Chapitre 357: Chapter 434 Ireland 1
Listening to the German broadcast, Churchill turned pale and shivered all over. "Treason, this is blatant treason!"
While they were here exhausting every effort to resist the German army, those bastards were colluding with the enemy and inviting disaster into their midst?!
It's utterly detestable!
"Deploy troops to eliminate them immediately!"
As Churchill banged the table in rage, the broadcast continued. "Germany also welcomes the Irish and Welsh people to raise the great banner of resistance against Britain. His Highness Wilhelm promises that after defeating Britain, the people of Scotland, Ireland, and Wales can choose to become independent nations or join the German Federation."
The faces of those present turned extremely grim. This move was truly despicable.
The Welsh, like the Scots and Irish, are descendants of the Celts who came from the European mainland. The ancestors of the Welsh, the Britons, landed on the British Isles around 1000 BC and were later conquered by the Roman Empire.
After the fall of the Roman Empire, Germanic tribes from the European mainland began to enter the British Isles. Among them were the Angles and Saxons, who settled on the island and are the ancestors of today's English people. As the English grew stronger, by the 9th century, Alfred the Great established the Kingdom of England, and Wales gradually became a vassal state.
In 1277, King Edward I of England invaded Wales. Facing the advancing English army, the Welsh agreed to submit to Edward I, provided they were ruled by a prince born in Wales, who could not speak English and whose first words must be in Welsh.
Edward I readily agreed and quickly moved his wife to Wales, where she gave birth to their son, Edward II, in Wales. Edward II met all the Welsh conditions: he was born in Wales, did not speak English at birth, and was later named the Prince of Wales, a title that subsequently became the title for the heir apparent to the British throne. By 1536, England and Wales signed the first Act of Union in British history, officially incorporating Wales into England.
After the union, due to its proximity to England, many English people moved to Wales, which had been under British control for over 800 years and formally integrated for nearly 500 years. Most Welsh people identified with Britain, and the few Welsh independence activists mainly sought more benefits from the central government.
Thus, Churchill was not too worried about any significant unrest in Wales. The true thorn in the side of the British Empire was Ireland!
Churchill lit a cigar, shaking slightly, and pondered for a moment. "Do you think the Irish will stay quiet?" Even he found the question laughable; believing the Irish would remain quiet was as likely as believing in divine intervention to save the British Empire. "If we send more troops to Northern Ireland under the guise of protection, Ireland will surely make a move, right?"
"Absolutely!" The Chief of the Imperial General Staff replied with a bitter smile.
Everyone knew most Irish people hated Britain. Although Ireland currently professed neutrality, it was clear they were itching to act!
After all, this was their best chance to gain independence from Britain and even reclaim Northern Ireland. Their claims of neutrality were merely for British ears. If Britain increased troop presence in Northern Ireland, Ireland might very well strike first.
But they were helpless against Ireland. If there had been a solution, Ireland would not be an independent state with a president now, albeit nominally part of the Commonwealth but effectively an independent country.
"Prime Minister, I believe sending more troops to Northern Ireland now is an unwise decision. It would only give Ireland an excuse to use military force. If we use force, it would only benefit the Germans."
Churchill frowned and asked, "But what if the Irish collaborate with the Germans and the Germans land in Ireland?"
The Chief of the Imperial General Staff shrugged. "Then we would have to withdraw our forces from Northern Ireland and focus on defending England."
Churchill thought for a moment and, not quite giving up, asked, "Is there no other way?"
"No, there is no other way," the Chief of the Imperial General Staff sighed deeply. Even if they launched a full-scale attack on Ireland now, they couldn't control the island in just a few days. By then, the Irish would likely welcome the German army with open arms.
As the group sighed, the broadcast continued, discussing the fraught history between Ireland and England that British officials preferred not to mention.
From 1845 to 1849, Ireland experienced a nationwide "potato famine." Potatoes, the staple food of the Irish, suffered severe blight, leading to widespread crop failure and famine.
In 1845, Ireland relied almost exclusively on one crop: potatoes. Over 1.5 million agricultural workers had no other income to support their families, 3 million small farmers depended primarily on potatoes, and even the upper classes consumed far more potatoes than the English. When the crop failed, it was the rural poor who bore the brunt of the disaster.
The blight of 1845 hit the richer eastern parts of Ireland hardest and spread westward. Whole fields of young potato plants rotted before harvest, leaving households with nothing for the winter.
Europe in the 1840s still held strong religious beliefs, and people tried to reconcile Catholicism with emerging sciences like geology, botany, and economics. Disasters like the potato blight were seen through a religious lens, often as divine punishment. Most British opinions, tainted by religious bias, viewed the blight as a warning against indulgence and carefreeness. More extreme views linked the disaster to the Irish people's "religious errors," seeing the blight as a divine lesson to move away from their reliance on potatoes.
By the summer of 1846, the potato shortage exceeded the worst predictions. Three to four million people faced death from what was, in modern European history, an unprecedented crop failure. Only Britain had the resources to address the disaster, but doing so required wise management and political sincerity.
In the summer of 1847, an uninfected potato crop was harvested. Many observers concluded that the famine was over and that Ireland should recover on its own. However, with few plantings, the yield was still dismal. Most of the island did not achieve a meaningful recovery, and hunger and disease continued to ravage the population.
In 1848, another potato blight shattered hopes of recovery. This new outbreak hit regions that were already weakened by years of famine. While conditions improved slightly in less impoverished areas, the west and south faced another severe crisis akin to the "Black 1847." Disease struck again in 1849 and 1850, pushing some areas to the brink of collapse.
During the "Black 1847," a local official from Cork County, Nicholas Cummins, described a harrowing scene: "I entered a peasant's cabin and was stunned by what I saw. Six emaciated, ghostly figures lay on a pile of filthy straw in a corner. I thought they were dead, but as I approached, I heard faint moans. These 'people' were still alive."
At the time, Britain was at its peak during the Victorian era and had completed the Industrial Revolution, making it the world's factory. Britain led the world in colonial, political, and economic developments, boasting an empire that covered nearly a quarter of the world's land and population. Britain was the epitome of prosperity, development, and civilization, its power unrivaled.
Yet, faced with an unprecedented famine in Ireland, Britain remained indifferent, allowing the disaster to spread and leaving Irish bodies unburied. When the first grain ships arrived in Ireland, the corn they carried was inedible, and even the application process for the unusable corn was highly complex. The British government even obstructed spontaneous humanitarian aid.
Eventually, even the Ottoman Sultan Abdülmecid, moved by newspaper reports of the Irish famine, announced a donation of £10,000 to the starving Irish. However, Queen Victoria requested that the Sultan donate only £1,000, as she herself had only donated £2,000. The Sultan complied but then "secretly" sent three ships of grain to aid the Irish.
During the famine, in 1846, Britain repealed the Corn Laws to protect its interests, disrupting the free import of Irish grain to Britain. This deprived Irish wheat of its monopoly in the British market, damaging Ireland's agricultural economy. British landlords in Ireland, after the repeal, largely switched from growing wheat to raising livestock, further weakening the ability to resist famine and exacerbating the crisis.
During the worst years of the famine, Ireland continued to export food to Britain. Throughout the famine, Ireland remained a net exporter of food, a ruthless practice that turned a natural disaster into a human-made catastrophe.
Ultimately, this famine reduced Ireland's population by a quarter (1.5 million deaths) and forced 2 million to emigrate.
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