history of Scotland and Ireland Before being mixed up with the history of England, the reason why the history of England became epic is that there was only one king, one parliament, a river Thames that rose and fell with the tide, and a big city as a trading center and port.
London England was built on these factors Get up.”
On the contrary, other countries on the European continent did not have such stability.
It was not until the era of the Sun King Louis XIV that France eliminated various hidden worries of domestic divisions and completed national and cultural unification.
Germany and Italy are even more troubled.
The former has lost Austria and a considerable part of the German-speaking area forever, while the latter has been repeatedly invaded by countless foreigners since the fall of the Roman Empire.
The national identity within the territory is unimaginably poor. , until the 21st century, there are still countless separatist forces active in various parts of Italy.
Although the future British Empire was unable to integrate Scotland and Ireland for a long time, which led to the separation of the latter and the establishment of the country, the former frequently caused troubles and was criticized and laughed at internationally.
However, if we only look at the land of England, its internal simplicity and unity are so solid that it is almost unshakable.
Since the establishment of the Plantagenet Dynasty, England has been unified throughout its long history.
Even if there is a civil war, the goal of both sides is for national power, not separatism.
However, when serfs of different colors from India, Africa and America appeared on the land of England, it became a mini version of the future United States. , can this island country still maintain its original cohesion in history?
Of course, with the complete disregard of human rights in the Middle Ages, the immigration problem plaguing EU countries in the 21st century is not completely unsolvable.
Specifically, it is genocide.
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After these alien immigrants become useless and cause trouble, As long as you find an excuse to kill them all, the world will be restored to its original state and all problems will be solved.
However, will they still kneel down and let you slaughter them?
At the end of the Roman Empire, which practiced slavery, it admitted countless barbarians into the country.
As a result, the Gothic cavalry flattened Rome.
The Cao Wei and Jin dynasties also settled barbarians in border counties and counties as a good strategy to stabilize the border, but the result was that the five barbarians devastated China.
But at this point in time, few people are aware of this hidden worry.
The lords and nobles were just happy to see that, relying on the boundless power of the "angels", their soon-to-be-abandoned manors and pastures finally had new farmers to work on them, and someone would be able to pay rent to them next year.
As for the serfs' skin color being different from their own, what does it matter as long as they can obey orders and work?
Anyway, they, the superior people with noble blood, have never thought that those serfs who are as humble as animals are the same kind of people as themselves.
"In short, the future of this world has fallen into fog, and no one knows what will happen in the future.
Europe will definitely not become a world of swords and magic.
Although we will leave behind the magic encyclopedia dictionary, The false magical era will not last long.
The magic encyclopedia will be used for no more than twenty years.
After that, the cruel reality will come to Europeans again. " Wang Qiu rubbed his hands in the cold wind and finally concluded, "Perhaps, the European civilization, which is still very immature at present, will soon collapse again due to various chaos.
But various cultures are developing in Europe in advance.
Collision, as well as the temporary and complete disappearance of population pressure, may also allow social progress and civilization evolution to be realized in advance, thereby ushering in a more beautiful and harmonious new world.
Who can guess?"
"Well, then, will the new era that originally belonged to the Reformation, Renaissance and geographical discovery still come?"
After Li Wei pondered for a moment, he asked Wang Qiu, "After we people turned everything upside down" oshow7: