Moscow, the Grand Kremlin.

As the main palace of the entire Kremlin complex, the Grand Kremlin has always been the private residence of the Tsar, and Moscow was actually the capital of Tsarist Russia until Peter the Great moved the capital to St. Petersburg. However, after the relocation of the capital, with the gradual development of St. Petersburg and its proximity to the sea, its geographical location became more and more important, and the status of Moscow seriously declined, and it slowly became a companion capital.

But now, Moscow has ushered in a turning point, ushering in an opportunity to regain the capital of the Russian Empire, that is, the third son of the former tsar, Alexander Alexandrovich, after the death of his father, with the help of the Russian Imperial Guard, escaped from St. Petersburg, which was blockaded by his uncle Grand Duke Mikhail Nikolayevich, and rushed to Moscow and resolutely ascended the throne as emperor, becoming the thirteenth emperor of the Russian Empire, calling himself Alexander III.

Aleksandrovich is only 19 years old now, but after experiencing the life of a rich and carefree prince, and after the great changes in the past six months or so, his heart has become quite mature and has a lot of feelings. The biggest danger at the moment is that his uncle, originally Grand Duke Mikhail Nikolayevich, was crowned by the Orthodox Patriarch himself in St. Petersburg as a new generation of tsars, and the time was just three days after his arrival in Moscow, before he became emperor.

In this way, Mikhail Nikolayevich seized the opportunity and became orthodox in the eyes of some officials and military of the Russian Empire. After all, he ascended the throne in the Orthodox capital of St. Petersburg, where the vast majority of the nobility and central officials of the entire Russian Empire, whether they wanted or not, took a stand and submitted to him, and, most importantly, the coronation of the Orthodox Patriarch. You know, the vast majority of the population of the entire Russian Empire were Orthodox Christians, and the Tsar's accession to the throne, according to tradition, had to be crowned by an Orthodox Patriarch.

Therefore, although Alexandrovich immediately ascended the throne as emperor and proclaimed himself Alexander III, he was not in St. Petersburg, and was not recognized by the vast majority of officials and nobles of the Russian Empire, and second, he was not crowned by the patriarch, so he was naturally very unconfident. Fortunately, he finally announced that from now on, the capital of the Russian Empire will be moved back to Moscow, and the Kremlin will be his imperial palace, and because Moscow was once the center of Russian Orthodox Christianity, there is also a Church of the Assumption in the Kremlin, which was the place where successive tsars and grand dukes received the coronation of the patriarch before the 18th century, so although the patriarch is not in Moscow, there is still an archbishop, which is one level worse than the patriarch, but it is better than nothing.

Later, as the civil strife in the Russian Empire intensified, rebellions began to appear in Poland, Lithuania, Finland, Chechnya and other Caucasus regions and even Kharkov, and even some local garrisons looted farms and disbanded and returned to their hometowns, and the Russian Empire became a battle for the throne between two tsars.

And at this time, Mikhail Nikolayevich, who was originally considered the orthodox tsar, was considered by the local nobility and the army everywhere to be unfavorable for governing the Russian Empire, and was forced to take full responsibility for the civil strife in Tsarist Russia, and was disliked by the army. At this time, the army changed direction and instead supported Alexandrovich in Moscow as the new tsar. Aleksandrovich, who received support, directly appointed Alexander Ivanovich Baryatinsky, who had served as commander-in-chief of the Caucasian garrison and now deputy marshal of the Guards (in Moscow), as marshal of the Russian Empire, and led the Russian troops around Moscow to prepare for an attack on St. Petersburg in the west.

At this time, the local Russian garrisons that had fled from the Ural Mountains in the east one after another, as well as a steady stream of Cossack cavalry, broke into the Great Plain of Eastern Europe and camped around Moscow. These Russian troops numbered two or three hundred thousand, and their generals, after learning of the changes in St. Petersburg and Moscow, rushed to Moseley to express their allegiance to Alexandrovich, and Alexandrovich was naturally overjoyed.

He thought that he had so many troops to allegiance, and while he was excited, he was even more determined that he could defeat his uncle who had robbed him of the throne in St. Petersburg. For a while, I didn't care why these troops fled back to the Eastern European Plain from the east of the Ural Mountains, although I knew that these Cossack internal guard troops and some guards were defeated by the western expeditionary army of the Eastern Empire and fled back, but I felt that it was because of the assassination of my father that the front-line soldiers were unstable and lost the battle.

And the new Russian Field Marshal Ivanovich Baryatinsky directly told Aleksandrovich that with his many years of experience in warfare, those Easterners would never dare to attack the Ural Mountains, after all, the front here is too long, they lack supplies, and the weather is cold, and those Eastern armies are simply not tolerant of severe cold. Moreover, he would reorganize a group of troops to defend several fortresses in the Ural Mountains, especially Orenburg and Yekaterinburg, which would firmly keep the enemy forces in the east out of the Ural Mountains.

After they had organized their army and conquered St. Petersburg first, they would be able to completely consolidate Alexandrovich's position as tsar, and then turn back and lead the Cossack army east of the Ural Mountains to recover Siberia and the Kazakh Khanate.

Only 19-year-old Tsar Alexandrovich naturally listened to the words of Field Marshal Ivanovich Baryatinsky.

Indeed, the situation is also gratifying! The Moscow Army, under the command of Marshal Ivanovich Baryatinsky, launched an offensive in the direction of St. Petersburg with almost 200,000 troops, and behind it, an internal guard army of almost 150,000 troops was organized to prepare for subsequent support.

At this time, although there were as many as 250,000 generals in St. Petersburg and the surrounding areas, 60,000 were sent to Poland to suppress the Polish rebels, and 80,000 were sent to the Grand Duchy of Finland and Lithuania to suppress the rebellion in Finland and Lithuania, resulting in only 100,000 troops in St. Petersburg.

The frenzied offensive of the Moscow army, in less than a month, captured all the way to Tver, Bologoye, Reykshino, Novgorod and other towns, and frantically advanced more than 400 kilometers, less than 200 kilometers from St. Petersburg. Fortunately, the coldest weather came, and the bad weather made it extremely difficult for even the native Russian army to safely march and fight in the field, and the 200,000 troops on the Moscow side, after losing more than 5,000 soldiers, had to stay in Novgorod and other places to wait for the harsh winter to attack St. Petersburg.

But in the coldest of these two or three months, the young Tsar Alexandrovich in Moscow received the astonishing news that his uncle, the puppet Tsar of St. Petersburg, had reconciled with the rebellious Poland and Finland under the pressure of his Muscovite army!

Originally, St. Petersburg's counterinsurgency army approached Poland and almost completely defeated the Polish rebels, but because of his Moscow army attacking St. Petersburg, Mikhail Nikolayevich actually gave up the usual dignity of the tsar, not only brazenly reconciled with the Polish rebels, but also allied with them, recognized Poland's independence and possession of Poland and half of Lithuania's territory, and the only condition was to help St. Petersburg resist the attack of his army from Moscow.

Not only that, but the nobles in St. Petersburg, who were greedy for life and feared death, also instigated Mikhail Nikolayevich to take the initiative to promise the same reconciliation in Finland, which had already rebelled. St. Petersburg withdrew the 80,000 Russian troops that had attacked the Finnish rebels, recognized the Finnish rebellious national army and established the Republic of Finland, which became a vassal state of 100% autonomy of the Russian Empire, but only a nominal suzerainty without exercising any diplomatic and internal administration, on the condition that Finland provide more than 30,000 soldiers to help St. Petersburg resist the attack from Moscow.