War Palace and Knee Pillow, Austria’s Destiny

Vienna, Schönbrunn Palace.

Franz looked at the map and saw an island in the Pacific that had only been marked in recent years - Hawaii.

When you think of Hawaii, you probably think of beaches, sunshine, beautiful women, hula dancers, opening durians with bare hands, and endless happy people.

But in fact, there was a history of blood and tears here. Before the Europeans arrived in Hawaii, there were nearly 300,000 indigenous residents living here (another way of saying it is 800,000). However, in less than two decades after that, the population declined. It dropped to less than 60,000.

In 1842, U.S. President John Tyler first recognized the Kingdom of Hawaii. As Franz expected, he was a very ambitious and capable president.

According to the Americans themselves, they were afraid that Japan would send troops to occupy Hawaii. Because according to the U.S. whaling fleet report at the time, the Japanese had ambitions for Hawaii. If Japan forcibly annexes Hawaii, the United States will intervene on the grounds of anti-aggression.

In fact, the credibility of this is not high, because the Kingdom of Hawaii was supported by the British. Putting aside the distance between Japan and Hawaii, the word "British" alone could make the Tokugawa shogunate flinch.

Hawaii is a natural transit point in the Pacific Ocean, which was the dream of any great power in the era of sea power. This was the reason why the United States truly recognized its government. At that time, the United States, like other Western powers, hoped to control Hawaii through colonization.

It is a pity that the diplomat active on the British political stage at that time was Palmerston, who did not take the face of Americans into consideration. After learning of the Americans' ambitions, they directly publicly declared that Britain had sovereignty over Hawaii.

(Historically, it is 1843, but it is advanced in the book.)

What the British did was a huge blow to the U.S. federal government, but the latter had nothing to do with the former.

In fact, in addition to British and American colonists, there are also Chinese, Japanese and French people on the island. The Chinese and Japanese mainly came here to trade sandalwood and work, and of course the French also came here to colonize.

However, the French obviously arrived later and were equally helpless against the British. Although France occupied Texas at this time, John Tyler was no mediocre man.

He believed that although France and the United States were rivals on the North American continent, they could fully cooperate on the Hawaiian issue and jointly fight against the British.

Although Britain was extremely powerful at this time, the front line in the world was too long and there were too many enemies. Therefore, when encountering strong enemies, they could only choose to avoid or wait and see.

However, after French King Louis Philippe and Minister Guizot learned that the U.S. government proposed to join forces, they rejected it.

This is not only because of the strategic conflict between France and the United States, but also because of the unique sense of superiority of Europeans in this era. They regard all civilizations outside Europe as barbaric civilizations, especially France in this regard.

Of course, Louis Philippe was still very shy about offending people, so Guizot had no choice but to continue to act as a villain. In his letter, he accused the U.S. government of being a villain. John Taylor just laughed after reading it. Just throw it away as garbage.

At this time, the United States still had a bigger problem, and that was some disobedient Indians and restless neighbors. Listing Indians has always been a plus in American history. Almost every great American president has done something for Indians.

John Tyler was no exception. The Indian Removal War had always been on his mind. John Taylor was a very self-denying man, and exterminating Indians was one of the few things that excited him.

But at this time, after the operations of Andrew Jackson and others, the population of American Indians had greatly reduced, and most of them had moved to the west.

John Tyler drew circles on the map and only had a few hundred thousand Indians left to fiddle with, so he came up with the idea of ​​moving them all to reservations in Oklahoma.

"This event will surely go down in history forever," John Taylor wrote in his diary.

As Marlon Brando wrote in his acceptance speech at the Oscars:

For two hundred years we have been saying to the Indians who fought for their land, their lives, their families, their rights to freedom, "Lay down your arms, my friends, and we will survive together... …”

They laid down their weapons and we massacred them. We lied to them. We defrauded them of their land. We starved them into making agreements that defrauded them, which we called treaties but never kept.

Of course, this time was no exception. At first, the Indians resisted heroically, causing the U.S. Army to suffer heavy losses. The battle loss ratio between the two sides was about 1:15. After losing more than 200 soldiers, the Americans repeated their old tricks.

First, sign an agreement with some tribes and ask them to help you eliminate the "uncooperative" tribes, and promise to give them cattle, sheep, pasture, and without leaving their homes.

This strategy worked quickly. Those tribes that resisted were defeated, and hundreds of thousands of Indians set foot on the road to the reservation. Afterwards, the U.S. Army did not forget the "friends" who helped them. Looting was accompanied by massacres, and the last batch of Indians had to embark on this Trail of Blood and Tears.

In the last hundreds of thousands of Indians, less than 60,000 successfully entered the reservation, and those bones scattered on the Great Plains will eventually be buried by wind and sand.

Unfortunately, whether it was the Polynesians in Hawaii or the Indians on the North American continent, Franz was unable to do anything. Moreover, due to the westward expansion of the United States, a large number of Indian tribes poured into California.

These Indians were submissive when facing the Americans, but seemed to be arrogant when facing the Hispanic whites in California.

It's a pity that Friedrich's second brother, Archduke Carl Ferdinand, the second son of Archduke Carl, is stationed here. He was a man who did his duty without mercy, whether facing the natives of California, the Mexicans, or the invading American and Indian tribes.

There is a huge generational difference in weapons between the Indian tribes and the Austrian army stationed in California, and the quality of the soldiers is also different. On one side there are elite regular troops, and on the other side there are some primitive herdsmen who are hungry and skinny.

There was never any suspense in the battle between the two sides. Most of the time it was a one-sided massacre, but even so, the Indian tribes did not give up their attack on California.

In fact, the reason why these Indians were brave was because the Americans promised behind them: "They will become the masters of the land they conquered."

For a false promise, a group of hopeless people carried out an impossible invasion. But as the war continued, the casualties on the Austrian Empire's side continued to increase.

As a result, John von Sina, the newly arrived acting high-ranking official in California, decided to fight fire with fire.