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In early May 1849, St. Petersburg, the capital of the Russian Empire, the overlord of the European continent, ushered in the best time of the year.

The city is located in the western part of the Plinev Lowlands, at the confluence of the Neva River and the Gulf of Finland - the Neva Delta. Founded in the time of Peter the Great, it was the base camp of the Russian Empire as it moved westward into Europe and towards the sea. It is different from the solemn and dull atmosphere at the feet of the Son of Heaven in Beijing. Petersburg, on the other hand, is a vibrant and bustling coastal capital.

The wide streets are full of magnificent tall buildings and beautiful sculptures, all the houses are so beautiful, and all the pedestrians are well-dressed and polite, as if it were a fairytale city.

Next to the "Kiss Bridge", near the border of Petersburg, there were several dusty carriages parked, four-wheeled and two-horseed, the paint on the black body had peeled off a lot, and the transparent glass windows were still stained with muddy water, and the groom was in the front row with his neck shrunk and sleeves caged, as if he was dozing. In the carriage of the carriage in front of him, there was a man in white who was crying, and there was a Russian admiral with a frowning and tangled expression beside him.

"Your Majesty...... Emperor...... The slave has the emperor's grace, the slave is incompetent, the slave still goes with you......"

The person who howled and cried was Bai Siwen, the deputy minister of foreign affairs of the Qing Dynasty, the minister of the imperial mission, and the minister extraordinary and plenipotentiary in Russia, England, France and other countries.

When he left Beijing, the Qing Dynasty was still the lord of China, and the Daoguang Emperor was still a generation of holy monarchs. Although the situation is not very good. But no one thought that the city of Beijing would really be taken away by the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom. This bad news. It was when Bai Siwen and his entourage arrived in Moscow that they were sent by fast horses - Beijing fell, Emperor Daoguang was martyred (in fact, he was not dead), the sixth son of the emperor, Prince Gong, was the emperor in Shengjing, the Qing Dynasty had retreated to Guanwai and Saibei, and the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom had the land of the Central Plains and confronted Zhu Ming in the south.

This news was like a bolt from the blue, and it made Bai Siwen dizzy. So he changed into filial piety clothes and cried all the way to Petersburg.

"Mr. Bai...... Petersburg has arrived, and as long as His Majesty the great Nicholas I agrees to send troops, it will definitely help the Qing Dynasty to restore its rule. ”

It was Rear Admiral Putiyatin, who accompanied him all the way from Beijing to St. Petersburg, who comforted Bai Siwen and genuinely wanted to help the Manchu dynasty regain its rule.

"Is Emperor Nicholas really willing to send troops to help the Qing Dynasty restore the country? Then the Russian Empire is really the reborn parent of our Qing Dynasty......" Bai Sven wept and thanked Putiyatin.

However, Major General Putiyatin was worried, and the news from the West shocked him very much, and Luo Xiangmei, the queen of the Ming Dynasty, and Liu Peng, the right prime minister, became the guests of honor of the British and French governments.

First of all, he was a guest at Windsor Castle and signed the "Ming-Ying Treaty" with the British government, in which the British Empire recognized the government of the Ming Kingdom as the sole legitimate government of China, and did not put forward inappropriate demands such as extraterritoriality, unilateral most-favored-nation treatment, and negotiated tariffs. This illustrates. The British Empire has recognized the Ming Kingdom as a second- or third-rate power in the world!

After that, Luo Xiangmei and Liu Peng returned to France, and were replaced by Charles, who had just been elected president of France. Napoleon was treated as a guest of honor. The two sides signed the Mingfa Covenant at the Dureuil Palace. That's right, it's the Covenant! The French Republic and the Ming Kingdom actually formed an alliance. What made Putiyatin's scalp tingle even more was that the French president who allied with the Ming Dynasty was surnamed Napoleon, and he was the nephew of the Napoleonic Emperor who led 600,000 troops to Russia to kill people and set fires......

According to this trend, once the Ming and Russia go to war, Britain and France will do everything possible to provide support to the Ming even if they do not stand on the side of the Ming Dynasty and directly participate in the war!

However, it does not seem to be in the interests of Russia and other countries to abandon the Manchu Qing and turn to good relations with the Ming Dynasty. Now that Zhu Ming has not yet unified China, he has shown the potential to dominate the East Asian continent, and if Zhu Ming is allowed to continue to grow bigger and seize all the land of the Manchu Qing Dynasty, the backyard of the Russian Empire will not be a fire, but a volcanic eruption.

Today's Russia is really standing at a crossroads, and I hope that God Almighty can give His Majesty the Tsar enough wisdom to solve this problem. Major-General Putiyatin thought so.

……

May 23, 1849.

Russian Poland, Royal Palace in Warsaw.

Tsar Nicholas I of Russia was alone in his study, and his mood was very gloomy and heavy.

The situation is very bad, very bad. The European revolution that began in February 1848 has not yet been quelled. Moreover, the storm of revolution was blowing from Western Europe to the east, and had already reached Austrian Poland and Austrian Hungary.

In particular, the arrogance of the Hungarian Revolution made Nicholas I, the dictator of the Russian Empire, feel restless. In the Battle of Nadisaro on April 19, the Hungarian Self-Defense Army crushed the main force of the Austrian army under the command of the famous Austrian general, Marshal Prince Wendy Schretz! A little more than a month later, the Hungarian capital Pest was captured. The Hungarian revolution seemed to be about to triumph!

According to the contagious nature of the revolutionary tide in Europe, the victory of the Hungarian revolution must have inspired the revolutionary enthusiasm of the neighboring countries. Considering that there are many Poles in the Hungarian self-defense army, if the Hungarian revolution is not stifled, Poland will be the next to make trouble, and after Poland, the revolutionary storm is likely to spread to Russia proper! Like the Decembrist uprising more than twenty years ago!

Nicholas I was not a faint monarch like Emperor Daoguang who didn't even know how much an egg was. Having been a tsar for more than 20 years, His Majesty certainly knew that the Russian Empire, which he ruled, was the most powerful in the world, and under its glamorous coat, it was a giant with feet of clay that had fallen into a serious social and economic crisis.

In fact, His Majesty the Tsar agreed with the Decembrists - Raevsky, Otoevsky, Ryleyev, Chukhal Bekai and others were absolutely and completely correct about Russian serfdom and Russian constitutional reform!

In a civilized European country in the 19th century, there was no constitution, no parliament, and even more exaggerated was that there were tens of millions of serfs in the country! This is simply a big joke, and even an ancient, backward, barbaric, and ignorant oriental country like China is now imitating European countries to make constitutions, open parliaments, and protect the freedom, property, and equal rights of their subjects.

Even China, the big country in the East, can follow the example of Western Europe in carrying out constitutional reforms! As a European country, which has been learning to emulate the Russian Empire in Western Europe since Peter the Great, can you be cheeky enough to say that serfdom is in line with Russia's national conditions, and that the tsarist dictatorship is necessary to ensure the stability and unity of Russia?

However, knowing that the Russian Majesty wanted to carry out reforms and those who could implement them immediately, the current constitutional movement in China was not a reform at all, but the result of a revolution, and the Tatar dynasty that had ruled China for 200 years collapsed, and the old system could naturally be buried along with it. But how could the Romanov dynasty abandon the aristocratic serf owners who supported it overnight, and how could it have abandoned serfdom, which had long since become the basis of the Russian economy?

Unless there is also a revolution to overthrow the Romanov dynasty!

So the Decembrists were absolutely right, including the article on the attempt to overthrow the Romanovs!

Nicholas I, on the other hand, had to stand on what he himself considered wrong, doing everything possible to maintain his dynasty and empire, racking his brains to find a safe and reliable way forward for Russia.

This was the purpose of his visit to Poland, with Joseph, who had just become Caesar of the Austrian Empire. Franz met to discuss sending troops to help Austria suppress the Hungarian Revolution and prevent the storm of the European revolution from blowing into Russia from the west. At the same time, he also had to meet with Marquis Liu Peng, the prime minister of the Ming Kingdom, who had arrived from France, in order to reach a peace treaty that would stabilize Russia's eastern border...... If a peace treaty cannot be reached with the Ming Dynasty, then the Eastern question will probably be a big trouble that will cost the empire countless energy, manpower, and financial resources in the next few decades. (To be continued......)