1885, I came to save Greece

Chapter 173 The Power of a Photograph

Five days later.

In a café on Montmartre in Paris, a playwright known for his acerbic remarks put down his copy of a magazine and said to his friend at the table, "I always thought that the so-called 'divine right of kings' was just a pretty hat. Now it seems that someone has really put it on like a crown."

In London, before the fireplace of a gentlemen's club, a meticulously groomed knight shakes his head at his smoke-filled companions: "These Greek landowners have mastered barbarity, something even Ottoman governors couldn't learn. They've tarnished the word 'noble.'"

Meanwhile in Berlin, Kaiser Wilhelm II slammed the newspaper down on the table in his palace and roared at his generals, "Look! Look! This is what it means to win the hearts and minds of the people! Sofia's husband, my brother-in-law, did better with a loaf of bread than you did with ten thousand cannonballs!"

The photograph titled "The Crown Prince and Bread," along with the subsequent heart-wrenching reports, swept across Europe like a storm.

"...Here, you won't see the 'orderly' described in official reports. You'll only see the bayonets of landlords' private armies and empty granaries."

"...We witnessed His Highness the Crown Prince order the granaries of the Deragace family, the largest landowners in the area, to be split open with axes. The mountains of wheat inside were enough to feed the entire region's famine victims for three months. And at the entrance to the granaries, a sign painted on the walls read, 'Better to feed rats than to feed humans...'"

The greed and cold-bloodedness of the Greek landowning class contrasted sharply with the kindness and courage of the Crown Prince and his wife. A torrent of public opinion surged towards Athens from all directions.

In Athens, a newspaper that had just days before attacked the Crown Prince for "putting on a show" was now closed. Angry citizens set piles of newspapers ablaze at the entrance, flames roaring everywhere. They plastered the newspaper office's exterior walls with the photograph of the Crown Prince with bread.

In parliament, the representatives of those large landowners no longer dared to show their faces in public. The members of parliament who had once clamored for "suppressing the mob" in the parliament hall were now hiding in their mansions with the curtains drawn, listening to the angry shouts of "Severely punish the traitors" from the crowd outside their windows, their legs trembling with fear.

On the plains of Thessaly, Constantine's reputation reached an unprecedented peak.

When truckloads of grain were transported into the village, when large pots of hot soup were set up, and when children laughed again, this land of despair finally came back to life.

The disaster victims regarded Constantine as a savior who had fallen from the sky.

As his entourage toured the disaster area, thousands of farmers spontaneously knelt down on both sides of the road. They were not forced, nor were they acting out of courtesy, but rather it was a heartfelt, primal form of worship and gratitude.

They kissed the dust he walked on, and held their children high so he could touch them.

The slogans they shouted were no longer the distant and vague "Long live the King".

Instead, it was a heartfelt cry: "Constantine! Our father!"

When the overwhelming title reached his ears, Constantine sat in the carriage, his body stiffening for a moment. He felt not the thrill of power, but a heavy, almost suffocating sense of responsibility.

The will of the people is there, and the trend has already been set.

He ordered the aid team to make public all the evidence of the landlords' crimes that they had secretly collected.

A blood-soaked investigative report. A century-old lease agreement that exploited tenant farmers like a contract of servitude. A detailed record of the landlord's disregard for human life.

Each piece of evidence was like a bombshell, exploding in Athens. Public sentiment was inflamed. Calls for severe punishment of greedy landowners and thorough reform of the land system surged from every corner of the city, converging into an unstoppable torrent.

On the day before he was to leave Thessaly, Constantine summoned representatives of the tenant farmers from all the villages. The meeting place was a bare ridge on a field that had just been eaten by locusts.

He stood on high ground, with the vast and scarred plains of Thessaly behind him.

He looked at the weathered faces before him, faces that had been rekindled with hope, and spoke in a steady and powerful voice.

"I assure you."

"This land will soon welcome its true masters."

"Every drop of sweat you shed on this land will, in the future, yield fruits that belong only to you!"

The farmers didn't understand complicated principles, but they understood this sentence. A thunderous cheer resounded through the sky.

Constantine returned to Athens.

Behind him lay the direct mandate and expectations of hundreds of thousands of farmers on the Thessaly Plain.

He holds the support of public opinion across Europe.

He trod upon the landlord class's retreat born of fear.

In preparation for the upcoming land reform, he has secured the most important thing—an unparalleled moral high ground and a vast and unstoppable foundation of public opinion.

Royal Palace Study.

Constantine took a piece of parchment from a locked drawer. It was the blood-stained pact of the De La Garcees family, passed down for centuries, that the old village chief had given to the agent before his death.

He placed the contract in the most conspicuous place on his desk, then took out a cigar from his cigar box, cut it, lit it, but didn't smoke it; he just watched the smoke swirl around him.

The study door was pushed open, and Sophia walked in.

"Outside in Syntagma Square, there are people cheering for you." She walked to his side, looking at the profound sadness on her husband's face that didn't match his age. "They say you are the savior of Greece."

Constantine shifted his gaze from the ancient parchment to Sophia's face. He reached out and gently stroked his wife's cheek, his voice tinged with apology: "This time, I've brought you on this adventure with me."

Sofia took his hand and shook her head: "My husband is fighting for this country, how can I hide inside the safe palace walls?"

"But that wasn't a battle, it was a show," Constantine chuckled self-deprecatingly. "In front of those reporters, I played the role of a benevolent monarch, and you played the role of a noble princess. Together we put on a play called 'The Crown Prince and the Bread,' and now, all of Europe is applauding us."

Sofia paused, sensing the weariness in her husband's voice. She gripped his hand tighter: "But we brought real bread, didn't we? And the smiles on the children's faces weren't fake."

Constantine fell silent. He stubbed out his cigar, stood up, walked to the other side of the desk, and picked up a brand-new fountain pen.

He looked at the blood-red old contract and said to Sophia, "The title of savior is too heavy. I'm just a garbage collector."

He unscrewed the pen cap and wrote the first line of the title on a blank sheet of paper.

"Now, it is time to establish a new covenant for this land."

On the paper, a line of clear handwriting appeared:

National Land Redemption and Distribution Act (Draft)