In the eleventh year of Yongchang, the two capitals and thirteen provinces of the Central Plains of the Ming Dynasty had already telegraphed.

The telegraph not only brought the provinces of the Central Plains closer together, but also opened some civil telegraphs in various local telegraph offices.

Because trains and ships have become people's daily means of transportation, and the road guidance system has been further relaxed, the number of people who come and go to do business is still relatively large.

The opening of the telegraph meant that the exchange of letters, which used to take more than ten days, now only takes one or two days.

If two people are chatting on a telegraph, it can be shortened to a few minutes.

The advent of the telegraph made many feudal lords realize that the fortunes of the Ming dynasty were still on the rise, and their control over the local areas was also increasing.

In the same year, the construction of universities in local provinces was also continuously promoted.

However, this year was not all good news, for example, on the fifth day of the first lunar month, an unprecedented tsunami suddenly appeared in the Yingzhou area.

In the telegram report after the disaster, Yingzhou's political envoy played that the cities on the eastern coast seemed to have fallen into a big river, and the sea water continued to pour in and retreat.

This happened intermittently seven times, and it did not end until noon the next day.

Later, according to Zhu Yiguan, a professor of hydrology at Yingzhou University in Daming, the tsunami should have come from the depths of the Daming Sea.

In the first month of the same year, "Strange Tales from Liaozhai" written by Pu Songling, a member of the Ministry of Rites, was released, and in just six months, it became the first "popular" sales volume of the imperial store.

In the month of Layue, when the emperor gave the manuscript fee settlement, Pu Songling's "Strange Tales from Liao Zhai" received a remuneration of more than 600 taels, which is equivalent to a year's salary for a six-grade official.

In March of the same year, Spain hired Xu Miao, a famous doctor of Qi, to diagnose the condition of King Carlos II through the introduction of the director of the Royal Store in Madrid.

When Xu Miao arrived in Madrid in April, Carlos II was completely crippled.

He lost all his hair, was deaf, could barely see in his eyes, had few teeth left, and suffered from severe epilepsy.

His strange behavior was called "Enchanted" by spies in various European countries, and he was nicknamed "The Devil".

However, in Xu Miao's view, this is just a mental illness caused by impotence in the early years.

Xu Miao treated Carlos II for various illnesses in Madrid, and his originally oil-dried body was rejuvenated little by little.

Under Xu Miao's guidance, Carlos II no longer felt inferior to his illness, but the social pressure of the Spanish royal family still crushed Carlos II.

In the winter of the twelfth year of Yongchang, Carlos II died of illness in Madrid at the age of 40 under the guidance of Xu Miao.

As he had no heirs, he made a will to pass the throne to his sister Maria Theresa and his nephew, Philippe, Duke of Anjou, grandson of Louis XIV, King of France of Bourbon.

Philip could inherit Spain proper, Italian territories, and overseas colonies, but he also stipulated that France and Spain could never be merged into a single state.

Such a will seemed to be a problem, but it displeased Leopold I, who was also Holy Roman Emperor and King of Hungary.

Leopold I, who sought to succeed his second son, Archduke Charles, to the throne of Spain, believed that Princess Maria Theresa had promised herself and her descendants to renounce the Spanish throne forever when she married King Louis XIV of France.

In the month of the same year, Louis XIV proclaimed Philippe King of Spain, called Felipe V.

Dissatisfied with the newly succeeded Edward VII across the Channel, he issued a statement declaring that the Kingdom of Great Britain would not tolerate French domination in Europe, and therefore formed an anti-French alliance with the Netherlands.

At the same time, Edward VII and William of the Netherlands supported Archduke Charles of Austria to succeed to the Spanish throne, and joined by the presence of Savoy in Portugal and Italy.

In March of the twelfth year of Yongchang, the War of Succession broke out, and the main battlefields were in Italy, the Netherlands, Germany and Spain.

After the outbreak of the war, the total population of the countries involved in the war was more than 74 million, and the number of troops involved in the war was 600,000.

At the beginning of the war, Ouyang Gao, a bachelor at the University of Paris, was summoned to the Louvre by Louis XIV to ask him what he thought of the war.

To Louis XIV's question, Ouyang Gao answered truthfully.

He believed that France must take the Spanish throne and that the Holy Roman Empire and the Dutch armies would need to be inflicted heavy losses in this war.

If this strategic objective can be achieved, then France can recuperate briefly after the war, and then start the war again, completely conquering the Netherlands and cutting off the evil neighbor that has been in the north of France.

As long as the Netherlands can be conquered, then after a few years of recuperation, with the combat strength of the French army, France can gradually encroach on the German region in the future wars.

At the same time, Ouyang Gao persuaded Louis XIV to borrow money from the Daming Bank in time and use the loan to pull Daming to his side.

As long as Da Ming can stand behind France, then France can have its back to the Atlantic Ocean and obtain a steady stream of materials from Qi on the other side of the ocean.

Ouyang Gao's suggestions, each of which made Louis XIV nod his head constantly.

In fact, he had already thought about these foreign policies, and he asked Ouyang Gao to come just to let him act as a guarantor and borrow money from Daming for France.

Ouyang Gao expressed his understanding of Louis XIV's request, and later accompanied the French Chancellor of Finance to the branch of the Bank of Daming in Paris.

This time, in order to prevent the Ming from standing in the anti-French alliance, France proposed a loan of 10 million taels to the Daming Bank, and said that the loan amount would be used for trade with the countries of the Ming Dynasty.

After this guarantee was made, Han Shao, the branch president, wrote a handwritten letter to the Beijing head office of Daming in front of the two.

As a banking system founded by King Qi Wen, the Daming banking system has restrictions on lending.

The head office cannot exceed 10 million taels, the branch cannot exceed 3 million taels, and the branch branch cannot exceed 1 million taels.

If this amount is exceeded, it will be necessary to go to the Financial Inspectorate in the head office, and the Financial Inspectorate will play to the Cabinet and the six ministries, and finally the emperor will decide.

Based on the current information transmission situation of the Ming Dynasty, it will take about three months to send the letter to the West Sea Port in Luchuan, and then notify Beijing in advance through the West Sea Port telegram.

This time and again, it will take six and a half months at the earliest.

In order to cope with the all-out war, Louis XIV recruited another 100,000 troops, bringing the total number of troops to 300,000, with a ratio of 1:75 to the population of the country.

It was also when France was expanding its army, and Da Ming, who had no idea, was arranging academic exchanges between the Armaments Institute and the Qi Academy of Sciences in Beijing at this moment.

The exchange began in March and is expected to end in September.

These six-month exchanges have made great progress in the natural sciences and technology of the two countries, and at the same time, the law of conservation of energy and transformation has also been proposed by some scholars.

On June 27, when the handwritten letter of Han Shao, the branch manager, was sent to the city of Beijing, Emperor Yongchang approved the loan from France, and he concentrated on participating in this exchange meeting between the two countries.

In this exchange, the Yongchang Emperor Zhu Heyin appointed the crown prince Zhu Yixuan as the superintendent of the country, and he was immersed in the exchange meeting.

He saw with his own eyes that the previous microscope was further improved by more than 700 bachelors from both countries, and witnessed the emergence of inventions such as "compound joint objective lens", "colorless lens", and "oil immersion device".

This is only one aspect of Zhu Heyin's interest, and in other places where he is not interested, there are countless inventions produced by various academic collisions.

In chemistry, the atomic theory and the periodic rate of elements have been proposed by scholars, and the artificial synthesis of organic matter has also been proposed.

When the time came to October, after the two countries were reluctant to separate, Emperor Yongchang ordered that in the post-disaster reconstruction of Yingzhou Province, 20,000 acres of mountainous land in the north of Beizhou County, the capital of Beizhou, were assigned to the Armament Institute.

Later, he asked the Ministry of Industry to build an academic exchange hall here to facilitate academic exchanges between the two countries in the future.

At the same time, France also received news of loan approval.

Louis XIV, who received a loan of 10 million taels, was very generous, and he used all the loan to purchase gunpowder, flintlock pistols and artillery, as well as grain, sugar and other materials of the country.

This approach made the anti-French allies who were still stationing troops unbearable, so on October 10 of the same year, the Holy Roman Empire officially sent troops and began a fierce exchange of fire with France on the border.

At the same time, Britain and the Netherlands at sea were not idle.

On 23 October, the Battle of Vigo Bay broke out, and the Anglo-Dutch Combined Fleet defeated the Franco-Spanish Combined Fleet in the Spanish Gulf of Vigo, in which all the ships of the Franco-Spanish Fleet were burned or captured, and about 2,000 naval officers died.

On the twelfth day of the lunar month, Peter I of Tsarist Russia, who had returned from studying at the University of Paris, published the newspaper "News" in St. Petersburg, which was the first officially printed newspaper in Tsarist Russia.

It reports on major political events and military news at home and abroad, and also publishes news on domestic economic construction, such as the construction of handicraft workshops in various places, the discovery of metal deposits, and so on.

In addition to the newspapers, he also brought back the latest tactics and training methods in Europe.

His domestic 30,000 Cossack cavalry and 60,000 shooting regiments were trained, and at the same time the internal army was expanded by 30,000.

On the 30th day of the lunar month, the Battle of Oxstadt broke out, where 60,000 French troops and 70,000 German troops of the Holy Roman Empire celebrated the arrival of the 14th year of Yongchang with artillery fire.

Compared with Europe, the science of the Ming and Qi countries has made considerable progress after the exchange meeting.

The Daming Armaments Institute synthesized urea in February of the 14th year of Yongchang, breaking the boundary between organic and inorganic matter.

In March of the same year, Qi also put forward the cell theory, the theory of evolution and the law of heredity.

Based on these laws and doctrines, many scholars conducted further research with the financial support of the Qi State and the Ming Dynasty.

One of the most famous is Ye Tianshi, who proposed "cytopathology", and the basic principles of his doctrine include: "Cells come from cells; The body is the sum of cells; Diseases can be explained by cytopathology, etc. ”

Based on the principles of these doctrines, in the same year, Qi Guo and Daming successively established bacteriology in medical schools.

In May, Yongwang Zhu Ciyan died in the palace of Yongyi City at the age of 80.

After the news was transmitted back to Beijing, Emperor Yongchang gave him the nickname "Zhao", and he was the king of Yongzhao, and Zhu Heping, the son of Yongguo, ascended the throne.

On the fifth day of the sixth month, Zhu Cijiong, the king of Ding, ordered his son Zhu Helei to lead an army of 40,000 to attack Tsarist Russia, while the Mongolian king of Shunning, Hongkoor, stationed 30,000 troops in the north, involving the Swedish army near the Baltic Sea.

On the seventh day of the sixth month, Peter I, who learned that the country was raising troops, decided to go on a personal expedition.

He led the 90,000 shooting regiment of St. Petersburg after half a year of training to the city of Valdai in the south, and at the same time boosted the morale of the whole army on the way out.

On the ninth day of the sixth month, Zhu Helei led an army of 40,000 to besiege the city of Valdai, and at this time there were only 5,000 militia defending the city, which was useless.

Zhu Helei did not rush to attack the city, but waited for Peter I to lead the army to arrive.

Knowing the attitude of the army, Peter I did not despise the enemy because his troops were twice as large as the opponent, but rested in a village thirty miles north of the city of Valdai.

At the same time, Peter I sent a letter of help to Sweden proper, hoping that King Alvin would send 20,000 troops from the north to support him.

However, Peter I also knew very well that the Swedish king Alvin was very afraid of the Ming Dynasty after the establishment of the country, so there was a high probability that he would not send troops.

Therefore, after a short rest of five days, Peter I resolutely arrived at the battlefield with a regiment of 90,000 shots.

At this time, the 40,000 Dingjun were waiting for them, and Zhu Helei, the prince of Dingshi, felt a novelty about the new appearance of the shooting corps, and at the same time couldn't help but raise a trace of vigilance.

After the military reforms of Peter I, the firing corps at this time was significantly superior to the previous ones.

They were armed with flintlock muskets, and there were about 300 guns in the army, and the queue was uniform.

Such an army is already about the same as the Dingguo army, and the only thing that the Dingguo army is more advanced than them may be the bayonets on the flintlock pistol.

On the morning of June 16, war broke out outside the Valdai, and the Dingjun, also using flintlock muskets, built a series of fortifications that Peter I had never touched.

He ordered the scribes below to write down the fortifications, while directing the army to attack, trying to drive away the Dingjun who had come to harass their homeland.

However, it turns out that even though the shooting regiment has undergone military reform and narrowed the gap with the Dingjun, the gap between them and the Dingguo soldiers still exists.

On the battlefield, relying on rich combat experience and fortifications, the officers and men of the fixed army can still be at ease with one enemy and two enemies.

On the first day of the battle alone, the Tsarist army left more than 2,000 corpses, and the corpses of the Dingjun army were deliberately collected by Zhu Helei.

This method made the Tsarist army unable to see the corpse of a single soldier on the battlefield, so much so that they wondered if their side had not even defeated a single soldier.

However, Peter I was not fooled, and he did not hesitate to expose the behavior of the Dingjun army in secretly collecting the corpses in the battle, and used the excuse to exaggerate the casualties of the Dingjun.

The accounts of the battle losses on the first day of the "Battle of Valdai" differ from each side.

In his "Diary of the Eastern Crusade", the Russian officer Vakalov recorded that the number of Tsarist Russian casualties was 1,637, and the number of soldiers killed in the battle was 1,256.

Dingguo's "Western Expedition Report" recorded that 527 soldiers were killed in the Ding's army, and 2,467 were killed in the Tsarist Russia.

This discrepancy is not just in the first day, but in the fact that from the beginning to the end of the war, both accounts are at odds with each other.

The tug-of-war between the two sides in the Valdai lasted for a month, and the number of people in the army who could stand up became smaller and smaller.

Zhu Helei, the commander of Dingguo, hoped to complete his work in one battle, completely annihilate the main force of Tsarist Russia in Valdai, and then completely destroy Tsarist Russia.

Peter I wanted to inflict a heavy blow on Dingguo, so that Dingguo would not dare to easily wage war against Tsarist Russia after this defeat.

The stalemate lasted until 13 July, the day on which a breakthrough took place.

At noon, when the two armies were resting to the critical moment, an army moving south from the north attracted the attention of both sides.

After repeated deliberations by King Alvin of Sweden, he finally decided to support Tsarist Russia, because he saw the strategic goal of Dingguo wanting to swallow Tsarist Russia from the First Battle of Valdai.

If we sit back and watch Dingguo accomplish this strategic goal, then Sweden will border Dingguo, and today's Tsarist Russia will be tomorrow's Sweden.

Therefore, the Swedish king Alvin gathered 50,000 troops and personally led the army to support Tsarist Russia, which is why it took him a month and a half to reach the battlefield.

Half an hour later, when the Swedish army arrived on the battlefield, all the more than 70,000 surviving soldiers of Tsarist Russia cheered.

Compared with the cheers of the Tsarist Russian army, the more than 30,000 soldiers on the side of the Dingjun army looked at each other and hesitated.

However, before they could think clearly, Zhu Helei, the prince of the world, as the commander, sighed, and then ordered the troops to be collected and returned to Dingguo.

Sweden joined forces with Tsarist Russia, which was an opponent that Dingguo and Mongolia could not defeat when they joined forces, so there would be no results in any further fighting, so they had to withdraw their troops.

At this moment, Zhu Helei's heart was unwilling.

As an existence who had served in the Ming army for several years, he knew very well that if the Ming Dynasty was willing to equip the rifles with the feudal domains, then just Dingguo alone would be enough to swallow the whole of Northern Europe.

However, the Ming Dynasty did not do this, and the country could only retreat under the noses of the coalition forces of the Northern Alliance.

Listening to the laughter coming from behind, Zhu Helei couldn't help but clench the reins of the horse.

Under the backdrop of the retreat of the Dingjun, the first war between the Dingguo and the Northern Alliance was declared a failure.

On the second day of August, more than 34,000 soldiers of the Dingjun Army, under the leadership of Commander Zhu Helei, returned to Yanmen (Tver), the border of Dingguo.

On the third day of the first month, Zhu Helei led more than 100 cavalry to Dingxiang, the national capital, and arrived in Dingxiang on the fifth day of the first month.

After arriving in Dingxiang, Zhu Helei told his father, Zhu Cijiong, about the difficulties of the war and the changes in the Northern Alliance.

In Zhu Helei's view, the reason why the feudal clans were able to win many battles against foreign enemies in the past was that the armies of the feudal domains were well-armed.

However, now after several decades, whether it is Europe, West Asia, or South Asia, the quality and weapons of the armies of various countries have risen, and the armies of the vassal domains have no generation difference between them, so it is naturally difficult to fight, and the number of soldiers killed in battle will only increase.

Therefore, Zhu Helei suggested that Zhu Cijiong should be dismissed as an uncle, hoping that the emperor would approve the purchase of rifles by the vassals.

In this regard, Zhu Cijiong hesitated for a long time, and finally decided to send a song to the capital.

However, he was not sent as an uncle Wang, but as a king of the Biansai domain and an ordinary general.

In the note, he described the quality and weapons and equipment of the soldiers in the Ming Dynasty, the feudal domains, Europe, West Asia and other regions from a military point of view, and finally repeated the evaluation that the feudal domains were now unable to suppress foreign enemies, so he hoped that the emperor would relax the rifle policy.

On the fifth day of October, this recital was sent to the capital and was read by Emperor Yongchang for the first time.

After reading it, Emperor Yongchang invited Li Dingguo, the eighty-four-year-old Duke of Qin, to give him an idea.

After Li Dingguo read through the songs, he also thought that if the foreign enemy made such progress, then he should relax the "rifle policy" towards the feudal domains, and there was no need to worry about the rebellion of the feudal domains, after all, the weapons owned by the Ming Dynasty were not as rudimentary as before.

Seeing that Li Dingguo said this, Emperor Zhu Heyin of Yongchang also immediately made a judgment and announced the sale of rifles to the feudal domains......

(End of chapter)