Bordeaux City

In a lavish French-style building, in the study on the second floor, Richard was listening to a report on the progress of the negotiations.

The person who reported was Baron Tan Dewen, the deputy of Xu Jinxun's secretarial team, who was also an outstanding staff member from the military aristocracy of the Tang Dynasty, and was appreciated for his rigor and degree.

Baron Tan Dewen is a member of the Tang Empire's diplomatic negotiation team, and is only responsible for listening with his ears and not participating in any detailed discussions, and then returns to His Majesty the Holy Emperor Taizu.

After listening for a while

Richard didn't say anything, just waved his hand, and Baron Teydwin gave a respectful salute and quietly retreated.

Judging by the current situation of contact

As old global colonial powers, Britain and France have very different attitudes, which are reflected in the distribution of global interests of the Tang Empire.

Britain is conservative, France is positive.

In particular, after the Third South American War, the post-war status quo of the six South American countries jointly carved up Brazil, France actively expressed its willingness to recognize, while Britain delayed its position.

The British side asserts;

In view of the high stakes, the matter was deferred.

Due to the prudent evaluation of the international mediation team formed by the European powers, the people of South America were given a fair and just future, rather than being decided by a group of people led by the Tang Empire.

This is actually to retain a containment attitude towards the Tang Empire on this international issue, which has a lot to do and can be exchanged for many strategic interests.

This also included the Arabian Peninsula issue and other demands of the Tang Empire, which the British all clung to and did not let go.

As a veteran international conspirator and veteran world hegemon, the British are well aware that similar issues involve major issues such as the reconstruction of the post-war international order and the division of interests among the world's colonial powers, which are all heavy bargaining chips.

To be the first to admit it is undoubtedly to abandon martial arts.

Even if the Entente bloc was facing many difficulties, the British did not want to see the Tang Empire succeed again and fall into the well at a difficult time in Europe, so they clenched their bite and did not let go.

The French are already in a hurry, and the battlefields on the Western Front are mainly located in the northeastern provinces of France, which has dealt a fatal blow to France's industrial and agricultural production.

Add to that the death of millions of French men on the front lines, and an entire generation filled the bottomless battlefield meat grinder, which is heart-wrenching for France.

For the French, now any overseas interests are secondary, the most important thing is to send reinforcements to the European theater, whether it is troops, weapons, materials and money, everything cannot wait.

The vast British colonies were supplemented by the Canadian Legion, the Anzac Legion, the Indian Legion, the South African Legion, the Sri Lankan Legion and the Egyptian Legion, and the number of soldiers was almost endless.

The British can proudly say; The blood of the Indian subcontinent is not shed, and the British Empire will not fail.

What does France have?

The largest French Algerian regiment is still the most white French descendants of immigrants, the same French, and the meat is all rotten in the pot.

In desperation, France had begun to recruit black colonial soldiers for war, and many British newspapers and magazines published satirical caricatures to mock the French.

The black soldiers in French military uniforms in the cartoons look comic like idiots, all of them are stupid and look very comic.

And the German army on the front also sensed this, and often used the place with a large number of African soldiers as a breakthrough point, so as to make a contribution in one fell swoop.

In German parlance;

Beating the French is like chiseling stones, and beating the is like eating chocolate, often accompanied by some dessert after a meal.

The so-called dessert after dinner is that the French army had to go forward one after another to block the bullet hole in order to make up for the empty battle line caused by the rout of the black soldiers.

After coming and going, the French army, which had suffered a lot, did not dare to use black soldiers on a large scale, so they could only do logistics work in the rear.

Richard knew the situation on the European front very well, and he knew his old rival the British, who were completely the masters who did not cry without seeing the coffin, and were extremely tough and cunning.

Now that the main line of the world war has become clear, the difficult and bloody year of 1916 is about to pass, the Battle of Verdun on the Western Front and the Brusilov Offensive on the Eastern Front have come to an end, and the Battle of the Somme is about to come to an end.

Although the Tsarist army won the victory of the Brusilov offensive on the Eastern Front, the heavy cost of more than 5 million casualties after the outbreak of the war so far has brought the decaying agricultural empire to the ground, and all kinds of old evils have erupted together.

In just half a year or so, this boss's empire will collapse......

Stand at a historical juncture

Richard was able to deeply understand the choice of the Americans in his previous life, and to join the European battlefield at the end of the war, was completely in the guise of picking up bargains.

Think about it, can Britain and France get used to him?

In the original historical trajectory

Britain and France, who led the post-war negotiations in Paris, gave the elated president of the United States a big shock, mocking him to the point of being almost self-conscious, and after returning home, he once again held high the banner of the Monroe Doctrine and went to run the small world of America.

In today's world, the Tang Empire has done everything that the United States has done, and it has surpassed it in South America, how will Europeans treat the post-war world pattern?

Will it look up to the top?

Will it be favored?

This was obviously all a delusion, and Richard knew so well about the foul character of the British and French that he had no extravagant expectations.

What we cannot get now will not be obtained in the redivision of the post-war international order.

If you forcibly ask for it, you will only get humiliation.

Between now and July and August next year is a precious window of time to force the British to soften their attitude and recognize the Tang Empire's vested interests and global sphere of influence

In the global sphere of influence of the new Tang Empire

In addition to acknowledging Brazil's current situation, the Tang Empire earned more than 5.7 million square kilometers of vast land in the frenzy of carving up Brazil, and was the biggest vested interest.

Acknowledging the status quo of the Arabian Peninsula, which includes the five provinces of the peninsula, namely Jeddah, Yemen, Abu Dhabi, Kuwait and the Kingdom of Oman (a provincial dependent kingdom), plus the region along the Red Sea and Jordan north of Jeddah.

Jordan is a traditional British sphere of influence, bordering Egypt's Sinai Peninsula to the west, what would become Israel to the north, Lebanon to the southeast, and Syria to the east.

Although this area is not bordered by the Mediterranean, it is only more than 130 kilometers from the closest point of the Mediterranean, which can be reached by mobile corps in a day.

The Tang Empire's request to obtain the Jordan region is tantamount to stripping meat from the hearts of the British, which is something that is not willing to do in any way.

Such an appeal is tantamount to dancing on the red line of the British and testing its strategic bottom line step by step.

The Tang Empire did not want Syria, Lebanon, the West Bank, Iraq and other sensitive areas of West Asia, as long as Jordan.

Such an asking price was right on the throat of the British, and it made them very uncomfortable.

Under tremendous economic and military pressure, Britain also formed several factions with sharply opposing opinions on the issue of winning over the Tang Empire to participate in the war.

In particular, the Great Gu Greu-Saxon nationalists and the British upper class aristocracy strongly advocated immediately co-opting the Tang Empire into the war, at any cost.

Every white citizen of England who died in the war was painful to their hearts, and the losses of the British nobles were particularly heavy, and the call for a strong ally was rising.

On the contrary, the British Liberal Party, which has always been left-leaning, has a hard-line attitude and is also opposed to the mainstream of compromise.

Richard has been in charge of the Tang Empire for more than 70 years, from the 31st British Prime Minister Robert Peel to the current 53rd Prime Minister David Lloyd George, a total of 22 British Prime Ministers, and he knows the political ecology and politicians of his old rival Britain very well.

These people are very realistic interests.

Thinking to something, Richard lit a cigar, stood up and walked to the window to look out.

The city of Bordeaux at sunset is tranquil and beautiful, with old French buildings standing everywhere, as if time has frozen in time.

Ignore the city's high defensive walls and forts, gun-carrying patrols and armed militia, and this is a beautiful southern city to live in.

Every day

City dwellers line up in front of shops with baskets on their shoulders, hoping to buy the few items they have, and most are disappointed.

Because of the limited number of goods, they are often sold out after queuing for a few hours, and those who can't buy them can only come back in disgrace.

The store will not be open on the second day, depending on whether the product arrives.

I took a deep breath of my cigar and let the strong smell of cigar smoke envelop my tall figure.

There was a hint of determination in Richard's deep eyes, and he had already made up his mind.

He was about to return home with a secret decree to impose a trade embargo on both sides of the war in Europe, cutting off the food transportation lines and funding sources of the Entente bloc.

This move

From the point of view of neutral countries, there is nothing wrong with the Tang Empire, which sends supplies to neither the Entente nor the Allied bloc, just to avoid the suspicion of financing the war.

In fact, this move was a fatal blow to the Entente bloc, because Britain, France, Italy and other countries now rely on the grain delivery of the Tang Empire and valuable funds.

Breaking these would have led to the loss of the entire war by the Entente.

Taking this move will put the Anglo-French bloc and the Tang Empire in an absolutely hostile situation, making the situation of this world war more complicated and dangerous.

Don't do much, it is difficult for Tsarist Russia to continue without capital input, and it only takes two ~ three months for the Tsarist Empire to collapse.

You must know that while Britain and France and other countries have borrowed large amounts of loans, they have been spending large sums of money to renew the life of Tsarist Russia and maintain its role of sharing pressure on the battlefield.

Once the Tang Empire cut off its financial loans, neither Britain nor France could come up with money to lend to Tsarist Russia, because they couldn't survive themselves.

All the new campaign plans for 1917, the armament rearmament plan, and even the food is not enough to eat, what kind of war is there to fight?

In 1916, Britain's agricultural losses reached 32.7%, France's 51.5%, and Italy's 17.6%.

Once the Tang Empire cut off the channels for the delivery of materials, even if it was just a leak of news, the black market prices in Europe, including the United Kingdom, would immediately double, which was so realistic.

The Tang Empire led by Richard did not want to talk about the post-war international order and the division of interests, and now it had to get the benefits in its hands, and if it didn't get it, it would turn its face.

What's the drop, I'm afraid you'll bite me?

It was now the end of 1916, and the grain produced by Britain, France and Italy had almost been consumed, and closing the valve for export supplies at this time was tantamount to kicking the Entente group standing on the edge of the cliff, and the consequences were obvious.

Richard doesn't care about this, he only cares about the real benefits that he can get, and he doesn't have to worry about the turn of face from Britain and France, does he still want to go to war?

The Tang Empire must show its sharp claws and fangs, and let those countries such as Britain, France, and other countries who are still intoxicated with the idea of white world priority wake up, and this world is not their final say.

At no time, the power of the Tang Empire cannot be ignored.