Austria's main line of the Neletania railway is almost complete, and people can take a train directly from Tuscany in Italy to Hamburg in North Germany, a journey that used to take months and now takes 30 hours.

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

This gave the Austrian side a huge advantage, and the areas through which the railway passed were full of Austrian goods and cultural imprints.

The locals began to learn South German and even Viennese.

Viennese is a mixture of German-based languages, with Czech in the kitchen, Polish for ordering and calling waiters, Ukrainian for swearing, Latin for church visits, and occasionally some South Slavic and Gypsy.

(Croatian, Serbian, Slovenian, 95% similarity at the time)

This greatly accelerated the pace of national integration in Germany, Austria, and Italy, and the traditional aristocracy and local powers in Italy were severely affected, and the dependence of the emerging bourgeoisie on the Austrian government was greatly strengthened.

At this time, Austria did not adopt a policy of appeasement towards northern Italy, as it has historically done, nor did it adopt an excessively aggressive policy of national supremacy to forcibly Austrian the region, but the local forces that openly clamed for independence and tried to humiliate and beat soldiers and officials were dealt with according to the law.

Small merchants and capitalists were already oppressed and exploited by local powers, and the actions of the imperial government happened to protect their interests.

The taxes levied by the state are simply not worth mentioning when compared with the exorbitant taxes and miscellaneous taxes set by the local governments. Naturally, there was no reason why these people should not support Austrian rule, after all, it was only the landlords and gatekeepers who suffered from the abolition of tariffs.

As for the serfs and laborers, they regarded the empire as a savior.

At this time in the Austrian Empire, the Vienna-Prague-Dresden railway, the Vienna-Linz-Salzburg-Munich railway, the Vienna-Graz-Udine-Venice-Milan-Parma-Modena-Lucca-Florence railway, and the Vienna-Brno-Lviv-Krakow railway had been completed.

The only one that is not open to traffic is Graz-Ljubljana-Trieste, where the terrain is too dangerous to be solved by more investment.

The first phase of the Austrian Empire's railway work has been largely completed, and the main goal of the second phase is to continue the refinement of the Neletania railway network and to connect Zagreb and Belgrade at the same time.

Salzburg – Innsbruck – Feldkisch – Bregenz, Salzburg – Bischofshofen – Celz Valley – Graz.

Linz - Graz, Vienna - Brook Andermore - Klagenfurt - Villach - Udine, Brück Andermore - Graz, Innsbruck - Bolena - Udine - Milan.

Prague – Brno – Přerov – Ostrava – Katowice, Brno – Brzeclav – Vienna, Prague – Plzeň – Domážice – Munich, Prague – Ustí – Dresden, Prague – Wrocław

The total length was about 15,000 kilometers and was expected to be completed in 25 years, which was a very reasonable expectation at the time, after all, the construction rate of the Austrian Empire was about 300 kilometers per year.

However, these are basically smoke bombs released by Franz, and the only major routes to be built are the Trieste-Zagreb-Belgrade line, which is expected to be completed in five years and has a total planned length of 3,000 kilometers.

This would ensure that Belgrade would always be under Austrian control, and that in the event of war, it would be easy to send troops and supplies, both by water and by rail.

In fact, at this time, the length of the railways of the Austrian Empire was already dozens of times that of history, and the excessively dense railway network was too early for the fledgling Austrian Empire, mainly because the yield was too low, which could easily lead to the emergence of a railway bubble.

Infrastructure development needs to keep pace with economic development, but investment in infrastructure should not be too much. The length of the railways of the Austrian Empire was calculated by experts on the basis of the speed of development of the country at this time and the volume of goods.

Franz was afraid that their numbers were too conservative, and he increased them by 50% on that basis, after all, the development of this era was far faster than people imagined at that time.

However, later developments showed that Franz should have built the railroad according to the plan he had originally made, because the country was developing faster than people imagined at the time, but also beyond Franz's own imagination.

At this time, the powerful railways, industrial capacity, cheap raw materials, and the unprecedentedly large market, combined with Franz's monopoly plan, and the profits of the colonies and multinational corporations, gave the Austrian Empire a qualitative leap in finances.

At 310 million florins, it is more than twice as many as the Austrian Empire for the same period. The salaries of Austrian officials, which had not been raised for 30 years, finally moved once, and the annual income of each person increased by 10 florins.

This may be a drop in the bucket for high-level civil servants or those living in big cities, but it is a precious reward for those who live in the countryside, borders, and mountains.

However, Austria's top brass still looks like they love the bankers who come to collect debts, and they have been in debt for decades anyway, and they have long been used to it.

The unwilling bankers, using all kinds of means, finally bribed Count Korollov to get a reply that they would only pay new debts and not old ones.

Although disappointed, they also had to accept this reality.

In fact, the purpose of repaying new debts is to borrow more debts, and as for old debts, it depends on luck and mood.

Of course, this is not the result of the bankers' bribery of Count Korollov, but the legitimate embezzlement of the old slippery man by taking advantage of poor information.

In fact, although the financial revenues of the Austrian Empire have increased significantly compared to the same period in history, they are still too small for this country that is taking off.

Various departments are grabbing the budget, transport, education, commerce, army, navy, internal affairs, justice, secret police, postal, industry, agriculture, mining, fishing.

Every department has its own reasons, and they all have to do it. Every annual budget meeting of the empire is like a battle, and in the past, when the country ran out of money, various departments were in a state of zombies, one by one.

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

According to the statistics of the last meeting, the budget of the Austrian Empire was at least 600 million florins a year, which was only obtained after the budgets of many departments were cut in half.

According to this calculation, there is still a deficit of more than 300 million yuan in a year, and this day cannot be lived.

Prince Metternich and Count Korolav had their heads in a hurry, Archduke Louis was leisurely drinking tea on the side, and Archduke Franz Karl's seat was still vacant.

Ferdinand I was still busy eating dumplings, and the immortal Baron kept his mouth shut and said nothing.

(End of chapter)