With the advent of 1905, the two giants of China and Russia entered a state of war, and the Chinese Navy was reorganized into the China Ocean Fleet, which consisted of 7 battleships, 5 fast battleships, 8 armored cruisers (including the Guiyuan class), 15 light cruisers, plus a large number of destroyers and supply warships, slowly left their home ports and sailed towards the South China Sea, and finally converged in the westernmost areas of the Philippines in Bangao and Balingham. And use this place as a fleet anchorage. Waiting for the arrival of the army transport ship, the front of the Chinese Ocean Fleet is only a few dozen kilometers away from the nearest part of the Dutch East Indies colony! At this time, the Russians and the Dutch discovered that the first target of the Chinese Ocean Fleet's naval attack was actually Kalimantan Island! It seems that the Huaxia Navy has given up the plan to go directly to the Java Sea River for a decisive battle, and it is very likely that they will steadily push towards the Java Sea step by step!

In addition to the main force of the large Chinese Ocean Fleet, a humble fleet also headed south from Haikou, but instead of going to the Philippines, they came to the vicinity of the British colony of Malaya. And this 12-submarine broken fleet is going to use Kuching, Malaya, as a base to launch a raid on the Russians! The reason why the British acquiesced to the supply ships of the Huaxia Navy to supply submarines from their colonies is simple, because Huaxia expressed its willingness to share submarine technology and anti-submarine experience with the British. With the growing strength of the German-Austrian series, Xu Jie always felt that he had to add some weight to the British in order to balance the situation in Europe, so Xu Jie decided to make the future German submarine war more miserable!

And in the face of the aggressive Chinese Ocean Fleet, the Russians and the Dutch also made corresponding arrangements. On February 5, 1905, Makanov finally arrived in Batavia with the huge Russian Pacific Fleet, and the first thing they did was not to deploy. Instead, they hurriedly threw the warships into the dock for cleaning and maintenance, and ran for tens of thousands of kilometers, and no matter how good the ship was, it couldn't stand it! Scraping the bottom of the ship is just the basics, the boilers and pipes need to be cleaned and maintained, as well as the rest of the battleship, well, people need to be maintained. But in the face of this war that I don't know when I will start. The Essen fleet, which was deployed in advance, was pushed to the front line!

And seeing that Huaxia actually wants to break through from Kalimantan Island. The Dutch also panicked, and Admiral Harvey moved all his ships from the vicinity of Belitung to the east to join up with the Russian fast fleet in Essen to prepare for the next move. At the same time, the Dutch, while strengthening the land defenses of Kalimantan, begged the Russians to transfer more land forces to the Far East. And said that even if the soldiers who came were bare-armed, it would not matter, and the Netherlands was willing to provide the Russians with the armaments they had stockpiled in advance free of charge. And this made the Russians feel quite surprised and angry, the war is about to start, and you still have private supplies?!

In fact, this is not a big deal, and it is common in history to make small gestures between allies. For example, during World War II, Germany needed to provide fuel to the Italian Navy every month. The reason is that the Italians say they don't have enough fuel. Without fuel, the fleet could not go to sea, and as a result, when Italy countered the water, the Germans took the opportunity to occupy some Italian areas and actually found hundreds of thousands of tons of fuel reserves! It greatly alleviated the fuel dilemma of the German troops stationed in Italy.

The war in the south is on the verge of breaking out, and the two sides in the north are already in full swing. 300,000 Chinese troops were already stationed in positions, and the Russians were also on the Nebuchu line, but unlike the Chinese army, which was supported by railways and a modern road network, the Russians' transportation lines relied on the unfinished Trans-Siberian Railway and tens of thousands of pack horses. And these pack horses themselves are also big consumers of materials!

"From the moment the troops were stationed, the war had already started for logistics. Hundreds of thousands of people and a large number of horses consume thousands of tons of supplies every day. The supply of the rear can only theoretically meet the consumption of the troops at the front, and from now on we are depleting the supplies that were stored in previous years. And that's still without a war. Looking at the dwindling supplies and empty warehouses every day, I already have a vague glimpse of the future of war! A Russian logistics officer wrote in his diary.

Now both the Chinese and the Russians are waiting for an opportunity, an opportunity to officially declare war! And this opportunity did not make the two countries, which are always ready to fight, wait too long! However, to the surprise of the two countries, the fuse of this war was not lit on the soil of China or Russia, but on the island of Kalimantan, a Dutch East India colony!

On March 8, 1905, a merchant ship laden with Chinese sailed from Tarakan, northeast of Kalimantan. Prepare to escape from this place that is about to turn into a battlefield. The reason why a large number of Chinese are still stranded in Kalimantan is partly because they believe that war is unlikely to break out in Kalimantan, and partly because the local Chinese private army is sufficient to fight against the sparse Dutch colonial police! As for the army? They all went to Java, and there were not many left in Kalimantan.

However, as the Chinese fleet entered the Philippines, it was increasingly likely that Kalimantan would face an attack by the Chinese army, so the local Chinese community decided to evacuate the elderly, weak women and children. Originally, the Dutch did not plan to manage it or did not have the strength to manage it, although Huaxia's intention to do something to Kalimantan Island was already obvious, but the Dutch still held the last illusion, and the Dutch did not have the strength to restrict the evacuation of the Chinese.

The Dutch have no intention of moving the Chinese, but the Russians have this plan, not only the top brass has this plan, but even the ordinary big-headed soldiers have this plan! After all, the wealth of the Chinese in Southeast Asia is famous, as a Russian who goes all the way to fight and rob all the way, for the Russians who come out to rob and rob less, it is simply intolerable to let this big fish slip away from their hands! Even though the local Dutch government repeatedly warned of the possible consequences of doing so, the Russian garrison continued to go its course.

The scattered Chinese armed men with elite weapons in their hands were not able to move, so the Russians set their sights on the women and children who were ready to retreat! As a result, the Chinese ship, named Yunchang, was stopped by several Dutch-flagged steamboats shortly after leaving the port! The Russians on the steamboat waved the Mosinagan in their hands and shouted excitedly, while several steamboats also quickly approached the Yunchang passenger ship.

Seeing that the Yunchang was about to fall into the hands of the Russians, a huge figure appeared from the sea level in the northeast, but the Russians, who had been carried away by the wealth above, did not discover this killing god at the first time and continued to rush towards the Yunchang, and exchanged fire with a small number of armed men on board!

Originally, several steamboats were equipped with 75MM sampan guns, and this thing was to replace the French 75mm rapid-fire guns that the Russians were equipped with in large quantities and press them on the ship as inland river gunboats. If these cannons were used, the Yunchang would have been sunk soon, but the Russians obviously did not let these things sink into the sea for the sake of the wealth above, so a fierce small arms battle broke out!

And when the armed personnel of the Yunchang were gradually suppressed, the armored cruiser Weihai of the Huaxia Navy finally included several Russian steamboats in its own artillery range! This veteran of the Sino-Japanese War finally fired the first shot of the Second Sino-Russian War! The dense rain of bullets quickly took out three Russian steamboats! In the face of these desperate scoundrels, the Huaxia Navy did not rescue them, but used the dense small-caliber rapid-fire guns and machine guns on the side of the ship to kill these Russian soldiers struggling at sea one by one in the water!

And the Yunchang incident finally detonated the Second Sino-Russian War! On the same night, the government of the Chinese Republic declared war on Russia and the Netherlands, for the simple reason that the Russians had attacked the Chinese for no reason, and the Dutch flag was hoisted on the Russian ship, so they declared war on the Netherlands. The next day, the governments of Russia and the Netherlands also declared war on China. Thus broke out the largest war in the Far East!

Soon after the outbreak of the war, the north and the south started fighting at the same time, and the heavy artillery units under Nie Shicheng began to bombard the southern section of the Russian Nebuchu defensive line, and the Russians did not lose too much artillery in the "artillery decisive battle" on the first day, but soon died down, the reason is very simple, the number of shells of heavy artillery is really a little small, the Russians decided to save a little fighting, and the Chinese army did not choose to attack except for shelling, and the lengthy artillery bombardment will be the main content of the early operation on the northern front.

On the third day of the declaration of war, under the cover of the main fleet of the Huaxia Navy, the first batch of 7,000 Vietnamese troops and their equipment and supplies went to the Tarakahn area on 15 transport ships. The attack on Kalimantan Island has officially begun, and in the face of the fragile defense of this city, almost all the Huaxia capital ships have no desire to fire, and it is a waste to attack a few old shore defense guns and hastily built fortifications with any guns larger than 8 inches!

As a result, several 8-gun and 6-inch guns of the Guiyuan class, as well as the 6-inch guns of the light cruisers, became the main force of fire support, and in just two days, the Talakarn area fell into the hands of the Chinese marines. On the night of March 12, 1904, three detachments of the Huaxia Rapid Fleet and two light cruiser formations under the command of Ye Zusi slowly sailed into the Makassar Strait, where they were to proceed to the Java Sea. In the operation of this codename Ranger. All bases along the coast of Java that can repair and maintain naval warships, as well as the fast fleet in Essen, will be the target of the Chinese Navy's strike! A magnificent naval battle is about to be staged in the Java Sea!

Thank you for the reward of dsbghost~~~. (To be continued......)