In front of the Grand Trianon Palace in Versailles, a magnificent bronze statue was erected.

This small palace in the Palace of Versailles was Napoleon's favorite residence for his ascension and the residence of the current Emperor Napoleon III, and this bronze statue was a state gift from the Emperor of China. The net height is three zhang, it is a colossus, the emperor Napoleon sits on a horse, does not smile, his eyes are deep, he looks into the distance, he sits down and the war horse is a little too fat, the emperor holds the hilt of the sword in one hand, it seems to draw the sword, and it does not seem to be like drawing the sword.

"Draw your sword and look around, dazed!"

Zhou Dagong sighed at the bronze statue.

Napoleon did not draw his sword, the Grand Duke said it was because he did not know where to swing it.

Napoleon III was a very introverted emperor who did not care much about national politics and did not understand it very well. When he was in Quebec, there was an Aosta dictatorship, and when he returned to France, his uncle was in charge, and he didn't have to deal with difficult parliaments or responsible state affairs, he only needed to write his consent on the documents sent to him.

It is strange that such a person cares most about the stock news published in the newspaper every day, and is also keen on investment.

It is basically impossible for such a person to have anything in common with the Chinese emperor and grandson who likes to be in the wind and snow, so except for social activities such as balls and dinners, the two do not see each other very often.

However, this is not to snub the Grand Duke of Zhou, the French, at least the French royal family is still very enthusiastic about China, not only the friendship with Napoleon that the Chinese emperor said, but more importantly, the French royal family knows very well that they can return to France from remote North America to restore the country, and the greatest support given to them is not Prussia, which is verbally recognized, but China, which explicitly supports France at the last moment. Because before the Bonapartes decided to return home, they had already received assurances from China. If the Bonaparte Restoration were to cause a War of Succession, China would have sided with France.

With this strong guarantee, the Bonaparte family dared to restore, and this is why Bismarck made a public statement.

That's why there was an alliance between France and China.

France's economic development has been good in recent years, Lyon's silk industry is still standing on top of the world, Chinese products can only enter Europe in the form of high-quality fabrics, but the French can make silk into more diverse clothing, French hats, skirts, and even a silk scarf with lace can also lead the fashion.

Clothing is the largest export product, and French clothing with a cultural value-added effect has a high profit margin. Feeding hundreds of thousands of designers, tailors, businessmen.

Other industrial fields have also developed rapidly, with 10,000 kilometers of railways built, 8 million tons of coal mined every year, pig iron output of more than 1 million tons, and steel output of 50,000 tons.

But there is a big problem with French industry, his industrial profit margins are not small, but the population he feeds is different. It is impossible to industrialize by relying on luxury. The annual value of clothing and luxury goods amounted to 1.5 billion francs, while the annual output of the entire mining and metalworking industry was only 565 million francs.

At the same time, Prussia, although in textile and light industry, was far like France. But Prussia mined twice as much coal as France, and produced roughly equal pig iron and steel. But the railway mileage is already as high as 15,000 kilometers, and if you add Poland, it has reached 20,000 kilometers, which is twice as long as France. The railway drives a complete set of machining industries, and there are already 300 machine factories in Prussia, of which there are thousands of workers in the machine factories of Krupp, Tinus, and Polsich, which are currently the largest factories in the world.

These machine industries not only produced 3,000 locomotives and 60,000 train cars for Prussia, but also exported a large number of machines to the British and French markets, and the machine tool products produced in Prussia were even exported to China. Of course, it is only the low-end, high-end machine tool market, which has always been a British monopoly. Although individual factories have reached the level of the British machine, the number of self-produced machine tools in China is limited and can only be sold domestically, lacking international competitiveness.

The strategic significance of these machine factories lies in the fact that they can produce a wide range of weapons. In the previous Austro-Prussian War, for the first time in history, Prussia did not import British weapons and relied on its own industry to meet its military needs. This was also the time of the war against Russia, because Britain later banned the export of weapons to Prussia, which indirectly allowed a large number of orders for weapons produced by machine factories such as Krupp, which greatly stimulated the weapons production capacity of these factories.

Compared with the French railways are only two-thirds of Prussia's, and ten years ago they were far ahead of Prussia, France's railway construction is not only slow to grow, but also slow to build, followed by a small number of steam locomotives, but also a large number of British and Prussian products, resulting in the country's machinery industry is not large, it is worth mentioning, only one Schneider factory.

The backwardness of France's heavy industry is only relative, in terms of absolute quantity, there are few countries in the world that are developing faster than France, but Prussia because of the industrial endowment of the Ruhr area, coal growth is extremely fast, which has led to the promotion of steam engines, and French coal has never been self-sufficient, one-third needs to be imported.

Although in terms of absolute economic aggregate, France is three times that of Prussia, but in military-related fields, it is indeed lagging behind Prussia, and the gap is not small.

It's just that the French don't know it, after all, their population is far more than Prussia, and their financial revenue is more than that of Prussia, and the French army has never thought that they are worse than the Prussian army, after the Napoleonic era, they think they are the first in the world, although Napoleon was defeated, but it is not that the French army can't beat others, but there are too many enemies, and it is difficult to defeat four hands with two fists, and the heroes are also afraid of dogs!

The Palace of Versailles has many places worth visiting, works of art, paintings, but Zhou Dagong always felt awkward, a nouveau riche atmosphere, and a kind of uncontrollable temperament in the magnificence.

Grand Duke Zhou did not stay long in Versailles, he was waiting for someone, the uncle of the French emperor, the prime minister of France, Louis Napoleon.

Louis Napoleon became increasingly intolerable to Prussia, which he believed was stirring up anti-French sentiment and agitating the German national sentiment.

Louis exchanged views with the Grand Duke of Zhou, and France expressed its attitude that as soon as Prussia formally announced the annexation of Poland, or established any relations with Poland of a merger nature, France would immediately declare war on Prussia, and France would never allow such an act of destroying the system of divine power in Europe.

France wanted to strengthen its cooperation with Russia, and he believed that Poland should be a free, independent country, not a dirty barbarian state like Prussia. Louis hoped that in the event of a war between France and Prussia, Russia would provide some help, and France would be willing to work with Russia to guarantee Poland's freedom.

The Grand Duke of Zhou asked about the Polish crown, and Louis believed that the issue could be further discussed by France and Russia.

He hoped that the Grand Duke's visit would lead to a unified Franco-Russian attitude towards Prussia.

Napoleon had already made many diplomatic moves with regard to the establishment of Franco-Russian relations, but the Tsaress's refusal to make her position clear was somewhat incomprehensible to Napoleon, who believed that Russia would not be willing to allow Prussia to control Poland.

But as things stand, it is no longer realistic to divide Poland again, Poland has become a powerful country, and whoever controls it will have access to a well-trained Polish army of hundreds of thousands. Whoever wants to divide Poland will also become the enemy of this army.

Napoleon was reluctant to get France to accept the surrender of the Polish crown to Russia, at least he thought that Prussia was not worth the sacrifice that France would make.

But France controlled the Polish crown, which was also impossible, Britain would not agree, Prussia would not agree, Austria would not agree, and the most opposed must be Russia.

The most realistic thing is nothing more than a joint defeat of Prussia by France and Russia, and a new Polish royal family will be jointly promoted by France and Russia, which will be supervised by both France and Russia.

Zhou Dagong said that he could not express his attitude on behalf of Russia, but he would definitely convey the attitude of France to the female tsar.

A meeting was unlikely to lead to anything on such a major issue, and Napoleon did not insist on it, and at this time he still did not think much of Prussia in his heart. It is also regarded as second-rate, but the Polish problem is a big mistake, and no one expected that Poland would be able to burst into such a strong force under the control of Prussia. But when Prussia and Russia were fighting for Poland, France had no chance to intervene, because France was worried about getting involved in the Great War between Britain and Russia and China. Instead, they are taking advantage of that opportunity to expand their colonies in North Africa.

It's a mistake, but it's a mistake that will end up in your own hands.

After finishing his meeting with Napoleon, he quickly left France and headed south from the Mediterranean, stopping in Sicily and then on to Greece.

The visit of the Chinese emperor to Greece, where the Chinese prince ruled, and the visit of Zhou Dagong from Russia, have attracted the attention of the diplomatic community, and he has too many symbols on him, the second grandson of the Chinese emperor, the husband of the Russian tsaress, and the king of the Ural kingdom.

There's too much room for reminiscence.

For example, why did he go to Austria, then to Switzerland and France, but not to Prussia, and does this represent a certain attitude of Russia towards Prussia? Does his stay in Austria for a long time represent China's attitude toward Austria, or Russia's attitude toward Austria?

If everyone thought that his status as the second grandson of the emperor was not enough to represent China, now that he is visiting Greece and holding talks with the king of the United Kingdom of Greece and Bulgaria, it is too Chinese.

Why did Zhou Dagong come to Greece after such a big detour instead of coming to Greece directly from Austria or from the Black Sea, and does this mean that Russia had any diplomatic ties and what special relations were established between Russia and Austria, France, and now Greece?

Perhaps this visit has no political purpose, just an impromptu outing by Zhou Chun, but his identity is to make the international situation unwinded.