With the death of Nicholas II, the Romanov dynasty was officially declared to be over.

The country, built on the corpse of this empire, adopted the Peace Decree, drafted by middle-aged people, demanding the immediate conclusion of a peace treaty "without cession of land and without indemnity", proposing a truce to all belligerents, declaring a withdrawal from the war.

At the recommendation of Tesla, they conducted a negotiation with Beichen, and according to the current war situation, it was unlikely that this emerging country would want to break away from this war, and it would be impossible to pay reparations without ceding land.

However, with Tesla's mediation, they eventually signed a peace treaty in Vladivostok.

The price was their withdrawal from Central Asia, and Beichen needed to join Tesla's "Apocalypse" program, the research program for weapons capable of destroying cities.

At the same time, the other party needs to lease the right to use several large oil fields in Beichen for 50 years, which is actually a disguised compensation.

Beichen has little desire for land now, and they are more inclined to control it economically than to actually control it.

Because the effort and reward required to actually control it are quite disproportionate.

Just now Beichen counts Southeast Asia, hundreds of ethnic groups, and the progress of ethnic integration has only been more than 100 years, and each of them is still unsettled, if it were not for the majority of the main ethnic groups, this country would have been divided for the second time.

What's more, Tsarist Russia is a multi-ethnic country, with 194 nationalities, and it also believes in Orthodox Christianity, which is completely different from the belief system within Beichen, which is even more troublesome.

It's not hundreds of years ago, and genocide is a thing that will go down in history, and it's not necessary.

At the same time, the river is obviously not as easy to defend as the mountains in this era, and if the Lena River is the boundary, there will be a long longer defense line, and at the same time, it will have to defend Britannia on the other side, and the defense pressure will be too great, and there will be some unnecessary defense spending.

The north-south span of the country is too large, and the pressure on infrastructure is also great.

In addition to this, when you get the northern lands, you can get a Arctic route.

The earth is round, and the Arctic route is the shortest distance to each continent, but now the icebreaker technology is average, and the economic benefits are not high.

Therefore, under the trade-offs, it is the best choice to directly ask for resources, after all, the only good place in these lands in the north is resources.

Later, the Treaty of the Three Emperors Alliance signed between Tsarist Russia and Germany was signed by Nicholas II, and after his death, the Three Emperors Alliance naturally disappeared.

At this point, North Russia completely withdrew from the war.

But as soon as he withdrew like this, the German-Austrian League was a little uncomfortable.

At that time, the three countries suspended the battlefield on the Western Front and jointly chose to attack Persia.

Now North Russia has successfully escaped from this quagmire because of Tesla, but Beichen will not let go of the German-Austrian alliance.

The pressure of the war on the Eastern Front increased dramatically.

As Tesla said, once North Russia chooses to withdraw from the war, then the situation will also be reversed.

So Germany chose to carry out the breakthrough on the Western Front with more radical actions.

So in this year, the German commander Mahan von turned his attention to this Verdun fortress on the eastern front of France.

Since the early years, after the failure of the German attack on Verdun in 1914, the French army has become more confident in their fortress, believing that the Germans are no longer able to take the place.

Therefore, the fortress was also no longer reinforced and fortified after this.

At the beginning of 1916, before attacking Verdun, the German army began to brazenly increase its troops in the area of Chambène on the Western Front, which made the then French commander Joseph believe that the German army intended to capture this part of the Western Front and then invade Paris by this route.

So he threw a large number of troops into Chambeni.

Joan of Arc, who had the same name as the saint from hundreds of years earlier, had a different opinion, and she proposed to the French commander that scouts be sent to Verdun to monitor enemy movements.

Although Joseph did not believe that Germany would choose to attack in this already failed place, he trusted Joan of Arc's almost prophetic judgment.

He sent scouts anyway.

However, who knows, this dispatch does not matter, and the scouts soon receive information that a surprise force of German troops and at least seventeen divisions of aircraft and artillery are quietly approaching Verdun.

Joseph hurriedly deployed troops to Verdun, but fortunately he reacted quickly, and the defensive deployment was not hasty.

However, the Germans laid five railways near Verdun to support war materials.

And on February 21, Char and Alicia came to visit the Verdun neighborhood.

In line with the principle of secrecy and not revealing the direction of the assault, the German army used more than 1,000 artillery pieces to carry out concentrated bombardment of more than 40 kilometers of the front along the line.

At this moment, what appeared in front of Alicia and Char was the spectacular scene of countless artillery salvos.

Still under the drowsy sky, one fireball after another dragged the tail flame through the air, bombarding the forward positions in graceful parabolas.

Countless artillery fires poured down on the tens of kilometers of land, leveling the hills and blasting the earthen walls to pieces.

The troops of West Farland had to hide in the bunkers and holes they could find, praying that they would not be bombarded by artillery fire and buried by rubble.

Alicia felt the earth tremble, and there was a constant scream, and countless pieces of earth and rubble were bombarded into the air and rained down.

Even those mechs that faced the almost one-sided slaughter of infantry on the battlefield were still difficult to resist in the face of such dense bombardment.

For eight hours, more than a million shells were poured on the land.

Countless potholes from the shells of the battlefield were filled with corpses, and all kinds of stumps and scraps mixed with rubble to become part of the earth.

The soldiers who had broken limbs or intestines that had fallen out rolled in pain on the ground.

The wreckage of the mecha was everywhere, smoke billowing into the sky, a scorching smell in the air, and no trace of green was visible to the entire land.

Char estimated that in just eight hours, tens of thousands of people were killed on this battlefield.

The ferocious firepower and the apocalyptic scene deeply shook Alicia, who was still fighting against the infantry.

"Is this here, Purgatory?" Alicia muttered softly.

"It's purgatory, but this purgatory is on earth." Char leaned against the fence and quietly looked into the distance, "The general of the other side has truly realized the true way to fight a thermal weapons war. No matter how large the number of enemies is, it is useless before absolute firepower suppression. ”

Alicia watched silently at the battlefield below.

Even after such a heavy bombardment, the West Francis army was not defeated.

In between enemy attacks, they emerged from their bunkers and counterattacked with anti-mech cannons, grenades, and surviving mechs, and even repelled several waves of German attacks.

"But in addition to firepower, the will to fight is also the key to determining the direction of the war." Alicia muttered softly.

West Francis during the First World War was still very backbone.

In the history of another world, the reason why they surrendered so quickly in World War II was actually because in several battlefields known as meat grinders in World War I, they almost killed an entire generation of people and wiped out their vitality.

However, although the West Francis at this time were very determined to fight, the Germans were also desperate.

They even mobilized the resources of the Eastern Front to this side, mobilizing the forces of the entire Central Powers for a breakthrough.

They believed that if West France collapsed, Britain would also collapse.

At the same time, the Maria Mountains, the protector of Britannia, will be theirs as well.

As long as the battle line is pushed to the Great Pampas and the Maria Mountains are held, the army of Britannia can be blocked for respite.

If Britannia wants to attack them, they must use the navy.

And the German navy is definitely considered strong in this world.

With the end of this wave of bombing, the German army directly used mechs carrying new types of weapons.

They resemble the Storm Mech, but the difference is that they carry a flamethrower.

Mechs of this era do not have any thermal insulation systems.

Metal materials easily conduct heat, which is why middle-aged people were injured in the battle in St. Petersburg.

So the flamethrower may not hurt the mecha too much, but it can be fatal to the pilot inside the mech.

The scorching flames burned the metal of the mecha red, and the driver inside the mech either escaped from the driver's seat and was charred by the flames, or stayed inside the mech and was roasted alive.

And for those infantry who don't have mechs, these flamethrowers are even more terrifying.

They could have been hiding in bunkers to deal with their enemies, but flamethrowers could burn them to death in bunkers, and even if they weren't dead, the smoke from the flames would have smoked them to death.

At the same time, they concentrated a large number of superior forces as the vanguard for a surprise attack, and broke through the first line of French defense on the same day.

Char and Alicia have been observing the battlefield from the courtyard of the castle.

This may be the most intense battlefield they have ever seen in their lives.

The air was filled with the smell of diesel burning, mixed with the heavy smell of gunpowder smoke, and a kind of phosphoric acid, and the earth was no longer green, but gray, and the air was filled with a desperate dead air.

However, Alicia is also very smart, and she senses that something is wrong when she sees the entire battlefield from God's perspective.

"Why, the Germans did not attack the west bank of the Meuse, where the defense was not the weakest? Their purpose was not the Verdun fortress? ”

"Their purpose is the fortress of Verdun, but not to take it." Char's eyes flickered, "Remember what I told you before?" ”

Alicia seems to realize something, and her face is a little ugly (end of chapter)