Chapter 895: Battle of the Far East - Sit-down Battle

The 1st Airborne Division descended from the sky, although it caught the Russian army by surprise, but their strength was too thin, and the soldiers and commanders also lacked battlefield experience, otherwise the Russian army would write history again. After a month-long battle, most of the columns of the Russian army in the Far East were annihilated, but nearly 300,000 remnants still broke out of the encirclement, and the total number of enemies destroyed by the Manchurian Army stayed at 680,000, failing to break the record of 700,000 enemies destroyed in the Battle of Renham.

This fiasco shattered all hopes for a counteroffensive by the Russian army, and all they could do now was to hold on, and the commander-in-chief of the Russian army, Grand Duke Nikolai Nikolayevich the Elder, withdrew all his forces, abandoned all the strongholds on the periphery, and withdrew all his forces to Fort Yekarina on the Ishet River on the eastern slope of the Middle Urals. This move was tantamount to giving up all of Russia's presence in Asia and opening the door for the Manchurian Army to advance into Central Asia. The Manchurian Army can not only sweep through the Khanate of Central Asia, but also allow Russia to say goodbye to Asia completely, and the Caspian Sea will also become the Romance of the Three Kingdoms. But the old Grand Duke Nikolai Nikolayevich had no choice, he had to hold the Ural Mountains, hold the steel town and transportation hub Yekarina Fort, otherwise the iron hooves of the Manchurian army would inevitably cross the Ural Mountains, and Russia would never recover.

The Manchurian Army chased the defeated troops all the way to Fort Yekarina, but because of insufficient preparation, it failed to take Fort Yekarina, giving the Russian army a chance to breathe and deploy. When the battle calmed down a little, Acton regretted it a little, but Goxinga was in a hurry to go to the front almost in person. Starting the pursuit from the 15th height, the Manchurian army followed the Russian army all the way too far, they had already separated from the supply railway for more than 300 kilometers, and the farthest troops were actually nearly 400 kilometers. The winter under the Ural Mountains will take at least four months to pass, and the vast snowfield, which is almost extinct on the road, may soon become a dead end for the Manchurian army. One or two divisions, 30,000 or 40,000 people, can rely on airdrops to maintain supplies, and nearly 500,000 troops on the front line cannot be counted on aircraft. The Russians' favorite weapon was their great depth and cold winter, with which they defeated the invincible Napoleon, and the elder Grand Duke Nikolai Nikolayevich also wanted to give Gohinga a taste.

"The northern frontier forces attacked Yekarina Fort with all their might, striving to annihilate all the Russian troops east of the Ural Mountains within ten days. If the strategic goal cannot be achieved within the time limit, the supply should be withdrawn immediately, and it should not be confined to one city or one place. "Siberia, where there is nothing to do, is about to flutter snowflakes, so that the railway soldiers of Xishou are advancing very slowly, and they want to build the railway to Yekarina Fort, and the devil knows when. The ugly Guoxinga, who didn't want to die, immediately ordered the northern front line to launch a fierce attack, and if he couldn't beat it, he would retreat immediately, and he would never grind with the Russians in the snow.

"Praise the great God and make it colder! Freeze to death these greedy Manchurian robbers! While Goshin was scratching his head, the elder Nikolai Nikolayevich was just cooking in Yekarinburg. The temperature has dropped to minus forty degrees, and the elder Grand Duke Nikolai Nikolayevich is still praying that it will continue to get cold.

Russians, who live in cold climates all year round, have adapted to this cold weather, and they are well prepared. There are many warm houses in Ekarina Castle for everyone to live in, and even the most front-line soldiers have a thatched hut to live in. Moreover, Yekarinaburg, as a steel center, hoarded a large amount of coal, and even in the open trenches, the Russian army could bake a fire. Dressed in fur, drinking vodka, and roasting over a fire, the old Grand Duke Nikolai Nikolayevich believed that the Manchurians would never be treated as well as them. The cold weather would not only increase their supply burden, but also kill and wound a large number of their personnel, Napoleon's soldiers froze to death by hundreds of thousands, and the Manchurian army was not at all.

But the truth is often hopeless, the Manchurians did not struggle in the cold wind, as the old Grand Duke Nikolai Nikolayevich imagined, they were a little uncomfortable, but on the whole they were quite okay. There was no such thing as a house in the Manchurian Army, and the few small cabins that were easy to occupy were only enough for the headquarters. Fuel is not very sufficient, they have no coal, they can only burn some wood, gasoline, diesel had to be reserved for tanks, but they could not use it until they had to. However, the survival skills of the Chinese are obviously much stronger than those of the Russians. As if digging caves, the soldiers of the Manchurian Army dug many holes in the trenches and hollowed out the walls to make flues. The only pieces of wood burned in the flue, and then the smoke spread its warmth to every manhole. The Russians could not understand this technique at all, because the high-tech product of the ondol was only mastered by the Chinese. It is better to eat and wear the Manchurian Army than the Russian army, and the winter training uniform of the Manchurian Army is sandwiched with cotton-down-cotton, with plenty of meat and more liquor than vodka. There was a large amount of liquor in the Manchurian army, which was originally used as antifreeze, and it was so cold that it could not stand it, so it could naturally be used for emergency relief.

Five days were spent on both sides, and the Manchurian army did not freeze to death, and the outer positions carefully deployed by the old Grand Duke Nikolai Nikolayevich allowed the Manchurians to occupy a few pieces, and the old Grand Duke Nikolai Nikolayevich was a little unable to sit still. Fort Yekarina is unavoidable, and the Russian army in the Ural Mountains in winter has no way to deploy defenses, and Fort Yekarina is lost, and everyone can only see Moscow. Grand Duke Nikolai Nikolayevich the Elder gave the harshest military order, no one should take half a step back, and he would fight to the death with the Manchurians every inch of land. However, it is not enough for his subordinates to play with their lives, and the old Grand Duke Nikolai Nikolayevich must have some ingenuity in order to be able to confront the Manchurian army.

In the mind of the old Grand Duke Nikolai Nikolaevich, Nikolaevsk, that is, the place called Temple Street by the Chinese, could not help but appear. The only time the Russian army stopped the Manchurians was on Temple Street, and only the brutal street fighting on Temple Street stopped the Manchurian Army's seemingly invincible chariot. The report on the battle on the 15th heights brought back by Stoletov convinced the elder Grand Duke Nikolai Nikolayevich that urban street battles and underground fortifications were the invincible mode of defensive operations. But before the elder Grand Duke Nikolai Nikolayevich could turn into a groundhog, a startling news reached the Yekarinburg front, which surprised the Russian-Manchurian armies, and Germany and Austria-Hungary declared war on Russia.

Goxinga had always been hesitant to start a war against Russia at the beginning, and he didn't want to start a war against Russia in the second half of the year, but he was fooled by Bismarck before he made up his mind. Whether it was the Battle of Renham or the Battle of the 15th Heights, after every great victory of the Manchurian Army, Goxinga would wait for news from Berlin with hope. However, Bismarck and Wilhelm I disappointed Goxinga again and again, and they did not mention a word about the war against Russia except for some pompous congratulatory messages, and the angry Goxinga wanted to go to war against them. As a result, when Gohinga no longer had hope for them, Bismarck and Wilhelm I suddenly gave their hands and brought Joseph's eldest nephew in hand.

Bismarck, a political veteran, would not suddenly discover his conscience about the matter of fooling Goxinga, and the sudden attack of Germany and Austria was also out of their own considerations. After the Battle of Heights 15, the losses of the Russian army in the Far East had reached nearly 1.5 million, which made the German military circles very excited, and everyone felt that they could advance with the Manchurian Army in the east and west, and then kill Russia in one go and completely swallow the Balkan Peninsula. It is a pity that Bismarck felt that the time was not very ripe, although Germany and Austria in the Balkans and Turkey, they were greatly interfered with by Russia, but they could not start a war against Russia as soon as possible. Germany and Austria are not only opponents of Russia in Europe, England and France are still there, and Germany must be cautious in every move.

But at the same time that the Manchurian army was besieging Yekarinaburg, a great good news came, and Li Zhi of the Nanyang Dispatch Army also won a battle. After several months of preparation, the Nanyang Dispatch Army invaded India in one fell swoop, annihilating more than 100,000 British, French, and Indian troops, including more than 70,000 British and Indian troops. Imphal, the counteroffensive base of the Anglo-French coalition against Burma, was taken down, and the spearhead was directed at Dimapur, an important supply base of the coalition army. The combined Anglo-French fleet, which gathered all the elite of the British and French navies, could no longer stay in the English Channel because of the progress of the situation in Europe, and had to set sail for an expedition to South Asia to defend Britain's most important colonies.

As soon as the main forces of the British and French navies left, Bismarck's spiritual head immediately came up, and the terrifying lion finally went to fight the eastern dragon. Moltke, the elder chief of the German General Staff, immediately formulated a general strategic plan for Germany to dominate Europe and China, and Bismarck and Wilhelm I immediately bluffed. The first step in Germany's hegemony plan is to take advantage of Russia's fire and add fuel to the fire. After Wilhelm I went to Vienna and fooled Joseph again, Germany and Austria immediately set the tone for declaring war on Russia. Bismarck went to London and Paris to fool around, and Bismarck was convinced that Britain and France had absolutely no courage to intervene now, and that he would definitely win the opportunity for Germany to single out Russia. As long as Britain and France do not move, Germany can absolutely eliminate this big hidden danger behind itself, and if it starts a war with Britain and France in the future, Germany will not suffer from the enemy on its back.

After a few busy days, Wilhelm I and Joseph finally declared war on the Russian Empire on the sixth day of the siege of Yekarinburg in Acton. More than 900,000 allied troops of the two countries rushed to the border line with a roar, and then stopped on the border line with a sharp brake. The pressure was smashed, and 700,000 troops were scraped together, and they were hurriedly sent to the border to resist the German-Austrian allies, and urgently contacted Britain and France for help. However, an embarrassing situation arose, whether the Russians were increasing their troops or sending envoys to ask for help, the German-Austrian allies were squatting on the border and did not move, as if they had forgotten about the declaration of war. The Yekarina Castle on the Eastern Front was under heavy artillery fire, but the people on the Western Front just sat down, without any indication as if they were here to fight a sit-down battle.