Chapter 231: Preparing for a Rainy Day
With the Holy Roman Empire reestablished, there was a mountain of tangled affairs to deal with. Government administrative bodies had to be reorganized, and the rights and obligations of the state governments and the central government had to be divided—matters Franz needed to personally oversee.
The reorganization of the administrative bodies was, in effect, the transformation of the Austrian central government into the central government of the New Holy Roman Empire, which directly governed the Austrian Empire and the Kingdom of Bavaria.
Taking domestic stability into account, Franz remained highly restrained in allocating powers. Other than taking command of the military and control over foreign affairs, he left the rest untouched.
Of course, that did not mean the central government could not interfere in local affairs. It was simply that under normal circumstances, the central government would not meddle in the internal affairs of the states.
If problems arose within a state—for instance, a local rebellion or a major upheaval such as a coup—the central government could naturally intervene.
Beyond these matters, the most troublesome issue was still the distribution of fiscal revenue. Local governments would certainly have to hand over part of their revenue to the central government, and the precise percentage had become the focal point of contention.
The state governments naturally hoped that they would only need to contribute a few percentage points for central expenditures, leaving the remaining funds entirely at their own disposal. The central government, meanwhile, hoped to secure a larger share and then allocate funds to local governments according to actual needs.
Behind the struggle over finances lay, even more fundamentally, a struggle over power. That made the issue all the more complicated, and it would be difficult to sort out in a short time.
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