In July 1905, Kaiser Wilhelm sailed on a yacht and secretly met with his cousin Tsar Nicholas in the waters of Buchenko in the Gulf of Finland. After a few years, the two cousins met again, and after a routine polite greeting, William soon noticed that something was wrong with Nikolai's state.

Different from William's impression of his cousin's heroic and rich image, the Tsar's face standing in front of him was gloomy, and there was a hint of heaviness and melancholy between his eyebrows, obviously upset and depressed. Seeing this scene, William couldn't help but feel a secret in his heart, and he could fully imagine what a gloomy time for Nikolai in the past year or so.

Since the end of the Battle of the Sand River, there has been an undercurrent in Russia, and the army's defeat in the front-line war directly caused strong domestic dissatisfaction with the government and the tsar, and then detonated the sleeping volcano hidden in Russia. After half a year of gestation and fermentation, what was originally a peaceful petition by the workers to change the status quo turned into a large-scale insurrection that spread throughout the country under the instigation and instigation of foreign spies and the bloody suppression of the tsarist government. Mass strikes by workers, looting of landlords by peasants, assassination of important government officials, and almost daily bloody clashes between the military, police and the population. To the tsar's surprise, even the army saw the emergence of revolutionaries who rebelled against the government, and the sailors of the battleship "Potemkin", the most elite of the Black Sea Fleet, mutinied, sailed the ship to the coast of Romania and surrendered to the local guards. This negativity and the spread of mass insurrection greatly hampered the normal functioning of the Russian war machine, making the situation at the front more unfavorable, and the unfavorable situation spread back home. It will also trigger a further escalation of civil unrest. The situation that Russia is currently facing has fallen into a vicious circle from which it will not be able to extricate itself. This gave the tsar a headache.

And compare to the defeat of the Far East and the unrest in the country. The Tsar's greatest concern was the Empire's alarming financial problems. In this fierce local war, which lasted for more than a year, Russia had already spent more than 500 million pounds on the war and military expenditure, not only squandered all the huge money borrowed from the capitalists of the French banks, but even the already modest money in the treasury was quickly drained like a bucket with a hole in it. You must know that the French are by no means good men and women, although they injected a lot of loan blood for the Russian war, but the interest on this huge amount of money is also extremely high! Nikolai originally planned to pay off his debts with the war reparations obtained from the victory over Japan, but the actual situation was very different from his assumptions; The war, which had been waged at great expense, yielded no results. On the contrary, hundreds of thousands of troops and the entire navy except for the Black Sea Fleet were lost! With almost no hope of victory, the Russian government was instantly pushed to the brink of bankruptcy.

There is no cure for the fiasco of war, revolutionary riots, financial collapse, and hemophilia, which can kill his young son Alexei at any time...... Countless calamities struck the Tsar like a thunderbolt from the sky, and the great contrast made the melancholy and pain in his heart even higher.

Rao is William knew that Nikolai was not having a good time during this time, but when he saw the mental state of Nikki's cousin, he still couldn't help but be secretly frightened. However, this is tantamount to a perfect time for William to take advantage of the fire. William comforted his down-and-out cousin, who he saw as "worthy of living in a grass hut in the countryside and growing turnips", and then threw out a treaty similar to a defensive alliance, waiting for Nikolai to sign his name on this treaty.

Since the signing of the Defensive Alliance between France and Russia in 1892, Wilhelm, who has been deeply remorseful, has always wanted to make up for the great mistake of Russian betrayal, which was created by Bismarck and carried forward by himself. After all, there was no hatred between Germany and Russia. The awkward relationship between the two sides was entirely due to the fact that France had kidnapped the Russian bears on their chariots through a large export of capital, and Wilhelm had always hoped to break the German encirclement through his personal relationship with the Tsar. Therefore. At this time when Russia's defeat in the war with Japan was at its lowest ebb, and then the rise of the revolution at home, he extended an invitation to the distraught Tsar for a private secret meeting with him, and proposed a treaty agreement in which one of Germany and Russia would be obliged to support the other in the event of an attack. Wilhelm overestimated the power of the Tsar, believing that with the signature of both monarchs, Germany would be able to break the encirclement of Germany by France and Russia. Nikolai also signed very cooperatively.

When Nikolai put down the quill in his hand, William burst into tears. In his opinion, now that Germany and Russia have reconciled, there are only two options left for France, either to reconcile with Germany or to abandon the Franco-Russian alliance. Excited, Wilhelm immediately reassured Nikolai, who had become an "ally": "The religiously defying republic, stained with the blood of several monarchs, is not fit to be Russia's partner," as evidenced by their opposition to Russia's strategy of expansion in the Far East, which is at stake in Russia's national fortunes. He also elaborated to Nikolai on Russia's argument for victory in the Russo-Japanese War: Japan's losses were not much less than those of Russia, and they were only lucky enough to win by virtue of the strength of their country against a corner of Russia. As long as the Tsar continued the war, Russia would surely turn defeat into victory and drive the Japanese Army into the sea in one fell swoop with a steady stream of troops and materials to the Far East.

When the tsar brought the treaty home, the ministers were horrified and immediately explained to him the mysteries of the treaty. To assume the obligation to join the German side in a possible war is undoubtedly to abandon the Franco-Russian alliance, and the withdrawal of French capital is simply not something that Russia can afford! Nikolai, whose IQ was played with by the Kaiser, had to brazenly declare that this matter would still be discussed with France, and this German-Russian alliance treaty would not be closed at the very least. But William's trip was not without success. His "long war of resistance" to Nikolai greatly impressed the Tsar, who was already on the verge of despair, and restored some confidence in the victory over Japan along with his powerful ministers. The Tsar never thought in his heart of letting go of this group of yellow-skinned monkeys who dared to challenge the dignity of the Russian Empire, and it was only because he could not do anything that he had to decadently consider whether he should accept the mediation of US President Theodore Roosevelt; Now, with the discovery that it is still possible to make the monkeys pay the price in blood, how could Nikolai let go of this opportunity? Even if the finances collapse again, the war must continue!

Taking a step back, even if Russia were ready to end the war in the Far East, which had cost them face, they must not just make peace with Japan. After all, in more than a year of war, the Russian army basically did not achieve any victory: the territories they occupied in South Manchuria and Central Manchuria were all occupied by Japan, more than 300,000 officers and soldiers were killed and wounded, and the navy lost all its old capital in the war, and the loss of 21 capital ships before and after made them fall from the third position in the world to the eighth in the world, and even the Austro-Hungarian Navy was able to overwhelm them with three newly designed Habsburg-class battleships. The hearts of the members of the Russian decision-making level were clear: if they walked to the negotiating table with the Japanese in this bare-bottomed appearance that they could not even afford to wear fat, would it be possible to end the war with relative dignity? If Russia, one of the five great powers in Europe, ceded land and reparations to Japan, a group of yellow-skinned monkeys, in the posture of a defeated country, then Russia will not be mixed up in European circles in the future? Therefore, even in order to end the war, one or two battlefield victories should be used to win bargaining chips with the Japanese!

The history of the Russo-Japanese War has thus deviated into a new track.

Although it is entirely possible for Russia to defeat Japan by doing so, for Germany at the moment, there is no need to worry about what threat Russia will pose to them after defeating Japan. The war continues to this day, and Russia has thrown countless resources and rubles into this black hole in the Far Eastern theater that has nothing to do with the European war; The internal and external debts are high, the economy is in disarray, the military is exhausted by desperate efforts, and the revolution is booming...... All of these have greatly depleted Russia's overall national strength, and Germany's initial goal of using Japan to weaken Russia has been achieved.

Although Japan's war potential is far inferior to that of Russia, behind it is the two financial giants of Britain and the United States, who are vigorously transfusing blood, and nearly half of the funds they invested in the war are foreign debts raised by the financial capital industries of Britain and the United States. The money was turned into guns and ammunition in factories in both countries, and then transported by merchant ships from the sea to the Japanese mainland to support the front lines. If Russia wants to completely defeat Japan on the land battlefield, it will take a lot of national strength and time to do so. Most crucially, the St. Andrew's navy, which ranked third in the world, has become a thing of the past, which means that Russia cannot threaten the Japanese home core, and can only make some progress on land; It was obviously impossible for Japan to pay reparations in the armistice with a victory of this magnitude, and the benefits to Russia would be extremely limited. The longer the war between Japan and Russia continues, the more advantageous it will be for Germany; A Russia, exhausted by the war in the Far East, could not pose a threat to Germany and could not threaten the security of the German Eastern Front.

Just as Nikolai continued to push the war like a gambler with a red eye, Qingying also ushered in a decisive battle that he was determined to change Schlieffen's plan. (To be continued......)

PS: Thank you for the monthly ticket voted by the book friend with zero sadness~~