The black clouds rolled, the night was deep, and a pale white hooked moon hung alone in the sky, completely enveloped by heavy dark clouds from time to time. The cold wind is howling, the dust is flying, and although the time has just entered the autumn moon, St. Petersburg, which is adjacent to the cold zone, has already revealed a little winter breath.

In the splendid grand hall, Tsar Nicholas II was sitting at a large square table; His hands were on his forehead, his eyes were closed, and his bearded face was full of exhausted tiredness and unconcealed sadness.

Since Nikolai and Feolodovna from Hesse, Germany, got married, the free-love couple had a very good relationship, and the young Nikolai worked his beloved queen. However, God gave Nicholas the supreme throne, but did not care about the children under his knees: the queen had conceived four children in a row in the previous eight years, but all of them were princesses without the Y chromosome, so that the crown prince was undecided. The flame of hope that the Tsar and his wife raised again and again were ruthlessly extinguished in the process of delivering babies again and again. Seeing that time is passing day by day and the two are about to enter middle age, the problem of the heir to the Tsarist throne that has not been solved is becoming more and more acute, and it has always haunted the hearts of the Tsar and his wife like a demonic hand around the neck. If this continues, Nikolai will have to choose one of his nephews to be the prince, like the old Austrian Emperor Franz, whose son died young.

In early 1904, the medical officer detected that the queen was pregnant with her fifth child. The Tsar and his wife, who had experienced a series of failures, had great expectations for this time, after all, from a genetic point of view, the probability of having five girls in a row was not much less than the luck of being hit by a flower pot while walking on the street. And this time it finally did not disappoint the tsar and his wife. On the day of Alexei's birth, the overjoyed Tsar immediately made the infant crown prince of all Russia and announced the news to his 140 million people. Today, when the war in the Far East is in full swing, God has given him the prince of Nikolai's dreams, is this not a good omen for the prosperity of Russia? Niko**, who was in a good mood, felt that his life was full of brilliant colors and his future was bright; He then sent a telegram to Aleksayev, the governor of the Far East, and asked him to attack the battlefield and congratulate the crown prince on his birth with an unprecedented victory.

However, just a week later, the Tsar was on a rollercoaster ride, falling from the peak to the bottom in an instant.

Since the Tsar and his wife were the children of the late Queen Victoria, and the two were out-and-out close cousins who intermarried, the recessive gene for hemophilia from Queen Victoria was quietly brought to the gene pool of the Romanov family, and the fruit of pain was bred in the flower of the free love of the Tsar and his wife. After examination by the medical officer, the crown prince was diagnosed with hemophilia, which was common among European royalty, and this disease was incurable under the medical conditions of the time: this meant that the young crown prince would be in a state of extreme weakness and danger for the rest of his life, and his life would be at risk at any time due to bleeding and various diseases caused by weakness. A few days later, Nikolai, who was in the prime of life, had already reached the number of gray hairs of his middle-aged cousin William, who was 9 years older than him, and he was heartbroken about his young son's incurable condition. Nikolai couldn't understand why his disabled cousin could give birth to a large number of healthy boys, but why was he so unhappy about the issue of heirs, who was far younger and more heroic than William.

Just when Nikolai was visiting famous doctors for the genetic disease that Crown Prince Alexei was suffering from, the Far Eastern battlefield was also a disaster, and a series of bad news almost knocked him nerves. The Russian army was defeated by the Japanese army under the command of Dashanyan in the Battle of Liaoyang, losing nearly 30,000 troops, discarding a large number of munitions and materials, and the gateway to Liaoyang, the core area of Manchuria, was smashed open by the Japanese. At the southern tip of the Liaodong Peninsula, the outer positions of Dalini, the ice-free port fortress that Russia had painstakingly managed, had also been lost, and nearly 10,000 soldiers were killed, wounded, or captured; The remaining 40,000 defenders retreated completely into the fortress, and under the command of Stessel's idiots, they only wanted to wait for reinforcements without making any sorties.

It is only that Dalini was besieged by the Japanese army, after all, it was an isolated city far from the core of Manchuria of the Russian army; Having forcibly leased the port city by force, Nikolai had already decided to build the only ice-free port seized by Russia into a strong fortress capable of withstanding the strongest attacks. In the years that followed, Russia invested heavily in the fortifications here, employing thousands of skilled technicians and tens of thousands of local laborers to build the fortified core of today's fortified fortress with many turrets and clusters of fortifications. With abundant food and ammunition, Nikolai is confident that this Far Eastern fortress can definitely last more than a year with a strong core defense system! Therefore, although Nikolai was dissatisfied after receiving the news of the defeat of the Russian army in the southern part of the Liaodong Peninsula, he showed no signs of madness; As long as this fortress can hold on to help, it has not crossed his bottom line.

However, the news of the retreat of the Russian army from Liaoyang undoubtedly touched the most sensitive nerve of the tsar. Since the start of the war for more than five months, Russia's troops and materials in Europe have been continuously transported and assembled to the Far East, and Russia's military strength in the Far East has long been unprecedented. However, in the Liaoyang area, where there were a large number of strong defensive positions, the more than 200,000 troops under the command of Kuropatkin began to retreat on all fronts after holding out for two months, which was simply an incomprehensible outcome. Before the outbreak of the battle, Kuropatkin also swore in a telegram that Nikolai would not retreat from Liaoyang; Now this sentence is still lingering, but the Russian army is running fast like a frightened rabbit! What made Nikolai even more angry was that the casualties of the Russian army in this battle were only more than 20,000, which means that the Russian army completely withdrew from Liaoyang on its own initiative while still retaining a lot of strength!

Although Kuropatkin deliberately exaggerated the number and strength of the Japanese army in his later report to St. Petersburg in order to justify his retreat, and to some extent to alleviate the Tsar's anger that had accumulated to max and was ready to make a big move; However, the outcome of the battle still left Nikolai depressed and angry. The defeat of the Russian army in Liaoyang not only made the trapped Dalini more and more distant from them, but also had an extremely bad impact on the international community: the price of the government bonds issued by Russia fell sharply in the international market, and the government's action to raise funds for the war suddenly became extremely difficult; The tsarist government was disgraced, and there was a lot of discontent in the country because of the defeat in the war and the hardships of life. Nikolai was eager to transfer all his more than 1 million troops who had nothing to do in Europe to the Far East to fight, sweep through Japan with the overwhelming force of Mount Tai, and regain the land and honor that belonged to Russia; However, the long distance has greatly diluted Russia's national strength, so that the military power that Russia can have in the Far East can only be slowly gathered in a delicate and long-term attitude. Previously, Nikolai had always liked to stand in front of the huge map of the world, leisurely savoring how vast the empire was under his rule; However, now looking at the Siberian region, Nikolai feels that this desert permafrost where birds don't is so annoying!

For a moment, Nikolai was envious of the German Empire ruled by Willy's cousin, whose 1,000 kilometers of territory and dense railway lines were enough to allow their army to reach from one side to the other at breakneck speed. He rubbed his forehead tiredly, and the corners of his mouth flashed a bitter smile that was more ugly than crying, this powerful feeling that could not be used can really make people feel helpless, angry, and angry!

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"Smack...... Pop ......" The crisp sound of leather shoes touching the floor suddenly sounded, which was particularly clear in the lonely and quiet hall. Nikolai slowly opened his eyes, only to see the Minister of the Navy, Havelan, appear in his office at some point. He put down his right hand against his forehead, and said weakly: "My general, is there any bad news from the Far Eastern battlefield?" ”

Havelan said softly: "Your Majesty is too worried, I have always told Your Majesty a good news. Admiral Rozhdestvensky has completed almost all the preparations for the fleet's departure, and is expected to officially pull anchor and set sail in two weeks' time. HAMBURG, Germany – The American Shipping Company is also ready to send more than 80 coal carriers to the eastern Atlantic and the entire Indian Ocean to fuel our expeditionary fleet. ”

Nikolai's lips were furrowed, and a look of joy gradually bloomed in his turquoise eyes; After a while, the expressions of helplessness, loss, unwillingness, and anger on his previous face all disappeared, and were replaced by a smile that was rare these days, and he said: "Rozhdestvensky is a good guy, and it is not in vain that I have rewarded him with a promotion." As long as this fleet reaches the Far East and joins forces with General Makarov's First Pacific Fleet, we can completely cut off Japan's maritime lifeline of supplies to their front-line forces through the mainland. At that time, not only will the land of Yellow Russia be at your fingertips, but even it will not be difficult to land in Japan and colonize this group of dirty and inferior yellow-skinned monkeys! Speaking of this, Nikolai showed a hint of fierceness in his eyes, and said hatefully: "This time, I must let the Japanese monkeys taste the real iron fist of the Russian Empire!" ”