Europa Universalis 1867: Start by inheriting an armory

Meanwhile, on a flat road in London, a troop of cavalry was slowly advancing.

The Royal Cavalry, almost entirely composed of black warhorses, led the way, their heavy leather harnesses adorned with brass buckles, their hooves striking a series of deep, rhythmic beats like drumbeats.

The riders wore crimson uniforms with blue edging on the cuffs and collars. The red horsehair embellishments on their polished steel helmets stood out conspicuously at the front of the column; these were the insignia of the Royal Guard, known as the Albert Helmet.

Behind them followed the army's field artillery, its dark gray barrels secured to the gun carriages by heavy iron chains. The wheels were taller than an adult man and pulled by heavy horses, the axles creaking with every step.

Just watching those wheels turn makes me feel sorry for the horses pulling the cart.

The procession moved eastward along the main road, with pedestrians on both sides making way for them.

No one dared to block their way; Londoners were used to the army's carriages and horses running rampant in the streets.

Just as the procession was passing through an intersection, a vegetable cart suddenly rushed out from the left side of the road.

The horses pulling the carriage seemed startled by something, neighing and rearing up. The coachman pulled on the reins, muttering incomprehensible Irish.

More than a dozen large wooden barrels tipped off the vehicle and shattered on the stone road.

Dark green pickled cucumbers rolled all over the ground, each one plump and chubby, their pickling juices splashed everywhere, filling the air with a sweet and sour aroma, carrying the scents of garlic and dill.

The lead cavalryman quickly pulled on the reins, forcing the entire column to stop. Those behind, unaware of what was happening ahead, nearly had their cannons ram into the rear of the horse.

An officer rode up from the back of the column, dismounted, walked up to the coachman, and launched into a tirade of abuse.

But the coachman looked completely innocent, spreading his hands, and the words that came out of his mouth were all heavily Irish English, or rather, a hybrid of Gaelic and English. The officer listened three times and only understood one word: "Damn it."

After their initial stunned silence, the poor people on both sides quickly came to their senses.

In the blink of an eye, more than a dozen people rushed up, squatted on the ground, and began to snatch the pickled cucumbers that had rolled all over the ground.

This is survival. Pickled cucumbers were a national dish. Back then, whether it was expensive stewed meat or cheap porridge, it needed some sweet and sour flavoring.

All these cucumbers on the ground can be taken home, rinsed, and eaten, saving the cost of a meal of pickled vegetables.

The officer frowned, looking at the chaotic scene before him.

The coachman was still gesturing wildly as he explained, while the poor were still busy grabbing cucumbers, and the road was completely blocked.

He gritted his teeth and waved to the team behind him.

"Take a detour!"

The troops restarted, and the horses bypassed the chaotic intersection and turned into another street.

The cannon wheels rolled over the stone-paved road, turning heavily and slowly.

No one noticed that the groom, who was still gesturing and explaining, turned his back and smiled slightly as the troops turned the corner.

The artillery was clumsy and heavily reliant on smooth roads. On London’s narrow streets, being forced to detour meant taking more time, not to mention the many unexpected incidents that followed.

He squatted down, pretending to help tidy up the scattered barrels, and righted the barrels that hadn't yet tipped over.

Then he looked up, glanced in the direction the group had disappeared, lowered his head, and continued working.

At the same moment, the door of an Anglican church near the Blackwell Armory was kicked open, and several parishioners who were wiping the altar huddled together in fright.

The church is located less than half a mile east of the Greenwood factory. It doesn't usually have many people coming to pray, but the people who came in this time were from Fennia, and they weren't there to pray.

A dozen or so people filed in, all wearing light blue jackets, and none of them were carrying weapons, at least not at the moment.

A nun dressed in a black robe walked out of a side door, holding a string of prayer beads in her hand.

When she saw the group of people, she paused, her lips moving as if she wanted to step forward and stop them, but the group paid no attention to her.

They went straight to the area in the church where coffins were kept. According to the custom at the time, unclaimed bodies or bodies for which there was no money for burial would be temporarily kept somewhere in the church.

"You can't..." the nun said in horror.

Two Fenians stepped forward, one on the left and one on the right, and without hesitation pried open the coffin lid.

The nun was so frightened by what she saw that she knelt down, and her rosary beads fell from her hands and scattered all over the ground.

She clasped her hands together, quickly made the sign of the cross in front of her chest, her lips trembling as she recited a Latin prayer, then lowered her head and closed her eyes.

The coffin lid was overturned and placed on the ground.

Inside were not corpses or bones, but rifles wrapped in oiled paper, with the butts facing up and the barrels facing down, neatly stacked inside the coffin.

The smell of flaxseed oil wafted from the sarcophagus, mingling with the original milky scent of the church, creating an eerie and unsettling atmosphere.

Those believers and followers who witnessed this scene covered their mouths in shock. They had never known that the place where they came to pray every week, the place closest to God, was hiding more than a dozen guns that could kill.

The people of Fennia looked at the shocked crowd before them, their expressions remaining completely unchanged.

For them, this is not a sacred place.

This is an Anglican church, a landmark of the enemy, a temple of the oppressors.

Standing here, they felt no fear of blasphemy; on the contrary, they were all immersed in the pleasure of challenging authority, as if they had spat on the enemy's face and then used the enemy's face to wipe the soles of their shoes.

The leading man bent down, took a rifle out of the stone coffin, tore off the oil paper, and pulled the trigger.

Click!

The sound was crisp and clear, so he handed the guns one by one to the people behind him.

At the same time, on the roof of the Greenwood factory.

Gavin Dawson wedged the edge of the ash removal port with an iron bar, and soot gushed out of the opening, choking him and causing him to cough violently.

He then pulled hard, completely opening the iron frame of the ash removal port, and with his other hand, he groped for the oil-soaked rag at his waist.

He should have been in prison, because the two arsonists betrayed him.

But Richard found him and gave him a choice: do me a favor, and if he did, he wouldn't have to go to jail.

He thought it was a worthless check, a joke played by one conman on another.

But he didn't have many options.

"All you have to do is throw a few burning rags into the chimney," Richard said. "The ash removal port is at the bottom of the chimney; you can get there by climbing to the roof. Pry open the metal cover, stuff the rags in, and then run."

Gavin asked him why he didn't let his own people do it.

"Because my men won't beat my foreman," Richard replied.

Gavin was speechless; he knew Richard was referring to the beating Sean had received.

He lit the rag, and the flames spread rapidly, turning the entire rag into a scorching fireball.

He stuffed the rag into the dust extraction port, then turned around and climbed down the iron ladder, thinking to himself that he was finally free.

The bad news is that Richard lied to him, and he's going to jail no matter what.

His movements were many times faster than when he came up; the ladder swayed beneath his feet, as if it were about to fall apart at any moment.

He didn't dare turn around, but he heard it: after the rag fell into the chimney, there was a moment of silence, followed by a deafening roar.

The coal ash inside the chimney was instantly ignited, and flames shot upwards along the flue, bringing with them a scorching gas stream and a large number of bright sparks that shot out from the top of the chimney.

The iron cap at the top of the chimney swayed a few times from the impact of the airflow, emitting a series of piercing metallic groans, as if telling everyone in Blackwell that something bad was about to happen.

In the workshop, the workers next to the boiler were the first to notice that something was wrong.

That was the sound they feared most, because they heard the boiler noise every day, but now that sound had changed.

Black smoke billowed from the exhaust valve, followed by a sharp hissing sound from the steam pipe.

"The boiler is going to explode!" An old worker was the first to react, and he shouted at the top of his lungs.

Everyone stopped what they were doing at the same moment, looked up and looked in the direction of the old worker, and then they saw thick black smoke pouring out from the cracks in the furnace.

The workers threw down their tools, the child laborers jumped off their stools, and the guards who had been shouting orders were the first to run away.

If the boiler explodes, its power could very well level the entire factory.

They surged toward the workshop's main gate, side doors, and any exit that led outside.

Someone tripped over the threshold and couldn't get up in time, so the person behind him stepped over him; someone ran off his shoes and ran barefoot on the gravel road, running faster than anyone else.

The entire factory was emptied in the blink of an eye.

However, the boiler will not explode because the heat from the burning rag is far less than the heat released by the burning coal inside the boiler, and it is insufficient to reach the limit pressure of the materials inside the boiler.

However, the high-temperature gas would definitely break through the welded joints of the pipes and create the illusion that the boiler was about to explode. As a result, when the Fenian people arrived, they would not be greeted by a holy war, but by an empty factory.