The secret visit of the Holy Emperor Taizu of the Tang Empire to Europe was listed as the top secret of the empire, and the news was blocked in all directions.

In order to create a false impression, in the Wanshou Palace where the Holy Emperor Taizu lived in Chaoge, all the court servants were not allowed to go out, nor were they allowed to have any contact with the outside world, and they were in a de facto state of confinement.

In the name of a certain earl surnamed Li in the Tang Empire, the Holy Emperor Taizu disguised his true identity and arrived in Berlin, the capital of the German Empire, on March 13, and stayed in a palace-style residence on the Kurdhou Street.

Berlin's Kurthou Strasse is one of the most prosperous and lively places in the country, with buildings that are mostly hundreds of years old and full of palace-like buildings of all sizes.

Nowadays, the entire Kurthou Street belongs to the property of the Tang royal family, and many nobles and wealthy merchants from the Tang Dynasty live here, becoming Berlin's Chinatown.

When I came to the German Empire, I immediately felt the tense atmosphere of preparing for war.

In late March, Berlin has just come to a warm and cold spring after a harsh winter.

In the crowd of people in the streets and alleys, there are many Junker military aristocrats in military uniforms, and the proportion of military personnel is significantly higher than usual.

On the outskirts of Berlin

There are three very large military bases, stationed no less than 210,000 field mobile troops, as many as 14 infantry divisions, and five heavy artillery divisions.

Compared with the new M1897 75mm field gun, which the French Army regarded as the treasure, the German Imperial Army believed in "great miracles" and was generally equipped with 105mm and 122mm large-caliber field heavy guns.

Each fully staffed German division consisted of two infantry brigades and one artillery brigade, with a total strength of about 18,300 men.

Each infantry brigade has two regiments, each infantry regiment has three infantry battalions and a machine gun company, the infantry is uniformly equipped with Mauser 1898 bolt-action rifles, and the machine gun company is equipped with 12 Maxim heavy machine guns.

The artillery brigade has four battalions, one heavy artillery battalion is equipped with 12 152 mm field guns, and three battalions are each equipped with 12 Krupp 105 mm field guns, for a total of 48 heavy guns.

Compare it to

The French army is equipped with 4 battalions of M1897 75mm field guns, which are regarded as top secret by the French army, and the news is strictly sealed from Germany.

All French artillery training was carried out at the Beirouge military base near Paris, and most of the more than 4,000 75-mm field guns were locked in warehouses and could not be seen at all.

Although the caliber of this M1897 type 75 mm field gun is slightly inferior, it uses a revolutionary hydraulic recovery mechanism, and the rate of firing is as high as 16 rounds per minute, which is 2~3 times that of the German Krupp gun.

As long as a few artillery battalions are concentrated, a dense rain of grenade fragments can be formed on a wide field battlefield of 7~8 kilometers, which will cause fatal damage to the German troops exposed in the field.

When Richard arrived in Berlin, he noticed the difference in just a few days.

The price of bread is 3 times that of North America, the price of milk is 5.6 times that of North America, the price of sugar is 11 times that of North America, the price of chocolate is 8.2 times that of North America, and the price of kerosene is 4.5 times that of North America......

The income of the average Berlin worker's family is barely enough to fill their stomachs, and it is difficult to buy two more pairs of wool socks.

The factors that caused all this

It is precisely because of the German Empire's recklessness of military force, a large number of armed armies engaged in an arms race, invested huge sums of money in the production of weapons and equipment and ammunition for storage, and invested them in the naval arms race of the High Seas Fleet at any cost.

In order to raise funds, the German government has raised a lot of taxes under various names, which has virtually pushed up the cost of living for ordinary workers' families.

Most of all the income is spent on food, and very little money can be used to improve the living environment.

This has little impact on the financially rich middle and upper classes, but the vast number of workers are feeling pressure, the voices of dissatisfaction among the people have come and gone, and social contradictions have become more and more acute.

If a government makes its people unable to live, it is certainly not a qualified government.

This is the case in the German Empire now, in order to satisfy Kaiser Wilhelm II's ambitions, colonial expansion at any cost, and an arms race at any cost.

In Richard's opinion

Kaiser Wilhelm II had gone mad, and Tsar Nicholas II had the same symptoms.

What these two men have in common is that they are extremely arrogant and conceited, and they are completely blind to the suffering and great pressure that the country and its people are under, driving the country to move forward on the road of destruction.

At this stage

Germany's frenzied expansion of the army has reached 1.61 million, and it plans to further expand to 2.3 million people, arming a full 145 divisions, reaching as much as 7 times the strength of the Tang Empire's army.

This year's military spending has reached 2.2 billion German gold marks, which is 4.92 times that of the Royal Army of the Tang Empire.

In terms of the total economic size, the German Empire, which ranks second in the world in terms of economic scale, has a GDP of only 36.3% of that of the Tang Empire, a little more than one-third.

At present, the confrontation between the two major military camps in Europe is tense, and neither of them will back down in the slightest, because any concession will lead to devastating results.

After decades of hateful propaganda, there are irreconcilable contradictions between Britain and Germany, between Germany and France, between Russia and Austria, and between France and Italy, and the people regard each other as enemies.

The situation was terrible, and the fanatical Germans, in order to kill the French and the British, preferred to work overtime in the factories hungry and tighten their belts in support of the arms race.

In this frenzied atmosphere of preparing for war, anyone who dares to retreat will first be torn to pieces by the anger of the people, and there will never be a second way out.

When the entire European continent is caught in this dangerous spiral of war, there is little power left to stop it.

Germany, France, Russia, England, Italy, and Austria-Hungary were all building up their armaments, and military training could be seen everywhere from the cities to the countryside.

Only this year

The number of people trained in military training in these countries reached 4.9 million, 5.06 million, 5.65 million, 1.2 million, 2.11 million and 3 million respectively, and the boom even spread to Belgium, a small European country.

Belgium has only 54,000 troops, but the total number of people trained in military training has reached 330,000, compared to just over 3.1 million in Belgium as a whole.

What is this concept?

Basically, adult Belgian men, from 18 to 45 years old, are undergoing military training and preparing for war, with the exception of a few government clerks.

The whole of Europe is now a volcano ready to erupt, and if any one spark ignites, the war will soon spread to the whole of Europe and beyond.

As far as Richard knew

Germany had already drawn up a plan to abandon German East Africa, German West Africa, German Jiao-East Peninsula and other German colonies in the event of war.

In fact

Germany could not keep these overseas colonies, and the High Seas Fleet, which Kaiser Wilhelm II spent a lot of money to build, faced the Royal Navy of the British Empire, the most powerful in the world, and could not even break out of the North Atlantic.

After the Tang Empire occupied Mozambique, its next step was to take over German East Africa.

Anyway, it's for nothing, don't get it for nothing.

This situation made Richard feel laughing and crying, since he couldn't keep his overseas colonies, what was the point of Germany's painstaking efforts to engage in colonial expansion?

Former German Prime Minister Bismarck saw this a long time ago, so he resolutely opposed colonial expansion, which was tantamount to wasting money and manpower.

Just from this point of view

Former German Chancellor Pismarck's international strategic vision is more than a step above Kaiser Wilhelm II.

With so much money wasted by colonial expansion, wouldn't it be good to make up 40 more infantry divisions? Is it bad to reserve 5000 more cannons?

Early June

Located in St. Petersburg on the Gulf of Finland

Richard and his entourage, who goes by the pseudonym Count Li Mingjian, arrived in St. Petersburg during this sunny season and then lived in a Russian-style court building.

This Russian-style palace building is also one of the assets purchased overseas by the Imperial Internal Affairs Office of the Tang Empire, which was purchased through hidden channels, and it is not obvious that it has any relationship with the royal family of the Tang Empire.

This is the habit of the Tang royal family, and they always like to hide their assets, and the deeper they hide, the better.

So far

Richard himself didn't know how much property the eight royal funds of the Tang Empire had?

The eight major funds all have their own categories of fixed asset investment, and the relevant important land deeds are locked in the secret vault of the inner courtyard of the palace, and it is impossible to see the light of day for tens or hundreds of years.

In this life, Richard came to the territory of Tsarist Russia for the first time, and it was an important coastal city, full of strong Nordic style.

Compared with the Nordic countries, the Russian-style palace architecture is more atmospheric, covers a wider area and is more exquisite, showing a good style of a great country.

Stroll through the streets of St. Petersburg

A large number of palace-like buildings here belonged to the Russian aristocracy and wealthy merchants, and the blue waters of the Gulf of Finland make it look like a fairytale world.

But if you walk into the slums, you will see many ragged Russian civilians and workers, most of whom have patches on their bodies and can only survive on the lowest black bread.

The polarization between rich and poor is extremely high here, and there are many beggars and vagrants.

Except for the shipyards and telegraph offices aided by the British and French, there was hardly any other modern industry in the whole city, and the industry was still dominated by backward handicraft workshops, and the productivity was very low.

Tsarist Russia was such a contradictory country, although the emancipation of serfs was declared, in fact there were still a large number of serf estates in the vast expanse of Ukraine and Belarus and in the inland hinterland of Tsarist Russia.

In the eyes of the Russian aristocracy, these lowly serfs could not even be called people.

Such a backward agrarian country has been the nightmare of the whole of Europe for more than 100 years, famous for its constant stream of serf soldiers, known as "gray cattle" or "steam rollers".

Over here

Richard also saw that there were many troops training, and unlike in Germany, many Tsarist soldiers had only a wooden stick in their hands and used it instead of rifle training.

Even in such humble conditions, Tsarist Russia was still full of strong aggressive ambitions, from top to bottom.

Therefore, this is really an amazing people, and it has almost inherited the aggression genes of the Mongols.