The War Court and Lap Pillow, Austria's Mandate of Heaven

Chapter 1575 Mobile Department Store
Franz's intention was to lower prices to expand the domestic consumer base within the Austrian Empire, but this was also for the sake of export profits. Austrian citizens were required to purchase from royal companies or the church using their Austrian citizenship documents.

For example, citizens of the Austrian Empire had the right to purchase shoes at half price twice a year. Of course, this only applied to work shoes and everyday footwear; special high-end shoes and boots were excluded.

Other items such as clothing and bread can be sold in the same way. Of course, the shelf life of bread is not very long, and those breads nearing their expiration date will be sold at night.

This is mainly to avoid affecting bakeries that are operating normally, and also to reduce the probability of others taking advantage of loopholes. After all, normal rich people would never queue up with a group of poor people to grab food that is about to expire.

In reality, unless someone is truly poor, no one would be willing to spend a lot of time and energy scrambling for limited-edition, near-expiry food.

Therefore, to judge the living conditions of the Austrian Empire's citizens, one only needed to look at the sales volume of these goods. If discounted, near-expiry food items didn't sell well on any given day, it proved that they were truly well-fed.

However, those responsible for selling these special goods must be wealthy young men who have no worries about food and clothing, or reserve officials; at the very least, they cannot be impoverished individuals.

Franz planned to promote it as part of a package deal with department stores, since after years of development, many regions of the Austrian Empire had the potential to establish department stores.

However, the specific scale depends on the size and development level of the city; it is impossible for every city's department stores to reach the level of Vienna, Venice, and Prague.

Promoting department stores in towns is no problem, but in the countryside, one can only rely on churches. Of course, Franz could also have the reserve officials who were teaching in the countryside do the work, opening semi-permanent shops in some rural markets.

In addition, the royal family and the church will join forces to launch mobile department stores. These people will imitate the form of ancient caravans and go to some remote areas to carry out trade and missionary activities to spread the gospel of God and the emperor's benevolence.

Once the mobile department store was launched, it immediately became the second most desirable job for Gypsies. Their first choice was to be a tour guide, but most Gypsies ended up as temporary workers or farmers in the city.

Indeed, in the Austrian Empire, the main occupation of the Roma people was farming. After the Hungarian rebellion was quelled, large tracts of unclaimed land appeared, and Franz simply put the Roma people to work in the fields.

Although this move was met with much opposition at the time, after all, many countries in history had tried to stop the Roma (Gypsies) from migrating.

As early as the Reconquista, the Spanish attempted to settle a group of Roma who had converted to Catholicism, and even allocated them land.

As a result, a considerable number of Roma chose to continue their wanderings, and some even sold their land to Arabs, causing heavy losses to the Kingdom of Aragon.

Empress Theresa May and Joseph II once attempted to civilize the Roma, and they conducted long-term education programs for them. However, with the death of Joseph II, it has been proven that the Roma learned nothing except German during those years.

Catherine the Great of the same period also made a similar attempt, but her method was very Russian: she captured Roma people and brought them to farms, then branded them to serve as serfs.

As a result, when Napoleon invaded Russia, these Roma people fled their farms to serve as guides for the French army.
The Austrian Empire was one of the very few countries that allowed Roma to serve in the military, which in the past was just a common practice of conscription.

The so-called permission to join the military is more like an excuse to convince oneself. However, such an excuse is very necessary for a major power.

But the Roma have suffered far greater injustices, so losing a family member seems insignificant.

However, the military system of the Austrian Empire underwent significant changes after Franz's reforms. Those who joined the army not only received a salary, but also a substantial pension if they were killed in action.

If they run around all day, they won't get the money. People are loss-averse, so the Gypsies won't give up the money easily.

Therefore, they had no choice but to settle down, and the benefits of settling down were obvious: their lives became more stable and prosperous, and since most of the people living near the Roma settlements were also from other ethnic groups, they felt less inferior. No one truly enjoys a life of constant wandering, and the Roma are no exception.

Of course, in addition to the reasons mentioned above, the Roma people who were resettled there saw war-torn land and countless simple graves on their way there.

From time to time, priests come to perform the final Mass for the bodies that are discovered by chance, which makes it seem like a very humane country.

But thinking about it carefully, who caused all of this? Whose land were they cultivating? And where did those people go?

Unless they're stupid, they won't try to challenge the country's bottom line.

Compared to the troublesome western region and industrial capacity issues, the situation in the central and eastern regions is much better.

With the end of the war, a large number of immigrants moved to Hungary and Transylvania, resulting in more than 800 million acres of new arable land being added each year.

At this rate, the Austrian Empire would be able to break free from its dependence on cheap Russian grain in just two more years. However, even at this pace, it would still take the Austrian Empire fifteen years to fully develop its domestic arable land.

It must be said that the Hungarians have been extremely wasteful of resources; in the past few centuries, they have only developed 25% of the land on the Hungarian Plain.

If it were that the land on the Hungarian Plain was barren or difficult to develop, that would be one thing. Hungary boasts some of the world's most fertile black soil, with an average humus content 2-4 times that of Ukraine and Northeast China. It also has a well-developed water network, a suitable climate, and moderate rainfall.

Flat land can be cultivated directly with just simple clearing.

This was a complete shock to Austrians living in a mountainous region. Land that Hungarian serfs would despise was top-notch farmland in Austria.

The land in Transylvania is far inferior to that in Hungary, but it would be first-class arable land in any other part of the world, at least much better than mountainous Austria.

Ultimately, it was the inhumane actions of the Hungarian high command; they preferred land to lie fallow rather than rent it to the poor. According to Austrian Empire records, almost every Hungarian noble family owned tens of thousands, even hundreds of thousands, of acres of hunting grounds.

The Elthazi family alone owns a vast hunting ground of over one million acres, where they keep various wild animals for the entertainment of their family members.

Are these guys really just a bunch of hedonistic idiots? Putting aside the facts, from a hindsight perspective, they are definitely the dumbest of the dumb.

In fact, if you look at it in the context of the times and the political structure, you'll find that these guys were very shrewd.

They understand the fundamental principles for maintaining their power.

It was serfdom.

Therefore, it was necessary to maintain the scarcity of land in order to strengthen personal control over serfs. Only when serfs had to rely on lords to allocate limited land resources could the rule of the Hungarian nobility be stable.

After all, if everyone has food to eat and land to cultivate, people will not have so much awe for the power they hold.