Belgrade, Austrian Empire Balkan Regional Headquarters.
"Finally, it's our turn! I really don't see what the point of going to Dobruja is."
The tall, thin staff officer complained.
"Aren't we helping our ally? If we don't go, the Russians are finished."
His short, stout colleague beside him explained.
"It'd be better if they were finished. Can the Russians really be called our allies? Just thinking about those more than a million Gray Cattle is frightening. There's nothing wrong with letting them suffer a little."
This was, in fact, the thinking of most of the Austrian military high command. For centuries, the Balkans had always been the Austrian Empire's traditional direction of expansion.
The Ottomans were Austria's sworn enemies, while the Russians were Austria's greatest rival. If the Russians wanted to die, then let them die. Now was the time to seize territory.
Ever since Austria acquired Belgrade, the military had been preparing to attack South Serbia. They had long conducted countless military simulations and infiltrated nearly every critical point.
Especially after Milos Obrenovic's death, the Serbians had continuously taken the initiative to draw closer to the Austrian Empire. After all, the Ottoman Empire, having annexed Serbia once more, truly did not treat them as human beings.
Besides large-scale purges and reprisals, it had established an exceedingly harsh system of taxation and surveillance. The Serbians' rights to autonomy had been abolished, and they had once again been reduced to an inferior people.
This was especially true for those Serbs who had fled from Austria to Serbia back then. Even the Hungarians had never treated them so inhumanely.
Furthermore, South Serbia's land was still very underdeveloped, its infrastructure incomplete, and the land itself far less fertile than that in the north.
Even though the Ottoman Empire's taxes were lower than Hungary's, the