Istanbul, the capital of the Ottoman Turkish Empire, inside the Dolmabahce Palace.

Guo Songtao, the special envoy of the Chinese Empire to Europe, looked at the extremely luxurious palace, the entire hall was covered with gold sculptures, and the ground was also covered with exquisite Persian wool blankets, Guo Songtao couldn't help but shake his head, and secretly said in his heart No wonder this Ottoman Empire will decline, just this palace, I am afraid that it is a huge wealth. I heard that the construction of this palace began more than ten years ago, and the construction was completed only a few years ago, and the Ottoman Empire also borrowed a lot of money from Britain and France to build this palace. It's just crazy.

Although Guo Songtao has come to the Dolmabahce Palace for the second time, he still can't help but be shocked by the magnificence here.

However, the good thing is that none of this has anything to do with its own Chinese empire. The purpose of Guo Songtao's trip has been achieved, although the Ottoman Empire is now barely an ally of the Chinese Empire, but after all, it is still a foreigner, and Guo Songtao is naturally not so kind to give some advice or something.

The corridor in the palace is full of *** style as if there is no end in sight, a male servant who claims to be the Ottoman Sultan Abdulaziz Oglu Mahmoud II leads Guo Songtao forward, and Guo Songtao is silent and silently follows behind.

This time, Guo Songtao entered the palace to bid farewell to the Ottoman Sultan, and by the way, he fulfilled the previous agreement.

As early as three months ago, Guo Songtao had traveled from Paris to Berlin, Vienna, and Istanbul, in addition to avoiding the British peace envoys and Tsarist Russian envoys who had been looking for him, and the main purpose was to come to the Ottoman Sultan to discuss the alliance between the Chinese Empire and the Ottoman Turkish Empire.

Two months earlier, Guo Songtao had contacted the Ottoman Foreign Minister Fouad Pasha through Nanyang Company's head in Istanbul, and through Fouad Pasha, the Ottoman Prime Minister Ali Pasha. Of course, it took a lot of money to open the way.

Through the introduction of these two most powerful ministers of the Ottoman Empire, Guo Songtao, as the special envoy of the Chinese Empire to Europe, was finally summoned by the Ottoman monarch. In fact, if it had not been for the news that the Indian Ocean Fleet of the Chinese Empire had captured the ports of Mascot and Aden in West Asia and attacked the British colony of Cape Town in the south, the Ottoman monarch might not have been so anxious to see him.

And when the Chinese Empire was so powerful that even the once powerful British Empire retreated, the Ottoman monarch had to pay attention to this Chinese Empire's envoy to Europe.

Guo Songtao still remembers the sultan's surprise and shock when he first met the new monarch of the Ottoman Empire, Abdulaziz Ogru Mahmud II, and directly presented his thoughts and requests to the other party.

Very simply, Guo Songtao directly said his intention: on behalf of the special envoy of the Chinese Empire to Europe, he asked for an alliance with the Ottoman Empire to attack Tsarist Russia together!

When the Ottoman Sultan Abdul Aziz heard this, he directly thought that Guo Songtao was a madman and wanted to drive him away. In the eyes of the Ottoman Empire, although it was extremely powerful, it was still not enough to compare it with Tsarist Russia, the superpower of Europe. After all, Tsarist Russia's territory and the number of troops are there, and it is still able to fight well and has a traditional history of strong expansion, and in the wars with neighboring countries, especially the recent wars with Ottoman Turkey, almost all of them ended in the victory of Tsarist Russia, so it is crazy to let yourself attack Tsarist Russia!

However, at that time, Guo Songtao directly told him that after Tsarist Russia experienced the Crimean War, its vitality was greatly damaged. In particular, the originally powerful Black Sea Fleet was completely annihilated in the Crimean War. As a result of the Crimean War, the Crimean Peninsula and Tsarist Russia were stationed in the entire Black Sea perimeter to reduce their troops. After the war, Tsarist Russia's economy collapsed, and it could no longer afford to spend a huge amount of war. In addition, in the past two years, under the turbulence of the reform of serfdom, the Tsar has fierce domestic contradictions and social turmoil, and a large number of Cossack troops in Tsarist Russia have suffered a crushing defeat when attacking the northwest of the Chinese Empire, which has dealt a serious blow to the morale of the entire Tsarist Russia.

Tsarist Russia at this time was simply a paper tiger. The most important thing is that Guo Songtao mysteriously told the Ottoman Sultan that major changes would occur in Tsarist Russia soon, and at that time, Tsarist Russia would be even more chaotic.

Having said this, the Ottoman Sultan, despite his intentions, was reluctant to agree to an alliance with the Chinese Empire against Tsarist Russia. As a last resort, Guo Songtao revealed the final means and directly told Abdulaziz that the army of the Chinese Empire would unite the army of the Kazakh Khanate, the Sikh army, and the armies of many Indian states and other vassal states to form a combined army of more than 300,000 to attack Tsarist Russia from the Caspian Sea.

It wasn't until he heard these words that the Ottoman Sultan Abdulaziz was really moved and agreed to sign a secret alliance agreement with Guo Songtao, agreeing to attack the Russian Empire together. But even so, Abdulaziz was still a little worried, and directly offered to hear the news that the combined army of the Chinese Empire and the vassal states had entered the territory of Tsarist Russia, and they officially sent troops to the Ottoman Turkish Empire.

Guo Songtao was a little speechless, but he was confident in the arrangements of the Chinese Imperial Secret Service Division.

Sure enough, it didn't take long for a surprise news to spread, first the Tsar's own brother was sent to Poland as governor-general, only to be assassinated as soon as he arrived in Poland, and then the Tsar's own family was blown up in the dining room of the Winter Palace in St. Petersburg, and the whole Tsarist Russia was in chaos. First of all, the two princes competed for the tsar, but they did not expect to be robbed of the throne by their uncle, just when everyone thought that the dust had settled, a prince fled to Moscow and was also supported by a group of troops as the tsar, so that two tsars appeared, and the mutual forces began to fight constantly.

Taking advantage of this opportunity, the originally oppressed major powers in Tsarist Russia rebelled one after another. The first of the largest disturbances began in Poland, and then led to rebellions in the principality of Finland, Lithuania, Caucasus, Chechnya, Kazakh, and many other places whose interests had been violated by the reforms.

Seeing this situation, Sultan Abdulaziz of the Ottoman Turkish Empire was completely relieved, and could no longer bear it, so he immediately mobilized the Turkish army, divided into three routes, and sent troops to the north to attack Tsarist Russia.

After turning a few corridors, he entered a large hall, where the Ottoman foreign minister, Fouad Pasha, greeted him and replaced the manservant to bring Guo Songtao into the hall.

There are a lot of *** in the apse, apparently just summoned by the Sultan, recently the Ottomans are preparing to continue to carry out the secularization reform of the Ottoman Empire that began to be implemented by the first two sultans, so from time to time there are *** nobles entering the palace to admonish, seeing Guo Songtao such a non-*** Oriental face coming in, these people's eyes shot at Guo Songtao like a knife.

Guo Songtao turned a blind eye to all this, and slowly followed Foreign Minister Fouad Pasha with a light smile on his face.

At this time, Sultan Abdul Aziz, escorted by several male servants, walked out and personally came to greet Guo Songtao. hugged Guo Songtao, and quickly touched the tip of his nose on Guo Songtao's left and right cheeks, if Guo Songtao didn't know that this was the high-standard etiquette of the Ottoman ancient Turks to treat distinguished guests, I was afraid that I couldn't help but lose goosebumps.

"Venerable Dongfang Guo, I'm so happy to see you again!" Abdulaziz said hello and said eagerly: "We have already heard that the eastern united army led by your country has begun to assemble on the east coast of the Caspian Sea, and I wonder if your envoy can urge you to send troops as soon as possible, so that your country and our army will be able to quickly capture the Black Sea and the southeastern part of the Caspian Sea in Tsarist Russia." ”

"Khan, our army is still collecting food and troop carriers, and it will take about a week at most to cross the Caspian Sea to the Azerbaijani region on the west coast. At this moment, the Russian army has no leader and is in chaos, and your army can take advantage of the situation to attack steadily, and we echo each other from afar! ”