Three days later, the clouds cleared and the rain cleared, the sky was clear and clear, but Turin was completely transformed into a vast ocean inside and outside.
On the lower west side, the deepest water here can reach the neck of an adult. It is impossible to see the road conditions under the yellow-brown water filled with impurities. Citizens with poor water quality may even drown when traveling on daily basis.
risk.
The situation in the east area of ​​the city is not much better. The water in most streets has reached the chest of an adult man. This depth is enough to submerge nearly one-third of the low-rise houses in Turin, causing nearly six people to die.
Thousands of people are homeless and displaced.
Even the Royal Palace of Turin, the residence of His Majesty the King, did not escape this catastrophe. Although the courtiers of the palace tried their best to prevent the influx of floods, in the end they were in vain.
The king's favorite back garden, the Florentine Baroque style garden, has now been occupied by the smelly floods. The precious orchids and herbs, and the priceless nanmu furniture can only be left to soak quietly.
It's waiting to rot in the water.
The entire first floor of the palace, as well as the exquisite and luxurious courtyards, fountains, theaters and churches inside, all became muddy and extremely dirty in these three days.
Even Carlo Emanuele III himself was forced to move into a room on the upper floor of the palace despite the inconvenience of his legs and feet.
Humiliation, unprecedented humiliation. In more than 40 years of governing the country, Carlo Emanuele III has never suffered such a great humiliation.
But compared with the predicament in Turin and the suffering of the people, the old king could not care less about his personal honor and disgrace:
Now nearly one-third of the city's population is homeless and has no fixed place to live. This is definitely the top priority for Carlo Emanuele III at the end of October when the weather turns cold.
Every night, countless people were unable to find a place to stay. They wore thin, damp shirts and stayed awake all night in the cold autumn wind. Countless people contracted the cold and had high fevers.
Lucky citizens could pick up some wooden boards and piece them together into simple floating platforms, but most people could only huddle on the roofs of flooded houses and sleep on the ground.
Although Carlo Emanuele III has been trying his best to coordinate and settle these citizens, he not only opened the city hall and various government department buildings to the public, but even specially designated the bastion where the army was stationed and the Turin Palace.
An area used to house displaced people.
However, these measures can only accommodate a few thousand people at most. In the face of the 60,000 displaced people, they are undoubtedly just a drop in the bucket.
In addition, the city of Turin is now not only short of food, but also clean water has become a huge problem.
You know, the chest-deep water in the city is poured from the sewers. Moreover, the streets of European cities are full of dirt and filth. No one knows how many snakes and insects are soaked in the water.
The decaying carcasses of rats, ants, and other animals.
Even just looking at the disgusting dim yellow water and smelling the pungent stench everywhere, absolutely no one would want any drop of water to get into their mouth.
But where can people get clean water?
Basically every well has been swallowed up by floods, and the groundwater has also been polluted. The palace and the nobles can filter the sewage and boil it for drinking, but what can ordinary people do? They are in the cold winter.
There may not be enough firewood reserves, so how can you light a fire and boil water at this time?
In the first two days, people could still collect clean rainwater from the heavy downpour. However, as the clouds disappeared and the rain stopped yesterday, the little clean water in the hands of citizens was about to be exhausted.
Some desperate citizens didn't care at all, so they plunged directly into the sewage beneath them and started drinking. As a result, many people had unstoppable diarrhea and high fever that afternoon, and many died of dehydration as a result.
.
In every street of Turin, you can almost see bloated corpses floating on the water, and the living don't even have the energy to express sympathy and prayers to these dead.
What's even more terrible is that as the saying goes, there will be a great epidemic after a flood. Although it is not yet certain whether an infectious plague broke out in the city of Turin, looking at the hundreds of people suffering from high fever due to wind chill or dysentery, the rest
Citizens can't help but feel panic and panic.
After all, no one knows whether a man lying unconscious in a corner is infected with cholera or plague.
Carlo Emanuele III also ordered doctors and scholars from the University of Turin to help citizens prevent the epidemic, but those scholars were unable to protect themselves at this time and were of no use at all.
Despair, boundless despair, no one knows how long these days will last, no one knows whether they can survive such a catastrophe.
At this time, the 200,000 people in Turin were like a huge powder keg. They were sad, they were angry, and they hated not only the Corsicans outside the city, but also those high-ranking officials and nobles who were lying on their bodies and living in the palace.
His Majesty the King.
Carlo Emanuele III's order to reduce ration shares and re-levy grain reserves became the first spark to detonate this powder keg.
...
At noon on October 28, San Martino Square was already crowded with thousands of refugees. They were hungry and depressed, but they still looked forward to the delivery of today's food rations.
This square is one of the few highlands in the city, and floods have little impact on it. Therefore, countless refugees have flocked to it in the past few days. Fifty people can squeeze into an open space the size of a courtyard. The entire square
Thousands of citizens evacuated from the disaster gathered.
Soon, a municipal manager led dozens of officials and policemen escorting a group of grain carriages into the square.
Upon seeing this, the citizens immediately stood up and lined up around the carriage. Their daily ration was only this meal. If they did not receive food here, they would have to tighten their belts and sleep hard tonight.
.
This chapter is not over yet, please click on the next page to continue reading! Municipal bureaucrats and police first spent a long time maintaining order, stopping and arresting more than a dozen refugees who were fighting for the front position, and then started today
distribution of rations.
However, every citizen who received the ration immediately fell silent. They looked at the food in their hands and couldn't believe that this was their food for the whole day:
A piece of bread as thin as a cicada's wings, a bowl of vegetable stew that smelled suspiciously, was as light as water, and was still cold.
This is still the daily quota for adult men. As for women and children, they don't even get a piece of bread, only a bowl of so-called vegetable stew.
Just for a moment, a series of complaints and roars resounded through San Martino Square:
"Are you kidding me? Yesterday I was able to get a piece of bread, but today I only have this small piece?!"
"I handed in three bags of flour, which is enough for me to eat until winter, but now I can only receive one piece of bread every day?!"
"Damn it, my bread is moldy! Can anyone eat this?"
"There are dead rats and cockroaches in my soup!"
...
Thousands of refugees waved their fists angrily and approached the municipal manager and the food convoy step by step.
The supervisor was so frightened that he dropped the account book in his hand. In front of him were thousands of refugees filled with grief, anger, and righteous indignation. It was impossible for him and dozens of police officers to deal with them alone.
Just when the situation became increasingly difficult to deal with, an officer suddenly rushed to the scene with more than a hundred soldiers.
Seeing the troops entering, the refugees who were shouting and cheering immediately became much restrained.
But they did not disperse, nor did the anger and unwillingness in their hearts. Everyone still stood there and stared coldly at these uninvited guests.
The city manager also immediately breathed a sigh of relief. Although he didn't know the purpose of this army coming here, he still hurried forward to shake hands with the officer and say thank you:
"You came just in time, sir, otherwise I would have been beaten to death by these unscrupulous people... If your troops have no other tasks, I wonder if you can help us maintain order on the scene. Today's rations will be distributed soon...
."
"Maintaining order? Sorry, we have other tasks now."
The officer sneered, not hiding his contempt for the unruly people in front of him. He walked straight to a grain carriage, patted the axle, and ordered loudly:
"Come here, take all these carriages back to the Southwest Bastion!"
Not only the citizens present widened their eyes, but even the municipal manager was shocked and quickly stopped him:
"What... what are you doing! Sir, these are rations to be distributed to the citizens!"
The officer ignored the municipal supervisor at all, and while ordering his men to start driving the car, he calmly took out a cut cigar and held it in his mouth. In Turin at the moment, the living conditions of these soldiers are undoubtedly the most generous.
He puffed on the spot for a while, not caring about the hateful looks of the citizens, and then casually threw the half-smoked cigar in the puddle at his feet:
"I am the grain collection officer of the city defense force. The task I received is to once again collect the grain reserves in the hands of the people. It just so happens that your rations have not been distributed yet. We will save the money from these idiots.
Want to come back."
The citizens who heard this were stunned. They couldn't believe that they would see such a ridiculous scene with their own eyes.
Before the city hall even distributed relief grains to itself, the army had to confiscate the grains to superiors again.
What the hell is this, left hand instead of right hand? What about these hungry civilians?! Is this world so absurd?!
The municipal manager was also shocked. He opened his mouth wide and it took him a long time to squeeze out a sentence:
"But...but, these victims should..."
The officer obviously didn't have much patience anymore. He plucked his ears and sighed:
"Brother, your mission is to distribute food to civilians, and my mission is to collect food from civilians. So why bother? I can just take this convoy away and it will be over. We can get the best of both worlds. Okay
, stop talking nonsense, I haven’t completed today’s food collection quota yet.”
To be continued...