At this moment, Palmerston was slaughtering his way across New Zealand, but behind the seemingly glorious spectacle lay immense hardship. After all, no one truly wanted to fight natives in the colonies.
Palmerston merely wanted to return to London on the strength of his achievement in suppressing New Zealand. Yet the Maori were still fierce. Though they could not defeat Britain, they could wage guerrilla warfare and keep the British endlessly entangled.
The suppression campaign proved far more time-consuming and arduous than Palmerston had imagined. For a man in his seventies, it was undoubtedly torment.
The sudden whim of that unlucky child Murad V had already left the British scrambling, but the Austrian Empire military's sudden burst of activity was the truly fatal blow.
The first to bear the brunt was the British Navy. First Lord of the Admiralty Sir James Graham immediately said, "I request that the North Sea Fleet be dispatched to the Mediterranean at once. Otherwise, there is no guarantee Austria will not resort to surprise attacks again. If the New Mediterranean Fleet is destroyed once more, it will shake the very foundations of our British Empire."
Everyone knew this was no alarmist talk. The Austrian Empire had done it before, and intelligence also suggested that Austria might be planning something similar.
If the New Mediterranean Fleet was truly wiped out again, Britain would have to carefully consider whether it should continue stationing a standing fleet in the Mediterranean.
The tremendous losses of recent years had already become more than British finances could bear. The British Navy had exhausted every trick in its arsenal merely to maintain its current size, and it was already showing every sign of fatigue in the newly emerging field of ironclads.
Yet that did not mean they would support the navy's proposal.