Chapter 138: Doing this is also very difficult for me.
Chapter 136: Doing this is hard for me too
Berlin
Frederick William IV has been thrilled ever since he heard that a large amount of donations had been collected in Austria. That’s right, he was excited, not angry.
In addition to the Prussian Kingdom, the entire German region collected donations, if converted into Austrian guilders calculation, about 43 million guilders, Austria alone contributed more than 30 million.
This amount of money is already equivalent to the financial income of the Kingdom of Prussia for half a year, and if all of it can be gotten, it will undoubtedly be a timely rain for the Prussian government, which is short of financial resources.
It is a pity that His Majesty the great Franz proposed to earmark the money, and as a result many German states followed suit, but of course they did not do things as cautiously as His Majesty Franz.
Up to now, the Prussian government still received more than five million guilders from the German region, the rest was mostly cut off by their respective governments.
How could the bureaucrats do nothing with such a large benefit? It’s not like they didn’t want to be as scrupulous with their donations as Franz was, all of them were issued receipts, and refunds were available if they couldn’t use them all.
As you can imagine, the rest of the money was not destined to reach the Prussian government.
What depressed Frederick William IV even more was that in the media, the Kingdom of Prussia had already received donations from the German region, and the total amount had already exceeded one hundred million guilders.
In this era, the news is not transmitted smoothly, there is no bank flow can be checked, and anyway, it is all casually, the states do not want to lose face, and one by one, they all donate an astronomical sum of money.
Really, does this matter?
Anyway, it’s all the data published by the media around the world, and it’s not officially recognized, so it doesn’t matter in the future even if it’s found out.
If you run into a shameless government, you can just bite the bullet and say that you gave the money to the Prussian government, and no one can prove that you didn’t.
For example, Franz allocated the first donation to the Prussian government, a total of one million guilders, all in cash, in the presence of the media transferred to the Prussian Embassy.
Of course, perhaps thinking that one million was too little, one million became three million in the Vienna newspapers. If Franz is a little unscrupulous, directly swallow the extra two million guilders, not impossible.
Not everyone is Franz so preachy, lying about the number of donations is only a small problem, many places obviously only gave two hundred thousand, had to let the Prussian officials sign the receipt of five hundred thousand.
Anyway, the money in the hands of others love to take it or not, in front of the interests of the bureaucrats are bursting at the seams.
In addition to the Prussian influence of the state, the phenomenon of this situation is a little smaller, the South German regional state has become the hardest hit.
Prussian Prime Minister Joseph von Radowitz said worriedly, “Your Majesty, we can’t have this money!”
“What?” Frederick William IV asked suspiciously
Dissatisfaction with the German states is dissatisfaction, but there’s no need to be upset with the money, right? Even if a large portion of it was embezzled by the bureaucrats of each country, what they got their hands on in the end wasn’t a small amount.
Now the Prussian government was so heavily in debt that Frederick William IV was ready to declare the government bankrupt and renege on the entire debt if not for the different times.
“Your Majesty, these states are nominally supporting us in battle, but in reality they are all harboring evil intentions.
Now that they hold us in such high esteem, if the Russians insist that we give up the two duchies of Schleswig and Holstein, how should we end up?
Now that all the countries of Europe, except the German region, are on our side, the Danes are emboldened and will not make concessions.” Joseph von Radowitz said bitterly
There is no doubt that the use of war to divert domestic conflicts has been overplayed this time, and now the Prussian government is riding a tiger. If they can’t take back the two duchies of Schleswig and Holstein, there is no way for them to give an explanation to the people.
This was not only the people within Prussia, but also the people in the German region.
Domestic public opinion, they can still find a way to guide, foreign public opinion do not want to think about it, not to be hacked into **** only strange?
This problem, Frederick William IV also thought of, but he had no choice, whether to accept this money or not, the final result will not change.
Successfully recovered the two duchies of Schleswig and Holstein, they are the heroes of the German nation, failure they are the national traitors of the German nation.
Unless they dared to fight a real war with the Russians, then win or lose, they could be accounted for.
In this era, Russia was the hegemon of Europe, it was normal that Prussia could not beat the Russians in single combat, and the people could understand that they would transfer this anger to Austria and other states that did not participate in the war.
How could nationalists and patriots accept it if the Prussian government retreated without a single shot being fired?
In the eyes of the general public, now that all the states in the German region had their backs, they should not wimp out even against the Russians, right?
Public opinion was terrible, and the Russians were even more terrible!
If a Russo-Prussian war breaks out, who will Austria help?
In Frederick William IV’s opinion, it was unlikely that Austria would fall to Russia, and under the pressure of public opinion, would most likely support Prussia.
Unfortunately, this support was very limited, and getting Austria to actually contribute was impossible. After all, with the Kingdom of Prussia finished, the biggest obstacle to Austria’s desire to unify the German region was gone.
Austria’s support was no more feeble, but it also canceled out the diplomatic pressure from the French side. A large group of German states waving their flags sort of canceled out the diplomatic pressure from the smaller European states.
The diplomatic pressure on the Kingdom of Prussia was now so much less than it had been historically; and the pressure exerted on them by the patriots at home surpassed that of the same period in history.
Neither the Chancellor, Joseph von Radovi, nor the King, Frederick William IV, could make up his mind to abandon the duchies of Schleswig and Holstein.
Too much had been invested, and for this war the Kingdom of Prussia had already paid more for the war than Austria had spent in the Austro-Saxon War.
From the outbreak of the war to now, has lasted more than a year, although the two sides really fight a short time, Prussian troops also hang Danes, but military confrontation also cost money ah!
Military spending in wartime is often several times or more than in peacetime, which is too much for the militaristic Kingdom of Prussia.
The military expenditure of the Kingdom of Prussia, has always been high, from the accession of Frederick II in 1740, the number of Prussian army from the original 70,000 people surged to 200,000, accounting for the country’s population of 9.4%, the military expenditure every year to spend 4/5 of the government’s entire budget.
At that time, Prussia was only the tenth largest country in Europe in terms of area and the thirteenth largest in terms of population, but its army ranked fourth in Europe after Russia, France and Austria.
This number was increased to 235,000 men by Frederick II’s successor, William II, and in the following years the Prussian army hardly ever fell below this number.
Keeping such a large army in times of peace was a financial strain on the Kingdom of Prussia, which had a small population and had not completed industrialization.
Fiscal deficits were commonplace for this country. Under these circumstances, it was very difficult for the Kingdom of Prussia to seek loans from the outside world or to issue debt papers.
It was only when the government ran out of money that Frederick William IV put his face down and asked for help from the German states. Even though he knew that the money was not good, he still accepted it.
“It’s too late to talk about this now, let our people collect evidence first, in case there is a change of heart in the future, we can also pull them down.
This is all the next best thing, the final solution is still to keep the two duchies of Schleswig and Holstein, when the time comes these states will obediently send over the money.” Frederick William IV said fiercely
“Your Majesty, I’m afraid it’s not that simple, when the time comes, these states will most likely demand that these two duchies be allowed to become independent.” Joseph von Radovi thought for a moment and said
“Don’t worry, as long as we succeed in reclaiming these two duchies, when the time comes to create an established fact, they won’t be able to do anything, it’s not like we don’t have any supporters.” Frederick William IV said confidently
After so many years of propaganda, the idea of Little Germany had already overpowered the theory of Greater Germany in many regions, and there were not a few people who supported the unification of Germany by the Kingdom of Prussia.
If Franz hadn’t stirred up the Frankfurt Conference, the Lesser German Ideology would have become the mainstream in the German region by now.
……
The insistence of the Prussian government made it very difficult for the government of St. Petersburg.
From the beginning they had sided with Denmark, and the Czarist government had announced to the public that it would use force if the Prussian government did not back down.
What was to be done now? If they did, it would be in vain for the Austrians; if they did not, would the face of the Russian Empire be lost?
Even their own little brother can not protect, the tsarist government backtracked, they still have the nerve to mix in the international arena?
Can only say that now is no longer the same as then.
Back then, the Tsarist government could treat credibility as toilet paper and throw it away; now the Russian Empire is already competing for world hegemony, so if they don’t pay attention to credibility, who will convince them?
A lone world leader looks imposing, but is actually in crisis. Unless you can unify the world by force, just refer to Napoleon.
St. Petersburg
Nicholas I asked with concern, “What does the Austrian government say, are they willing to mediate in this Poutine war?”
“Your Majesty, the Austrian government refuses to participate in this mediation, that old fox Metternich said that due to the public opinion in the country, the Austrian government’s participation in the mediation will only be on the side of Prussia.” Foreign Minister Karl Worcelrod replied in a difficult manner
The fact that the Russians did not want to go to war with the Kingdom of Prussia, and that the Tsarist government was trying to avoid war in any way possible, was no secret, and naturally the Prussian government was informed of it.
Tragically, the Prussian government’s acquisition of this information allowed them to make a direct strategic miscalculation that the Russians would not intervene by force, increasing their confidence.
“Damn, I’m afraid the Austrians are still dreaming of us helping them remove the obstacles to unifying Germany, aren’t they afraid that we’ll leak the Russian-Austrian secret pact?” Nicholas I said to himself
Everyone is a person with eyes, do not dare to stupidly answer: not afraid.
Once the Russo-Austrian secret treaty is leaked out, Austria’s later strategy will be in trouble, and Russia’s later strategy is just straight up finished.
An Austria that annexed the South German states would scare the British, at best, and raise the danger level to something close to the French, but compared to the Russians who annexed the Ottoman Empire, it would be nothing to write home about.
There were still ways to limit the former, whether it was to support the Kingdom of Prussia, or to provoke French-Austrian relations, or to alienate Russian-Austrian relations, all of which could serve as a counterweight.
The latter is not the same, now the Russian Empire, the British can only look at them in a daze, if they let them annex the Ottoman Empire, the world hegemony is sooner or later things.
Even if Nicholas I very much want to pull Prussia on board, but also do not dare to leak half a bit of information to them, and even in the deliberations, the confidentiality of the work has been raised to the highest level.
……
(End of chapter)