Great time travel

Chapter 6, the chubby God is here
In February 1348, the Mediterranean coast in southern France, Marseilles

This famous seaport, which was originally established by ancient Greek immigrants and was born before the Roman Empire, has been bustling for nearly [-] centuries, seems to be covered with a gray veil at this time, like a mummy. shroud.

Since the "death ships" from the Crimean Peninsula that were tainted by the disease were put into the port last month because of the benevolence of the citizens of Marseilles, the horrible Black Death was like a tsunami. Flooded the city, poured into every street in Marseille.

— first high fever, vomiting, coughing, and abscesses, then silence and death, and a lingering horrible stench!
Obviously, those medieval European quack doctors who only knew about sex and bloodletting could not treat this unheard of severe plague at all.Just after the New Year, the death knells of every church in Marseille began to ring all day long without stopping.From morning to night in the cemetery, the mourning of the bereaved families in black veils always echoed.A priest often has to preside over the funeral of six or seven corpses at the same time-and this is only the treatment of the upper class and powerful!
As for the urban lower class, and indeed most of the middle class, the situation is even worse.It is also because they have no money, or perhaps because they are lucky, that most of them stay at home, and thousands of them fall ill every day.And because they lacked proper medical treatment and were left unattended, nearly all died.Whether it is day or night, many people always die on the road.Many citizens' families died silently in the house, and the neighbors didn't know they were dead until the corpses decomposed and gave off a foul smell.In short, in less than a month, the city has become full of corpses. If the living people nearby can find a porter, they will ask the porter to help carry the corpse out and put it at the gate; Holding their noses and lifting them themselves, they did not do this out of compassion, but because they were afraid that the rotting corpse would threaten their survival.

Every day at dawn, I saw corpses piled up at the door of every house.The gravediggers put these corpses on the bier again and carried them out. If the bier could not be obtained, they would be carried on wooden planks.There are often two or three corpses on a bier.It became a very common thing for a couple, or a father and son, or two or three brothers to be put together on the same bier—the sudden outbreak of death has already made people cry and almost numb.

Every day, or even every hour, a large number of corpses are transported to the churches in the city, and the church cemetery can no longer accommodate them, especially those powerful and wealthy families, who are buried in the ancestral graves of their families according to the custom. The situation is even more serious.When the cemetery was full, they had to dig some long and wide deep pits around them, and buried hundreds of corpses later.Like the cargo piled up in the hold of a ship, the bodies were all placed in the pit in layers.Only a thin layer of soil was covered, and the hole was not sealed until the entire pit was filled.

But in fact, the death knell in the church is still ringing, and the corpses in the city are still being buried. In this sad age, it is already called happiness.At the very least, the municipal government of Marseilles is still functioning, priests and nobles are still trying their best to maintain order, and according to the news from Sicily, there are already streets full of rotting corpses that no one can bury, and the city has been devoured The wild dogs and crows occupied the whole country, and the whole country seemed to be ruled by death. Even the regent of Sicily fled to the mountains to become a wild man-because his guards, squires, courtiers and knights were all dead!
However, as the plague continued to spread, no one knew whether Marseille would follow in the footsteps of Sicily and be completely conquered by death.

One month after the introduction of the Black Death, not only the densely populated urban area of ​​Marseille became a purgatory on earth, but also the Provence countryside in the suburbs became devastated due to the fleeing of infected citizens and the spread of the plague. capital of the Provence region of France).

Those poor French peasants and their families, if they fall ill in the village and in the fields, often end up worse than the townspeople--there are no doctors, no one to look after them, and they just fall dead on the roads and in the fields. , Or die at the door of the house, and then be eaten by wild dogs, there is no coffin to accommodate, or even a grave to bury.They died not as a human being, but as an animal.

In such a hopeless world, not to mention surviving, even dying with dignity has become a luxury!
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At this moment, in the outskirts of Marseille Port, a funeral is being held in a manor with the red octagonal white cross flag of the Knights Hospitaller.

"...Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name,
May your kingdom come, may your will come on earth as it is in heaven.

Give us this day our daily bread.

Forgive us our sins, as we forgive our enemies.

May we be free from temptation and deliver us from evil.

For the kingdom, power, and glory are all yours.

Forever, Amen! "

Accompanied by the melodious singing of the church choir, the tired and emaciated priest in black presided over the funeral ceremony with a dull expression.Perhaps because he has witnessed too many deaths in the past few days, his mental state seems to be very bad, and he didn't notice the wrong sentence several times.However, the relatives of the deceased who attended the funeral didn't care - at this moment, it would be very, very good to have a somewhat decent funeral, and to have a group of people come to watch the funeral at the risk of getting sick.Couldn't have asked for more.

You must know that many famous deceased people often have no one present even the moment they die, because the living people want to avoid the infection of the plague, so the family and friendship are torn apart by death.So that in the end, everyone avoids me, and I avoid you; neighbors, no one cares about anyone else's business.Once someone is sick, or even just rumored to be sick, relatives and friends immediately cut off contact, and even if they seldom say a word, they stay far away.It is not uncommon for older brothers to abandon younger brothers, uncles to nephews, sisters to brothers, and wives to abandon their husbands.The most incredible thing is that even some parents refuse to look after their children, as if the children were not born by themselves.

Closer to home, in front of the emaciated priest lay Diderot in a rough oak coffin.The body of Bacon Knight.

Just last week, the resident agent of the Knights Hospitaller in the port of Marseilles was as strong as a bull, drinking heavily and telling jokes loudly.But since he unfortunately fell ill five days ago, poor Master Diderot immediately became swollen and bruised, and lost weight at a speed visible to the naked eye. When he was dying, almost only a set of bones remained. Except for the most familiar people, no one recognizes him anymore.

As the heir of the deceased, Li Wei.Bacon's mood is undoubtedly very sad: it is sincere grief, not pretending to cry.

——Although it is the identity arranged by the Lord God system, Uncle Diderot really has nothing to say about his cheap nephew. He treats him completely as his own child, and devotes all his assets, experience, experience, knowledge and connections to him. Hand in hand... For Li Wei, a wanderer who has bid farewell to his hometown, this kind of love and care from his family cannot be measured by money. A good comrade with integrity, Li Wei really never expected his uncle to die as soon as possible so that he could inherit the family property as soon as possible.

On the contrary, as early as the moment he was alarmed by the Black Death, he began to rack his brains to plan countermeasures so that his family could escape the catastrophe.

However, even as a time traveler, Li Wei is not omniscient, let alone omnipotent.Facing the Black Death, which was raging like a tsunami, and Uncle Diderot who was dying in bed, he was actually as powerless as the medieval natives of his time.

Indeed, as a traveler who only knew a little about the history of medieval Europe, Knight Levi had heard the name of the Black Death, knew that it was actually a kind of plague, and knew that Europe died in the Black Death. Many people were killed, but they did not remember the specific year when the Black Death broke out, nor did they have a deep understanding of how terrible the plague was. They thought it was similar to the "SARS" flu in the 21st century. When it came to the end, they were caught off guard for a while-according to the original plot arrangement, they would automatically return to the Lord God's space after the Battle of Crecy, so those seniors who were more prepared did not pay attention at all to the French history. Things that didn't happen until after 1346...

More importantly, even if Levi knew about the threat of the Black Death a long time in advance, so what?There was certainly no cure for this disease in medieval Europe, and nowhere else could it be avoided.Even the northernmost Norway has not escaped the invasion of the Black Death.Could he still be able to persuade his uncle to give up the manor and wealth in the port of Marseilles, as well as the position of the Knights of the Hospitaller, and hide in the barren mountains to be a savage for a few years?

In fact, as soon as the twelve "death ships" arrived in Marseilles, combined with the rumors of the epidemic that they had heard from the Italians, the Levi knights who had just woken up from a dream immediately realized it, and immediately began to turn their heads. Discuss with his wife who is also a time traveler how to fight the plague.

But very soon, the time traveler and his wife found out in despair that they had no way to deal with the raging Black Death—the hygienic conditions in this place were really bad, and it was normal for the plague to break out every now and then It is a miracle that he has been free from illness and disaster!

No way, the sanitary conditions in most European cities are quite poor these days.In Europe in 1348, there were pigs running on the streets of London, Paris and Rome, as well as chickens and geese walking around and pulling manure, not to mention a second-rate city like Marseilles.

In Marseille, only the busiest squares and commercial streets in the city are paved with cobblestones, and other roads are covered with stinky mud.Silt, garbage and feces are everywhere, rotting animal carcasses can be seen everywhere, everyone defecates on the side of the road, residents dump the urinals directly from the window into the street, as if turning the city into an oversized hut, The sewer system left over from the ancient Roman Empire has long been silted up. When it rains, the streets are full of sewage, and pedestrians have to walk on stilt-like super high heels. Such a dirty city is simply a paradise for rats, cockroaches and fleas. , Of course, it is also an excellent seedbed for breeding various plagues!

Moreover, Europeans' construction skills are very poor these days, so the houses are quite small. The wooden houses in fairy tales can almost be called luxury houses, and ordinary poor people often can only live in straw huts.Especially in densely populated cities, due to unscientific planning, most of the houses are poorly ventilated and poorly lit. What's more, the per capita living area is comparable to Hong Kong's "pigeon cage" in later generations.Even in noble houses in cities, many people often live in one room.As for the middle class and poor families, seven or eight people are simply squeezed into one bed, and they don't know how they should do the thing of producing offspring at night.Some families don't even have beds, and the whole family can only sleep on moldy straw piles...

What is even more troublesome is that marble and other stone materials in the Middle Ages are very expensive, and the technology of firing bricks and tiles has also deteriorated severely. Therefore, unlike those Italian city-states with strong financial resources that have popularized brick houses, in the relatively poor port of Marseilles, Most of the houses are made of wood, mud or even hay. Of course, the brave and tenacious rats can easily break into these fragile fortresses and bring the deadly disease to every family at the fastest speed: in such a sad city In the environment, even if the strictest isolation measures are promulgated, most of them are ineffective. With the sad technology level of medieval Europe, even if you can really isolate every patient, is there still a way to isolate every rat?
Next, the situation of environmental sanitation is already so bad, the situation of personal hygiene is also appalling.

Well, although the real medieval Europeans are not like "thousands of years without bathing" like some disgusting legends.At least things like bathtubs existed in Europe in the Middle Ages, but the concept of hygiene was too backward in those days, and many people couldn't afford to take a bath or didn't like to take a bath.

Moreover, with the beginning of the Renaissance, by 1348, Europeans' hygiene concepts had improved compared with those in the early Middle Ages, especially after the Crusades, the Arabs' bathing methods and large bathroom construction techniques also followed suit. With the returning Crusaders, it slowly spread to Europe.In addition, the rampant Vikings and pirates spread the steam bath (sauna) in their hometown to all parts of Europe after burning, killing and looting... So, from the 10th and 11th centuries, Europeans began to slowly Some medium and large bathrooms were built.By 1292, there were already 26 steam baths and common baths in Paris, and there were also dedicated staff who traveled all over the streets of Paris to invite guests to take a bath.As the most prosperous port city in southern France and a frontier window for exchanges with Mediterranean countries, the number of bathrooms in Marseille is naturally not small.

But it is undeniable that in the dark European Middle Ages, due to the degradation of technical level, there was no ability to build huge and complex boilers and pipelines. Compared with the public baths in the ancient Roman Empire, which were so cheap that the poor could afford them, the medieval The cost of bathing for Europeans has indeed been greatly increased.Therefore, on the eve of the Black Death, the wealthy and middle-class people who are not short of money can leisurely enjoy showers, bubble baths, steam baths, and even hot spring baths.But most poor people still rarely bathe.Everyone from the farmer to the lower class was infested with lice and fleas, and so suffered from frequent skin infections, dysentery, and colds, which further weakened people's resistance to disease.

——In such a dirty and disgusting living environment, there is no such thing as "health" and hygiene. If those delicate "little freshmen" and "little fresh meat" of later generations are allowed to live in the alleys of medieval European cities In a few days, it is estimated that they will commit suicide in grief and indignation without contracting the Black Death.

The most terrible problem is that, in the face of such a long-standing and difficult situation, even if the Knights of Levi managed to push the ruling class of Marseilles to make up their minds and start to renovate the city appearance and strengthen environmental sanitation, not to mention where the required funds will be raised. How to solve the resistance, it will take many years at least in terms of time... But now that the Black Death has broken out on a large scale, is there still time for such a large-scale construction project?
I'm afraid that even if the municipal authority of the Port of Marseille issued a decree, in such a panic environment, there would be no one to implement it!

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Now that it was too late to renovate the city and strengthen environmental sanitation, Knight Li Wei began to change his thinking, wondering if he could start with eradicating the hosts of the germs and launch a pest control campaign to stop the black death. The spread of the plague of schistosomiasis-this approach also has good examples. For example, the new China of later generations successfully curbed the spread of schistosomiasis through large-scale eradication of oncomelania.

Then, Li Wei discovered with infinite despair that in this sad medieval Europe, even the means to eliminate rats were so scarce!
"...Damn it! The rats are already infested, and the Church of Rome still declares that cats are evil animals and partners of witches, and has organized the massacre of cats in Europe for hundreds of years? Bind cats to the stake Burn to death! Is this a death? A death? Or a death?!"