War Palace and Knee Pillow, Austria’s Destiny

Franz at this moment was not as relaxed as he had imagined. In fact, the troubles at home and abroad were overwhelming him.

Due to its previous predatory demands for colonies and high-pressure policies, the Austrian Empire's colonies in Africa were in flames.

The black natives were not capable of attacking the fortresses and towns built by the Austrians, and they could not even capture a village.

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But this does not mean that they did not cause much trouble, as the Austrian Empire's aggressive expansion strategy in the colonies led to a serious shortage of manpower.

The black natives gradually figured out this pattern during the war with the Austrians, so they would only attack lone Austrians and then kill them in the most brutal way to achieve a intimidating effect.

The effect of this approach was very significant. The expansion of the Austrian Empire was greatly slowed down, and the colonies had to organize a large number of militias for self-defense.

The Austrian Empire's colonies were already very short of manpower, and a large number of them were invested in security warfare. Not only did the development of the colonies stagnate, but even many basic functions were paralyzed.

In particular, the paralysis of the transportation system prevented materials from being transported in from the coast and goods from the inland from being transported out. The stagnation of development exposed many potential problems of the colony itself.

Now many inland colonies don't need the British to fight at all, they will choose to surrender.

In addition to the attackers, the black natives learned arson from somewhere unknown, and they even had matches and flints on them.

This had never happened before. Before, the natives would only set fire to unimportant places, but now they specifically burned the Austrians' cash crops and warehouses.

Especially those coffee trees and cocoa trees, which usually need a growth cycle of 3-4 or even 5 years before they start to make a profit.

Women and children dare not even leave the village, let alone walk at night.

Under the continuous attacks from the natives, some colonists were on the verge of mental collapse, but what was even more disgusting was that some colonists took advantage of the chaos to fish in troubled waters, robbed property, kidnapped women, and made the already chaotic situation even worse.

Franz's desk was piled with letters for help from various colonies and settlements. In fact, the official organizations were still okay, but the reclamation groups organized by the private organizations were the worst off at this time.

The vast majority of these commercial reclamation groups organized by non-governmental organizations are unqualified. Some reclamation groups organized by unscrupulous businessmen lack both reclamation capabilities and guards, and they even have no experience in surviving in Africa.

They were beaten by the natives and abandoned their wives and children. They were afraid of being punished by the authorities and kept the incident secret. By the time the regular colonial army got the news and arrived, the best opportunity had usually been missed.

The most hateful thing is that there are people who fabricate stories and mislead the colonial army with wrong information.

Some claimed to have found thousands of natives near the village, but when the colonial troops hurriedly arrived, they did not find even a trace of the natives.

Someone claimed that his child was kidnapped by several natives and was hiding in the valley. A dozen brave warriors rode fast horses to the so-called hiding place, only to find that there were several large hidden tribes inside, with as many as thousands of people.

Some reported seeing giant beasts over 12 meters tall, but when the army arrived with heavy weapons shipped from their own country, all they saw was a stray African elephant less than 4 meters tall.

In addition, there are lion prides with 300 male lions, mosquitoes larger than heavy draft horses, giant lizards over 8 meters long, zebras with flaming feet, crocodiles with nine heads, exploding dandelions, Bigfoot, and unicorns.

The whole thing is just a "Journey to the Dark Continent", but as an official organization, they cannot turn a blind eye to it.

In fact, there was no place for unofficial organizations in Franz's original colonial plan. After all, he did not want his colonies to be decentralized and independent like the United States.

But as the size of the colony expanded, it became increasingly difficult to rely solely on official organizations to organize immigration and labor.

On the other hand, the folk reclamation groups are wild enough to always attract a large number of people, and they are also cheap enough.

By the standards set by the Austrian Empire, the cost of colonization was too high.

In addition, some nobles and businessmen also saw business opportunities in the colonies. From Franz's own standpoint, he hoped that the aristocracy could grow stronger and restore its former glory.

As a result, the colonies of the Austrian Empire began to open up to private capital, and initially achieved quite good results. The entry of a large number of reclamation groups filled the gap in official power.

But it was precisely because of the barbaric development of these colonization groups that the official power of the Austrian Empire in the colonies was unable to cover all areas at that time.

It seems that expensive things nowadays often have only one disadvantage, which is that they are expensive.

Some colonies advocated increasing the number of troops to conduct a comprehensive cleanup of the area around the colonies and regularizing the militia. The indigenous military force was not worth mentioning at all. Before they adopted the sneak attack strategy, the indigenous people's lethality in the colonies was even less than that of diseases, mosquitoes and wild animals.

Burn forests, deploy large numbers of cavalry troops at key strategic nodes, and establish a rapid response system to prevent indigenous invasions.

Some colonies advocated compromise with the indigenous people and restoration of the previous cooperative relationship, which would allow the indigenous people to continue to provide labor and save a lot of costs.

Franz couldn't help but hold his forehead. It was not difficult to build some simple fortresses in the colonies, but building railways in the inland of the colonies was basically wishful thinking.

Putting aside the technical and policy aspects, the cost alone has exceeded the acceptable range of a large empire. Unless Franz, like the Italians did in the past, uses Austrian blood to help Africans build roads.

This was obviously impossible. At least within ten years, the Austrian Empire would not be able to build railways in the interior of Africa.

The Austrian experts had another trick up their sleeve: they were prepared to use biological control. Based on their research on African natives, the main asset of these natives was their cattle.

So in theory, the Austrian Empire could find a disease that only spreads in cattle and then poison all the indigenous cattle.

In addition, they could also adopt the advanced experience of the British, which was to support a puppet and let him conquer the natives, and then the Austrian Empire could directly exploit this puppet.