novelSusiti Chapter 126 Block my way? The road is right beneath my feet!
Chapter 126 Block my way? The road is right beneath my feet!
The bliss of newlywed life didn't linger long on the Crown Prince's schedule. On the morning of the third day of their honeymoon, Constantine, already dressed, appeared in the palace's meeting hall. Sofia personally adjusted the Prussian blue sash at his collar, her azure eyes reflecting an unspoken understanding and support.
The atmosphere at today's royal meeting was quite different from usual.
Prince William's messenger had just arrived, bringing with him the Kaiser's approval and confirmation that the first group of engineers was about to depart. This letter acted like a shot in the arm for the young Greek reformers. In the meeting hall, a group of newly promoted officers, led by Metaxas, stood tall, their eyes gleaming with fervent enthusiasm.
Constantine stood before the enormous map, holding a thick scroll of blueprints in his hand.
"Gentlemen," his voice echoed clearly and forcefully in the spacious conference hall, "this is the blueprint for the Royal Greek Steel Works."
He spread the blueprints out on the long table. It was an incredibly complex engineering blueprint: the outline of the blast furnace was majestic and imposing, the structure of the steel rolling mill was precise and intricate, and the railway tracks connected the factory area to the distant port like a spider web. Every detail was drawn and modified by Constantine himself, incorporating his industrial knowledge, which was ahead of its time.
"The engineers and the complete blueprints from the German Empire are about to arrive. Here, we will build Greece's first modern blast furnace." He pointed to the heart of the blueprints, "and use molten steel forged by ourselves to build the backbone of Greece's future. Our soldiers will use rifles made in our own country; our fleet will be clad in armor forged in our own nation!"
The scene he described made the young officers gasp for breath, their young faces flushed with excitement. The machines roared, molten steel flowed—a powerful industrial nation seemed to be right before their eyes.
Even King George I, looking at his son's spirited figure, couldn't help but show an approving expression.
Just then, an untimely voice rang out.
"Your Highness, your grand vision is truly inspiring."
Finance Minister Spyros Melas rose from his seat. He was overweight, with a perpetually humble smile, but his small eyes, hidden in the folds of his flesh, gleamed with shrewdness. He represented a long-established Athenian banking family and was the most important pawn of the oligarchic group within the cabinet.
He didn't look at the blueprints, but instead slowly opened a thick ledger in front of him.
"However, even the most magnificent building needs land to support it." Melas's voice trailed off, carrying a feigned regret. "To cooperate with Your Highness's plan, the Ministry of Finance has surveyed all suitable land around Athens for building factories."
He turned the pages of the ledger, making a rustling sound that seemed to strike the nerves of the reformers present.
“Unfortunately,” Melas emphasized the word “unfortunately,” “from Fariro to Elefsina, all the landowners of plots with water sources and close to transportation lines have ‘coincidentally’ raised their bids in the past week.”
He closed the ledger with a dull thud.
"The average increase is five times."
He raised his head, his smiling face appearing incredibly jarring to everyone. "Your Highness, I regret to inform you that, at current land prices, even if we emptied the national treasury, we still couldn't afford a single plot of land large enough to build your magnificent factory."
The conference room fell silent instantly.
Everyone understood. This was a blatant and undisguised extortion. The oligarchs used their most effective weapons—land and capital—to build an invisible yet insurmountable wall against Constantine's grand plan.
The flush on the officers' faces faded, replaced by a furious lividity. King George I's brows furrowed tightly.
Constantine's plan was nipped in the bud before it even took its first step.
The meeting ended unhappily in a tense atmosphere.
As night fell, Constantine returned to his study. Sophia, still awake, was carefully organizing stacks of metallurgical documents that had been sent to him from Germany by lamplight. Seeing her husband, she put down the documents.
"Are they using those tangled territories to make things difficult for you again?" she asked softly as she walked to his side. Her voice was gentle, but her blue eyes gleamed with an all-knowing wisdom.
Constantine didn't answer. Instead, he took Sophia's hand and led her to the huge map of Athens against the wall. On the map, the plots of land mentioned by the finance minister Melas were marked in red ink, like shackles blocking Athens' path to industrialization.
"They thought they had blocked all the roads," Constantine's gaze swept over the red markers, his face showing no sign of frustration, but rather a sense of strategic composure, "forgetting that I'm standing on one of them."
His finger did not point to any of the marked, expensive plots of land, but rather to a forgotten area on the outskirts of the city, marked in light brown.
It was a desolate hill.
"Here," Constantine's voice was calm and confident, "'Otto's Olive Hill Estate'."
Sofia looked in the direction he was pointing. It was a seemingly unremarkable piece of land marked "Royal Property".
"This was the private estate of the last Greek king. Because the land was barren, nothing could be grown except for a few half-dead olive groves. After my father ascended the throne in Greece, it became a gift from the oligarchs. However, it has been abandoned for nearly twenty years," Constantine explained. "Everyone has forgotten its existence. But they have also forgotten that there is an abandoned royal carriage road here that leads directly to the port of Piraeus without passing through any private lands."
His finger drew a clean, straight line on the map.
"Most importantly, this land belongs entirely to the royal family. We don't need to pay anyone a single drachma's worth of land."
Sofia's eyes lit up.
The following morning, a royal decree, personally signed by King George I and co-signed by Crown Prince Constantine, was posted in the most prominent position in Syntagma Square in Athens.
The decree proclaimed to the entire nation: In order to revitalize Greece, the King and Crown Prince decided to use royal lands to build the nation's pillar industry—the Royal Greek Steel Works! The site was chosen at the "Otto Olive Hill Estate" on the outskirts of the city!
At the end of the decree, a solemn declaration was written in bold:
Effective immediately, this area is renamed "Royal Phoenix Hill Industrial Zone"! This is a beneficial act for the country and its people. Anyone who dares to obstruct the construction of the factory in any form will be considered to have committed a blatant violation of royal property and will be prosecuted for treason!
The news sent shockwaves through the city.
Inside a secluded mansion surrounded by high walls in the Fanar noble district.
Alexius Mavrokodatos listened to his men's panicked reports, his face so dark it seemed to drip water.
"Snapped!"
He crushed the Venetian crystal glass in his hand into shards. Blood dripped from between his fingers, but he was oblivious.
Constantine easily broke free from the land noose he had meticulously laid, using a move that was almost like flipping a table. Constantine even used this opportunity to gain immense prestige for himself under the guise of "using royal property for the benefit of the nation."
"What a Phoenix Mountain... what a Constantine..." Mavrokodatos wiped the blood off his hands with a silk handkerchief, the resentment in his eyes almost solidifying.
He gave a cold command to a man in black standing in the shadows of the room.
"If the land won't work, then let them stumble in people's hearts."
"Go, go tell those fools in the villages at the foot of Phoenix Mountain. Their olive trees, their ancestral land, are about to be devoured piece by piece by the steel monsters of the Germans."