The Balkan friends are making a lot of noise.

After selling to the Ottoman Empire, an Egyptian fleet included one Eastern Zhou-class and one Western-class (to be precise, it was leased to the Ottoman Empire with ships and ships), and then the remaining warships also had a home, and the three Western Zhou-class were sold to the three South American powers: Brazil, Argentina, and Peru. Two more Eastern Zhou-class ships were sold to their younger brothers, Italy and Spain, and of course the cruisers also found their next home.

Originally, everyone was watching the excitement of the Balkans, and seeing when these children in the Balkans would stop making trouble, so we could go up and share the fruits, which was the original words of Liu Kunyi, the Imperial Colonial Minister.

But the French expanded their army, and the explanation given was the need to expand their territory, which is true, in 1878, the French had just completed the exploration and conquest of West Africa, and officially included West Africa into their French colony.

Then the Germans also began to expand their army, and the Franco-Prussian War had just ended, and every move of the French was irritating to Germany. Germany has also begun to expand its army incessantly, Germany's explanation is that you can expand the Foreign Legion in the colonial garrison, you are obviously expanding the standing army, you are stupid, the most important one is that the old enemy France is expanding the army, and I must expand the army in order to protect myself. In fact, this time it is really not France's fault, France's current North African colonies of Algiers and Tunisia have not established actual rule at all, in order to completely control North France, there is no known domestic standing army, France is empty, for this reason France decided to expand the army by 100,000 people, At that time, France's standing army will reach 603,000, and the Germans are actually mainly guarding against France, and under Bismarck's intervention, Germany finally decided to expand its army by 50,000 and its standing army to 530,000.

But note that the French have expanded not only the army, the interests of the French in the Mediterranean at this time are definitely the greatest, even the British at this time can not compare, in order to maintain and consolidate their interests in the Mediterranean, the French Admiralty also ordered all 16 armored ships, including six ironclad ships, to major shipyards in the country to expand the strength of the French Mediterranean fleet, one is to protect the colonies in North Africa, and the other is to demonstrate to Italy and Spain, After all, the latter two had just bought a large ironclad and a cruiser from China. But Italy and Spain are not soft eggs, especially Spain two years ago, shortly after the restoration of the royal family, under the sponsorship of the Imperial Hong Kong and Macao Consortium, they still gritted their teeth and ordered two improved Western Zhou-class ships from Guangdong Shipyard. Italy's own ship-building capability was not bad in the first place, and Italy, which had been unified for less than half a century, was full of boundless enthusiasm, and the parliament immediately approved its own ship-building plan.

France's Mediterranean Fleet is expanding its strength, Italy and Spain are also expanding their navy, so Britain's Mediterranean Fleet will also expand accordingly, especially the current British Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli is still an active advocate and defender of British colonial imperialism, in mid-1878, the British Parliament passed the Mediterranean Fleet Emergency Expansion Act, in which Britain will send eight more ironclads and eleven cruisers to the Mediterranean Fleet in the next three years, Of course, these cruiser ironclad ships are still aimed at the French Mediterranean fleet, and the British would not be in such a hurry if the Egyptian fleet of the empire was still there, and the three of them would be balanced together, but now there are only a few gunboats left in the Egyptian fleet of China, so what's the use.

Now Li Hongzhang's cabinet looks stupid, what is this going to do? Especially when I saw that Britain and France began to expand the Mediterranean fleet, there was no way to leave the Egyptian fleet, and it would take time for the new warships to be tested, and the empire's deterrence in Egypt was insufficient during this time. The East African Fleet is the main fleet of the Indian Ocean Navy, unlike the Persian Gulf Fleet and the Indian Fleet, which consist of only a few cruisers and gunboats, and the holes in the East African Fleet are a little bit from the home fleet. (Note: Because there are basically no enemies near the territorial waters of the empire, in 1875, the navy number of the South and North Oceans was abolished and merged into the home fleet of the Royal Navy of the Chinese Empire, so now there are two fleets in the empire, a large domestic fleet and the other a strange fleet, ah no!) Special Fleet)

When eleven ironclads and twenty-nine cruiser gunboats of the East African Fleet sailed into Port Said, all the countries of the Mediterranean bombed again. What is China doing here? Come to demonstrate! The explanation of the Imperial Cabinet was to strengthen the escort of merchant ships on the Mediterranean route and protect the imperial merchant ships. The British don't believe it, the French don't believe it, but I just believe it myself. In fact, in Lin Hong's opinion, there is no need for such a huge fleet, you must know that the most important commercial routes of the empire are the Pacific route and the Indian Ocean route, and the route of the Mediterranean Sea has only just developed in recent years. The Cabinet meant to remind them not to go overboard, and that was pretty much it.

The French can see that if this continues, their good demand expansion will become a competitive expansion. The French returned to their own tracks, the British are not stupid, Britain has been in Europe with France as an opponent, China in the world as an enemy, the Chinese stationed such a large fleet in Egypt, the British also sent warships from the home fleet in order to achieve a balance of power with the Egyptian fleet of the empire. At this point, this inexplicable military competition has come to an end, but in fact, the military expansion bill signed by Britain, France, Italy and Spain some time ago cannot be canceled by either the army or the navy, and Europe's military strength will expand slightly in the next three years. This kind of small expansion is tolerated by large countries, but a small country like Serbia can no longer bear it at this time.

Serbia is located in the middle of the Balkan Peninsula in Europe and covers an area of 88,361 square kilometers. Serbia is bordered by a total of 8 countries with a total length of 2,457 km. It has a 151-kilometer-long common border with Hungary in the Austro-Hungarian Empire in the north; It is connected to Romania in the northeast and has a common border of 476 km; It is bordered to the east by Ottoman Bulgaria, with a common border of 318 km; It is bordered to the southeast and south by Italian-controlled Albania and Ottoman Macedonia, respectively; It is bordered by Croatia in Austria-Hungary to the northwest, with a common border of 241 km; It has a 312-kilometre-long common border with Bosnia and Herzegovina in the west; The eastern part has a 211-kilometre-long common border with Montenegro. Serbia's geographical location on the Balkan Peninsula forms a natural bridge and crossroads between Western, Central, and Eastern Europe, as well as between the Near and Middle East.

Serbia gained a high degree of autonomy during the revolutions of 1804 and 1815. After this political victory, the Grand Duke of Serbia, Milan Obrenović IV, still proclaimed himself Grand Duke on the grounds that Serbia was not yet fully **, instead of being crowned king as the Serbian radicals thought. A small group of radicals among the Serbs preach what is known as Greater Serbianism.

"Greater Serbianism" refers to the nationalism of the Serbs in their long-term pursuit of establishing a large Balkan power centered on it, which gradually formed and developed in Serbia under the domination and partition of the great powers and in the struggle for national liberation, and constantly collided with other nationalisms, becoming the source of contradictions and hatred between the Serbian nation and other nationalities, which was also an important reason for the later disintegration of the former Yugoslavia and the outbreak of war. The idea advocated the creation of a larger Serb state in the western part of the Balkan Peninsula in southeastern Europe, including: the initial settlements of Serbs after their arrival in the Balkans, such as Montenegro, Umadija and other territories of the Serbian kingdom in the Middle Ages, including Preevovalley, Macedonia and other places where a large number of Serbs migrated, including Vojvodina, Knin, etc., whose basic goal was to unify the areas inhabited by Serbs. But some of the more radical groups also have claims to areas where Serbs are minority.

Such ideas later seemed to be a narrow nationalist view, but now it was the mainstream in the imperial era, but unfortunately not in small countries. Here I want to talk about which so-called "patriotic youth" Princip in history caused the First World War. Gavrio Princip (25 July 1894 – 28 April 1918) was a Bosnian, ethnic Serb nationalist, and member of the Mafia. He is described in many domestic books as a patriotic young man, but in fact, former Yugoslav President Tito said that Princip was actually a terrorist. Why? Because Ferdinand, the Austro-Hungarian Crown Prince who went to Bosnia at that time, was not an imperialist at all, and it can even be said that Ferdinand was a good person, both in his actions and in character. Ferdinand went to Bosnia and Herzegovina to take his wife with him (Ferdinand's wife was not an aristocratic woman, and she was not welcomed in Austrian aristocratic circles). The second is to discuss with the government of Bosnia and Herzegovina the self-determination of the people of Bosnia and Herzegovina and the ** of the region, Ferdinand was in favor of the then Bosnia and Herzegovina government peacefully breaking away from Austria-Hungary and becoming a ** state, but why did Great Serbian Doctrine kill him? In fact, both the government of Bosnia and Herzegovina and Ferdinand wanted a peaceful solution to the contradictions in the Balkans. If Ferdinand and the government of Bosnia and Herzegovina had come to an agreement, the Greater Serbian Empire of the Greater Serbian Union in the Balkans would have lost its object of contradiction. So the politicians of Greater Serbia provoked the First World War for the sake of their own unrealistic ideas