1885, I came to save Greece

Chapter 192 The Second Shot

A cool night breeze swept across the crumbling columns of the Parthenon. Constantine stood atop the Acropolis, overlooking the myriad lights of Athens scattered below. The city was awakening, slowly but surely.

Alexandros Dimitriopoulos's figure appeared silently behind him, like a part of the night.

"Your Highness, something has happened on the Thessalian border."

Constantine did not turn around. His gaze remained fixed on the distant, vast land, the land of hope he had just wrested back from the oligarchs with iron and blood.

"Speak." There was no emotion in his voice.

"Thirty kilometers north of Larissa, a farm called Corino was attacked last night. A family of four was killed." Alexandros's tone was flat, simply stating a fact.

Constantine slowly turned around, and in the moonlight, his azure eyes were as cold as a frozen lake.

Three days ago, on the Thessalian plain.

The autumn sky was high and azure. The boundless wheat fields, like a golden ocean, rippled in the gentle breeze. This was the first bumper harvest after the land reform, and the air was filled with the aroma of ripe grains and a scent called "hope."

Long lines stretched to the far end of the dirt road in front of the newly established "National Granary" outside Larissa. Farmers drove their donkey carts, laden with heavy ears of wheat. Their faces, tanned by the sun, glowed with a healthy rosy light—a radiance of heartfelt joy.

At the front of the procession, a middle-aged man named Pavlos was nervously watching the granary official weigh the wheat on his cart with a huge iron scale.

"Three hundred and twenty kilograms, Pavlos, a good harvest this year!" the official shouted, jotting down the numbers in a thick notebook.

"Thanks to His Highness the Crown Prince!" Pavlos grinned, revealing a set of white teeth, and smiled like a child.

He took a small cloth bag from the official; the bag felt heavy in his hand. He untied it, and inside were brand-new, gleaming drachmas, reflecting a dazzling light in the sunlight.

Pavlos poured the silver coins into his calloused palm and counted them one by one. His hands trembled, and his eyes were a little moist. He had lived forty years, his father for sixty, and for generations, they had been serfs working for landowners. They had seen wheat, but had never truly owned it. They had seen money, but had never had so much money of their own.

He carefully put the money away, tucked it into his innermost pocket, patted it, and felt a sense of peace.

"Go home and get your wife a new piece of cloth, and buy some candy for the kids!" The villagers behind him joked loudly and in good spirits.

"Of course! We still need to save money to send my son to the school His Highness runs!" Pavlos drove the empty donkey cart with much lighter steps.

Golden waves of wheat, gleaming silver coins, children's laughter, and dreams for the future—all these elements combined to create a scene of abundance unprecedented in Greek history.

Amidst this joy of harvest, unbeknownst to anyone, a cold, venomous gaze was fixed intently on this golden land from the other side of the strait.

In Constantinople, inside a luxurious mansion in the Pera district.

The room was dark; heavy velvet curtains blocked out all light, with only the flickering firelight from the fireplace illuminating a few blurry figures. The air was thick with the aroma of Turkish hookah and expensive cigars.

A portly Greek man lay out an intricate map before the fireplace. His name was Panos Savaras, once one of the largest landowners in Thessaly, whose land reforms had stripped him of everything overnight. His face was contorted with hatred as he fled with his family's secrets.

"General, Mr. Bey, please look." Savaras's finger traced the location of the Thessalian plain on the map. "That blond-haired Constantine has divided our land among those lowly people. Now, those peasants think they are the masters of the country. And a powerful Greece, a Greece capable of fulfilling its so-called 'great ideals,' is clearly a thorn in the side of His Majesty the Sultan's great empire."

Sitting on the sofa opposite him was a man in the uniform of a high-ranking Ottoman officer, with a horrific scar running from his brow bone to the corner of his mouth. He was Tarat Pasha, a hawkish general in the Ottoman military. He simply smoked a cigar, remaining silent, but his hawk-like eyes gleamed with a bloodthirsty light.

Another slightly younger Turk was Farouk, Muradbey's nephew. His uncle's opium business had been ruined by Constantine, causing the family's reputation to plummet. His hatred for Constantine was no less than that for Savaras.

"Mr. Panos, what do you mean?" Farouk asked coldly.

"It's simple." Savaras grinned maliciously. "Those peasants are the root of Constantine's new policies. Why do they support Constantine? Because Constantine gave them land and false hope!"

"We don't need to fight the regular Greek army. We just need to... destroy their hopes."

Savaras's finger slammed heavily on the border line of the map.

"We'll send men disguised as bandits across the border. They won't steal grain or money. We'll just set fires and kill! We'll kill those farmers who are shouting the loudest and living the best!"

"Once, twice, ten times! When bountiful wheat fields turn to scorched earth, when nighttime lullabies become widows' wails, guess what those foolish farmers will do?"

He looked up at Talatpasha, his voice full of seduction.

"They will be terrified, they will despair! They will discover that the land the Crown Prince has given them is stained with blood, it will kill them! They will miss the past! They will miss the days when, though poor, at least they could survive! At that point, Constantine's reforms will rot from the roots!"

"At that time, Your Excellency will only need to exert a little pressure, and the entire Thessaly will fall without a fight! We will be able to reclaim everything that belongs to us! And you will become a national hero who has recovered lost territory!"

Talatpasha slowly exhaled a smoke ring, the scar appearing even more menacing in the swirling smoke. He finally spoke, his voice hoarse as if two stones were rubbing against each other.

"My men are only responsible for crossing the border. I'm not interested in anything else."

"That's enough! Your Excellency General, that's enough!" Savaras was overjoyed.

Thessaly border, Corino farm.

Night fell, and all was quiet. The farmer's family was fast asleep, exhausted from the day's harvest.

A dozen or so dark figures, like ghosts, silently emerged from the woods along the border. They moved nimbly and coordinated perfectly. Each of them was dressed in coarse cloth and their faces were covered with black cloth, but the high-quality Mauser rifles in their hands and the standard military knives at their waists gave away their true identities.

Without making a sound, they dealt with the farm's guard dog. The men skillfully pried open the doors and windows and slipped inside.

A few moments later, a few short, muffled screams, which were tightly muffled, quickly dissipated in the night wind.

The shadowy figures retreated, taking nothing with them. One of them took a jar from his pocket and splashed a black liquid onto the dry straw piles and the wooden houses.

"call--"

A match is struck.

A fiery serpent instantly engulfed the entire farm. Flames shot skyward, turning half the night sky blood red.

On the burning walls of the farm, someone had hastily scribbled a line of crooked Ottoman Turkish words in black paint:

"This is God's land!"

The fire burned all night.

The next morning, when the neighbors arrived, the entire farm had been reduced to a charred ruin. The laughter and joy of the past had turned into the acrid smell of burning in the air.

This brutal attack was like a pebble thrown into a calm lake, creating ripples of panic on the Thessalian border. The joy of the harvest was shrouded in a heavy shadow. People began to lock their doors and windows at night, afraid to venture out.

The local government received the report and dispatched several police officers to investigate. Looking at the ruins and the writing on the walls, they hastily concluded: "Ordinary bandits committed robbery across the border, accidentally killing someone."

A ten-man police patrol was dispatched to the border region. However, the very next night, the patrol was ambushed in a valley. The enemy's marksmanship was excellent, and their teamwork was superb. The police officers barely had time to return fire, and more than half of them were killed or wounded, forcing them to flee in disarray.

This only emboldened the bandits. The police's incompetence further eroded the farmers' sense of security.

The news, like snowflakes, flew to Athens.

The royal study was brightly lit.

Constantine stared at the report Alexandros presented, his face ashen. The report detailed the scene—the professional method of murder, the arson not motivated by money, and the provocative slogan.

"This is no ordinary banditry," Constantine said coldly.

He immediately instructed the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to lodge a formal protest with the Ottoman Empire, demanding that the perpetrators be severely punished.

The Ottoman government's response came swiftly and was predictably arrogant and sarcastic. They vehemently denied any involvement in the incident and retorted that it was a tragedy caused by poor security within Greece. They claimed that if the Greek government was unable to manage its borders, the Ottoman Empire was willing to help them maintain order "out of humanitarian concern."

Shameless!

Constantine crumpled the diplomatic telegram into a ball and slammed it to the ground.

He understood completely.

This was a war he couldn't openly proclaim. The enemy was dressed as bandits but engaged in the activities of a regular army. If he sent troops, he would be escalating the border conflict into a war between two nations, playing right into the enemy's hands. At that point, Greece, with its current national strength, would be utterly unable to confront the Ottoman Empire head-on, and the external powers, led by Britain and France, would be happy to see Greece get a beating and then cry out for "mediation."

However, if he doesn't use the army and relies solely on the local police, it would be like throwing an egg against a rock, and he could only watch helplessly as the people on the border were slaughtered one by one.

His fist slammed heavily onto the map on the table. His hand was pressed against the golden area of ​​Thessaly.

That land is bleeding. And he is bound hand and foot.