Watching the great powers stir up storms, William I, the newly enthroned King of Prussia, could no longer sit still—or rather, the Junker aristocrats could no longer sit still.
The butterfly effect was powerful. With Austria's resurgence, the Prussian Government discovered that its dream of becoming a great power was truly about to become nothing more than a dream.
A sense of crisis was the driving force behind Prussia's rise to strength. During the First Schleswig War, the Prussian army had performed poorly—one could even call it trash.
Calls for military reform remained fervent within the Prussian army. The principal leader was one of Prussia's three greats—Albrecht von Roon.
Roon was not well known, but what he accomplished was earth-shaking. Not only did he preside over the reform of the Prussian army, he also single-handedly promoted Moltke and pushed Bismarck onto the chancellor's seat.
Without this talent scout, Moltke might still have had a chance to climb upward, but Bismarck, the royal family's public enemy, could forget about ever rising to power.
General Roon was extremely troubled now. Not long ago, he had taken on the post of Naval Minister alongside his role as Minister of War, only to face a major problem: calls within the country to carve out colonies were growing louder and louder.
Roon did not know what others thought, but he opposed opening overseas colonies. There was only one reason—no money.
To dispel everyone's impractical notions, he had to win William I's support. Yet William I also wanted to seize wealth from overseas colonies and alter the Kingdom of Prussia's fiscal predicament, which gave him a headache.
At a government meeting in Berlin Palace, Chancellor Frank once again emphasized the benefits of opening colonies and proposed establishing a colonial empire that belonged to Prussia.
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