At the end of Qin, I became a son of the plane

Chapter 600: The Scapegoat and the Roman Citizens’ Riot

"Railway?" Apatius and Maxius were surprised.

They were no strangers to this thing. The Han Dynasty had tens of thousands of miles of railways that connected the entire empire. With the railways, the Han people could sell their goods to extremely far places, and the army could travel thousands of miles a day. Its economic and military value was obvious to any normal person. However, the high cost of the railways made the Romans envious.

Apatius even said: "We in Rome do not have the financial resources to build a railway."

The Roman Senate also calculated that the cost of making railroad tracks with iron produced in Rome, even if slaves were used to build the railway, would exceed 2000 million Han coins per kilometer. Even if imported Han iron was used to make railroad tracks, the price could only be reduced by less than %. For a unit price of million, this reduction would not make much sense.

Rome's annual fiscal revenue was only enough to build less than 100 km of railway. The Romans simply could not afford to build such an expensive road, so they could only continue to build their own Roman Road (the kind of gravel road in the countryside behind the village).

Maxius counted on his fingers and said, "After the defeat in the Third Punic War, Rome had to pay pensions to the families of the soldiers who died in the war. Several cities in Sicily were destroyed by the war, and Rome had to rebuild these cities and the Roman navy. In the next ten years or so, Rome's finances would be extremely tight, and there would be no spare money for luxury goods like railways."

Then he said enviously: "I'm afraid that in the whole world, only the Han Empire can be so luxurious as to use steel to build roads."

Hu Hai smiled and said, "We don't have to use our own money to build a railway. We at Fei Hai Bank are willing to help Rome build a railway, but we require that the operating rights of the railway belong to us. Of course, your Roman army will have free military access."

Railways were the Han Dynasty's main crop. Many nobles and big merchants wanted to own railway lines. Unfortunately, the imperial court had very strict control over railways. In prime locations, they were given a maximum of 30 years of operating rights, while in inferior locations they were willing to give them 50 or even hundreds of years of operating rights. But who would have nothing better to do than build a railway through Shu? It would take 100 years, let alone 200 years, to get a return on investment.

When Hu Hai built railways for the Romans, he naturally did not want to be a philanthropist. The Apennine Peninsula was a flat and fertile land, and the cost of building railways on such land was the lowest. There were more than 600 million Romans on this peninsula, which was a densely populated and wealthy place. There was no need to worry about the future operation of the railway. The most important thing was that in Rome, there was no so-called 30-year operating right. The built railways truly belonged to him, Hu Hai. Railways had a natural monopoly nature, and tolls on the road were the real iron crops.

Apatius and the others were a little surprised when they heard this. First, they were surprised that Feihai Bank had the financial resources to build such an expensive railway. Second, they were surprised why Huhai would do such a thankless task? Or what benefits could Huhai get from the railway?
So the two men said that they would first report the matter of building the railway to the Senate and then give Hu Hai a reply.

Apatius and his companion had just left Hu Hai's mansion.

At this time, a servant rushed to Apatius's carriage and cried, "Master, something terrible has happened. The citizens of Rome are rioting. They rushed into your silk shop, beat us up, and took away all the silk in the shop."

Apatius got off the carriage in a rage, grabbed his servant and asked, "What are the city defense troops doing? Why don't they control these rioters?"

The slaves cried, “There are too many citizens coming, and the city defense forces dare not control them.”

"how many people?"

"There were so many people that the streets were full of them. Moreover, these Roman citizens cursed their master, saying that he was a coward. The armistice you signed betrayed Sardinia and Sigmar. You betrayed the entire Roman Empire because of your business dealings with the Han people."

At this time, a middle-aged man in a panic also rushed to Apatius's carriage and cried, "Our family house has been attacked by the mob. The mob smashed, looted, and burned everything. Master, please send troops to arrest all these mobs."

Apatius looked closely at the crying middle-aged man and realized that it was his butler.

He asked anxiously: "How is Basque? How is Naobi?
The housekeeper said: "The young master and mistress have already escaped and are now hiding in the family manor outside the city."

Apatius was relieved when he heard this. Then he felt wronged. The battle was a complete defeat, the worst defeat Rome had suffered in 30 years. What could he, a diplomat, do? Could he drive out the combined forces of Carthage and the Han people alone?

What the Roman citizens could not obtain on the battlefield, did they still want to obtain outside the battlefield? They had already done their best to win the current treaty.

Of course, it was reasonable for the Roman citizens to vent their anger on Apatius. The best person to take the blame for this war was actually the military consul Laenas.

But Laenas did not make any obvious mistakes in this war, and the Romans also understood that the reason they were defeated was that their weapons and military strength were inferior to those of the enemy, and that the enemy had died on the battlefield. It would be a bit too much to let the military consul Laenas take the scapegoat at this time.

But with such an unprecedented defeat, there had to be someone to take the blame, allowing all Roman citizens to vent their anger.

Apatius was soon found by the citizens of Rome. As the senator who knew the Han Dynasty best in Rome, Apatius was also the largest supplier of Chinese goods in Rome. He provided 30% of Rome's silk and 20% of its spices and tea. With the wealth boom brought by Chinese goods, his family's wealth expanded rapidly, and his political status also rose year by year, from a relatively low-level senator family to one of the top families in Rome.

To some extent, Apatius was the largest foreign trade supplier in Rome. This identity was not a problem in peacetime, but in wartime, he was a complete comprador and a spy of the Han people in Rome.

Especially since Apatius was also the negotiator of Roman diplomacy and it was he who signed the treaty that resulted in the Romans’ defeat, the Roman citizens would not sympathize with him and believed that this was the most favorable treaty the Romans had ever signed.

Instead, they believed that Apatius had so many interests in the Han people that he must have sold out the interests of Rome to please the Han people, which was why he signed such a traitorous treaty.

So the angry Roman citizens broke into Appatius' house and demolished it completely to vent their dissatisfaction with the defeat.

Although Maxius patted Apatius's shoulder with a sad face to comfort him, he was actually smiling in his heart. His family also sold silk, but because their relationship with the Han Dynasty was not as good as Apatius's, they could not get cheap goods. The share of his silk in Rome was far less than that of the Apatius family. In a way, this riot solved the biggest competitor for his family.

But he was too happy too soon. Soon, his servants also ran to Maxius's carriage and cried that the mob had robbed all their silk. Hearing this, Maxius almost fainted. His family's most valuable property was gone.

It was only at this time that the two men realized that the turmoil in Rome was far more widespread than they had imagined, and involved more people.

Rome had been victorious for more than 30 years since the Second Punic War. This disastrous defeat was hard for the citizens of Rome to accept. Of course, the defeat was only the fuse. The fierce conflicts within Rome were the direct cause of this unrest.

Under the promotion of Xu Fan, the Maritime Silk Road was opened all the way to the Mediterranean region. This not only means that the Maritime Silk Road was opened thousands of years in advance, but more importantly, the amount of goods sold by the Han Dynasty to the Qinzhou increased hundreds of times.

In history, after the Han Dynasty went through untold hardships to reach Rome, the price of each piece of silk was more expensive than gold, and only the senators and aristocrats could afford it.

Although Han silk caused a craze in Rome, only the top families in Rome were qualified to wear silk. Apart from the loss of a small amount of gold and silver, it had little impact on the overall Roman society.

But now it is different. The amount of silk transported to the Mediterranean has increased dozens of times, and the price will naturally drop dozens of times. This will affect the cloth produced in Rome, not to mention some low-priced Han cloth and Hun cloth competing with Roman textile workers.

However, it was the Roman senators who dealt a fatal blow to the Roman handicraft industry. Influenced by the Han Dynasty, Rome also began to develop industry. Of course, they mainly developed light industry or the textile industry.

The textile industry has the characteristics of low investment, quick results and high profits, which made it extremely popular among the Roman senators.

They either bought the Han Dynasty's steam engines or asked engineers to copy the Han Dynasty's obsolete water-powered spinning wheels and textile machines. Although these were obsolete machines, they were still a dimensionality reduction blow to Rome's hand-made textile machines.

In recent years, more than a dozen steam textile mills have emerged in Rome, and water-powered textile machine factories are scattered along the banks of the Tiber River. These new productivity has doubled the cloth production in Rome in a few years. Rome's family workshops have been attacked from both inside and outside. They have been beaten back by the three forces and were completely defeated in a few years.

These families were handicraft workshops, and most of them were Roman citizens. When they lost their workshops, they naturally lost their source of income, and these citizens accumulated their anger towards foreign goods.

There is also the cheap steel of the Han Dynasty. Even after traveling tens of thousands of miles, the price is still several times cheaper than the steel in Rome.

The steel industry is an asset-heavy industry. It includes both the industries of Roman senators and aristocrats and family-run blacksmith shops of Roman citizens. In addition, Rome was a military empire and wars continued for many years, requiring an extremely large number of armor, swords, spears, and halberds. In the words of later generations, steel and weapons manufacturing were the pillar industries of Rome.

The steel imported from the Han Dynasty into Rome affected the business of these blacksmiths. At the same time, the Roman senators learned the blast furnace technology of the Han Dynasty and began to suppress the blacksmith shops of those Roman citizens' families.

After all, these family-run blacksmith shops needed thousands of hammers to forge a Roman iron sword. But the Roman senators' arsenals bought the Han people's hydraulic hammers. With a thousand-pound hydraulic hammer, a Roman short sword was formed. How could they compete with such a productivity gap?

These Roman citizen blacksmiths also wanted to transform, but they soon encountered a catastrophe. The war between the Parthians and the Huns made the entire Mediterranean region realize that the future was the world of firearms. What the Roman legions needed was not swords, spears, and halberds, but muskets and artillery.

The blacksmiths who had been making Roman daggers all their lives suddenly found that their lifelong skills were useless. They had never made a musket, and cannons could not be made in a family workshop. They could only become unemployed passively, which was a devastating blow to the Roman citizen blacksmith shops.

However, the Roman citizenship system had extremely strict property standards. If the property did not meet a certain standard, the citizen might lose his or her identity and, in turn, his or her political rights.

The passive industrial upgrading of the Roman Empire directly caused the collapse of the two industries where the largest number of citizens were concentrated. One can imagine the inner distress and anger of these unemployed Roman citizens.

However, the Roman senators have not yet realized this. In fact, because of these two industrial upgrades, their family wealth has increased. In the eyes of the senators, these two transformations of Rome were extremely successful. They replaced Han goods with local products, effectively resisted the Han goods, and protected the economy of Rome.

This riot should have broken out long ago, but the land laws of previous years allowed some unemployed Roman citizens to transform themselves into farmers, retain their identities, and effectively ease the conflicts within Rome.

But there is always a trade-off. The Land Law eased the internal conflicts in Rome, but it also made the Roman senators unaware of the structural contradictions brought about by Rome's industrial upgrading. Naturally, the Roman senators did not think about how to resolve this contradiction.

But the contradiction was there. This military defeat directly ignited the anger of the Roman citizens and completely intensified the contradiction. Under the suppression of Han goods, the citizens of Rome fell into lower class and their lives became difficult.

The Roman senators took advantage of the winter wind of the Maritime Silk Road to see their families' wealth skyrocket. This unfair phenomenon completely triggered the anger of the Roman citizens after the defeat.

They robbed all the shops of the Roman senators who bought Chinese goods, leaving no one untouched. Silk, Chinese cloth, tea, spices, all goods from the Han Dynasty became the objects of their venting.

In the square at the Roman port, silk, cloth, tea and spices from the Han Dynasty were piled up into three small hills, and the outer areas were filled with Roman citizens who had come from all directions.

(End of this chapter)