Chapter 730 The Establishment of an Industrial State
Over the next few days, the entire Blood Harbor gradually became busy.
Isabella recruited a large number of troops. Unlike the previous troops, the soldiers recruited this time were not only required to fight, but also had some cultural requirements.
Isabella's requirements were not high. It was enough for him to be able to read and understand the tactical manual.
If it were placed in other places, this would be simply a fantasy. Sending literate people to the battlefield is an incomprehensible and huge waste.
But in Blood Harbor, it's okay.
Castel spared no effort in promoting liberal education in Blood Harbor. All children of school age were sent to school with free tuition and meals.
Although adults no longer provide free meals, as long as you want to study, you can definitely go.
At the beginning, Castel used schools as one of the relief measures, which not only provided the victims with food but also allowed them to learn something, and a large number of refugees flocked in.
During the most difficult times, we even had to build a shed in the open air as a school.
But Castel's extremely strong infrastructure capabilities quickly caught up, and schools were built before people could even react.
Zoe was a little worried that they were building too many buildings at once. After all, this group of people should be the largest, and the space would be vacant once they graduated.
But Hughes told the construction team to go ahead and build the school only when they were sure it was fully functional.
As it turned out, this decision was correct.
The speed of Blood Harbor's development far exceeded everyone's expectations. The scale effect of the industry was like a snowball, growing faster and faster, and larger and larger.
Soon Blood Harbor began to siphon off the nearby population, and refugees who were forced to have nowhere to go by the war poured in. Blood Harbor's solution was still to use schools instead of relief.
The secret orders even set up soup kitchens in schools. Their holy water was not sacred, but people would pray devoutly in the kitchens.
After this operation, the literacy rate in Blood Harbor was raised to an extremely terrifying proportion.
However, not everyone is good at studying and can work in a factory. For many who are older or have poor learning abilities, literacy is their limit.
This is just a job to make a living in Blood Harbor.
But now, Grand Duke Tis has given them a new way - to join the army and earn military merits.
Isabella may not be very kind, but she is never stingy. The price she offers is very attractive, even if it is the price of her life.
Moreover, as long as you join the army, you can go to school with pay, and if you want to pursue further studies later, all expenses will be waived.
Many people don’t like to study, but if they are paid for studying, they won’t be so disgusted.
It's not just Tis, Castel is also recruiting soldiers.
Although in theory Castel was only responsible for support, Hughes did not have the illusion that he could completely ignore what was happening on the battlefield.
To put it another way, Isabella recruited soldiers, but Castel was only responsible for production. Isn't it like my neighbor hoarding guns and I hoarding food?
Furthermore, the young men of the Crusaders wouldn't agree. The young soldiers were eager for glory and honor. Expecting a group of worshippers to be peace-loving was too idealistic.
Therefore, Zeus was also organizing an expeditionary force, but he was not in a hurry and was proceeding step by step.
This expeditionary force is different from the one to the north. It is not entirely composed of the army, but also has a considerable part of the navy and air force. The main battlefield on the ground is mainly in Isabella.
By the way, in order to distinguish it from the expedition to the north, this war with the Rhine was officially named the "Great Expedition".
This time, Castel's military factory has fully utilized its production capacity. Many idle production lines have finally been put to use, and the steel plant that was almost closed down before has also begun to operate at full capacity.
Now most of the factories in Castell have switched to importing raw materials. There are actually quite a few mineral deposits on the island, but most of them have been sealed for future considerations. Now Castell no longer lacks raw material supply.
The Northern Territory is vast, and its area alone is almost comparable to the empire controlled by the Holy See.
Although the overall strength is not as good, the resources are extremely rich.
Coal mines, iron ore, and resources needed for various industries can basically be found here.
The northern territory used to be vast and sparsely populated, with little processing capacity for the resources produced, and it was even more difficult to transport them out, so it has always been very backward.
After Alexei took charge of the northern border, he brought over Hughes's idea of prioritizing the development of transportation.
The first thing he did was to build roads.
At that time, there were still many small cities in the north that were actually controlled by the old nobles, and the expeditionary force did not have enough manpower to occupy them all.
Alexei did not launch a forced attack, but chose to focus on infrastructure construction, building railways and opening up shipping.
At the same time, Hunter, Alvarez and others were asked to go over to assist in handling affairs in the North.
So the noble lords who were defending the castle were surprised to find that the battle they had expected did not come, but the railway came instead.
The expeditionary force built the road in front of them so blatantly, without caring about their thoughts at all.
It’s not that no nobles tried to sabotage it, but wherever the railways went, armored locomotives would go, and there would be airships on guard in the sky.
Once the enemy was discovered, the engineers would put down their work and slowly walk back to the vehicle to rest. The nobles who took the soldiers out of the city could only charge at the armored vehicles.
Haha, if you have anything to say, just say it to the machine gun position on the roof of my car!
The nobles quickly stopped this futile action and switched to a mentality of watching the show.
If you want to build a road, go ahead and build it. But will it destroy my territory?
Hey, it really works.
When the expeditionary force first started building the road, the people in the territory were naturally terrified and did not dare to get close.
But after a long time, some people bravely came forward to find out the news.
As a result, they found that these people were willing to hire people to do the work.
This is a big deal. If you help those expeditionary forces dig the foundation and carry the sleepers, you can get real money!
Settle on the same day, no delay!
People were skeptical at first, but when the first person came back with Leo, everything changed.
The lords were surprised to find that all the people in their territories had run away to help the enemy.
This made them very angry, so they brought their knights with them and prepared to teach these weirdos who loved to build roads a lesson.
The result - what result was there? The expeditionary force simply did not take the initiative to attack. Now that they had the name of protecting the workers, the soldiers rushed forward faster than each other.
The lords were dismayed to find that the number of people under their command was decreasing, but they had no way to do anything about it.
The city can certainly close its gates, but they cannot remain closed forever. It is not a war, people need to eat, and food must be transported in from outside the city.
That would have been fine, but the real turning point was that a worker was injured on the construction site.
(End of this chapter)
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