Chapter 382 Under the Luxembourg Agreement
The Luxembourg Agreement is as follows:
1. The Kingdom of Belgium was downgraded to the Grand Duchy of Belgium.
2. For example, return the Flemish region to the Netherlands.
3. For example, return Western Luxembourg to the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg.
4. The Grand Duchy of Belgium is protected by France.
5. The provinces of Namur and Liege, formerly part of Belgium, were merged into the Principality of Liege, with the Austrian Emperor also serving as Duke.
Although the British delegation refused to sign the contract, it did not affect the mood of the representatives of other participating countries. After the signing ceremony, a grand dance was held at the Grand Duke's residence in Luxembourg.
Britain's diplomatic defeat did not affect Palmerston's mood at the ball. However, the Whigs did not fare so well. This incident directly led to the collapse of Viscount Melbourne's cabinet and the Tories' return to power.
This is not the first time Robert Peel has come to power, but his poor personal relationship with the Queen has caused him and his party to experience several serious ups and downs.
Fortunately, the confident Whig party got away with it this time. Domestic businessmen paid too high a price for the wonderful post-war interests that this group of politicians painted. If they did not personally launch a war, Britain would probably We will fall into another depression like the one in 1837.
(As mentioned earlier in the book, the U.K. London stock market crashed due to the U.S. real estate crisis.)
But the location and object have become two major problems that plague the new cabinet. France, the German Confederation or Russia? Obviously, without reliable allies, it is difficult to face these powerful and difficult enemies alone.
The United States may be a good choice because there has been a territorial dispute between the two sides on the border between Oregon and the United States and Canada.
However, as Britain's supplier of cotton raw materials, rashly starting a war with it would affect the interests of many local businessmen, and it would be a waste of money.
Unfortunately, before the British were still struggling to find a breakthrough, the economic crisis broke out.
The blind mass production of factories caused a surplus of products. Businessmen and capitalists who suffered losses naturally tried to sell their goods at low prices, which indirectly caused the profits of many industries to plummet.
It is an unchanging truth that goods do not make money and factories have to lay off people. Since workers have lost their jobs, the capacity of the market for consumption has been reduced to a large extent.
This vicious cycle is not the first time for Britain; as a rule, it will be experienced almost every five to ten years.
Kingdom of Prussia, Berlin
This joint operation in the lowlands gave Prussian officers a deep appreciation of the horrors of railway transportation.
Assuming that the enemy we face is not France but Austria, the latter's soldiers and supplies will be continuously transported to any point on the Prussian-Austrian border through the internal line, and it is not uncommon to even directly attack the city of Berlin.
In order to avoid being robbed, Frederick William IV, instigated by a group of Junker officers, moved the train station not far from the center of Berlin out of the city and surrounded it with bunkers and roadblocks, making it look like a train station. A defensive posture.
Of course, compared with Prussia, which is relatively broad in depth, the small countries in the German Confederation have no way to find gourds. Some kings with severe persecution paranoia even wanted to demolish their own railways to feel at ease.
They were afraid that one day groups of troops from Prussia, Austria and other countries would come directly to their door if they disagreed with them. At that time, they could only greet them with white flags.
After hearing that the Prussians moved the railway station in the center of their capital ten kilometers north, the states within the German Confederation began a vigorous renovation project of the railway station in their capital in the following days.
However, several small countries with limited financial resources and military strength chose to lie down. After all, if they have no ability to protect themselves, they might as well make money honestly, right?
Of course, this decision of various state governments has brought great inconvenience to their citizens, because the latter need to walk several kilometers more to reach the new station site, but it has also unexpectedly ignited another industry-public carriage.
To put it simply, a public carriage can be regarded as the current bus; it is different from the modern taxi, which is expensive and the phenomenon of rip-off is more common. Different from the vulnerable groups that modern people imagine, almost every coachman carries a pistol or a dagger and other light weapons, because they often have to face homeless people and wild animals that stray into the city; in the early days of urbanization in the 18th and 19th centuries, people The probability of encountering a wild animal cannot be ignored.
As early as 1662 in history, the famous French mathematician and physicist Blaise Pascal tried operating a stagecoach. He received authorization from Louis XIV to establish a stagecoach company, responsible for the operation of five lines.
This great scientist set several rules for the public transportation industry across the ages, and people still abide by them today more than three hundred years later.
1. The route a vehicle takes from one site to another is fixed.
2. Regardless of the use of the carriage, even if there is no one, the vehicle must depart according to the "stipulated time".
3. Each passenger only needs to buy a ticket for himself, and the fare remains unchanged.
The remaining two have undergone some changes with the development of the times.
4. The "Round Paris Line" route is divided into several sections, and you need to pay once for each section.
(A road section refers to a large section of road, including several stations, which here means transfer.)
5. In order to avoid black-box trading operations and waste of exchange time, gold is not allowed to be used to pay for tickets.
Pascal's stagecoach project was a huge success at first and did solve some of Paris's traffic congestion problems.
But history has never lacked examples of bad money driving out good money. France could have led the trend of the times.
Just like they beheaded Lavoisier, one of the greatest scientists in human history, during the Revolution, Pascal and his company offended the horse racing industry and the so-called elite class by giving commoners the opportunity to ride in carriages like the nobles.
Members of the Paris Assembly and nobles insisted on highlighting their privileges and advocated prohibiting "soldiers, retainers, servants and other inferior attendants" from enjoying the same treatment as those above.
Since then, public carriages in Paris have lost a large part of their passenger base, and the reduction in passenger traffic has forced them to continue operating by raising fares.
This went against the original intentions of its founders and made this form of public transport increasingly unpopular. Eventually, Pascal's stagecoach disappeared around 1677.
It was not until 1828 that Paris and London, the two largest cities in Europe, had to openly seek solutions from society in order to solve the increasingly serious problem of urban traffic congestion.
Pascal's plan 200 years ago was proposed again, and the public carriage returned to people's attention.
However, in the large cities of the German Confederation, including Berlin, Munich and Dresden, public transportation still relied on walking and taxis. As a European city after Paris and London, Vienna is not included in this list.
In a sense, this war promoted the development of public transportation in Germany. Although the public carriage was an outdated means of transportation in Franz's eyes, there was really no substitute for it in a short period of time.
However, it is not difficult to make Austrian carriages more competitive. After all, rubber tires are obviously much more advanced than the wooden tires commonly seen in streets and alleys.
At present, solid rubber tires are still expensive and high-end goods, and only nobles from various countries can afford them. Developing pneumatic tires was not a difficult task for Franz and his scientific team.
With the empire's current industrial strength, it is still very easy to produce pneumatic rubber tires.
However, in order to minimize waste and also dominate the market, under Franz's proposal, the world's first pneumatic rubber tire company "Michelin" came out.
That’s right! Go the way of the French and leave them with nowhere to go!
(Michelin is a French brand.)