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Even if the British navy is repulsed and invaded the western Mediterranean, it will not make sense, the Chinese navy will not be supplied with a single port around, and the rejuvenated British navy will block the Chinese navy in the western Mediterranean once it reappears in the Tunis Strait.

However, previous naval battles have proved that even if the battle began in the early morning and used twice the number of warships to fight the British army, it was impossible to sink the British capital ships in a whole day. This is diametrically opposed to the Mediterranean naval battle more than 30 years ago, when everyone had the ability to destroy the other, the explosive bombs were huge, and the wooden ships of both sides encountered the destructive effect of artillery, and as a result, both sides were frightened, and it was decided that the land batteries that attacked the other side suffered greater losses, and they were unable to land and fight. As a result, they chose to defend.

This time, no one can destroy anyone, and it is not even as good as at the beginning, if you grit your teeth and destroy each other with the British, you can destroy the British Navy.

The difference is that the crown prince of the present day is more resolute than the emperor of the past, and the emperor of the past will consider the huge losses, and will consider whether the huge casualties are worth it. Now the crown prince does not think about the consequences, just destroy the British navy, even if it pays huge losses. Even if it costs the entire navy veterans to be exhausted, they will not hesitate to exhaust it, but there is no means to destroy the other party.

As long as the Chinese fleet chooses to break through from here, Britain can only choose to intercept it in this direction, because Britain does not dare to give up here and dare not let China break through the Mediterranean.

It will take too long to strategically weaken Britain's supply capacity strategically compared to weakening Britain step by step from the periphery.

The attitude of the crown prince made it very difficult for the sailors, and it was indeed the most convenient to break through from the Mediterranean.

However, it is not impossible, after repeated discussions and deductions, the sailors still believe that it is not operable to break through directly from the sea, unless the technology suddenly breaks out and an artillery capable of causing devastating damage to the ironclad ship is born, otherwise it is impossible to annihilate the British Navy near the British base, as long as the navy cannot be annihilated in the short term, it can only retreat. This is a major disadvantage of ironclads, because unlike sail warships, ironclads rely on logistics and supplies, which are from the industrial age. After a day of fighting, artillery shells and fuel need to be replenished, and if the enemy's navy is only damaged, it will still have to be consumed with the opponent when it comes back next time.

Unable to directly destroy the enemy fleet itself, the sailors believed that it was better to weaken the opponent's ability to sustain combat first, that is, to start with the bases of the British. The forward base of the British army is Malta, just as China has always used Crete as a base, and the disadvantage of this base is that it is small in size and does not have the ability to support a large fleet. The British fleet had no problem anchoring here, and the basic maintenance capabilities were also available, but if it was badly damaged, it would have to go to a more complete base for repairs. It was advantageous for the British that they occupied Sicily, which had a certain population and where European companies built relatively good shipyards.

But if the Grand Fleet is fully damaged, Sicily's repair capabilities will not be enough, but nearby Italy can clearly help, and taking a step back, France is not far away. So even if the Chinese fleet seriously damaged the entire British fleet, they would have the ability to quickly carry out repairs nearby. France, Italy, and especially France's well-developed industrial system were the largest backing of the British Navy in the Western Mediterranean.

And to inflict heavy damage on the entire British fleet, it is impossible for the Chinese fleet to be undamaged, and to fully restore its combat effectiveness, it will not have such a good advantage as Britain, first of all, it must retreat to Crete, and the maintenance capability of Crete will never be able to support the entire fleet, so Greece is important. However, Greece's industrial strength is very different from that of France, so the damage to the size of the entire fleet has to be withdrawn to the Black Sea coast and used the developed shipping capacity of the Black Sea coast to maintain.

Historically, the Russo-Japanese naval war, an important reason why Russia lost so badly was that they lacked naval bases all over the world, and after coming to Japan across half the world, not only were people very tired, but the state of the ships was actually not very good.

Now in the competition in the Mediterranean, although China's basic strength is not bad, and the shipping system developed on the Black Sea coast on the basis of prosperous trade is definitely not worse than that of France and Italy, but the distance is too far. The forward bases controlled by the British, Malta and Sicily, are on the border of France and Italy, and the British occupy an absolute geographical advantage. Unless the shipbuilding industry in Greece is comparable to that of Italy and France combined.

Until this disadvantage could not be changed, the sailors believed that with the current superiority in troops, it was not possible to break through the western Mediterranean head-on, so they would retreat to the next best thing and weaken the British advantage first.

The General Staff of the Naval Division submitted a new plan, this time seeking to strike at British bases, rather than destroying the British Navy. Previously, the reason why the Chinese fleet had failed to return in vain three times in a row with a certain advantage in naval battles was because of the distance, whether from Crete or Greece, the distance from Malta was much farther than that of Italy.

The Navy decided to shorten the strike distance step by step, so that the naval fleet and soldiers could dock nearby after the naval battle, rest and continue the operation.

It would be too difficult to capture islands like Malta and Sicily head-on. It seems unrealistic to have to rely entirely on the strength of the sailors.

However, the Mediterranean Sea is a closed sea area surrounded by the continents of Eurasia and Africa, and there is no breakthrough to be found in Europe, but Africa can. After the British seized Sicily, they easily closed the Strait of Messina, and now China must pass through the Strait of Tunis to get to the western Mediterranean, and Malta is stuck at the entrance to the Strait of Tunis.

Malta is not easy to capture, but Tunisia is much easier. Fighting all the way from the coast of Africa, attacking by sea and land, the sailor believes that he still has this ability.

Tunisia was once fiercely contested by France and the Ali dynasty of Egypt, and the powerful France finally won, during the alliance with China, France used Tunisia as a strategic fulcrum against the British sea power in the western Mediterranean, and invested a lot of resources here, although it was impossible to develop a huge industrial system in Tunisia, but the port facilities and shipyards were relatively complete.

Once occupied, the Chinese naval division would not only be able to obtain a nearby supply base, but also shorten the strike distance of the British Navy and enhance its sustained combat capability. Moreover, the geographical location of Tunisia, facing the western Mediterranean, is equivalent to breaking into the hinterland of British power, and is already located behind Malta.

The British, who continued to maintain a military presence in Malta, instead fell into a local disadvantage. Therefore, Britain will never accept that this place will be occupied by China, and will give full aid to Tunisia, which is a French colony, and the French will definitely defend this place to the death. This is destined to be a vicious war on land and sea, and China has limited land forces in this direction.

Due to the constraints of practical conditions and the lack of necessity, China has not carried out a general mobilization, and has only carried out partial mobilization in the territory of the Americas and the northwest frontier, and lacks the land forces to attack Tunisia, and the distance is long, even if there are troops, it is difficult to transport them here in the short term.

However, the Indian battlefield basically ended the fighting, and the law and order war did not require too many troops, and the imperial grandson Zhou Gu formed a large number of Indian puppet troops, and the five million African company troops that had been fighting for half a year from the frontal battlefield could be drawn out to fight.

There are many convenient conditions for the use of the Indian army to fight, firstly, this is the company's armed forces, and the use of these forces will not arouse too much public opinion in the country, and secondly, an extremely favorable condition is that Zhou Chun, the king of the Urals, tried his best to promote the construction of the Indo-European railway in order to connect Assam with the Urals, and the path of this railway was from India to Persia and the railway of the Manchu Empire.

The territory of the Manchu Empire, from Central Asia to Persia and to the valley of the Two Rivers, also had a narrow outlet to the sea in the Mediterranean. In order to strengthen the connection with the Manchus, the Greek king supported the construction of a railway to the Mediterranean port of Iskenderun, which meant that troops from India could directly reach the Mediterranean.

Even further, Egypt itself had railways, and after its defeat in the French battle for Tunisia, Egypt later built a coastal railway from Egypt to Cyrenaica and Tripoli in order to strengthen its control over Cyrenaica. In addition, Egypt borders the Manchu Empire, and the Manchu valley of the two rivers borders the Egyptian-ruled province of Syria. As the most developed area of the Manchu Empire, the two river basins had railways, and Syria also had railways, although the railway networks of the two countries were not connected because of the different railway companies, railway standards and technologies, but it was not a difficult thing to transfer.

The only trouble is that it is France that has invested the largest investment in the region in Syria, and the railways in Syria are run by the French. Now that France is a belligerent with China, it is impossible for them to honestly hand over the railways to Chinese control.

China is temporarily unable to control the Egyptian-ruled province of Syria, and Egypt will need Egypt's cooperation if it wants to attack Tunisia by land through Egyptian territory. Therefore, the key to this plan is to win over Egypt to the war.

China's influence on Egypt is enormous, not directly, but through European companies. The European companies that controlled the Suez Canal were essentially in control of Egypt's finances in the same way that the African companies that controlled the South African gold mines had on the Kingdom of South Africa.

It is not difficult to win over Egypt, and it is not difficult to exert pressure and give benefits to Egypt to comply. Tunisia cannot be given to Egypt in its entirety, and China can only demand the establishment of a base and annex the territory of Tunisia to Egypt. At the same time, the investment of French capital in Syria and other places is not something that the Egyptians are willing to do, but they are powerless to resist, promising that they can confiscate these French assets, and I believe that Egypt will be very active in immediately seizing and taking over the French-funded railways.

If the crown prince is still not satisfied, the staff of the naval division decides that he can only take the blame and resign, and let the crown prince invite Gao Ming to go.

Fortunately, this time the crown prince, who was difficult to serve, was unified.

Another battlefield of this world war, the North African battlefield, has begun!

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