Vienna, Schönbrunn Palace.
Franz watched the latest battle reports from North America with some boredom. To be fair, he had never expected the British to fare this badly in North America.
A great victory at Pittsburgh had wiped out nearly a hundred thousand US Army troops; the surprise attack on Washington had failed; William Roden had put a bullet through himself; and the US Army had successfully retaken Trenton.
If this went on, Britain really would be finished.
But no matter what, now that Britain's decline was plain for all to see, Franz ought to stomp down hard on it.
Franz walked over to the map and studied it. In truth, the Austrian Empire itself was still under construction, and the use of its national strength was already basically at saturation.
The Austrian Empire could not even finish developing the colonies it already possessed, so seizing undeveloped colonies would be utterly not worth the loss.
After all, this was no longer the fifteenth century. If this were the dawn of the Age of Exploration, then the Austrian Empire could still recoup its costs through outright plunder.
But this was already the nineteenth century. Those Black tribes, even those primitive Black kingdoms, could hardly provide spoils sufficient to satisfy Franz.
Seizing territory would not only bring no returns, but also require troops to be dispatched to garrison it. That was simply asking for trouble.
As for the theory that capital could do anything, Franz did not believe in it at all. Even the East India Company was on the verge of collapse in the nineteenth century, let alone those even smaller private groups.
Colonial companies were inefficient, corruption was rampant, and their excessive pursuit of profit and power did far more harm than good to the state.
On one hand, they