The Ming Dynasty did not revolutionize

Chapter 302 Napoleon did not want to be the king of a fallen country
Talleyrand once again went to see Wang Tingzhen with Napoleon's reply, and Wang Tingzhen again asked the Western Factory to encrypt it and send it back to Shuntian Prefecture.

Zhu Jianxuan laughed after reading Napoleon's letter:

"Let me wait for you for three to five years, then you will really become the emperor of Europe, and you will really be able to bargain with me."

Zhu Jianxuan sighed in his heart, and then responded to Napoleon with a more severe and tough attitude.

Since France knows that its strength is far inferior to that of the Ming Dynasty, it should put itself in the right position.

The Ming Dynasty had its own military plans, which did not necessarily require cooperation from France, and naturally it would not wait for France.

If Russia and the Ottoman Empire continue to exist, they must pay tribute to the Ming Dynasty and become its vassal states. Their future borders in Europe should also be the current borders.

At this time, France had not yet conquered Austria, Hungary and other places, and did not border the Ottoman Empire, so it was not qualified to participate in the plan to dismember the Ottoman Empire.

France must either start cooperating with Ming's actions against Russia as soon as possible, or deal with its own affairs with Ming.

After Zhu Jianxuan finished writing it, he did not ask the Western Factory to send it back immediately, but put it in a drawer first.

Then he asked about the military deployment in various aspects of the Ming Dynasty.

In Zhu Jianxuan's opinion, Napoleon was determined to advance step by step rather than engage in large-scale battles, and it was very likely that he would not launch an expedition to Russia.

Then the Ming Dynasty’s battle strategy could only be to attack Europe first and then Asia.

During the days when Talleyrand traveled back and forth between Berlin and Antwerp, the Ming Dynasty's military mobilization had already begun.

Since the fighting on the front lines in America has ended, the remaining suppression, garrison and exploration tasks can be left to the local militia.

Therefore, the main forces participating in the war in America can be directly transferred to Europe.

The main forces originally from Ming Dynasty, Australia, North America, and Africa were stationed in Mexico, the Caribbean, Panama and other regions for rest and recuperation.

It took them fifteen days to reach the Netherlands by steamship.

It takes twenty days for the main forces from southeastern South America, the La Plata region and Brazil to reach the Netherlands.

It also takes twenty days for the troops from the Nanyang region to travel to Italy.

After Talleyrand made two trips to Berlin and Antwerp, 300,000 main forces of the Ming Dynasty had already arrived in Europe.

Together with the garrisons already stationed in North Africa, the Netherlands, Hadron, Taranto and other places, the number of Ming troops in Europe has exceeded 500,000.

However, they still need some time to rest and stockpile more supplies, and wait for more vassal troops and militia.

So Zhu Jianxuan delayed for another half a month, and the militia from the Ming Dynasty and the vassal armies of Japan and Korea also arrived in Europe along with more military equipment and supplies.

This time, Talleyrand stayed in the Ming Dynasty's European Governor's Office in Antwerp for half a month, and he became a little anxious waiting these days.

Talleyrand could understand that the Ming Emperor might not be satisfied with the conditions proposed by Napoleon, so he needed more time to discuss and bargain with his ministers again.

It’s just because Talleyrand’s contacts with the Ming Dynasty on behalf of France were secret, so I can only live in a separate courtyard these days.

Talleyrand felt inexplicably anxious because he could not go out without permission or contact anyone irrelevant to him.

It was not until Zhu Jianxuan's response was delivered that Talleyrand was finally relieved.

Wang Tingzhen met Talleyrand again, and just like last time, he handed the sealed box handed over by the Western Factory to Talleyrand with both hands.

Talleyrand took it with both hands and said goodbye.

This time, Talleyrand rode his horse himself and rushed back to Berlin as quickly as possible with his cavalry guards to present Zhu Jianxuan's response to Napoleon.

After reading it, Napoleon showed no surprise and his expression became extremely serious and gloomy.

Talleyrand asked tentatively:
"Your Majesty, how did the Emperor of the Ming Dynasty respond?"

Napoleon handed the letter to Talleyrand:

"See for yourself."

Talleyrand took a quick glance, and then his expression became the same as Napoleon's:

"Your Majesty the Emperor of the Ming Dynasty is going to declare war on Russia immediately?"

Neither Talleyrand nor Napoleon paid much attention to Zhu Jianxuan's deliberate tough and nasty attitude in expressing his contempt.

Zhu Jianxuan felt that he had a bad attitude and that his arrogant words were true in the eyes of the two of them. They could completely accept this status.

Neither Talleyrand nor Napoleon cared about the attitude and were directly worried about the future situation in France.

Napoleon walked to the wall and looked at the map of Europe hanging on the wall, half talking to himself and half responding to Talleyrand's question:

"The Ming Dynasty does have this capability. They can mobilize millions of troops and deploy millions of troops on multiple battlefields at the same time.

“But the biggest problem is where the battlefield that Ming wants to participate in is, and it may not necessarily be Russia.

"News has been coming from Naples and Hanover these days that the Ming fleet's activities near Taranto and Hadron are becoming more frequent.

“There should be a large influx of supplies and even troops coming in.

"Murat is worried that the Ming Dynasty may be preparing for war against France, so he suggested that we take the initiative to attack and eliminate Taranto and Hadron.

"The key point is that during these two correspondences with the Ming Emperor, the Ming Emperor never responded directly to the ceasefire."

Talleyrand tried to analyze it:
"Is the secret communication between Ming and us just to delay the experiment so that Oman can dispatch more troops?
"Then your majesty, how do you think we should respond to the Ming Dynasty now? Should we immediately start an expedition to Russia?"

Napoleon raised his head with a bit of despair in his heart and sighed very rarely:
"I can actually accept the conditions of the Ming Dynasty. It is not impossible to place the future border of France and even Europe on the current Russian border.

“Comparing the so-called conquerors in European history with the dynasties of Shenzhou, we can clearly understand that simply conquering land does not have much significance.

“The key is to truly control the land and population in the core areas and ensure that these places can exert most of their power stably.

"These core forces do not need to be too large in size to be used as a weight to move the entire world.

“So we don’t need to rush to occupy too much land.

“But the problem is that even if we accept Ming’s request and fully cooperate with it, Ming may not follow the planned plan.

"Our main force is on an expedition to Russia, and the Ming army prepared in Europe is coming out to cut off our retreat. What can we do?
"Unless France pays tribute to the Ming Dynasty directly, the Ming Dynasty will not sign an alliance agreement with us.

"This verbal cooperation plan has no binding force on Ming Dynasty.

“We are referring to the historical experience of Shenzhou, integrating the strength of the German regions and turning these places into our core areas.

"As the current emperor of Shenzhou, the Ming Emperor may know better than us what effect our actions will have.

"If the reforms we made made Ming feel threatened, then inviting us to attack Russia together might just be a trap.

"The real purpose of the Ming Dynasty from the beginning may have been to strangle France."

Napoleon felt that he had guessed Zhu Jianxuan's true intention, but it also caused him to feel unprecedented powerlessness.

Its own reforms had not yet been completed, and the transformation of the German region had not yet been completed. At this time, the Ming Dynasty attacked with all its strength, and France was simply unable to resist.

Napoleon immediately thought of the losers in the history of China who competed for the position of the only emperor of the Celestial Empire.

Napoleon felt that he was not the last emperor like Liu Chan and Li Yu, but more like Liu Yu, Xiao Yan, and Chen Baxian.

Napoleon believed that he had sufficient military capabilities and had learned from Shenzhou how to truly control local areas. The road to unifying Europe seemed bright.

However, as the main body of the Shenzhou Empire, the Ming Dynasty became a huge mountain that pressed down on it.

It would be fine if he didn't know how to realize his ideal, but he was unable to realize it after knowing the method. This feeling made Napoleon extremely painful. Should he lead the current France to surrender directly to the Ming Dynasty? Should he pay tribute to the Ming emperor?

If this behemoth was not the Ming Dynasty but Russia, Napoleon felt that if he could not defeat it head-on, he could surrender and join it first, and then wait for an opportunity to seize power from within.

However, the system and experience of the Shenzhou Dynasty were too rich, and it was impossible for someone who had served as a monarch to enter the core circle of the new court.

The emperor of the Celestial Empire would not give the surrendered monarchs any chance to make a comeback. Even if they complained a few words like Li Yu did, they might be killed.

Napoleon did not want to be a king who lost his country like the Chinese, so he was unwilling but could not make up his mind, and could not respond to Zhu Jianxuan immediately:
"Go and do your own thing first. I need a quiet environment to think about it."

Talleyrand also had a basic understanding of the current situation, but he had no way to come up with any solution.

He didn't dare to offend Napoleon at this time, so he bowed and said goodbye obediently.

Talleyrand looked at the diplomatic information from all sides, scratched his head and thought or worried for a few days, and then he had to go meet Napoleon again.

The Ming Dynasty's Honglu Temple sent someone to deliver an official diplomatic message, a formal ultimatum against France and Napoleon.

Napoleon was required to give up all conquered areas and restore the pre-war situation in Europe as much as possible.

Restore the Bourbon royal family's rule in France and bring the French King Louis XVII, now recognized by the Ming Dynasty, and Louis Joseph, the crown prince of Louis XVI, back to France to succeed to the throne.

If Napoleon accepted these conditions and cooperated with the Ming Dynasty and other European countries to restore order, the Ming Dynasty could enthrone Napoleon as a Duke.

Napoleon could choose a place as his fiefdom in northern Germany, Warsaw and the surrounding areas, northern Italy, Sardinia or Corsica.

After reading the ultimatum, Napoleon slammed the document on the table with red eyes:

"The real purpose of the Ming Dynasty is to strangle France.

“The American War had just ended, and they were eager to deal with us.

“They would rather not interfere with the civil unrest in Spain than come to deal with us who are reforming in Germany.

“This shows that what we did really made Ming feel threatened.

"You should reply to the Ming people in my name that the crown prince of Louis XVI can come back to be the King of France.

"I can give up the title of Emperor of France and pledge allegiance to the Emperor of Ming, but I will continue to be the King of Germany or the King of Italy.

"Order in the German region has been completely overturned, and it is impossible to return to the situation before the war.

“The people of the Ming Dynasty should be more aware than other European countries of the fundamental difference between the German region and the rest of Europe.

“Even if the Ming army has an absolute advantage in equipment, it will still cost a huge price to seize the German region by force.

“The serfs who were liberated and given land, and the grassroots officers who were given fiefs, would protect everything they got with their lives.

"Since the Ming people have no interest in the land and population of Europe, there is no need for them to suffer hundreds of thousands or even millions of casualties in order to wipe us out."

Napoleon found another angle to negotiate with the Ming Dynasty.

Let the Ming Dynasty calculate for itself, give itself some conditions and treatment, end the war as soon as possible and reduce losses, compared to paying a huge price to completely destroy itself, which is more worthwhile.

Talleyrand immediately sorted out Napoleon's intentions and sent them to the diplomatic envoys from the Ming Dynasty.

The news of the effect was delivered to Shuntian Prefecture, the Honglu Temple, the Cabinet, and Zhu Jianxuan's office the next day.

After reading it, Zhu Jianxuan did not respond to Napoleon directly, but formally issued an order to attack.

At the same time, he asked the Honglu Temple to send the anti-enemy manifesto prepared by the cabinet to various European countries.

Officially notify Britain, Russia and Austria that the Ming Dynasty will officially participate in the war on the European continent and ask them to prepare to cooperate.

The Ming Dynasty had almost completed its preparations for war, so there was no need to continue arguing with Napoleon.

Delaying time further would be more advantageous to Napoleon.

So even though winter was about to arrive, Zhu Jianxuan still decided to start the attack directly, because the winter in Western Europe was not as cold as that in the north of Shenzhou.

Both Napoleon and French dictator Ferdinando Bonaparte suffered setbacks in Russia, and an important reason for this was that Russia's winters were much colder than Western Europe's.

The war started first on the warmest Italian peninsula.

Two hundred thousand Ming troops have recently gathered around the Ming city of Taranto, located in the bay at the southernmost tip of the Italian peninsula.

After the order to start war was issued, 30,000 vanguard troops immediately set out.

First, under the cover of aircraft and artillery, capture the French occupation forces' strongholds around Taranto.

Although the Ming Dynasty and France had always declared war but not fought, they did not dare to relax their guard against each other at all.

The Taranto region ceded by the Kingdom of Naples to the Ming Dynasty was basically a fan-shaped area centered around the port of Taranto.

There are no obvious natural landmarks such as mountains or rivers on the region's boundaries.

The Ming people built fortresses, dug trenches, and set up barbed wire inside the border, while the French occupation forces also built bunkers outside the border.

France does not have such abundant steel production, so it cannot build a fence as easily as the Ming Dynasty did. It can only simply pile up stones and river mud as a mark.

Most of the surrounding French occupation forces and local vassal troops knew that their fortresses were meaningless.

Because they were face to face with the Ming camp, they could often see the Ming artillery test firings directly and knew how powerful the Ming artillery was.

Even if they built formal sporadic fortresses, they would not be able to hold out for long under the bombardment of such artillery, not to mention that they actually only had relatively simple small bunkers.

The moment the war really began, the French soldiers' speculation became reality.

The bunkers where they usually garrisoned soon collapsed under the bombardment of the Ming Dynasty.

A large number of soldiers in the bunker died on the spot, and a small number ran out howling frantically.

Then they heard a strange huge buzzing sound.

Flocks of large iron birds appeared in the sky and fired dense bullets as they swooped down towards them.

The actual killing power of aircraft machine guns strafing the ground is limited, but the deterrent effect is extremely huge.

Even modern people who are accustomed to the existence of airplanes would panic when faced with a rain of bullets falling from the sky.

Ordinary soldiers of this era had never seen an airplane, and at this time they were faced with the dual pressures of mysticism and physics.

In addition, a group of wheeled machine gun armored vehicles entered the battlefield and used the vehicle-mounted machine guns to directly suppress the soldiers who tried to assemble, causing more effective killing than aircraft.

Some French officers and veterans managed to regain their sanity after a brief panic, but were unable to gather and organize their troops.

Because the ordinary soldiers below, local or from foreign vassal states, were simply unable to carry out orders.

The order in the military camp or on the battlefield quickly collapsed.

In such chaos, the Ming infantry entered the battlefield with rifles and began shooting and driving away the chaotic enemies from a few hundred meters away.

At the same time, the armored vehicles at the scene also stopped shooting and used the electric horns on the vehicles to shout to the surroundings:

"The Ming soldiers will not be killed if they surrender and hand over their weapons to suppress the rebellion."

The Ming Dynasty's military equipment and combat methods were already two eras ahead of European countries, so there was no suspense in the battle from the very beginning.

(End of this chapter)