The Ruhr, Prussia
Spring 1854
The ground itself shook now.
Not from earthquakes.
Not from artillery.
From industry.
Deep beneath the Ruhr Valley, thousands of miners worked through narrow tunnels lit by oil lamps while steam-powered extraction systems thundered overhead. Coal wagons rolled endlessly through underground rail tracks before emerging into a landscape transformed almost beyond recognition over the past decade.
Smoke covered the horizon.
Factories stretched beside rivers.
Steel mills glowed through the night.
Rail lines crossed the valley like black scars cutting through industrial towns that continued expanding every month.
The Ruhr no longer looked like merely a region inside Prussia.
It looked like the engine of a future empire.
And Europe had begun noticing.
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