African Entrepreneurship Records

Chapter 1414 The Austro-Hungarian Empire Crisis

In Schonbrunn Palace, the old emperor Franz could not sit still after hearing the unity of the three countries of Italy. He hurriedly called Crown Prince Rudolf over.

Since World War I, Franz has basically entered a retirement state. Although he is known as an emperor, the state government affairs are basically handed over to Rudolph. He spends his days in Schonbrunn Palace on weekdays and commemorates all the past.

People like Franz, who are like ascetics, will not mess around even if they retire, which is one of Franz’s biggest advantages.

Soon, Rudolph was summoned by Franz.

After seeing the Crown Prince Rudolf, Emperor Franz immediately held accountable and said, "Rudolph, what did you do? You actually watched Italy reunification?"

Franz said sternly, and his right hand bulges and knocked the golden stick in his hand on the ground. The marble ground was stirred up, and the beard at the corner of his mouth trembled due to the touch of his muscles.

No wonder Franz was so angry. No one knew better than him that the threat of Italian unification to the empire. After all, Italy almost unified, causing huge trouble to the Austro-Hungarian Empire.

Faced with his angry father, Rudolph also felt wronged. He said, "Father, don't be angry first. In fact, we have our own difficulties."

Franz said with a slight ups and downs on his chest: "Difficult? Now the unification of Italy is the biggest difficulty of the empire. In order to dismantle Italy, we put in a lot of effort and energy, and even won over Hungary at a great cost, so that we finally retracted the Kingdom of Italy back to the northwest corner of the Apennine Peninsula through war."

"The unified Italy was able to be aggressive against the empire in military terms and block our Adriatic sea route. Now, as long as Benito reintegrates the Three Kingdoms navy, it may not be impossible to create a powerful naval fleet like Italy in the past to suppress the development of the empire in the Adriatic Sea."

The Italian navy was indeed much stronger than the Austro-Hungarian Navy at that time. Although Italy's national strength was much worse than the Austro-Hungarian Empire, Italy was indeed a country that was naturally suitable for the development of the ocean.

The Apennine Peninsula is like a boot, penetrates deep into the Mediterranean and divides the entire Mediterranean into two halves. It can be said that it has a very prominent strategic position.

Moreover, Italy's coastline is winding, nearly 7,000 kilometers, almost equivalent to India. Therefore, since ancient times, Italy has been a powerful shipping power in the Mediterranean.

Therefore, it is not difficult for Benito to integrate the shipbuilding industry of the three countries and build a powerful Mediterranean navy.

After all, Italy has a strong foundation in the shipbuilding industry, and based on this, building warships is not difficult for Italy.

Compared with the Austro-Hungarian Empire, Italy only lacks the technology and experience in building large warships. After all, since its disintegration, the three Italian countries have been unable to develop a strong navy with the power of one country.

However, this is not a big problem. After all, Italy's shipbuilding industry is still there, and technicians are still there, especially the Kingdom of Italy in order to colonize the Red Sea coast and control Sardinia and Sicily, so the construction of the navy has never been interrupted. However, the naval construction plan is more pragmatic and tends to be defensive.

Moreover, Italy lacks large-scale warship construction technology, which can be achieved by imitating or introducing ready-made technologies abroad.

The navies of many countries started like this, such as the East African Navy, the German Navy, and the US Navy, so it is no problem for Italy to have a strong shipbuilding industry.

In fact, in recent years, some shipyards in Italy have also received manufacturing orders for some large ships, thanks to Italy's cheap labor resources.

Italy has a very dense population. Without the unification of the Kingdom of Italy, it would have a population of nearly 20 million, which is almost half of the French population. Moreover, the Italian region has been a low point in the European economy over the years, and the wage level is not high.

Therefore, even France is trying to build Italian population, and some French companies are keen on investing in and building factories in the Italian region, especially low-end industries with high labor demand, including textile and shipbuilding.

In recent years, in addition to investing in Italy in the industry, France has been keen on issuing its nationality to Italian immigrants to alleviate the serious labor shortage caused by World War I.

From this point of view, Italy should be the first country in Europe to enjoy the demographic dividend this century, and this demographic dividend is based on the decline of France. France lacks people, but it does not lack funds and technology. At the same time, Italy is close to France, which facilitates France's industrial transfer.

The reason why the demographic dividend is emphasized is that compared with neighboring countries, Italy has the richest human resources, so rich that a large number of Italians flow to all over the world every year.

Today, France and South America are the main influx of Italian immigrants. In addition, European economically developed regions such as the United Kingdom and Germany have also absorbed a lot of Italians. However, the United Kingdom and Germany do not lack population, so it is difficult to obtain nationality between the two countries. Of course, high-quality talents are exceptional.

However, as for Italian immigrants now, France is the first option, it is close to home, has many job opportunities, and it is easy to get married. After all, there are a large number of widows waiting to be taken over in France.

In the past, France was arrogant, so even though the population growth rate was at the bottom of Europe, it was difficult for other countries to immigrate to become French. However, after being hit hard by the World War, France's acceptance of immigration, especially Italian immigrants, has greatly increased.

After all, compared to importing "black people" from colonies, the French people have a stronger psychological acceptance of Italians, not to mention that Napoleon, one of France's greatest figures, was also an Italian to a certain extent.

In short, Italy and France have had a good relationship in recent years, and the two have strong complementarity, which is different from their previous lives. Although France was also hit hard by the population in World War I in the previous lives.

However, France in his previous life sat in the seat of the winner, and its glory still belonged to France. However, France in this time and space was not the case. In the eyes of most French people, it was another "French-Prussian War". After all, France paid too much in the first battle, but it got nothing, which was lost.

This is also one of the problems Franz is worried about. He told Rudolph: "Since the European economic recovery, Italy itself has been getting closer and closer to France. Now that Italy is unified, France may still increase cooperation with Italy, which is extremely unfavorable for us."

"Italy itself is our potential enemy. If it is supported by the British and French and quickly re-armed, it will have a huge impact on the geopolitical situation of the empire throughout the Eastern Mediterranean."

"Not only that, Italy's unification means that we have lost two very important markets, the Pope and Naples. The population of the Pope and Naples is close to 20 million, but now they have become the treasures of the Kingdom of Italy."

"This time Italy's unification can be said to have an extremely bad impact on the imperial military and national defense and economy." Not to mention anything else, the loss of a market with a population of nearly 20 million is enough to make Emperor Franz feel distressed. For the current Austro-Hungarian Empire, the loss of this market is likely to have a very bad impact on the Austro-Hungarian Empire's economy.

Once the economy has problems, it may trigger a new round of political crisis in the country, especially the separatist forces in the non-ruling ethnic areas of the Austro-Hungarian Empire are likely to make a comeback.

And the Crown Prince Rudolf knew these situations very well.

Since Italian unification has happened and it happened under his nose, it would be useless to shirk responsibility at this time.

Therefore, Rudolf also admitted his mistake completely and frankly: "Father, this unification of Italy is indeed my mistake."

Faced with this rebellious son who was young, he can now take the initiative to take responsibility in front of him, which makes the old emperor Franz feel that there is a successor.

So, he gave Rudolph a rare excuse: "This is not entirely your responsibility. After all, no one would have thought that Italy could reunify through this form."

"Even if it's me, I may not be able to react when facing a person like Benito. I have reviewed what happened in Italy these days."

“This time Benito’s process of unifying Italy is really amazing. He has embarked on a path that no one in Europe has ever taken before.”

"By motivating the Italian people and inciting their emotions, paralyzing our supportive forces in Italy, this practice is very similar to the Russian Labor Party."

"However, Benito's technique is better than his superiority. In the process of the Russian Labor Party seizing power, war and conflict were accompanied by war, but Benito was able to win over all the forces that could be won over, thereby avoiding large-scale bloodshed and wars."

"If Italy can have a civil war, it will not develop in a bad direction for us. After all, when the war breaks out, we will have the excuse to interfere in Italy, and even send troops to suppress it openly."

"But this is what Benito is cunning. He does not give us any excuses to interfere. He completed the peaceful evolution of the Pope and Naples in a very short time."

"This also gives us a warning, that is, Benito can unify Italy through this means, the Labor Party can also subvert the Tsar's rule through similar means, and our Austro-Hungarian Empire must also be wary of wolf-abused ambitions, use folk sentiment to carry out riots and state separatist activities."

"From this perspective, our situation is even more difficult than before Russia and Italy. We have to face not only the sabotage activities of Labor elements that subvert the country, but also the sabotage activities of extremist nationalism and separatists."

Benito is an Italian extreme nationalist. He can achieve reunification of Italy through extreme nationalism. The extreme nationalists in the Austro-Hungarian Empire can naturally incite some areas that are dissatisfied with Vienna and become independent from the empire.

It can be said that the Austro-Hungarian Empire is now sandwiched between two thinking. To the east is Russia led by the Labor Party, and to the west is Italy led by extremist nationalists. Their ideology is extremely destructive to the Austro-Hungarian Empire.

After all, the situation in the Austro-Hungarian Empire was too complicated. The Germans, Hungarians, Czechs, Romanians, Croats, Slovenians in China... can be described as a mess, with all kinds of contradictions very prominent.

So, Franz said with great concern: "Now we must not only consider the negative impact of Italy's reunification on the empire, but also prepare for some possible changes in the country."

"To be pessimistic, there is almost no way to solve the problem of the empire. It's also my fault for not handling these problems well, leaving you a mess."

"If I could be tougher back then, maybe the situation in the empire would not have deteriorated to this level today."

The reason why Franz said this is mainly because the separatism of the Austro-Hungarian Empire in recent years has not only not been eased by his series of compromise policies, but has become increasingly intense.

The reason Franz focused on this issue is because separatists still have ways to solve it, unlike Labor, the whole world has no good way to do the latter.

  To deal with separatists, we can suppress them through various means, such as massacre, arrest, or forced assimilation. For example, in East Africa, even people of different skin colors can integrate into a national subject through a series of policy means.

Therefore, Franz regretted that he did not implement a more radical integration policy in the empire. Of course, when he was young, Franz was a matte worker and he was unwilling to integrate the empire's culture and identity in such a radical way.

However, as time went by, he regretted more and more, especially as separatism became more and more prevalent in the Austro-Hungarian Empire, this seemingly powerful country could be dismembered at any time.

Franz was very worried that Rudolph would not be able to conquer those people after his death. After all, Franz ruled the Austro-Hungarian Empire for decades, and he was even the founder of this country. Therefore, Franz has many supporters and collaborators, but Franz’s supporters and collaborators are not equal to Rudolph’s supporters and collaborators.

So, after pondering for a while, Franz seemed to have made a great determination and said to Crown Prince Rudolf: "For us in Habsburg, the most important thing now is to ensure the survival of the family, but the situation in the empire is so bad that there is no hope."

"So, Rudolph, we must take into account the most dangerous situations that may occur and use this as a basis for preserving the rule of the family as much as possible."

"It is not even ruled out that after the disintegration of the empire in the future, Habsburg can only serve as the plan to disintegrate a king. Our roots are Austria and Hungary. Therefore, we must strengthen the family's control over these two regions as much as possible and support the power of the family and the nobles. We must reuse trustworthy people, especially those who are consistent with our interests. Even if they have ulterior motives, as long as they support Habsburg, it is a force that can be united."

The interests of the nobles and the royal family are unified. After all, if the royal family is gone, it is likely that they will find it difficult to continue to maintain their past interests. Just like the Russian aristocratic group was defeated with the Russian Tsar. After the collapse of Tsar Russia, these nobles were actually nothing.

(This chapter ends)