I Am the Crown Prince in France

Chapter 339: Novice in Public Opinion Warfare

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The marriage between Mysore and France came too suddenly, surprising everyone involved.

This also includes Marquis Lafayette.

Coming out of the Ambawila Palace, he looked at Salah, his tone full of confusion and surprise: "You actually want to promote a marriage with the natives?!"

Salah also smiled politely: "This is the bargaining chip left by His Royal Highness the Crown Prince for us, and of course we have to throw it out when necessary. You yourself said that the rainy season is coming.

"Besides, this is just the marriage between Haji Bey, oh, no, Duke Haji and the Kingdom of Mysore, and it has no impact on the royal family.

"According to the secret agreement between the two parties just now, the marriage will not be made public before the British withdraw from the Indian peninsula. Only a secret wedding will be held and the dowry will be delivered. This will not affect Anglo-French diplomacy in the short term.

"Oh, and the 600,000 pounds betrothal gift! This money is enough for you to bring two regiments from France to participate in the war here."

Yes, Salah used his eloquence to persuade Tipu Sultan to add another 100,000 pounds of betrothal gifts during the discussion of the marriage just now.

"It's up to you..." Lafayette had no interest in these political operations, and still looked anxious, "But Tipu has not responded to what I said about attacking the British. Your marriage plan doesn't seem to have any effect."

"This is just part of the plan." Salah followed him into the carriage, closed the door, and continued, "It makes our relationship with Mysore closer, and at the same time we have gained an important ally-General Sheikh Khan.

"By the way, Marquis, I need to apply for 100,000 livres of funding from you."

As the main person in charge of the Indian strategy, Lafayette is in full charge of the troops and finances. This time, Joseph allocated 700,000 livres of funding to him.

"What do you need so much money for?" Lafayette looked at his Tunisian colleague in surprise. If the latter was not a disciple of Elder Alayi, with a prominent status and a huge family power, he would have suspected that Salah wanted to run away with the money.

"To deal with those Mysore officials who speak for the British," Salah said, "such as Jahanzeb.

"Although it is cheaper to hire people in Mysore, you know, there are no newspapers here, oh, even if there are, it's useless. Most people here are illiterate, so if you want to carry out some propaganda, the cost will be very high-I can only hire a lot of people and use their mouths to spread the news."

"Propaganda? What do you want to promote?"

"Well, in the words of His Royal Highness the Crown Prince, this is called a war of public opinion." Salah still smiled, "to put the pro-British guys in trouble. Then General Sheikh Khan will deal a fatal blow to them! "

Lafayette had no other way to persuade Tipu Sultan at the moment. After thinking for a moment, he could only nod: "Okay, I hope you can succeed. But you need to write a report every day and give it to me on the flow of funds."

"You will see the daily financial report, Marquis."

Soon, with Mysore as the center, some stories about the British began to spread to cities such as Seringabadan and Gonggu.

With the connections and resources of General Sheikh Khan, the news spread very quickly.

In fact, Salah only spent one-third of the applied funds. In order to overthrow Jahanzeb's forces more quickly, Sheikh Khan, as an ally, paid 5,000 pounds from his own pocket, equivalent to more than 100,000 livres, and mobilized many nobles of the same political faction to help.

On the streets of Seringabadan, a dozen Hindu citizens were gathering together, talking about something excitedly, "My relatives in the Ambawila Palace heard those generals say that more than 3 million people died at that time! But most of them are from Madurai, so we can't feel it here. "

"The British killed so many people!"

"Don't you know this? This is to scare us." A small man with fair skin and wearing a red short robe continued mysteriously, "Have you heard about it? In order to control North America, a very remote land, the British killed all the Indians they could see, that is, the people who originally lived there! There were tens of millions of them!"

"Yes, I heard about this." A middle-aged man nodded, "My business partner has been to North America, and he told me about what happened there. The British would trick the Indian leaders into a room, saying that they wanted to discuss something, and then set fire to them all. Oh, they would also give blankets used by plague patients to the Indians, causing a village to be infected with the plague and die. "

"I heard that the British are preparing to attack Mysore. What happened to the Indians, they will do to us..."

A man stroked his chest with lingering fear and said: "Fortunately, there is Tipu's army, otherwise more than 3 million people would have died in the two wars with the British. Maybe even we will..."

Another old man added nervously: "I also heard that the British like to eat children, especially high-caste children, who are clean and meaty. They only eat limbs and hearts, and throw the rest to feed dogs..."

The people around were immediately horrified. Although they were not high-caste, their children were white and plump. If the British attacked this time, the children would probably die tragically on the dining table.

What they were talking about was, of course, the "script" written by Salah and the accompanying writers.

It was just that Joseph didn't know much about the specific situation in Mysore before, so he only roughly talked about the ideas of the public opinion war, and left the rest to the executors of the "Indian Project" to act according to circumstances. As a novice, Salah finally made up such a thrilling thing.

However, he understood the principle of "eight parts true and two parts false" mentioned by His Royal Highness the Crown Prince.

The psychological shadow left by the two previous Mysore wars on the locals was used as a starting point. Most of the content was what the British really did, but the numbers were slightly exaggerated. For example, the war between Mysore and Britain killed less than 130,000 people in total. There were far fewer than tens of millions of Indians who were massacred.

Of course, eating children was something he attributed to the British based on the horror stories he heard when he was young, which fell into the category of "two parts false".

Since the Indians have extremely limited sources of information, it is difficult for anyone to verify the truth or falsehood of this. Salah, who sent out a large number of water troops, quickly gained the right to speak during this period.

At the same time, in Madurai in the south, people were talking about the same topic and joined the British in selling slaves in large quantities.

Because it was close to the sea, everyone began to worry that they would be sold to America to work day and night as coolies like the Africans.

In more places, the news that the British would ban Hinduism and Islam in Mysore, force everyone to convert to Protestantism, and those who disobeyed would be shot, caused a greater panic.

For a time, the memories of the first two Mysore wars, coupled with the news about the British, filled the hearts of every Mysorean with hatred and fear of the British.

All it took was a spark to ignite the gunpowder barrel.