Chapter 1304: The Bustling Eastern Europe

Recently, Longyan has just ended its wars.

What Liu Zheng has been considering ever since is the problem of surplus troops. This issue was mentioned before; the extra recruitment quotas that those Feudatory Kings took advantage of during the war have now become a burden too heavy to manage.

To Liu Zheng, is this not a threat?

These are likewise a threat to the stability of Longyan.

So, how can these threats be reasonably eliminated?

Europe.

Only Europe.

Liu Zheng smiled slightly.

The day after he received the letter from Frederick.

He proposed the plan to march into Europe at the parliament.

This plan is mainly divided into military advancement and commercial advancement. Commercial advancement is primarily through the control of the Suez Canal to sell more Longyan goods to Europe. Military advancement is through an alliance with Prussia to partition Poland-Lithuania.

In the history of Liu Zheng's previous life, the first partition of Poland was led by Russia.

The main reason was that the strength of Tsarist Russia was too great, and its thirst for expansion broke the balance of power in Eastern Europe. Those who participated included Russia, Prussia, the powerful Austria, and the declining Ottoman.

But this world is different.

Tsarist Russia did not continue to grow strong, but instead took a massive tumble at the hands of Longyan. This caused the distribution of power in Eastern Europe to begin to tilt. Unlike the history Liu Zheng knew, Tsarist Russia did not continue to grow strong, and the Ottoman also achieved victory in the Fifth Russo-Turkish War, and recently even captured the Black Sea Port.

Suddenly, the situation in Eastern Europe became chaotic, and the balance of power shifted.

For the Habsburg Dynasty, this is excellent news.

The Habsburg Dynasty, this famous dynasty, still needs an introduction. This was the most powerful and widely ruling royal family in European history, having once ruled the Holy Roman Empire, the Spanish Empire, the Austrian Grand Duchy, the Austrian Empire, and so on and so forth...

The Habsburg Family, also known as the Austrian family, was unprecedentedly powerful in the early 18th century.

Before the rise of Russia, the Habsburg Family undoubtedly held the discourse power over all of Eastern Europe. But as Russia became increasingly powerful and barbaric, their power began to be threatened.

Therefore.

Now that Tsarist Russia has been defeated, the Habsburg Family is the happiest, and likewise, they have begun to swell with pride. Since even Tsarist Russia has been defeated, the situation in Eastern Europe will return to their hands.

However.

Frederick the Great of the Hohenzollern Dynasty is clearly unwilling.

They do not want to see the Habsburg Family continue to be powerful in Eastern Europe; they want more discourse power.

Thus, Frederick the Great has already begun to develop a friendly alliance with Hamid, the leader of the Ottoman Empire, which has begun to recover. Once this news came out, the Habsburg royal family was clearly unable to sit still.

One must know that Austria hates this Frederick to the bone.

Why?

Because this fellow Frederick can definitely be counted as a genius. Just after he became the King of Prussia, Prussia's military strength was already fourth in Europe. But he still felt it was not enough; he poured most of the country's income into the army to update and reform it. He also invented a tactic, the Oblique Order Tactics; later, this tactic displayed powerful combat effectiveness and was successively imitated by various European countries.

Consequently, after this fellow had carried out reforms for a period of time, in order to test the results of the reforms, he desperately needed an opponent to practice on, and thus, this opponent was found in Austria.

Who told them that at this time, the King of Austria had just taken office and was a woman?

It was precisely in this battle that Prussia beat Austria until it fled in panic, allowing Prussia to seize the wealthy Silesia. This is the famous War of the Austrian Succession.

But.

What kind of country is Austria?

Are the people of the Habsburg Family so easy to bully? The biggest reason why Austria so easily ceded Silesia to Prussia was actually because this first Archduchess of Austria in history, Maria Theresa, faced opposition from the feudal lords when she took office, which also triggered the War of the Austrian Succession. In this gap, Prussia attacked, and Teresa could only cede territory in exchange for Prussia's recognition of her throne.

Speaking of this Teresa, she is another legendary figure.

Born into the Habsburg Family, she was a noble born with a silver spoon in her mouth. Her father, Charles VI, had originally been determined to have a male heir, but he gave birth to three daughters in a row...

At this time, Charles VI was already 39 years old, and he had no more children afterward.

Teresa was the eldest daughter; she was good at singing and dancing, skilled in horsemanship, and proficient in multiple languages since childhood, completely the image of a strong woman.

But she almost married Peter II of Tsarist Russia, yet due to a twist of fate, because Menshikov held absolute power in Tsarist Russia at this time, he wanted to marry his own daughter to Peter II. This also allowed Teresa to regain her freedom, and she unhesitatingly stayed with her cousin, the Duke of Lorraine.

Just like that, at only twenty-three years old, Teresa inherited the throne of Charles VI and became the first Queen of the Holy Roman Empire. At that time, Austria was absolutely in a precarious situation, with an empty treasury, rampant plague, and the people plunged into despair.

It was precisely at this time that people felt Teresa was weak and easy to bully, and Prussia was naturally one of them.

When Frederick II launched the war in shock, Austria was absolutely in imminent danger.

But it was this Teresa who, in such a desperate situation, began to display her intelligence and talent. She began to gain a lot of internal support within the country. She obtained the support of 50,000 elite troops from the Hungarian nobles, huge loans from Britain, and an alliance from the Russian side. And through forbearance, she temporarily recognized Prussia's rule over the Silesia region in exchange for her status as a legitimate heir.

When she strengthened Austria through various means and drove out the armies of France and Bavaria, following the death of the puppet king Charles VII who had been supported by Prussia, Austria finally began to return to peace.

And in the following years, Teresa's talent was once again displayed.

She began to rectify the corruption and chaos within Austria, consolidated monarchical rule, and finally, after a few years, through various diplomatic means, united the alliance relationship between France and Tsarist Russia to form an encirclement of Prussia.

But just at this time, Tsarist Russia suddenly became decadent, which for Teresa was definitely both happy and worrying.