"Why not a real war, but just a threat of war?" Yevgeny. Karlovich. Butzer covered his head in disbelief. What is written on the message I saw? Threatening Beijing with war?

Just kidding, right?

When did the Russian Empire need to be patient with the decadent and cowardly Chinese?

Xinjiang's offensive in the north and south has been contained and thwarted. Thousands of Russian soldiers were spilled blood, two Russian generals became prisoners of the Chinese in disgrace, and the face of the Russian Empire was completely wiped off and trampled underfoot.

All Russia has to do in this is retaliation, only a full-scale war with the Chinese. The empire bordered the Chinese not only with Xinjiang, but also with northeast China and Mongolia.

Yevgeny. Karlovich. When Butzer saw the first paragraph of the telegram about the thwarted march of Kaufman and Velevkin, the first and only reaction in his mind was all-out war. This old man of Russian diplomacy, who has gone through a series of unequal treaties between China and Russia, such as the "Aihui Treaty" and the "Sino-Russian Beijing Treaty", did not take the Qing Empire seriously at all.

In Yevgeny. Karlovich. In Butzer's eyes, China and the Qing court are a piece of fat meat that can be slaughtered. Now that there is an excuse and a necessary revenge, it is time to eat.

He never imagined that what St. Petersburg wanted him to issue was only a threat to the Qing court, not a declaration of war.

Is this too unreasonable? Also too contemptuous of China's Yevgeny. Karlovich. Butzer couldn't accept it.

There was not much explanation in the telegram, and the staff did not know what the Tsar and the bigwigs in St. Petersburg really thought. For Yevgeny. Karlovich. Butzer's question, he couldn't answer.

In fact, Yevgeny. Karlovich. Butzer did not know that Kaufman's telegram had arrived in St. Petersburg from Tashkent a few days earlier. After translating the contents of the message, the first thing the receiver said to the Tsar's attendant who had come to pick up the message was the same as the first thing the clerk said when he knocked on his office door: "God, we are in trouble......

Neither the Tsar of Russia nor the princes of the court of Gorgon thought about Kaufman's defeat. After all, the total number of Russian troops on the two routes reached close to 10,000 people. With the assistance of 2,000 Kokand soldiers, will it still be defeated in the hands of Liu Xian? How many people did he have in his expeditionary army?

Yes. For these bigwigs in St. Petersburg, Liu Xian was indeed surprised by the fact that Liu Xian had twice let Russian generals enter the prisoner camp.

It's just that it's just a surprise. Everyone firmly believes in the combat effectiveness of the Russian * team, and is confident that when the number of troops reaches more than 9,000 people. will annihilate all the power of Liu Xian from the north and south. They never thought about the possibility of failure!

Therefore, when Kaufman's telegram reached Tsar Alexander II, when he saw that the northern and southern advances had been contained and thwarted, and that 3,000 Russian soldiers had been killed or wounded, Alexander II's first reaction was to start an all-out war against China.

Minister of War of Russia, who helped Alexander II reform the Russian military. Dmitry, who single-handedly established the Russian Army and Navy Reserve. Alexievich. Miryutin agreed. This well-known political moderate in Russia's top leadership did not show any moderation at all when facing China.

If Russia had not had Alexander. Mikhailovich. Gorchakov, Liu Xian really started the Sino-Russian war. Alexander. Mikhailovich. Gorchakov stopped the trajectory of events slipping into a full-scale war.

"Your Majesty, how many troops are you going to send into the Far East and Central Asia? You must know that our total strength in the Far East is just over 20,000 people. The force that could be used to launch an attack on China was less than 20,000 men. It was also wrapped in a large number of Cossacks who had not been tested in war......"

The Russians fought in Europe, and they were not able to mobilize the Cossacks in Siberia who were able to assemble a cavalry division in total, and after tens of thousands of miles of trekking to the battlefield on the Western Front. Many of the Cossack cavalry in Siberia were rookies who had not withstood the test of war. Their only experience of 'war' came from the possible struggle to collect taxes from the local natives.

The Russians seized large swathes of Chinese land in the Far East. But land development requires a lot of labor. The shortage of labor in eastern Russia has been a major problem for the Russian government since 200 years ago. Large areas of territory were far from the centers of Russian rule, and there was not a single village for hundreds of miles. This is even more true now that Russia has seized large swathes of territory from China. The establishment of Russian rule in that land in these years was very precarious.

In order to consolidate his rule there, Alexander II issued the Regulations on the Migration of Russians and Foreigners to the Amur and Primorsky Provinces, giving immigrants various benefits. But up to now, the number of Russians willing to emigrate to the Far East has only fluctuated between 1,000 and 1,500 per year, and most of them have settled along the way, and very few have reached the Ussuri region. Now the number of Russian immigrants in the Ussuri region is only about 5,000. This is far from sufficient for the vastness of Ussuri. It is not enough to provide the necessary supplies and assistance for the 20,000 Russian* troops.

A war against China from the Far East would be a southward offensive with 5,000 troops that would bring down the finances of the entire Far East. Not to mention the completely unsolvable logistical transportation problem.

It doesn't mean food. Rather, it refers to guns, bullets, and munitions.

The food Russian army can be solved on the spot, don't expect the mercy of this group of old hairymen. But what about arms supplies? There are not many gunpowder stores in the northeast.

Alexander. Mikhailovich. Gorchakov broke it open. Crumpled, instilled his own opinion to the tsar, and told the tsar that Russia simply could not afford to attack the Qing Empire from the Far East!

"Even if the Qing Empire is corrupt and incompetent, and their army is no longer able to fight, the vast territory is the best defense for the Chinese." And Central Asia—"

"As long as the army is transferred from the Caucasus, the Russian flag will be planted all over Xinjiang sooner or later. However, this is limited only to the case where the opponent is General Liu and is China.

The empire's rule in Kazakhstan had yet to be strengthened, and there were still many opponents in Bukhara and Kokand, and the Khiva Khanate was an enemy of the empire, and Great Britain was hiding behind the three khanates.

Xinjiang will be a quagmire. As soon as the empire falls, our enemies will no longer be just the Chinese, but also Central Asia and Great Britain. ”

Alexander II was silent, Dmitry. Alexievich. Ilyutin was silent, as were all the important ministers present who supported an all-out war between Russia and China.

Alexander. Mikhailovich. Gorchakov waited for a moment, "Your Majesty, gentlemen, one more point - fifteen years have passed since the end of the Crimean War, and our peace with the Ottoman Turks has lasted fifteen years!" This peace will continue in the short term, but for how long? ”

From 1676 to the last Crimean War [1853], although it was not fought by the Turks, it was the ninth Russo-Turkish war in the real sense, a total of 177 years, with an average of less than 20 years of war, generally only 145 years, except for the last Crimean War. Because many times the Russian-Turkish war was fought in one dozen or six years.

The British are Russia's No. 1 enemy, and Turkey is Russia's No. 1 enemy, and its national situation and national importance are not at all comparable to China or Xinjiang.

"The current Turkish Sultan is a very good monarch. With the assistance of Fouad Pasha and Ali Pasha, he continued the reform work of the previous sultan. the establishment of new administrative districts (1864); the adoption of the French to form the Council of State (1868); the introduction of public education and the establishment of a new type of university modeled after the French university model; The first Ottoman Civil Code was promulgated.

He was the first Ottoman sultan to visit Western Europe, and he established friendly relations with France and England. He is an enemy to be reckoned with. ”

Turkey's new army has at least 300,000 men, and at the same time Turkey has a powerful Black Sea Fleet. However, it was much more powerful than the Black Sea Fleet, which Russia had rebuilt after the last war. In the last war, the Russian Black Sea Fleet defeated their Turkish counterparts, only to be wiped out by their British and French counterparts.

Liu Xian should be sincerely grateful to Alexander. Mikhailovich. Gorchakov, the Russian diplomat who also had bad intentions towards China, prevented this imminent Sino-Russian war.

Yevgeny. Karlovich. Butzer no longer understood St. Petersburg's telegram, and he had no choice but to follow the above meaning, and the next day, at the Prime Minister's Yamen, he issued a Russian threat of war against China to Beijing.

It's a pity that this time Evgeny . Karlovich. Butzer's mouth cannon is invincible, and the cannon is too powerful. His threat of war was not taken seriously by the Prime Minister's Yamen at all. Just like the story of 'the wolf is coming', every day the wolf is coming, the wolf is coming, and now the wolf is really coming, and no one believes it.

On the contrary, Prince Gong also learned from Yevgeny. Karlovich. There was a hint of delight in Butzen's roaring attitude.

"Could it be that Xinjiang has won the war again?"

Yevgeny. Karlovich. Although Butzer often shouted that the wolf was coming, there were not many angry attitudes like today.

In the afternoon of the same day, Wen Xiang, one of Prince Gong's irons, made an appointment to meet with the British Minister to China. Wen Xiang did not hear the latest information about Xinjiang from Aliguo, but he knowingly revealed the threat of war from Russia to Aliguo.

Because according to Wen Xiang's analysis, he felt that if Liu Xian Zhen won another great victory in Xinjiang, Russia's current threat of war would be more of a negotiation opportunity to resolve the contradictions between the two sides. Just wanted to keep their own interests from being lost, and the Qing Dynasty also needed the support of the British. (To be continued) R655