Politics had always been a game where one small move could shake the entire system. What looked like a simple rebuke was, in truth, Franz closing the valve on expansion and suppressing the voices of the pro-war faction in the country. Everything had two sides. The Continental War had been won far too easily, the spoils had been far too rich, and most importantly, the Emperor had been generous enough to share the profits. The result was that “glory lies on the battlefield” had become the mainstream belief of society. Driven by greed, the entire Empire had grown unprecedentedly warlike. Ordinary people wanted war as a way to rise from obscurity. Soldiers who had built their careers on military merit longed to break through the barrier of nobility. And nobles themselves wanted war to climb even higher. “Men die for wealth, birds die for food.” The law of nature was on full display. Under the lure of profit, everyone seemed to forget the dangers of war. It wasn’t that no one saw the problem. They did. But everyone tacitly pretended not to. The reason was simple: France’s collapse had stripped the Austrian government of any sense of crisis. In their eyes, without France as its eternal rival, there was no one left in the world who could stand against the Holy Roman Empire. Even if the Royal Navy still held the number one spot, even if the Russian giant remained formidable, their weaknesses were all too clear. Russia had a weak industrial base, a government so poor it rattled with every step, and its economic lifeline lay firmly in the Empire’s hands. The Tsar had no choice but to bow to Austria. Britain’s navy might still be the strongest in the world, but only for now. Once the Empire truly decided to fight for naval supremacy, it would be Britain’s turn to retreat. If they could not match quality, they would simply crush them with quantity. For every ship Britain built, the Empire would build two. Two against one would always tip the scales. Money made arrogance easy. With the Holy Roman Empire unified, its financial revenues exceeded the combined total of all other European nations. As long as the government tightened its belt, it could play both land power and sea power without fear. No matter how arrogant everyone else had become, Franz himself had not lost his grounding. Revenue and expenditure were two sides of the same coin. Ordinary people only saw the government’s massive income, but they ignored the equally massive expenses that came with it. If not for the old-fashioned feudal system that had drastically reduced administrative costs, the Austrian government’s income might not even have been enough to sustain the vast Empire. After all, thanks to the wars, the Austrian government had been running a deficit for three consecutive years. Achieving a balanced budget would not come until 1894 at the earliest. “A nation, no matter how great, will perish if it craves war.” This was a truth that held in every era. Reality had already proven that once a war reached a certain scale, no matter how rich the spoils, the short-term result was always a loss. The outside world only saw the glory of the victors. They did not see the suffering behind it. Spoils of war only became true wealth once they were digested. Otherwise, they remained nothing more than numbers on paper. It wasn’t just the government that had been bled dry. Even the nobles had empty purses, especially the newly risen military nobility. Their pockets might have been cleaner than their faces at this point. They had no choice. All their money had been poured into their fiefs. Since the land was theirs to govern, it was theirs to fund as well. Even the old nobility struggled to cough up such sums all at once. Building up a fief wasn’t a one-man task. To pour everything into it meant not just emptying their own coffers, but often draining the wallets of friends and relatives too. Still, this was investment. And it was the safest kind of investment. As long as they didn’t ruin themselves with foolish schemes, running a fief would never lead to loss. The only ones still flush with cash were the capitalists. Yet even they were trembling in fear, keeping as low a profile as possible. Each one was terrified that the desperate Austrian government might catch them on some charge and confiscate their wealth outright. If all their wealth had been clean, of course they wouldn’t need to hide it. The problem was that in these times, almost every capitalist was tainted with blood. Investigate anyone, and nine times out of ten you’d find something. The Austrian government loved this game. Whenever money was short, they launched an “anti-corruption” drive, which conveniently dragged a group of capitalists into the net. Sometimes they didn’t even bother with subtlety and simply fixed their eyes on a few fat sheep to shear. Since Franz had ascended the throne, this had already happened three times. Each time, the capitalists were the leeks on the chopping block. And without fail, the ones who strutted the loudest were the first to be cut down. Especially those fools who tried to meddle in politics, every single one of them now had weeds growing on their graves. Franz himself had little to do with it. Behind the scenes, this was the nobles and the bourgeoisie locked in their endless struggle. To keep their political dominance, the noble class always made sure to suppress the rise of the bourgeoisie within the rules. This wasn’t unique to the Holy Roman Empire. The same battle was being waged across the entire European continent. The only difference was that the conservatives in the Empire were stronger, pressing down so hard that the bourgeoisie could barely breathe. Still, this struggle had little to do with ordinary people. Even most nobles and small-time capitalists weren’t qualified to take part in this. As for the great capitalists, as long as they stayed out of politics, they weren’t targeted. Unfortunately, many failed to realize that. They dreamed of building powerful political networks, only to end up triggering the nobles’ taboos and dragging their entire families into ruin. Fall once, learn the lesson. They might not have understood it consciously, but Franz had already drawn a red line for them. Cross it, and you die. After enough beatings from reality, the capitalists finally grew wiser. Most of them now believed that wealth itself was not the problem, but flaunting it was. So the trend shifted. No longer was “flaunting riches” in fashion. Instead, they embraced an Eastern wisdom: “wealth should not be shown.” Once the capitalists sensed that the Austrian government was short on funds, one after another began pretending to be poor. Many of them would rather stash their money in the basement than let the outside world know they were wealthy. Hoarding money was not a crime. It was their property, and they had the right to use it however they pleased. The Austrian government played by the rules. Legally owned private property was considered sacred and untouchable, so they could do whatever they liked with it. In a way, this secrecy from the capitalists actually helped the Austrian government stabilize its currency and weather the financial crisis. Otherwise, with the amount of money they had already issued, the value of the guilder should have collapsed long ago. Compared to the plummeting franc, the guilder, despite also being overissued, barely wavered in value. That in itself was nothing short of a miracle. The problem of insufficient currency circulation no longer existed in the age of paper money. If there was not enough, they could simply print more. As the circulation of the guilder expanded, increasing liquidity became natural. Just like the US dollar in later times, as long as the market retained confidence, the government could keep printing without hesitation. The era of massive military expansion had come to an end. Now the age of economic expansion was just beginning. As long as the Austrian government could hit one short-term goal, it would soon free itself from its current financial straits. By the mid-nineteenth century, the gold standard had gradually been established across continental Europe. International trade settlements relied on gold, with the pound and the guilder serving as supplementary means of exchange. In reality, aside from the reputation of being “international currencies,” both the guilder and the pound were not truly independent global currencies. Their status as settlement money still depended on their link to gold. Only by transforming the “gold–guilder system” into a purely “guilder system” could the guilder become a genuine international currency. At that point, they could follow the path of the Americans in later generations, getting rich simply by printing money. Chancellor Karl quickly spoke up, “Your Majesty, the value of the guilder depends not only on our credibility but more importantly on its tie to gold and its ability to be freely exchanged. If we abandon gold and remove the restraints of our reserves, then we could print as many guilders as we wanted. The outside world would never accept that. Worse, it could collapse overnight just like the franc.” This was inevitable. The Holy Roman Empire’s credibility was not low, but it was far from being universally adored. If the guilder were ever unlinked from gold, the British would immediately seize the opportunity and push the pound forward to capture the market. Seeing that the Chancellor had been misled by a superficial concern, Franz shook his head and explained, “This is a long-term goal. In the short term, the guilder naturally cannot be separated from gold. But aside from maintaining a fixed exchange ratio with gold, we can add more leverage. For example, grain settlement, oil settlement, and so on. In these areas, we hold absolute advantages. If we demand direct settlement in guilders, the resistance from other nations should not be too high. First, we establish the guilder’s settlement status across continental Europe, then gradually expand it worldwide. Once the overall situation is secure, we can take the final step.” Copying homework was hardly difficult. Even though Franz did not know all the details of how the Americans had built up the hegemony of the dollar in later times, he had heard enough about the tricks of pegging the dollar to gold and later breaking that link. Since it had worked in the original timeline, there was no reason not to follow the same playbook. Whatever small complications arose in between, if the Americans could handle them, then surely the Austrian government could as well. The Americans had grain dominance and oil dominance. The Holy Roman Empire possessed the same advantages. The chips on the table were evenly matched. In the short term, it was unrealistic to spread the guilder system across the entire globe. But implementing it on the European continent was entirely within reach. When selling monopolized goods like grain and oil, they could simply insist on payment in guilders. It was impossible for the European nations not to compromise. Europe was still the center of the world in this era. Once the guilder’s supremacy was established on the continent, spreading it overseas would become much easier.
*** https://postimg.cc/gallery/PwXsBkC (Maps of the current territories of the countries in this novel made by ScH)
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