The night shrouded the Daming Palace, the vast Taiye Pool was sparkling, and the forbidden courtyard of the deep palace was quiet.

Several huge lion and tiger giant beasts were lying or standing, silently waiting outside the hall, in the night, the eyes of these pet beasts emitted a terrifying blue light, which made people look at the hairs.

The candles in the hall were bright, and His Majesty the Emperor was still reading the folds in the imperial study.

After using some dim sum stew, Emperor Richard waved his hand to let the palace attendants go down, and he had no intention of visiting the concubine at night, so he went to bed in the imperial study.

Sit on the couch

Emperor Richard held the latest issue of "World Summary" edited by the Imperial Secretariat in his hand, and looked at it leisurely from an outsider's perspective......

In Europe

In this month, Kaiser Wilhelm II, who was not willing to be lonely, made a public speech in the Reichstag, preaching that "the Germany of the world, the world of Germany" to expand and colonize Lilun, and the preferred target was Africa, which received warm applause from the parliamentarians for more than 10 minutes.

Former Chancellor Bismarck, who was kicked home by Kaiser Wilhelm II to eat rice, angrily attacked Wilhelm II and openly expressed his opposition.

He described Wilhelm II as "a child wielding a heavy axe", implying that he could hurt others as well as himself, and even more so badly.

The contradictions between the monarchs and ministers of the German Empire have become public, causing the media in Europe and the United States to follow suit, and the Tang Empire is no exception.

Late February 1891

Just after the traditional Lunar New Year of the Tang Empire, the Pacific War in South America was rekindled, and the rearmed Peruvian and Bolivian coalition forces, as well as more than 7,200 Chinese mercenary cavalry, began a large-scale counteroffensive.

The main battlefields were in two places, one was the port of Arica, which was occupied by the Chilean army, and the other was Antofagasta, the only outlet to the sea in the former Bolivia, and fierce battles were fought in both areas at the same time.

I have to say

In the face of the extremely difficult situation of the embargo, the Chilean army showed an extremely tenacious will to fight, and put up desperate resistance in the face of a serious shortage of logistics and ammunition, and even contained the offensive of the coalition forces.

For more than ten days

The Chilean defenders of Arica and Antofagasta persevered, fighting repeatedly with the Coalition soldiers in the city, fighting bloodily, regaining lost positions with white-knuckle charges.

March 4

The Tang Imperial Army, which nominally carried out the peacekeeping mission of the "American Alliance", quietly let go of the garrisoned peace zone when the fighting between the two sides was fierce, allowing more than 4,000 Chinese cavalry to rush into the city and stab the Chilean army in the back......

As the battle continued into the night, Antofagasta was declared to have changed hands, with most of the 13,200 Chilean troops stationed in the area killed and wounded, and just over 4,700 captured, most of them with injuries of varying severity.

The Chilean army that occupied Arica was stronger, and the U.S. coalition did not have peacekeepers here, so they were more able to fight freely and fight to the death.

Otto von Stembed, Chile's famous German general, led an army of 25,000 men, with strong fortresses and fortifications, holding Arica on the Peruvian border and Tacna to the north, resisting the coalition's 112,000 troops.

After more than a month of fighting, the coalition forces suffered more than 16,200 casualties.

Emperor Richard was also speechless about the fighting power of rookies like Peru and Bolivia, these agrarian Indian peoples who had degraded and could not fight.

Although he held advanced infantry weapons aided by the empire in his hands and received complete military training from retired officers of the Tang Empire, his performance was unbearable.

The officers and men of the coalition were well fed, warmly clothed, had sufficient ammunition, and had a four-and-a-half-fold superiority in strength, but they were still fiercely counterattacked by the other side again and again.

Okay, keep fighting.

The current huge gap cannot be erased by the stubborn will of the Chilean army alone.

How long could the army of General Otto von Stembed, without reinforcements, with a serious shortage of food and ammunition, already more began to fight with spears, broadswords and bows and arrows?

For the Tang Empire

I'd rather be surrounded by rookie neighbors like Peru and Bolivia than have a tough and capable Chile next to me, and find a way to cripple it.

In the Pacific War in South America, the Tang Empire did not directly intervene, but only used money and materials to help one side.

He also acquiesced in the dispatch of cavalry by the vassal states of South America to cross the Andes Mountains and attack the southern provinces of Chile, plundering people and property, and exacerbating the chaos and turmoil in the region.

This aggravated state of affairs will not last long for the Chilean junta.

in East Asia

At the beginning of 1891, Nicholas, the crown prince of the Russian Empire, went to Vladivostok to preside over the opening ceremony of the Trans-Siberian Railway, which sent a strong signal to Britain and the Tang Kingdom;

The national policy of the Tsarist Empire's eastward expansion is already steadily advancing, almost irreversible, and soon there will be black pressure in East Asia, spreading like a flood over a dam......

Although it is still more than a decade before the Trans-Siberian Railway is completed and opened, the United Kingdom has already expressed concern about this, and the pressure of geopolitical competition has increased exponentially.

At this point

You have to admire the strategic sensibilities of the old imperialists, and the concerns of the British stem from a clear understanding of the aggressiveness of Tsarist Russia.

In this regard

The government of the Tang Empire was much more sluggish, still indulging in the illusion of invincibility in the Pacific Rim, bursting with self-confidence, lacking awareness of the great dangers that East Asia was about to face, and taking ineffective measures.

The Tsarist Russian Empire devoted all its efforts to building the Trans-Siberian Railway, and the direction was already very clear, and it was impossible for the Tang Empire government not to be aware of it.

However, the selective neglect stems from strategic short-sightedness, from the short-term success brought about by the government's tenure, and from the lack of long-term strategic planning, let alone the pre-planning for the situation in East Asia in a decade or so.

Emperor Richard was keenly aware of this, but he did not directly inform the government what to do, which obviously did not help.

Instead, he used the influence of the royal family to set up research institutes composed of senior experts and professors on international issues in nine famous universities, including the University of California, Chang'an Institute of Technology, the University of Los Angeles, and Taoyuan University of Administration.

Although the names are different, most of them are engaged in international cutting-edge strategic research, and they are called "the think tank of the imperial family".

The good news is

Although the road of innovation in which Fuso learned from European and American countries in an all-round way has gone through ups and downs, under the unanimous recognition of the government and the opposition, Fuso has eliminated the old precedents and comprehensively reformed the old system, which has brought about a new change in society and opened the road to industrialization.

History corrected the direction with strong inertia, and the Tang Emperor Richard also breathed a sigh of relief, after all, it is better to have a substitute for the dead in front than to let the weak Qing Dynasty face the bloody mouth of Tsarist Russia......

According to the itinerary plan

After inspecting Vladivostok, Crown Prince Nikolai will visit the province of Butterworth and Fuso, and if nothing else, something unexpected will happen......

More than 20 years after being incorporated into the empire, Beihai Province has made great progress and has become one of the official overseas provinces of the Tang Empire, the imperial territory closest to the East Asian continent.

With a population of 722,900 at the end of 1890, Hokkai Province had built a relatively mature and affluent society, forming an urban agglomeration dominated by Hokorai (Otaru), Sapporo, Hakodate, Linshui, and Wakkanai, with the largest city of Hokori (Otaru) having a population of 131,200 and Sapporo ranking second with 87,600 people.

Beihai Province has overcome many difficulties and built a "cross-shaped" trunk railway and a number of railway branch lines throughout the island, with a total mileage of more than 5,200 kilometers of highways, and built a port mainly in Penglai (Otaru) City, Linshui and Wakkanai, forming a relatively complete infrastructure.

The island's "cross-shaped" trunk railway network consists of the east-west "Root Railway" and the north-south "Hanji Railway", which can be easily extended to each town by means of a branch railway.

The "Roots Railway" stretches east from Sapporo in the western part of the island and Horai (Otaru) to Nemuro in the eastern part of the island, and is the main railway artery in Hokkaido Province.

Another north-south main railway, which runs from Hakodate in the south, runs north along the coastline and continues north at the intersection of Sapporo and the "Roots Railway" before ending in Wakkanai, the northernmost part of the island. ”

The construction of railways and highways extending in all directions and the clean urban management of Beihai Province have attracted a large number of government officials from Fuso to visit and study, wave after wave, and have become the frontier base for promoting modern civilization in Europe and the United States.

After the visit, the government of Fuso and the representatives of the prefectures, feudal domains, and daimyo were all shocked, and they were deeply inspired by the power of modern industrialization.

Due to the natural geographical advantages

The province of Butterworth has developed into an economic structure dominated by finance, shipbuilding, offshore fishing and agriculture, and the society as a whole is relatively wealthy, ranking among the top in Asia.

The submarine long-distance telegraph cable across the Pacific Ocean enters the sea from the westernmost point of Alaska and follows the East Asian continental shelf to land in the province of North Sea, where it splits in two.

The first was to lay westward to Weihaiwei, a British leased land, and from here extended north-south to form a telegraph network on the East Asian continent, with the northernmost point entering the territory of Tsarist Russia and the southernmost point reaching the French Saigon Governor's Palace.

The second crosses the Tsugaru Strait to the south into the Fuso Islands, and then continues south to connect with the Amami Kingdom, ending at Naha City, the capital of the Ryukyu Kingdom.

Because of its convenient modern telecommunications industry and geographical location near East Asia, Penglai in Beihai Province has become the East Asian headquarters of many multinational banks in the Tang Empire, as well as the Asian headquarters of the four world-class telegraph giants.

Several major oil companies that monopolize the world's oil industry have also collected huge sums of money from their operations in Asia, forming a relatively developed financial industry.

According to statistics

One-tenth of the province's population is engaged in modern finance and telecommunications, and the education industry is developed, with many well-known institutions such as the Northern Institute of Technology, Beihai Engineering School, and Beihai Normal School, and more than half of the students are from Fuso Island, Amami Kingdom and Sulfur Kingdom Kingdom, and there are many from the Great Qing Kingdom on the other side of the strait.

In terms of agriculture, Chinese immigrants have cultivated 1.27 million mu of fertile land, more than 115,000 cattle and a large number of chickens, ducks and livestock on the island, and the food self-sufficiency rate has reached 6%.

Almost one-fifth of the province's population is employed in jobs related to inshore fishing, providing nearly 42,000 jobs (note, minus women, children, and the elderly who have lost their ability to work).

Wakkanai is a famous fishing port in Beihai Province, and the surrounding area is densely populated with thousands of fishing boats, large and small, and has developed a well-equipped industry.

Shipyards, repair shops, fishing nets, fish hooks, iron chains, canvas, frozen storage, fish processing, salting factories, etc., form a complete industrial chain from upstream to downstream.

Butterworth Province is also an important military base, with the Royal Navy and the Royal Army Overseas Military Region having troops stationed in the province, but they are not large.

The port of the East Asian Detachment of the Pacific Fleet of the Royal Navy is located in Penglai City (Otaru), and the fleet has five old ironclad destroyers with the "Han" brand, and the flagship is the first batch of ironclad cruisers "Vicious Wind" to enter service.

The ship was one of the main ships of the expedition to Egypt more than 20 years ago, and during its service, it experienced a fire, which caused a major accident in which 17 crew members were killed and injured, including 6 deaths.

After repairs at Port Said, the ironclad cruiser "Vicious Wind" was in poor condition and was deemed unsuitable for long-term deployment, so it returned to the Empire mainland thousands of miles away.

The ship suffered another major power failure in the East China Sea, and was later towed to Beihai Province after rescue, where it finally settled down and spent the last days of its service life.

So, the East Asian detachment also has the nickname of "retirement home".

Even so

Before the two giant ships "Dingyuan" and "Zhenyuan" of the Great Qing Dynasty were listed in the Beiyang Fleet, the flagship of the East Asian Fleet, the "Evil Wind", with a displacement of 4,850 tons, ranked first in the fleets of East and Southeast Asian countries all year round, and was generally regarded as an irresistible and powerful existence.

The annual routine mission of the ironclad cruiser "Evil Wind" is to take a few younger brothers to Fuso Province for a goodwill visit, from Tokyo, Kobe to Nagasaki, its huge hull like a hill, every time it can attract the envy and admiration of Fuso Province.

As for the Amami and Ryukyu kingdoms further afield, the ironclad cruiser "Evil Wind" has not been there for several years.

His own family knows his own affairs, and the East Asian Squadron knows it clearly;

The ironclad cruiser "Vicious Wind" was purely a façade, and the condition of this old ship was really bad, and the annual goodwill visit around the island had drained all his energy.

If you go on a longer voyage, you may be sunk in the rough winds and waves of the western Pacific.

An ironclad ship that may lose power at any time must not risk sailing, that is tantamount to self-defeating!

There is no problem in making a goodwill visit around Fuso Island, after all, the Tsugaru Strait is only 39 kilometers, and Fuso Island is full of ports along the coast, making it very convenient for emergency stops.

Every time the ironclad cruiser "Evil Wind" set off with many younger brothers, it looked majestic and very impressive.

As a matter of fact

Without bringing a large number of ironclad destroyers and military auxiliary ships, the ironclad cruiser "Evil Wind" would not dare to leave the port, and in case of a major failure in the power system, it would really be called a failure to work every day.

(End of chapter)