The merchants, too, had witnessed Austria's financial strength and foresight in the storm of 1848.
In particular, the move to buy back small-denomination Anticipation Notes before the war had been nothing short of inspired. Otherwise, it was hard to say whether the Austrian Empire might have followed Britain and France down the path to an economic crisis from which it could not escape.
Some astute merchants and economists had already sensed that something was amiss: the Austrian Empire's economic strength and reserves of precious metals far exceeded their estimates.
In fact, Franz had another reason for halting the circulation of small-denomination Anticipation Notes: counterfeit money had begun to appear.
Strictly speaking, forging Anticipation Notes was extremely difficult and risky, since the banks kept records and employed special anti-counterfeiting measures.
However, as the Austrian Empire's economy developed, people grew reluctant to make a trip to the bank just to use small-denomination notes.
That gave counterfeiters an opening. After all, most people of this era were still poor at distinguishing paper money. They could not match the trained eyes of professional bank tellers, and unless they were careful, getting swindled was inevitable.
Austria had been late to adopt paper money, but it had since imported a considerable amount of technology from Sweden and France. At home, research into anti-counterfeiting measures had never stopped.
Yet since 1844, counterfeit money had remained an obstacle the financial system could not overcome. The Austrian Empire had always cracked down hard on counterfeiting, but the fakes kept multiplying—and growing more convincing.
These counterfeits had surpassed what an individual could produce. They looked more like the work of professionals using specialized machinery.
An investigation traced the fakes to Bavaria. Following the trail, Austrian agents soon uncovered their true source: France.
Backed by government officials and financial bigwigs, these