Being reduced to sitting at the same negotiating table with the Habsburg Monarchy and the New Austria Kingdom—such "tiny countries" that had sprung up from who knew where—was a tremendous humiliation for France.
But France was now facing a life-or-death crisis, so it could only swallow this insult.
The world's gaze was fixed on the Eurasian continent. France's predicament in West Africa did not cause much of a stir, and even Britain, France's "inseparable" ally in West Africa, made no response at this time.
After all, in theory, the expansion of the Habsburg Monarchy and the New Austria Kingdom had shattered the stable order that West Africa had maintained for so long.
Since the Berlin Conference of 1884, when the European powers had established their spheres of influence and colonial systems in West Africa, the colonial order there had seen little change for nearly half a century.
The sole exception had been Germany's West African colonies before the First World War, which had passed into East Africa's hands.
Yet although East Africa had acquired Germany's sphere of influence in West Africa, no one could criticize its methods. The two nations had completed the West African colonial transaction through fair negotiations.
This expansion by the Habsburg Monarchy and the New Austria Kingdom was entirely different.
The two kingdoms of the House of Habsburg had not even bothered to invent a "reasonable" excuse before brazenly launching war against a French colony.
In peaceful times in Europe, France and Britain, the two greatest stakeholders in West Africa, would certainly have suppressed this at any cost. It had set a terrible precedent. Not only did it threaten the two nations' colonial interests in West Africa, but tugging one hair could move the whole body, potentially triggering chain reactions throughout their other colonies around the