Rome.
At noon, the sun blazed overhead. Everyone at the construction site, soldiers and civilians alike, was drenched in sweat. It soaked their skin and stained their clothes with dirt, but their enthusiasm never waned.
Whether Austrian soldiers or Roman citizens, they all understood how important it was to rebuild Rome.
For the citizens of Rome, it was their home. For the Austrian soldiers, it meant double pay.
Although Franz had always placed great importance on educating the army, he felt that, here and now, it was better not to put his faith in spiritual bombs.
After all, the men he had brought with him were all veterans. And because of his policy of appointing people based on merit, the soldiers and officers in this unit came from all sorts of backgrounds.
They had been through a great deal and seen too much of the world. They had also been deeply influenced by the military culture of the day. In short, they were no innocents.
For men who wouldn't lift a finger without seeing the money first, Franz felt that straightforward material incentives worked better.
Some of the young, strong men even worked with their shirts off, drawing admiring looks from the women who had come to help.
Work-relief programs applied to women too. Though it was difficult for them to take part in the heavy labor involved in reconstruction, women had their own areas of expertise, such as washing clothes, cooking, sewing and mending, and caring for the wounded.
Since Franz often organized work-relief programs, he had a group of people under his command who used a whole system of theories to assess each worker's contribution to a project.
The system had deliberately made no distinction between men and women, so as long as they did enough work, women