Since he now had a newspaper as a public opinion weapon, the most important next step was to craft a popular persona for himself.
If a persona is built well, it can implicitly make the public believe Carlo is on the side of the majority, even without him taking any action.
As a member of the royal family, a friendly and people-loving character was destined to be popular.
The public certainly wouldn’t want the royal family above them to act aloof and superior.
This was why monarchs of later generations, led by the British King, always put on a friendly and affectionate facade.
Whether presenting himself to the Italian public or the European public, rigid and conservative thinking was destined to be unpopular.
Although there was a massive conservative faction in monarchic countries, for Italy and Spain—where Carlo wanted to go—the reformist faction was what the people truly wanted to see.
However, even though Carlo wanted to establish the impression of a reformist, he absolutely would not offer any opinions on Italy’s actual reforms.
Reform is reform, but who leads the reform is the truly important question.
Supporting and being optimistic about reform was a weapon in Carlo’s hands, but if he genuinely started dictating the reforms, the losses would outweigh the gains.
No government would like a king who dictated every aspect of the country.
If Carlo wanted to become the King of Spain, he first had to understand how to be a mascot and not meddle everywhere.
On February 21, 1866, Italy’s Il Sole 24 Ore published an article titled “We Want Bread, Macaroni, and Milk,” authored by Carlo, successfully firing the first shot in establishing an image of caring for the people.
In this entirely ‘chicken soup’ article, Carlo repeatedly mentioned the importance of the lower-class Italian public, especially the peasants in southern Italy.
He summarized in the article: Whether in Italy or Europe, the demands of the people are actually not complex.
They just want to be fed and clothed warmly.
If the government could focus more attention on the lower-class masses, perhaps the people’s lives would be much happier.
The entire article didn’t contain any profound philosophies; it even painted Carlo as a prince with too much free time and an overflowing sense of compassion.
Although many lower-class people developed a favorable impression of Carlo because of this report, government officials were dismissive.
Take care of the lives of the lower-class people?
It sounds nice, but doesn’t the money still have to come from the government?
Putting aside how much budget it would take to improve the lives of all lower-class Italians, wouldn’t it be better to invest that money where Italy needed it more, like military construction and industrial development?
As for those commoners at the bottom of society, guaranteeing they didn’t starve to death was already pretty good.
What noble lord had the mind to care whether the commoners were full or warmly dressed?
Because Carlo simply had no one to deploy under him, this report only had some influence around Milan and hadn’t even spread to Florence.
But for Carlo’s plan, he had successfully taken the first step.
Regardless of what the government and nobles thought, the first thing to do now was to make the public believe that Carlo was a prince who cared about the lower classes and was overflowing with affection.
Such a character would absolutely not be hated by the public.
After all, the vast majority of any country’s population consisted of the lower classes.
This was something no political system or ideology could change.
Unfortunately, Carlo was too young right now.
Many of his plans couldn’t proceed smoothly, and he needed to spend a lot of time and energy completing a traditional elite Italian noble education.
Although he was just a prince, his place in the line of succession was an almost impossible third.
But Victor Emmanuel II paid very close attention to Carlo’s education and upbringing.
As Victor Emmanuel II’s current youngest son, Carlo undoubtedly received the most doting love and attention from his father.
This year, Carlo was nearly 15 years old and had basically completed his early elite noble education.
According to Victor Emmanuel II’s cultivation plan for Carlo, he had two choices.
One was to choose management and economics majors for in-depth study, so he could properly handle his lands and assets in the future.
The other choice was to go to a military academy and become an honorable Italian military officer, dedicating himself to the royal family and the country.
For Carlo, who had long had plans in his mind, the most suitable choice was naturally to attend a military academy and cultivate his military abilities.
More importantly, at the military academy, he might get to know some officers whose reputations were not prominent but who possessed good military skills, thereby accumulating his own network of contacts.
It was a pity Carlo wasn’t the first in line to the throne—the Crown Prince.
Otherwise, he could have completely used the identity of the Crown Prince to form a royal guard and cultivate his own armed forces from scratch.
Although a unified Italy possessed the qualifications to compete with the great powers, Italy’s foundation was still too thin right now, even in terms of military academies.
The top ten famous military academies in the world in later generations did not include Italy.
Even now, there were really only a few military academies in Italy worth choosing.
The most reliable military academy choice right now was the Turin Military Academy, located in the former capital of the Kingdom of Sardinia.
This military academy was located in Turin, the base camp of the House of Savoy, and was an important institution for the Kingdom of Sardinia to train its military backbone.
Victor Emmanuel II maintained a supportive attitude toward Carlo’s desire to attend the military academy.
This was very common for Western monarchies.
For the kings of these monarchic countries, the people they could trust the most were members of the royal family and nobles.
The Royal Military Academy of Turin was primarily responsible for training infantry and artillery officers, while the Royal Military Academy of Milan was responsible for training cavalry officers.
This was also why Carlo directly chose the Royal Military Academy of Turin.
After all, firstly, Carlo didn’t need to personally charge into enemy lines, and secondly, cavalry would become obsolete within a few decades.
Neither the terrain of Spain nor Italy was suitable for large-scale cavalry charges.
Actually, compared to the instructors at the Royal Military Academy of Turin, Carlo admired a legendary Italian name much more: one of the three great founding fathers of a unified Italy, the hero of two worlds—Giuseppe Garibaldi.
Discussing military ability alone, Garibaldi was absolutely the most outstanding military commander in all of Italy in modern times.
Even the descriptions of the entire Italian unification event by historians in later generations only mentioned three highly meritorious figures, known as the Three Heroes of Italian Unification.
“The unification of Italy is attributed to the ideas of Mazzini, the sword of Garibaldi, and the diplomacy of Cavour.” From this description, one can see just how excellent Garibaldi’s military talents were.
But unfortunately, among the Three Heroes of Italian Unification, only Prime Minister Cavour belonged to the Kingdom of Sardinia’s faction.
Mazzini, who created the ideology of Italian unification, was a thoroughgoing republican and an enemy of the monarchy.
And Garibaldi, whom Carlo extremely admired, though he hadn’t clearly opposed the monarchy, had sought refuge with the republican system multiple times and was not trusted by the monarchy.
Although Garibaldi was extremely selfless in the process of Italian unification—resolutely handing over the entire territory of the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies to the Kingdom of Sardinia even after conquering it—his high prestige in the army and his history of serving the republic prevented him from entering the high echelons of the new Italian government.
(END CHAPTER)