War Palace and Knee Pillow, Austria’s Destiny

The main line of the Neletania Railway in Austria is basically completed. People can take a train directly from Tuscany, Italy to Hamburg in North Germany. The journey that took several months now takes 30 hours.

At this time, in other countries of the German Confederation, except for a few main trunk lines, other railways were still under construction.

This provides Austria with a huge advantage. Any area the railway passes through is filled with Austrian goods and cultural imprints.

Local residents began to learn South German and even Viennese.

Viennese is a mixed language mainly German. Czech is used in the kitchen, Polish is used when ordering food and calling waiters, Ukrainian is used when swearing, and Latin is used when going to church. It is also used occasionally. Some South Slavic and Gypsy languages.

(Croatian, Serbian, and Slovenian were 95% similar at the time)

This greatly accelerated the speed of national integration in the three regions of Germany, Austria, and Italy. Italy's traditional aristocracy and local forces were severely impacted, and the emerging bourgeoisie became increasingly dependent on the Austrian government.

At this time, Austria did not adopt a policy of appeasement towards Northern Italy as it had historically, nor did it adopt an extreme policy of national supremacy to forcibly Austrianize the region. However, local forces that openly clamored for independence and attempted to humiliate and beat soldiers and officials were dealt with in accordance with the law. .

Small businessmen and capitalists were already suppressed and exploited by local forces, and the actions of the imperial government happened to protect their interests.

The taxes levied by the state are simply not worth mentioning compared to the exorbitant levies and miscellaneous taxes and commissions set by the local governments. Naturally, these people had no reason not to support Austria's rule. After all, the only people who suffered were the landlords and wealthy people. On the contrary, they had made huge profits from the elimination of tariffs.

As for the serfs and workers, they regarded the empire as their savior.

At this time, the Austrian Empire, Vienna-Prague-Dresden Railway, Vienna-Linz-Salzburg-Munich Railway, Vienna-Graz-Udine-Venice-Milan-Parma-Modena-Lucca-Flo The Lens railway and the Vienna-Brno-Lviv-Cracow railway have been completed.

The only section that is not open to traffic is Graz-Ljubljana-Trieste. The terrain here is too dangerous and cannot be solved by increasing investment.

The first phase of the Austrian Empire's railway project has been basically completed. The main goal of the second phase of construction is to continue to refine the Neletania railway network and connect Zagreb and Belgrade at the same time.

Salzburg - Innsbruck - Feldkirch - Bregenz, Salzburg - Bischofshofen - Selz Valley - Graz.

Linz-Graz, Vienna-Bruck-under-Moor-Klagenfurt-Villach-Udine, Brook-under-Moor-Graz, Innsbruck-Bolena-Udine-Milan.

Prague-Brno-Przerov-Ostrava-Katowice, Brno-Brzeclav-Vienna, Prague-Pilsen-Domazlice-Munich, Prague-Ust- Dresden, Prague-Wroclaw

The total length is about 15,000 kilometers and it is expected to be completed in 25 years. This was a very reasonable expectation at the time. After all, the previous construction speed of the Austrian Empire was about 300 kilometers per year.

However, the above are basically smoke bombs released by Franz. The only ones that really need to be repaired are a few important trunk lines and the Trieste-Zagreb-Belgrade line. This 550-kilometer railway is expected to be completed in five years. It will be completed within the year with a total planned length of 3,000 kilometers.

This will ensure that Belgrade will always be under Austria's control. In the event of a war, both water transportation and rail transportation can easily deliver troops and supplies.

In fact, the length of railways in the Austrian Empire at this time was already dozens of times that in history. An overly dense railway network was too early for the just-starting Austrian Empire. The main reason was that the rate of return was too low, which could easily lead to the emergence of a railway bubble.

Infrastructure construction must keep pace with economic development, but investment in infrastructure cannot be too excessive. The length of railways in the Austrian Empire was calculated by experts based on the country's development rate and total cargo volume at this time.

Franz was afraid that their figures were too conservative, so he increased them by 50%. After all, the development speed of this era was far beyond the imagination of people at the time.

However, future developments showed that Franz should build the railway according to the customized plan from the beginning, because the country's development speed not only exceeded the imagination of people at the time, but also exceeded Franz's own imagination.

At this time, powerful railways, industrial capabilities, cheap raw materials, and an unprecedentedly broad market, coupled with Franz's monopoly plan, colonial and multinational corporate profits, gave the Austrian Empire a qualitative leap in its finances.

310 million florins, already more than twice the amount spent at the same time in the history of the Austrian Empire. The salary of Austrian officials, which has not been increased for 30 years, has finally been increased, and each person's annual income has increased by 10 florins.

This may be a drop in the bucket for high-level officials or civil servants living in big cities, but it is a precious reward for those officials living in villages, borders, and mountainous areas.

However, Austria's top executives still look off-putting to bankers who come to collect debts. They have been owed money for decades anyway, so they are already used to it.

The unwilling bankers used various means and finally bribed Count Korolaf to get an answer that only new debts would be repaid but not old debts.

Although they were disappointed, they had to accept this reality.

In fact, repaying new debt is to borrow more debt. As for old debt, it depends on luck and mood.

Of course, in fact, this was not the result of bankers bribing Count Korolaf, but the old slippery man's legal corruption by taking advantage of the information gap.

In fact, although the fiscal revenue of the Austrian Empire has increased significantly compared with the same period in history, it is still too little for this booming country.

Every department is scrambling for the budget, including transportation, education, commerce, army, navy, internal affairs, justice, secret police, postal service, industry, agriculture, mining, and fisheries.

Each department has its own reasons, and they are all reasons why it must be done. Every annual budget meeting of the empire is like a battle. In the past, when the country ran out of money, all departments were in a zombie state, each one worse than the other.

When the empire has money, all departments are like sharks smelling blood, scrambling for their own share of the budget.

According to statistics from the last meeting, the Austrian Empire's annual budget is at least 600 million florins. This figure was obtained after cutting the budgets of many departments in half.

Based on this calculation, there will still be a deficit of more than 300 million yuan after one year, and this day will be impossible.

Prince Metternich and Count Korolaf had a headache. Archduke Louis was drinking tea leisurely, and Archduke Franz Karl's seat was still vacant.

Ferdinand I was still busy eating dumplings, and Baron Slote, who had survived the disaster, closed his mouth and said nothing.