Gladstone was momentarily speechless. How much money would it take to win the war? How was he supposed to know? Come to think of it, why were they still fighting? The big financiers no longer wanted to fight!
"One hundred million pounds."
Gladstone felt that the Austrians would never accept that price. After all, one hundred million pounds was an astronomical figure at this time.
If the Austrian Empire truly paid Britain one hundred million pounds, its economic system would collapse on the spot.
At this time, one hundred million pounds was equivalent to 732.24 tons of pure gold—enough to fill 250 horse-drawn carriages.
As far as Gladstone knew, the Austrian Empire itself had plenty of problems at the moment: bandits, robbers, rebel groups, cults, gangs, heretical ideas, runaway public opinion, and corruption.
Even with so many internal problems, the Austrian Emperor still had to turn his knife on the government itself—and fight rats.
This affair had long since become a joke to the entire world, even spreading to the Qing Empire. Of course, by the time it reached Xianfeng and the scholar-officials, it had changed completely beyond recognition.
It went something like this: on the other side of the world stood a nation that had been absurd for generations and had now reached the pinnacle of art. One day, its emperor woke up, saw a rat, and ordered the entire populace to catch rats together.
As the saying went: keep the rats, not the people; keep the people, not the rats. Its brutality far surpassed that of King Zhou of Shang and King Jie of Xia, forming a stark contrast to the Qing Empire's claim that every generation had been ruled by wise sovereigns.
Some felt proud and spoke up on Xianfeng's behalf. Others believed that the Qing Empire's