Empire Rising: Spain

Chapter 205: Chapter 151: The Economic Crisis Arrives (2)

If the heretics steadfastly refuse to repent, the Inquisition still has the power to impose the death penalty, and it is in rather cruel ways, the main one being execution by fire.

Although the Spanish Government can no longer openly establish institutions like the Inquisition to eliminate colonial heresies, similar methods can still be used.

After all, during this period, the governance of colonies by various countries has not been particularly glorious. Once some results are achieved in the future, more civilized packaging can be done, which actually doesn’t have much impact on Spain.

Facts have proven that currently, taking strong legal measures to unify Spain’s nationality, religion, and language is a better way.

Only two and a half months after the enactment of the law, it effectively rectified the chaotic linguistic phenomena in Catalonia and the Basque Region.

As time came to May 1873, on the streets of Barcelona and Bilbao, only signs and texts written in Spanish could be seen, and local languages and scripts had disappeared without a trace.

For such changes, surely there are some radical nationalists expressing their dissatisfaction.

But these few people are obviously insignificant in front of Spain’s national interests and they were easily suppressed by the police.

Even the two infantry divisions that had prepared in advance were rendered useless, as most people did not have overly radical objections to this law. The more radical ones fell under the government’s strong suppression, succumbing to the police’s firearms.

The clock stops at May 9, 1873, and the world crisis eventually erupted.

Our view shifts to Vienna, the capital of Austria-Hungary, one of Europe’s most prosperous cities, and once a world-renowned international metropolis.

But since May 9 arrived, the situation in Vienna has plunged into extreme chaos. The chaos first erupted from the Vienna Stock Exchange and then directly spread throughout the entire city.

How terrifying is the economic crisis? In just 24 hours, the total value of all enterprises on the Vienna Stock Exchange depreciated by several billion Florin (Austria-Hungary’s Rhine Shield, also called Florin, with 1 Pound ≈ 11.7 Rhine Shield), causing many companies that were already worth millions to return overnight to where they were before liberation.

According to the more official exchange rate currently, a million Rhine Shields is equivalent to 85,470 Pounds and 2,223,000 Pessetas.

No matter which country you are in, companies worth over 80,000 Pounds are considered large enterprises. And in this rapidly arriving economic crisis, a large number of companies in Vienna valued over or close to 80,000 Pounds were on the brink of bankruptcy, demonstrating the lethalness of the economic crisis.

Slightly larger companies are slightly better off, only teetering on the brink of bankruptcy. But those not so valuable medium- and small-sized enterprises quickly went bankrupt in the whirlpool of the economic crisis.

The day before, these enterprises were even in a period of rapid development, yet the next day they faced a significantly severe bankruptcy crisis, having no choice but to announce the bankruptcy of their factories and businesses.

Such a dramatically different situation within just a day also plunged a large number of Vienna citizens into panic. People scrambled to withdraw their money from the banks, fearing their money would vanish along with the airport economic crisis.

But this severe bank run crisis exacerbated the pressure faced by the banks. What’s more lethal is that during this period, banks were often not heavily regulated by the government, with more being privately owned small and medium-sized banks.

Banks of this size are inherently unable to withstand a bank run crisis, so on the second day of the economic crisis, Vienna residents horrifyingly found a situation worse than enterprise bankruptcy, which is that a large number of banks also started declaring bankruptcy.

Enterprise bankruptcy represented a large number of Viennese losing their jobs, while bank bankruptcy meant Vienna residents even lost what little savings they had.

Unfortunately, due to the suddenness and the enormous impact of this economic crisis, most Viennese people experienced both losses.

In other words, more than half of Vienna’s citizens successively lost their jobs and savings within two days, becoming penniless.

Although they still had houses, houses in this era were not valuable. During this period, large cities were slowly forming, and Vienna’s population was only close to a million, so housing prices were naturally not at a high level.

Moreover, now that the economic crisis has arrived, no matter how high the housing prices, it is impossible for anyone to spend their money on buying houses.

This also led to a deadly issue for a large number of Viennese—they would have no income sources, and even their basic living needs like food and clothing would become significant challenges.

Even though this economic crisis started at the Vienna Stock Exchange, it was fundamentally impossible for other European countries to escape unscathed.

In less than a week, the economic crisis quickly swept through the stock exchanges of other countries, led by London and Paris. Even Spain’s two medium to small-sized stock exchanges were affected to some extent.

“Carlo, is this the impact of the economic crisis?” Queen Sophie of Spain sat somewhat uncomfortably on a chair, holding a recently published newspaper from a local Viennese newspaper.

Although she married into Spain, Queen Sophie remained very concerned about Austria-Hungary. To ensure that the Queen could learn about all the events happening in Austria-Hungary every day, Carlo arranged for people to collect all kinds of news and newspapers from Austria-Hungary daily and transport them to Spain as quickly as possible.