As the winds grew colder in late autumn, the Germans slowed down their offensive slightly after the capture of Paris, but the French government did not take the initiative to pray for peace with the Germans, as was widely speculated. Pen @ fun @ pavilion wWw. ｂｉｑUｇE。 As a result of the defeat in the war, the wartime cabinet led by the Socialist René Viviani was declared to fall, and President Pleenga appointed Aristide Briand, the 52-year-old founder of the Socialist Party, as the new prime minister (chairman of the Council of Ministers), who quickly formed a cabinet.

Unlike the relatively moderate Viviani, Briand, who served as prime minister in 1909 and 1913, was notorious as a "dictator" who used the military to harshly suppress the 1910 general strike of French railway workers, but in international politics he built a good image of himself with his graceful demeanor and superior oratorical skills.

In the new wartime cabinet, a number of Socialists who had served in Viviani's cabinet were retained, and the most striking changes were, of course, the Minister of the Army and the Navy, with Joseph Gallieni, a military man by birth, replacing Alexandre Millerand, the leader of the left wing of the Socialist Party, as Minister of the Army, and Alfred Gervais, who was also an orthodox military man and former commander of the French Navy's standing fleet, replacing the inactive politician Jean-Victor Organieuux as Minister of the Navy. These two capable and courageous generals provided expert guidance to the military decision-making of the French wartime cabinet - Gallieni's superior management skills quickly moved the French Army from a hopeless retreat to an active defense, and he transferred the aged and sluggish Chauffeur back to the rear, and made Foch, who had distinguished himself in the Frontier Campaign and the Battle of Paris, the commander-in-chief of the French army's front.

On 5 November, the same day that the German army landed in Ireland, the French repelled the fierce attack of the German 3rd Army at Rouen, northwest of Paris, and continued to play an important role in Le Havre, the large port closest to the front line. A large number of wounded British soldiers returned to Britain through here, and the British recruits were sent to France to be trained and mentored by veterans after completing their basic training.

Gallieni relied on his impressive performances on the battlefield to gain the favor of the top political circles, and French Admiral Alfred Gervais, although he did not have such an opportunity, has worked hard for many years. In the mid-to-late 19th century, the New School dominated the construction of the French Navy, which overemphasized the speed of ships and torpedo tactics, and focused on the field of torpedo boats and submarines, resulting in the development of battleships in the French Navy far behind the times, and it was not until the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century that the French Navy began to realize that it had made a mistake in direction, and Gervais was one of the critics of the New School. Unfortunately, until the outbreak of World War I, the New School still had a great influence on the French Navy, and the design and construction of large ships was slow and difficult. Just as the "offensive supremacy" misled the French Army, it was not until the battlefield that the bloody reality taught the French Army to defend in a timely manner, and the process of the two naval battles of Jutland and Flanders brought a huge shock to the French Navy, and at the same time made them see clearly the real protagonist of naval warfare in this era, the dreadnought!

The mistakes of the French Army were mainly at the tactical level, and once they were adjusted in the right direction, they were not much worse than the Germans on the battlefield, but the mistakes of the French Navy were strategic problems that could not be remedied in the short term. With the entry into service of the "Jean-Bar" and "Paris", the French Navy also had only four dreadnoughts in total, and the nine old battleships of the newer age were classified as "quasi-dreadnoughts", but their actual combat effectiveness was a notch lower than that of real dreadnoughts. On paper, the French navy is now able to blockade and suppress the Austro-Hungarian fleet and defend against the Ottoman Turkish navy, and it is impossible for ordinary people to extend their strategic influence beyond the Mediterranean, but Gervais does not intend to stick to the rules. At the wartime cabinet meeting, he pointed out sharply that under the same conditions of general military mobilization, France, with a population of 40 million, could not defeat Germany with a population of 67 million on its own, and that if Britain and Russia were to give full play to their war potential in order to resist the German army for a long time in the current predicament. The military vitality of the latter depended to a large extent on the financial support of Britain and France, while the survival and decline of the former lay in the sea routes.

Based on this important logic of war, Gervais proposed to hand over the defense of the Mediterranean to the French Navy's large number of torpedo boats and submarines, and secretly transfer the main fleet to Brest, where it would work with the British main fleet deployed in southern England to deal with the arrogant German navy. After a heated debate, Gervais's proposal was finally adopted. On 4 November, the main French fleet with the "Lone Pull" as the flagship left Toulon for Brest, and after the fleet departed, Gervais sent a letter to Churchill, the British Admiralty, briefly expounding the adjusted strategic layout of the French Navy.

At this point, the British had no choice but to abandon their inherent prejudices and lower their posture to discuss with the French navy the organization of a combined Anglo-French fleet against the German navy. Leaving aside the question of whether the German fleet could be defeated, the attitude of the British side had already contributed to the prestige of Gervais's wartime cabinet in France.

On November 10, seeing that the French government had no intention of making peace, the German army resumed its all-out offensive, not only amassing more than 200,000 troops and thousands of artillery pieces into the attack on Rouen, but also advancing to strategic points in central and southern France.

On the Eastern Front, the Austro-Hungarian army launched a third offensive against Serbia, and the Russian military operations in Galicia were stopped by the German 9th Army Corps, which rushed to the aid of Austria-Hungary, and the two sides formed a temporary standoff on the front from Russian Poland to the northern part of Austria-Hungary. The only advance made by the Russian army was the invasion into the territory of Ottoman Turkey in the Caucasus direction, but this was far from shaking the foundations of Ottoman rule.

Due to bad weather on the way, the French main fleet did not arrive in the port of Brest until November 13, three days later than originally planned, and the French did not know that the British main fleet had already left the port of Portland in southern England, and the last elite forces of the Royal Navy entered the North Sea with desperate determination, waiting to defeat the main force of the German High Seas Fleet in one fell swoop. During this time, German troops landing in southwestern Ireland and the Irish Independence Forces conquered several towns in County Carey, and engaged in a "fierce" battle with a unit of British Task Force 2 in the county's capital, Tralee. With fewer than 3,000 men on both sides, more than 400,000 rounds of ammunition and more than 500 shells were expended in the battle, which lasted more than seven hours, and almost reduced Tralee to ruins, and it was not until a battalion of German naval infantry joined the battle that the British soldiers withdrew from the battlefield with their wounded comrades.

On 15 November, the main fleets of the British and German navies were still competing for patience outside each other's sights, and the French main fleets did not actively play their role as surprise troops, but quietly anchored in the port of Brest, because they had as many as 5 battleships, 3 cruisers, and 11 destroyers in need of overhaul. These ships, which were positioned on the design bench as "Mediterranean-type warships", suffered from poor seaworthiness, and the voyage from the Strait of Gibraltar to the Bay of Biscay made them suffer. In addition, the French Navy's light ships were fast and weak, and the large ships were all modest, and the negative effects of the "new school" were almost everywhere.

On this day, the "Senes Fleet," which had first tried to fight jointly with the main fleets of Britain and France, sailed into Cork Harbour in southern Ireland. For nearly half a month, the British and French fleets under the command of Rear Admiral Sennes of the French Navy had been pursuing the two armored cruisers of the German Pacific Fleet. The long and arduous voyage tested the spiritual will of the crew, and the mechanical parts of the ship were also a severe test, 12 of the 14 British and French destroyers involved in the pursuit returned to port for maintenance due to mechanical failure or other problems, only these 4 armored cruisers persevered, but when they chased to the southern waters of Ireland, the problems accumulated by the French armored cruiser "Hawack" had seriously affected its normal navigation, and the British armored cruiser "Samurai" also urgently needed a boiler cleaning, This, coupled with the new directives of the French Admiralty, prompted Senes to make the decision to enter the port of Cork to recuperate.

The next morning, the ghostly sister ship Scharnhorst reappeared. They attacked a British convoy in the waters south of Scal. Due to the recent activities of the German Navy's reconnaissance detachment in the waters north of Ireland, the British Navy used two protective cruisers and three destroyers to cover two troop carriers and four supply ships to Bantry to assist the British Second Task Force in Ireland in attacking the Irish Independence Forces and the German landing force west of County Carey. As a result, in just half an hour, the "Scharnhorst" and "Gneisenau" sank and severely damaged one British protective cruiser each with their overwhelming superior firepower, and the loss of the supply ship was only secondary, and the two troop carriers carried more than 900 British Army soldiers. With the road cut off, they had to desperately flee eastward under the cover of their own destroyers.

After receiving the urgent report, the British fleet anchored in Cork Harbor quickly dispatched, and the British armored cruiser "Defense", which pursued the Spee's fleet to this point, joined it, and they sailed at full speed to reach Skar in just over two hours, but with their strength, they did not have a great chance of victory in the face of the Spey fleet, so Senes sent a report to the French Admiralty for instructions, and at the same time ordered the "Edgar" to lift anchor and set sail, and sail out of Cork Harbor with the British fleet.

(End of chapter)