Chapter 94: Kitchener Steps Down
While Lelouch was returning home in glory, across the strait on the other side, recently, the situation in Britannia domestically has been anything but peaceful.
The navy has cumulatively lost 1 battleship, 15 pre-dreadnoughts, and 3 battlecruisers, totaling 19 large warships permanently sunk, with over 17,000 navy soldiers killed in action, drowned, or captured.
With such heavy losses, how can they explain it without someone taking responsibility?
The army’s situation is even more outrageous; the expeditionary force was annihilated, and Commander-in-Chief Marshal French directly surrendered to the enemy. The Ypres-Dunkirk Campaign, lasting several months, ultimately ended with the army suffering over 210,000 annihilated.
And the navy paid such a huge sacrifice to rescue the army, but the end result was barely enough to serve as a fig leaf—
Before the encirclement closed at Dunkirk, the British Army withdrew the heavily damaged 3rd Army back home for rest and reorganization; at that time, a considerable portion of the 3rd Army’s soldiers were already wounded soldiers, barely preserving the army’s only intact army-level unit.
The only other units rescued intact were the 29th Division of the 4th Army and the 1st Cavalry Division of the Cavalry Corps, these two division-level units. When they withdrew, they also brought back around 20,000 other friendly forces and wounded.
The entire British Army’s veterans are left with only 4 division-level formations; the rest are all scattered stragglers.
In the end, the veterans who fought bloody battles on the European continent, including wounded soldiers, totaled 45,000 who returned.
The total number of army veterans dropped sharply from 260,000 pre-war to 45,000; this loss is not just simply over 210,000—it will greatly suppress the army’s training and expansion speed.
With 80% of veterans killed, wounded, or captured, relying on the remaining 20% seeds to train new recruits will at least delay an entire training cycle—because the old-bring-new expansion model at the time basically expanded at a ratio of three to five times per round. And each round’s training and combat break-in period is at least half a year.
In other words, to form a new regiment with 4 battalions under it, it must have at least 1 battalion of veterans mixed with 3 battalions of new recruits to become combat-ready. Otherwise, if the veteran ratio is too low, training efficiency and unit combat effectiveness cannot be guaranteed.
And the total number of British Army veterans that can be mobilized（including colonial troops） dropped sharply from 260,000 to 45,000, which is roughly equivalent to losing an entire expansion cycle.
At least half a year later, by August this year, Britannia’s combat-ready army soldiers can recover to a scale of over 200,000, whereas in original Earth history at that time point, the British Army theoretically could approach a million（but actually did not achieve it, because they later lost another big batch in the Dardanelles Strait campaign）
Then another half year later, they would roughly have the capability to launch the Somme campaign.
But now this rhythm has been forcibly interrupted, and the British Army’s construction cycle has been pushed back by half a year overall.
Losing 200,000 army veterans might not seem like much to their ally the Frankish Kingdom; since the war began, the Franks have lost several times 200,000.
But that’s because the Frankish Kingdom is an army powerhouse, maintaining a million veterans pre-war, expanding while fighting and honing them, so they can withstand losing several 200,000s.
For Britannia, such an army small nation, with so few seeds, 200,000 is absolutely a severe wound to the foundation.
The Dardanelles Strait campaign, originally launched in the first half of this year in history, definitely cannot be launched now, at least delayed to the second half. And even if they go, the troops’ scale and combat power cannot compare to original history.
On the Eastern Front battlefield, without the British Army to pin down the Ottoman Army, the Lushans’ pressure will be even greater, and a series of chain reactions could occur.
For such heavy losses, starting from February 23rd—that is, the day the Germanians across the strait widely publicized in newspapers the news of “capturing and forcing down French”—a not insignificant personnel earthquake occurred in London’s Britannian Cabinet.
Everyone engaged in fierce arguments, and the Conservatives also launched fierce attacks on the Liberals in power, forcing Prime Minister Asquith to hold accountable, remove several ministers to bear the people’s anger. If not, then Prime Minister Asquith should roll out himself!
This matter hadn’t yet been argued to a conclusion when, at the beginning of March, a bunch of new bad news came back: surprisingly, a small number of British Army POWs actively defected and stated willingness to fight for the Germanians! And a considerable number of Indian POWs also turned coat—this was simply an utter humiliation!
The Conservatives immediately launched even fiercer attacks and demands for accountability against Prime Minister Asquith’s Liberal cabinet!
This attack reached its peak during the House of Lords meeting on March 2nd.
……
March 2nd, morning, London, House of Lords chamber.
Just after the meeting began, the Conservative leader Andrew Bonar Law took the lead in fiercely attacking the prime minister: “Prime Minister Asquith! History has already proven that your lax style is fundamentally unsuitable for leading the great Britannian Empire in such harsh wartime conditions!”
Then, Bonar Law’s confidant, the Conservative MP and media mogul Mark Aitken, immediately followed up, unleashing full firepower:
“Not only are you incompetent on the battlefield, but the people you use have no willpower, no sense of honor or loyalty—they’re just a bunch of turncoats! The generals you send out only know to grovel and surrender voluntarily!
The soldiers you manage actually resent that ‘the enemy’s soldier pay is still not as high as rear workers’ wages’ and even defect!
Your treasury and economic management departments turn a blind eye to the chaos in the rear labor market, letting bankers and military industry capitalists casually raise workers’ wages, causing some key skilled workers’ wages to be dozens of times higher than soldiers’! Making the soldiers psychologically imbalanced!”
After Aitken and others chimed in, Bonar Law sternly concluded:
“Your Excellency Prime Minister! Aren’t you encouraging the people to evade military service by all means? Now from London to Manchester, from Coventry to Glasgow, large numbers of citizens are appearing with fake medical certificates and fake disability proofs to evade enlistment!
Everyone knows that working in rear factories as workers earns many times more than going to the front line to sacrifice for the country! Your economic management model isn’t encouraging people to abandon honor and pursue only profit?! Someone must take responsibility for this! And someone must take responsibility for the previous series of defeats!”
In the House of Lords, the surging tide of accountability and cursing soon left Prime Minister Asquith tottering.
Asquith gritted his teeth, his vision going black, nearly collapsing several times.
He knew that after holding out for over a week, he finally couldn’t drag it on.
Today, he had to sacrifice at least one pawn each in the military and economic departments, or he absolutely couldn’t pass this hurdle.
He had no way to argue, only inwardly cursing those mysterious vicious bastards among the Germanians across the strait countless times.
Exactly which black-hearted rotten-lunged thing would think of such a poisonous scheme, using the British Army as bait on the battlefield—not only annihilating the army, but also heavily damaging the lured navy.
Exactly which black-hearted rotten-lunged thing would play propaganda war, thinking of utilizing Britannia’s absolute free market economy characteristics, targeting weaknesses with mad attacks, stirring up soldiers’ dissatisfaction that rear workers earn more than frontline desperados, inciting massive waves of defection.
Never heard before that those honest Germanians would play dirty tricks and propaganda war! Is there some guy in Germania whose IQ and EQ mutated?!
Finally, after several hours of struggling to fend off, Prime Minister Asquith was forced to make three decisions:
First, abandon the vested interests that the Liberals hogged at the start of the war, and was forced to promise a coalition cabinet, absorbing some Conservative figures to serve as cabinet ministers.
The Liberals were originally elected in 1908 and legitimately in power; in 1911, Asquith pushed some reforms, re-elected and reformed the cabinet, succeeding in reappointment once.
Calculated, without the World War breaking out, with Britannia’s absolutely indulgent free economic policy at the time, and outward expansion, the Liberals could have steadily held power for a long time.
But now, because of their indulgent economic policies, it has backfired. Those policies only benefit big capitalists, not centralization and coordination, leading to the frontline battle situation rotting.
They could only cede part of the great power.
That day, after intense discussion, the opposing Conservative bigwig Bonar Law was finally absorbed by Prime Minister Asquith, becoming the de facto “deputy prime minister,” able to intervene in many decisions.
This was the biggest loss for Asquith’s cabinet.
And further down, Prime Minister Asquith lost two important cabinet ministers today.
Either the Army Ministry or the Naval Ministry must have at least one that couldn’t be kept.
Before today, Asquith was still weighing whether to abandon Naval Minister Walton or Army Minister Earl Kitchener.
Walton’s problem was that he had already led the navy to defeat twice in a row.
In the Ostend Campaign last November, that madman Hipper sank 4 Royal Navy pre-dreadnoughts and a bunch of auxiliary ships at the cost of not even sinking one warship, causing 8,000 navy officers and men casualties and drownings.
This time was even more outrageous, over a dozen large warships sunk, over 17,000 killed/drowned/captured.
After these two defeats, the opposition’s calls for Minister Walton to step down were growing louder.
However, Walton’s only extenuating circumstance was that in this major defeat, he was dragged down by the army. If not for the army’s incompetence being encircled, forcing the navy to rescue, the navy wouldn’t have accidentally fallen into the trap.
As for the matter of being chased and finished off by Hipper at the end, Britannia’s top brass still considers it an accident to this day.
Could only blame that madman Hipper for being too bold, completely not playing by the rules, behavior unpredictable by logic, like a mentally ill rogue acting independently.
So the extra losses caused by this point couldn’t be blamed on Walton’s head; the opposing Conservatives didn’t plan to harp on this detail, just focusing on the earlier points, grabbing the big and letting go of the small to attack.
On the other side, Earl Kitchener’s problem at the Army Minister was that he lost one fewer major defeat than the navy, just one campaign overall, but the scale of his defeat was much larger than the navy’s—not holding the railway line at first, then not holding Dunkirk City later.
Moreover, the army’s incompetence, having coastal defense batteries seized by the enemy and muzzles turned to hit the navy, causing how much extra loss to the navy? Even if you can’t fight, when you see coastal defense fortresses about to be seized by the enemy, can’t you find a way to self-destruct?
Adding up these responsibilities, ultimately Kitchener and Walton’s issues were about even, perhaps Kitchener slightly heavier.
After all, Walton got into trouble because he went to rescue Kitchener.
And today’s new situation completely tipped the scales.
Because the Germanians across the strait waged propaganda war on POWs, causing large numbers of army soldiers to defect, directly publicly stating willingness to fight for the enemy, no longer for “a capitalist country that arbitrarily lets rear workers’ wages far exceed soldiers’ pay.”
This isn’t simple surrender or capture, but large-scale active, sincere defection. The nature is much more vile.
With this incident, Prime Minister Asquith could no longer protect Earl Kitchener.
Finally, before the meeting ended that day, he reached a compromise with the opposition: remove Earl Kitchener from the Army Minister position, let him return to the Middle East region to continue as Governor of Egypt and Sudan, responsible for pinning down the Ottomans on the Eastern Front Southern Front.
Before the World War broke out, Earl Kitchener was originally doing this; he rose in his military career by bloody slaughtering the Sudanese Mahdi’s rebellion, using the lives of hundreds of thousands of Sudanese people.
So returning to Egypt to fight the Ottomans in the Middle East region, this business Kitchener is more familiar with; better let him go back.
Coordinating the overall army, he has been proven incapable.
Seeing the prime minister finally vacate the Army Minister position, the opposition didn’t pursue further; they also thought Kitchener could at least handle the Egypt Governor job, so it’s making the best use of talent.
After Kitchener’s dejected departure, Prime Minister Asquith privately instructed him: “Go to Egypt and work a few months, I’ll find a way to pull you back. After all, you have high prestige in the army; this time go cooperate well with the Lushans on the Eastern Front, help the Lushans pin down part of the Ottoman Army.
In the future, I’ll let you take full responsibility for the army’s external liaison tasks; whenever the Imperial Army needs to cooperate with allies or even divide the Middle East, you can contribute, and if you do well, no worry about not coming back.”
Earl Kitchener could only swallow this anger, and inwardly gained a rough understanding of his new career path: currently only responsible for managing colonies like Egypt and Sudan, but if he performs well, in the future cooperating with Lushans or even Franks to divide the entire Middle East, he can also lead.
This way, as long as they win this World War and dismember the Ottomans, his governorate won’t just be Egypt and Sudan, but also include new colonies in other Middle East regions that the empire wins in the future! He will become the Governor of the entire British Middle East!
The prime minister painted such a big pie; the follow-up depends on his own performance, whether he can eat it. After all, those lands are still in enemy hands; need to extinguish the Ottomans first to become Middle East Governor.
The prime minister also privately promised him that as long as he does well, the 45,000 escaped army veterans and the 200,000 new recruits being urgently trained will be reassigned to him, prioritizing supplementation to the Middle East war zone in the future.
As for Britannia homeland, as long as the newer recruits hold it, it’s fine; anyway with the Royal Navy, enemies can’t land on the homeland. The British troops on the Frankish battlefield are all annihilated, Belgians fully occupied by enemies; Britain doesn’t plan to return to Western Front land battles short-term, so take the army to the southeast line.
And with Kitchener’s resignation as Army Minister, Naval Minister Walton was kept.
The opposition didn’t pursue relentlessly, letting Walton continue and observe further.
After preserving his position, Walton was desperately thinking of ways to turn the tables. In original history, he was already organizing the Dardanelles Strait landing battle at this time, that is, the Gallipoli Campaign.
But now with the army losing so much, this campaign obviously can’t start.
But his old partner Earl Kitchener was demoted back to Egypt as governor, and the empire’s future focus is also on the Middle East battlefield fighting the enemy.
After much thought, Walton felt he still had to launch a landing battle against the Ottomans, just delayed in time, at least to the second half of this year.
After the Army Minister position became vacant, after some wrangling, Chancellor of the Exchequer Lloyd George temporarily reassigned to Army Minister; when a suitable candidate comes, find someone else—temporarily letting an original finance person manage the army is also considering that currently the army has no combat tasks, only reconstruction, so someone who manages money and resources is enough. Wait a few months until the army needs to fight again, then find a military expert to take over.
（Note: In history, Kitchener was not dismissed because he didn’t suffer such a defeat; he was eventually killed. After his death, Asquith’s cabinet urgently had Lloyd George serve concurrently as Army Minister for a while, then switched to a professional）
Parliament also passed a resolution: during Lloyd George’s tenure as Army Minister, set up a new “Ministry of Munitions,” also headed by Lloyd George. Specifically responsible for wartime economy and military industry production coordination, to avoid the previous issue of the Treasury Department, Army Ministry, and Imperial Trade Commission overlapping management and multiple authorities.
The reason “black-hearted capitalists wildly raising workers’ wages, causing workers’ wages far higher than frontline soldiers’ pay” such morale-damaging incident happened before was because no dedicated department was in charge.
For this previously unencountered situation, the Treasury Department, Army Ministry, and Trade Commission pushed responsibility around; black-hearted capitalists also stuffed lots of money to the heads of these three departments to not interfere with military factory workers’ wage hikes, resulting in nothing getting done.
In the future, if black-hearted capitalists commit the crime of randomly raising workers’ wages again, go straight to Lloyd George; if he can’t manage it, count it as his dereliction.
As for after Lloyd George takes Army Minister and Minister of Munitions, the vacated original Chancellor of the Exchequer position goes to the opposition leader Andrew Bonar Law—in Britannia’s political tradition, “Chancellor of the Exchequer” is basically equivalent to “deputy prime minister,” second only to the prime minister.
Prime Minister Asquith compromising with the opposition for coalition cabinet naturally had to vacate the plump Chancellor of the Exchequer spot for the other side.
Finally, Asquith’s cabinet not only needed to dismiss one Army Minister, but also in the aforementioned economic management area, needed to take down another as scapegoat.
The investigation result was dismissing the Chief of the Imperial Trade Commission, Walter Runciman.
Walter Runciman took ultimate responsibility for the previous “rear disorderly wage hikes leading to frontline soldiers’ dissatisfaction and defection” incident, directly dismissed to civilian.
Later, it was found he received many benefits from military industry capitalists and their backer bankers, directly thrown into prison.
This Walter Runciman isn’t wronged at all, because he was originally an extreme free trade, extreme free market economy supporter, opposing all economic supervision, opposing all macroeconomic control.
Now with the war fought like this, he was still advocating pure free trade, refusing economic supervision; if he doesn’t die, who does.
After Walter Runciman was dismissed, replacing him as Chief of the Imperial Trade Commission was Lloyd George’s original Treasury Comptroller, Austin Chamberlain.
（Note: This Austin Chamberlain is not the same as the Chamberlain decades later who said “I brought peace for our time”; he is that later Chamberlain’s older brother.）
……
Two days later, Ollie Empire capital, Vienna.
Lelouch, finally arriving in Vienna by train, while getting off and waiting for attendants to unload his luggage, boredly stretched and loosened his muscles.
While stretching, he glanced at a newsstand on the platform, strolled over, and bought a newspaper.
Just opened and glanced, he saw a big news headline.
《Britannian Cabinet Earthquake》:
Due to previous consecutive defeats, and large numbers of British Army and Indian POWs defecting.
British Army Minister and Chief of the Imperial Trade Commission, two ministerial-level officials dismissed.
Original Chancellor of the Exchequer reassigned to Army Minister, and Minister of Munitions.
Original Treasury Comptroller reassigned to Trade Commission Chief.
Opposition leader Andrew Bonar Law absorbed into cabinet, serving as Chancellor of the Exchequer, second only to Prime Minister Asquith.
After reading the news, Lelouch’s mouth finally couldn’t help but curl up.
This could be considered him slightly scheming to take down two British ministers.
This is the fate of being enemies with him Lelouch, and merely just the beginning.
Afterwards, all those robed beasts in Britain’s court, he will pull them down one by one, rub them in the mud.
Let those utterly immoral shit-stirrers create chaos worldwide!
In a delighted mood, Lelouch decided to drink a few extra glasses well after going home today, to celebrate this double blessing day.
“Sir, luggage all unloaded, where do we go now?” Captain Klose, company commander of guards, pulled Lelouch’s mind back from his smug fantasizing.
Lelouch thought: “Go to the Vienna tax office, my brother-in-law works there; first persuade him and my sister to jump ship.”
