Chapter 215: The Tsar Is Playing Right Along
Many of Duke Rupprecht’s poisonous schemes, taught by Lelouch, could not be spoken of in the open, but their effect on governing the nation was absolutely outstanding.
Some of these matters, when unavoidable, had to be discussed with prisoners of war and Minister Baden of the Occupied Area Affairs Department.
Although Minister Baden was a well-known figure of the center-left, he was very pragmatic and not bound by dogma. He could understand and cooperate on certain matters and guarantee absolute secrecy externally.
This was another benefit of the schemes Lelouch provided them: all of Lelouch’s schemes had an alternative logic that could explain them on the surface, so there was no fear of leaks.
For example, he decided to prevent the Emperor and Hindenburg from a hasty attack on Poland, aiming for a delayed assault, but he would not reveal his true motives to anyone. He had preemptively planted the technical reason that “tanks cannot ignite their diesel in the coldest part of winter, so they will be immobilized and unable to advance,” which could be publicly stated.
Therefore, no one could blame him for the slow rescue of the Poles in the end. It was like in the World War on the Earth plane, when the people of Warsaw at the last moment wanted to rescue themselves without relying on external forces, but external forces were unable to advance by the Vistula River due to technical malfunctions and needed to rest, and finally, the people of Warsaw were suppressed.
In that incident, according to history, the Poles could not blame anyone; they brought it upon themselves.
And Lelouch’s current situation will only be handled more perfectly than those above. As long as they follow his plan, posterity will have nothing to say, no matter how they look at it.
This is the reputation of the foremost strategist in the world.
After finishing the handling of occupied areas, spoils of war, and the arrangements for the pace and priorities of the next three months of warfare, Lelouch rested for another day in Kyiv, then took his leave of Duke Rupprecht and prepared to return to Berlin to report to the Potsdam Military Academy.
In the next three months, he might not necessarily stay at the Potsdam Military Academy the entire time; he could also visit major military industry enterprises in the rear and lay the groundwork for military technology development. He would also check on the expansion of his sister and brother-in-law’s electric furnace steel mill and see if the company that uses substandard steel to build wartime railway steel rails and wartime railway cars had successfully started production.
The entire journey by train alone would take two or three days, and he estimated he would arrive in Berlin on January 12th.
…
To speak of other matters.
While Lelouch returned to Berlin, dusty from his travels, across the strait, the Britannian Domestic front and the Lushanian domestic front to the northeast were shrouded in gloom and experiencing significant upheaval due to the disastrous defeat and the annihilation of large armies in the Gallipoli Campaign and the Kyiv Campaign.
In London, at 10 Downing Street, the Prime Minister’s residence, Prime Minister Asquith had been confined to his room for several consecutive days, claiming illness and refusing to see anyone.
Specific affairs were temporarily handled by Chancellor of the Exchequer Andrew Bonar Law and Minister of Armament and Army Minister Lloyd George.
He knew very well that with the complete and utter failure of the Gallipoli Campaign, resulting in the annihilation of 750,000 troops, not only Naval Minister Walton Spencer would be held accountable, but he himself, the Prime Minister, would likely be unable to remain in office.
The stakes this time were too high, even undermining Greece’s neutrality, causing the Britannian Empire’s diplomatic prestige to plummet significantly and its international reputation to be ruined.
The result was that they had not won the war and had encountered the enemy’s armored assault and infiltration, failing at the last tens of kilometers from Istanbul, with the entire army surrounded…
If Asquith knew Chinese, he would have cried out to the heavens: “Heaven has destroyed me! It is not my fault in the war!”
The reason he had not yet resigned was that at this moment, Britannia had only suffered a complete military defeat, but the complete diplomatic defeat had not yet arrived.
If it were only a military defeat, the resignation of Naval Minister Walton would have been sufficient. If the diplomatic defeat were also to be fully realized, then he, the Prime Minister, would not be able to escape either.
And now, on January 10, 1916. Ten full days after the complete military defeat, the full extent of the diplomatic failure had finally materialized.
That morning, the door to the Prime Minister’s office was opened, and the State Secretary entered Asquith’s office carrying a heavy telegram.
“Prime Minister… This is a telegram from Greece. King Constantine I of Greece announced today that the rebellion within Greece has been successfully concluded. The traitor Venizelos has been captured alive in Thessaloniki and brought back to Athens, where, after an emergency trial, he was publicly executed in Syntagma Square. Approximately 100,000 Athenian citizens witnessed this execution…”
It was over. Everything was over.
The diplomatic failure had also fully arrived.
With the pro-Britannian traitorous Greek proxy, former Prime Minister Venizelos, duly executed as a traitor. It was said that tens of thousands of Athenian citizens threw rotten food scraps at him and spat on his corpse.
Britannia’s previous narrative of “responding to the invitation of the Greek people to help them overthrow the tyrant” had turned into a complete lie and a joke. This was the final blow to the Britannian Prime Minister.
“I… accept responsibility and resign. Please draft a resignation speech for me.” Asquith swallowed with difficulty, but it did not alleviate the dryness and stickiness in his throat. He felt as if his throat had withered, and he could not even muster the strength to speak.
Later that day, Asquith formally announced his resignation, and subsequently, Naval Minister Walton was also forced to resign.
After a series of urgent procedures, George V announced, according to protocol, that Chancellor of the Exchequer Andrew Bonar Law would serve as interim Prime Minister.
Simultaneously, Minister of Armament and Army Minister Lloyd George would be reassigned as Chancellor of the Exchequer and Minister of Armament. This meant replacing Lloyd George’s Army Minister position with Chancellor of the Exchequer. In essence, he was promoted again and would now control both money and armament production, effectively consolidating the coordination chain for the empire’s military industry production resources.
The construction and command of the army would no longer be Lloyd George’s responsibility. From this perspective, this situation was quite good for him, as he would no longer be responsible for any future defeats; he would only be responsible for producing weapons.
If there were no issues with weapon production and quality, but the front-line army still lost, it would not be the fault of the Chancellor of the Exchequer and Minister of Armament.
On the Earth plane, after Asquith was removed, Lloyd George from the same faction should have succeeded him directly, appearing as a “reformer.”
However, in this plane, due to the extremely poor performance of the high-ranking military officials in Britannia, Lloyd George, having served as Army Minister, could not directly ascend. He had some issues, but not as much as the Prime Minister and Naval Minister.
Therefore, the tone of this cabinet reshuffle shifted from “reform” to “start from scratch,” allowing Asquith’s opponents to come to power.
…
Following the major upheaval in Britannian leadership, Andrew Bonar Law, who lacked military experience, successfully came to power as the leader of the opposition.
However, he was also bewildered by the situation.
With the World War having reached this point, were they to sue for peace with Germania? That would be too humiliating and would mean completely betraying Frank and Lusha, as the three had signed a treaty not to make separate peace with Germania. Doing so would completely wipe out Britannia’s diplomatic credit accumulated over centuries.
Therefore, Andrew Bonar Law decided to struggle a bit longer.
Unsure of what to do, he decided to seek advice from Walton, a dismissed minister rumored to have some insights and resources in military matters, though he had been unlucky.
On the morning of the 11th, the first day Bonar Law became Prime Minister, he summoned the now-unemployed Minister Walton to his office to ask for his views on the current situation.
“What do you think? Can Lusha still be saved? To be frank, you are no longer in politics, and we have no conflict of interest. Please speak freely about any suggestions you may have. If they are valuable, I will naturally adopt them.”
If they were unreliable, he would naturally not adopt them, and would just listen, as Bonar Law himself did not understand.
The retired fat Walton was still full of fighting spirit and willing to continue offering advice to those in power, a stark contrast to the completely dejected Prime Minister Asquith.
He straightened his spirits and analyzed diligently:
“The war has reached this stage, and Lusha’s biggest problem is that they have completely lost their ability to regenerate.
Their remaining territory has lost 90% of its coal, 80% of its iron ore, and 60% of its steelmaking capacity compared to its peak. Furthermore, they have a deficit of at least over ten million tons of grain, the most basic necessity.
The most terrifying thing now is not Germania continuing its triumphant advance into Lusha.
If the Germans were to attack, things would be better; at least we could sit back and watch two batches of gray livestock wear each other down, depleting the German manpower reserves.
What is truly terrifying is that Germania will completely occupy Lusha’s core resource areas and slowly digest them for its own use. At the same time, they will continue to deepen the blockade, completely cutting off Lusha’s channels for importing steel, weapons, grain, and coal.
In that case, within a year, Lusha will be reduced to a situation where they cannot even produce guns and cannons and can only fill the gaps with human lives!”
Bonar Law waved his hand, dispelling the cigar smoke that spurted from fat Walton when he got excited, and coldly summarized:
“So, your point is, if we still want to save Lusha, the key is to open up shipping routes and continue to provide Lusha with blood transfusions, so that Lusha’s human resources can be efficiently utilized to continue depleting German manpower?
Be more specific. Which shipping routes are still available to save them? Your Gallipoli plan failed. The Black Sea cannot be saved anymore, and the Baltic Sea has long been a den for the German fleet.”
The situation faced by the Lushanians in this plane was even worse than on the Earth plane, because the Eastern world in this plane was isolated and did not participate in the division of spoils between the empires.
Lusha in this plane did not even have Vladivostok, so there was no Pacific shipping route. They could not rely on the meager capacity of the Siberian Railway.
Therefore, even fat Walton, who was well-versed in naval affairs and had studied the lifelines of maritime trade for half his life, could not offer many options:
“To save Lusha, there are only two paths left: either ensure that weapons, ammunition, and grain can be transported to Lusha through the Arctic Ocean route in the north—this route, it is said, Nicholas II began to exert effort on in late November last year.
They are rushing to build a port called Murmansk at all costs to replace the easily freezing Arkhangelsk port.
But even if the port is built, they will still need to simultaneously rush to lay a railway connecting Saint Petersburg and Murmansk, otherwise, even if the supplies are shipped to Murmansk port, they will only be piled up in warehouses and cannot be transported to Saint Petersburg.
Besides the northern shipping route plan, Lusha’s only other option is to open up the Middle East south of the Caucasus,
From Egypt, controlled by our country, to Syria, Iraq, and Persia, controlled by the Ottomans. Although Lusha lost control of the Black Sea, they can still bypass the Caucasus Mountains through inland transportation on the Caspian Sea.
And we must ensure that grain from India reaches the Caucasus via Iraq or Persia.”
Prime Minister Bonar Law frowned and pondered for a moment, discussing with seemingly little confidence:
“However, regarding the first route you mentioned, the Murmansk issue, there’s nothing we can do to help, right?
Control of the North Sea is definitely not a problem; the German High Seas Fleet can only hide in the turtle shell of the Baltic Sea and dare not come out to contest control of the North Sea. But the construction of Murmansk port and railway can only rely on the Lushanians themselves.
As for the southern Middle Eastern plan, I recall that when the war first began, the Empire attempted to attack the Ottoman region of Iraq from a few chieftain tribes controlled by the Empire on the southern bank of the Gulf, but was disastrously defeated by General Goltz, who was sent by the Germans to the Ottomans as the commander of the Middle Eastern front.
Are you still expecting the Empire’s elite troops to risk a landing in the Middle East? That would be even more suicidal than the Gallipoli Campaign!”
Fat Walton was naturally very resentful when his past mistakes were brought up face-to-face. However, his hatred for Germany made him willing to endure humiliation:
“I know very well that the Empire’s current army strength is no match for the Germans. There is no hope of solving it solely through military means by ourselves.
But if Your Excellency decides to pursue the Middle Eastern route and take another gamble. I know someone named Thomas Edward Lawrence, who might be able to find you another route, to make other ethnic groups in the Middle East ruled by the Ottomans rise up in revolt. Then the Empire would only need to provide them with weapons and ammunition, and let them fight the Germans and Ottomans with their lives!
This young man is absolutely talented in winning over and understanding local people. Foreign Minister Lord Belfort also has a high opinion of him. If you don’t believe me, you can ask Belfort.”
Fat Walton pulled Arthur Balfour to vouch for him, so Prime Minister Bonar Law had to be more cautious and temporarily noted down this name and strategy.
He planned to have a chat with the young man named Lawrence in a few days when he had time.
…
Speak of the Tsar, and the Tsar appears.
While fat Walton and Prime Minister Bonar Law discussed how to save the Tsar, Nicholas II himself was indeed eager to save himself.
The grain shortage in Lusha’s northern cities had already become apparent with the onset of winter.
The reason for this immediate effect was that Lusha’s grain shortage was not a new problem.
The war had caused too much damage to agricultural production, and Lusha had a too high mobilization rate, with a large number of young and middle-aged laborers conscripted into the army. Most of the fields in each province were tilled only by women.
As a poor empire, Lusha did not have agricultural mechanization and basically did not use tractors for farming. As early as the winter of early 1915, cities like Petersburg and Moscow had already experienced famine.
Now, by the end of 1915 and early 1916, it was actually the second winter famine in Lusha since the outbreak of the war.
Under these circumstances, coupled with an additional deficit of over ten million tons of grain, the severity was imaginable.
…
“What is the grain deficit this year? What is the situation in Petersburg, Moscow, Minsk, and Warsaw? How many people have starved to death?”
In the Winter Palace in Petersburg, Nicholas II asked the Minister of the Imperial Court, Ivan Logginovich Goremykin, who had come to pay his respects, with a worried expression.
This Minister of the Imperial Court had been appointed only after the war began. He was originally known for opposing reforms, refusing to make concessions to the bourgeoisie, and oppressing serfs and workers.
He was also very close to Rasputin, a powerful mystic favored by the Tsar, and they often colluded. At this moment, he had to answer this thorny question in a low voice, with downcast eyes:
“According to municipal statistics, the number of civilians who starved to death in Petersburg was 1,620.”
“In reality?”
“Approximately… over 80,000.”
“What? Just in Petersburg alone?” Nicholas II’s eyes widened so much that the wrinkles at the corners of his eyes stretched flat. “Then what will the total be…”
Minister Goremykin: “Your Majesty, the figures for other places have not yet been compiled, but the Council of Ministers is doing its best to stabilize the situation. The situation in Warsaw, Łódź, and other places is infinitely more severe.
Our current strategy is to collect surplus grain from across Poland and western Belarus to ensure supply to the most important cities such as Saint Petersburg, Moscow, and Novgorod.”
Nicholas II sighed heavily: “Even if we transport it, what good will it do? Can the Empire directly distribute grain to the people? How many corrupt officials will take advantage of the distribution process! If we expect the people to buy grain themselves, the price of bread outside has already risen dozens of times! I hear it’s still rising!”
Nicholas II seemed to have some self-awareness and was well aware of how corrupt and filthy the civilian bureaucracy in Lusha was.
Minister Goremykin could not help but blush and quickly explained: “We still have a solution. The Council of Ministers has discussed a solution, which is to provide relief work in lieu of direct relief. Civilians who cannot afford to eat will participate in the concentrated construction of the Murmansk port and the railway connecting Murmansk and Saint Petersburg.”
On the Earth plane, the Murmansk port was finally completed on October 4, 1916 （ Old Calendar September 21st ）. After the port was built, it could indeed be used normally, with cargo ships entering and exiting.
However, the situation with the railway connecting the port was much worse. The railway was nominally put into trial operation on November 3, 1916 （ Old Calendar October 21st ）, exactly one month after the port was completed.
But in reality, apart from a few freight trains running on the day of the announcement of trial operation, it was immediately announced that there were problems and repairs were needed. To put it bluntly, the quality of the railway was not up to standard, and the roadbed would settle when trains ran on it. It was purely a prestige project rushed to meet the Tsar’s demands. By March 1917, when the Tsar was overthrown, the railway had still not truly operated at full speed.
It was said that a massive amount of grain transported from Britannia’s colonies to Lusha was piled up at Murmansk port, but it could not be transported out and there were no proper storage conditions. As a result, tens of thousands of people starved to death daily in Lusha, while countless amounts of grain rotted in the open-air warehouses at Murmansk.
Now, with the loss of the Kievan Rus’ Great Plain and the entire southern resource area, the importance of Murmansk port to Lusha had greatly increased.
The Tsar in this plane clearly could not wait until November of this year for the port to be completed and the railway to be operational. He was determined to solve this problem nearly a year in advance.
Furthermore, due to the strong presence of the Germania Navy in the Baltic Sea, the route that allowed goods to be transported with the covert assistance of Norwegians and some pro-Britannian and pro-Norwegian factions in Sweden was also cut off, and the route from the Gulf of Bothnia to Helsinki could no longer be used.
All these changes made Murmansk the only hope for Lusha to save itself.
Nicholas II finally recognized this situation and decided to show ten times the determination of Qin Shi Huang building the Great Wall and Emperor Yang of Sui building the Grand Canal, to rush the construction of Murmansk port and the Murmansk-Saint Petersburg railway in the harsh winter.
“Alright, there’s no other way now. Announce it as relief work. All surplus labor in the major cities who cannot afford to eat will be sent to build the port and railway, and given food.”
“Your Majesty is wise!” Minister Goremykin breathed a sigh of relief, fortunate to have passed another hurdle.
He actually had more to say but did not: if there was not enough food and many people were destined to starve, the most perfect scenario would be to have those who should starve die in a planned and timely manner.
Otherwise, if they did not die in winter and dragged on until the spring famine, they would consume three more months of grain before dying, and in the end, they would not survive, and would have taken up three months of food for another person who could have survived, resulting in a lose-lose situation.
Therefore, making people build ports and railways in the extreme winter within the Arctic Circle was also an unavoidable measure.
Murmansk port’s latitude is 68.5 degrees.
Anyone who has studied junior high school geography knows that the Earth’s axial tilt is about 23.5 degrees, so places with a latitude higher than 66.5 degrees are within the Arctic Circle and belong to the frigid zone.
Murmansk is 2 degrees further north than the Arctic Circle, and yet now, in this extreme winter lacking food and coal, Lusha has to send millions of people to Murmansk to build railways.
These people are mostly from the urban underclass, who may have been idle laborers or industrial workers, but due to the lack of coal and steel, factories have shut down, and workers have lost their livelihoods. With food prices rising dozens of times higher, they have no choice but to be sent to build roads.
Many more are taken from the Polish region: landlords who resisted the Tsar’s grain requisition, self-employed farmers, Polish landed gentry, in short, all resistors.
From then on, thousands of people died of cold and starvation daily on the construction sites along the Murmansk line.
On January 20th, a great blizzard, the largest on record for that year, occurred. In one night, an astronomical number of people froze to death from hunger on the construction sites. The piles of white bones along the Murmansk railway line were so numerous that the number of human thigh bones far exceeded the number of sleepers.
Ultimately, the number of lives lost by Nicholas II in building this railway and port was several times greater than the losses incurred by Emperor Yang of Sui in digging the Grand Canal and campaigning against Goguryeo three times.
The resentment of the Lushanian people towards Nicholas II was finally ignited. All that was needed now was a spark.
The reason everyone had not immediately rebelled was simply that they felt they could endure a little longer. If, after the railway and Murmansk port were completed and overseas transportation resumed, and the economy recovered, they could tolerate the Tsar’s rule a little longer.
But if, after the railway and port were completed, this vital shipping route were still choked off by the Germania Navy, then there was no doubt that a rebellion to assassinate the Tsar would erupt instantly.
The Murmansk railway and port were the last card Nicholas II was gambling with for the three hundred years of the Romanov dynasty’s rule.
This was a card that required the lives of hundreds of thousands, even millions, to be piled up. If this card were seized, a rebellion would erupt more than half a year earlier than on the Earth plane, which was entirely predictable.
—
PS: I have to go out on Sunday, so I won’t split the 6,000 characters into multiple updates.
