Franz II immediately frowned. "Where are we supposed to move troops from? The front?"
After capturing Mantua Fortress, Napoleon had let his army rest for half a month and had now marched north again.
After Alvinzi's defeat, there was not a single force left in all of Venice capable of stopping the French Army.
Napoleon had crossed Venice almost as though on a march, and his vanguard had already approached Görz, Austria's southwestern border province.
That was why Franz II had once again launched a desperate nationwide mobilization.
The troops Archduke Karl had brought back numbered only a little over thirty-three thousand. Even with another two thousand local garrison troops, they could never stop Napoleon.
Yes, Franz II's claim to the British that he still had fifty thousand soldiers had been nothing but a bluff.
According to Archduke Karl's report, he had to recruit at least thirty thousand new soldiers within a month and a half just to barely hold Klagenfurt Fortress—the southern gateway to Vienna.
Under such circumstances, moving troops from the front to Vienna to suppress the riots might as well mean letting Napoleon come and deal with these troubles himself.
Kobzl froze. Given the current scale of the protesters, the two thousand Guard at Schönbrunn Palace were certainly not enough.
Hoendorf, chairman of the Military Committee, stepped forward two paces. "Your Majesty, the Debrecen Legion still has several thousand soldiers. Together with the Prague Guard, they should be enough to handle the riots."
Franz II's expression only darkened further.
The Debrecen Legion was Hungary Parliament's "private army." He could already imagine how many concessions he would have to make to those Hungarian nobles in order to deploy it.
He sighed and gestured to Kobzl. "Please make a trip to Pest as soon as possible."
Tugut hurriedly said,