Chapter 203 The Third Way

Chapter 203 The Third Way

It's just that Franz didn't want to choose either of the two paths before him.

Franz first tried to use the desulfurization method to reshape the leftover scraps from shoemaking. Due to the limitations of the technological level at this time, doing so would only cost more money, so he had to give up.

After that, Franz tried to make a fuss from the source, using special molds to utilize the rubber most efficiently. Of course, it failed again. It was still the same old problem, lack of pre-production technology.

Just when Franz was at a loss, Adjani's negotiations came to fruition. The Brazilians decided to give in. They were willing to sell 1,000 tons of rubber at 500 florins per ton.

This made Franz feel very hurt. In fact, he now hopes that the Brazilians will raise the price of rubber as high as possible. Because at this time, the Austrian rubber industry already had a first-mover advantage.

If the cost is increased at this time, it will undoubtedly greatly increase the threshold for entry, which will reduce competitors and maintain Austria's leading position.

At the same time, it can also delay the modernization process of other countries' industries, and the increase in rubber prices will also help Brazilians expand production capacity.

Historically, Brazilians were too lazy. It was not until the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century that rubber production reached 18,000 tons.

At the same time, just in time for the great development of the automobile industry, the rubber crisis occurred. At the peak of the crisis, the price of rubber reached US$6,600 per ton, and even after the crisis, it remained above 1,000 pounds (US$5,000) for a long time.

It even forced Europeans to find places to grow rubber on their own.

In the end, it was only with the support of our people that the rubber crisis was completely resolved. At that time, the United States, Spain and other countries defrauded a large Eastern country of a large amount of money to invest in rubber production.

It was not until a large number of rubber plantations were established in Southeast Asia that the world's rubber shortage problem was solved.

If Brazil's rubber production remains as low as in history, not even the Austrian Empire will be able to supply it to the whole world.

Franz just returned to the study, Thalia followed, and Adjani quietly closed the door.

As soon as Franz sat down, Talia and Adjani burst into laughter. They were obviously laughing at the previous conversation between Franz and Oshiosugi.

"Don't laugh," said Franz.

"Why? Are you going to brainwash us too? Haha!" Thalia and Adjani opened their arms together, and Franz had no choice but to look away and ignore them.

However, they did not want to let Franz go.

Thalia and Adjani hugged each other and spoke in a deliberately raised tone.

"Oh, my dear, let the world feel your pain!"

"I will give you the power you want! Come and drink from the cup of hatred!"

"Have you had enough fun? Don't roll around on my bed." Franz said slightly helplessly.

Thalia regained her composure and said.

"Why didn't you bring Miss Shanyin with you? She seems to admire you very much."

"Why should I take her with me? And seeing that her grades are pretty good, I want to know where she can go? If Oshiosugine really has any talent in science and technology, I would rather she stay in Austria. "Franz explained.

"Then what do you think of Miss Alina? She is also very smart and beautiful. Although she is a Jew, her loyalty to the royal family is as good as anyone's," Thalia said.

"Miss Thalia, you are the principal of the Royal Academy for Women in Vienna. You should be a gardener, not a... Even the stupidest farmer will not do such a thing as destroying seedlings to encourage growth." Franz said.

"Those children are still young, and so is Franz. They are still in the learning stage. We still need to see their development. It is not too late to make a decision in the future." Adjani made a rescue.

Syria, Beirut.

As soon as the Austrian reinforcements arrived at the port, they were warmly welcomed by the British troops.

General Gablenz even doubted whether this was the city in urgent need of rescue.

Looking at the spotless uniforms and the magnificent military band of the British Navy, General Gablenz felt that he was just attending a party, not a military rescue operation.

Fortunately, General Gablenz was used to ridiculous things during the Mexican War.

General Gabrenz had been sent to Mexico together with Count Stadion as Tasan Anna's military advisor, and even served as a Mexican general for a period of time.

However, with the end of the Mexican Civil War, they also got the opportunity to return home. General Gabrenz did not have as strong a background as Count Stadion, and could not directly become the governor of a province. He could only lead his troops across the ocean to Beirut to gain a future for himself.

At this time, Gablenz had 3,000 Austrian Expeditionary Force soldiers in his hands. His mission was to cooperate with the British in fighting in Egypt. Although Prince Metternich asked him to preserve his strength as much as possible, both he and the Austrian military hoped to perform well. Press the British head up.

However, Gablenz soon received desperate news from the British. Egypt had 130,000 troops in Syria. The gap in strength between the two could no longer be described by the word disparity. It was simply clouds and mud. judgment.

What's even more frightening is that the British admiral in front of him wants to drag him to drink as soon as they meet. The heartless British guy is about to blow up General Gablenz, and he needs a good drink to calm it down.

While changing cups, William Simmond revealed to Gablenz that the situation in Beirut at this time was far less critical than the battle report said.

Although the total strength of the Egyptians is 130,000, only about 70,000 can actually fight. 50,000 of them are confronting the Ottoman army on the northern front. The remaining 20,000 are besieging Beirut, and there are about 60,000 auxiliary troops. Delivering supplies and maintaining law and order.

General Gabrenz rested in Beirut for a night under the influence of alcohol. When he arrived at the fortress outside the city the next day, he found that British Army soldiers were eating potatoes.

Colonel Carter Wynn of the British Army received him very warmly, but he had nothing to offer, so he had to peel a potato for him himself and sprinkle a little cumin and salt on it.

Gablenz thought again of the "Looking at the Stars" he had eaten last night. Although that dish was a bit scary, it was not as shabby as the British Army.

In addition, he also discovered a very strange scene. The British clearly only had one regiment, but they had nearly 50 cannons. This was really unusual. You must know that at this time, European countries generally had the firepower of an army, which was 50-70 artillery pieces.

Later, Gablenz found out that these artillery pieces were originally lent to the Army by the Royal Navy. Of course, these guns were not borrowed for free. The Army had to use their supplies to replace them, so now Colonel Carter can only eat potatoes.

The 3,000 men brought by Garblenz, plus the 2,000 men brought by Colonel Carter, the combined total of the coalition forces was only 5,000. Seeing the corpses on the ground on the battlefield ahead, he couldn't help but start to worry about his future.

He even doubted whether his men could survive the fierce battle in the future.

"Colonel Carter, you are such a brave man. In such a lonely city and such a fierce battle, you actually persisted for twenty days. It is really admirable."

"You misunderstood. The Egyptians have no habit of collecting the corpses of their companions. Anyway, those corpses will be buried by the sand sooner or later. As for the battle, there has never been a real battle here." Colonel Carter replied.

"How do you say this?" Gablenz was a little confused.

"The morale and discipline of the Egyptians are extremely poor. As soon as the guns are fired, they will flee in large areas, followed by unilateral massacres. I have been stationed here for more than half a month, and only 160 of my soldiers died. The total number of Egyptian troops killed and captured has long exceeded 10,000." Colonel Carter said with some pride.

If Colonel Carter's words were told to other European generals, they would definitely accuse Carter of bragging. But Gablenz had seen even more outrageous fighting during the Mexican Civil War.

If the American army is a bunch of rabble, then the Mexican army is simply a bunch of street gangsters. The Egyptian army, which has been excluded from Western civilization, is certainly not as good as the Mexicans.

This is also true. Ibrahim responded as soon as he learned that Beirut had been lost. He personally led an army of 20,000 people. Facing Beirut with only 2,000 lobster soldiers, he wanted to win a quick victory.

But what Ibrahim didn't expect was that he suffered unimaginable setbacks here.

He originally wanted to lure the opponent into a decisive battle, and took the opportunity to send the Death Army (a barbarian army that claimed not to be afraid of death) to outflank the opponent's retreat, and then completely annihilate it.

Since the Syrian battlefield lacked sufficient mobile troops, he could only use infantry instead of cavalry.

But the result was that their elite troops were suppressed by the firepower of the lobster soldiers in the front and suffered heavy losses. The Death Army responsible for the encirclement was defeated by the bayonets of the lobster soldiers and fled after leaving more than a hundred corpses.

There were 3,000 members of the Death Army, and the death rate was less than 5%. Their morale had completely collapsed.

Later, Ibrahim also tried to directly attack Beirut City, but those volunteers from the Royal Navy and Beirut City were not vegetarians. Not only did it fail to achieve any results, but the British also annihilated many effective forces because their forces were too dispersed. Now he can only temporarily recruit auxiliary troops to continue the siege of Beirut.

After Ibrahim learned the news that the Egyptian navy was completely wiped out in the Battle of Beirut, he drank every day to drown his sorrows.

He once remonstrated with his father, Muhammad Ali, begging for peace, but was reprimanded. Ali blamed Ibrahim for not taking Istanbul, which gave the Ottomans a chance to breathe and invited foreign aid to destroy Egypt's maritime power.

Ibrahim, on the other hand, felt that Ali should have sent all his fleets from the beginning and headed straight to Istanbul instead of fantasizing about defeating Britain and Russia and becoming the world's hegemon.

Since the Egyptian attack was thwarted, the Ottomans organized a counterattack.

Letters asking for help piled up on Ibrahim's desk like snowflakes.

There was nothing he could do at this moment, because the coast of Egypt was plundered by the Austrian navy, and Ali refused to support the Syrian battlefield.

In addition, the effect of the imperial edict was very significant, just like Lincoln's "Emancipation Proclamation". The Ottoman army recruited a large number of ethnic minority soldiers in a short period of time.

The most terrifying thing is the resistance of the people at the bottom. Ali's brutal rule has long made the civilians complain. They constantly organize guerrillas to harass the Egyptian army's supply lines, and even pass information to the British and Ottoman armies.

Just when Ibrahim was at his wits' end, his adjutant suddenly came in and reported, "The British and Austrian coalition forces have moved!"

Vienna, Schönbrunn Palace.

Just when the war in Beirut was about to break out, Franz received Friedrich's letter. Friedrich complained crazily in the letter about Franz's Congreve rocket.

During the previous sneak attack on the Egyptian Navy, this thing did more damage to the Austrian army than the Egyptian Navy. The longest range can reach 4 kilometers, but the radius of the error range can actually reach as much as 2 kilometers.

What's more terrible is that the flames and hot gases ejected by rocket launches often burn soldiers and even ignite ships.

Franz rubbed his forehead. Rockets could not be used for precise strikes even in World War II. To continue improving accuracy, Franz thought of a rodless spin design.

However, this kind of rocket has higher technical requirements and must use a launcher. At the same time, it also needs the help of a hydraulic press during production, otherwise mass production cannot be achieved.

After some investigation, I found that Austria does have hydraulic presses, but they are mostly used to squeeze vegetable oil, and the power is too low.

What surprised Franz even more was that Austrian industry still used hydraulic forging hammers. It was obvious that steam hammers should be used in the steam era.

In fact, the reason is very simple, that is, Austria has a dense network of rivers, large cutting height differences, and abundant water resources. Compared with spending money to buy expensive steam forging hammers, simple, cheap and widely available hydraulic forging hammers are more popular.

As for the hydraulic press, it is considered that it can only squeeze oil and is not used in industrial production at all. Franz knew nothing about these construction machinery. He only knew that hydraulic presses would play a huge role in industry and military in the future.

So he could only throw out a general topic and leave it to Austrian scientists to solve it. But Franz knew one thing. The hydraulic press really started to develop because an engineer mistakenly mistakenly thought oil was water and added it to the hydraulic press, which greatly improved the efficiency and really attracted attention.

Soon the first oil-water mixing hydraulic press was born, and what Franz never expected was that the first experiment with this hydraulic press was actually used by Doppler's daughter to press coffee beans, which indirectly led to the birth of instant coffee. .

Under the night, the Mediterranean Sea was pitch black, with only the sea breeze blowing violently.

Friedrich was sitting on his flagship, the third-class battleship "Venice", looking at Alexandria in the distance, the richest city in Egypt.

Alexandria was a fortified city, but precisely because it was a fortified city, its defenders were more likely to slack off.

To be honest, Venetians are really professional counterparts when it comes to being pirates. Coupled with the instigation of the Karamanli family, many tribal elders who had long been dissatisfied with Ali's brutal rule took the opportunity to cooperate with the Austrian navy's actions, and for a while Egypt was wailing.

Muhammad Ali's excessive consumption of opium and wine, coupled with successive blows, made his temper even more violent, and he executed two Alexander governors one after another.

Ali believed that today's situation was entirely caused by the governor of Alexandria's negligence, so he vented his anger on the two unlucky men.

The replacement of four governors in a row made the defenders of Alexandria panic. The new governor Al Said did not want to die in an unknown manner, so he searched for money everywhere as soon as he took office.

Friedrich List, then U.S. Secretary of State, promised Al Said that as long as he paid $10,000, he would send a ship to pick him up and accept him as a U.S. citizen.

Friedrich List also assured Al Said that as long as he became an American citizen, he would be protected by American law and Muhammad Ali would no longer be able to sanction him.

In fact, in order to generate income, Friedrich List also extended the same invitation to many senior Egyptian officials.