At the beginning of the 20th century, many Europeans would associate the words barbaric, backward, ignorant, dirty, and riotous with the words "barbaric", "backward", "ignorant", "dirty", and "riotous", as if the land was full of illiterate peasants and vagabonds. Pen | fun | pavilion www. ｂｉｑｕｇｅ。 infoA country that loves to conquer and expand, but has never hosted a world fair, an Olympics or anything like that, St. Petersburg's glittering palaces seem to exist only in pictures and photographs, and few people are willing to cross the Baltic Sea to see what they see. King George V traveled far and wide, conquering the discerning French in Paris, listening to the cheers of the Indian populace in Delhi, and going to Berlin, which he did not like very much, except for St. Petersburg. Contemporaries of monarchs and presidents, Wilhelm II, Joseph I, Emmanuele III, Georges Clemenceau, and Woodrow Wilson, rarely left their footprints in Russia......

Strictly speaking, Kronstadt was only the gate to St. Petersburg, but the growing turmoil in the Russian capital left Natsuki to wait and see. Nicholas II was well aware of this, so during the meeting he did not make even a courtesy invitation. After the defeat of Russia, it is still a great empire across Europe and Asia, with an area larger than all European countries combined, and the size of the fully mobilized army is still a number that everyone is awe-inspiring. In his speech, he only mentioned "cooperation" and "mutual benefit", without acknowledging that his country was on the verge of collapse, and that only money and food from outside could alleviate the terrible crisis in front of him. On the contrary, Kokovtsov, the chairman of the Council of Ministers of the Reich, who was a steady and sophisticated man, kept knocking on the side, trying to get the know-how from Natsuki to calm social contradictions and create a prosperous world.

At the worst of the situation, the religious conflict in Ireland did give outsiders a sense that it was possible to cause a civil war, but in less than half a year, the crisis had cleared up, and it seemed that all the hidden dangers were frost before sunrise, and most people attributed this wonderful change to the "magic" of His Majesty King Joachim, the king of Ireland, and Kokovtsov seemed to take it for granted. As everyone knows, religious contradictions are a kind of ideological conflicts, which have a long history, and have caused countless tragedies over thousands of years, and the stability of Ireland is only a temporary subsidence of the crisis of faith, and it is the successful operation of the ruling class to deliberately arouse the people's nationalist consciousness to divert the focus of society, and Natsuki has not fundamentally resolved the contradiction between Protestants and Catholics. And then again, Protestantism and Roman Catholicism have the same roots, but there are differences in the understanding of doctrines, Protestants and Catholics living in Ireland have no life-and-death contradictions, and the bloody conflicts are largely instigated by a few people with ulterior motives, but the proletarian revolution and the monarchy **** are similar to the relationship between water and fire, and there is no possibility of peaceful coexistence at all.

If Xia Shu is allowed to take charge of the Russian regime, then the fundamental way to resolve the class contradictions is to change the current situation of poverty and backwardness in the country and the corruption and incompetence of officials, strive to restore social order, and improve the living conditions of the grassroots workers. They always felt that the young king in front of them had a way, and the reason why they talked about it left and right was because they had not yet received the conditions that satisfied him.

Long before Natsuki's visit, the Irish diplomats and military attachés stationed in Russia had preliminary communication with the Russian military and political officials in charge of naval affairs, mentioning that His Majesty's visit would actively promote cooperation between Ireland and various countries in the industrial, military, and other fields, and that in order to show their sincerity, they could consider refitting a medium or large warship for the Russian Navy free of charge -- the so-called free of charge means that no technical and labor costs will be charged during the refit process, but the materials, equipment, and weapons required will still be borne by the Russian side.

The topic of resolving social contradictions could not be talked about on one road, Nicholas II turned to talk about the military cooperation between the two countries, Kokovtsov praised the speed of development of the Irish shipbuilding and aviation industry with interest, and talked about the modernization of the Russian Navy, Nicholas II said on the spot that Russia's military procurement should not be confined to its own enterprises, and that its own country does not yet have manufacturing capabilities, or that the technical standards are too low and the cost is too high, should actively seek ways to purchase. Irish aircraft and light ships are recognized as good and cheap goods in the international arms market.

During his previous visits to Sweden and Finland, Natsuki each decided on a warship modification cooperation, which is a business strategy to show Irish shipbuilding skills to the outside world and attract potential customers, as well as a measure to accumulate technical experience and broaden design ideas for domestic shipyards.

In modern times, Russia has attached great importance to the development of its own military industry, from guns and ammunition, artillery vehicles, battleships, and bombers have all been localized, but on the one hand, it is constrained by the lack of production capacity, and on the other hand, it hopes to learn from each other's strengths and weaknesses through outsourcing, and Russia still orders a lot of ships from other countries -- armored cruisers in Britain, battleships in France, and cruisers and submarines in Germany, they either gave important technical inspiration to Russian engineers, which were then used on ships built by Russia itself, or played an active role on the battlefield, and even caused considerable losses to the countries that built them.

It is said that it is easy for both sides to reach an agreement on what they need, but in today's special situation, both sides have their own concerns. Natsuki is worried about the change of regime in Russia, and the refitting of ships for the Russian Navy will not only cost money, but also make no money, and even leave a bunch of political and diplomatic problems, with these energy and material resources enough to equip the national navy with a few more new submarines, Nicholas II is worried about more and more complicated things, they feel that sending too good ships for modification will leak the core technical secrets of the Russian Navy, and too poor ships have no need for technical modification, and they have wasted the "promotional gifts" given by the Irish, Moreover, if a ship goes to Ireland for maintenance, it must be accompanied by a certain number of sailors, and if these people are influenced by advanced ideas during their stay abroad, and then bring "deadly germs" back to China, will it not add fuel to the fire?

The two sides vaguely probed and discussed these inconvenient but obliged questions, and the prolonged meeting first made Nicholas II impatient, and he playfully proposed that the names of all ships over 1,000 tons in the port of Kronstadt should be written on pieces of paper, and that he or the King of Ireland should draw them blindfolded, and that whichever ship was drawn would sign the contract for the refit. Natsuki immediately smiled and asked, what if the "Gangut" is drawn? The cost of modernizing and refitting dreadnoughts usually accounts for more than 20% of the cost of building a ship, and the Irish government has not prepared such a large amount of money!

After all, a joke is a joke, and no one will take it seriously, but under this invisible urging, the two sides showed the highest efficiency and preliminarily selected the armored cruiser "Rurik" of the Russian Navy as the object of cooperation this time. The battleship was ordered from Britain by Tsarist Russia after the Russo-Japanese War to replenish its losses, built by Vickers-Armstrong, launched in November 1906 and completed in July 1909. With a full load displacement of 17,000 tons, it is roughly an order of magnitude rival with the British Minotaur, the German Scharnhorst, the French Edgar Curie, the Japanese Kurama class, and the American Tennessee class. During the war, whether it was the United States, which maintained neutrality, or Italy and Japan, which participated in the war one after another but were far away from the main battlefield, the armored cruisers they served were basically in a busy state, or carried out cruise, alert, and breaking the mission alone, or reconnoitred and covered for the main fleet, and the amount of activity was among the best among all types of ships, and the "Rurik" was of course no exception. At the very beginning of the war, it participated in mine-laying operations against Germany as the flagship of a cruiser detachment, and later participated in defensive operations in the Gulf of Riga, where it was slightly wounded in battles with the German fleet.

As the last large warship ordered by Tsarist Russia abroad, the role of the "Rurik" on the drawing board is that of a ranger fighting with the main fleet, its absolute speed is not fast, but it has the powerful firepower of two twin 254 mm primary guns and four twin 203 mm secondary main guns, and is equipped with twenty 120 mm secondary guns. On paper, its level of protection was comparable to that of the armored cruisers under construction in various countries at the time, but the criticized damage management efficiency of the Tsarist Russian ships greatly reduced the battlefield survivability of the warships, and what made the Russian Navy even more embarrassing was that at the end of the war, the sailors on many ships refused to fight because of poor food, and the new flagship "Gangut" even had a naval mutiny for such reasons.

Whether the "Rurik" will embark on the trip to Ireland, Nicholas II did not make a decision on the spot, and Natsuki did not have a clear attitude, and the two sides have left their intention to cooperate, and the corresponding matters are left to the diplomatic and military officials of the two sides to continue to negotiate. Although the two monarchs will meet at the dinner table, the formal meeting will end there, and the king of Ireland and his party will board and leave the ship early the next morning.

At dusk, in the rest place specially arranged by the Russian royal family, Natsuki looked through the window, from here you could not see the round spires of those Russian-style palaces, the water surface in the direction of St. Petersburg was reflected in the light of the setting sun, showing a blood-red color, and two pillars of smoke were faintly visible in the direction of the city, one thick and one faint, looking like the smoke columns produced by two ships when they were sailing, but he had a bad premonition in his heart, so that the salty sea breeze smelled like it was mixed with a strong smell of blood.

(End of chapter)