Chapter 277 Austrian Imperial Railway Phase II Project

The main trunk line of the Neretania Railway in Austria has been basically completed. People can take a train directly from Tuscany, Italy to Hamburg in northern Germany. The journey that used to take several months now takes 30 hours.

At this time, in other countries of the German Confederation, except for a few main trunk lines, other railways are still under construction.

This provides a huge advantage for the Austrian side. All areas where the railway passes are full of Austrian goods and cultural imprints.

Local residents have begun to learn South German and even Viennese.

Viennese is a mixed language based on German. The kitchen language is Czech, while ordering food and calling waiters is Polish. Ukrainian is used when cursing, Latin is used when going to church, and occasionally some Yugoslav and Gypsy are used.

(Croatian, Serbian, Slovenian, the similarity at that time was as high as 95%)

This greatly accelerated the speed of national integration in the three regions of Germany, Austria and Italy. The traditional aristocracy and local forces in Italy were severely impacted, and the emerging bourgeoisie's dependence on the Austrian government was greatly strengthened.

At this time, Austria did not adopt a policy of appeasement towards northern Italy as in history, nor did it adopt an extreme national supremacy policy to force Austrianization on the local area. However, local forces that openly clamored for independence and attempted to humiliate and beat soldiers and officials were dealt with according to law.

Small merchants and capitalists were originally suppressed and exploited by local forces, and the actions of the imperial government just happened to protect their interests.

The taxes levied by the state and the heavy taxes and commissions imposed by the local governments are simply not worth mentioning. These people naturally have no reason not to support Austrian rule. After all, the only ones who suffered losses were the landlords and the clans, who made a lot of money because of the abolition of tariffs.

As for serfs and laborers, they regarded the empire as a savior.

At this time, the Austrian Empire has completed the Vienna-Prague-Dresden Railway, the Vienna-Linz-Salzburg-Munich Railway, the Vienna-Graz-Udine-Venice-Milan-Parma-Modena-Lucca-Florence Railway, and the Vienna-Brno-Lviv-Krakow Railway.

The only one that has not been opened to traffic is Graz-Ljubljana-Trieste. The terrain here is too rugged and it is not a problem that can be solved by increasing investment.

The first phase of the railway project in the Austrian Empire has been basically completed. The main goal of the second phase of construction is to continue to refine the Inner Letania railway network and connect Zagreb and Belgrade at the same time.

Salzburg-Innsbruck-Feldkirch-Bregenz, Salzburg-Bischofshofen-Seltzer Valley-Graz.

Linz-Graz, Vienna-Bruck an der Mor-Klagenfurt-Villach-Udine, Bruck an der Mor-Graz, Innsbruck-Bolena-Udine-Milan.

Prague-Brno-Prerov-Ostrava-Katowice, Brno-Breclav-Vienna, Prague-Pilsen-Domažlice-Munich, Prague-Ust-Dresden, Prague-Wroclaw

The total length is about 15,000 kilometers, and it is expected to be completed in 25 years. This was a very reasonable expectation at the time. After all, the construction speed of the Austrian Empire was about 300 kilometers per year.

However, the above are basically smoke bombs released by Franz. The only important trunk lines and Trieste-Zagreb-Belgrade line that need to be repaired are a few important trunk lines and Trieste-Zagreb-Belgrade line. This 550-kilometer railway is expected to be completed within five years, with a total planned length of 3,000 kilometers.

In this way, Belgrade can be ensured to be under the control of Austria forever. In the event of a war, both water transportation and railway transportation can be very convenient to deploy troops and supplies.

In fact, the length of the railway in the Austrian Empire at this time was already dozens of times longer than in history. An overly dense railway network was too early for the Austrian Empire, which had just started, mainly because the rate of return was too low, which could easily lead to the emergence of a railway bubble.

Infrastructure construction must keep up with economic development, but investment in infrastructure should not be too much. The length of the railway in the Austrian Empire was calculated by experts based on the country's development speed and total cargo volume at that time.

Franz was afraid that their figures were too conservative, so he increased it by 50% on that basis. After all, the development speed of this era was far beyond the imagination of people at that time.

However, future developments showed that Franz should have built railways according to the plan customized at the beginning, because the country's development speed was not only beyond the imagination of people at that time, but also beyond Franz's own imagination.

At this time, the powerful railways, industrial capacity, cheap raw materials, and unprecedentedly broad markets, coupled with Franz's monopoly plan, colonies and multinational corporate profits, made the Austrian Empire's finances have a qualitative leap.

310 million florins, more than twice the same period in the history of the Austrian Empire. Austrian officials' salaries, which had not increased for 30 years, finally increased by 10 florins per person.

This may be a drop in the bucket for high-level officials or civil servants living in big cities, but it is a precious reward for officials living in rural areas, borders, and mountainous areas.

However, Austrian officials still do not care about bankers who come to collect debts. After all, they have been owed for decades and they are used to it.

The unwilling bankers used various means and finally bribed Count Korolov to get a reply that only new debts would be paid but not old debts.

Although they were disappointed, they had to accept this reality.

In fact, paying new debts is to borrow more debts. As for old debts, it depends on luck and mood.

Of course, this is not the result of the bankers bribing Count Korolov, but the legal corruption of this old sly guy using information asymmetry.

In fact, although the fiscal revenue of the Austrian Empire has increased significantly compared with the same period in history, it is still too little for this soaring country.

All departments are scrambling for budgets, including transportation, education, commerce, army, navy, internal affairs, justice, secret police, postal service, industry, agriculture, mining, and fisheries.

Each department has its own reasons, and they are all reasons that must be done. Every annual budget meeting of the empire is like a battle. In the past, when the country had no money, all departments were in a zombie state, and one was worse than the other.

When the empire had money, all departments were like sharks that smelled blood, scrambling for their own budget.

According to the statistics of the last meeting, the Austrian Empire's annual budget is at least 600 million florins, and this is the data obtained after the budgets of many departments were cut in half.

According to this calculation, there is still a deficit of more than 300 million in a year, which is unbearable.

Prince Metternich and Count Korolaf were in a state of headache, Archduke Louis was drinking tea leisurely on the side, and Archduke Franz Karl's seat was still vacant.

Ferdinand I was still busy eating dumplings, and Baron Slote, who survived the disaster, kept his mouth shut and said nothing.