War Palace and Knee Pillow, Austria’s Destiny

On April 25, 1843, the yacht "Victoria and Albert" was launched, but this ship full of love suffered the most profound malice.

Many people and forces, for their own reasons, did not want Victoria to visit France, and even wanted her to die.

Britain and France were troubled by the labor movement at this time. In fact, they were not the only two countries. Most countries in Europe were in this kind of contradiction.

Of course, the exceptions are Austria and Russia. The former is enjoying the dividends brought by technological progress, while the latter does not have its own industry at all.

Austria's factories were also divided into royal and private ones.

The royal family's factories were highly technological, had high wages, few working hours, and were relatively respectable. However, the requirements were also extremely strict, with so many rules and regulations that it was mind-numbing, and many obligations and responsibilities were also clarified.

In fact, the production efficiency is much higher than that of private factories, but Franz did not kill all private factories at once.

Because some things are very realistic and absolute equality is impossible.

There is no essential difference between Austria's private factories and other private factories in the world at this time. They are the same inhumane and dark, but the wages are slightly higher than those in other German states.

This is of course not the conscience of factory owners, but the fact that Austria has state industrial subsidies. It’s just that this subsidy was not distributed to the factory, but to the workers.

Franz actually has his own purpose. State-controlled unions are more conducive to maintaining social stability.

After all, Franz has been destined to have certain villain attributes since he was born, and this will not change just because of what he wants to do or what he does.

But Franz can decide what he thinks and what he does.

Thanks to state subsidies and the presence of royal factories, workers in the Austrian Empire had a fairly decent life, and there were even many workers from other countries who came to work here.

This is mainly due to traditional thinking. Austria is a traditional agricultural country, and farmers like to guard their own land.

Small and medium-sized citizens in cities prefer "decent jobs", such as clerks, small civil servants, and small shopkeepers.

The Austrian Empire has been relatively stable over the years, so not many people want to work in factories. Even in history, Austria's national factories had to temporarily suspend production because they could not recruit workers.

The Austrian National Factory was founded during the reign of Queen Theresa with the purpose of increasing fiscal revenue, solving financial difficulties, and at the same time gaining support from the citizen class.

However, after a hundred years of development, the national factory has been completely corrupted and completely deviated from the original intention of its establishment. Due to layer upon layer of corruption among officials, factories not only fail to increase government revenue, but also require state funding for subsidies.

On the one hand, the management structure is bloated and overstaffed, but on the other hand, there are almost no workers in the factory. It is common for more than a hundred officials to work in a factory with more than a dozen people, but no one dares to do anything because this piece of cake involves the interests of many parties.

Cutting off someone's financial path is like killing one's parents. The most dangerous thing is to tamper with the cakes of vested interests, which often requires huge costs, even lives.

This is one of the reasons why the vast majority of reformers in history did not end well.

Back to the main story, in short, Austrians are not interested in working in factories, but it is a very good place for German immigrants.

At this time, the idea of ​​Greater Germany that was just emerging was very popular among German immigrants. The most critical and core part of it was to rely on Austria to unify the German Confederation.

Disturbing the order of the Austrian Empire and affecting its development was extended to a crime.

Of course, this was deliberately guided by Franz. After all, he did not want to deal with both domestic nationalism and foreign nationalism.

As for Russia, after establishing trade relations with Austria, the situation of the nobles opened up. They felt that the development of industry was completely nonsense.

Because at this time Russia had almost no industrial base, and the industrial gap with Austria was exaggerated. The development of industry now not only requires a large investment of manpower and material resources, but also requires enough time to keep up with Austria's pace.

In fact, it was because the Russians saw the industrial level of Austria that they misjudged the industrial level of the entire world.

At the same time, the industry of the Austrian Empire was strong and could fully meet Russia's needs. The alliance between the two parties is relatively stable, and Austria has a large demand for raw materials from Russia.

This makes the Russians think that they do not need industries other than military for the time being. After all, it is easy to monopolize the import market, but it is not so easy to unify the domestic market.

Therefore, as long as Franz sent someone to understand some important figures in Russia, they would take the initiative to contact the Austrian side and act as compradors.

Moreover, investing the money earned in agriculture will yield results faster than investing in industry. In addition, these compradors are originally big landowners. As long as Russia has no industry, they can cut it twice.

At the same time, you can also stabilize your own strength, so why not?

In Russia, not only the nobles are satisfied, but the government is also satisfied, because with the increase in imports and exports, it is easier for the country to collect taxes.

The Russian Finance Minister couldn't open his mouth from ear to ear every time he saw the financial statements. The figures were so beautiful.

Nicholas I was a monarch who worshiped the military very much, and he also had a group of generals managing the country. They only care about whether this country is strong and peaceful, but not about Russia's future.

Now Russia's treasury is slowly becoming fuller, and its army is becoming more powerful, which makes His Majesty the Tsar very satisfied.

At this time, Nicholas I was most worried about the Straits issue, because Britain had never given up asking Russia to hand over its privileges in the Bosporus and Dardanelles.

Once the Ottoman Empire was bewitched by Britain and cut off the straits, trade between Russia and Austria would be interrupted, and Russia would suffer huge losses.

There are two ways to solve this problem. One is to build a direct railway to Austria on the European continent. This will not only waste people and money, but also cause hidden dangers to homeland security. The most important thing is that Austria may not agree.

Another way is to completely surrender the Ottomans and let Russia control the Black Sea Straits.

In fact, Nicholas I has been thinking this way for a long time, and the great nobles in the country are also very supportive of this matter.

This is not because those nobles suddenly remembered the thousand-year dream of the Third Roman Empire, but that there is a large area of ​​land around the Black Sea suitable for growing cotton and tea.

Both cotton and tea were very popular commodities in Europe at this time, and could almost be regarded as hard currency.

Yes, Russia was still a major tea-producing country in Europe at this time and had a long history. It has been cultivated since the 17th century, but has not been accepted by mainstream Europe due to its poor quality.

It was not until 1817 that modern Russian "dark tea" emerged, after first purchasing high-quality seeds from the Qing Dynasty and then planting them near the Black Sea at lower latitudes.

Ever since, the Russians began to think intensively about the Ottoman Black Sea region.