On May 16, 1904, in the palatial Petrogov Palace in St. Petersburg, the capital of the Russian Empire, Tsar Nicholas II was staring with disdain at the "stupid ministers like animals" in front of him.

"Your Majesty, in a month our aviation units will be ready for battle, and special anti-aircraft guns and anti-aircraft machine gun mounts are being loaded and transported to the front, and the enemy's air superiority will soon be in vain......," War Minister Vanovsky reported triumphantly, his flattering expression reflecting the puppy's plea of his master.

Nicholas II glanced at him: "Now the crux of the matter is on the Baikal front, we are going to counterattack and drive the enemy back to the Amur River to the sea!" Take advantage of the current opportunity! The Tatar emperor and his warlike ministers were so overwhelmed by the earthquake in the Beijing area that they even transferred back the commanders of the Western Front, and the time had come to destroy the enemy forces on the Baikal side! Don't you have a plan for the front line yet? ”

In March of that year, Lieutenant General Linevich, the former commander of the 5th Army, replaced Kuropatkin as commander-in-chief of the Far Eastern Army, and of course he himself fled to Ulan-Ude in time, while the 5th Army was surrounded by the Chinese army as a "martyr" to save the whole army, and it is said that he himself has always been haunted by this.

"Your Majesty, we have assembled five armies, the 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 6th, and 7th armies on the Baikal side, with a total strength of more than 700,000 men, and General Linevich intends to launch an attack on the enemy before May 20 to rescue the 5th Army, which is encircled in Chita." Vanovsky reported briefly.

In order to make up for the losses and enable the Far Eastern Army to continue fighting, within two months, 300,000 troops were sent to the Ulan-Ude front through the Trans-Siberian Railway, and the plan of the base camp was to transport 14 infantry divisions and 10 cavalry divisions totaling 320,000 people to the Far East in the next two months.

"It is not enough just to rescue the 5th Army, to tell Lynevich that we need victory, a victory capable of destroying the enemy's main corps."

"Your Majesty, now we are fully focused on fighting China, and the troops that have been invested in it are close to half of our total strength, so we will not be able to deal with the threats from Eastern Europe, the Balkans, and the Middle East......," said Vanowsky, who had preached before the war that one Russian soldier could withstand one and a half Chinese soldiers, and at this time he was also worried about the future of this war.

"So fix the problem as soon as possible! We must attack on all fronts, on the western front we must enter Xinjiang, on the southern front we will annex Mongolia, on the eastern front we will seize all of Manchuria, and we will let the Chinese know the fate of offending the Russian Empire! ”

"Your Majesty is crazy!" Half of the ministers present exchanged glances in unison.

"Your Majesty, yesterday the ambassadors of the United States and France again offered us the intention of mediation, should we make some positive responses?" Foreign Secretary Ramsfold inquired cautiously.

Nicholas II snorted viciously and shook his head: "They should first ask the Chinese if they are willing to stop the war, if the Chinese are willing to withdraw from our land, we will naturally not be greedy enough to annex the whole of China." ”

"Your Majesty, our financial resources are close to drying up, the major European banks are no longer considering our new loan requirements, our gold reserves have fallen to the point where we can no longer maintain the basic credit of the ruble, and if we are unable to borrow money from abroad within three months, our entire fiscal and monetary system is in danger of collapsing......" said Chancellor of the Exchequer Sherepske.

Nicholas II glared at him dissatisfied: "You don't have to worry, I have been invited to meet with His Majesty the Kaiser on his yacht in the Gulf of Finland, and in a few days you will see that the German bankers and arms merchants have met our demands to the best of their ability, and since the damned French are making it difficult for us at a critical moment, then we can put our hopes on Germany......"

"I'm afraid the banks of Germany will not be able to meet our demands......" Sherepsk did not dare to spit out this sentence.

"Your Majesty, you must have seen my recital...... "Interior Minister Bobedonostsev referred to the recital mainly to report on the recent riots and strikes in various places, which to the Tsar was as depressing and depressing as a midnight black cat or a cloudy crow.

"I'll leave it all to you, don't let me down." Nicholas II replied unpleasantly, and Pobedonostsev had to resign himself to it.

"Your Majesty, General Rozhestvensky's fleet has arrived at the island of Bey in Madagascar, ready to rest for two weeks before setting anchor for Cam Ranh Bay......"

The report of the Admiralty Havelan finally lifted the Tsar's spirits.

"Why do you have to rest for two weeks? Can't you set sail a little faster? ”

"Your Majesty, General Rozhestvensky's report is that warships frequently break down during the voyage, and if they do not carry out a comprehensive overhaul, they will not be able to continue their future voyages, let alone undertake the task of fighting the East Asian Combined Fleet."

"Since the Fleet Commander said so, let's wait for his good news." Nicholas II clearly had confidence in Rozhestvensky, a favored retainer.

The chairman of the Council of Ministers, Sergei Yulievich-Witt, did not say a word, he felt that it was superfluous to say anything now, and that the sober words of a sober man could only be a source of irritability and unhappiness for His Majesty the Tsar until the last illusion was shattered.

"Germans...... Maybe they can really help. ”

After the crystal balls of hope were shattered to a complete screeping, Werther unconsciously blew out a gorgeous glassware.

Werther didn't just create things out of thin air. Eight years ago, in the study of Nicholas II, Witte saw a painting entitled "DiegelbeGefahr! The oil painting (Yellow Peril), gifted by Kaiser Wilhelm II, shows the archangel Michael in armor and holding a flaming sword warning the patron saints of the European powers with a cross suspended above their heads that the "Yellow Peril" has arrived. In the distance, a giant fiery dragon is leading a group of warriors dressed in East Asian-style armor and flying clouds towards Europe, and the city is blazing below. Wilhelm II also painted an inscription: "The peoples of Europe unite to defend your faith and your homeland!" ”

Eight years earlier, in 1896, China had completely defeated Japan in the Sino-Japanese War and established a pro-Chinese regime in Japan, followed by the formation of the Military, Political and Economic Integration Alliance of China, Japan, North Korea, and Ryuk East Asia, a huge alliance of yellow people with more than a quarter of the world's population, which once shocked European countries.

However, the ensuing large-scale purchases from Europe dispelled the doubts of the European powers to a certain extent, and British and German machine warships, French luxury goods, and Russian furs and minerals were all imported to the East Asian Union on a large scale, and the East Asian Alliance exported a large amount of raw materials or semi-finished agricultural products to Europe, which once caused the prices of agricultural products in the world market to plummet, and caused the United States and the three South American countries (Brazil, Argentina, and Chile), which are good at agriculture, to suffer considerable losses. However, since 1900, China's high-quality and low-cost industrial products, especially high-quality steel, began to sweep the world, and Russia once became one of the main importers of China's high-quality steel billets. It was also suggested that the European powers should heed the Kaiser's call to abandon their rivalry and work together against the yellow enemy. As soon as this theory came out, some people immediately refuted that the Kaiser's theory was nothing more than a smokescreen for his ambition to unify the European continent, and some people said that the First Sino-Japanese War was nothing more than an Asian tiger biting an Asian monkey, and no matter how strong the tiger crashed into the face of the highly industrialized European powers, it was only a tiger skin specimen. In short, the struggle for reality is always much more important than the seemingly untouchable distant threat, and the "yellow peril" theory has had its ups and downs, but it has never been the basis of realpolitik.

However, the current reality is exactly in line with the artistic conception of that oil painting, China with the dragon as the national flag and spiritual totem is leading his East Asian lackeys through resource-rich Siberia step by step, threatening Europe, which represents the highest civilization in the world, today is the Siberian wilderness, tomorrow is the East European Plain, the day after tomorrow it is the turn of the Danube, the Elbe and the Seine, the descendants of the barbaric Genghis Khan will again sack the entire Eurasian continent in a few hundred years, burning streets, factories, farmland, slaughtered whites, Toppled church spires, trampled crosses trampled by barbarians - DiegelbeGefahr!

If the Kaiser had indeed retained this "DiegelbeGefahr" in his consciousness, then Russia might have been saved.

If the "East Asia Club" is more than just a non-mainstream talk group, then Russia may have a chance to recover.

In any case, Russia must not be forced to be ruined by the imminent revolution, and everything it has worked so hard to turn into a bubble so easily, and if Germany can take advantage of it, then do everything it can to pull it into the water!

Sergei Yulyevich Witt made up his mind.

Meanwhile, on the island of Bay in Madagascar, the commander of the Second Pacific Fleet, Rozhestvensky, has eliminated any determination or ambition.

Standing on the bridge of the flagship "Suvorov", standing on the bridge of the flagship "Suvorov", facing the hot wind of 13 degrees south latitude, Rozhestvensky wanted to jump from here, but he sadly found that jumping from such a low place probably even broke his legs.

Along the way, half of the warships suffered mechanical failures, which made the crew of the maintenance ship "Kamchatka" anxious; and during the live-fire exercise of the warships' artillery in the Atlantic, not only did not a single shell hit the floating target, but also almost reimbursed the cruiser "Aurora" for towing the floating target.

Stacked with coal ladles on the deck, painted black German coal ships slowly following behind their butts, ghostly British reconnaissance ships hovering around the fleet, lifeless, ragged sailors......

The wind swept and the clouds surged, looking at the flowing clouds dancing in the sky, Rozhestvensky smelled the breath of death.