Yet Franz saw it differently. In the end, it came down to this: "There are always people willing to risk their heads for a profitable deal, but no one will take a loss for nothing."
When it came to transporting people, no country in the world had more experience than the Austrian Empire. At the time, a typical vessel—whether a cargo ship or a passenger ship—could carry 500 to 1,000 people at most.
Transporting 150,000 people would require at least 150 to 300 ocean-going ships, and that was only for the people themselves. Since entire families were moving, their baggage and cargo had to be included, which meant the number of ships needed would at least double.
There was no way to gather that many ocean-going ships all at once. Even if they managed it, ordinary ports could not accommodate hundreds of vessels.
For reasons of both safety and economics, Texas's ports could not remain open to French ships without restriction. The only option was to transport people in batches, and the costs of keeping them waiting in the meantime would be impossible to estimate.
That was only taking sea and river transport into account. It did not consider overland travel or the problem of resettling the emigrants back home.
The French exiles in Texas were not refugees on Ireland; they would not meekly accept whatever fate handed them.
By a conservative estimate, the whole plan would cost between thirty and fifty million francs. Before, that would have been a mere drop in the bucket for France's finances.
But France was now in the midst of an economic crisis. Could Louis Napoleon really produce that much money? Would the parliament agree?
Franz understood the infighting between Louis Napoleon and the Party of Order. Neither side would let such a perfect