for 1907 and 1908, the navy had been allocated some 63.4 and 73.4 million krone, which at the time was considered an inflated budget due to the construction of two Radetzkys. Montecuccoli worried that the general public and the legislatures in Vienna and Budapest would reject the need for a ship as expensive as Prinz Eugen, especially so soon after the political crisis in Budapest. The dramatic increase in spending meant that in 1909 the navy spent some 100.4 million krone, a huge sum at the time. This was done in order to rush the completion of the Radetzky-class battleships, though the looming construction of three other dreadnoughts in addition to Prinz Eugen meant the Austro-Hungarian Navy would likely have to ask the government for a yearly budget much higher than 100 million krone. A secret agreement to fund construction of Viribus Unitis and Tegetthoff, Prinz Eugens sister ships, was struck with the Rothschild family in Austria, who owned the Witkowitz Ironworks, the Creditanstalt Bank, and had significant assets in both the Škoda Works and the Stabilimento Tecnico Triestino. Archduke Franz Ferdinand personally courted Albert Salomon Anselm von Rothschild to obtain his family's monetary support until the government could buy Prinz Eugens two older sister ships. Facing potential backlash over constitutional concerns that constructing two Tegetthoff-class battleships committed Austria-Hungary to spend roughly 120 million Krone without prior approval by either the Austrian Reichsrat or the Diet of Hungary, the deal remained secret. The agreement was ultimately leaked to the public in April 1910 by the Arbeiter-Zeitung, the newspaper of Austria's Social Democratic Party. However, by the time the Arbeiter-Zeitung broke the story, the plans had already been finalized on the Tegetthoff-class battleship and construction on Prinz Eugens two sister ships was about to begin. General characteristics Designed by naval architect Siegfried Popper, Prinz Eugen had an overall length of , with a beam of and a draught of at deep load. She was designed to displace at load, but at full combat load she displaced . Prinz Eugens hull was built with a double bottom, deep, with a reinforced inner bottom that consisted of two layers of plates. The hull design was intended by Popper to protect the battleship from naval mines, though it ultimately failed Prinz Eugens sister ships, Szent István and Viribus Unitis, when the former was sunk by a torpedo in June 1918 and the later by