At this time, only six months had passed since the war, and the situation was changing one after another, and accidents were frequent.

The biggest surprise was that the battlefield suddenly came to a standstill.

First of all, the Polish offensive on the northern front, the Petersburg front defended by Russia, after the Russian army established a defensive line, the Polish army, which was good at excellent maneuvering and roundabout operations, was blocked, and then began to become a Polish army to storm the Russian fortress, the results are self-evident, the Russian army does not have the ability to confront the Polish army in the field, but the ability to fight positional warfare is still there.

And a terrifying new weapon was put into service, not a large-caliber steel cannon, but a weapon called the Grimm or Gatling gun.

This weapon was supplied by the Americans, invented during the Civil War, but its performance was unstable, and only a few were put into service in the later part of the war, and with the improvement of the Americans, it became practical, began to equip the United States Federal Army, and began to be exported at the same time. During the war, the clans of both sides did not hesitate to purchase all kinds of weapons. The American, Richard Jordon Gatlin, had a thriving business, first selling machine guns to the Tsaress, who was unable to stop the Polish army, and then to Konstantin, who was retreating.

Miraculously, both sides blocked the enemy one after another.

This is, of course, a coincidence, that it was the fortifications that held back the enemy, and the machine guns only strengthened the power of the fortifications. But the common people are not good at thinking deeply, just as everyone attributed the Prussian victory in the Austro-Prussian War and the Franco-Prussian War to the needle gun, and they believed that the female tsar blocked the Poles, and Konstantin blocked the Ural army because they were equipped with machine guns.

The real reason, in fact, after the advent of rifled weapons, long-distance precision strikes have made defense more advantageous. In the past, the queue shot was to make up for the lack of firepower, the importance of firepower is that only dense ammunition can effectively kill and injure the enemy, because the smoothbore gun has no accuracy, can only be compensated by dense firepower, rifled guns make it possible to strike accurately, so the high damage caused by the queue shooting tactic becomes unnecessary.

It can be said that the technological progress represented by rifled guns has made the battlefield more brutal, and machine guns are just rifled guns with enhanced firepower. This kind of progress is a military and technological progress, but it is a regression of mankind itself, because the progress of war is a disaster for the human race. But businessmen don't care about this kind of disaster.

Fueled by the shrewd American businessman Gatlin, this view was so influential that it made the machine gun famous at once. Countries have bought Gatling guns, either for patented production, or for direct imitations.

Equipped with a large number of machine guns, both sides began to defend again, digging trenches one after another, just a barbed wire fence, and the scene of the First World War could appear.

At this point the offensive turned into a disaster.

The Ural army suffered heavy losses in the battle of attacking the Dnieper, and soon found that the offensive was unsustainable, and the retreating Konstantin dug too many trenches, assumed too many machine guns, and had completely switched to the defense, from the middle of Russia to the banks of the Dnieper, five lines of defense were established, and after storming the first two lines, the Ural army lost more than 300,000 troops, and Zhao Rang had to let the troops suspend the offensive and turn to rest.

The Donetsk Ridge on the southern front is also an unbreakable danger for the Don River reserves, although it is only a low hill, but under the defense of the fortifications, it is difficult to defeat it with no number of casualties, and it has to be turned to the defense.

At this time, the arrival of the Austro-Hungarian army relieved Konstantin's urgent need, and when he did resist the enemy's attack, Konstantin decided to launch a counteroffensive, he wanted to be the tsar of the whole Russia, and could not be divided in Ukraine. At the beginning of the counteroffensive, Konstantin did get some results, he quickly drove the Ural army, which had not yet turned to the defense, to the Russian heights, but had not yet completely occupied this hilly area, re-approached Moscow, the Ural army also learned trench tactics, the trenches dug by the Chinese soldiers were denser than Konstantin's army, and as a result, Konstantin's counteroffensive ended.

Both sides began to look for and explore new tactics in order to break the deadlock. The tactics of intensive heavy artillery bombardment and concentrated assault of infantry were soon invented, but the enemy's defensive position was immediately improved, and a position was often composed of three or more parallel trenches, and when the enemy took the first trench with great sacrifices, he found that there were still two enemy trenches in front of him, and he was unable to continue to advance, and he was unwilling to retreat. As a result, the trenches of the two sides are getting deeper and deeper, sometimes facing each other hundreds of meters, or even tens of meters, and sniper tactics have also emerged.

The Russian battlefield completely turned into a stalemate phase, and began a war of attrition with the consumption of weapons, ammunition and human lives.

Large-scale movement warfare is still being waged only in the southern European theater.

Because after repeated tug-of-war between Italy and Austria-Hungary around the Venice area, they quickly learned trench warfare.

It is reasonable for Austria-Hungary to look down on Italy, in terms of individual soldier quality, military quality and command ability, the Austro-Hungarian army is indeed higher than Italy, but this gap is not as obvious as in World War II, because the mobility in this era is not as high as in World War II. During World War I, although the Italians did not defeat the Austro-Hungarian army, Italy was able to launch twelve battles of the Isonzo River in the border area, and although the Austro-Hungarian defenses failed to break through the defenses of the Austro-Hungarian army on twelve occasions, the Italians did not retreat.

Therefore, in the battle for Venice, the two sides fought repeatedly, and the artillery completely destroyed a historic city, and finally Italy held the city of Venice, because of the blockade of the French navy, which allowed the Italian navy to bombard the place, while the Austro-Hungarian navy was forced to shrink in the port of Fum.

Then the Italians also found the mystery of trench warfare and began to fight a war of attrition with the Austro-Hungarian army.

On the battlefield of southern Europe, the Balkan Empire has been attacking, the main force has captured the south and east of the Transylvanian plateau, and the Ural army of Dobroga has captured Moldova, and an agreement has been reached that the Black Sea coast of Moldova will be ceded to the Kingdom of Dobroga, and most of it will be annexed to the Principality of Wallachia.

In the lower Danube, it was the Bulgarian army that went back and forth with the Austro-Hungarian army, and Austria-Hungary tried to recover West Wallachia and take advantage of the situation to recover all of Wallachia. Bulgaria, on the other hand, tried to keep West Wallachia, and as for the excess territory they were not interested in, because it was impossible to get it, and it was not much possible to advance north, either by invading Serbia or by seizing the territory of the Kingdom of Hungary.

Therefore, the Bulgarian army, which was on the defensive, gradually found the way of trench warfare and began to turn to trench warfare.

The combined forces of Wallachia and Greece fought repeatedly with the Hungarians on the Transylvanian plateau, because of the cooperation of the local Transylvanians who spoke the same language as the Wallachians, the Balkan Empire did not even have much sense of fighting in a different place here, but was full of guerrillas who cooperated with them, so it was always mainly offensive.

But at the end of the year, the offensive of the Balkan Imperial Army also stalled due to environmental concerns and the increasing defensive tactics of the Hungarians.

This war allowed the Balkan Empire to show its edge, in terms of individual quality, they really could not catch up with the Austro-Hungarian army, but they performed higher than the Italian army, they have surpassed the ranks of the third rate in Europe, successfully squeezed into the second rate, and the Austro-Hungarian army can fight, second only to the Russian, French, German and British first-class armies.

Although the quality of individual soldiers was inferior to that of the Austro-Hungarian army, it was very surprising that it was able to maintain the suppression of the Hungarian army and maintain the offensive at the same scale, inspired by the emotional reconquest of lost territory.

But after winter, the Balkan Empire found that they had no way to attack. Because the Hungarians took advantage of the winter to strengthen and refine their defensive lines, their officers learned from the more advanced trench warfare of the Russian battlefield.

In 1868, the Russian Civil War led to a local scuffle in Europe, and the following year it went.

The two sides continued to fight back and forth, but after the spring, no one wanted to attack.

First of all, the Ural army was unwilling to continue to sacrifice for Russia, and 500,000 Ural Chinese had already paid their lives for the female tsar, and Zhou Chun strongly opposed the meaningless attack.

Hungary held off the onslaught of the Balkans, but when it counterattacked, it allowed the other side to use the Carpathian defense line to kill and wound a large number of Hungarian soldiers. They regained the Transylvanian plateau, but were blocked in the Carpathian Mountains on the edge of the plateau. The Balkan Empire failed to capture all of Transylvania, but captured Moldova. After peace talks with the local forces of Moldova, the other side voluntarily joined the Principality of Wallachia, which is the same ethnic group, and also provided more than 200,000 veterans of the same ethnic group to the same country.

Bulgaria succeeded in keeping the promises they had made in the last war, fulfilling the empty promise of the West Wallachian plain at the cost of the lives of 200,000 Bulgarian soldiers. Greece recovered the Ionian Islands and annexed Albania.

Both sides are unwilling to continue the frantic attack, but only use long-distance artillery battles on the battlefield to consume each other's soldiers, but tons of shells may not be able to kill a soldier hiding in the trenches, but will make the consumption of countries unprecedentedly increased, wealth is generally consumed in water, and the debts of countries are increasing geometrically.

Russia has borrowed 80 million taels of gold from China, equivalent to 500 million pounds; The Balkan Empire also owed a debt of £200 million. Italy borrowed £100 million. Poland spent £300 million. Konstantin borrowed the most foreign debt, and he almost relied on foreign debt to fight this war, so he owed 600 million pounds in debt.

In the spring, the two sides attacked each other, and in the summer they ended in a fierce artillery battle, and in the fall, both sides did not even want to fight artillery.

In the winter, Bismarck offered to mediate, hoping that China, Britain, France, Italy, Greece, and Poland, as well as the two sides of the civil war in Russia, would hold a peace conference in Berlin.