The War Court and Lap Pillow, Austria's Mandate of Heaven

Chapter 1168 Russia's Choice
After the dinner, Earl Derby got into his carriage. He suddenly felt that the blank check handed to him by the Baring family was no longer attractive.

In addition to the delicious food and fine wines at the dinner, Congressman Lionel also presented two super luxury cruise ships anchored in Portsmouth Harbor as a birthday gift for the Earl of Derby's youngest son.

The cost of building the two cruise ships was 7.5 pounds and 8.3 pounds respectively. At the same time, the price of a third-level battleship was pounds.

Including the decorations and furniture, the total price of the two cruise ships is at least more than 200,000 pounds. For an ordinary British farmer, it may take 10,000 years to accumulate such a huge fortune.

In addition, Lionel is willing to use 1% of the Suez Canal Company's shares to establish a foundation specifically to support the Tory Party.

At this time, the total share price of Suez Canal Company was at least more than 1600 pounds, or at least 16 pounds, and this money still has room for appreciation in the future.

The maximum amount of the so-called bad check was only 5000 pounds. Of course, even pounds was enough for a British farmer to save for years.

The Earl of Derby was very happy. Today, he not only protected the future and hope for Britain, but also realized his own life value. He couldn't help but feel that he had reached the pinnacle of his life.
In Vienna, the various topics of the peace conference were basically finalized. However, the Europa Monetary Union and the Suez Canal Company became the protagonists of the peace conference.

Although the former was opposed by the United Kingdom, it was precisely because of the United Kingdom's opposition that economists throughout Europe conducted very extensive discussions on this issue.

The result of the discussion is that Europe and even the world need such an alliance because it can greatly increase market and capital liquidity, reduce trade costs, reduce exchange rate fluctuations and increase economic stability.

Of course, the so-called world monetary union is impossible, as the communication technology at the time is not sufficient to support a network of such scale.

Britain's opposition does not constitute a practical obstacle to the establishment of the Europa Monetary Union. After all, most countries can benefit from it, just to varying degrees.

In essence, the establishment of the Europa Monetary Union is a positive-sum game rather than the usual zero-sum game. It can increase the total amount of wealth and achieve a win-win situation.

Of course, how much benefit each country can reap from the opportunities will depend on its capabilities and size, but it will be better than in the past.

Although the British had always been strongly opposed, they did not hesitate at all when it came to joining, which made the representatives who had been wavering before roll their eyes, but Viscount Stratford chose to turn a blind eye.

Somewhat unexpectedly, Russia, which had always chosen to remain neutral, did not join the monetary union in the end, while the Kingdom of Sweden chose to bring in its vassal state Norway to form its own territory.

At this point, a super currency alliance was established that covered almost all of Europe, Egypt, the Ottoman Empire and its vassal states.

Franz had long anticipated the British's duplicity, and he did not believe that the British would miss this opportunity.

In fact, he has considered leaving Britain aside to reduce competitive pressure, but if Britain is really left aside, the monetary union may not be like this at this time.

Both Britain and France have great ambitions, the Spanish are fence-sitters, Portugal and the Ottoman Empire are British staunch supporters, and Muhammad Ali looks down on everyone.

If Franz insisted on excluding Britain, Europe would most likely form two monetary alliances, or it would remain the same as in history. But in either case, it would not be possible to mobilize and integrate the resources of the entire Europe in the most effective way.

Sweden is actually a very strange country. Although it does not seem to be very strong in people's impression, they are proud of being the Nordic lion.

After the Great Northern War, the country inevitably went into decline, but they did not look down on the so-called powers on the European continent. At the same time, Sweden was also considering national security. After all, the Europeans had conquered Sweden by religion, and they did not know that this time the Europeans would subvert Sweden again under the guise of a monetary union.

The sudden withdrawal of the Russians was unexpected by most people, but Franz knew that Russia was a country that lacked a sense of security to a great extent.

Whether it is military security, political security, transportation security, or economic security, the Russians have set up many obstacles to prevent invasion by other countries.

The most typical example is Russia's broad-gauge railway. In fact, compared with transportation volume and stability, the Russians prioritize national security.

During this period, railway transportation capacity in many areas was far higher than actual needs, and many large mines actually used narrow-gauge railways.

Moreover, there were far more than one way to increase train capacity during this period, such as increasing train speeds, adopting larger and more sturdy carriage designs, and so on.

The Russians' anxiety originally came from the East, when the Mongol invasion of the West caused serious psychological trauma to the Russians.

The 15-strong Mongolian army was invincible and conquered every inch of Russian land.

Almost every place they passed was massacred, all the men were killed, leaving only women and children to interact closely with the Mongolian men who came from afar.

It was no secret that Genghis Khan's army routinely engaged in massacres.

For example, the wheel chopping (first developed by the Jin people) and Genghis Khan’s famous saying:

“The greatest pleasure in life is to kill all your enemies, rob them of all their property, watch their relatives weep, ride their horses, and rape their wives and daughters.”

During the next 250 years of Mongol rule, the so-called "pure Russians" were almost exterminated, at least Russian men were slaughtered for several generations.

It is for this reason that Westerners like to call Russians "White Tatars", and the Russians are deeply ashamed of this.

In a sense, the Russians' sense of unease originated from the East, where the shadow cast by the Mongols on the Russians was too great.

Of course, the Russians’ nightmare was far more than that. Later, the Poles also beat the Russians into fleeing in panic.

The most recent one was Napoleon at the end of the anti-French war. It is hard to say what the fate of Russia would have been without Kutuzov and General Dong.

It would be strange if the Russians could still feel safe after experiencing so many catastrophes, and this is indeed the case.

When the news of the Europa Monetary Union reached St. Petersburg, it was immediately opposed by the vast majority of Russian senior officials. Almost everyone felt that this was a conspiracy from the West.

In addition to the Russians' own persecution delusions, the British spies planted inside Russia also played a very important role.

In the eyes of the British, any possible move by Russia to become stronger must be prevented, because the latter is too large and its threat spread across Eurasia, which is simply not comparable to that of Austria.