The Ming Dynasty did not revolutionize

Chapter 350 Ultimatum
Li Celing knew that if a battle broke out between the main forces of the Shun Kingdom in Tashkent and the main forces of the Ming Dynasty, it would mean that the official war between the Ming Dynasty and the Shun Kingdom had begun, and there would be no room for reconciliation in the relationship between the two sides.

Zhu Jianxuan also knew that a full-scale war was about to begin and the Ming Dynasty could no longer delay.

The imperial court had been publicizing the crimes of Shun State, Russia, and the Ottoman Empire, but had never taken action to punish or conquer them. Over time, this undermined the court's prestige.

Ordinary people and small overseas countries thought that the Ming Dynasty court was all talk and no action.

It has been seven years since the end of the large-scale war in Europe, and the Ming court and local governments have completed rest and reorganization.

There is plenty of energy to start a new round of large-scale war.

So when Chen Huacheng led his army to the city of Tashkent, Zhu Jianxuan also arranged for envoys to go to the courts of Shun State, Russia, and the Ottoman Empire to issue them an ultimatum.

In the city of Delhi, although Li Celing arranged to receive the Ming envoys in the main hall of his palace, he did not allow too many ordinary officials to come in.

Only Li Celing, his two most trusted sons, and several of the most important and trustworthy cabinet officials were present.

Li Celing wanted to see what the Ming Dynasty wanted first before deciding whether to make the relevant information public.

When Li Celing received the report, he didn't know whether the Ming envoy would ask him to kneel down and receive orders after arriving.

If you kneel down, you will lose your prestige.

If he didn't kneel, he would be giving up the last chance of maneuver, and his relationship with the Ming Dynasty would be a fight to the death.

The Ming envoy was Ma Weiguo, the Right Prime Minister of the Honglu Temple, who was the former head of the Western Factory and had previously served as a minister in Persia.

After Ma Weiguo entered the hall, he first looked around at the few sparse people around him, and then looked up at the old man sitting upstairs.

Ma Weiguo knew in his heart that the old man was Li Celing, but he still asked loudly first:

"Where is Shun Wang Li Celing?"

This was a ceremonial confirmation of identity to show that he had delivered the imperial edict.

Li Celing was in a very unhappy mood. Even according to his status in the Ming Dynasty, he was at least the title of a county prince or even a prince.

When these ordinary officials saw me, they had to at least salute me respectfully and were not allowed to call me by my name directly.

Now the other party's attitude does not seem like facing a prince of the Ming Dynasty, but rather like facing a commoner or even a prisoner.

Li Celing said with a straight face and a cold tone:
"I'm Li Celing."

Li Celing no longer mentioned that he was the Prince Shun of the Ming Dynasty.

Ma Weiguo, the Right Prime Minister of the Honglu Temple of the Ming Dynasty, nodded, confirming Li Celing's identity.

Then he turned around, opened the wooden box in his follower's hand, and took out an official document from the Ming Dynasty's Honglu Temple with both hands.

It is an official document, not an imperial edict, so there is no need to be particularly respectful.

Ma Weiguo opened the document with his own hands and read the contents to Li Celing on the spot.

The content of the document is relatively long, but it does not use awkward rhetoric such as parallel four-character and six-character sentences. Instead, it uses quite popular vernacular to recount the events since the Shun Kingdom and Li Zicheng.

From the perspective of the Ming Dynasty court, Li Zicheng and all the subsequent Shun monarchs and ministers were once again classified as rebels, traitors, and bandits.

At the end of the document was a formal final notice, demanding that Li Celing surrender immediately.

The Ming Dynasty can now give him an intact body, give Li Celing's descendants a chance to survive, and exile them to Africa.

If you still resist the heavenly soldiers, the disaster of having your property confiscated, your entire family exterminated and your entire clan killed will not be far away.

Ma Weiguo read very loudly, with particularly powerful intonations. Li Celing and his son and ministers around him could not help but twitch their lips after listening to it.

This ultimatum is really just an ultimatum, not the last formal negotiation.

What kind of condition is this: “the body can be left intact”?
Any warlord with some power would not accept such a threat unless he was actually facing death.

The rulers and ministers of Shun State felt that the Ming Dynasty court had no "sincerity" at all, did not take Shun State seriously at all, and had no intention of preparing to negotiate with Shun State.

There is absolutely no room for maneuver between the Ming Dynasty and Shun Kingdom.

Li Celing understood the reality of the situation and was furious. He couldn't help but say a few words back:

"Then you should also go back and tell Zhu Jianxuan that I, the Dashun, will inherit the will of Emperor Taizu Gao and from now on will never coexist with the tyrannical and incompetent emperor.

"If Zhu Jianxuan surrenders now and surrenders his country, I can leave his body intact and exile his entire family to the grassland.

"If you continue to do evil, when the Dashun Heavenly Soldiers enter Shuntian Prefecture again, you will be killed without mercy."

Ma Weiguo laughed out of anger after hearing this:

"You are really frogs in a well. You are on the verge of death, but you are still arrogant.

"Once the war really begins, you won't even have the chance to surrender!"

Li Celing was also very angry, and he also knew that Daming would not be able to do anything to him in a short period of time, so he directly responded with a sharp response:

"I'm going to tell you the truth. Now is your last chance. If you don't surrender quickly, the country will be destroyed soon."

Ma Weiguo was completely speechless this time, and now he looked at Li Celing as if he were a dead person:
"Forget it. I don't bother to argue with you. The imperial edict has been delivered. Goodbye."

Li Celing frowned and waved his hand, ordering people to drive Ma Weiguo out of the palace.

Then he held a meeting with his main trusted ministers to symbolically discuss the war plan that had been deduced countless times.

At the same time, Alexander, the Russian monarch in St. Petersburg, and Selim, the Ottoman monarch in Istanbul, also received similar notices from Ming envoys.

The Ming court listed and denounced their crimes in an official document and formally demanded that the monarchs of the two countries surrender completely.

The notices received by Russia and the Ottoman Empire were slightly different from the one received by Shun State, and the Ming Dynasty actually offered them some conditions.

So far, the Ming Dynasty has not had any formal direct conflict with Russia. The Ming Dynasty and the Ottoman Empire have previously signed a ceasefire agreement, so now give them one last chance.

The Romanov family was allowed to hold the title of Duke of Moscow and continue to rule tens of thousands of square kilometers of land around Moscow as a vassal state of the Ming Dynasty.

The Ottoman Sultan could obtain the title of Duke of Ankara and later rule the lands around Ankara as a vassal state of the Ming Dynasty.

But at the same time, they were also warned that this was an ultimatum and the final condition, and they could only choose to accept or reject it, and there was no room for bargaining.

If the monarchs of the two countries reject this ultimatum, the Ming Dynasty will officially launch a full-scale attack on the two countries in three days.

After the war between the two sides officially began, the Ming Dynasty no longer accepted their surrender.

In the eyes of the Russians and Ottomans, this was actually a declaration of war, and it was agreed that the war would officially begin three days later.

The status of the Duke of Moscow and the Duke of Ankara was so far different from their current status that it was impossible for them to accept it directly.

After hearing the announcement, Russian monarch Alexander and Ottoman monarch Selim sent the Ming envoys out of the palace, and then asked their close ministers at the same time.

Should he leave the capital and go to inland areas to command operations?

The reason is very simple. They all know that the Ming Dynasty’s navy is very powerful, and the Russian capital of St. Petersburg and the Ottoman capital of Istanbul are both coastal port cities.

Once war breaks out, these port cities will face direct threats from Ming Dynasty's naval guns.

Although both cities were located deep in the bay and inland sea and were not directly attacked from the outside sea, they were not sure how long their navy could hold off the Ming navy.

In the past few years, they have specifically learned about and analyzed the wars of the Ming army in the past twenty years. In the Northern Expedition to destroy the Qing Dynasty, Zhu Jianxuan, who was then the King of Wu, directly commanded the navy to set out from the sea and suddenly attacked the coastal ports of the Qing Dynasty.

They occupied the Qing Dynasty's main ports, blocked the Qing Dynasty's access to the sea, then directly landed the army by ship, surrounded the Qing Dynasty's capital, and finally forced the Qing emperor to surrender directly.

In the war against Portugal, the Ming Dynasty also used naval direct attacks to occupy the port, and then forced the Portuguese king to surrender.

In subsequent wars in America and Europe, the Ming Dynasty was accustomed to adopting the strategy of controlling the land with the sea, using tactics of attacking and controlling ports and then controlling the inland.

The Ming Dynasty also had a special kind of flying knight that could conduct aerial reconnaissance and launch direct attacks.

This type of flying knight assisted the navy and the army, making the Ming Dynasty's offensive means more diverse and more difficult to resist.

Therefore, in the past few years, both the Russian and Ottoman monarchs have been mentally prepared to abandon their capitals and move their capitals inland.

The Russians were preparing to return their capital to Moscow, and the Ottomans were preparing to move their capital to Ankara.

However, they have only made preparations now, but have not moved the capital inland in advance.

At the same time, when faced with the Ming Dynasty's "declaration of war", he only considered moving the capital and did not set off immediately.

This shows that their understanding of the Ming army is still quite limited, and they have no idea how big the gap is between them and the Ming army.

In fact, the reason why these three countries did not surrender directly now was simply because they did not know how powerful the Ming Dynasty was.

The overall level of the Ming Dynasty's main army is considered advanced even in the World War II era.

The standard weapon of the infantry is a high-level bolt-action rifle. Heavy machine guns and squad light machine guns are commonly equipped, and special forces also have submachine guns.

The army has a large number of two-wheeled and four-wheeled motor vehicles, a large number of specialized trucks and troop carriers, a large number of aircraft and artillery to support combat, and various armored vehicles.

The main forces were generally equipped with battlefield telephone equipment, branch forces used wireless telegraph equipment on a large scale, and tanks, aircraft, and artillery all had radios.

Whether it is firepower intensity, mobility, command efficiency, or reconnaissance capability, all of them have far surpassed this era.

Before directly fighting against the Ming army, the rulers and officers of other countries had no idea what kind of opponent the Ming Dynasty was.

Even if they had fought, after just a few years, the Ming army would have changed into a different form.

For example, the Ottomans, who had fought against the Ming Dynasty, were misled by their experience in North Africa, making them feel that the gap between themselves and the Ming Dynasty was not that big.

Although they could not defeat the Ming Dynasty at the beginning, they completed a round of reforms afterwards and established a group of new-style troops.

In the past, the Ottomans could not stop the Russian attacks, but now the new army can gain an advantage against Russia.

So when facing the Ming Dynasty, even if it is still relatively weak, the gap should not be particularly large.

If used simply for local defense, it should be able to stop the Ming Dynasty's attack.

At the same time, during the wars in America and Europe, the Ming Dynasty had only a few aircraft carriers with a displacement of 15,000 tons, which were built for reconnaissance purposes.

We now have a group of aircraft carriers with a displacement of 40,000 tons, which are attack aircraft carriers specially designed and built for combat.

The number of aircraft carried by a single aircraft carrier also jumped directly from twenty or thirty to eighty to one hundred.

At that time, the Ming Navy had only more than a hundred aircraft in total. Now, a Ming aircraft carrier can carry a hundred aircraft, and the total number of aircraft in the navy has exceeded one thousand.

The key is that the performance of the aircraft itself has also undergone a disruptive improvement, and the engine power has increased from 200 horsepower to 1,000 horsepower.

The maximum level flight speed has increased from 200 to 300 kilometers per hour to 500 to 600 kilometers per hour.

The range has also been increased to nearly two thousand kilometers.

Even if the Spaniards and French were to come out and face the Ming Dynasty's offensive aircraft again, they would be shocked.

In fact, Napoleon was stunned.

While the east-west railway was being built in Poland, the Ming Dynasty was building a military airport on the eastern border of Poland and continuously supplying combat aircraft to the area.

From small aircraft weighing a few tons to large aircraft weighing dozens of tons, the total number quickly exceeded five thousand.

During the preparations for war in the following years, Ming's aircraft production capacity was fully expanded, and another 5,000 aircraft were added in succession. Now the number has reached 10,000.

The sheer number was enough to terrify Napoleon.

It is impossible that the Ming Dynasty’s aircraft were only stationed in Poland. There must be some on the battlefields in the Balkans, Arabia, India, and the Western Regions.

There were a total of 10,000 planes on the battlefields in Poland and Eastern Europe. How many planes did the Ming Dynasty deploy in the entire war?
There should be at least 30,000, right? Fifty thousand is also normal...

Napoleon knew that the Ming Dynasty had flying machines and flying knights who operated them to fight in the air.

On the battlefields of Italy and Germany, Napoleon's French generals and soldiers faced this magical flying cavalry.

But at that time, the Ming Dynasty had only a small number of aircraft, with only dozens or hundreds of them on the entire battlefield.

Because it was so magical, French generals and soldiers including Napoleon felt that it must be a very complex special equipment that was difficult to mass produce.

As a result, just a few years later, flying machines became mass-produced products in the "tens of thousands".

A few decades ago, if a European country had 10,000 formal cavalry on the ground, it would already be a very powerful force.

The Ming Dynasty has tens of thousands of flying cavalry!

They really can come and go as fast as the wind, traveling thousands of kilometers in a few hours, able to control battlefields thousands of kilometers around, and able to attack from the sky with cannons and machine guns.

Traditional defensive forces such as city walls, trenches, artillery batteries and moats have become meaningless in the face of attacks from the sky.

Just looking at these planes, they are a force capable of destroying any European power.

Napoleon and his generals often sighed in their hearts that it was fortunate that they had compromised with the Ming Dynasty and joined the Ming Dynasty's vassal state system.

If the war at that time had continued, they would have faced unilateral crushing by these flying knights.

Now, Napoleon just wanted to know how long the Russians could hold out after the war began.

The Ming Air Force was directly managed and commanded by Ming generals. Napoleon could only ask them to cooperate with his own combat plans and had no way to directly command them.

Napoleon didn't know now that although the number of planes in the Ming Dynasty was increasing rapidly, the number of pilots was not enough.

The Ming Dynasty's aviation industry developed too fast. It was forced by the power of the imperial court. Now all the flying machines produced are used by the imperial court and the army.

There were no airplanes in the civilian population, and no flying atmosphere had been formed, so naturally there were no potential pilots to choose from.

Now most of the "Flying Knights" who have arrived at the front lines with these planes are actually novices who have graduated from the crash course of aviation schools.

They just learned how to fly the plane, drop bombs and dive and strafe.

But they don't need to learn anything else for the time being.

They don't have any enemies to match now, so they can just crush the enemy on the battlefield. As long as they can drive and drop bombs, they can go to the battlefield. They will become proficient after driving more.

Except for the Ming Dynasty, enemies all over the world have no available aircraft, so the Ming Dynasty currently has no dedicated fighter jets for air combat.

The design concept of all large, medium and small combat aircraft is to tend to be attack aircraft with multiple mounts and multiple machine guns.

Large aircraft are specialized in bombing, while small aircraft also serve as battlefield support aircraft, responsible for reconnaissance of the enemy and suppression of the enemy's ground forces.

(End of this chapter)