Chapter 137: Walking a Tightrope
Everyone was in a difficult position. Franz breathed a sigh of relief. The Prusso-Danish War would not end anytime soon, which meant he had enough time to plug the hole.
Paper could not wrap up fire. If he did not fill that hole, then even if he dumped the chamber pot over the Prussians' heads, it would not be reliable!
What if the truth was exposed one day? Would Emperor Franz's face still be worth anything?
Misappropriation and embezzlement were entirely different concepts. The former could be explained as normal capital operations by the bank—as long as the money could be produced on schedule. The latter would be a permanent stain on history.
While Prussia and Russia were locked in a standoff, the European powers had not been idle either.
Aside from occasionally voicing opinions on international affairs to proclaim their presence, the French were chiefly occupied with internal struggles. Even their overseas colonial expansion had been affected.
The British were very busy. They intensified their invasion of India on one front, expanded their colonies in Southeast Asia on another, and simultaneously launched an invasion of New Zealand...
Britain's colonial empire was already close to taking shape. Aside from the African Continent, which was still absent, virtually every other region had either been incorporated into the British colonial empire or was in the process of being incorporated.
Everyone was busy, and that created an opportunity for Austria.
With the world's attention focused on the Prusso-Danish battlefield, on April 15, 1849, Austria joined Naples, the Papal States, Tuscany, Bavaria, Württemberg, Baden, Hesse-Darmstadt, and other states in establishing the Holy Roman Economic Union in Rome.
European public opinion was thrown into an uproar. Fortunately, Franz had not placed its headquarters in Vienna, or the political repercussions would