In 1879, the largest costume ball in the history of Russia, Empress Alexandrovna, was held thanks not only to Grand Duchess Elena Palovna for her leadership, but also to two people, Count Nikolai Gerasimov, Minister of State of the Winter Palace in St. Petersburg, and General Shuvalov, Chairman of the Reich Council of Ministers.

Empress Alexandrovna, who has been bedridden since the beginning of the year, has returned to St. Petersburg from Moscow in October, and the climate is far more humid and cold than Moscow, making it even more difficult for Empress Alexandrovna to endure on the sickbed.

Count Gerasimov's ancestors, as Catherine the Great's attendants, moved from Stettin on the Baltic Sea to St. Petersburg more than a hundred years ago, with the conversion to Orthodox Christianity, Count Gerasimov's living habits have actually been very Russified, but Count Gerasimov still stubbornly believes that he is still a proud German in blood, but a German who believes in Orthodox Christianity.

Not only in terms of blood, Count Gerasimov was also very proud of Prussian culture and the German language, as early as the Russian court in the eighteenth century, especially in the time of Catherine the Great, the entire Russian court was the most fashionable to speak German, and to read and publish German books.

In order to get rid of ignorance and backwardness in Russia as soon as possible, Catherine the Great recruited a lot of small nobles and technical class personnel from Germany to come to Russia, and by the time of St. Peter in 1879, there were still more than 50,000 Germans living here, accounting for about 7% of the total population of the Russian capital, and the vast majority of these Germans belonged to the Russian noble and technical class.

For example, during the Great Patriotic War of 1812, except for a few Russians such as Marshal Kutuzov, most of the officers of the Russian army regiments and staff were Germans, or Prussians.

General Shuvalov's family, if traced back to its roots, is inextricably linked to the Prussian military Junkers, who moved to Russia.

After the French Revolution, with the influx of a large number of Bourbon nobles into Russia, especially after joining the upper aristocratic circles of St. Petersburg, French once again became the most fashionable aristocratic language in Russia, and German could only be relegated.

From Kazan to the banks of the Volga River on the Black Sea, there are nearly 2 million Germans living in Protestant Mennonites, who are more like victims of Russian fairy tales than their fellow aristocrats living in St. Petersburg and Moscow.

Catherine the Great introduced Mennonites from Germany to Russia because they believed in peace and did not love war, in the words of the Great, the Mennonites were a herd of farming and docile sheep raised in the Volga steppes, and in order to make these Germans willing to come to Russia instead of North America, the Emperor generously promised these German immigrants that Tsarist Russia would permanently exempt them from military service and most taxes, and allow them to believe freely and retain the habit of speaking German.

History has proven once again that believing in the oath of the Russians is undoubtedly tantamount to suicide, and from 1871 onwards, Alexander II openly began to break these promises, starting with the abolition of tax incentives, to forcing Mennonites to do military service, and this year ordering Germans to switch to Russian.

Although these peace-loving Mennonites were looked down upon by the belligerent Prussians in Germany at that time, after all, everyone still belonged to Lutheranism, but the sect was different, so these Mennonites living on the Volga River soon ran to St. Petersburg to ask for help from their fellow German nobles.

Some German nobles turned a blind eye to this, but there were still some nobles who were willing to help their kindred, and the court minister, Count Gerasimov, was one of them, and the upright Count Gerasimov was not accustomed to Alexander II's ruthlessness towards the empress, nor was he tired of his reneging on the oath of his ancestors to the Mennonites, and he had long thought about how to re-establish the glory of Germany in the Russian court.

But the Russian Empire is the empire of the Romanov family, and it is also the empire of Alexander II, as long as Alexander II himself is unwilling, anyone can change the status quo in Russia, so the German nobles in the Russian Empire need to unite and use all means to influence the tsar.

Duchess Pavlovnapa, the standard-bearer of the pro-German faction, was anxious about the needs of Grand Duchess Elena Palovna, the leader of the German women's group, and wrote a letter to Prime Minister Bismarck about the embarrassment of the pro-German faction in Russia after Empress Alexandrovna became seriously ill, and at the end of the letter he even asked the old prime minister to think of a way for him.

This kind of jealous and intriguing plot of the Tsarist harem palace fight, what can the old prime minister do, he has no choice but to find Joey in the palace, hoping that the little guy he likes can give him a new idea.

Joy had some advanced experience in palace fighting, and he didn't know where to start with how to defeat Alexander II's junior, Lady Dolgorukova, but he could definitely agree with strengthening Germany's influence within the Russian court.

Naturally, Joy's eyes fell on General Shuvalov, not only because he was the highest-ranking and well-known German-friendly in the Russian Empire, but also because of his inextricable economic interests with the German Empire.

General Shuvalov, who served as chairman of the Imperial Council of Ministers in May this year, is not only a bright political star, but also a rising business tycoon in the Russian economic circles, the first thermal power plant in Russian history, the St. Petersburg Power Plant, and the power grid of St. Petersburg, the St. Petersburg Power Company.

Those who know the inside know of course that this is all based on the output of the German company Siemens, not to mention that every screw is imported from Germany, and even the coal used in thermal power plants comes from the Ruhr area of Germany, not to mention the skilled workers who lay the power grid.

Russia does not have a power industry base at all, so it is natural to import a full set of German equipment, and the import of German coal, but Joy vigorously promotes the result of German standards, according to Siemens' explanation of General Shuvalov, the coal needed for German thermal power equipment belongs to dye coal, according to German standards, so that fuel coal in calorific value, ignition temperature, grindability, particle size, chemical composition, characteristics at high temperatures, and resistance ratio, etc., have strict regulations.

Well, to be honest, not only General Shuvalov, but also people who are not in the thermodynamics industry, do not understand what the German engineers are saying at all, the only feeling is that they are professional, too professional, no matter how you look at it, the Germans have already transplanted their attitude towards military professionalism to industrial production.

In addition to adhering to the professionalism of doing everything to the extreme, the German manufacturers in 1879 also had a touch of customer service spirit that did not belong to this era, and the German manufacturers who were close to Joy liked to stand in the customer's point of view, starting from the customer's concern, and providing customers with more additional benefits.

For example, regarding the need to import German coal for the St. Petersburg power plant, Siemens thoughtfully said that as long as General Shuvalov approves, Siemens will hire German and Russian mineral experts to find coal mines in Russia that need to meet German electricity standards, and even said that if it finds Russian fuel coal of better quality, Siemens is willing to import a large number of them.

If General Shuvalov is willing to cooperate with Siemens to vigorously promote the power industry in Russia, Siemens also euphemistically hinted that after Russia imports a certain number of complete machines, Siemens will export its products to Russia in the form of parts, and is willing to cooperate with General Shuvalov to set up a joint venture assembly plant in Russia to help the Shuvalov family earn more .....

Oh, and the correct formulation should be, vigorously accelerate the process of industrialization of electricity in Russia.

There has never been a shortage of hypocrites in history, and this kind of practice of making a fortune in silence and gaining a good reputation for supporting the Russian national industry at home is quite in line with General Shuvalov's careful thinking.

In fact, in addition to Russia's power industry, General Shuvalov also has a monopoly on Russia's pharmaceutical industry, especially the emerging vaccine industry with huge profits, especially the Russian monopoly of the German-made pertussis vaccine.

The only thing that General Shuvalov regrets is that the German company Solvay, which is in charge of the Russian market, is unwilling to commit to setting up a pertussis production plant in Russia, and at most is willing to set up a few drug transit and storage warehouses that meet German medical standards, and the cost of building the warehouses will still require General Shuvalov to pay.

Originally, I thought that several warehouses were just simple buildings made of masonry and thatch, but when Solvay handed the quotation of the German standard pharmaceutical warehouse to General Shuvalov, looking at this pharmaceutical warehouse composed of high-grade concrete, a large amount of steel, steam refrigerators, electric fans, lighting equipment, etc., Shuvalov finally felt how expensive the German standard was.

But looking at the price of a tiny bottle of whooping cough, which was more expensive on the black market than the same volume of gold, General Shuvalov decided to put up with it.

Professional, caring, profitable, but expensive.... This is how German standards felt for General Shuvalov.

The core technology must remain in Germany, and the assembly, sales and warehousing can be placed in other countries, which is the bottom limit that Joy has drawn for the German companies he cooperates with, and thanks to Joey's experience in dealing with some centralized countries in his previous life, Joy clearly knows that doing business with countries like Russia, as long as there is the support of the high-level elites in Tsarist Russia, you can basically do a white wolf business with empty gloves.

Of course, the Germans did not do the business of the white wolf, and General Shuvalov became more and more demanding of the Germans from the arrogance of his first high position, so Joey recommended to Chancellor Bismarck the second man of the pro-German Russian Empire to stand for the Germans in Russia.

According to the description of Duchess Pavlovnapa, the queen's symptoms are reflected in cough and frequent low-grade fever, but this symptom may be caused by a variety of diseases or inflammation, of course, the most likely is a respiratory disease.

This was a time when there were no X-rays, no antibiotics, and no even the simplest sulfonamides, so with an irresponsible attitude of being a dead horse doctor, Joey's advice was simply to create a clean and warm living environment for Her Majesty, and to drink more Coke or Sprite with lemon juice, plus more pure oxygen.

According to the normal medical diagnosis process, it is necessary to do routine blood examination, chest X-ray examination and sputum culture, and isolate the same pathogenic bacteria twice in a row to confirm whether it is a respiratory disease, and various antibiotics are also needed for specific treatment.

But today's Joey is a person with the dazzling halo of Professor Koch's favorite student, and is praised as a prodigy-like figure by the German medical community.

Looking at such an honest old prime minister, Joey, who knew what level he was exactly, couldn't help but blush a little, the only thing he could do was to help Siemens design an electrical appliance that could be heated with electricity, and the other was to ask Linde Gases to provide pure and pure oxygen, and to ask Mr. Behrens to design another oxygen mask full of industrial art.

At the end of October, the above things were also transported to the Winter Palace, and Count Gerasimov began to meticulously implement the plan provided by his fellow Germans, taking the opportunity of General Shuvalov's early connection of the power grid to the Winter Palace, a heating core composed of winding resistance wires on a ceramic base, behind which was covered with a silver mirror reflector, the most primitive electric heaters began to appear in large numbers in the Winter Palace, and the unpleasant smoke originally produced by wood and coal heating was swept away in the Winter Palace.

The air in the Hermitage was no longer damp, cold and moldy, but clean, smelling good and warm.

Coke, which originally contained coca, which can be used to treat cough, and a large amount of lemon juice rich in vitamin C, also reduced Queen Alexandrovna's cough symptoms and strengthened her physique by the way.

In the end, the pure oxygen provided by Linde Gas Company not only alleviated the queen's chest tightness and difficulty breathing, but because of the reason for drunk oxygen, it was easier to fall asleep, and the queen, who was fully rested, slowly got better.

There is no advertisement that is more convincing than a person standing in front of you alive, let alone Her Majesty the Queen, who has been bedridden for many years, and is even on the verge of death.

Therefore, the aura of German products has an additional religious atmosphere of "miraculous life-saving".

General Shuvalov, who was responsible for introducing German products into the palace to cure Her Majesty's illness, stood as dazzlingly as the sun god at the Winter Palace masquerade ball tonight.