Starting with the smashing of Dunkirk

Chapter 105 The Big Moves of the Troublemakers in Burkina Faso

The news that the Italians had finally declared war on Austria caused quite a stir in Demacia.

Because from the emperor down to the ministers, including the foreign minister, no one expected the Italians to be so short-sighted. Nor did they expect the Bretonnia to have gone to such lengths to win over the Italians.

But the Italians did declare war, which greatly boosted the reputation of the minority who had predicted that the Italians would not be able to resist the temptation, and they were regarded as "visionary".

Crown Prince Baria, Duke Rupprecht, who was behind Lelouch, was naturally among them. Many people in Berlin's political circles, including some members of parliament, began to regard Duke Rupprecht as a representative of the royal family with "the potential for enlightenment and vision."

As a result, Lelouch himself also gained a small boost in popularity.

But to fully understand the whole story, we need to look back at the recent bizarre actions of the Britannians.

……

Let's go back more than half a month to the end of March 1915.

Our focus has temporarily shifted to Rome, a thousand miles to the south.

After two months of constant back-and-forth and meddling, the Foreign Minister of the Republic of Burkina Faso, Count Arthur Balfour, has finally achieved some breakthroughs.

This was the day that Burkina Faso and Italy signed the "secret agreement for the division of spoils".

This Mr. Balfour is a notorious old conman and a member of the Goldflitter cult.

The most famous deed of Sir Balfour in Earth's history was signing a series of agreements to divide up the territories of other countries, such as the Balfour Declaration, and drawing a bunch of borders haphazardly in the Middle East, which led to a century of chaos in the region.

The Balfour of this plane may differ slightly in the details of his actions from the one on Earth, but his nature is the same.

After several days of negotiations, the official contents of this secret agreement are as follows:
"The Britannian Empire was willing to enter into a secret treaty with the Kingdom of Italy, promising to give the island of Malta to the Kingdom of Italy. It would also give away strongholds such as Mussus and Mechni in Egypt, as well as the port of Matrouh, to the Kingdom of Italy in batches."

The Kingdom of Italy pledged war against Oreo and the Ottoman Empire and launched a full-scale attack on the Slovenian and Albanian regions.

Once the aforementioned territories were successfully captured, the Allied powers promised that the Kingdom of Italy could permanently and legally possess these lands, regarding them as Italian territory.

The aforementioned conditions for gifting Malta were fulfilled immediately upon Italy's declaration of war against Austria and the United States.

The remaining terms, such as granting Mustsus, Mechni, and the port of Matrouh, will be delivered gradually, depending on the actual progress of the Italian Kingdom's conquest of Slovenia and Albania...

Additionally, to assist the Italian navy in besieging the Austrian navy's home port of Trieste, and in crossing the Adriatic Sea to land in Albania.

The Britannians pledged to support the Italian Navy with three Star-11 battleships: Star-11, Star-11, Star-11, and Star-11, as well as five armored cruisers.

The aforementioned ships cooperated with the Italian Navy during the aforementioned campaign. After the campaign concluded and its objectives were achieved, they were donated to the Italian Navy…

Minister Arthur Balfour had a cunning plan. Although he promised many benefits and made grand promises, he didn't give them all away at once.

Initially, all that was given away was the island of Malta, and that was conditional on the Italians formally declaring war.

It's no wonder the Italians were so impatient later, hastily declaring war before completing any preparations. They wanted to see if the Britannians would keep their promise and actually hand over control of Malta.

If the Italians performed well enough, they would eventually advance along Egypt's northern coast to within about 260 kilometers of Alexandria—150 kilometers east of Matrouh is El Alamein, and in between lies uninhabitable desert. Alexandria is 110 kilometers east of El Alamein.

The terms offered by the Britannians this time were essentially a concession: they would cut off all of Egypt's territory except for El Alamein, the last gateway to Alexandria, which they would hold onto tightly, while relinquishing everything else. These terms were undeniably generous.

The additional condition he mentioned—the gift of naval vessels for joint operations—was also an attempt to further entice the Italians into taking the bait.

These conditions did not exist in Earth's original history; in Earth's history, the Kingdom of Burma only made empty promises and offered territory to its enemies.

Given the dire situation Blagoveshchensk is facing on the western front, Italy has become increasingly hesitant to form an alliance with Blagoveshchensk, requiring a significantly larger investment to win it over.

Fortunately, the battleships and armored cruisers promised in the secret agreement were all old ships over 15 years old and not very valuable.

The "Star-15" is a typical pre-dreadnought, commissioned between 1999 and 2002. It was originally designed for global deployment and was never used for combat on Burkina Faso's soil. After the outbreak of World War II, it was entirely deployed to the Mediterranean Fleet.

……

After Minister Arthur Balfour reached a secret agreement with the Italians, there was still more than half a month before the Italians officially declared war on the two Austrians.

This two-week time difference wasn't just something the Italians were hoping for, wanting to wait. It was also something Arthur Balfour was hoping for, as he was counting on using this time difference to strike while the iron was hot and take down Romania and Greece as well.

After leaving Rome, Balfour first landed in Greece, and then planned to travel north overland through Greece to Serbia, and then turn east overland into Romania.

Because the Ottomans and Bulgaria had joined Demania and blocked the straits, the Bretonnians could not reach Romania by sea and had to take a slow, roundabout land route.

Greece was not the Bretonnians' most pressing need at the moment, because Greece only bordered the Ottomans, not the Oreos.

Since the Kingdom of Burkina Faso is still unable to organize a landing operation in the Dardanelles Strait and has not yet reached the Ottoman mainland, there is no need to expose the pro-Burkina faction in Greece too early.

However, since he was already there, and it wasn't easy for a foreign minister like Balfour to make the trip, he might as well take the opportunity to chat with the Greek leadership and strengthen their relationship.

After landing at the port of Piraeus near Athens, Arthur Balfour's first thought was, of course, to meet King Constantine I of Greece.

Everyone knows that, according to the Greek constitution, the power to declare war and to make peace always rests with the king. If the Kingdom of Burkina Faso wants to win over Greece, the best course of action is to approach the king directly.

As a result, Arthur Balfour was unsurprisingly rejected.

King Constantine refused to see him, citing illness as the excuse, which at least saved face for the people of Burkina Faso.

Balfour tried everything but to no avail, and finally had to settle for a private meeting with the newly elected Greek Prime Minister, Eleftherios Venizelos.

Venizelos gave Balfour a lot of face, receiving him warmly, and the two had a long private talk.

Finally, Venizelos privately promised Balfour that if the king refused to join the Prussian camp, he would, if necessary, invite the Prussian army into Greece in the name of the prime minister and the people to help the people overthrow the tyrant.

Belfort was naturally overjoyed to receive such a promise. In exchange, he might give Venizelos Macedonia, plus the Thrace region.

He even promised that if the Greek army could recapture Constantinople in the future, he would cede Constantinople to Greece as part of its territory!

Venizelos could hardly believe such good conditions.

Constantinople! If we could take it back, Greece would be restored to the glory of the Byzantine era! That would be a really long step backward in history.

Having achieved such feats, he will be the greatest figure in Greek history, unparalleled before or since, and the mere act of regicide will seem insignificant.

……

After spending a few days in Greece and winning over a prime minister willing to commit regicide, Balfour's final stop was Bucharest, which he arrived at as scheduled in early April.

In Romania, Balfour's situation was clearly better than in Greece.

The former king of Romania was very pro-Demania. However, he died without leaving a son.

The current king is the second nephew of the former king. He became king as the third in line because his father and elder brother (the former king's second brother and eldest nephew) refused to give up their pro-Demania stance, which led to opposition from those who were pro-Russa.

Therefore, the current King of Romania is bound to the pro-Russia stance and has no choice; this is the foundation of his rise to power.

Since Lusa and Britannia are in the same camp, it is only natural that they continue to cooperate with Britannia.

After some negotiations, Balfour finally signed a secret agreement:
"Romania is allowed to declare war on Oreo only after Italy has made progress in its war against Oreo, and at the latest, it must declare war only after Italy has gained the upper hand over Oreo."

At the same time, it allowed Romania to never declare war on the Ottomans, thus avoiding a two-front war.

Finally, Bulgaria formally pledged to cede all of Hungary's Transylvania and Bulgaria's territory, excluding Greek Thrace, to Romania after the war.

In other words, according to this treaty, if one side of the alliance won, Bulgaria would be completely destroyed and cease to exist. Its entire territory would be completely divided up by Greece to the south and Romania to the north, leaving not an inch of it.

However, even with such conditions, Romania might not dare to take the risk.

Therefore, Burkina Faso also promised to provide Romania with a batch of weapons, equipment, and military supplies.

Because the strait was blocked by the Ottomans, sea transport was impossible. Therefore, this batch of supplies and munitions was also transported overland from Greece through Seville to Romania.

The transportation losses and costs along the way will be very high.

Romania's condition was that at least 10 divisions equipped with modern weaponry would be required for them to participate in the war.

贝尔福只好捏着鼻子，承诺给20万支李恩菲尔德步枪、1200挺维克斯重机枪、2亿发子弹，120门18磅炮、6万发3吋炮弹，40门60磅炮、2万发5吋炮弹，外加600辆卡车，换取罗马尼亚人最终参战。

The number of rifles provided was more than that of 10 divisions, but the artillery was reduced to only one-third the size of the original army. In addition, some trucks and other supplies were also provided.

To transport these supplies, they had to be unloaded at the port of Thessaloniki in Greece, then secretly transferred via the railway from Thessaloniki to Belgrade, and finally crossed the border mountains to Bucharest.

Since Balfour was unable to persuade the King of Greece to openly defect and support Burkina Faso, he could only rely on the help of the pro-Buso Prime Minister Venizelos of Greece to smuggle the goods across the sea.

Venizelos couldn't possibly work for Balfour for free. With such a large amount of supplies passing through, he took the risk and still wanted to ask Balfour for equipment for five divisions to help them build a private army that was close to the Prime Minister. This way, if the King discovered this and things really came to a head, the Prime Minister would have his own army to fight against the King.

(Note: Greek constitutional law stipulates that the king is the commander-in-chief of the army, and the army is loyal to the king. Historically, Venizelos later rebelled by raising his own new army, using weapons provided by the Kingdom of Phu.)
For this big deal, the country of Burkina Faso gave away the equipment of 15 of its lowest-level army divisions.

Among these supplies was equipment for five divisions, which the Kingdom of Burkina Faso originally intended to use to mobilize Indian troops in South Asia to form a new army. However, the Greeks intercepted this equipment, resulting in a slowdown in the mobilization of the colonial army by five divisions.

The equipment for another 10 divisions will require extra production, consuming resources that will result in the navy building at least 50 fewer destroyers or hundreds fewer transport ships. This will inevitably have dire consequences for the Royal Navy in its counterattack against Demania's submarine warfare.

But the Britannians had no other choice; they could only hope to win over as many allies as possible in exchange for an advantage on the Eastern Front.

-

P.S.: Tomorrow we'll return to the protagonist's perspective to break the deadlock.

This chapter is a bit of a chronological account, introducing the conditions and offers from all parties. This is unavoidable, because very few people know the historical background of World War I.

It's necessary to mention the messy things that the Burkina Faso side did, otherwise the story would seem incoherent.

(End of this chapter)