Earl Dai Changfu expected that Count Pan Hengchen, chief of staff of the navy, entered the palace and brought two naval development plans, both of which required a lot of military spending;

One is to use the Navy's right of first refusal to renew the contract and build six more steam ironclad frigates in the next three years to further improve the Navy's combat effectiveness and maintain its maritime capabilities.

The other is that after the completion of the "Sea Consolidation Plan," the Navy has ambitiously put forward another plan for the development of naval vessels, that is, the "Zhenguo Plan."

As the name suggests, the "Zhenguo Plan" is to develop the main battleship of more than 3,500 tons of ironclad steam, Zhenguo Maritime Frontier, and further demonstrate the role of the navy.

As a result, His Majesty approved the first plan, and the second was vetoed.

There is no other reason

The 3,500-ton ironclad steam main battleship developed by the "Zhenguo Plan" is expensive, and it adopts the design of the ship's waist gun room, carrying four 60-pound large-caliber naval guns and 12 20-pound auxiliary guns.

The cost is also gratifying, and a steam ironclad main battleship soars to nearly 400,000 yuan.

This money is enough for the construction of 5 ironclad frigates of more than 1,000 tons.

The reason why the 3,500-ton ironclad steam capital battleship is so expensive is that it uses a new type of three-expansion steam engine, a new type of high-pressure boiler, a newly completed large-caliber naval gun of the Colt Weapons Company, and a series of new technologies.

If there are more ships built, the unit price of construction can be lowered a little, about 32 or 30,000 per main steam ironclad ship.

At this stage, the kingdom is still in the first 10-year entrepreneurial period, and it is necessary to cherish the current peaceful environment and vigorously develop the economy, and the development of naval armaments is not an urgent project.

With this 400,000 yuan, Richard can add 15,000 Chinese immigrants to Paradise Island, and he can create 100,000 yuan in income that year and implement a rolling development strategy.

In just a few years, this money can roll over to more than 60,000 Chinese immigrants, create more social value and enhance the kingdom's heritage.

Building an ironclad battleship is just a waste of money, and it also requires expensive training and daily maintenance expenses, and at least 2~3 types of battleships are built, which is more than a million expenses.

The Tang Kingdom has invested millions of yuan in the two immigrant cities of New Xi'an and Donggang, the key paradise islands.

Unlike colonization and economic construction, naval spending is only in and out, and it is a net consumption.

At present, the Tang Kingdom does not urgently expand the size of its naval fleet in North America, and the development of a powerful navy will only attract the attention of the British, so why bother?

Wouldn't it be nice to spend a small amount of money of 10,000 or 20,000 yuan to provoke Americans to kill each other in the Kansas Civil War, and the Tang Kingdom moved a small stool and sat next to it to watch the play?

Therefore, Richard approved the previous naval development project, vetoed the "Zhenguo Plan", and only agreed to allocate 35,000 yuan for research and exploration in ship design, and then drove Count Pan Hengchen, chief of staff of the Navy, away.

Nowadays, the development trend of the world's steam ironclad warships is in the ascendant, and because there is no reference, the designs of various new steam ironclad warships are strange and are in the pioneering era.

In the world, in particular, there are three major trends in ship design;

The first is that the European naval powers, mainly the United Kingdom, generally cover large sail battleships with a displacement of 4 to 6,000 tons with iron armor to enhance their resistance to damage.

The guns are arranged along the side of the ship, and the battleship sails mainly with sail power, supplemented by side wheels and propellers, and this complex power combination not only causes the ship to be crowded and tense, but also very prone to breakdown, and the reliability is poor.

The British even devised a hoisting propeller that used hundreds of people to lift the propeller from the stern into the sea when needed, which was time-consuming, laborious and ineffective.

The second is the bizarre experimental design.

For example, the U.S. Navy is similar to the design of a submarine-style full-coverage armored ship, which has a very low side and a speed of 5~6 knots, and will be overturned and sunk if the wind and waves are a little stronger in the sea.

Therefore, it can only sail along the coast when the wind and waves are calm, and the main use scenario is in the inland river with less wind and waves, which is used to fight for control of the river and vent fire on the ground to support infantry combat.

But here's the problem

The United States does not share rivers with other countries, and the only Missouri River on the border with the Tang Kingdom, with less than 800 kilometers of more than 3,600 kilometers long, is navigable.

Moreover, the Missouri River is a seasonal river with very variable water volumes, and when the snow melts at the turn of spring and summer, the water upstream is extremely fierce. The mighty river rushed down, turning the vast area in the middle and lower reaches into a country.

The hydrological situation is complicated, the water is fierce, not to mention the American-style ironclad steam warships with poor routes, even ordinary ships dare not pass, so they can only stay in the port honestly.

In the autumn and winter, the water becomes smaller, and the American ironclad steam warships with deep draft will run aground if they don't do it well.

The third type is a simplified design represented by the Tang Kingdom, which is characterized by the abandonment of sails and side wheels, and the use of propellers as the only ship power.

In the long-term practice of transoceanic immigration, the shipbuilding industry of the Tang Kingdom has gradually embarked on a unique path of its own and won a place in the marine steam turbine industry.

The marine steam turbine power produced by the Datang Kingdom is known for its high coal-burning efficiency and good reliability of high-pressure steam boilers, and through the improvement of horizontal steam turbines, a new type of steam ship power represented by three-expansion steam turbines has been formed, ranking among the world's advanced.

The University of California's Marine Power Laboratory brings together many experts and scholars from European countries and the Tang Kingdom, and is one of the world's high-level marine power research and development laboratories with a great reputation in the industry.

A series of enterprises and government agencies, such as the Royal United Shipping Company of the Tang Kingdom, the Pacific Shipping Company, the Royal Family Charitable Fund, and the Ministry of Finance of the Royal Government, have allocated large sums of money to the key laboratory for many years to fund ship power research and technology.

With the accumulation of a large number of R&D funds, the Marine Power Laboratory of the University of California has made a series of advanced achievements that have attracted the attention of the world, and have formed fist products on the market in marine triple expansion steam turbines, high-pressure boilers, 6 horsepower, 12 horsepower diesel engines, 245 horsepower steam locomotives and other projects.

There is no need to myth the technological level of the steam era, even the most high-end marine triple expansion steam turbine is designed to be known at a glance, and there is no secret.

The key lies in the stress structure of the power design, the combustion and output efficiency, the bearing and optimization of the mechanical structure, and the balance between durability and economy.

Coal should not be consumed too much in order to squeeze more power, but more power should be generated in tons of coal, so that the steam turbine can be more powerful, carry more cargo, and travel longer distances.

Striking the right balance between power and fuel consumption is at the heart of a state-of-the-art marine triple-expansion steam turbine.

No matter how large the ship is, the coal it can carry is limited.

The steamships of the Tang Kingdom generally carried a heavy oil tank, and the heavy oil was appropriately used when sailing, so as to intensify the combustion efficiency of coal and squeeze out more navigation power, which is the representative of today's advanced ship power.

The ships of the British Royal Navy generally did not adopt this design, because Britain did not have a reliable supply of heavy oil, and it was impossible for the British Royal Navy steamships located in the Indian Ocean and the Atlantic Ocean to import heavy oil from the Tang Kingdom, which was unrealistic.

Heavy oil is very viscous, it must be heated with steam pipes when loading and unloading, with special transport ships and transport vehicles, and the ship's heavy oil tank should be specially designed near the high-temperature boiler, and the heat of the furnace temperature can be used conveniently.

The UK does not have any of these conditions.

This is the advantage of relying on local resources in the Tang Kingdom, the ship has a special heavy oil tank when it is built, designed near the high-temperature boiler.

As a major country in the petrochemical industry, all ports along the coast of California Province of the Tang Kingdom have facilities for storing heavy oil, convenient steam heating pipelines, which can not only refuel oil, but also nearby coal terminals, which is very convenient for ships to use.

In the field of ocean shipping and shipbuilding, the Tang Kingdom is closely behind the United Kingdom, although it cannot be compared with the United Kingdom in terms of ship construction volume and shipyard scale, but the technical level is not inferior.

December 16, 1855

Count Esterhazy arrived in St. Petersburg with an Austro-Hungarian ultimatum demanding that the Tsarist Empire accept an armistice.

Otherwise, Austria-Hungary would have joined the coalition and started a war against the Russian Empire.

And so it goes

The world's top 4 powers all appeared, Britain, France, and Austria-Hungary formed a united front, plus the Tang Kingdom and the Kingdom of Sardinia, two little brothers, to deal with the isolated Tsarist Empire.

Years later

European public opinion generally believes that this is the key to the decision of the Tsarist Russian Empire to decide on an armistice, and while Russia is mourning the ruthless betrayal of its former allies and brothers, the general trend on the battlefield has gone, and it is no longer able to refuse the ultimatum of Austria-Hungary.

In January 1856, Sir Corrington succeeded Sir Simpson as the new Commander-in-Chief of the British Army. Unfortunately, the timing of his appointment was not coincidental, and the Russian Tsar Alexander II had already agreed to peace talks, and the opportunity to continue the expansion of the war was no longer there.

January 16, 1856

Tsar Alexander II accepted the Austro-Hungarian ultimatum and agreed to start peace talks.

On February 25, the Paris Peace Conference was held.

Britain, France, the Don, the Ottomans, the Kingdom of Sardinia, and Russia, and Austria also participated in the peace conference because of the "Vienna Four-Point" proposal.

The Russian Empire wanted the Kingdom of Prussia to be present in order to gain its support and avoid being surrounded by wolves in the peace talks, but Britain objected, citing the fact that the Kingdom of Prussia did not enter the war.

In the end, it was the British who prevailed, and the Russian negotiators had to face the countries on the united front, like a lioness caught in the bite of an African hyena, in difficult negotiations.

In fact

Tsarist Russia was not without sympathizers and supporters, and the French Emperor Napoleon III did not want Britain to weaken Russia too much, which would put France under more pressure to face the chaos in Europe on its own.

Therefore, at the Paris Peace Conference, France, as the host, gave strong support to Russia on many occasions.

The Tang Kingdom also has an ambiguous attitude on this issue, and Richard also does not want Britain to be too strong in Europe, and there is a Tsarist Russia that can touch Britain's sensitive nerves at any time in front, and Britain can more or less stop and focus more energy on Europe rather than North America.

Therefore, on the appropriate issue, the Tang Kingdom assisted France and supported the reasonable demands of Tsarist Russia in disguise.

For example, on the issue of the Crimean peninsula;

Britain demanded that Tsarist Russia cede the Crimean Peninsula, but Tsarist Russia resolutely opposed it, and France and Tang tacitly supported the position of the Russian representatives, which made the hard-line British negotiators have to back down.

The peace talks in Paris became the central issue of the world's attention in 1856, and it was also the center of the Tang Kingdom's first appearance on the international stage, participating in the formulation of the international order as a victor.

This undoubtedly boosted the international status of the Tang Empire, and its status as a third-rate power was widely recognized by the international community.

At the Paris Peace Conference, after intense bargaining, the countries finally reached an agreement.

On March 30, the Treaty of Paris was signed, the main provisions of which were as follows;

First, the great powers jointly guaranteed the "independence and integrity" of the Ottoman Empire.

Second, the Ottoman Empire pledged to improve the conditions of its people regardless of race or creed.

Third, Russia recovered the occupied territories of the Crimean peninsula, ceded the mouth of the Danube and southern Bessarabia to Moldavia, returned Kars in the Caucasus to the Ottoman Empire, and renounced the right to protect the Orthodox Church in the territory of the Ottoman Empire.

Fourth, the suzerainty of Serbia, Wallachia and Moldavia remained with the Ottoman Empire, with no interference from Russia and a joint guarantee by the Great Powers.

Fifth, the neutralization of the Black Sea, prohibiting the passage of warships of various countries through the straits, and prohibiting Russia from establishing or maintaining arsenals along the Black Sea coast.

6. Freedom of navigation on the Danube.

In the terms of the Paris Treaty, Russia was forced to accept harsh conditions, lost many of the rights and interests it had gained through the Russo-Turkish war for nearly 200 years, and its prestige and status as the "gendarme of Europe" plummeted.

The treaty forbade the Russian Empire to have a fleet and naval bases in the Black Sea, and did not allow the Russian Empire to fortify the Aland Islands in the Baltic Sea, which allowed the firewall planned by the British to be implemented, and its strategic goal of encircling the Russian Empire was realized.

meanwhile

The Russian Empire needed to cede southern Bessarabia to the Ottoman Empire, return the fortress of Kars, and recognize the collective protection of the three principalities of Moldavia, Wallachia, and Serbia, which were under the suzerainty of the Sultanate.

The Paris Peace Conference was an unprecedented fiasco for the Tsarist Empire, and after the westward expansion strategy collided, the Tsarist Empire, which was greedy for land, could only turn around and look eastward.

From this period

In Central Asia, Xinjiang, Mongolia, the three eastern provinces, and other places, the Tsarist Russian Empire frequently took action, through various despicable means such as threats and oppression, and in the next ten years, without using a single soldier, through various imposed unequal border treaties, it seized more than 1.5 million square kilometers of territory from the corrupt Manchu dynasty.

All of this is a story for later.

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