At Vienna Palace, upon receiving news of the outbreak of the refugee tide, Franz was utterly stunned.
There was no helping it—the news was simply too shocking. Belgium and the Rhineland were both at the heart of Europe, not some insignificant backwater.
One could imagine that once this news spread, all the diplomatic efforts the French Government had made before would go down the drain. Even their ally, the British, would look at the Paris Government in a different light.
After playing politics for years, Franz had developed nerves of steel and quickly regained his composure.
"Has the news been confirmed? Is the refugee tide really because the French are expelling the local population, rather than being caused by the war?"
Refugees created by war and the expulsion of local inhabitants were two entirely different concepts. The former was inevitable; the latter revealed France's ambitions.
Do not be fooled by the fact that this war had broken out because the French wanted to seize territory west of the Rhine River. In truth, the French Government had never acknowledged any intention of annexing those regions.
In this day and age, expansion on the European Continent would not only invite public ridicule and diplomatic hostility—it was also a major political taboo.
A legal basis was a hurdle that could not be bypassed. Undermining it was equivalent to shaking the foundations of Europe's political system. Those who broke the rules would inevitably suffer the rules' backlash.
The French had launched this war on the pretext of missing soldiers. There were countless similar excuses for war across the European Continent. A war could break out over a jar of honey, let alone missing soldiers.
So long as they did not openly reveal their ambitions and merely acted in secret, everyone could pretend not to