"Metternich! You visionary fellow! Is Belgrade so easy to take? Who gave you the right to sign such a stupid treaty! ”

Although Count Korolav was a Croat, he had no interest in his suffering compatriots.

Count Korolav, a Great German, was now more worried about the targeted measures taken by Russia after Austria got Belgrade and Bosnia.

He felt that he would be able to bring Metternich down this time, but what he didn't know was that what he had just said had offended the Austrian Imperial Government.

In fact, as the Count of Korolov feared, the Tsar, although he ostensibly agreed to the deal, made contact with the Prussian side.

For the support of the tsar, William IV, of course, was willing to accept it. Although the Tsar once plucked Prussia once in the food crisis, and even indirectly led to the death of Wilhelm III, Frederick Wilhelm IV was in dire need of allies under the strong pressure of Austria's evil neighbor.

On the other hand, as long as Britain and France did not continue to oppose Russian hegemony in the Straits, there was no need for Russia to maintain its alliance with Austria.

After all, the Austrians took the land of the Slavs, and as the emperor of the Third Rome, sooner or later he would recover all the lands of the Slavs.

The ambitions of Nicholas I were never just about hegemony in the Black Sea.

Nicholas I nominally wanted to restore Constantinople and fulfill the dream of the Third Roman Empire for nearly 500 years, but in reality he wanted the entire Balkans and all the lands bordering Russia.

When Alexander I was still in power, Nicholas proposed a "West Slavic Plan" to create a Slavic empire from the Elbe to the Near East, from the Adriatic to the Arctic Ocean, but it was rejected due to madness.

Now that Nicholas I has become tsar, there is no one left to veto his proposals.

In order to realize the West Slavic plan, at the behest of the Tsar, experts from St. Petersburg and Moscow, in cooperation with the Special Third Section, prepared a pamphlet and distributed it everywhere.

They advocated the creation of a pan-Slavic alliance to confront Europe. In the name of liberating the Slavic brothers and protecting the Orthodox Christians from persecution, Russia brainwashed the people of the Balkans.

There are six core elements in this booklet.

First, all Slavs must be "liberated", and the regions in which they live should be integrated with Russia.

Second, this alliance must include Constantinople, along with the Sea of Marmara, the Bosphorus and the Adriatic Sea around it.

Thirdly, Constantinople was to serve as the third capital of the Union.

Fourth, the Pan-Slavic Union had to be loyal to the Tsar, who was the head of the Union, and the other kingdoms were ruled by a monarch chosen by the Tsar.

Fifth, the Union will include eight kingdoms: Tsarist Russia, Bohemia-Moravia-Slovakia, Serb-Croat-Slovenia, Bulgaria, Romania, Hungary, Greece, and Constantinople.

Sixth, Poland, Albania, Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Belarus and Ukraine should be directly subordinate to Russia.

Although this plan seemed ridiculous at the time, Russia never abandoned it for hundreds of years after it was proposed.

Corresponding to the West Slavic plan, there was also the East Slavic plan, but it involved some areas and will not be discussed in this book.

In order to realize the glory and dreams of the Romanovs, there must be a war between Russia and Austria.

Moldova and Wallachia, the Danube principalities, were already Russian protectorates at this time, and were separated by the Carpathian Mountains, so the tsar did not think that Austria would attack these two regions.

Therefore, Austria had only one direction to the east, and Belgrade, the key to the Balkans, had already fallen into its hands, so Serbia became the last barrier to prevent the Austrian Empire from encroaching on the Balkans.

Naturally, Russia will provide it with military training and sell it advanced weapons and technology, but it would be naïve for Serbia alone to try to hold Austria at bay.

Therefore, Russia should vigorously support Prussia and make it an important force to contain Austria.

Although the Austrians, by their actions and words, told the world that their center of gravity was on the Italian peninsula, the Tsar would not believe this, he only trusted his own judgment.

The short-lived alliance between Russia and Austria was nothing more than a deal between Russia, which wanted to dominate the strait, and Austria, which wanted to seize Belgrade.

Historically, Russia's "military aid" to the Ottomans in 1833 effectively turned the Black Sea into an inland lake for Russia.

In the secret terms of the Russian-Turkish alliance treaty, the Ottoman Empire recognized that the Black Sea straits were open to Russian warships, and blockaded the Dardanelles in the interests of Russia, prohibiting the fleets of any other country from entering the Black Sea straits at any time and under any pretext.

Coupled with the misdirection of Nesserlov's pro-British faction, Russia always believed that they had the possibility of peace with Britain and joint hegemony, and Austria was their worst enemy.

In this life, under the intervention of Franz, Britain failed to get Russia to abandon the "Russo-Turkish Alliance", so Russia still maintained hegemony in the Black Sea and control of the straits.

This led the Russians to take it for granted that the British were no longer their main threat in the Near East, but that Austria, a traditional land power like them, was.

So they began to defend Austria strictly, but the British, who had not achieved their goal, were not satisfied, and expelled the French forces, achieving only half of their goal.

What the British wanted was hegemony in the Near East, and neither France nor Russia could stay, and historically attacking Austria was nothing more than a convenient one.

Now that the Egyptian navy has been destroyed, it is a matter of time before surrender is a matter of time, the influence of the French in the Near East is basically zero, and only Russia can compete with Britain for hegemony in the Near East.

As for the so-called Russian-Turkish alliance, it is nothing more than a piece of waste paper that can be discarded at any time.

I'm afraid that only the Russians themselves believe that this paper covenant will work.

Historically, under the skillful operation of Palmerston, the London Conference was used to successfully formulate the Straits Convention, which abolished the privileges of the Russians in the Bosphorus and Dardanelles.

Instead, the Black Sea straits were placed under the supervision of the international community, which directly buried the efforts of the Russians for nearly a hundred years, while also leaving behind a bunch of controversial issues that eventually became one of the triggers for the Crimean War.

Canning, who was interim foreign secretary, was not as radical as Palmerston, but he was well aware of the Russian threat during his long time in the Ottoman Empire.

If Britain wants to maintain its hegemony in the world's oceans, Russia must not be allowed to rush out of the Black Sea. However, the top priority is to force Egypt to surrender, and as for unilateral sanctions against Russia, it is impossible to do so, and the best way is to convene a five-nation conference again to discuss how to deal with Russia.

(End of chapter)