Life of Being a Crown Prince in France

Lavallette immediately responded:

“Your Highness, after Vienna removed the domestic tariffs and guild system, the merchants immediately stopped funding the Liberals.

“The civil servant selection mechanism advocated by Metternich also kept lawyers and journalists busy preparing for the civil service exams.

“Even the serfs are not causing much trouble now. Only a few radical republicans and anti-Secret Police factions are still active.”

He glanced at the Crown Prince and suggested, “Given the current situation, I think the possibility of internal chaos erupting in Austria is not high anymore, perhaps we shouldn’t continue investing funds.”

Joseph, however, smiled: “No, now is the best time for you to stir up the Austrian situation.”

The Director of the Security Bureau was taken aback: “But…”

Joseph said, “Metternich has merely covered Austria’s internal ravines and quagmires with a layer of snow, but that doesn’t mean their path is truly smooth.

“Those old nobility, guild members, tax farmers, local chambers of commerce, they are not doing anything now because Metternich has expanded the scale of the Secret Police threefold, but that doesn’t mean they’ve truly accepted the status quo.

“In fact, Metternich is piling up several barrels of gunpowder inside Austria’s big house.

“Once a spark appears somewhere, the explosive force will be far greater than originally.”

Metternich is indeed a rare political genius in Austrian history and has keenly identified obstacles to Austria’s development, quickly devising countermeasures.

However, he has not touched the root of the problem, or rather, subconsciously, he doesn’t dare to touch those roots.

Take the tax farmers group, for example. Large and small tax farmers plus their tax collector officials and thugs number seventy to eighty thousand people and control massive wealth.

If you don’t first clean up this interest group, announcing the end of their livelihood will make them comply willingly — that’s a delusion!

Lavallette suddenly realized: “Your Highness, I will immediately send people to contact these forces, persuading them to move about adequately.”

In the Security Bureau’s context, “activities” represents an uprising.

Joseph shook his head: “That will only keep Austria’s Secret Police occupied for a while.

“We need a bigger spark.

“In fact, Metternich’s reforms have one extremely fatal mistake, which is ‘Germanization.’ This will severely anger all nations outside of Austria proper, especially Hungary.”

He understood very well that Hungary’s cultural cohesion was very strong, always maintaining its own Congress, whose customs were very different from Vienna.

This time, Metternich demanded all Hungarian government departments, courts, military, and even ordinary schools must use German, absolutely touching the reverse scale of Hungarians!

At the same time, Metternich must limit the Hungarian Congress meetings, seriously offending the top nobility.

Vienna’s unified management of Hungarian tariffs and currency not only offended Hungarian nobility but also crossed the capitalist red line.

Historically, it was precisely these “strategically farsighted” reform policies enforced for over 30 years that successfully pushed out the “Pest Uprising,” with Hungary declaring independence.

Subsequently, the Hungarian Army repeatedly defeated Vienna’s suppression forces, forcing the Emperor of Austria to seek aid from Russia. Eventually, with the help of 140,000 Russian troops, the Hungarian uprising was defeated.

Even if independence wasn’t achieved successfully, Austria, bloodied at the time, had to accept several favorable conditions for Hungary, such as greater autonomy and Hungarian as the sole official language.

Right now, although Metternich’s reforms have been implemented for a short time, Joseph had already made the Security Bureau do “pre-study” —

After the “Exiled Kuruts” organization received stable funding from the “mysterious Venetian merchants who sympathize with Hungarians,” they moved their headquarters back to Hungary, expanding their members to three or four thousand.

At the same time, the French Chamber of Commerce reached secret trade agreements with Buda, Pest, and other places, with the annual import of fur, peppers, and draft horses totaling over 1.8 million francs.

Moreover, after Charles’ Iroquois Treasures Company sparked a tobacco craze in France, Hungarian farmers began secretly growing tobacco in large quantities, selling nearly 400,000 francs annually.

France, then, sells cheap textiles, furniture, drugs, and machinery products to Hungary. Because all are smuggled from Serbia and other places… no, it should be “special trade,” tariffs are zero, leading to very cheap prices, welcomed by Hungarians from nobility to serfs.

The back-and-forth trade between both sides has exceeded 4 million francs. And at this time, Vienna claims it will control Hungarian trade…

Joseph felt that as long as the Security Bureau operated effectively, making the Pest Uprising happen decades earlier wasn’t impossible.

Once Lavallette carefully noted everything down, Joseph remembered another matter: “By the way, when is Austria’s army entering the St. Gallen Pass?”

“It’s supposed to be these days, Your Highness, about 6,000 people.”

(Today’s state is not great, more than 3 hours only coded this much… The little author strives to recover status as soon as possible!)