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

Chapter 1611 The Troublemaker's Persistence
Although they did not agree with Nicholas I's actions, they shared the same goal as him: to reclaim Constantinople.

According to these people, neither continuing to deploy troops in the Balkans nor easing relations with the various ethnic groups in the Balkans through appeasement is in Russia's interest at this time.

Similarly, joining forces with the Austrian Empire to attack the Ottoman Empire was not a good option. However, among these less-than-ideal choices at this time, taking a desperate gamble to capture Constantinople was the most correct path for Russia.

At that time, Russia was seen by them as a mountain of rubbish code in later generations. Randomly changing it would not only fail to save Russia, but would also plunge Russia into an abyss of no return.

In contrast, capturing Constantinople presented an opportunity—a chance to boost Russian morale and defuse domestic conflicts.

Or perhaps they, like Nicholas I, believed that capturing Constantinople would solve all of Russia's problems.

As for the plans of Nicholas I and the War Department at this time, they were completely useless. In their view, the most important thing at this time was to force the Austrians to participate in the war. First of all, Russia could not fight two against one, and it was even less likely to allow the Austrians to develop in its rear.

The remaining task was to divide and dismantle the Ottomans' potential allies, primarily the British and French, since they believed that countries other than Britain and France posed no threat to Russia and were therefore unimportant.

These people have their own ideas, but they lack real power. Moreover, they only have ideas at this point and do not know how to do them. At least, they have not formed a unified opinion internally.

But their enemies were not like that.
The British have always had a clear objective; even they themselves didn't believe that Britain and Russia could coexist peacefully. However, Britain was in a precarious situation at the time, and the astute British would certainly not choose to go to war with Russia then.

Moreover, besides Russia, the Austrian Empire was also a major concern for them at this time.

Although Britain and Austria each had their own territory and there were not many direct conflicts, the British envisioned that no powerful nation could emerge on the European continent that could escape their control.

Ideally, it should be like France at this time, serving at most as a counterweight to balance various forces, rather than as a separate power.

The Austrian Empire was also one of the targets that Britain was bound to dismantle, especially since its actions in the Europa Monetary Union were seen as a challenge to British economic hegemony.

This is a problem that Britain cannot ignore, but it is still the same original problem: the Austrian Empire has little interaction with Britain and is an independent system, so the methods commonly used by the British are not very effective against the Austrian Empire.

To date, the largest export commodity from Britain to the Austrian Empire has been coal, especially high-quality anthracite. While the Austrian Empire possessed a wide variety of mineral resources, its reserves were not particularly abundant, and high-quality anthracite had to be imported.

Initially, the disadvantages of the Austrian Empire were not obvious. However, with the continuous advancement of industrial technology, the demand for high-quality coal increased, and the Austrian Empire's naval power was inseparable from high-quality coal.

Therefore, the Austrian Empire had always been a major importer of British coal, but at this time, this could not be used as a direct means of sanction by the British.

The reason is simple: the Ruhr region of Prussia has an abundance of high-quality coal.

Britain was able to export coal to the Austrian Empire solely through a low-price strategy. If the British were to use this as leverage to impose a coal embargo on the Austrian Empire, the Prussians would quickly seize the British market in Austria.

Even with Britain and Prussia imposing an embargo on the Austrian Empire, the Duchy of Orléans remained a variable. Alsace-Lorraine also possessed abundant coal resources, and Louis Philippe would certainly not refuse to replace the ecological niche of the Prussians and the British. In terms of threat, the Austrian Empire posed less of a direct threat to Britain than Russia.

Based on British experience and their own circumstances, they felt it was more worthwhile to deal with the Russians by supporting a third party; a direct confrontation, whether a military conflict or a trade dispute, would not bring the British much advantage.

Furthermore, since the ceasefire agreement has not yet expired, going too far would be counterproductive.

So at this time, the British were mainly helping to send money, supplies, and weapons to the rebels in the Balkans, and even helping to treat the wounded and train soldiers.

The reason the British were so kind to the Balkan people was mainly because the Balkans were very draining, forcing the Russians to focus their main efforts on this barren land.

Britain also provided substantial financial support to the Ottoman Empire, with the British government hoping that the Ottoman Empire could build an iron wall against the Holy League.

In fact, the Ottoman Empire did have an Iron Wall plan at this time, and they planned to use the mountains of eastern Rumelia and a large number of fortresses and bunkers to form a super defensive line.

This defensive line would greatly enhance the Ottoman Empire's ability to defend itself, but at the cost of essentially losing its ability to march north and reclaim its lost territories.

In addition, the British also sent a large number of instructors to help the Ottoman Empire train its new army. The new army that the Ottomans had previously developed had not been of much use, so the Ottoman government decided to adopt the British model entirely.

The two sides quickly reached an agreement, with the British promising to help the Ottomans train 300,000 new troops, and the Ottoman Empire's new army would be under the command of British advisors during the war.

Everyone knew this was a humiliating and unequal agreement, but Queen Shevkefza had no choice, as the Ottoman Empire was facing a serious internal division.

In particular, the new army established during Tanzimat's reforms believed themselves to be the representatives of the Ottoman Empire and lacked identification with Ottoman traditions.

As Ottoman rulers, they were all too familiar with scenarios like Janissary rebellions, so they were bound to cultivate an army completely loyal to the royal family.

There was a serious division among the Ottoman leadership between those who advocated leaving the EU and those who advocated remaining. Many Ottoman officials were unwilling to continue confronting the Russians on the front lines, believing that if they voluntarily relinquished their European territories, the Russians might let them off the hook.

However, Queen Mother Shevkevza was not so naive. She was certain that the Russians would never let the Ottoman Empire go and would continue to invade southward until the Ottoman Empire completely disappeared from the world.

Sheffield Queen Mother did not want to be a traitor, but in many cases, she had no choice but to do so in order to preserve the Ottoman Empire and her family's rule.

In addition to the army, Britain was also prepared to help the Ottoman Empire restore its naval strength, since a weak navy had always been Russia's Achilles' heel.

The British didn't believe the Ottoman Empire could defeat Russia, but they could certainly wear down the Russians. Since they were going to put on a show, they wanted to go all out; diverting Russian resources to naval development would further waste Russian funds and weaken their overall strength.