The War Court and Lap Pillow, Austria's Mandate of Heaven

Chapter 1828 Rushing Down the Sewer
Baron Eisenheim was not afraid of the dark muzzle of the cannon, but the jailers were different; they had never seen anything like it.

To be fair, Baron Eisenheim treated them well and was quite adept at managing his subordinates, but the enemy before them was truly a bit too much.

The jailers dropped their rifles and raised their hands, and Baron Eisenheim roared angrily.

"Pick up the gun, or we're done for!"

Despite Baron Eisenheim's furious roar, the gates were slowly opened, and the troops outside rushed in, quickly bringing the situation under control.

The resistance from a few of Eisenheim's close associates was utterly ineffective; the two sides were not even in the same league, and the battle failed to make any waves.

With the entry of the military and journalists, this newest and most secure prison in the Austrian Empire was completely stripped bare.

The door to the dark dungeon was forcibly broken open from the outside, letting in sunlight, but the faint light seemed insufficient to illuminate the thick, inky darkness.

Soldiers and journalists had to carry kerosene lamps inside, and the stench of excrement and death inside made them all frown.

Despite their discomfort and nausea, they entered the dungeon, where a rat was staring at the uninvited guests with its scarlet eyes.

When the soldiers raised their guns, it instinctively chose to flee. Soon, as the gas lamps along the way were lit, they finally discovered the so-called prisoner.

The people inside were all emaciated, huddled together, shielding their eyes from the glaring light with their hands. Even in winter, they only had simple clothes and straw stained with filth.

"Please, I really have nothing left! I'll never dare to sell socks on your turf again!"

The speaker's voice was hoarse, but very youthful.

However, his fingernails had been pulled off, his head was bald, and there were even several knife scars, but he was wearing a school uniform.

John Cimpon immediately sensed something was wrong and grabbed the jailer guarding the cell.

"what happened?"

The jailer quickly shook his head.

"I do not know."

John Campion drew his pistol and pressed it against the jailer's forehead.

"what happened?"

The jailer waved his hand, crying.

"I really do not know."

John Campion fired a shot into the jailer's left leg.

"I simply don't know! You can kill me and I still won't know!"

John Campion fired another shot into the jailer's right leg, then pointed the pistol at his forehead.

"Say!"

“I said! He’s selling socks on Detective Lil’s turf and he refuses to pay protection money.”

Inspector Lil sent him in to learn the rules. After a while, we released him.

Please, please, have mercy and call a doctor for me. My leg is bleeding. I've told you everything I know.

The jailer pleaded.

John Kempon shouted out.

"Doctor! Call a doctor! There's a child here, and a whole bunch of injured people!"

Without needing to say much, the soldiers and reporters nearby worked together to remove the rusted iron gate.

John Campion took off his lieutenant general's uniform and covered the shivering student whose fingernails had been pulled out and whose head had been shaved.

"Don't worry, no one will hit you again. Now tell me your name and address, and I will notify your family."

Then he spoke to the soldiers who were accompanying him.

"No matter what method you use, you must get all the information those bastards know."

"Yes!"

The conditions in the dungeons weren't bad enough; the factories inside the prisons were hell.

Hundreds of bald, toothless prisoners are numbly applying mercury mirrors and some strange handicrafts.

These people had blank expressions and vacant looks, which were undoubtedly symptoms of mercury poisoning.

At this time, mercury glass mirrors were still very expensive, but because mercury is highly toxic, they were very difficult to use.

So Baron Eisenheim built a mercury processing plant in the prison, where prisoners not only made mercury mirrors but also applied mercury to the works of nobles and artists.

In fact, the Austrian Empire had already mastered silver plating technology, and Franz's company had even monopolized the manufacture of high-end mercury glass mirrors.

However, in order to maintain profits, he did not promote it on a large scale (he lowered the price, but did not completely drive it down), which resulted in some people still risking their lives to make money.

These prisoners all exhibited some degree of mental derangement due to the effects of mercury, but they didn't need to worry about it, as the vast majority of them wouldn't live past 24 months.

The situation in the women's prison was also miserable. Young women with some looks would be packaged as prostitutes and locked in the prison. Most of them had the warden's mark on their chests.

Those who were not good-looking were forced to work endlessly in the laundry room, while the dungeons of the women's prison were even more filthy and smelly.

In stark contrast, the top floor houses a banker who falsifies accounts and a mob boss with 24 charges against him.

The two were served red wine and steak at every meal, enjoyed the misty Turkish bath filled with opium tincture, had beautiful women by their side, and even kept pets.

The two men were not wearing any shackles or chains, nor were they dressed in prison uniforms; instead, they were wearing high-quality fur coats.

His daily life consisted of reading, exercising, playing with women, and taking morphine. The furnishings of his room were so unusual that they were hard to associate with a prison; they were more like a palace.

A week later, hundreds of former prison guards knelt in a row, a judge announced the verdict, and a priest was sitting in the final Mass.

The witnesses are the thousands of surviving prisoners. Of the 153 prison guards in this jail, 141 will be executed here, which can be considered a belated justice.

Nine people were killed during the storming of the prison. Of the remaining three, two were exiled, and one was allowed to retire early and received a compensation of 9 florins.

Baron Eisenheim, the warden, and his adjutant Utteris were taken to Vienna for trial.

All the property and assets of the prison guards will be used to compensate the victims, and if the victim has passed away, the compensation will go to their family.

Vienna's black and gray industries were also thrown into chaos, with the businesses of corrupt police officers being thoroughly raided.

Without the control of corrupt police, some gang members have become unscrupulous, and some have even openly attacked patrol teams on the streets.

Armed raids and violent resistance against raids are commonplace, and battles frequently erupt on the streets of Vienna.

However, most of these so-called battles do not last long, as the firepower and quality of gang members are no match for those of the military.

The battle was not a back-and-forth affair; it was a one-sided rout by the Austrian army.

There is also a beggars' guild in Vienna, but this beggars' guild has absolutely nothing to do with the so-called "acting on behalf of Heaven".

These beggar gangs primarily engaged in theft and fraud, but they also engaged in other similar activities such as ear picking, staged accidents, child abduction, and trafficking of women.

These people were the biggest lackeys of those corrupt cops, and also the first to be betrayed. After all, they were truly a bunch of scum (not only were they morally corrupt, but they also had little practical value).

When Austrian soldiers entered the Beggars' Sect's territory in combat groups of three to five, Rat King Pokhan, the leader of the Beggars' Sect and the Rat Gang, thought of his predecessors.

"No one can run wild on the Beggars' Sect's territory! Not even the Emperor! Today, let those scoundrels see who the real Emperor of Vienna is!" In fact, Pokhan's confidence was not without reason, after all, his men were not afraid of death and had a very low moral bottom line.

They were almost invincible, especially in street fighting, since no one wanted to trade one life for one with these beggars.

Therefore, despite the vicissitudes of life, only the Beggars' Sect has remained standing. Although some powerful figures have tried to eliminate the Beggars' Sect, none of them have ever succeeded.

So Rat King Porkham remained completely calm, and a wicked plan was already brewing in his mind.

In the eerily quiet alley, several disabled children missing limbs suddenly appeared at the intersection.

"Damn it, how can there be a child here!"

The officer waved his hand.

"Take the children away, there's going to be a war soon."

A soldier rushed forward to pick up the child, but the child, who had been standing there dumbfounded, suddenly pulled out a dagger and stabbed the soldier in the abdomen. The disabled children around also rushed forward.

The officer wanted to send men to the rescue, but at that moment the windows on the street opened, and buckets of boiling excrement and hot water poured down, instantly throwing the troops into chaos.

At that moment, a flock of crows flew by, and with a wave of his hand, countless Beggars' Sect heroes emerged from all directions, cutting down the army.

The next day, members of the Beggars' Sect dragged the corpses of Austrian soldiers and swept the streets in front of the palace.
Rat King Pokhan took a deep breath; just thinking about it felt amazing.

However, the reality is that the daggers of those disabled children could not penetrate the bulletproof vests of the soldiers, and even a group of disabled children could not take down a single soldier.

In reality, as long as that soldier ran a little further away, Pokhan's assassins would be completely useless.

As for things like opening windows and splashing hot water or excrement, that's even more outrageous, because highly stressed Austrian soldiers would shoot directly at those open windows.

Even if the Beggars' Sect members who were carrying water jugs and buckets of excrement were not shot on the spot, they lost the courage to continue showing themselves, after all, those below were real weapons.

Of course, even if those members of the Beggars' Sect were truly unafraid of bullets, their excrement attack range was still quite limited.

As for those so-called suicide squads, they were just a bunch of rabble; a few gunshots were enough to scare them so much they wet their pants.

A few bullets would take down the first few lunatics, and the rest would scatter.

Even in urban warfare, Pokhan's outlaws proved utterly ineffective against these highly specialized urban combat units.

When attacking the Rat King gang's stronghold, the Austrian army even used rockets and 8-pound cannons. Under the absolute overwhelming firepower, the Rat King gang's headquarters was quickly captured.

However, John Campion did not find Porkham, who was called the Rat King because of his exceptional ability to escape.

While the fighting was raging outside, Pokhan had quietly slipped into the sewers with his confidants. As someone who had been part of the sewers' construction, he felt a deep familiarity with the place, as if it were his home.

However, with the entire city under lockdown, he could only eke out a living in the sewers.

Vienna's sewers are so extensive that finding even a few people in them would be an impossible task.

However, this also depends on the determination of Franz and the Austrian imperial government. After seeing Porkhan's masterpieces, Franz was determined to make the Rat King disappear from the world completely.

"The Beggars' Sect should not exist."

Pokham searched several of their rat burrows and found that they were all blocked off.

"No! Boss, there are troops everywhere, we can't get out. It seems they're determined to kill us."

"One of the subordinates said anxiously."

But Pockham was not afraid.

"What's there to be afraid of? I've already prepared rat holes in this sewer, and there's plenty of food inside."

We're not afraid of it taking several years!

Upon hearing this, his subordinates immediately began to flatter him.

"Boss is wise!"

"As expected of the Rat King! The Human Emperor is still far inferior to you!"

After listening to a string of compliments, Pokerhan gradually felt better.

"Let me tell you! What kind of holy ruler is this?! He even declared war on rats! He's just an idiot!"
He can't wipe out the rats of Vienna, much less our rat gang!

"Well said! Applause!"

Everyone clapped and cheered, but the applause grew louder and louder, even becoming deafening.

"Stop filming! It's deafening!"

"We've all stopped. Who's still filming?"

Just as everyone was wondering, someone suddenly realized what was going on.

"No! That's the sound of water!"

Pokham was shocked.

"How could the sound of water be so loud? Is there a flood? It hasn't rained, how could there be a flood?"

Just as they were at a loss, the flood arrived.

The icy floodwaters directly submerged the sewers, and the sewage was swept away by the current like filth in a toilet bowl, with no way to resist.

There are naturally no floods in winter, and even if there are, they wouldn't be so rapid and dramatic.

But when Vienna’s sewers were first built, Franz designed a flushing system for the city.

This spectacle is created when several sluice gates connected to the Danube River open simultaneously, allowing large amounts of river water to flow into the sewers.

This artificial flood successfully flushed Porkhan and his men out of the sewers.

However, saying they were flushed out of the sewer isn't quite accurate; to be precise, they fell into a large net.

This created an awkward situation, as the people caught in the net had to endure the constant scouring of the icy river water and the impact of the filth in the sewers.

It was several hours later, and the Rat King Porkham felt he was about to freeze to death, before someone finally lowered the net.

A group of soldiers used water hoses to clean Pokhan and his men, who were covered in filth.

"Sir, they've been found!"

"Very good! Tie them up and take them to the square."

Pokerhan and his men were greeted by the Viennese people who lined the streets to welcome them, showering them with rotten eggs, rotten vegetable leaves, and leftover radish heads.

The so-called Beggars' Gang committed all sorts of evil deeds on a daily basis, and specifically bullied the poor and outsiders. The lower classes had long hated them to the core.

Of course, almost all Viennese people hate them; just like their gang name suggests, they are like rats in the street, hated by everyone.

However, at this moment, most of the Rat King Gang members could no longer feel anything. The previous icy water wash, coupled with the drying effect along the way, had left their bodies basically numb.

The crimes committed by members of the Beggars' Gang didn't actually require a judge's verdict; the citizens could recite them by heart.

Rat King Porkham readily admitted to all the accusations against him, and his final wish was to exchange his life savings for a quick and painless death.

However, Franz was not prepared to accept the deal; he decided to let the people decide Porkhan's fate.