Chapter 1597: The Road to Heaven

October 12, 1700, two in the morning. One second. Co】, wonderful novel, no pop-ups, free to read!

An enticing aroma began to drift across the positions of the Ottoman Empire's foodie legions — this might well be their last meal before meeting Allah, so of course they had to eat something good. Just past one in the morning, scattered points of firelight appeared behind the Ottoman army's positions. Before long, the delicious smell was carried by the breeze into the open ground between the battle lines of the two opposing armies.

The Austrian jaegers patrolling and keeping watch in the middle ground under cover of darkness caught the scent and knew at once that the Janissary corps was about to attack.

As for the Janissaries' main direction of attack, that was not hard to judge either — wherever the cooking fires were most numerous and the aroma strongest, that was surely where the foodies were massed, and the main attack would come from there.

At half past two in the morning, the cooking fires on the Janissary positions gradually died out, the smell of food completely dispersed, and the scent of death began to spread over the battlefield.

As the Janissary warriors finished their hearty breakfast and began their prayers facing Mecca, the Catholics opposite also began eating their breakfast. It was of course not as lavish as the Janissaries', but it still came with pork sausages, and each man was given three portions of bread, butter, and pickled cucumbers — that was their food for the entire day!

At the same time they received their rations, part of the Austrian army began moving out from their encampments and entering the forward defensive positions.

The positions they had to defend formed a very simple defensive system made up of trenches, breastworks, Spanish riders, and artillery fortifications. Viewed from the front of the line, the Austrian positions appeared to be a single straight defensive line — break through at one point, and the whole line would collapse.

But in reality, behind the seemingly straight breastwork there were eight roughly circular defensive systems, likewise composed of trenches, breastworks, Spanish riders, and artillery fortifications. The main strength of the eight infantry regiments and six artillery batteries stationed on the first line was placed inside these eight circular works. Before formal battle began, only a small screening force stood behind the first-line breastwork.

Behind these eight circular works there was also an east-west dirt road linking the eight circular works together.

The forward first-line positions, the circular works, and the dirt road together formed one complete defensive system.

And on the Lakeside–Danube defense line there was not just one such defensive system, but two, one behind the other.

In addition, the Austrians had used several farmsteads and a stretch of woodland between the Lakeside and the Danube to skillfully construct eight strongpoints to support the two main defense lines.

At three in the morning, large numbers of Austrian troops began leaving the circular works where they were quartered and entering the forward defensive positions. It was now late autumn, and in Austria the days were short and the nights long. Around three in the morning the sky was still pitch black, with only the moon hanging at the edge of the sky casting down a little light.

The Austrian infantry advanced by companies, with only each company commander and the first platoon's platoon leader carrying torches, one at the front and one at the rear of the column. Although the great majority of the Austrian officers and men taking part in today's battle were raw recruits, everyone's morale was high — they all knew they were defending the fatherland, defending their homes, defending God!

They knew even more that they were fighting for the liberation and freedom of their Austrian fatherland!

Knowing so much was of course the fruit of ten or twenty years of earnestly running compulsory education...... In fact, running compulsory education did not require very great economic strength, and of course it did not begin with Austria under Henry I's rule. As early as 1524, that Martin Luther who stirred up the Reformation proposed that municipal authorities should establish schools for the young, teach small children, and compel parents to send their children to school. Under his influence, in 1619 the Duchy of Weimar was the first to issue regulations requiring children to study doctrine, reading, and writing; because it clearly carried an "obligatory" and "compulsory" character, it is regarded as the beginning of compulsory education.

Close behind was Duke Ernest of Gotha, who in 1642, in the regulations he issued, likewise began promoting compulsory education, and the measures were quite severe — children who skipped school meant fines for their parents! Under his strict supervision, the educational level of the Duchy of Gotha was greatly improved!

Austria under Henry I's rule was the third in Europe and the sixth in the world to implement compulsory education — before Austria, the United States in the New World, the Qing Kingdom, and the Western Chu Kingdom in Central Asia had successively promulgated compulsory education laws.

Look at these countries that have implemented compulsory education laws: apart from the United States, which is rich, none of the others is particularly wealthy. When Henry I promulgated his law, Vienna's banking industry had only just begun to develop. And in the era when the Qing Kingdom implemented compulsory education, it was still a poor, hard-up samurai state. As for the Western Chu Republic, it is not wealthy even now, while that especially rich United States was the last of this group of countries to begin implementing a compulsory education system.

The reason for this situation shows that compulsory education has little to do with whether a country has money, but a great deal to do with a country's capacity for governance and execution.

That is why the countries currently implementing compulsory education are all countries with relatively small populations. Moreover, in the United States, the Qing Kingdom, and the Western Chu Kingdom, compulsory education applies only to the national race.

The Great Ming, with a population of more than two hundred million, though its annual revenue reached one hundred sixty or seventy million taels, because of its huge population, vast territory, and enormous differences from one region to another, simply cannot implement compulsory education with one uniform stroke. It can only advance gradually, prefecture by prefecture and department by department; at present fewer than one-tenth of departments and prefectures have begun compulsory education, and the results of implementation fall far short of those little German duchies that one can cross back and forth in a day — the Duke of Gotha set up twenty primary schools and got compulsory education going, and the duke himself could go and supervise it, while the Great Ming would need at least several hundred thousand primary schools......

At this very moment, on the Janissary corps' assault positions, another group of equally educated warriors was also fully equipped and ready to move. These men were not merely foodies — they were cultured foodies! Orhan, who founded the Janissary corps, clearly understood the importance of education; he not only had his Janissary apprentice soldiers learn the skills of killing, but also had them study culture and knowledge, and that was how he forged the elite corps that terrified European Christians for more than three hundred years.

However, with the steady relaxation of recruitment standards and the rise of hereditary military status, the fighting power of this high-quality elite force had greatly declined — the system of recruiting child soldiers from Christian families for rigorous training had, from the time of Murad III, changed to "everyone may enlist," and by 1700 the Janissary corps had become a civic militia of Istanbul. Most of its members came from Istanbul's citizen families, and these citizens...... were in large part the descendants of officers and men who had retired from the Janissary corps in earlier years.

In fact, the families of Janissary corps soldiers already made up the majority of Istanbul's population!

And the Janissary corps had long possessed the great power to depose and enthrone sultans; they were the true masters of Istanbul and the Ottoman Empire.

So they too knew whom they were fighting for today!

In a small stretch of woodland south of the Lakeside, Mustafa Köprülü's forward command post had been set up. All through the latter half of the night, he and several trusted officers had kept watch here, quietly awaiting the arrival of the hour to begin the battle.

Today's battle concerned the rise or fall of the Ottoman Empire, and likewise the survival or ruin of the Köprülü family!

Rapid footsteps came, and then Mustafa Kara's voice: "Grand Vizier, the time has come! The time to begin the attack has come!"

"Then begin!" Mustafa Köprülü nodded heavily. "Let the artillery open fire. We must show the Austrians what our Janissary corps is made of!"