A Not-So-Peaceful Christmas Eve

December 24, 1845, Christmas Eve.

In her first year of taking over commercial affairs in Vienna, Pereni Schaffer presented Franz with a difficult problem: out of the seventeen high-level executives in Vienna, she demanded the removal of eleven.

The charges against these individuals included embezzlement, bribery, misappropriation of royal property, abuse of power for personal gain, illicit profiteering, dereliction of duty, extrajudicial punishment, abuse of authority, and leaking state secrets.

Most of them had committed every single one of these offenses; in reality, embezzlement, bribery, and graft were extremely common phenomena in the nineteenth century.

However, Franz had still underestimated the greed and audacity of these people. Even though some industries had only been established for two or three years, the amount embezzled actually accounted for 15% to 30% of the total profits.

Some industries had even been monopolized by one or several families. In fact, before this corruption scandal broke, Franz had felt that it might not have a major impact.

After all, many industries were just starting out, and it was difficult to find enough capable personnel in such a short time; finding people from familiar families seemed trustworthy enough.

The issue of family monopolies could be resolved slowly after the industries were on the right track; currently, many industries in Austria were still in the stage of land-grabbing.

However, the embezzlement of millions made Franz unable to sit still. One had to realize that this was the nineteenth century, where one hundred Florins were enough for an ordinary person to live on for a year.

Moreover, this was only in Vienna, and a nationwide investigation had not yet been conducted. In fact, Franz was not entirely ignorant of the corruption, and he had even dealt with a group of people in the interim.

But now it seemed