After a series of haggling, on December 17, 1891, the Anti-French Alliance finally reached an agreement and signed the Draft French Settlement.
At this point, the conference for dividing the spoils was more or less complete. All that remained was to have the French sign it at the Vienna Conference and establish its legitimacy.
Although the nations of the Anti-French Alliance had made arrangements beforehand, reaching a preliminary agreement in less than two months was still a display of efficiency.
Holding the signed treaty, Franz strongly suspected that everyone had moved so quickly because they wanted to hurry home for Christmas.
A "draft" was indeed a "draft." Other than agreements on the broad framework, the specific details were largely blank, and many provisions were even deliberately ambiguous.
For example, regarding the carving up of French territory, there were only place names; the specific borderlines were not reflected in the treaty.
It seemed very clear, but in reality the gap was enormous. Over Europe's thousand-year history, the area governed under the same place name had never remained unchanged. The treaty did not specify which historical period was to serve as the standard.
As a beneficiary of the arrangement, this was obviously a good thing for Austria. With no explicit agreement, there was greater room for maneuver; shifting and altering the borderlines a little would not be a problem.
The borders were not fixed, nor were the amounts of reparations. Only the distribution ratios among the various countries had been agreed upon, while the specific details could still be negotiated.
No matter what, they had to leave some work for the Vienna Conference to do, and conveniently hear the opinions of the various nations as well. Otherwise, there would be no way for the later performance to go on.
The treaty's contents