War Palace and Knee Pillow, Austria’s Destiny

Franz looked at the news about the Silesian uprising in the newspaper in front of him and thought to himself, "Is there something wrong with this year?"

In fact, as Austria joined the German Customs Union, the political, economic and geostrategic pressure on Prussia suddenly increased. Unfortunately, this pressure was also passed on to the civilians.

At the same time, the immigration policy led by Franz and the spread of Greater Germany thought also accelerated the fermentation of this incident.

But no matter what, Franz thinks this is a good thing, because Prussia's civil strife means that its status within the German Confederation will also decline.

If the current trend develops, Austria will definitely be able to secure its position as chairman of the confederation and even have a chance of reunification.

Of course, Franz is not ready to challenge all of Europe for the time being, so this idea still only exists in his mind. But what he didn't expect was that Austria's top political leaders showed no interest in regaining Silesia.

The crux of the problem lies in religion, but Franz doesn't understand it. So far, under his guidance, at least 100,000 Protestants from the North German region have been recruited, and nothing inappropriate has been found for the time being, especially in the royal estate. Among them, the issue of religious differences seems to have been forgotten.

Although Austria's fiscal revenue has grown rapidly in recent years, it still lags far behind that of Britain and France. At this time, Britain was at its most powerful, and Austria's economic aggregate was about two-thirds that of France.

It’s just that Austria’s tax collection capacity is too poor, and too many people in the country pay less or even no taxes. For example, the tens of millions of florins that Franz has earned over the years have not been taxed at all.

Strictly speaking, the Austrian Empire was not a modern country. Although it always wanted to build itself into a universal empire regardless of nationality or religion, its essence has never changed.

A feudal dynasty suture monster with the royal family as its foundation and religion as its link. Its most striking feature is its extremely powerful local forces and ubiquitous churches.

These forces are mainly local economic, military and political groups, fighting internally with the central government. The consequence of constant internal strife is that every time the imperial government proposes reforms, they will create a lot of things. The moth comes to push three and block four.

One of the biggest cancers was the Kingdom of Hungary. At this time, the fiscal revenue of the Austrian Empire was 230 million florins. Hungary, which accounted for nearly 40% of the empire's land area, only handed over 22 million florins, less than 10% of the empire's fiscal revenue.

Franz purchased more than 10 million acres of "wasteland" in Hungary, but in fact this was still only a small part of his "wasteland".

Now that only one million acres of it has been developed, Franz has recovered the cost and even has extra money to strengthen the construction of the royal estate.

In addition to immigrants who joined the royal estates, there were many German immigrants who were directly integrated into Austrian society, especially South Germans, and it was difficult for Franz to distinguish them from the Austrians.

Hungary's arable land area is as high as 7.8 million hectares. Until the beginning of the 20th century, its developed arable land area was only 2.5 million hectares. At this time, the arable land area may be less than 2 million hectares.

(This refers to Hungary itself, not counting the land in other parts of the Kingdom of Hungary.)

Franz's behavior also aroused the hostility of some Magyars. They propagated that the Habsburg royal family was prepared to encroach on Hungary by purchasing and that they must find a way to save their motherland.

According to Franz's vision, there are about 3 million serfs and nearly 800,000 landless nobles in Hungary. As long as the Hungarians can enact a bill similar to the American Westward Expansion Movement, the entire Transletania will receive great benefits. develop.

In this way, tax problems and development problems can be greatly alleviated. Moreover, 10 million acres of land can already attract at least 200,000 immigrants. If other industries and related personnel are included, the total number should reach 500,000.

It's just that the Hungarian extremists chose a method that Franz least wanted to see, which was to try to drive away the German immigrants violently and called on the Hungarian nobles to stop selling land to the royal family.

"The Germans on the royal estate are nothing but serfs of the Habsburg family. They have no right to cultivate our sacred soil in Hungary!"

"They must be punished!"

"Take back what belongs to us Magyars!"

"Long live Hungary!"

Kossuth's speech can be said to be very successful. Many young middle- and lower-class Hungarian nobles were incited by him to join the so-called "Hun Legion".

At first, they only carried out some intimidation, kidnapping, and extortion activities. The deacons responsible for managing the manor asked the Hungarian government for help, but received no response.

The situation soon took a turn for the worse. On May 1, 1840, the Hungarian Holy Advent, the first German immigrant was murdered. By May 17, many evil incidents had occurred, and even a royal deacon was killed.

On May 20, the Hungarian royal estate and the wasteland reclamation regiment began to organize guards. After that, the two sides had many fierce exchanges of fire.

As the situation continued to escalate, some among the Hungarian nobles began to waver, such as Count Széchenyi and Prince Eltházy.

They did not think that the so-called free people and the descendants of the Huns could defeat the Austrian regular army, so they sent a large amount of intelligence to the Austrian side.

In fact, Franz suppressed this matter and did not report it to the Austrian Imperial Government because he was afraid that a civil war would break out in advance.

Although it is impossible for Austria to lose, it will ruin the current good situation, and Britain, France, Prussia, and Russia will intervene as appropriate, and even Serbia and Sardinia will intervene.

Some people think that civil war is a good thing, but in fact, unless you have the power to defy everything, war is always the last option.

Hungary is not an indigenous African, nor is it a small country that can be controlled by a treaty. It has nearly 40% of the Austrian Empire's land, 35% of its population, and a history of nearly 800 years.

Once the war drags on for a long time, economic development will inevitably stagnate. At that time, prices will skyrocket, social unrest, unrest and panic may trigger large-scale flight, or even the outbreak of another uprising. Even if a quick war is used to end the war as soon as possible, there is a high possibility that another security war will be needed later.

This is an extremely terrible drain on national power. If he wants to completely solve the problem once and for all, he must either invest a massive amount of manpower and material resources, or expand the scale of the battle. Obviously, neither of these results can be accepted by Franz.

Metternich, who learned the news, naturally wanted to avoid the outbreak of civil war, so he only imposed slight penalties on the families who participated in the attack on the royal estate, and was prepared to ask the Hungarian side to hand over the participating horse bandits and compensate the royal family for their losses. until.

Before Count Korolaf could object, the military jumped out first. Count Latour said that all suspected families should be arrested, punished if guilty, and released if not guilty.

Count Latour also pointed out that Hungary is dominated by plain terrain and the entire territory is undefendable. There are only two important fortresses, Przemyśl and Budapest.

Among them, General Namet Hans, who is stationed at the Przemysl Fortress, is an elite man. Once the war starts, even if he does not help Austria, he will not join the rebels.

The Austrian military is confident of capturing the remaining Budapest within two months.

At the same time, there is also a heavy Austrian troop group in Belgrade. It will take a month to mobilize for war. Tural is confident that he can capture all of Hungary within two months.

Count Korolav said that it had not yet reached the point of using force, but Metternich's punishment was too light and they had to see blood. They should use the threat of liberating the serfs and let the Hungarians solve the problem on their own. .

If Hungary accepts the emancipation of serfs, it will also be good news for Austria. Not only will it fulfill its long-cherished wish since Joseph II, but the division of land will also greatly weaken the power of the Hungarian nobility.

If they are unwilling to liberate the serfs, they must show sincerity to satisfy the empire, otherwise

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