Chapter 179 The Russo-Japanese War breaks out

As time entered February 1904, the situation in the Far East became more complicated and confusing, and the entire Far East region was also shrouded in the crisis of war.

The protagonists of the crisis are naturally the Russian Empire, the overlord of the Far East, and the emerging island nations.

As a newly emerging country, the island country gained a lot of land in a series of wars and events, and also greatly expanded its army.

However, the mineral resources in the island country are very scarce, and the small Korean peninsula obtained cannot make up for the resource shortage of the island country.

Although the island country has signed a mineral resources import treaty with Australia, the cost of doing so is that it requires spending at least twice the market price in exchange for precious mineral resources.

This is a big burden for island countries that do not have sufficient funds in the first place. In addition, they bear a large number of loans from the British Empire and the United States. High interest rates and fiscal deficits gradually make the island countries' finances unable to support themselves.

They naturally set their sights on the northern part of the Korean Peninsula, the Guangmao land and the three eastern provinces, which have a large amount of mineral resources.

This land has a sufficient population, a large amount of cultivated land, and rich mineral resources.

More importantly, because it is connected to the Korean Peninsula, the mineral resources here can be quickly transported to the island country through the ports on the Korean Peninsula, which is far more convenient and cheaper than importing mineral resources from Australia.

But there is a problem. The land that the island country values ​​​​has been occupied by the Russian Empire several years ago.

As the overlord of the Far East, it is naturally impossible for the Tsarist Russian Empire to give up this land. After all, the Tsarist Russian Empire's Yellow Russia plan is also well known.

A hunter who is about to starve to death, facing a hunting area with rich prey at his doorstep, will he give up hunting just because there are strong guards?

Obviously not, because if he doesn't take action, he will starve to death. When faced with the threat of death, no matter how powerful the enemy is, he must fight hard.

This is the situation the island country is facing now. If nothing is done, the current finances will be enough to bring the entire country down. By then, the dream of revival will be shattered, and decades of hard work by the entire country, from the emperor to the common people, will be over. void.

Will the islanders accept such an ending? Impossible to accept. What's more, before acquiring the Korean Peninsula, the island country engaged in a war that staked its national destiny.

It was precisely because of this war that the island country obtained the Korean Peninsula, a land with good resources, and that the rise of the island country took the first step.

Since August last year, the island countries have formally made representations to the Russian Empire in an attempt to divide their respective interests in the Far East.

What the island country proposed was to ask the Tsarist Russian Empire to recognize that the island country had superior interests in North Korea, while the island country only recognized that the Tsarist Russian Empire had special interests in the Manchuria Railway.

This is equivalent to asking the Russian Empire to give up North Korea without gaining anything. Naturally, the Russian Empire will not agree.

The negotiations lasted for six months. The island country tried to divide its interests in the Far East with the Russian Empire in a peaceful way. However, it finally found that this plan was not feasible, so it gave up the plan resolutely and decisively.

On February 6, 1904, the island country issued a unilateral note to the Russian Empire, announcing the suspension of negotiations between the two countries and severing diplomatic relations with the Russian Empire.

At this time, it means that war between the two countries is inevitable, and the termination of negotiations actually means that another more arbitrary way will be used to start negotiations.

Sure enough, two days later, the island nation's navy attacked the Russian Empire's fleet stationed in Port Arthur without declaring war, and the war that determined the hegemony of the Far East broke out.

At this time, New Zealand's referendum was still in progress, and Arthur naturally would not express any opinions on the situation in the Far East. He only asked the Australian and New Zealand governments to issue a neutral statement declaring that Australia and New Zealand are neutral in this war.

However, Arthur still asked the military factory to contact the Russian Empire and the island country immediately to ask if they needed to purchase more weapons and equipment. Australia could work overtime to produce them and deliver them to them as quickly as possible.

After all, after declaring neutrality, it does not mean that arms trade cannot be carried out. Isn't this the case with the United States? In the early stage, it was neutral and sold arms to make a fortune. In the later stage, when the situation became clear, it directly joined and gained the high status of the victorious country at the minimum cost.

Compared with the island countries that are very determined, the Tsarist Empire does not have unified opinions in this hegemonic crisis.

The attitude of the Tsarist Russian Empire can be divided into two factions. One faction is the peace faction headed by the Minister of Finance and the Minister of Foreign Affairs. They saw the crisis in the domestic and international situation of the Tsarist Russian Empire and advised Tsar Nicholas II not to easily start a war. .

The proposal of the peace faction is that some concessions should be made in exchange for peace in a short period of time. At the same time, we will strengthen our economic plunder and war preparations in the Far East. After the Trans-Siberian Railway is fully opened to traffic, on the premise of solving the transportation problem in the Far East, and after the peripheral fortress near the Port of Port Arthur is completed, we will wait for an opportunity to engage in a decisive battle with the island country.

In fact, the peace faction is not a pure peace faction. The purpose of their advocacy of short-term peace is only for a better war. This is also the tradition of the Russians. They are not afraid of war.

The other faction is the main war faction represented by the Imperial Minister, the Minister of Internal Affairs and the Governor of the Far East.

This group of people are extremely fanatical chauvinists and imperialist adventurers. They were very confident in the military power of the Russian Empire, and at the same time looked down upon the newly rising country of the island country.

They believed that the army of the Tsarist Empire could easily destroy enemies from the island country with only a small mobilization.

And such a hearty victory could also allow the Tsarist Empire to calm down the domestic revolutionary crisis. On the basis of external affairs, it could also achieve internal security. It could be said to kill two birds with one stone.

This idea is actually because the current domestic revolutionary wave in the Tsarist Russian Empire is becoming more and more intense, and the senior officials of the Tsarist Russian Empire are already thinking of ways to calm this crisis in other ways.

But the Tsarist Empire was an autocratic country, and the Tsar had full power. All decisions still need to be made by Tsar Nicholas II.

However, when Tsar Nicholas II was still the crown prince, he traveled abroad and visited some countries on the order of the then Tsar Alexander III.

Nicholas II passed through Greece, Egypt, India, island countries and the Qing Dynasty, and then returned from far Eastern Siberia.

This also made Nicholas II the first emperor of the Russian Empire to have visited Asia.

It's just that this trip to Asia was not very wonderful, and it also made Nicholas II very hateful and hostile to the island country.

In 1891, Nicholas, the crown prince of the Russian Empire, led his friend Prince Georgi of Greece and more than 30 people to the island country.

At that time, the island country was still a small and weak country, and the island country's government fully welcomed the visit of Crown Prince Nicholas.

In order to ensure the personal safety of Crown Prince Nicholas, the island government has vowed to do everything possible. On the one hand, it has strengthened the police force and taken strict precautions to ensure that nothing goes wrong.

On the other hand, Shuzo Aoki, the foreign minister of the island country at the time, also agreed with the Russian ambassador to the island country that in the event of an assassination, the death penalty would be imposed in accordance with the crime of harming the royal family in the criminal law, and no mercy would be tolerated.

But the accident happened so suddenly. On May 11, 1891, while Crown Prince Nicholas was visiting the capital, he was assassinated by Sanzo Tsuda, a policeman responsible for protecting Crown Prince Nicholas.

The assassination was ultimately unsuccessful. Although Crown Prince Nicholas was stabbed twice, his life was not in danger.

However, as a result, the relationship between the Russian Empire and the island country dropped to a freezing point. Because of this incident, Nicholas II did not have any favorable impression of the island country, and even had extreme hatred and hatred.

How should a person who hates and hates the island country react when he hears that the island country is going to compete with the Russian Empire for hegemony in the Far East?

Should I shout angrily that these yellow-skinned monkeys deserve to die, or should I calmly think about my opinion of the Lord and the faction?

In fact, Nicholas II had both. He had two factions of views. He knew that the current preparations of the Russian Empire were not sufficient and hoped to postpone the war.

But Nicholas II was also convinced that tough measures were the best way to maintain hegemony. He felt that the best way to delay war was to take tough measures, and concessions would always lead to new concessions.

This seemingly contradictory idea actually supports the hard-liners’ claims.

The Tsarist Empire was indeed not fully prepared. There were less than 100,000 Tsarist troops in the Far East, and even fewer were equipped with new weapons.

Although a batch of weapons and equipment was purchased from Australia, more than half of these weapons and equipment were allocated to European armies, and only about one-third was allocated to the garrison in the Far East.

The entire Far Eastern Army of the Tsarist Empire had less than 200 artillery pieces, 20 heavy machine guns and more than 90,000 combat troops.

In terms of navy, although the Tsarist Empire's navy had more than 200 warships, the Pacific Squadron, which could actually be used in operations in the Far East, only had more than 60 warships.

On the island nation's side, the navy already has more than 80 warships, with a total tonnage of more than 270,000 tons.

Most of the main warships are new warships built in the UK, with uniform specifications and good performance.

One battleship ordered from Australia was not completed and is therefore not included in the statistics.

In terms of the army, the island country has more than 210,000 soldiers for operations outside the mainland, thousands of artillery pieces, and more than 50 heavy machine guns.

Judging from pure data, only in the Far East, the Tsarist Empire is already at a complete disadvantage. The navy can still achieve a barely balanced balance. The number of people and equipment in the army are not as advanced as those of the island countries.

It's just that the arrogant Tsarist Russian Empire simply believed that the island countries did not dare to offend the powerful Tsarist Russian Empire. They believed that as long as the Tsarist Russian Empire showed its tough side, the island country people would obediently compromise.

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