Chapter 364: Disappearing Prescience, Change of Heart
Chapter 354 – Disappearing Prescience, Change of Heart
With intent, the Russians soon paid the price for their behavior, and the Polish independence movement erupted even more swiftly than in history.
Britain and France increased their financial assistance to the independence organizations, and after the outbreak of the uprising, the independence organizations pulled up an army as fast as they could and began to sweep in all directions.
Franz, who was a tastemaker, was soon subjected to a letter of protest from the Czarist government.
Franz asked incredulously, “Prime Minister, are you sure that what is written in this protest letter is true?”
No wonder Franz was not shocked that Austria actually had four hundred volunteers fighting in this Polish uprising, most of these were retired officers and soldiers from Austrian Poland.
Under the eyes of the Vienna government, Polish independence actually managed to pull up such an armed force, if there is no problem will be the devil.
Secretly tripping up the Russians is one thing, but to have so many volunteers come out in the open is not to tell the outside world that Austria is supporting the Polish independence movement.
The Russian-Austrian alliance hadn’t been dissolved yet? To stab the Czarist government in the back like that is morally indefensible!
Prime Minister Felix replied awkwardly, “Your Majesty, it is true that there are quite a few Poles in the region of Galicia who support this uprising. There weren’t just four hundred people who participated in this uprising either, the number we counted was eight hundred.
If nothing else, this number is still increasing. Beforehand, we made a mistake in our estimation and didn’t think that so many people would participate in this uprising, so we didn’t take any measures.”
Franz rubbed his forehead, he didn’t even know what to say. When the Polish independence movement broke out, Poles from all over the world participated.
There were several million Poles in Austria, and it was inevitable that there were some volunteers, but this number was a little too much.
“Someone won’t set us up, will they?” Franz asked uncertainly
He very much suspected that this was a British and French plot to sow discord in Russian-Austrian relations and break up the Russian-Austrian alliance.
Prime Minister Felix replied, “Your Majesty, please rest assured. We have already checked and these people have no problems and indeed volunteered for the uprising.
Many of these people, who were originally residents of the Russian Poland region, immigrated to Garcia because they couldn’t stand the Russian rule.
Now that they have gone back to join the uprising, most of them are forces of hatred. We have taken action, and this will not continue to happen behind us.”
Faced with this result, Franz could only attribute it to the Russians being too deadly. What else could be done when you could get people out of the mirror in exile and not even forget to work for revenge.
Of course, someone in the Vienna government must have facilitated them, otherwise it would never have been possible for so many people to enter Poland smoothly.
Franz thought for a moment and said, “The Foreign Ministry and the Russians take their time to explain, and by the way, issue a diplomatic affirmation that the question of Russian Poland is an internal affair of the Russian Empire, and that countries should not interfere.”
In any case things had happened and it was just a matter of finding a way to make things right. It just so happened that after Britain and France expressed their international solidarity with the Polish Independence Organization, European countries responded, and the Tsarist government still needed Austria’s support.
After this happened, Franz did not expect to ask for favors. First show the attitude, as for the Russians believe it or not can only be left to fate.
This little thing, the relationship between the two countries is enough, from the Russian-Austrian alliance is still a little short of a rupture. As long as the alliance is still in place, the big deal is to slowly repair the relationship later.
Foreign Minister Weissenberg replied: “Your Majesty, the Russians will soon be unable to take care of themselves. According to the news coming from our station in St. Petersburg, the Polish insurgents have exceeded 100,000 men.
The Polish Independence Organization was premeditated, and after the uprising was launched, the Russian army of more than 100,000 deployed in the Polish region was defeated by the Polish insurgent army under the coordination of the inside and the outside.
Many troops became prisoners without even reacting, and many soldiers joined the Polish independence movement directly, as if the Russian revolutionary organization and the Poles had joined forces.
From what we’ve gathered, the insurgent army wasn’t exactly a rabble, and their leadership should have received a short military training.
At least 5,000 volunteers from all over the world participated in the Polish Uprising from the time it broke out to the present day, and most of these people had received military training and became officers of the Uprising.
The Foreign Office suspects that military training was given to the Polish independence organizations, and it is feared that these volunteers were pre-trained and entered Poland quickly after the outbreak of the uprising to lead it.”
Franz’s face paled; this was the truth of the matter, I’m afraid. Even a secretive underhanded one like Austria was able to toss out a few hundred volunteers, and a presence like Britain and France, who did it openly, would only go even further.
Was it hard to help the Polish Independence Organization train men?
For the big rogue is too easy, recruit a group of anti-Russian Poles, then simple training, put into the colony to fight a few battles, survive is qualified soldiers.
If there were also Russian revolutionary organizations involved, then things would be even more complicated, meaning that the rebellion wouldn’t be confined to Poland, but could break out in vast areas of the Russian Empire.
The reforming Russian Empire is certainly at a crossroads. Now was the most problematic time, with too many people in the country dissatisfied with the reforms of the Tsarist government.
The radicals suspected that the reforms of the Tsarist government were incomplete, while the conservatives felt that the reforms of the Tsarist government had hurt their interests, and once these dissatisfied people were stimulated, who knows what they would do?
It should be realized that from the beginning of Alexander II’s reforms, there had never been peace within the Russian Empire. The serfs who had just been freed looked at the huge land ransom payments and sighed.
Land redemption for the Russians was not as harmonious as it was in Austria. These ransom payments were subject to interest, which was not the same concept as Franz’s standardized delimitation of payments.
Austria’s land redemption money, basically according to 5 to 10 years of output on the land as a baseline, by the government unified collection and then transferred to the landowner.
Farmers can pay in installments of up to forty years, without counting the benefits. The annual redemption money to be paid is within everyone’s affordability.
Because of the unified apportionment, the levy is also twenty percent of the actual annual output of the land, which can be paid more or less, and in any case can be repaid within the stipulated period.
Due to the factor of rebellion, the government seized a lot of land, this kind of levy in fact, the government of Vienna is still a big profit, naturally, can take out part of the money to quell the situation of insufficient ransom money in the disaster year.
To the tsarist government here will not work, the landlords are still alive and well, the land is mostly this group of aristocrats, before the reform of the number of commoners in Russia’s estates has been less than twenty, the free peasants also own only a small amount of land.
Against this background, trying to compress the price of land redemption was definitely out of the question. It was even more impossible to collect and distribute them uniformly without paying interest.
If not for the Revolution, Franz would not have been able to force the nobles to accept such harsh conditions. In fact, the Austrian land reform was not complete.
Many of the nobles who were not involved in the rebellion and were not affected by the ripples of the rebellion still owned large amounts of land, and as long as they were unwilling the government could not force them to buy it.
No social conflicts erupted, mainly because the Vienna government compressed the per capita land redemption area and guaranteed that all people could redeem land, only the place was uncertain.
Later, with the expansion in the Balkans, and the opening of overseas colonies, only to make the original tense land supply became loose, more land conflicts can be completely resolved.
The colonial ministry’s immigrant propaganda slogan was now: “Want a farm of your own? Go to the colonies and start your own farm.
Want your own plantation? Go to the colonies.
You can have as much land as you want.”
This was something the Czarist government could not do, and although there was plenty of wasteland in the country to be cleared, that wasteland also had owners.
The area of land that the peasants acquired through redemption was actually lower, on average, than in Austria itself. Of course, this is the result of calculating the Balkans, with the Romanian region and the Serbian region contributing quite a bit of arable land.
Alexander II’s reforms only allowed 13% of the serfs to acquire enough land; 42% of the serfs acquired land that they could barely make ends meet after paying the ransom; the rest could not support themselves on the land alone and had to go out to work.
This provided sufficient labor for the development of capitalism in Russia.
Historically, with the development of the capitalist economy, a part of the rural population flocked to the cities, and the already tense land problem was gradually solved.
In the late 19th century, the Russian Empire then became strong again because of the reforms of Alexander II.
Now, unfortunately, Russia’s capitalist economy is just starting out and does not have the capacity to absorb much of the population.
It was too late for the social dividends of the reforms to come into play; but the social contradictions brought about by the reforms had already begun to come into play.
“Keep a close eye on the direction of the situation in Russia, figure out the forces put in place by all sides, and be ready to intervene; we can’t afford to let Russia have a major change of heart.”
Franz made an immediate decision, let the Russians suffer a little loss can be, to destroy the Russian empire or forget it!
Unless the Russian Empire could be dismembered and the threat solved once and for all, it was better to keep the Tsarist government.
After all, Russia under the Tsarist government was a limited threat to Austria, and there were too many people in the country who were dragging their feet, and even the brilliant Alexander II couldn’t change that.
It would have been different if the rules had been broken, Franz could have used the opportunity of the civil unrest to cleanse Hungary and integrate Austria, and who could guarantee that a powerful figure wouldn’t have emerged in Russia to turn the tide?
At least Alexander II had that ability to reform within the rules, he didn’t have the means to solve the problem completely.
But once the order was broken, things were different. The greatest legacy Nicholas I left him was an army loyal to the Tsar.
Once the army was taken care of, many problems were practically non-issues. As long as the table was overturned, the chances of Alexander II regaining the throne were very high.
If it was another country, there could still be a wave of intervention by countries forming a coalition army, running into Russia Franz stated that he was afraid of the cold.
Bathed in fire and reborn Russia appeared, then Austria will not have to do anything, focus on acting as the gatekeeper of Europe, responsible for watching the woolly bear on the line.
Prime Minister Felix objected, “Your Majesty, we should not act now. Although Alexander II’s reforms have harmed the interests of many, they have not crossed the bottom line of the conservatives.
As long as these people don’t move, Russia will not be in chaos. The Russian army in Poland collapsed, mainly because there were too many Polish soldiers inside.
In order to ensure the stability of the Polish region, the Tsar’s government ordered the conscription of soldiers from the Polish region not long ago in an attempt to move these people out of the region, but the uprising happened just as the plan had begun.
The Russian army was still loyal to the Tsar, the revolutionaries could not yet influence the army, and a small rebellion could not move the foundation of the Tsar’s government.
As long as Britain and France don’t intervene with troops themselves, it won’t be long before the rebellion is suppressed.”
Hearing the prime minister’s explanation, Franz breathed a sigh of relief. He had been in authority and had overlooked the fact that Britain and France would not personally intervene.
After losing the Near East War, the British had been much more cautious on European issues, keeping themselves out of the way as much as possible.
The French, let alone Napoleon III, had almost lost his throne, so how could he be asked to go into the muddy waters of the Russians again?
The Kingdom of Prussia was directly ignored, do not look at the latter part of the world they were blown how awesome, now the Russians sneeze, the Berlin government have the guts.
The best option for Austria now was to watch the show rather than prepare to intervene. Any move by the government in Vienna could release a wrong signal to the outside world, which could create an untenable situation.
Franz thought for a moment and said, “The Chancellor is right, I was the one who was too nervous, and now a move is better than nothing.
The Foreign Office told the Tsar’s government that we supported any action they took on the Polish question, and that the matter of the volunteers was to be put off to England and France.
Anything else that has nothing to do with us, nothing.”
Since we are adopting a static approach, it’s all right to play dumb.
Britain and France could stand up for hate, and that was because they were far enough away from the Russians to have no fear of reprisals from the Tsarist government.
It would be best if they could strike the Russians, and if they couldn’t they could still disgust the Russians and use the Polish independence movement to delay the reform process of the Tsarist government.
Was it really that simple? To this day, the international situation has long since changed and the advantage of Franz’s foresight no longer exists.
After organizing his thoughts, Franz quickly figured it out.
Austria is no longer the historical Austria, has accumulated enough advantages in the early stage, even without the advantage of foresight, in the international competition is still in a favorable position.
Too worried about the Russian Empire change, in fact, is also the cause of Franz’s lack of confidence. After all, the concepts of his previous life were so influential that he ignored the changes in his own strength.
Against any competitor, Austria exists in one, or more areas of strength, and it is enough to put these strengths to use.
The first is on the quality of the population, preempting the opening of compulsory education, and now Austria is already enjoying this dividend.
Once the second industrial revolution kicked in, the first-mover advantage was already doomed. By the time the competitors reacted, Austria was already at the forefront.
It seems that now Austria is not lagging behind, and following the footsteps of the British, certain industries can still run to the front.
Instead, it’s the usury empire that’s already starting to take the shape of a runaway. The lack of indigenous coal capacity has driven up the cost of many industries in France, and capitalists are becoming more and more interested in making financial profits.
The short-term rivals, Britain and France, are constrained by population size and native area, and the upper limits of development are already locked in.
The constraints on the native area and resources can be compensated for by the colonies, which are colonial empires that do not lack the resources, but there is no way to make up for the lack of population.
Nope, the French are already thinking of a solution, and that’s foreign expansion. Napoleon III just ate up the Kingdom of Sardinia to make up for the lack of domestic labor.
British talent is really no way, surrounded by sea to expand on the continent. Unfortunately, John Bull did not dare, once set foot on the European continent, immediately be taught to be a man.
Medium-term rival Russian Empire, still in the reform, industry has lagged behind for at least two decades, it is not a moment to make up for it.
Even if it was open, it would take more than a decade to catch up. In this age of rapid technological change, the rivals could not wait for them to catch up.
As long as it was still under the rule of the tsarist government, this kind of open-ended development could not happen, and it was God’s blessing to be able to ensure a normal level of development speed.
The Americans, their distant rivals, after this civil war, are expected to delay their development for 20 or 30 years. At the very least, they will have to wait until they have completed the unification of their country again before they have the ability to compete for world domination.
These advantages are only superficial; the real advantage is that the competitors have not yet realized their own weaknesses and have not taken corresponding measures to solve these problems.
(End of chapter)