The Luxembourg agreement reads as follows:

1. The Kingdom of Belgium was downgraded to the Grand Duchy of Belgium.

2. For example, return the Flemish region to the Netherlands.

3. For example, return West Luxembourg to the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg.

4. The Grand Duchy of Belgium is under the protection of France.

5. The provinces of Namur and Liège, which were originally part of Belgium, were merged into the Duchy of Liège, and the Emperor of Austria concurrently served as the duke.

Although the British delegation refused to sign the contract, it did not affect the mood of the representatives of the other participating countries. After the signing ceremony, a grand ball was held at the Grand Duke's Palace.

Britain's diplomatic defeat did not dampen Palmerston's mood at the ball. However, the Whigs did not have such a good time, and this incident directly led to the fall of the Viscount of Melbourne's cabinet and the return of the Tory Party to power.

This is not the first time Robert Peel has come to power, but his poor personal relationship with the Queen has led to several serious ups and downs.

Fortunately, the self-confident Whigs were playing this time, and the merchants of the country paid too much price for the good post-war interests painted by this group of politicians, and if they did not start a war themselves, Britain would probably fall back into the Great Depression of 1837.

(As mentioned earlier in the book, the stock market crash in London, England, was caused by the U.S. housing crisis.) ）

But the location and the target have become two major problems for the new cabinet. France, the German Confederation or Russia? Obviously, without allies to rely on, it is difficult to face these formidable and intractable enemies on their own.

The United States may be a good choice, as the two sides have a long-standing territorial dispute over the Oregon and U.S.-Canada borders.

However, as a supplier of cotton raw materials to the United Kingdom, a rash war with it would affect the interests of many local merchants, which is really more than worth the loss.

Unfortunately, the economic crisis erupted before the British were still struggling to find a breakthrough.

The factories blindly produced in large quantities, resulting in a surplus of products, and the merchants and capitalists who suffered losses naturally tried to dispose of their goods at low prices, which indirectly led to the collapse of profits in many industries.

Commodities do not make money, and it is an immutable truth that factories should lay off people. Now that the workers are unemployed, the capacity of the market for consumption has shrunk on a large scale.

This vicious circle is not the first time for Britain; Traditionally, it is experienced almost every five to ten years.

Kingdom of Prussia, Berlin

This joint operation in the lowlands gave the Prussian officers a deep appreciation of the terrible nature of rail transport.

Assuming that the enemy was not France but Austria, it was not uncommon for the latter's soldiers and supplies to be transported to any point on the Austro-Prussian border through internal lines, even directly under the city of Berlin.

In order to avoid theft, Frederick Wilhelm IV, at the instigation of a group of Junker officers, moved the railway station not far from the center of Berlin out of the city, and surrounded it with bunker barricades.

Of course, compared with Prussia, which was still relatively broad in depth, the small countries within the German Confederation could not find a gourd scoop. Some persecution-stricken kings even wished to tear down their own railroads to feel at ease.

They feared that one day hordes of troops from Austria and other states would come to them without saying a word, and the only way to greet them would be to waive white flags.

After hearing that the Prussians had moved the railway station in the center of their capital ten kilometers north, the states within the German Confederation began a vigorous renovation of the railway station in their capital in the following days.

However, a few small states with poor financial resources and overstretched troops choose to lie flat, after all, it is better to make money honestly if they are not able to protect themselves, right?

Of course, this decision by the governments of the states caused great inconvenience to their citizens, who had to walk several kilometers to reach the new station, but it also unexpectedly set fire to another industry, the public carriage.

To put it simply, the public carriage can be seen as the bus of the moment; It is different from modern taxis, which are expensive and the phenomenon of ripping off customers is more common. Contrary to the modern imagination of the vulnerable, almost every coachman carries a small weapon such as a pistol or dagger, because they often have to deal with homeless people and wild animals that have strayed into the city; In the early days of urbanization in the 18th and 19th centuries, the probability of people and beasts meeting could not be ignored.

As early as 1662, the famous French mathematician and physicist Blaise Pascal tried his hand at running a public carriage. He was authorized by Louis XIV to set up a public carriage company to operate five routes.

This great scientist set several rules for the public transport industry across the ages, and people are still following them today, more than 300 years later.

1. The route taken by the vehicle from one station to another is fixed.

2. Regardless of the use of the carriage, even if it is empty, the vehicle must depart according to the "specified time".

3. Each passenger only needs to buy a ticket for himself, and the fare remains the same.

The remaining two have undergone some changes over time.

4. The route of the "Tour de Paris" is divided into several sections, and you need to pay once for each section.

(A road section is a large stretch of road that includes several stops, which in this case means transfer.) ）

5. In order to avoid the waste of black-box trading operations and exchange time, please refuse to use gold to pay for tickets.

Pascal's public carriage business was a great success in the beginning, and it did solve part of the problem of traffic congestion in Paris.

But there has never been a shortage of examples in history of bad money driving out good money, and France could have been ahead of the times.

Just as they beheaded Lavoisier, one of the greatest scientists in human history, during the Revolution, they offended the carriage traders and the so-called elite because Pascal and his company gave the commoners the opportunity to ride in the same carriage as the aristocracy.

Members of the Parliament of Paris and the nobility insisted on exercising privilege, advocating the prohibition of "soldiers, squires, servants, and other inferior retinues" from being treated on an equal footing with the upper classes.

Since then, the carriages in Paris have lost a large part of their passenger base, and the decline in passenger traffic has forced them to continue operating by raising fares.

This goes against the original intentions of its founders and makes the public transport increasingly unpopular. Eventually, Pascal's public carriage disappeared around 1677.

It was not until 1828 that Paris and London, the two largest cities in Europe, had to openly seek solutions to the problem of increasingly urbanized traffic congestion.

And 200 years ago, Pascal's plan was put forward again, and the public carriage returned to people's attention.

At this time, however, in the large cities of the German Confederation, including Berlin and Munich and Dresden, public transport was still on foot and by horse-drawn carriages. Vienna, the second largest city in Europe after Paris and London, is not included.

In a sense, the war gave rise to the development of public transport in Germany. Although the public carriage was an outdated vehicle in Franz's eyes, there was really no alternative to it in the short term.

However, it is not difficult to make Austrian horse-drawn carriages more competitive, after all, rubber tires are obviously much more advanced than the wooden tires that are common in the streets.

At present, solid rubber tires are still expensive high-end goods, and only the nobles of various countries can afford to use them. Developing pneumatic tires was not a difficult task for Franz and his scientific team.

With the current industrial strength of the empire, it is still easy to produce pneumatic rubber tires.

However, in order to minimize waste and dominate the market, the world's first pneumatic rubber tire company "Michelin" was launched at Franz's suggestion.

That's right! Go the way of the French and let them have no way out!

(Michelin is a French brand.) ）

(End of chapter)