Chapter 278: Madrid Peace Talks

The dispute between France and Italy over Tunisia ultimately returned to the negotiating table. French Prime Minister Ferry never expected that the Italians would actually withstand French pressure and secretly send troops to seize a portion of Tunisian land.

Although France occupied the majority of Tunisia's territory, judging by the terrain of the occupied lands, the Italians were not necessarily at a disadvantage.

The regions occupied by Italy—Kairouan, Sousse, and Sfax—were all plain areas near the coast with immense development value.

Although the southern lands occupied by Italy possessed mountainous and desert terrain, the areas near the coast also held the vast Jifara Plain.

Conversely, in the Tunisian region occupied by France, although it accounted for nearly 70% of all Tunisia, the Tunisian Mountains occupied a significant portion of that area.

To the south, there were also the Chott el Djerid salt marshes and parts of the desert region; the land that could truly be reclaimed for farming or grazing was, in reality, not much different in area from the arable and grazing land in the Italian-occupied territory.

One must know that France was the one who initiated the war. Compared to Italy, France had invested more in this war yet had not gained much benefit; this point alone was enough to make the French public doubt Prime Minister Ferry's competence.

"Your Excellency, the Spanish Ambassador has once again expressed Spain's willingness to act as a neutral party to mediate the colonial conflict between us and Italy in Tunisia. They hope we can send representatives to Madrid to participate in peace negotiations to ensure that we do not break out into further conflict with Italy." Foreign Minister Gambetta pushed the door open and reported respectfully to Ferry.

Gambetta and Ferry belonged to the same party, which also meant that regarding the Tunisia incident, their goals were identical.

Ferry first stared blankly at the Tunisian battle plan map hanging in the Prime Minister's office, then turned around, looked at Foreign Minister Gambetta, and replied: "Mr. Minister, who do you think we should send to attend this peace conference?"

"Your Excellency, this peace negotiation is very important, and a diplomatic ambassador cannot make proper decisions. If you do not intend to appear in person, I am willing to represent France to negotiate with Italy," Foreign Minister Gambetta said, word for word.

Ferry nodded; the Foreign Minister was indeed a more suitable choice. Compared to an ordinary diplomatic ambassador, the Foreign Minister possessed greater authority and could also reflect the importance placed on this peace negotiation.

Compared to the Prime Minister, the Foreign Minister's status was not so high, avoiding France lowering its own standing.

After all, a role like the Prime Minister was matched against the Prime Ministers of Spain and Italy. On the premise that Italy did not dispatch its Prime Minister to negotiate, France naturally had no need to dispatch its Prime Minister.

Rashly attending such a conference would not only fail to give Prime Minister Ferry any say in the meeting, but would instead lower his status and cause him to be looked down upon.

"Then you shall represent France to attend this meeting. Minister Gambetta, this meeting must at least ensure that the land France has already occupied remains French, and it would be best if we could take back more than half of the land the Italians have occupied.

Tunisia is an important link in our colonial expansion plan; our colonial plan must absolutely not encounter problems here in Tunisia." Ferry made his decision and looked at Gambetta.

"As you command, Your Excellency." Gambetta nodded and accepted this rather arduous task.

At the same time, the Italian government was also determining its candidates for the peace talks.

It is worth mentioning that the Italian government also chose its Foreign Minister as the representative to attend the peace conference; perhaps this was a tacit understanding shared by European nations.

As for Spain, because of its status as a neutral mediator, the conference would be presided over by Prime Minister Canovas in person.

After all, as the host, if they sent another Foreign Minister to receive the representatives of the two countries, it would inevitably be a bit too shabby.

The conference would be held in Madrid. Besides discussing the situation in Tunisia, it would also conduct a certain exploration of the colonization of North Africa by Spain, France, and Italy to avoid such colonial conflicts between the three countries in the future.

After Spain invited the two countries to participate in peace negotiations, within a few days, the representatives of both countries arrived one after another in the Spanish capital, Madrid.

Upon arriving in Madrid, French Foreign Minister Gambetta did not have any particular emotions. Although Madrid had become quite prosperous after more than a decade of development, compared to the French capital, Paris, Madrid was still somewhat inferior.

Despite Madrid having built trams and a large number of streetlights, making it the world's first city that never sleeps.

But France had also followed up with projects regarding trams and streetlights after this, and these were already commonplace for Gambetta.

But for the Italian Foreign Minister, everything seen in Madrid was so fresh.

Italy certainly had some involvement in electricity, but Italy's finances were not as extravagant as those of Britain, France, or Germany.

This also led to Italy never building a city that never sleeps similar to Madrid; the Italian capital Rome, the Austro-Hungarian capital Vienna, and the Tsarist Russian capital Saint Petersburg were collectively known as the three dark cities of Europe.

Of course, this title was a humorous comment from the European media, and the reason was precisely the sluggishness of these three countries in the development of electricity.

Italy had of course participated in Spain's tram expo, but due to funding limitations, even the capital, Rome, could not achieve large-scale power supply.

The only ones truly qualified to use electricity were the Royal Palace and government office buildings; besides that, only those well-established factories would cooperate with Italian power companies to build power stations around their own factories.

Yes, if Italian factories wanted to connect circuits, they could only choose to fund the construction of power stations themselves.

As for the reason, it was of course that the Italian government had no money to build large power stations. Current electricity transmission had all sorts of problems; generally, electricity transmission would not cross cities, and even over relatively long distances, there would be massive losses.

The electricity from one power station could only supply cities within a range of a few kilometers; if areas further away wanted to use electricity, they would either have to pay a greater price or pool funds to build a new power station.

Precisely because of this, the electricity usage situation in Italian cities could be described as terrible. Only a few cities in the north had a few power stations, and all cities south of Rome did not even have a single power station.

"It is truly remarkable; Madrid has undergone earth-shaking changes in these ten-plus years of development, and these changes are exactly what the current Italy needs." The Italian Foreign Minister, feeling the changes in Madrid on the first day, could not help but sigh with emotion while communicating with the Italian Ambassador to Spain.

The Italian Ambassador to Spain nodded upon hearing this; he had been serving as the diplomatic ambassador to Spain for several years and could be said to have personally experienced the changes in Madrid.

Before Carlos became the King of Spain, Madrid was also a major European city, possessing a population of over 400, 00.

But at that time, Madrid was slightly backward compared to the capitals of other great powers; there were only a few factories in the suburbs, and both the number and scale of the factories were far behind other great power cities.

Looking at Madrid today, apart from the city scale being inferior to the capitals of Britain, France, and Germany due to population, it could already be compared with the capitals of Austria and Italy.

Between the Austrian capital Vienna and the Italian capital Rome, which city was not more famous than the Spanish capital Madrid?

The Italian capital, Rome, had already become a capital during the Roman Empire and had been the most important city in the Italian region for over 2, 00 years.

The history of Vienna becoming a capital could also be traced back to the Duchy of Austria; ever since the Habsburg family controlled the throne of the Holy Roman Empire, Vienna had also always been the capital of the Holy Roman Empire.

Conversely, Madrid had only been the Spanish capital for a little over 300 years. Coupled with the surrounding mountainous woodland and the characteristic of not being near plains, Madrid's development had always been severely restricted.

Although there was still a certain gap in terms of population, Madrid was already no worse than Rome or Vienna in terms of urban infrastructure and industry.

As an Italian, the Italian Foreign Minister felt envious of Spain.

One must know that the current King of Spain, Carlos I, was a Duke of Italy and the youngest son of the King of Italy just over a decade ago.

It was a pity that such a brilliant monarch ultimately became the King of Spain, and Spain, under Carlos's leadership, had once again become a powerful European great power, with even greater comprehensive strength than the current Italy.

Although he felt deeply about Spain's development, the Italian diplomatic representative did not have much time to sigh.

Because for Italy, the upcoming negotiations with France would become very important. As long as they could hold onto the land Italy had occupied, Italy would not become the losing party in this Tunisian colonial competition.

On the second day after the representatives of both sides arrived in Madrid, the peace negotiations between France and Italy officially began.

At the peace negotiations, Prime Minister Canovas attended first as the Spanish representative and emphasized the importance of peace negotiations for peace, expressing the hope that both France and Italy could put forward their own demands based on the goal of achieving peace.

Following that was the segment where the French and Italian diplomatic representatives put forward demands and argued with each other.

If the Italian side wanted to partition Tunisia according to the currently occupied areas, then the French diplomatic representative's demand was for Italy to withdraw from the Tunisian region, or at least give up half of the land currently occupied.

But the French proposal would certainly not be accepted by Italy. The land occupied by Italy accounted for less than one-third of Tunisia's total land; if they were to give up half of that, wouldn't it mean that most of the benefits were taken by the French?

What was the goal of the Italians going through all the trouble to occupy these two pieces of land, if not to snatch a piece of meat from the French's mouths and place themselves in an invincible position?

Because both sides held firm to their own demands and refused to yield, this led to the first day of peace negotiations falling into a stalemate, with absolutely no progress.

French Foreign Minister Gambetta returned to his residence expressionless and instructed the French Ambassador to report the current progress of the peace talks to the country.

In fact, before participating in the Madrid peace negotiation conference, France had also thought about inviting other countries to participate in the peace negotiations as neutral parties, or directly setting up another table and ignoring Spain's request.

From Spain's diplomatic attitude in this competition, it could be seen that Spain was firmly standing on Italy's side.

France naturally understood the logic of this, which was also the reason why France wanted to invite other neutral countries to join this negotiation.

If only Spain were allowed to be the intermediary, at the critical moment, Spain would certainly still lean toward Italy.

What was even more fatal was that because only France and Italy were participating in the negotiations, this also meant that France would face the pressure of both Italy and Spain from the very beginning.

But unfortunately, France invited many European great powers, including Germany, and all countries expressed no interest in this peace negotiation.

The reasons for Germany, Austria-Hungary, and Russia refusing were very simple: they were too far away from North Africa, so naturally, there was no need to offend Italy and Spain for the sake of France.

And the reason for Britain's refusal was also very simple: Britain preferred to see conflict break out between France, Italy, and Spain.

Even the purpose of Britain swapping three colonies in West Africa was to let conflict break out between Spain and France.

Right now was clearly a good opportunity; how could the British destroy their own carefully laid plans?

As for whether France would collapse under the immense pressure of facing the Three Emperors' Alliance and the Italo-Spanish Alliance simultaneously, the British also had their own solutions.

First, the strength of the Italo-Spanish Alliance combined was not as good as Germany or Russia in the Three Emperors' Alliance; for France, although there was pressure, it was not fatal.

Second, the British were already trying their best to dismantle the Three Emperors' Alliance. In the eyes of the British, the threat from Russia was relatively large, France second, and Germany third.

The British had always wanted to extract Russia from the Three Emperors' Alliance while destroying the relationship between Austria-Hungary and Russia as much as possible, thereby causing Germany to also move to the opposite side of Russia.

In this way, the European continent would reach a situation of confrontation between four major military groups. Germany and Austria opposing Russia, Italy and Spain opposing France; these two countries fighting alone were precisely the two major heart-troubles of Britain.

With Russia and France being held in check, the British could expand recklessly in Africa and the Middle East, which was the best situation for the British.

Precisely because of this, even though the British "troublemaker" nature made them very concerned about the situation in Tunisia, they ultimately refused France's invitation, stating they would not interfere in the situation in Tunisia.

This led to France having to go it alone; even knowing that Spain would stand on Italy's side at the critical moment, France had to participate in this peace negotiation.

Because if they did not participate in the peace negotiations, France would only be able to accept the reality of Italy occupying a portion of Tunisian land.

As for using force to expel the Italian army, this was something the French government had never considered. Although Italy was not strong, it was at least a great power and not so easy to defeat.

Coupled with Italy having Spain's help, France would very likely face the pressure of fighting on two fronts. Once France fell into a long-term war, the Germans would certainly not sit idly by.

If it backfired and became France taking on all of Europe alone, that would be a huge problem. No matter how ambitious Ferry was, he would not be bold enough to ignore France's current diplomatic predicament.

If they could avoid starting a war, they would avoid it; at least until France broke Germany's diplomatic isolation policy, France could not afford to offend Italy and Spain to the death.

(End of chapter)