Although Japan and Spain had each secured the backing of a major power, repairing warships still took time. The naval battle had temporarily come to an end, but the curtain was only just rising on the land war.
It was hard to say whether the Spanish were simply desperate to win or just bullheaded. In any case, the expeditionary force launched a full-scale counteroffensive, landing on several islands at once.
The specific results had not been announced. In any case, the Spanish expeditionary force was sweeping forward, and apart from a few large islands still in Japanese hands, it had retaken all the rest.
Franz did not care what was going on or whether the Japanese had some scheme in mind. As long as the Philippine Campaign dragged on, that was enough—and the longer it lasted, the better.
It was not because he wanted to profit from the war. Japan and Spain were both poor as church mice; no matter how hard anyone squeezed them, they would not yield more than a few drops of oil. The main thing was that recovering from the wounds of war took time. The longer the conflict dragged on, the more say the Vienna Government would have.
What worried Franz most at the moment was not the situation in the South Seas, but the restoration in France. Because of the succession issue, the three major royalist factions had nearly regressed from human brains to monkey brains. They had actually let the new government grow strong right under their noses.
When the nobles finally came to their senses, they made the astonishing discovery that the enemy had already reached into the military. They might not be able to win over senior officers, but that did not mean they could not win over rank-and-file soldiers.
Realizing