Oneviii. On January 28, '94, the days began to get a little longer, and the morning was still a little chilly in the morning with the slightly chilly sea breeze of the Mediterranean.

The sun had just risen over the sea, and the water was becoming colorful, and there seemed to be countless red flames dancing on the water. With the morning fog and the waves rolling on the sea, a fleet of twenty-three merchant ships and seven warships, perhaps the largest in the history of Austria-Hungary, slowly sailed away from Catalo Bay.

Boloyevich stood on the bridge of the battleship "Grand Duke Rudolf" in a yellow tweed coat, and looked at the fleet in front of him with great interest, the sea, the battleships, these things would be of great interest to him on his first ocean voyage.

For an army officer, the 8,500-ton "Grand Duke Rudolf" is indeed a behemoth, the entire hull and superstructure are painted black, and the three 240-mm main guns and 12 150-mm secondary guns on it can feel a terrifying power.

Boloyevich became a little excited, and carefully looked at the guns, as a soldier he was naturally interested in these forces.

He turned his gaze to the merchant fleets, where at least half of the steamers were loaded with munitions: 600,000 rifles, 300 new Maxim machine guns, 200 guns of various calibres from 37 mm to 70 mm, 20 million rounds of ammunition, tens of thousands of shells, and hundreds of tons of bombing. Medicine. The distances between the cargo ships were much larger than normal, and Bolojevich had no doubt that if an accident occurred with an accident with an ammunition on one of the ships, the entire ship would be blown into the air.

The other half of the ships were equipped with equipment, and it is said that a Qing governor was preparing to build a steel mill and an arsenal, which were ordered for him. These cargo ships carrying munitions and the freighters of the transport planes were staggered in two columns, which looked quite spectacular.

He could not understand what Hirton was doing, and as far as things were concerned, the Far East was calm and calm, and there was no sign of a war breaking out. If it weren't for the war, what was he going to do with such a large number of soldiers there? Can it really be sold?

It was an arduous voyage, more than 7,000 nautical miles from Trieste to Hong Kong, even through the Suez Canal, and the entire fleet sailed at a speed of 7 to 9 knots, even if it took more than 40 days to travel day and night. But this could not be done, on the way they had to add coal at least three times or more, plus the time to replenish at the port, even if it was all the way, it would take fifty days.

In fact, the whole fleet took fifty-seven days, and while in the Red Sea, a cargo ship was forced to be towed back to Djibouti due to a boiler failure, and it took twenty days to repair the boilers, so Heldon had to leave it alone to sail to the Far East with the rest of the fleet after repairing it.

In the Indian Ocean, the Adalliz suffered another engine failure, and the entire fleet waited for it on the surface for two days before the voyage began. The last leg of the voyage was delayed for another day in the South China Sea.

When the entire fleet arrived in Hong Kong, it was March 27.

Helton Lee left his entire fleet in Hong Kong, but he himself ran to Shanghai on the cruiser "Empress Teresa".

He asked Schroeder to send the ten-ship machine qì equipment ordered for Zhang Zhidong to Wuchang, while he sat in Shanghai and personally took charge of the purchase of raw silk.

This year's spring cocoon market was about the same as in previous years, and the purchase price of each load of cocoons was about 37 taels of silver, and Li Haidon borrowed a total of 1.5 million pounds sterling, or about 6.5 million taels of silver, from the Rothschild Bank and the Land Credit Bank in Vienna, all of which were invested in the spring cocoon purchase war.

By May, he had stockpiled about 600,000 quintals of cocoons and nearly 30,000 quintals of raw silk in Shanghai, and in the summer, he snapped up about 200,000 quintals of summer cocoons and 50,000 quintals of raw silk. At this time, Li Haidon had almost spent all the money in his hand, so he had to use the raw silk and silkworm cocoons in his hand as collateral to borrow 500,000 pounds from the British HSBC Bank, and began to hoard camphor and other items produced in Taiwan on a large scale.

By July, he had stockpiled about £3.2 million worth of goods in China.

By this time, the politicians with a sensitive sense of smell were already visibly aware of the tensions in East Asia.

Li Hongzhang was distraught by the recent situation in North Korea, and although there was news that war between China and Japan was possible, he still did not think that such a possibility was likely. Tsuki-sama's awareness of Japan and the comparison of power between the two sides were still stuck ten years ago, that is, during the Renwu Change. That time, in the end, the Japanese retreated, and it is estimated that this time they will retreat again. Korea was in turmoil, and the king asked China to send troops to help quell the rebellion, and as a suzerain, it had an obligation to do so.

The problem is that the Japanese are also shouting for troops.

It was a problem, but both Li Hongzhang and Yuan Shikai in Korea underestimated the determination of the Japanese this time.

Ignore it, this small country is jumping up and down, just trying to take advantage of it.

Due to an error in judgment, Li Hongzhang made the decision to send troops to North Korea.

The Japanese finally seized the opportunity and announced that they would also send troops to Korea, and it was a mixed brigade of more than 7,000 men, which was twice as many as the Qing garrison in Korea.

At this time, it was immediately lively.

In the imperial court, the main battle faction led by Emperor Guangxu's teacher, Hubu Shangshu Weng Tongyi, was shouting for an immediate war with the Japanese, and the young emperor who was bewitched by the main war faction had successively issued orders asking all Beiyang to prepare for war. However, Li Hongzhang had no intention of fighting a decisive battle with the Japanese at all, and he knew very well the situation of the Beiyang Naval Division, and he was not sure about the opponent of the war. And what kind of virtue the Huai army under his command is, he knows better than anyone else.

The land war is not good, the naval battle is not certain, Lao Li just wants to passively avoid the war, but the guys in Beijing who can't see the shape clearly at all are not relenting, and the emperor is constantly putting pressure on him.

The biggest problem is that the Beiyang Naval Division is not ready at all.

The Beiyang Fleet has not added a new warship for ten years, and Admiral Ding Ruchang has been reporting that the Beiyang ships are old and the artillery is backward, and he has asked the imperial court to allocate funds to replace the fleet with new naval guns. However, these demands were rejected one by one, for the simple reason that in order to pay for the expenses of the Empress Dowager's longevity celebration, the leader of the Qingliu Stream who had a personal grudge against Li Hongzhang, proposed to stop the purchase of foreign arms for two years, and not only refused to allocate funds for the purchase of new warships and artillery, but also stopped allocating funds for the purchase of artillery shells and for the daily maintenance of warships.

And the Japanese have been preparing for a long time, even the emperor is cutting back on food and clothing, adding equipment to the navy, and now, after ten years, they are finally showing their fangs.

Now it is not a question of whether there will be a war or not, but that those main war factions in the court want to make a big fuss about this, with the aim of overthrowing him Li Hongzhang. As for the outcome of the war, these people never cared.

This is the reason why those so-called Qingliu want to go to war, especially Weng Tongyi, this is an excellent time to bring down Li Hongzhang. Li Hongzhang knew very well that since his brother Weng Tongshu, a corrupt official, was impeached and dismissed by himself, this leader of the Qing school has always regarded himself as an enemy. Over the years, almost every time he put forward a certain innovative proposition, such as changing the imperial examination, emphasizing Western law, or training the navy, Weng Tongyi would definitely go against the grain and drag him back.

This time, too, they simply don't know that war is about the peril of the country, or they know it, but they don't take it seriously.

So Li Hongzhang was not ready to go to war.

But the truth was not what he wanted.

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