Franz had to admit that he had greatly underestimated the masterminds behind the National Assembly. In less than a month, several hundred prominent members of European royal families had come to see him.
There were even more socialites, along with handwritten letters from all sorts of respectable people, including some high-ranking military officers and members of royal families.
If not for the Vienna Uprising, followed by a great many officials pressuring the royal family by resigning, even more people would have come to see Franz. There might even have been another Vienna Uprising.
But there were no what-ifs. It was precisely because of the Vienna Uprising that a great many privileged classes within the Austrian Empire had been purged. In particular, the mass resignations of the old nobility had given Franz the opportunity to take back control of the civil service.
By then, they no longer had the power to exert political pressure. All they could do was play on people's sympathies.
Franz approved every resignation request from anyone who no longer wished to serve in government. Any official who refused to carry out orders or paid lip service while secretly defying them was treated as though he had disobeyed orders on the battlefield.
That would have been impossible in ordinary times, but these were times of turmoil.
In 1848, the turnover rate among Vienna's senior civil servants exceeded 1,000 percent. With dozens of successive governments, the Vienna government's decrees were worth less than scrap paper. Many officials were appointed in name only; they were already out of office before they had even taken up their posts.
As for the middle-ranking civil service as a whole, its turnover rate was close to 70 percent, and many government functions had ground to a halt more than once.
With personnel changes on