Fox of France

Although some progress has been made in long-distance power transmission, cross-regional power transmission, at least for now, is still impossible. So the situation of thermal power stations blooming everywhere has not changed much. The only change is probably that there are fewer people stealing cables now.

On the one hand, this is because there is much less copper on the wires of equal length, and on the other hand, it is also because it is too dangerous to steal high-voltage wires. At least in Paris, there is more than one provincial—no, the situation has changed a lot now, and there are very few provincials who do this kind of thing. Basically, those who do this kind of thing are either Highlanders or Prussians. Or it's the Poles and Italians, anyway, mainly foreigners-after finding out that the wires are unattended, they foolishly stole them, and as a result, they were directly cremated.

The death of some foreign thieves was not a big deal. After all, it has just entered the 19th century. Don't say that the French don't care much about such things. Even the embassies and consulates of these thieves don't care about them Take that to heart. A few low-level people, if they die, they die, what's the big deal. Even in their view, the death of these people has reduced the factors of social instability, and a few more deaths are even worth celebrating.

However, although these people "death is not a pity", one of the side effects of their death is very bad, that is, their actions can cause power outages in a large area every time, although generally speaking, those affected Not the most important thing, a power outage will bring huge economic losses to factories or various bars and nightclubs on the Montmartre Heights, but it is always a big trouble. Therefore, "Science Pravda" even had to publish a special series to popularize the safety knowledge related to high-voltage electricity: don't see a bird falling on it and think it's okay if you stretch your hand over it!

But these are all small problems. What Napoleon is worried about now is that it seems that the arms are not very easy to sell recently.

Originally Austria was a good buyer. Every time the French come up with something good, Austria will bite the bullet and buy it. Especially when copper mines were discovered in Prussia and made a fortune from the copper mines, the Austrians followed up with exploration and found that the veins of copper mines extended to the Austrian control area, so the Austrians immediately acted and started Open up copper mines. Moreover, the Austrians are not like Prussians in opening mines, and they are timid when using workers. The Austrians directly discussed with the Polish nobles, paid some money, and then directly dragged the Polish serfs to mine.

As for Prussia, Prussia really doesn't dare to do this now. Because Poles already account for half of the current Prussian population in terms of population. As a result, because of the cost advantage, the Austrians took away a lot of business from the Prussians. It stands to reason that with more money in the hands of the Austrians, they should be able to buy more French weapons.

However, the Austrians feel that they can't beat the French anyway, and now that the French have so much business with them, they probably won't beat themselves. As for beating others, it seems that there is nothing to beat them for the time being. Moreover, France's weapons are updated so quickly, and after buying new ones back, it will not be long before they fall behind again. Unlike Britain and Spain, Austria can sell old-fashioned things to the colonies.

As a result, the Austrians simply decided to save the money for buying weapons first, or use it to do some business. In this way, you can make a little more money. When the war is really going to happen, wouldn’t it be nice to buy the latest from the French?

As a result, the arms orders from Austria naturally shrunk rapidly.

In order to stimulate the consumption desire of the Austrians, Napoleon really wanted to hold a joint military exercise with Prussia, or secretly sell some small things to the Poles. Let them cause trouble so that the Austrians realize the need to spend money quickly.

But both of these proposals were opposed by Joseph and Lucien. Joseph strongly opposed the plan to arm the Poles: "If the Poles make a scene, the operation of the copper mines will definitely be affected. If the production of the Austrian copper mines is reduced, the price of copper in Europe will definitely rise again. The point of buying weapons Money, really may not be able to fill this pit!"

As for Lucien, he opposed joint military exercises with Prussia. He believes that this is not conducive to creating the image of France as a peace-loving and good friend of the people of all Europe.

"I don't object to threatening Austria and asking him to do business honestly, but Napoleon, isn't your method simple and crude! There is no sense of art at all."

So Napoleon became angry, and immediately threw out the trick of "You say I can't, you can do it": "You said it is simple, tell me, what can you do?"

Then Lucien immediately said: "This matter is out of my control. I am not an expert in this field. Don't shirk your responsibility."

And Joseph proposed: "Why don't we sell something to the Russians?"

"Russians? What can Russians afford?" Napoleon asked. "Russians are really stingy."

Russia's economic situation is not good, especially in the past two years, because of the continuous bumper harvests in France, the price of grain in the international market has not been high. This is definitely a big blow to the Russians whose main source of foreign exchange is grain export. So the Russians really have no money.

"We can give them loans." Lucien quickly interjected, "You see, we give loans to the Russians, and the Russians use the loans to buy our things, and then use the money we lent him to pay, and then slowly repay The interest on our loan, and then... isn't that nice?"

"Why are the Russians lending money to us? It doesn't seem to be under any threat for the time being," said Napoleon.

"We can spread the word that Turkey wants to buy a lot of weapons from us," Lucien said.

"It's not enough, Lucien, it's not enough." Joseph said suddenly, "We're going to spread the word that Turkey has reached a deal with us, and according to this deal, we will export a set of gun factories to Turkey. "

"In that case, what if the Russians ask us to buy an arsenal?" asked Napoleon.

"Sell it to him, it can even include technology transfer." Joseph said indifferently.

"Then how?" Napoleon asked.

"Why not? Even if they have a factory in their hands, can they still produce products that can compete with us for the market? Can they not rely on our various supports? Moreover, you also said that the Russians have The money they have is actually quite limited. If they bite the bullet and buy our factory, they will have to get the money elsewhere. How will they get it out?

Either by saving, what can they save? By buying factories and technology from us, they can save research costs. Well, we can persuade them, 'Don't re-invent the wheel', anyway, the technical level of what they researched by themselves is not as good as what they bought from us, and the price is more expensive. That being the case, why not cut the research fee?

It's like if someone wants to eat meat, he can go to the market to buy it, or he can raise pigs himself. But if they raise pigs by themselves, because they have no experience and no technology, the pigs they raise themselves will end up costly and taste bad. You said, can this pig survive? Then you might as well just go outside—to be precise, buy pork from us.

In this way, he will no longer spend money on his own pig raising. In fact, as long as he is willing to spend money on it and slowly cultivate his own team, the pork they develop by themselves will always become more fragrant in the future. cheap day. But we can interrupt the pace of accumulation of the Russian scientific and technical talent team by selling factories and technologies at the right time. While we can keep selling them a certain technology at the most appropriate time to make their scientific researchers 'useless heroes', we can also take the opportunity to poach these scientific researchers who are 'useless heroes' to us. come here. Napoleon, don't you think this is a very good thing? "

"And what if the Austrians and the British make similar demands?" Napoleon asked again.

"Analysis of specific issues? Well, Austria has nothing to do with it. Britain still has to impose certain restrictions. However, this restriction must be measured. In addition, it is best not to make this restriction directly by us, but by a committee. For example, aren't we very different institutionally from the British, the Austrians, and the Russians? We are a republic, aren't we? We can completely compare those democracies in Europe, ours, the Northern Italian Federation The Republic, as well as the Federal Republic of the Rhine, have been organized using the republican system to form an agency that specifically governs technology exports. It is called the "Export Control Coordinating Committee", and its office is set in Paris. It is responsible for the review of technology exports from any non-republican country. .Technology and various equipment and commodities not approved by this committee are not allowed to be exported," Joseph said.

"Yeah, Napoleon, I think we can first sell factories to Turkey; then sell factories to Russia; then we stir up something in Turkey or Russia; 'The media and other republics accused us of handing over the butcher knife to the tyrant to suppress the people for money; then we can justifiably establish this committee." Lucien said, "By the way, we can use this thing to Plant a lot of nails on the side of the real opposition."