Wild North America 1846

The secret trip of the Holy Emperor Taizu of the Tang Empire to Europe was classified as the empire's top secret, and all information was blocked.

In order to create an illusion, all the palace servants in the Wanshou Palace where Chaoge lived were in a de facto state of confinement.

The Holy Emperor Taizu used the name of a count named Li from the Tang Empire to conceal his true identity. He arrived in Berlin, the capital of the German Empire, on March 3 and moved into a nearby palace-style house on Kurfürstendamm.

Berlin's Kurfürstendamm is the most prosperous and lively place in the country. Most of the buildings along the street are hundreds of years old, and there are many palace-style buildings of various sizes.

Today, the entire Kurfürstendamm is an asset of the Tang royal family. Many nobles and wealthy businessmen from the Tang Dynasty live here, and it has become Berlin's Chinatown.

When I came to the German Empire, I immediately felt the tense atmosphere of preparation for war.

In late March, Berlin had just gone through a severe winter and ushered in a spring that was warm and cold at first.

Among the crowds in the streets and alleys, there were many Junkers military nobles in military uniforms, and the proportion of soldiers was significantly higher than usual.

In the suburbs of Berlin
There are three large-scale military bases, stationed with no less than 21 field mobile troops, as many as 14 infantry divisions, and five heavy artillery divisions.

Compared with the new M1897 75mm field gun, which is regarded as a treasure by the French Army, the German Empire's Army believes in "power can produce miracles" and is generally equipped with 105mm and 122mm large-caliber field heavy artillery.

Each fully-equipped German division has two infantry brigades and one artillery brigade, with a total strength of approximately 18 people.

Each infantry brigade has two regiments, and each infantry regiment has three infantry battalions and a machine gun company. The infantry is uniformly equipped with Mauser 1898 bolt-action rifles, and the machine gun company is equipped with 12 Maxim heavy machine guns.

炮兵旅下辖4个营，一个重炮营装备12门152毫米野战中炮，另有三个营分别装备12门克虏伯105毫米口径野战炮，总计48门重炮。

compared with

The French army is equipped with 4 battalions of M1897 75mm field guns. This field gun is regarded as top secret by the French army and information is strictly blocked from Germany.

All French artillery training takes place at the Beluge military base on the outskirts of Paris. Most of the more than 4000 75mm field guns are locked in warehouses and cannot be seen at all.

Although this M1897 75mm field gun is slightly inferior in caliber, it uses a revolutionary hydraulic recovery mechanism and can fire up to 16 rounds per minute, which is 2 to 3 times that of the German Krupp artillery.

As long as a few artillery battalions are concentrated, a dense rain of shrapnel fragments can be formed on a wide field battlefield of 7 to 8 kilometers, causing fatal damage to the German troops exposed in the field.

After Richard arrived in Berlin, he discovered the difference in just a few days.

The price of bread is 3 times that of North America, the price of milk is 5.6 times that of North America, the price of sugar is 11 times that of North America, the price of chocolate is 8.2 times that of North America, the price of kerosene is 4.5 times that of North America...

The income of an ordinary Berlin working-class family is barely enough to fill their stomachs, and it would be difficult to buy even two pairs of wool socks.

factors causing all this
The reason lies in the militarism of the German Empire. A large number of armed forces engaged in an arms race, invested huge sums of money in the production of weapons, equipment and ammunition for storage, and invested in the maritime arms race of the High Seas Fleet at all costs.

In order to raise funds, the German government introduced many taxes with various names, which invisibly pushed up the cost of living for ordinary workers' families.

Most of the income is used to buy food, and very little can be used to improve life.

This has little impact on the middle and upper classes with sufficient financial resources, but the majority of workers are feeling the pressure, voices of dissatisfaction among the people are rising one after another, and social conflicts are becoming increasingly acute.

A government that makes life difficult for its people is definitely not a qualified government.

This is the current situation in the German Empire. In order to satisfy the ambition of Kaiser Wilhelm II, colonial expansion was carried out at any cost and an arms race was carried out at any cost.

In Li Cha's opinion

Kaiser Wilhelm II had gone crazy, and Tsar Nicholas II had the same symptoms.

What these two people have in common is that they are extremely arrogant and conceited. They are completely unable to see the suffering and great pressure that the country and its people are enduring, and they drive the country to move forward on the road of destruction.

current stage
Germany's crazy military expansion has reached 161 million troops, and plans to further expand to 230 million troops, arming a full 145 divisions, which is seven times the strength of the Tang Empire's army.

This year's military expenditure has reached 22 billion German gold marks, which is 4.92 times that of the Royal Army of the Tang Empire.

In terms of total economic scale, the German Empire, which ranked second in the world's economic scale, had a gross national product that was only 2% of that of the Tang Empire, a little more than one-third.

The confrontation between the two major military camps in Europe is now tense, and no one is willing to give in, because any concession will lead to devastating results.

After decades of hate propaganda, there are huge irreconcilable conflicts between Britain and Germany, Germany and France, Russia and Austria, and France and Italy, and the people regard each other as enemies.

This situation is very terrifying. In order to kill the French and British, the fanatical German people would rather go hungry and work overtime in the factory, tightening their belts to support the arms race.

In this fanatical atmosphere of war preparations, anyone who dares to back down will first be torn to pieces by the anger of the public. There will never be a second way out.When the entire European continent is trapped in this dangerous spiral of war, there is no power left to stop it.

Germany, France, Russia, Britain, Italy and the Austro-Hungarian Empire are all expanding their armaments, and military training scenes can be seen everywhere from cities to villages.

only this year

上述各国经受军事训练的人数就分别达到490万、506万、565万、120万，211万和300万，这股热潮甚至蔓延到欧洲小国比利时。

The number of Belgian troops is only 5.4, but the total number of people receiving military training has reached 33, and the entire Belgium has only more than 310 million people.

What is this concept?
Basically, all Belgian adult men from the age of 18 to 45, except for a few government clerks, are receiving military training and preparing to go to the battlefield.

The whole of Europe is now a volcano ready to erupt. As long as any spark is ignited, the war will soon spread to the entire Europe and even surrounding areas.

As far as Richard knows

Germany has formulated a plan to immediately abandon German East Africa, German West Africa, German East Peninsula and other German colonies once war breaks out.

In fact

Germany could not keep these overseas colonies. The High Seas Fleet that William II spent a lot of money to build faced the world's most powerful Royal Navy of the British Empire, which could not even break out of the North Atlantic.

After the Tang Empire occupied Mozambique, its next plan was to take over German East Africa.

Anyway, it's free, don't don't want it for nothing.

This situation made Richard feel dumbfounded when he saw it. Since it could not keep its overseas colonies, what was the point of Germany's laborious colonial expansion?
Former German Prime Minister Bismarck had long seen this, so he firmly opposed colonial expansion, which was a waste of money and manpower.

Only from this point of view
Former German Prime Minister Pismer's international strategic vision was even more advanced than that of Kaiser Wilhelm II.

With so much money wasted on colonial expansion, wouldn't it be good to create 40 more infantry divisions?Wouldn't it be good to stock up on 5000 more cannons?

Early September
Saint Petersburg on the Gulf of Finland
Richard and his party, whose pseudonym was Count Li Mingjian, arrived in St. Petersburg during this sunny season and then moved into a Russian-style palace building.

This Russian-style palace building is also one of the assets purchased overseas by the Royal Household Office of the Tang Empire. It was purchased through secret channels, and it cannot be seen that it has any relationship with the royal family of the Tang Empire.

This has always been a habit of the Tang Dynasty royal family. They always like to hide their assets, and the deeper they are, the better.

so far
Richard himself didn't even know how much property the Eight Major Funds of the Imperial Family of the Tang Dynasty had.
Each of the eight major funds has its own fixed asset investment category, and the relevant important land deed documents are locked in a secret vault in the inner courtyard of the palace, and will not be seen again for decades or hundreds of years.

In this life of rebirth, Richard came to Tsarist Russia for the first time, and this important seaside city was filled with a strong Nordic style.

Compared with the Nordic countries, the Russian-style palace architecture is more majestic, covers a wider area and is more exquisite, showing the great style of a great country.

Strolling the streets of St. Petersburg

A large number of palace-style buildings here belong to Tsarist Russian nobles and wealthy businessmen. Under the reflection of the blue water of the Gulf of Finland, it seems like a world in a fairy tale.

But as long as you walk into the slums, you can see many ragged Tsarist Russian civilians and workers. Most of them are patched and can only survive on the lowest-grade black bread.

The polarization between rich and poor is extremely serious here, and there are many beggars and vagrants.

Except for the shipyards and telegraph offices aided by Britain and France, there are almost no other modern industries in the entire city. The industry is still dominated by backward manual workshops, and productivity is very low.

Tsarist Russia is such a contradictory country. Although it has announced that it has liberated serfs, there are actually a large number of serf estates in the vast Ukraine and Belarus and the hinterland of Tsarist Russia.

In the eyes of the Tsarist Russian nobles, these lowly serfs could not even be called human beings.

Such a backward agricultural country has been a nightmare for the whole of Europe for more than 100 years. It is famous for its steady stream of serf soldiers, known as "gray cattle" or "steam rollers".

it's here

Richard also saw many troops training. Unlike Germany, many Tsarist Russian soldiers only had a wooden stick in their hands and used it instead of rifle training.

Even with such crude conditions, Tsarist Russia was still full of strong aggressive ambitions, from top to bottom.

Therefore, this is really a magical nation, which has almost completely inherited the Mongolian aggression genes.