On April 25, 1843, the yacht "Victoria and Albert" was launched, but the ship full of love suffered the deepest malice.

Many people, many forces, out of their own considerations, do not want Victoria to visit France, and even hope that she will die.

Britain and France were at this time suffering from the workers' movement, and it was not only these two countries, but most of the whole of Europe were in the midst of this contradiction.

The except, of course, Austria and Russia, the former because they are enjoying the dividends of scientific and technological progress, and the latter because they have no industry of their own.

The factories in Austria were also divided into royal and private.

The royal family's factories are high-tech, with high wages, few working hours, and relatively decent, but they are also extremely demanding, with so many rules and regulations that make people's scalps tingle, and at the same time clarify many obligations and responsibilities.

In fact, the production efficiency is much higher than that of private factories, but Franz did not kill all private factories with a single rod.

Because some things are so realistic that absolute equality is impossible.

The private factories in Austria were not fundamentally different from other private factories in the world at this time, the same inhumane and the same darkness, but the wages were slightly higher than those of the other German states.

This was, of course, not the conscience of the factory owners, but the fact that Austria had a state industrial subsidy. It's just that this subsidy is not paid to the factory, but to the workers.

Franz actually had its own agenda, and state-controlled trade unions were better served by maintaining social stability.

After all, Franz was destined to have some villain attributes from birth, which will not change because of what he wants to do, or what he does.

But Franz can decide what he wants and what he does.

Thanks to state subsidies and royal factories, the workers of the Austrian Empire lived a decent life, and even workers from many other countries came to work here.

This is mainly due to the fact that Austria is a traditional agricultural country, and farmers like to guard their own acres and thirds of land.

Small and medium-sized urban citizens prefer "decent jobs", such as clerks, small civil servants and small shopkeepers.

The Austrian Empire has been fairly stable over the years, so not many people want to work in factories, and even in the history of Austria's national factories had to temporarily shut down because they could not recruit workers.

The Austrian National Factory was established during the reign of Queen Theresa to increase revenues and solve financial difficulties, while at the same time gaining the support of the burghers.

But after a hundred years of development, the state factory has been completely corrupted, completely deviating from the original purpose of its establishment. Officials are corrupt at all levels, and instead of increasing government revenues, factories need state subsidies.

On the one hand, the management is bloated and overstaffed, while on the other hand, there are almost no workers in the factories. There are more than 100 officials in factories with more than a dozen people, but no one dares to do anything, because this cake involves the interests of many parties.

Cutting off people's financial means is like killing your parents. The cake of those with vested interests is the most dangerous, often requiring huge costs, even lives.

This is also one of the reasons why the vast majority of reformers in history have not died well.

To get back to the point, Austrians are not interested in factory work, but it is a very good place for German immigrants.

At this time, the idea of Greater Germany, which had just emerged, was very popular among foreign German immigrants, and the most crucial and central part of it was to rely on Austria to unify the German Confederation.

It was a sin to disturb the order of the Austrian Empire and to influence its development.

Of course, this was deliberately led by Franz, after all, he did not want to deal with nationalism at home and abroad.

As for Russia, after the establishment of trade relations with Austria, the pattern of the aristocracy was opened, and they felt that the development of industry was complete nonsense.

Because at this time Russia had almost no industrial base, and the industrial gap with Austria was exaggerated. The development of industry now requires not only a lot of manpower and material resources, but also enough time to keep up with Austria.

In fact, it was the Russians who misjudged the industrial level of the whole world because they saw the industrial level of the Austrian side.

At the same time, the Austrian Empire was industrially strong enough to meet the needs of Russia. The alliance between the two sides was relatively stable, and Austria had a large demand for raw materials from Russia.

This makes the Russians think that they do not need non-military industry for the time being, after all, it is easy to monopolize the import market, but it is not so easy to unify the domestic market.

Therefore, as long as Franz sent people to understand some of the important figures in Russia, they took the initiative to contact the Austrian side to become compradors.

Moreover, it is also faster to invest the money earned in agriculture than in industry. In addition, these compradors were originally large landowners, and as long as there was no industry in Russia, they could cut it twice.

At the same time, you can stabilize your strength, why not?

On the Russian side, not only the aristocracy was satisfied, but the government was also satisfied, because the increase in imports and exports made it easier for the state to collect taxes.

Russia's finance minister can't keep his mouth shut every time he sees the financial statements, and the numbers are so good.

Nicholas I was a military monarch and had a group of generals running the country. They only care about whether the country is strong and peaceful, and they do not care about the future of Russia.

Now the Russian treasury is slowly becoming more abundant, and the army is more powerful, much to the satisfaction of His Majesty the Tsar.

At this time, Nicholas I was most worried about the straits, because Britain never gave up the privileges of letting Russia surrender its prerogatives in the Bosphorus and Dardanelles.

As soon as the Ottoman Empire was seduced by Britain to cut off the straits, trade between Russia and Austria would be interrupted, and Russia would suffer huge losses.

There are two ways to solve this problem, one is to build a direct railway to Austria on the European continent, which will not only cost people and money, but also cause hidden dangers to homeland security, and most importantly, Austria will not necessarily agree.

The other option was to bring the Ottomans to complete submission and Russia to control the Black Sea straits.

In fact, Nicholas I had thought this way for a long time, and the great nobles of the country were very supportive of this.

It's not that the aristocracy suddenly remembered the thousand-year-old dream of the Third Roman Empire, but that there were vast tracts of land around the Black Sea suitable for growing cotton and tea.

And both cotton and tea were very popular commodities in Europe at this time, and they could almost be regarded as hard currency.

Yes, at this time, Russia was still a major tea producer in Europe and had a long history. It has been cultivated since the 17th century, but it has not been accepted by the European mainstream due to its poor quality.

It was not until after 1817 that the good varieties were purchased from the Qing Dynasty and planted near the Black Sea at lower latitudes, that there was a modern Russian "black tea".

As a result, the Russians began to ponder the Ottomans around the Black Sea with great intensity.

(End of chapter)