Most of the library's collection came from the Bruges Public Library. When the Austrians withdrew, they took everything they could carry. Empty bookshelves did not look very appealing, so the local officials moved in books from elsewhere to fill them.
After a brief tour, Georgiana and Grégoire left the library and strolled through a corridor lined with countless plaster statues and sculptures.
This Summer Palace had once served as the headquarters of the Austrian East India Company, but it went bankrupt after operating for only ten years. The artworks the Austrians considered valuable had all been moved away, leaving only these behind. Even earlier, during the reign of Austria's Charles VI, because the emperor valued the navy and encouraged seafaring and overseas trade, Thor Garden, southwest of Jupiter Palace, had served as the offices of Austria's maritime department. They had withdrawn from there as well.
In fact, trade between Ostend and Guangzhou had once been extremely prosperous. It drove up the shares of the Ostend East India Company and sent Amsterdam's East India Company shares falling. But Ostend stood on the same level as London, with only a channel between them, so both Britain and the Netherlands regarded Ostend as a tremendous threat.
There was a saying at the time: destroy this cockatrice whilst young. It meant strangling the monster snake while it was still young.
Although Bruges had historically risen because of the Hanseatic League, while Ostend had merely risen alongside it as a port of military and strategic value, Ostend's influence now seemed to have quietly surpassed Bruges due to East Indies trade and the decline of the Hanseatic League.
Ostend was an excellent deepwater port. Under ordinary circumstances, it could accommodate large ships with a draft of four meters, and at high tide, vessels in the seven-meter