Ever since the sea traffic was cut off, the situation of the British was very dangerous. One of the most dangerous is food security. Since the "enclosure movement" of that year, there has been less and less food produced in Britain. In addition, the British do not have a "XX acres of arable land red line", and considering that the British are not suitable for the development of planting industry in terms of natural conditions. Neither wheat nor anything is grown compared to France, Ukraine and other European countries.

Therefore, for many years, Britain's food problem has been solved by the international market. After all, as long as you have money, how can you not buy food? People won't block you unless you do something that makes you angry. So, isn't it fragrant?

Of course, the British would have been able to do this, the British Navy has always been super strong, and it is not easy to use it from the sea blockade. As long as there is no blockade at sea, it is enough to rely on the arable land of overseas colonies. Therefore, this national policy of the United Kingdom back then was really not wrong.

But with the rise of France, especially the technological revolution led by the French Navy, the reliability of the British Navy has declined significantly. At this point, the policy should have been adjusted. In fact, the French gave the British time to adjust their policies.

As early as the first generation of the "Free Trade" appeared, the British had already found it increasingly difficult for them to secure their shipping lines at sea. Even Nelson, at that time, did not dare to say that the British fleet would be able to guarantee the safety of the shipping lanes.

If we hurry up and return to farming at this time, it will actually be too late. Although even if all the grazing is returned to farming, Britain's local grain production will still not be enough to support his consumption, but it will be much better after all.

However, the woollen industry is one of the most important industries in Britain, and in peacetime, it is also the most profitable trade to export. What about the woolen industry? Without the wool industry, how can there be money for an arms race? Therefore, there will be no return to farmland, and there will be no return to farming in this life, and only efforts to strengthen the navy can barely maintain food security.

However, it would be wrong to say that the British were not prepared, because the British built more warehouses and increased the proportion of grain reserves, so that even if there were temporary difficulties on the naval side, the British could theoretically support it for a long time.

And in Britain, the British rule efficiency is still quite high, so there are not too many granaries on fire. At least the lockdown hasn't been long yet, and food prices haven't risen too high, so that hasn't happened yet. But after a long time, what will happen after the food really starts to be tight, it is really difficult to say.

Relying on the grain in the granary, if the grazing is immediately returned to farming, it will be too late. But the ranch has become a farm, and it will become a pasture in the future, which is not a small expense, and many people feel that if they retire for only a year, they will immediately change back, so it is better not to toss.

Therefore, although the British government has introduced a series of measures to encourage the return of grazing to farming, not many landowners have responded to the call. This is not because they don't love Britain, but because they respect the laws of economics more. And they are also more willing to bet on the revival of the navy, or even peace negotiations.

Naval revival, well, is really a little bit possible, when the French proposed a new shipbuilding plan, the British immediately followed suit. In response to the Augustus-class battleships of the French, the British urgently designed the "King Lionheart" class battleships with a displacement of up to fifteen thousand tons, and already on the slipway began construction. And three of them were built in one go!

Of course, no matter how fast such a large warship is built, it will definitely not be possible to build it in two years. However, in theory, Britain's grain reserves can barely support this time. As for the rest, Britain has coal, iron, steel or something, and it can still be guaranteed.

It's just that people who really know how to do it also understand that the construction of improvised ships, the rush to build them, and then most of them have not yet had sufficient training time, these things add up to almost mean that the real combat effectiveness of this kind of warship is actually very problematic. In a sense, building this thing is a gamble on the fortunes of the country on the one hand, and on the other hand, it is not necessarily an attempt to raise a little capital for future negotiations.

In addition, in today's situation, these warships under construction have almost become a source of courage to support the whole of Britain to continue fighting.

Because in the battle of Dublin, the French used the new 280 guns, and the British naturally suspected that this gun was the main gun of the French battleships of the "Augustus class". So the cannons of the "King Lionheart" class battleships had to be redeveloped.

In fact, Joseph was also willing to let the British continue to maintain such illusions. With an eight-nation coalition (France, Ireland, the Netherlands, the Rhine Union, Prussia, Austria, Northern Italy, Spain, exactly eight. Landing in England and then burning down Buckingham Palace is fascinating to think about, but ......

But landing in England is really not easy.

The coast of England closest to France was full of damn cliffs, with only a few gaps to land. When William, Duke of Normandy, landed in England, there was no defense against those gaps. But nowadays, those places are full of well-guarded forts. Moreover, the British also laid a large number of mines on the nearby sea. Even if the entire French navy were dragged up, it would not necessarily be able to please these batteries.

Of course, the French could have gone a little further and landed in the direction of the Atlantic, around the Scottish side. The terrain is much better. But landing from here will allow the fleet to spend several times more time at sea, which means that their transport capacity will be reduced to a fraction of what it used to be. In a landing battle, if they can't quickly send an overwhelming advantage of troops and supplies ashore after landing, they will be driven into the sea by the enemy even if they go ashore.

Britain had a fairly developed railway system, relying on them to transport troops, which was very efficient, at least much faster than the sea route that bypassed half of the British island. So, it is dangerous to land at those points in the English Channel, but it is also dangerous to land on the Scottish side by taking a long detour.

In this case, a naval battle to completely destroy the hopes of the British, and then force the British to sign a series of treaties for land reparations, in the eyes of the French, was one of the best options.

Of course, the current strength of the French Navy is not enough to deal with the three "King Lionheart" class battleships, but the French are not idle in the arms race. Although "Lionheart" is a bit bigger than "Augustus", that doesn't mean that he is stronger than "Augustus". Because the French have a more developed industry and a higher level of shipbuilding. So the warships of the French were able to surpass the British in terms of speed and number of service.

According to information obtained by intelligence officers, the British "Lionheart-class" battleships are basically an enlarged version of the "Queen Elizabeth". That is, this is an Iron Tortoise with thicker armor, a larger caliber cannon, and no less slow speed. After all, in the last naval battle, under the inferior forces, the "Queen Elizabeth" still replaced one of the enemy's battleships, and in the eyes of the British, this is the correct manifestation of British design thinking. So, the English-style iron turtle is stronger than the French's fast-running thin skin. Although the British were not sure how thick the armor of the French battleships was, they portrayed them as weak eggshells for morale reasons.

However, the "Augustus class" is much more advanced than the previous "Imbrado class" than the "Lionheart" class and the "Queen Elizabeth".

The President of the French Academy of Sciences, Joseph Bonaparte, was personally involved in the design of this warship. This makes this warship imbued with a taste from the afterlife.

The first is the turret with a stepped arrangement of the central axis. On the central axis of this battleship, in the form of a ladder, two twin turrets were successively arranged. The turret will be fitted with a new 203 mm barrel and eight cannons, which will more than double the firepower of the previous Imbrado.

Of course, with so many cannons, it will consume a lot of weight, which makes the weight left of this ship that can be used for armor is not much. If the armor is still arranged in the same way as the original "Imperator class", then the defense of the "Augustus class" is at most similar to that of the "Impera class". After everyone has upgraded the cannon, such armor can really be said to be thin-skinned.

However, Joseph put forward a new concept of protection from later generations, that is, "key defense".

In later generations, as the power of the ship's guns became more and more powerful, but the displacement of the warship could not grow indefinitely, if you continued to try to wrap the warship with enough thick armor, it would only bring one result, that is, the warship would sink directly because it was too heavy as soon as it got out of the water. It's like the battleship of the second master of Gu back then, or the submarine of Spain in the later generations that misplaced the decimal point when it was designed.

Therefore, when designing warships, later generations abandoned the practice of arranging armor in all positions of warships, and adopted the practice of arranging heavy armor only in the most critical parts that directly affect survivability and combat effectiveness, and simply did not need armor at all in other non-essential areas.

In this way, if the opponent's armor-piercing bullet hits an unprotected place, it will most likely fly out directly through the hull, and the damage it can cause is limited. If it's an ordinary high-explosive bomb - those places are not a deadly place anyway, although they will be damaged, but the impact will be limited. And if in a naval battle, the other side uses this kind of shell, it means that it is basically impossible for them to pose any threat to the really important area, and take this opportunity to paste the opponent's face with authentic armor-piercing shells.

Therefore, although the "Augustus-class battleship" was far inferior to its opponent in terms of total armor weight, in terms of actual defensive effect, the "Augustus-class battleship" did not necessarily have a worse level of defense than the larger and heavier "Lionheart".

And on the slipway of the French, there are five "Augustus-class battleships" and five "Hermes-class supercruisers" under construction, and if nothing else, these battleships of the French will be completed before the British.

At that time, after defeating Britain again through a naval battle, all British hopes were dashed. And......

"And maybe there will be another revolution in Britain." Napoleon smiled at Lucien and said, "You have to arrange this matter well." But for now, um, you'd better concentrate and finish the North American thing first. ”

Just a few days ago, the Americans launched a general offensive towards Ottawa. After paying huge casualties, the Americans almost exhausted the ammunition of the British with their lives and entered Ottawa. Then something happened quite naturally, and the Americans started the massacre in Ottawa.

Americans kill every living person they see, whether he is a man or a woman, an old man or a child.

A group of American soldiers, armed with rifles with bloody bayonets, surrounded a building into which many British had fled. The Americans surrounded the building, and they even dragged artillery and aimed it at the building. A lot of British people have taken refuge here. However, the American soldiers did not rush in, because on this building, a French flag was flying.

This is the largest Catholic church in Ottawa. Moreover, the church can really fly the French flag, because the Holy See has already handed over the apologist to the French in North America.

Father Tom in this church is indeed a Frenchman, even though he is a Frenchman who speaks German. Today, the church is a sanctuary for many Canadians. Fr. Tom stands at the door of the church, with the French flag flying on the small spire of the church, which becomes a temporary shelter.

The Americans didn't want to have a conflict with the French, even a German-speaking Frenchman, and if it was just civilians who hid in the church, the Americans probably wouldn't have it. But someone saw with their own eyes that more than a dozen Englishmen in military uniforms ran into the church, and they could not turn a blind eye.

The Americans surrounded the church and demanded that Father Tom hand over the British soldiers who had taken refuge in the church. Fr. Tom, on the other hand, insisted that these men were no longer armed and therefore not soldiers, and that the church could not expel anyone who tried to seek safety under God's protection.

"Respect the temple and respect the right of refuge in the temple!" Father Thom insisted.