Cleaning up the officialdom's atmosphere was a somewhat weighty subject for Metternich. Though no one had blamed him for it, this truly was the mess he had left behind.
"Europe's Prime Minister" was not an empty title. For the prosperity and stability of every European nation, Metternich had worried himself sick. He had also had to battle domestic political rivals, leaving him with no energy to pay attention to corruption.
After decades of accumulation, small problems had grown into major ones. Austria's entire officialdom was as black as crows under heaven.
It had gotten to the point where the Austrian Government was too embarrassed even to shout anti-corruption slogans, because the seats beneath several people present might not have been so clean either.
Franz was very considerate of everyone's dignity. He did not know about matters from too far back, nor did he wish to know. He simply let them pass.
But the problems occurring now had to be dealt with. Removing the incompetent and improving the government's capacity for execution were the minimum demands he had put forward.
Having witnessed Franz's methods, they no longer dared underestimate this young emperor.
Just by considering the 1848 rebellion—how many interest groups the Austrian Government had used the opportunity to purge, how many powerful factions it had crushed—one could see how ruthless this emperor was.
Under normal circumstances, after killing so many people and offending so many interest groups, if they did not slap him with the label of a tyrannical ruler, then those groups would have failed to do justice to their own methods.
Yet reality was precisely the opposite. Those who opposed the emperor were all dead; those who remained alive were loyal subjects devoted to sovereign and country. All hatred had been pinned on the rebels, while the remaining