The Day Closest to Hegemony

Austria's report on Prussian and Russian casualties quickly set public opinion ablaze. The figure of "eight million" was simply too shocking, and everyone's attention was immediately drawn to it.

Countless people marveled that this was another "Thirty Years' War," yet unlike the last one, the Prusso-Russian War had lasted less than two years.

Was there a victor?

Perhaps ordinary people who did not know the full story would say the Russians had won, but anyone who truly understood the Prusso-Russian War knew that this had been a war in which both sides were devastated.

Prussia and Russia were both losers. The victors were the three fishermen who reaped the spoils—the United Kingdom, France, and Austria—and their positions became even more unshakable after the war.

As the nominal victor, the Russian Empire appeared to have gained the media-bestowed title of "Europe's fourth great power," but in reality, it had only gained a name.

A political order of three great powers becoming four was fine to talk about, but anyone who took it seriously was a fool.

What the Russian Empire possessed now was merely the potential to become the fourth leg, not the actual strength. If its future development went smoothly and its national power caught up, then it might have a chance to restore the pattern of Europe's four great empires.

Before the First Prusso-Russian War began, the Russian Empire had been one of Europe's four great empires, and even the top contender competing with the British for global hegemony.

After all that turmoil—two Prusso-Russian Wars, several million soldiers lost, tens of billions of Rubles spent on military expenses, the accumulated wealth of generations of tsars exhausted, and enormous debts shouldered—

its final reward was a fall from continental overlord to fourth place in Europe, along with a tiny bit