On 4 November, the German media took the lead in revealing that the Pacific Fleet of the Imperial Chinese Navy attacked the Ulsan naval base of the Tsarist Far East Fleet between the night of 3 November and the early morning of 4 November, causing heavy damage to the Russian Far East Fleet. As a result, the news of the Chinese Empire's undeclared war against the Russian Empire spread far and wide, and immediately caused a sensation all over the world.

The European and American powers could not believe that this was true, and that the Chinese Empire dared to take the initiative to attack the Tsarist Russian Empire, which was too hard to believe, but it was so, and soon the military strategists of various countries came up with a series of reasons that were enough to prompt the Chinese Empire to take the initiative to go to war, but they were all afterthoughts.

This will be the first contest between the East and the West in the 20 th century, and because of the contradictions between the Western powers, it is difficult for them to reach a unified ideology, and they will not be able to help Russia in the Sino-Russian war.

As a military ally of Russia, France was the first to jump out to condemn the actions of the Chinese Empire, but only to condemn it. The same is true of Germany, in order to divert the direction of Tsarist Russia's military attack and reduce the pressure on Germany to face both French and Russian attacks in Europe, the German political axe also issued a condemnation speech and expressed support for Tsarist Russia's actions for this purpose.

Most of the countries in Europe chose to condemn the rude behavior of the Chinese Empire from the perspective of white people, and only the British political axe blossomed, and their long-awaited Sino-Russian war finally broke out, so that the British political axe could use the power of the Chinese Empire to attack Russia.

The whole of Europe has issued statements of condemnation on the issue of the Ulsan Bay incident, and even clamored for support for Russia's counter-retaliatory measures against China. Of course, they are thundering and raining, and they are simply powerless to meddle in the Far Eastern war.

However, the Chinese Empire immediately launched a strong diplomatic response. Tang Shaoyi, Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Chinese Empire, sent a note to the ambassadors and consular personnel of various countries in China, asking them face to face: Why did you not condemn Russia's invasion of more than one million square kilometers of land in the Chinese Empire? In the face of the bombardment of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Chinese Empire, the political axes of various European countries were immediately speechless, and the condemnation of China in response to the Ulsan Bay incident was quickly muted.

Subsequently, the British political axe issued a statement saying that the territorial dispute between the Chinese Empire and the Tsarist Russian Empire should be handled by the two countries themselves, and Western countries should not interfere. As a result, European countries took the opportunity to find a step down and declared their neutrality one after another.

The Russian political axe, which was still in the dark, immediately sent a telegram to question General Alekseev of the General Headquarters of the Far Eastern Theater of Operations, and General Alekseev did not know about it, so he immediately sent a telegram to the commander of the garrison of the Ulsan Naval Base, Major General Makdolovsky.

Only by this time did Major General Makdolovsky have to tell the details. He originally thought that he would hide it for a few days, and then lead the fleet out of the port to fight the Imperial Chinese Navy, sink a few enemy ships, and then report to his superiors. He didn't want Alekseev and Nicholas II to know the truth, because then he would be sent directly to the gallows.

However, the damned Germans were the first to poke out, and Makdolovsky, faced with the questioning of General Alekseev, had to report.

As a result of the attack on the night of 3 November, 10 warships of the Tsarist Far East Fleet were sunk, six were severely damaged, and 17 other auxiliary ships of various types were damaged to varying degrees. Among them, four main battleships, the great Sisoa, Rytasrov, Rostislav, and Peresvet, two armored cruisers Gozen Guard and Gangut, and ten battleships, including the Manchurian, Beaver, Sea Dog, and Korean, were sunk. Four battleships, Oslyabia, Petropavlovsk, Poltava, Sevastopol and two armored cruisers Svetlena and Kornilov, were seriously damaged and stranded. In addition, a large number of torpedoes that missed damaged many dock berths, breakwaters and other naval facilities, causing huge economic and military losses.

When the Tsarist political axe learned the truth, he was shocked, as if he had fallen from heaven to hell at once. Previously, they had always threatened that the Chinese Empire would not dare to take the initiative to go to war, but now the heavy damage caused by the sneak attack on the Tsarist Far East Fleet in Ulsan will greatly change the military strength of the Far East, so it is like a slap in the face.

Tsar Nicholas II was furious and scolded the Russian defenders of Ulsan as a bunch of rice buckets. Despite the fact that Major General Makdorovsky constantly excused himself, General Alekseev, faced with the roar from Tsar Nicholas II, had to remove him from his post and appoint Stepan? Osibovi? Vice Admiral Makarov served as commander of the Ulsan Fortress and commander of the Far Eastern Fleet in the port of Ulsan.

Nicholas II's loss of face was naturally a big deal, so in the afternoon of the same day, the Russian political axe issued a decree from the tsar, ordering a declaration of war on the Chinese Empire.

At the same time, Wang Chenhao, who had already prepared an edict to declare war, ordered a formal declaration of war against the Tsarist Russian Empire, and the Second Sino-Russian War officially broke out.

After Tsarist Russia declared war on China, all preparations were not completed, and Tsarist Russia's huge war machine was not yet in operation. However, the top level of the Tsarist Russian political axe only issued strategic defense orders to the Far Eastern Theater and the Central Asian Theater, strictly ordering the Tsarist Russian troops in the theater to defend their territory and wait for reinforcements. Until this time, the top brass of the Tsarist Russian Empire only thought that the Chinese Empire only dared to attack the Russian navy secretly, and did not dare to take the initiative to attack the Tsarist Empire.

This thinking led to the Russian army in the Far East and Central Asia in a state of passive defense, which provided an opportunity for the Chinese Empire to take the initiative.

Of course, the Tsarist Empire was also a last resort.

At this time, the Tsarist Empire was being robbed of funds from the international financial predators, who transferred the financial means to deal with the Chinese Empire to the Tsarist Empire, resulting in the financial instability of the Tsarist Empire, and the Russian people sold rubles to purchase foreign exchange for hedging, or exchanged for gold to cope with the soaring prices during the war.

The Tsarist Empire was not rich in the first place, and in order to prepare for war, the common people of the Tsarist Empire were scraped layer by layer by the Tsarist officials, which has caused the common people to live in misery. Now that the war preparations of the Tsarist Russian Empire have not yet been completed, foreign financial forces have broken in to grab money, which has suddenly plunged the Russian people into dire straits, and the ruble is legally stipulated to be 9 rubles to 1 pound, and the market has risen rapidly to 1 pound to 11 rubles.

To add insult to injury, Nicholas II demanded the immediate completion of preparations for war, the start of war mobilization throughout the country, the completion of the last section of the Trans-Siberian Railway on Lake Baikal by the end of the year, and the completion of all strategic material reserves before the completion of military mobilization.

Nicholas II did not give Witte any justification, only demanded that he complete the task on time.

Witte had no choice but to start the money printing press and print rubles on a large scale. This immediately caused the ruble to depreciate further, and at the same time, in order to prevent the international financial predators from cashing out Russia's gold and silver reserves, the Russian political axe had to order the termination of the exchange of gold and silver with the ruble. Although this move curbed the international financial predators to a certain extent, the consequence was that Witte's hard-earned gold standard reform failed in the past few years, and at the same time, the ruble became an uncashable currency, and the international immediately terminated the international payment capacity of the ruble, and dealt a heavy blow to Russia's underdeveloped foreign trade.

While Russia was urgently preparing for war, the Chinese Empire had already made all kinds of war preparations and began to act before the declaration of war.

After the attack on Ulsan Bay, the Russian Far East Fleet had only 17 large and small warships left to fight, among which the large armored cruisers Russians, Admiral Nakhimov, Azov, Monomakh, and the Twelve Apostles survived because they were not in the port of Ulsan.

On the morning of the 4th, Rear Admiral Makdorowsky tried to lead the remaining ships out of port for battle, but was soon beaten back by the Pacific Fleet of the Imperial Chinese Navy. If it weren't for the completion of the batteries on the seaward side of the Ulsan Fortress, which blocked the sea off the port in time and blocked the follow-up pursuit of the Imperial Chinese Navy, the consequences would have been unimaginable once the Imperial Chinese Navy stormed Ulsan Bay.

But as a result, the Russian Far East Fleet lost the opportunity to break through and was completely surrounded by the Imperial Chinese Navy in the port of Ulsan. At the same time, the remaining ships of the Russian Far Eastern Fleet were also divided into two parts, one in the port of Ulsan and the other in Vladivostok. Together, the two detachments were no match for the Imperial Chinese Navy, let alone if they were separated, they were no match for them.

Subsequently, the Imperial Chinese Navy dispatched a large number of minelayers to place a large number of mines in Ulsan Port and the entire Ulsan Bay, completely blocking the Russian Far East Fleet in the harbor and unable to get out, and at the same time sending warships to cruise in the surrounding waters to be on guard.

As a result, the Imperial Chinese Navy easily obtained sea control in the Yellow Sea, the Korean Strait, and the Benhai Sea, laying a solid foundation for the next army operations.

Also on the morning of the 4th, the Chinese Emperor Wang Chenhao convened an imperial council, the navy had obtained sea supremacy, and the army would then launch military operations to establish a favorable strategic position in the Far East before the Russian large-scale reinforcement of the Far East.

The specific strategy is that in the first stage, the Imperial Chinese Army will carry out strategic defense in the three major military regions in the north, and at the same time transfer 15 armies and five armies from the other four major military regions to form the First Front Army, the Second Front Army, and the Third Front Army. Among them, the 1st Front Army had a total strength of 300,000 troops, and the main direction of attack was in Boli and Vladivostok, which was twice as large as the Russian army in the Far East. The Second Front Army has a total strength of 180,000 troops, and its main attack direction is on the Korean Peninsula, and its strength is three times that of the Russian army in Korea. The Third Front was an expeditionary force with a total strength of 120,000 men. Starting from the sea, they landed in the vicinity of Ulsan and Vladivostok respectively, with the main task of conquering the two strong fortresses of the Russian army.

The strategic purpose of the first stage is to use the First Front Army as the main force to contain the Russian army head-on, to try to contain the Russian army on the border between the two countries, to rely on the superior geographical location of the Heilongjiang River and the Ussuri River to fight, and to maintain pressure on the Russian army. The Second Front will occupy the Korean Peninsula in the shortest possible time and use the Korean Peninsula as a springboard to supply the troops fighting in Vladivostok at close range. The combat mission of the Third Front was to take Vladivostok and Ulsan, and once these two fortresses were taken, the strategic objectives of the Far Eastern campaign would basically be achieved.

On the morning of November 4, 1901, the 5th Army and the 18th Army under the Second Front Army, as the vanguard, took the lead in launching an attack on the north bank of the Yalu River. These two armies were the elite units of the Imperial Chinese Army, and their artillery skills were influenced by the commander of the Second Front Army, General Duan Qirui, who was extremely sharp and ferocious.

At about 9 o'clock in the morning, the two armies mobilized more than 200 artillery pieces to concentrate their firepower on Bitong, on the south bank of the Yalu River, to carry out a fierce artillery attack. The Bitong garrison force was only one regiment of Russian troops, and in the face of the fierce artillery bombardment of the Chinese Imperial Army, the Russian army's river defense position was suddenly in flames, and the Russian soldiers suffered heavy casualties.

The commander of the Russian army, Major General Sibersky, in Pyongyang, believed that the Imperial Chinese Army would take the direction of attack from the direction of Bitong, so he ordered the Russian garrisons in Chushan and Qingshui to be transferred to reinforce Bitong.

However, Sibersky was fooled and fell into Duan Qirui's tactics of attacking the west.

On the night of the 4th, the Fifth Army crossed the river in the upper reaches of the Hunjiang River Estuary Delta on the other side of the Chu Mountains. The Russian army in the direction of Chushan soon found that the Chinese Emperor [***] team was crossing the river in Chushan, however, most of the troops in Chushan were transferred to Bitong, and the Russian army in Chushan was less than 500 people, so the Russian army did not move, and watched the Chinese Emperor [***] team set up a pontoon bridge to cross the river.

In the early morning of the fifth day, a regiment of the vanguard of the Fifth Army launched an attack on Chushan. The secret weapon of the Chinese Empire, the thunder cannon, was used on the battlefield for the first time, and it immediately played a huge role. The Russian soldiers hiding behind the bunker did not understand why the shells could fall into the anticline fortifications where they were, but they did not have any time to think, and in the face of the fierce attack of the Chinese Emperor's [***] team, the northern position of Chushan was lost after a charge from the opponent.

Subsequently, the Chinese Emperor [***] team immediately launched the tactics of flanking and outflanking, which immediately frightened the defenders of Chushan, once the other side succeeded in detouring, then the Russian army in Chushan would be in a desperate situation, the Russian army suddenly panicked, the garrison commander ran first, and then the other Russian troops abandoned their positions and retreated.

Chushan was lost in less than an hour, but it wasn't until three hours later that Sibsky learned the news.

Chu Shan was condescending, and as soon as Chu Shan was lost, the Russian army in Bitong lost the cover of the commanding heights.

As a result, Sibersky ordered the Russian army to abandon the Yalu River defense positions and retreat along the entire front. Considering the huge disparity in forces between the two sides and the disparity in combat effectiveness, Sibersky decided to hold on to Pyongyang and wait for reinforcements.

However, to Sibsky's sorrow, the speed of the assault of the Chinese Emperor's [***] team was too fast.

It turned out that the Fifth Army and the Eighteenth Army of the Chinese Empire were equipped with bicycles, a veritable bicycle-based infantry army. In Sibsky's words, he rode to Pyongyang, stopping for a moment to give the horse a meeting and feed him with water. However, the bicycles of the Chinese [***] team did not need to rest, did not need to be fed with water and feed, and the vanguard of the rapid march even ate dry food while riding, and as a result, they naturally ran ahead of the Russian army.

On the morning of the ninth day, when the Russian army arrived in Shunchuan, they were stunned to find that the military flag of the Chinese Empire had been replaced on the head of Shunchuan City.

Sibersky was dumbfounded, for his retreat had been cut off.

(To be continued)