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According to the three elements of the tank proposed by Song Xiaofei: firepower, mobility and protection, the strength of firepower mainly depends on the tank's observation system, artillery power and ammunition power. Maneuver depended on the engine and basic tracks, protection depended on the thickness of the armor and the material of the armor, and in 1908 the two Chinese tanks overcame some of the major shortcomings of the original tanks of the first generation and fully reached the export level.

British Ambassador to China Juerdian, German Ambassador to China Clinder, and French Minister to China O'Curry were all excited after seeing the power of the tanks with their own eyes. In particular, the German ambassador to China, Klinder, who was a soldier and realized the great potential of "tanks" in trench warfare, sent three telegrams to Berlin in succession to promote this "secret weapon" of China, one of which was sent to Schlieffen, the chief of the German General Staff.

Schlieffen was at the headquarters of the German army in Luxembourg and received a telegram from the German minister to China, Klinder, as if he had found a treasure. Because Kaiser Wilhelm II has often visited the German headquarters to inquire about the situation of the war since the Great War on the Western and Eastern Fronts, his appearance gave Schlieffen a headache, and Moltke Jr. was no different. Kaiser Wilhelm II always asked for news of the German victory every day, and he wanted the German victory so much because he wanted to wear the most ornate emperor's uniform and go to the city occupied by the Germans for a military parade. As soon as he heard the news of the defeat of the German army, he was so depressed that he yelled at Schlieffen and Moltke Jr. like an impatient teenager, and sometimes even wanted to give Schlieffen the post of Chief of the German General Staff to Moltke Jr., or to command it himself.

When the German army and the Entente were locked in a protracted battle on both the Western Front and the Eastern Front, the most anxious person in the German army was the German Chief of the General Staff Schlieffen, and when he heard that China had a secret weapon specifically for trench warfare, he immediately rushed back to Berlin and met with Liang Shiyi, the Chinese vice chief of foreign affairs, who was visiting Berlin. At this time, China's ambassador to Germany was Zeng Guangquan, the grandson of Zeng Guofan. He also attended the meeting. According to Song Xiaofei's telephone instructions, Liang Shiyi and Zeng Guangquan understood the bottom line of China's tank exports.

On the German side, Pilov, then Foreign Minister, also took part in the negotiations. He once publicly said a giant bull x. Germany's ambition to re-divide the world is exposed: "Gone are the days when we in Germany were content with the blue sky when other countries divided the continent and the sea. We also ask for a site under the sun. ”

At the meeting, after some polite and polite greetings, the Chinese and German diplomats quickly got to the point.

German Foreign Minister Pilov spoke first, and he said to Liang Shiyi, vice minister of foreign affairs of China: "The German government's intention is very clear, that is, it hopes to get tank-related technology and finished products from your government, about 100 or so, and we can provide a considerable amount of funds for this." ”

Liang Shiyi smiled and said: "People say that the Germans are real and serious, and today they have experienced it." We can provide the relevant technology. There are also production licenses, but the condition is that your government not only needs to provide a sum of cash to buy the finished tanks, but also requires a patent fee for each tank, which is not excessive, right? ”

Patents are a relatively unfamiliar thing to Chinese. However, it is the exclusive right enjoyed by inventors in the United States, the United Kingdom, Germany, France and other countries over the invention and creation, that is, the right granted by the state to the inventor or his successor to obtain economic benefits within a certain period of time in accordance with the law. This system is extremely important for a country's invention, creativity and innovation. Chinese, however, are indifferent to patents, only care about the small profits in front of them, and piracy imitations are flying all over the sky. In the end, it is the creativity of a country that is destroyed. This is the relationship between short-term gains and long-term benefits, just like the difference between a reader reading a pirated version and reading a genuine novel. If everyone looks at piracy, the author has no profit. He has no incentive to write good work to repay the reader. In the end, everyone can only look at some shoddy things. The same is true for patents, if everyone goes to piracy and imitation, those who engage in invention and creation will have no motivation, and the atmosphere of social innovation will be corrupted.

Germany is also a country that attaches great importance to patent protection, so Liang Shiyi proposed to collect patent fees, and German Foreign Minister Pilov and German Chief of General Staff Schlieffen both felt that this was reasonable, which both of them were inclined to accept. Schlieffen, chief of the German General Staff, was a little anxious to let Liang Shiyi make an offer, because the German army did not have enough strategic materials to fight a protracted war, and it really couldn't afford to delay time.

Liang Shiyi said: "Since Germany is so sincere. Then we Chinese will not go around the corner. If it is mass-produced, the production cost of each tank in China is about 200,000 silver dollars. If the order is more than 500 vehicles, we consider charging an additional 200,000 silver dollars for each vehicle. That is, about 200 million silver dollars, but we only accept gold in China for this transaction. ”

At that time, a luxury car was only about 10,000 silver dollars, and China's offer of 400,000 silver dollars for a tank was really a bit high, and German Foreign Minister Pilov was not very satisfied with Liang Shiyi's answer, which was at least four times higher than the standard they expected in their hearts.

As a result, China and Germany quickly argued, but Liang Shiyi said that China's concessions were very limited, because it was still difficult to produce tanks on a large scale, and there was no way to mass produce them, so the price was relatively high, and if Germany did not buy it, he considered London to try his luck.

Since the start of the war, Germany's military spending has skyrocketed, and it feels that the price of tanks is too expensive, which also makes the negotiations deadlocked, and the whole negotiation has been negotiated for more than a week, but no results have been negotiated. If this situation continues, I am afraid that in another month, this negotiation may not be able to be concluded.

However, now is a time of war, and everything has to be carried out as quickly as possible. Schlieffen, the chief of the German General Staff, was a little impatient, and the war ahead made him feel very bad, and he put pressure on German Foreign Minister Pilov, in order to reverse the situation on the battlefield on the Western Front, and also for the sake of Germany's face, Kaiser Wilhelm II also asked Pilov to negotiate this negotiation as soon as possible, "even if it is worth paying some more sacrifices for this." With the Kaiser's statement, things became much simpler, and in the end the problem was resolved, and the Kaiser allocated a special amount of money from the royal treasury for sponsorship.

Pilov quickly agreed to China's terms and signed his name to the agreement. According to the terms of the final treaty, the German government was to pay the Chinese government 10 million silver dollars a year in order to pay for the patent for the tank, and Germany was required to buy at least 1,000 tanks a year from China for as long as the war continued.

After Song Xiaofei received the news. I was so happy that I ate two more bowls of rice that night. Historically, China had only to buy weapons from the European powers. For example, I once purchased planes from abroad, and it was the spring of the second year of the Republic of China. Following the advice of Brisault, adviser to the presidential office and military attache of the French Legation in Beijing, China decided to purchase the aircraft. The Beiyang government also borrowed 300,000 silver dollars from the European powers, of which 270,000 silver dollars were allocated by the Ministry of Finance to Bole, a legal person, and through him, he purchased 12 G-4 biplane trainers from the French company Gaudron Aircraft, including four of 40, 50 and 80 horsepower, as well as maintenance equipment and equipment in the repair plant. Now Chinese tanks can be exported to Germany, and with such a large order, the tank industry will definitely flourish in the future. The Americans can't say anything about it. Who said they couldn't supply what Germany needed. And China can.

Moreover, it is more convenient to transport strategic materials from China to Europe than the United States, and the prices of Chinese products are relatively lower and more competitive, which is also in line with the standards of free trade. However, at this time, China is no longer the China of the past, and has a strong navy and army to ensure its own interests.

Song Xiaofei thought to himself. Since the Germans bought tanks, then the British, French and Russians will not be indifferent next, and China can also sell anti-tank guns next. China's military industry will take a leap forward from this war.

After Liang Shiyi and his entourage received a large order in Berlin, they went to London non-stop. London was in a smog and I couldn't see my fingers. Because since the 18th century, Britain has developed rapidly with the help of the industrial revolution, and the widespread use of coal has led to the most serious air pollution period in British history.

Other words. At the beginning of the 20th century, London was a black industrial capital, brilliant but gray. The Industrial Revolution, powered by coal, left London dotted with factories. Households are also burning coal for heating, and soot emissions have increased dramatically. The smoke mixes with the fog and turns yellow-black. Often hanging over the city for many days, the towering chimneys have become one of London's landmarks. At that time, the foggy days in London could reach seventy or eighty days a year, black, yellow, and purple, so that the spicy and choking fog of London choked the nose.

London's long and cold winters make residents need to burn a lot of coal for heating, and due to geographical and meteorological factors, London is often foggy for days. This is similar to the current severe smog in China.

But Liang Shiyi and his entourage received a cold reception in London. The British War Department did not realize the importance of tanks at all, and the British believed that they had the most powerful Royal Navy in the world, which could firmly hold the Germans by the throat in a naval battle, so they did not want to spend huge sums of money to buy tanks in China. British Admiral Chancellor Winston Churchill tried his best to lobby Parliament, but to no avail. Liang Shiyi was in London for three days, and the British government only sent Foreign Secretary Gray to meet with Liang Shiyi on a routine basis.

Liang Shiyi sent a telegram to Song Xiaofei, saying: "London is seriously hazy, I am unwell, and I request to return to China early." ”

After Song Xiaofei knew the truth, he asked Liang Shiyi to travel in Europe for a month, and called back: "I believe that in less than a month, the British government will take the initiative to come to you." ”

Liang Shiyi was also convinced that the power of tanks in the European theater of trench warfare would be amazing, and if the British did not buy tanks, the British would lose the war. So he traveled around Europe.

When Chinese tanks quickly appeared on the battlefield on the Western Front, the tide of the war was quickly reversed. In Flanders, the Germans immediately launched a major counteroffensive. When a hundred tanks rumbled into the British trenches, the British casualties were astonishing. When Scotland's second highland light battalion was forced to withdraw from the battlefield, only 30 of the more than 1,000 elite soldiers who came to Belgium to fight in the war remained.

On the ridge around Ypres, the Germans also engaged in a series of battles, winning one victory after another. During the battle, the old Belgian town was gradually destroyed by German artillery fire that bombarded the old buildings on the ridge that had been used as observation posts by the British and French troops. German tanks weaved between villages and forests, raining down grenades and high-performance bombs at every potential target, and under the cover of the tanks, the German infantry charged with bayonets. The British and French troops were constantly repulsed.

Still, the British, French, and Belgian armies were brave enough to turn every house, every forest, every section of wall into a recalcitrant stronghold. But because the German tanks were devastated and decayed, the troops of the Entente in each stronghold had to pay a huge price to hold on for a while.

With tanks. The Germans were overwhelmed, and after the first line of fortresses was taken, they quickly attacked the second line immediately after, and the tank attack made the original British and French forces take advantage of the terrain to disadvantage the attackers.

It turns out that the eastern and southwestern parts of Ypres are more complex than the north, where there are dense hedgerows, wire fences, wide and wide embankments. There are many large and small forests, and there are dense dwarf trees in the forest, which makes it difficult to pass. Detection is also difficult. The Germans could only walk along the road, while the British and French machine guns swept the road. The Germans could only attack with preparatory fire, and most of the villages were destroyed before the infantry arrived.

Now with tanks, each capture of the Germans evolved into a complete battle, and there are no words to describe the courage and tenacity of the German ** team on these occasions. Machine guns did not help the armored tanks of the Germans at all.

In the end, the Germans captured the entire Ypres region, and the Allied forces were routed, suffering 140,000 casualties. The German victory also had a butterfly effect, allowing the Ottoman Empire and Bulgaria, which had been on the sidelines, to join the camp of the Central Powers. Germany bought Chinese tanks, it was too worthwhile.

The previously neutral Ottoman Turkish Empire joined the Central Powers, except because the military observers sent to the front saw the German ** team using tanks to be invincible on the Belgian battlefield. Another important reason for the major victory was that the Turks wanted to restore the glory of history and to achieve the great rejuvenation of the nation.

It is almost a miracle that the Ottoman Turkish Empire, one of the oldest empires of the Arabs, survived until the beginning of the 20th century. Its period of stability lasted longer than the Persian, Byzantine, and Arab empires in the region.

The Ottoman Empire reached its peak at the time of Suleiman the Magnificent. Between 1520 and 1566, under Suleiman the Magnificent, the Ottoman Empire reached its peak not only geographically. And it's also at its peak culturally. He was the tenth generation of the empire, which was founded by a Turkish tribal leader named Ottoman. He founded a dynasty 300 years before the birth of Suleiman the Magnificent and named it after himself. These ten generations of monarchs of the Ottoman Empire. Expanding outward at an uninterrupted pace, no family in the world has ever done this. Suleiman the Magnificent was the best of the ten monarchs, he was full of energy, fought bravely and tenaciously, and had a strong desire to conquer. When the empire was first founded, it was a small tribe in present-day eastern Turkey, but it gradually expanded in all directions, allowing the empire to control larger and larger territories around it. The Ottoman Empire first entered Europe in 1354 and captured Constantinople, the capital of the Eastern Roman Empire, 99 years later. From then on, Constantinople became the capital of the Ottoman Empire. Hagia Sophia, the greatest building of the Roman era, became an Islamic mosque.

In the century following the capture of Constantinople, the Ottoman Empire continued to expand, conquering large swaths of land south of the Danube. Suleiman's father, Sharim I, won Syria, Palestine, Egypt, and Algeria in a single war, doubling the borders of the empire. The territory he passed to Suleiman included many famous cities: Alexandria, Algiers, Athens, Baghdad, Cairo, Damascus, Jerusalem, Smyrna. The Ottoman Empire not only became the political and military ruler of the Islamic world, but also the guardian of many holy places related to Muhammad, the founder of Islam, such as Mecca and Medina. This made the hegemony of the Ottoman Empire difficult to challenge by others.

As the empire grew stronger, the Ottomans became less and less like a family in the normal sense of the word, but just a series of father-son relationships without marriage. The sultans of the Ottoman Empire never took wives, and they possessed hundreds of women who could not be married spouses as if they owned property. These women live in prison-like boudoirs and have only access to the sultan and the custodian who owns them. These custodians, generally black Africans, have had their male genitalia mutilated.

Suleiman the Magnificent, a contemporary of Henry VIII of England, inherited a rare legacy and gave it a new impetus. Like his ancestors, he was a samurai who personally led his troops into battle, and he once led 13 battles. His army penetrated deep into the heart of Europe. Occupied Belgrade, Budapest, conquered the entire Balkans. He laid siege to Vienna, the emblematic city of Central Europe, had it not been for the heavy rains that prevented him from transporting heavy weapons to the north of Vienna. He was able to almost take the city. He was a poet and a researcher of Aristotle. A great architect who made Constantinople bigger and more beautiful. He built Topkapi Palace, which was more extravagant than one might think.

Suleiman the Magnificent with 300 women**, and his son Mustafa was the heir. Someone gave him a red-haired Russian girl named Gao Run, who was later renamed Xurem. Shrem was the trophy of an Ottoman raid on Poland, and she was sent to the boudoir of Suleiman the Magnificent. She must have been an extraordinary woman of extraordinary beauty, and almost from the first day Suleiman the Magnificent met her, Suleiman the Magnificent never slept with other women again. Suleiman the Magnificent ended up doing something that the Sultan had not done for centuries: he married Xurem. If it weren't for the disgusting decline that the Ottoman Empire had embarked on from here. Their union is one of the greatest love stories.

But over time, various ills began to emerge. The Ottoman Empire was not indifferent to the aggressive posture of the European powers, but like the late Qing Dynasty, it maintained an arrogant mentality and acted slowly in its rigidity and stagnation, until March 1821, when an uprising broke out in Greece itself, and finally won the **, was strongly shaken. During the same period, Egypt, the former vassal state of the Ottoman Turkish Empire. There was also a powerful figure Muhammad. Ali, not only with his own army, but also with an attack on West Asia. Threaten Istanbul and have the potential to replace the Ottoman Turkish Empire. Sultan Mahmud II asked for help from all sides, Russia took the opportunity to send troops to station, and the Ottomans could only rely on signing humiliating treaties and ceding benefits in exchange for peace.

After a series of blows, the pace of change in the Ottoman Empire was forced to accelerate. Later in the reign of Mahmud II, a movement called "Tanzimat" began, "Tanzimat". In Turkic, it means reform and rectification, and it mainly adopts the proposals of Britain and France to modernize the country.

Mahmoud's ambition has not been rewarded. After his death due to illness, his son Abdul. Added to the throne by Mejid I. Assisted by a group of ministers, the reform measures involved religion, politics, military, commerce, education, journalism and many other aspects, more comprehensive and in-depth than China's Westernization movement, although nominally did not violate the ancestral teachings of the Koran, but in essence it was a cut of tradition, by the end of 1876, the Ottoman Turkish Empire promulgated a constitution, established a parliament, and achieved a constitutional monarchy. Because in 1856, with the help of Britain and France, the Ottoman Turkish Empire also defeated the Tsarist Empire and won the Crimean War.

Of course, for a unified ancient empire, just like China's Westernization Movement, the reform would break the superficially solid whole created by **, and the centralization of power would be destroyed, resulting in the interference of foreign powers to profit, the proliferation of various nationalisms, the expansion of regional power, and the state becoming more loose.

By 1876, Sultan Hamid II succeeded to the throne, and began to abolish reforms, follow the old road of feudalism, and in 1878, under the pretext of the national crisis, announced the adjournment of parliament. This recess, that is, thirty years, did not proclaim the abolition of the constitution, but restored the monarch**. Thirty years later, in 1908, the people's discontent accumulated and broke out, and the revolution led by the Young Turks broke out, similar to many revolutionary parties in the late Qing Dynasty in China, opposing the monarch **, demanding the restoration of the constitution, advocating the preservation of the territorial integrity of the Ottoman Empire, from mutiny to coup d'état in 1908, the momentum was like a bamboo, the 1876 constitution was restored, and Mohammed V was appointed as the new sultan, and soon the three-person military oligarchy headed by Enver was actually established, and a high-pressure policy was adopted, Ottoman nationalism was pursued and a pro-German policy was pursued abroad.

With the exception of the Ottoman Empire, there was no great power in the Islamic world. And for such a powerful civilization, if there is no great power in charge, in the era of industrial civilization, it is a very painful thing. Therefore, the Ottoman Empire wanted to regain its lost territory through war, so in this war, it finally joined the side of the Central Powers, and Germany, which was facing off against Britain and France, of course welcomed this.

There is another little-known reason for Turkey's participation in the Central Powers, and that is the default of the British Navy.

Bulgaria, on the other hand, was originally a vassal state of the Ottoman Turkish Empire, and in 1877 Russia declared war on Turkey, which was defeated. The following year, after the end of the Russo-Turkish War in February 1878, Bulgaria gained its independence from Turkish rule and was once unified. However, due to the inability of Russia, exhausted by the war, to withstand the pressure of the Western powers such as Britain, Germany, and Austria-Hungary, according to the Treaty of Berlin signed on July 13, 1878, Bulgaria was divided into three parts: the Principality of Bulgaria in the north, Eastern Rumelia and Macedonia in the south.

On September 6, 1885, when the national democratic movement of the Bulgarian people for reunification reached the high dynasty, Bulgaria realized the unification of the north and south of the northern kingdom of Hedong Rumilia, from which the motto "unity creates power" on the Bulgarian coat of arms came from, so Bulgaria also joined the Central Powers on the condition of acquiring part of the territory of Macedonia and Serbia.

The chances of victory in the Great War of 1908 by the German-led Allies are getting bigger and bigger! (To be continued)

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