Alexander had not been slacking off in Alaska at all. On the contrary, he had led the army on an expedition.
In the previous war, Alexander had led his five thousand troops in a successful incursion into the Yukon Territory, with the spearhead of his army reaching the Mackenzie River at one point.
However, unable to find the enemy and running short on provisions, they had no choice but to withdraw. Britain was in much the same position—on those endless snowy plains, they simply could not find the enemy.
After circling around for several months, both sides shifted to strategic defense. The cost of attacking was simply too great.
Only the Russian army could make a circuit through such frozen wastes and still retreat back to its own territory. Any other nation's army would have collapsed long ago. The British merely made a round through their own lands and lost one-fifth of their men.
Vienna, Schönbrunn Palace.
Nicholas I's reply left Franz not knowing whether to laugh or cry. This Tsar's way of thinking truly was rather unusual.
In fact, Franz had another reason for not swallowing up Alaska's gold mines for himself: with the technology of this era, merely surviving in Alaska was difficult enough, never mind mining gold.
It was a frozen wilderness. One could snap shovels in half and still fail to break through the soil.
The Great Northern Wilderness offered a useful comparison. To reclaim wasteland, one first had to burn the wasteland—pile coal and wood together, keep the fire going for days, then rake aside the ashes and dig while the ground was still hot.
Once it cooled, one lit the bonfire again, repeating the cycle over and over.
But unlike reclaiming land in winter, Alaska was permafrost. The difficulty was only more outrageous than