The territory and population of the Kingdom of Sardinia were similar to those of the Kingdom of Venezia, and the overall strength could not compete with the Austrian Empire, but it was not in accordance with the rules to eliminate him.

At the Congress of Vienna, the Emperor of Austria won the titles of the principalities of Parma, Piacenza and Guasta for his daughter, Marie Louisa of Napoleon, but in the end only one Parma was retained. The heir has not yet been established, because the identity of Queen Mary is very embarrassing, he is the princess of Austria, and the queen of Napoleon, and he also gave birth to Napoleon a son King of Rome, this heir cannot be determined, because the King of Rome is the first heir, so everyone defaults that Queen Mary can only rule for one generation.

But the geographical location of this Parma is very important, she is the Austrian-ruled Kingdom of Venicia to the north, the Kingdom of Sardinia to the west, and the Duchy of Modena to the south, Parma is sandwiched between three territories, although there is no access to the sea, but the Duchy of Modena happens to be a narrow territory between the Kingdom of Sardinia in the north and the Grand Duchy of Tuscany in the south, which occupies a small part of the Mediterranean coast and has a port called La Spezia.

This Duchy of Modena, later in the Congress of Vienna, divided the territory of Guasta from Marie and incorporated it into the Duchy of Modena, while Piacenza was directly ruled by Austria. However, this Duchy of Modena is not an outsider, and the Grand Duke of Modena is from the Habsburg family of Austria. This is an old tradition, and the Habsburgs are good at obtaining land by marriage. The last Duke of Modena, Ercole III, was the heir, and his only daughter, Maria Beatrice, married the son of Archduke Ferdinand Karl of the Habsburgs of Austria, and his son Francesco succeeded to the throne.

Modena is also ruled by the Habsburgs, so it is as pro-Austria as Parma, ruled by an Austrian princess, while the Grand Duchy of Tuscany in the south is ruled by the Spanish Bourbons, who came from France and have always been pro-French.

The decision to provide Austria with a loan to build a railway connecting Milan, Parma and La Spezia was not long and difficult to build, and Austria could raise funds, but this was a political gesture that meant that Britain supported Austria's expansion into the Mediterranean.

Moreover, Britain told Austria that it would support Austria's annexation of Parma to the Kingdom of Venilla after the death of Archduchess Mary of Parma.

Northern Italy has always been the hunting ground for France and Austria, the Bourbon and the Habsburgs have been fighting here for hundreds of years, and they have always won and lost each other, and finally because of the rise of Napoleon, France completely annexed Northern Italy, and because of Napoleon's defeat, Austria seized Northern Italy.

Now that Britain began to support Austria, it was bound to cause opposition from France, and Britain was not worried about France's opposition?

Of course, it's good not to object, but the problem is that the French are increasingly on the side of China and begin to build more and more ironclad ships, France is competing for hegemony in the western Mediterranean, and Britain is unable to confront China and France in the Mediterranean region at the same time in the era of ironclad ships, so the introduction of Austria to balance France is also a diplomatic strategy.

The last world war, which lasted for four years, is over, but the diplomatic war between countries has never been extinguished.

The British can pull allies everywhere to contain China, and China's diplomatic circles are also wine bags and rice bags, and the diplomatic confrontation with Britain again and again, China's new generation of diplomatic technocrats has long grown up.

The British rallied European powers against China, and Chinese diplomats rallied these countries against Britain, or at least remained neutral. Since China's influence only touches the Black Sea and can extend to the Mediterranean region through the Black Sea, the diplomatic front is mainly around the Black Sea and the Mediterranean region.

Like the British, Chinese diplomats valued Austria, a country that expanded into the Black Sea and the Adriatic and Mediterranean Seas, like a trident in the Balkans and Italy. In recent years, Austria's national power has grown rapidly, and because it has not been involved in large-scale wars, it has repeatedly picked up leaks in the wars. Not only is the country second only to Russia in terms of size, but its population has begun to keep pace with the population of France, which is stagnant. After the Napoleonic Wars, the Archduchy of Austria and the Kingdom of Bohemia developed rapidly under the rule of industry, the silk weaving industry and woolen industry in the Vienna area of Austria developed rapidly, and the glass and metallurgical industries in Bohemia were well-known in Europe.

Austria attaches great importance to education, the Grand Duchy of Austria and the Kingdom of Bohemia have almost universally made education compulsory, and the literacy rate in other places has also risen significantly.

China also supported Austria, and Chinese diplomats combined the common interests of China and Austria to attack Britain. The biggest card is the right of passage through the Turkish Straits, Britain has always supported Turkey to have absolute control over the Straits, in the past it was to restrict the entry and exit of Russian warships in and out of the Mediterranean, and now China has entered the Black Sea, replacing the Russian power, and there is also a need to enter and exit the Mediterranean, because the Ottoman Empire stood on the right side in this war, and finally not only took advantage of the situation to get the Crimean Peninsula, but also retained the traditional power, control of the straits.

The Chinese Black Sea Fleet has a need for free access to the Black Sea and the Mediterranean, and the Austrian Black Sea Fleet also has this demand, but Britain is against it.

China and Austria put pressure on the Ottoman Empire to sign a Straits Convention with the Ottoman Empire, redefining the Straits as an international waterway, through which merchant ships of any country could freely pass through the strait, and warships of countries bordering the Black Sea could freely enter and exit the strait.

China can also acquiesce in Austria's expansion into the Balkans, and even if Austria occupies the strait area, China does not care, as long as it is open to traffic, it can accept it.

China neither opposed nor supported Austria's expansion in the Mediterranean, because Austria's expansion direction was in the western Mediterranean and did not affect China's interests.

Austria, as a big country, is swimming between China and Britain, and is fishing in troubled waters like a small country, which is indeed despicable and ridiculed, and ridiculed that the Habsburgs could only get married.

But the Austrians did get the benefits, in the history of Austria, the industrial development has always been slower than the northern rival Prussia, not that the Austrians do not pay attention to industry, nor are they conservative in thought, in terms of education level, Austria implemented compulsory education earlier than Prussia, in terms of culture, Vienna is recognized as the music capital of Europe, which is not even comparable to Paris. Some people say that it is mainly because of the serious national problem in Austria, which affects the economy, but in the early stage of the national problem, it only existed in the struggle for power and profit of the upper aristocratic elite, and in the absence of a national war, it is difficult to prove that national estrangement will affect the economy, and it is possible that there are close economic ties between the two enemy countries, let alone between different nationalities within the same country.

By comparing it with Prussia, some of the results are actually quite simple. Mainly limited by resources and markets, in terms of resources, Prussia obtained the Ruhr region of Saxony after the Napoleonic Wars, where coal mines are extremely abundant, coal is the food of the Industrial Revolution, so Prussia can easily establish an advantage in the era of steam engines. The other is the problem of the market, although the Austrian Empire has always had a larger population than Prussia, a larger territory than Prussia, and a relatively larger domestic market, both countries have established trade barriers through tariffs to protect their own industries. But the Austrian market has always been inferior to Prussia.

One was the establishment of a customs union in Prussia, which unified the market with the other North German states and allowed Prussian industry to enjoy a larger economic hinterland. Second, Prussia's topography has too much advantage, on the one hand, Prussia's territory is mainly on the Bode Plain, a flat river, although the military is very disadvantaged, must rely on a high degree of militarization to protect themselves, gave birth to Prussian militarism, but economically it is very advantageous, before the railway era, the Rhine, the Elbe River let Prussia dominated the North Germany commodity transportation cost arable land, after the arrival of the railway era, the advantage is more obvious, The cost of building a railway on the plain is much easier than that of building a railway in the Austrian Alps, and the construction of the railway costs arable land, and the freight arable land is built, and the construction speed is faster, so the development of railways in Prussia is much faster than that in Austria.

Railways, rivers, flat terrain, and abundant coal mines gave Prussia the opportunity of the industrial era, and Prussia was better off the beaten track when both countries had no overseas colonies, and when all countries practiced protectionism. Later, it was even more advantageous that Britain opened its markets and began to promote free trade just after Prussia began to implement the Industrial Revolution, and Prussia and later Germany obtained a good market for industrial goods. And because of the Rhine, the Elbe and the geographical location, Germany has more convenient transportation to and from the British market and the British colonial market. Before and after World War I, the British even discovered that German products were exported more in their colonies than British products.

In other words, after the 1830s, the free trade system implemented by the British allowed Germany to obtain a world market on the premise of protecting its own domestic market.

Austria is not so lucky, of course, Austrian goods in the British market can also enter, but it does not have a cost advantage at all, join Austria to export goods to the British mainland, before the era of railways, Austria has almost no access to the sea, the navigation conditions of the Danube are not as good as the Rhine, and the lower Danube region, in the original history was not in the hands of Austria at all, and in the Ottoman Empire and Russia, it was later controlled by independent Romania and Bulgaria, and Austria occupied the plain of the middle reaches of the Danube, But it was also sealed here.

After the age of railways, Austria could export goods through Venice, but Venice was not ideally located in a semi-enclosed Adriatic sea, from which Austrian goods could be exported, bypassing the entire Italian peninsula and crossing the entire Mediterranean, before they could be exported to the British market. Moreover, the industrial areas of Austria are mainly in the Archduchy of Austria and the Kingdom of Bohemia, and the terrain of the Archduchy of Austria is similar to that of Switzerland, both of which are located in the Alps. The cost of building a railway is high, and the cost of transportation is also high.

These unfavorable geographical conditions have made Austria's industrial development technically not problematic, and Austria is not inferior in terms of electricity, locomotives, and mechanical products. But because there was no market, Austrian products were exported similar to the luxury goods that served the aristocracy in France, expensive velvets, bohemian crystals, and so on. The cotton textile industry can only produce and sell itself, and once the bulk consumer goods industry cannot develop, it will have a great impact on the industrialization of a country.

Therefore, the industrial level of Austria has never caught up with that of Germany and France, and it is only stronger than Russia, which is geographically worse and has a worse level of management and education.

But this era is suddenly different, China's territory has expanded to the Black Sea, Austria has also expanded to the Black Sea by chance, and the Austrians have solved the problem of navigation of the Danube River over the years, spending huge energy to dredge this river.

So the Austrians found that they could communicate directly with the Chinese market through the waterway. This market that they have obtained is larger than that obtained by the Customs Union in the North, and larger than the British market. And they are the only country around the Black Sea that has a developed industry.

What will happen to Austria's development, even Zhou Lang could not foresee.