Chapter 423 Pre-War Warm-up

Chapter 423 Pre-War Warm-up

Chapter 423 Pre-War Warm-up
Since Shao Quanzhong landed in Basra, he has found that Basra and Baghdad are much richer than Yerevan, a purely inland city.

But Basra and Baghdad didn't have telegraphs, so how could such a remote place have telegraphs? This is the advantage of border areas.

During the Crimean War from 1853 to 1856, this was the front line where Britain, France and Turkey attacked Russia.

War required fast communications, so the British spent money to build a telegraph service for this occupied frontier city.

Later, because Baku was quite wealthy as the world's largest oil field at the time, the Azerbaijanis extended the telegraph all the way to the Caspian Sea.

Shao Quanzhong took the telegram and took a look at it. Wow, it was a thick stack.

I took a quick look at it. Well, since I left Guangzhou on May 17, I have been cut off from the civilized world, and basically nothing major has happened in the past two months.

First of all, domestically, Sichuan investors’ railway shares were “nationalized” by Wen Xiang, and they immediately quit.

He tried to find connections by stealing holes everywhere and went to the Grand Council to file a complaint with the emperor.

But they were not as strong as Wenxiang. Instead of suing Wenxiang, Wenxiang arrested several of them who were the leaders of the trouble. Wenxiang was in trouble now.

To be honest, those who can invest in railways are all rich people. They are not as high-ranking as Wenxiang and cannot compete with Wenxiang, a dragon from across the river, but he is a local tyrant.

If I can't deal with you in the officialdom, I'll ask the underworld to deal with you.

The wealthy Sichuan families who suffered losses immediately sought out the Pao brothers, the mortal enemies of the Qing Dynasty.

These days, due to the Qing Dynasty's unremitting suppression for many years, the Tiandihui has staged rebellions many times, and too many leaders have been killed. Its vitality has been severely damaged and it is no longer viable. Only the Pao brothers of the Gelaohui are left in the Hongmen.

The Pao brothers in Sichuan suddenly received large sums of money from wealthy people and became very powerful.

Huohuo, we have been fighting against the Qing Dynasty and restoring the Ming Dynasty for more than 200 years. When have we ever received so many donations?
Those rich people are usually the running dogs of the Qing court. This time, the bureaucrats and the rich are fighting each other, and the rich are pushed to our side. This is a major benefit for the anti-Qing and restoration of Ming cause.

Soon, rebels rose up in the territory under the jurisdiction of the Governor-General of Sichuan, targeting Wen Xiang, a loyal minister of the Qing Dynasty.

Wenxiang was a loyal official, regardless of his intelligence. As soon as he arrived in Sichuan and took office, he immediately seized the military power and soon discovered something wrong with the new army.

He immediately took drastic measures and kicked out all members of the "Literary Society" in the new army.

Wenxiang had the New Army at his disposal, and he could suppress any rebellion. In the past few months, Wenxiang had suppressed several Gelaohui rebellions, killing many people.

The Qing court liked loyal ministers who dared to take ruthless actions against rebels. The Empress Dowager, the young emperor and most people in the Grand Council agreed with Wenxiang's approach, and the young emperor issued a special decree to commend him.

Wenxiang had the support of the emperor and Empress Dowager, and he was very proud and arrogant. He was the most powerful person at that time.

Well, you go ahead and show off first. Shao Quanzhong has no time to deal with Wenxiang, this jumping clown.

On the Japanese side, the Qing army and the Taiping army continued positional warfare on both sides of Lake Biwa. The 80,000 southern youth soldiers who surrendered in the northern route were also pushed to the front line to fill the trenches and were guarded by 100,000 youth soldiers of the shogunate.

With the Maxim machine gun and TNT-powered artillery, the losses from filling trenches increased greatly.

In just two months, the ratio of 200,000 to 180,000 young soldiers had turned into 150,000 to 100,000. Ahem, the 80,000 surrendered young royalist soldiers were not very willing to contribute...

The casualties in this small battlefield in Japan were nothing compared to those in the European war. Five months later, the German army, under the command of Schlieffen, the commander-in-chief of the Western Front, launched a blitzkrieg against Luxembourg and Belgium. Taking advantage of the artillery firepower of TNT explosives, the British and French forces were quickly defeated in the Battle of Charleroi and Mons, leaving only 15 kilometers from Paris. France was forced to move its capital to Bordeaux.

Then, the two sides fought a great battle on the Marne River.

Thanks to Zhang Siwen's intervention, France carried out industrial integration and greatly increased its scientific research capabilities.
As a result, chemist Edmond Fremy used nickel steel instead of copper to make the barrel, which improved the strength and durability of the barrel.

Schneider developed a 90mm breech-loading gun with a partitioned threaded breech block, which increased the loading speed. This thing was learned from the Krupp cannon after new materials were available. The French cannon was finally not backward.

At the same time, Britain dismantled all the cannons on its warships and sent them to the front line. The number of British and French cannons suddenly exceeded that of Germany, and their combat power increased greatly.

Before the war, the French and Russians were both researching high explosives for the Huai Army. The Russians rushed into battle without finding any, and the French did not discover TNT, but because of an explosion in a dye shop, they discovered picric acid.

Picric acid has a stronger explosive power than TNT, but its properties are very unstable. The French were slowly working on ways to stabilize its properties, but now that the war has begun, they can no longer afford to worry about that and immediately manufacture large quantities of it and send it to the front.

Picric acid was a double-edged sword. It destroyed more than a dozen cannons and killed hundreds in an ammunition depot explosion, but it did help to withstand the Germans' TNT bombardment.

Fortunately, although the British had many guns, they were muzzle-loading guns that took a detour, while Germany also had the killer weapon of smokeless gunpowder primer.

Comparing many factors, Britain and France mobilized 107 million troops in the Battle of the Marne, while Germany mobilized 148 million troops. In the end, Britain and France suffered 26.3 casualties, while Germany suffered 22 casualties.

It seemed that the German army had won, but the German army failed to capture the Marne River and the offensive momentum was stopped.

Schlieffen's strategic goal of quickly taking over France failed, and the two sides began a positional war over a 700-kilometer area from Switzerland to the Pas de Calais.

The Western Front was in a state of chaos, but on the Eastern Front, Russia's attack on East Prussia failed, hundreds of thousands of people were captured, and it was confronting the German army.

The Austro-Hungarian Empire invaded Serbia, with 200,000 troops facing Serbia's 250,000 troops. In the Battle of Mir, Austria-Hungary suffered tens of thousands of casualties, and Serbia lost half of its troops.

Austria-Hungary was gaining the upper hand but could not score any points. Serbia recruited all its citizens and prepared to raise another 200,000 soldiers. The two sides fought fiercely but there was no result yet.

Then, Italy sent 14,000 troops to fight Ethiopia. After five months of fighting, they lost...

Ethiopia mobilized 100,000 soldiers with cold weapons, including 10,000 cavalry, and managed to defeat 14,000 well-equipped Italians. It was even more powerful than the Qing Dynasty was at the beginning.

The Italians were so embarrassed that they immediately sent out 17,000 troops for a second expedition. It is said that Ethiopia mobilized 120,000 troops this time...

Well, I don't have time to care about Italy. On the Ottoman Empire side, Shao Quanxiao's 200,000 men were still in Thrace to contain the Turkish First and Second Corps.

The British and French attacks on the Gallipoli Peninsula were still not going well, and they were pushed back to the coast by Türkiye's elite Fifth Army, and the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps suffered heavy losses.

In Baku, Russia's 50,000 troops were fighting against the 116,000 troops of the Turkish Third Army, and were waiting for him to rescue them.

The intelligence from Syria and Jordan was urgently sent by cavalry from the rear. The two mechanized divisions of the Sinai New Army and the Arab New Army were attacking all the way, and the Ottoman Fourth Army was being defeated.

After reading a lot of intelligence, Shao Quanzhong participated in the staff meeting chaired by Grant.

The next day, the Huai Army marched northward, and two days later, arrived at the city of Tbilisi. The first real battle with the Ottomans was about to begin.

(End of this chapter)