On August 26, 1913, while people were still in shock and talking about the unprecedented defeat of the British Navy, the European battlefield broke out again. Romania, which borders the Black Sea, suddenly issued a strongly worded statement to St. Petersburg, saying that the Romanians in South Bessarabia were suffering cruel oppression and enslavement, and demanded that Russia immediately allow Romanian troops to be stationed there to protect the legitimate interests of the local people.

For Romania's move, governments can understand the calculations of the speculators in Bucharest. With the crushing defeat of the British Grand Fleet and the successive victories of the Germans on the Eastern Front, these Dacians sensed that the time was ripe and could not wait to get on the chariot of the German-Austrian alliance in order to obtain benefits that they would not normally dare to imagine.

Knowing that war was inevitable, Russia simply ignored Romania's demands and issued an order directly to the garrisons on the border with Romania for combat readiness. Twelve hours later, King Carol I, who did not reply, read out a mobilization order for war against Russia, and Britain and France declared war on Romania by invoking the terms of the Entente. However, the declaration of war by Britain and France could only serve as a symbolic support. Because they could neither send troops directly to the Balkans in Eastern Europe to strike at the Romanian rear, nor could they provide substantial assistance to Russia, which was facing a new enemy.

Originally, after the blockade of the Bosphorus, Russia could also connect to the Mediterranean Sea through the transit of the two Balkan countries of Guò, Romania and Serbia, and get something better than nothing from Britain and France. And now, Germany, Austria-Hungary and Romania are united. The whole of Europe has been cut off from it; Plus the superiority of the Turkish fleet in the Black Sea. Russia no longer has any room to breathe in Europe.

August 27th. Kaiser Wilhelm II once again delivered a national radio address, in which he highly praised Romania's choice of war. For William, the biggest effect of Romania's participation in the war was not actually the 700,000 or so more miscellaneous cannon fodder in the Allied camp, but the fact that his country would receive enough wheat and corn from this European granary to consume five million people, as well as a large amount of livestock, vegetables and meat. In addition, Romania's abundant oil production will also greatly lubricate the roaring German warplane. Putting aside the huge dependence and demand for oil in the aviation, chemical, electrical, mechanical and other industrial sectors. In the naval field alone, heavy oil plays a pivotal role: because its calorific value is nearly 50% higher than that of the best anthracite, it has a qualitative leap forward in terms of weight, power, volume, and fuel consumption rate.

And during the period when Romania entered the war and was preparing to launch an offensive, the new round of battles between the Russian army and the German-Austrian coalition army also became clear in the fierce fighting between the two armies.

Since the fall of Mashersov on August 23, the Russian army under the command of Grand Duke Nikolai has fallen into a passive and unfavorable situation: one of the German crab claws has reached the rear of Warsaw, blocking most of the Russian army's escape path; And its army on the northern flank is also steadily advancing to the southeast, and is about to close the main force on the southern flank. Current. However, the Russian army deployed more than two army groups near Warsaw, with a total number of more than 500,000; If the Germans completely closed this encirclement. This will be a Super Tannenberg battle that will be a reappearance of the Battle of Canning!

After receiving an accurate battle report from the front that the German 8th Army was also advancing for a long time, Grand Duke Nikolai finally understood the intentions of the Germans. What made him angry and horrified was that the other party was so bold and reckless, fighting so unrestrainedly when the total strength was only forty percent of his own, and he wanted to eat more than half of the main force of the Russian army from under his nose! Faced with the encirclement and outflanking of Xing-Lu's repeated tricks, the enraged Grand Duke Nicholas decided to deal a head-on blow to these arrogant men who regarded their army as nothing.

In fact, this decision of the Grand Duke was not entirely an act of will. If the Russian army only blindly retreated and defended under the onslaught of the German army, then it was almost impossible for them to withstand the opponent's attack in a positional battle with a loose defense line and full of holes. If they do not want to be a turtle in an urn again, the Russian army must quickly withdraw from the imminent siege of Warsaw, and this is the outcome that the Grand Duke and St. Petersburg do not want to see anyway. Since the partition of Poland by Austro-Prussia, Russia, the greatest beneficiary, has been operating on this land for more than a hundred years; Warsaw, as the most central front-line hub, has long carried the long-cherished aspirations of countless Slavs to radiate and expand into Western Europe. What's more, if the Russian army chooses to retreat quickly again, it will be difficult to ensure the order of the various departments in a panic; Once the army is in chaos before the battle, it will inevitably cause a catastrophic situation!

With the order of the Grand Duke, the main forces of the Russian army stationed in Warsaw began to make a noisy sortie and stormed the right flank of the German 8th Army in the north. At the same time, the main clusters deployed in eastern Poland also rushed westward, striking directly at the left flank of the German army in the north. After analyzing the battlefield intelligence transmitted by the forward troops, the Grand Duke had realized that the strength of the German 8th Army on the northern flank was far weaker than that of the southern group, which had a large number of independent cavalry units and was integrated with the Austro-Hungarian 1st Army. According to his plan, the Russians would first encircle and crush the German northern crab claws with absolute superiority in numbers, and then turn back to deal with the threat of the German 9th Army and the Austro-Hungarian 1st Army covering from the south.

To be fair, this is a rather aggressive and risky strategy. Because in the previous Battle of Lodz, the Russian army had the experience of storming the position of a German army with the strength of a multi-army army and not resisting, and finally let the new 2nd Army with 3 elite regiments be annihilated in the encirclement of the Germans. However, the current Grand Duke can only fight to the death, and it is not on his list to abandon Warsaw without a fight or to sit still in Warsaw. Unlike the last time, this time the Russian army carried out a two-sided attack on the German army, which was alone in the depths, and the frontal strength of its direct combat area would be more than five times that of the Germans; If we can't even open the situation with this advantage, there will be no need to continue this war against Germany!

In order to conceal his true purpose of the battle, and to pretend that the Russian army was fleeing in panic when it was about to be surrounded, the Grand Duke ordered the Russian troops stationed in Warsaw to maneuver east first, and then move north at full speed at night. The previous defeat had already made Archduke Nicholas feel that his own information might be leaked, and his orders were conveyed by wired telephones and even heralds. At the same time, the Grand Duke also ordered the troops defending in the south to launch a massive counter-charge, making a desperate gesture of not letting the Germans claw clamp, in order to attract the attention of the German army to this aspect as much as possible.

On the night of August 25, the Russian army suddenly launched a large-scale counterattack after a rare burst of heavy artillery preparations. Grand Duke Nikolai's actions succeeded in deceiving the German command, which had relied too much on intercepted wireless telegraphies, and no one expected that the weak Russian army would suddenly counterattack. Under the cover of the night, the artillery and machine guns of the German army were greatly weakened, and the Russian soldiers without rifles were also emboldened in the midst of being out of sight, and rushed behind the robe with sapper shovels and bayonet blades.

François's 1st Army, which was the main force of the German assault, felt that there were enemy forces on all sides, and this force had to advance during the day and then engage in brutal night battles; Flares were constantly fired into the sky, and as far as the light could see, almost all of them were clusters of earthy yellow cattle rushing across the vast field. However, to François's rejoicing, although the current Russian army is numerous, the fighting is indeed much worse than the army group in the previous Battle of Tannenberg; The Germans retreated without confusion, and with the cooperation of friendly forces, they gave the Russian troops a head-on attack with their own weapons.

For a whole day on the 26th, François's corps continued to face continuous fierce battles with the Russian army from all sides, and according to the intelligence of reconnaissance aircraft, the First Army had been encircled by more than five Russian corps. That night, François commanded the whole army to launch a counter-charge to the west in order to escape from this sudden encirclement; After eight hours of fierce fighting, the 6th Siberian Division in front of him was crushed by the Germans, and less than 1,500 men were able to escape. However, at this time, the lack of cooperation between the Russian troops began to manifest itself again; In the face of the Siberian division's hoarse plea for help, the rest of the Russian divisions' generals did not adopt any effective strategy out of fear of the German army, and sat back and watched François escape from the almost mortal encirclement in a posture of friendly troops who were in difficulty and immovable. It was a miracle that the German First Army took all their prisoners and did not lose a single artillery.

At the same time, the German command had recovered from the initial shock. Ludendorff decided to make the François regiment a red cloth to lure the main forces of the Russian army to gather and attack, while the rest of the divisions carried out a large-scale maneuver on the battlefield to once again encircle the gathered Russian troops. In a certain way, the transfer of the main force of the Russian army from Warsaw is tantamount to a great favor to the German army; Because the German army no longer had to spend a lot of effort to storm Warsaw, and in street battles, it was a bloody battle with the Russian army to pile up human lives. The German cavalry interspersed maneuvers and made detours; The infantry advanced layer by layer, driving the opponent to the predetermined area. Grand Duke Nicholas, who had a bad premonition, ordered the main forces withdrawn from Warsaw to retreat to the east, but it was already too late. (To be continued......)

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