On the way back to Venice, Franz planned to take a short nap. There would be plenty of troublesome matters to deal with afterward.
The news coming in from Berlin was that Prussia's situation was hardly any better than Austria's.
The tide of revolution had swept through Berlin as well, and Frederick William IV had learned from the earlier Zoological Garden massacre.
This time, he had summoned thirty thousand troops to Berlin, bringing the total forces at William IV's disposal to as many as fifty thousand.
But Metternich's early resignation and the chaos in Vienna left William IV with no sense of security at all.
He had hoped the Austrians might help Prussia shoulder some of the pressure, but Vienna fell first.
Meanwhile, the two major factions within the Prussian government had fallen into serious disagreement. The hardliners were represented by War Minister Kannitz, who insisted on crushing the Berlin Revolution.
The reason was simple: the Austrians had already made concessions, and the result was the chancellor's resignation, frequent changes of government, domestic political turmoil, and outside powers coveting the country—some even intervening directly to seize their share.
"The blood shed at the Zoological Garden must not be in vain! They have to learn their place! We absolutely cannot let people of such low birth ride roughshod over us!"
Although the Junker Landowners had been turning into bourgeois farmers over the years, and the power of the nobility had continued to shrink, they still had no desire to let more people threaten their position.
"Do you want the tragedy of France to be repeated in Prussia?" Chancellor Ludolf Camphausen countered.
Ordinarily, a country's chancellor outranked its war minister, but Prussia was clearly an exception at that moment.
Ludolf Camphausen was a Prussian banker who had participated in founding the Rheinische