As of January 29, the Empire had already put in a brigade of marines and a division of land forces in the direction of the Philippines, about 25,000 men had landed in the Philippines and launched an attack on the Spanish troops in the Philippines.

The military operations in the Philippines were very smooth, and the Spaniards, who lacked the will to resist, were losing one after another, counting on the British to intervene and join the war.

After half a month of diplomatic negotiations, the British found that it was impossible to get the empire to withdraw from the Philippines through diplomatic channels, so the British at this time finally showed the momentum of the world boss.

At 12 o'clock in the morning of January 29, when the Sixth Fleet of the Empire discovered the traces of the British East India Fleet, the British formally submitted an ultimatum to the Empire, demanding that the Empire immediately stop the invasion of the Philippines, otherwise the British would formally enter the war to curb the expansion of the Chinese Empire, and give an order to reply within six hours.

This ultimatum was quickly delivered to Lin Zhe, Lin Zhe only glanced at this ultimatum slightly, and then put it down, and said directly to the group of military and political dignitaries below: "You don't have to wait for six hours, just reply to them now!" ”

At this point, he paused; "If they want to fight, then they will fight!"

Although they were fully prepared for this result, the faces of the military and political leaders below still changed drastically, but the expressions of the civilian and military generals were different.

The civilian officials, who had always been the main peace faction, heard that there was going to be a war with the British, and when they thought of the impact of the war on domestic industry and commerce, they could not help but worry, and they feared that the continued rapid development of the empire would be destroyed by the war.

But the generals of the military are all excited, most of the military generals of the empire are very firm main battle factions, they have long been thinking about large-scale external expansion, expanding the territory for the empire at the same time, but also to improve their ranks and titles.

Many people think that after this war, I am afraid that there will be several more dukes!

Since the founding of the country after the five dukes, the empire has never been a duke, in the absence of a large-scale war, it is already the limit to be able to obtain a marquis, in the original Siberian War, only a few marquis were sealed, as for the duke, there is no one.

Now the war with the British is very likely to make the military produce a few more marshals and a few more dukes!

At two o'clock in the afternoon, the Reich Foreign Ministry officially replied to the British: the Reich refused to withdraw its troops from the Philippines.

The British, too, expected the Reich to reply, and the so-called ultimatum seemed to be a routine procedure, and at six o'clock in the afternoon, the British handed over the prepared declaration of war to the Chinese diplomats.

From this, the British officially declared war on the Chinese Empire!

The two great powers of the world are officially at war.

After China and Britain declared war, the United States felt complicated, on the one hand, they wanted to follow the Chinese and send troops to Cuba, but they were also afraid of British interference. But on the other hand, if you miss this opportunity, it will be difficult to find an opportunity in the future.

However, in the end, the Americans still could not make up their minds, and finally decided to take a look before speaking, although China and Britain declared war, it is unlikely that a full-scale war will break out, and even a land war is unlikely to break out for both, and the main battle should be on the naval side.

Moreover, the news of the departure of the British East India Fleet from Singapore was not at all, and one day was enough for the news to spread throughout the country, and at the same time, the news of the departure of the main fleet of the Imperial Navy from Cam Ranh Bay was also spread.

Now it is known that the British East India Fleet and the Chinese Pacific Fleet are in the waters of the South China Sea, and that what may be the largest naval battle ever fought is about to break out in the South China Sea!

The Pacific Fleet of the Imperial Navy, the fleets participating in the war include the First Fleet, the Second Fleet, the Fifth Fleet, and the Sixth Fleet, of which the Fifth Fleet and the Sixth Fleet are both without capital ships, with several small armored cruisers as the main force, leading a group of cruisers to fight.

The main task of these two detachments is to disperse over the vast South China Sea and search for traces of the enemy's main fleet.

The real main fleets are the First Fleet and the Second Fleet.

Combined, the total tonnage of these four fleets is about 350,000 tons.

The enemies of the Imperial Navy, namely the Spanish fleet and the British East India Fleet, in which the Spanish reinforcement fleet was only a supporting role, and its tonnage was about 30,000 tons.

And the strength of the British East India Fleet is not to be underestimated.

In 1895, the strength of the British East Indies Fleet was not strong, although there were a lot of capital ships, but many of them were old warships in service in the eighties, but after the Jinhua Incident broke out, the British quickly transferred a large number of capital ships from the Channel Fleet and the Mediterranean Fleet to the Indian Ocean and joined the East India Fleet sequence.

According to the inaccurate information currently obtained by the Imperial Intelligence Agency, in the East India Fleet, the British have reinforced at least two Sovereign-class battleships, as for the two Centurion second-class battleships and the second-class battleship Prestige, these three battleships were originally built by the British specifically to maintain the strength of the East India Fleet against the Imperial Navy, so these three battleships were originally in service in the East India Fleet.

That is, at present, the Imperial Navy can already confirm that the British Royal Navy's East India Fleet has at least five cutting-edge battleships.

And within the Imperial Navy it was not certain whether there were more battleships in the East India Fleet, because after 1895, the first two Majestic-class battleships that the British had started working between 1893 and 1894 were also in service one after another.

In terms of the speed and scale of shipbuilding, the British are still the number one player in the world, and the speed at which the Imperial Navy builds battleships has always been not fast, because the Imperial Navy takes into account that the number of warships built is not large, and the military expenditure is not much, so if the funds are allocated for construction in batches over two years, it is conducive to maintaining the scale of the shipyard and technological improvement.

In the past, when a battleship was built, it would take about two years for the hull construction alone, and about a year for the later outfitting, and after completion, according to the practice of the Imperial Navy, it would not immediately enter active service, but would have a short period of three months, as long as half a year, or even half a year. After the end of the sea trials, it can be considered a real service.

In other words, the battleships of the Imperial Navy, from the start of construction to the commissioning, the entire time period is about three and a half to four years.

If it is overtime, the imperial side will be able to complete the hull construction in more than a year, and strive to enter service in about two years.

However, compared with the British, who completed the construction and direct service in a year and a half, there is still a certain gap.

The first two battleships of the Majesty class were officially commissioned in December 1895, and there were two more years in 1896, that is, in the second half of this year.

However, it is estimated that the entire cycle of the latter ships will recover to more than three years from construction to service.

In addition to the battleships, the British in 1893, because of the stimulus of the expansion of the Imperial Navy, also accelerated the construction of the first-class protection cruiser construction plan, originally in history until 1896 to start the construction of a new generation of first-class protection cruisers, but in 1894, the British a new generation of first-class protection cruisers is officially started.

With a striking resemblance to history, this first-class protection cruiser is also called the crown class, this first-class protection cruiser with a displacement of 11,000 tons, equipped with 30 Belleville boilers, and the atmospheric power output reaches 16,500 horsepower, propelling this battleship to run 2.25 knots, and if it is strong pressure ventilation, the speed can be further improved.

However, the firepower is rather embarrassing, there are no large-caliber main guns, only sixteen 152 mm rapid-fire guns, and although the protection capability is good among the protective cruisers, it is still much worse than the armored cruisers.

The Crown-class first-class protected cruisers were built at a faster pace, with the first ship launched in less than a year, and by 1895 there were already three in service, and several more were added to active service this year.

A large number of capital ships have joined the active service one after another, which also gave the British Royal Navy a lot of confidence to dare to send a large number of warships to reinforce the East India Fleet.

According to the Imperial Intelligence Service, the current East India Fleet has at least ten first-class protected cruisers or armored cruisers in the early years, in addition to no less than ten old 10,000-ton ironclad ships.

There were even more second-class protected cruisers, third-class protected cruisers, and other small and medium-sized warships, all of which added up to the tonnage of the British East India Fleet in its current state of at least 300,000 tons.

In terms of tonnage, the Imperial Pacific Fleet and the Anglo-Spanish Combined Fleet are roughly the same, but the Empire has a lot of advantages in terms of cutting-edge capital ships, with eight former dreadnought battleships, while the British East India Fleet has only five, but the battleships of the old ironclad era, the Imperial Navy has only four old battleships, and the British have at least ten or more.

In comparison with first-class cruisers, Britain had more than ten first-class protected cruisers or armored cruisers, while the Imperial Navy had six new armored cruisers and four old armored cruisers, and the number was about the same.

As for everyone's second-class cruisers and third-class cruisers, the number is about the same, and there is no performance advantage or anything like that.

In short, the two fleets were evenly matched on the surface, and although the British East India Fleet was inferior in the number of new capital ships, the number of old battleships was higher.

And more importantly, the British Royal Navy's tactical level and training level have always been the first in the world in the past one or two hundred years, and it has never been when only other countries have learned from the Royal Navy, and the Royal Navy has never learned from other countries' navies.

Therefore, although the Imperial Navy is reluctant to admit it, it is a fact that there is a certain gap between the two sides in terms of tactics and training levels.

The Imperial Pacific Fleet and the East India Fleet were on par on paper, but the real result after the fight began was to be known only after the fight.

Just when Britain officially declared war on the Empire, two huge steel fleets in the South China Sea were slowly approaching!

At 3:40 p.m., the Sixth Squadron once again tracked down the end of the British main fleet, and its fast cruiser Chengdu, with its high speed of up to 24 knots, single-handedly bypassed the interception of the British outpost fleet, and at one point rushed into the sea less than ten nautical miles from the British main fleet, although the ship was soon driven away by several British cruisers and had to turn away.

However, it still brought extremely valuable information to the Imperial Navy, which confirmed the traces of at least one of the main fleets of the British.

According to the reconnaissance information transmitted back by the Sixth Squadron one after another, Lin Tongshu led the fleet to gradually sail to the southeast at a cruising speed of about twelve knots, and the goal of the Imperial Pacific Fleet was very clear, that is, to find the British Royal Navy's East India Fleet and then annihilate it! ――

(To be continued.) )