On the eighth day of the first lunar month in the thirty-fourth year of the Ming Dynasty, it was noon in the mainland of the Ming Dynasty, and it was still dark in the western mainland.
But for the Ming Dynasty, the most powerful empire in the world, and a hostile empire that made everyone feel powerless, the countries in Europe and the West did not dare to relax at all.
They all used various methods to arrange a large number of agents and informants in the Ming Dynasty and the vassal country.
Under normal circumstances, no one of the real dignitaries and elites of the Ming Dynasty would act as spies for foreigners, and it was impossible for the information of the Imperial Council to be leaked directly.
However, they could bribe many ordinary people, they could work to arrange for some Tatars to obtain residency, and they could send official ambassadors who were very restricted.
In most cases, espionage activities are not as thrilling as in movies and TV dramas, but are hidden in completely inconspicuous daily life.
Information that is very common to ordinary people in the country may be very critical information to other countries.
For example, the news and articles in various newspapers such as the Imperial Palace Daily, these public information may keep the senior officials of the Thai and Western countries awake at night.
The Western Continent, Lucia Empire, Moscow House.
Paul, the fifth emperor of the Lucia Empire, was called by his maid at dawn.
Several urgent secret reports from overseas intelligence agencies were sent to the emperor.
"The news is confirmed that Fengyuan State, a vassal of the Ming Empire, announced a reform announcement, and the Ming Dynasty officially began to withdraw from the vassal. The details are as follows..."
Paul, who is sixty years old this year, looked at the contents and analysis of the detailed report, and his expression became increasingly ugly.
I asked my servant to summon my most valued prince, Nicholas, and the empire's cabinet ministers to come over for a meeting, and I fell into a long period of contemplation.
How did the situation get to this point?
Lucia's first direct contact with the Ming Dynasty was the Battle of Yaksa more than a hundred years ago, which the Ming Dynasty called the Battle of Longjiang Fort.
Because of the war between the Ming and Qing Dynasties that lasted for many years, the Qing Dynasty, which theoretically owned the outer Heilongjiang, had no time to look north, making Lucia's expansion in the northeast even deeper.
However, Zhu Cixi had planned in advance, and after the Ming Dynasty reunified the country and completely eliminated the Jurchens and Mongols, he took action against Lucia.
Lucia's manpower in the Northeast was more "sufficient" than in history, and more troops were involved than in the Battle of Yaksa in history. Lucia's total strength was as high as thousands.
The result was a complete annihilation by the Ming Dynasty, which was better prepared. Except for a small number of Lucia troops who were killed in battle, most of them were captured.
Among these captives, only a small number of generals redeemed their bodies with their own money. Most of them were castrated and sent to work as coolies in the mines of Liaodong, becoming white slaves in the Ming Dynasty.
After the Battle of Longjiang Fort, Zhu Cixiang directly began to prepare for a new battle and took the initiative to contact and integrate the local indigenous people.
The "forest people" in the outer northeastern region, as well as the Mongolians known as "unscrupulous", including the "savage Jurchen" Sauron people, were trained to become the northern jungle hunters of the Ming Dynasty.
The Ming Dynasty provided them with living supplies and firearms and asked them to investigate and attack to the north and west.
After that, the Ming Dynasty and Lucia fought three small-scale battles in the East Xianbei and Beihai areas.
In places like the Xianbei Wasteland and Mobei Mongolia, before the railway connection, both sides were unable to carry out large-scale military operations. Relatively speaking, the Ming Dynasty had a slight advantage.
Lucia suffered a disastrous defeat in all three battles, and had to completely surrender and ask for a peace treaty with the Ming Dynasty.
In the peace treaty, the Ming Dynasty clarified the ownership of the entire eastern Xianbei, the area around Beihai, and all land east and south of Beihai.
Lucia promised in the peace treaty that she would never explore or expand eastward, and never seek access to the Pacific.
Lucia originally regarded the peace negotiation as a stopgap measure and prepared to secretly accumulate strength to move eastward again.
But with the Industrial Revolution in full swing and the Ming Dynasty building the railway to the shores of Beihai Lake, Lucia completely gave up on that unrealistic plan.
In a similar period of time, the Ming Dynasty also defeated the Dutch, Portuguese, and Spanish at sea, and became the only absolute controller of Nanyang.
Able-bodied Thai and Western businessmen generally understand the truth that all life east of Malacca follows the will of the Ming Emperor, not the will of God.
The Ming Dynasty's wealth, power, and unreasonable cruelty greatly shocked Lucia's little tsar Peter.
As a result, Peter's Westernization reform in Lucia's history disappeared and became the "Easternization" or "Minghua" reform of this world.
Peter took Zhu Cixiang as an example. He first ascended the throne and called himself emperor, and changed Lucia to empire.
Efforts were made to strengthen centralization, establish the Lucia Royal Consortium, cultivate elite royal groups, and gradually implement the Eastern-style imperial examination system.
Gradually transform serfs into Eastern-style tenant farmers, continue to learn from the Ming Dynasty to develop handicrafts, and continue to open mines and build factories.
Lucia has developed comprehensively, and Peter's own destiny has also changed.
He did not move the capital to St. Petersburg because the capital of the Ming Dynasty was not a coastal city. He just built a special railway to the nearest coastline.
Therefore, he did not catch the cold at sea, and finally lived to be over seventy years old in Moscow.
And when he was sixty years old, he followed Zhu Cixi's example and abdicated early and guided his son to become emperor.
Peter's eldest son, Alexei Petrovich, did not go to Europe when he was young, but was sent all the way to study in Ming Dynasty.
This changed the crown prince's thinking and further changed his destiny.
Alexei ascended the throne while his father was alive, and became the second Lucian Emperor under his father's guidance, and was more oriental than his father.
This smooth intergenerational transfer of imperial power laid the foundation for Lucia's subsequent stability.
The successive palace coups in history were eliminated as much as possible by two generations of emperors who mastered Eastern techniques.
The historical Catherine the Great naturally disappeared.
Paul, the current emperor of Lucia, was not Paul I, Catherine's hapless son, but Alexei's direct great-grandson and Peter's great-great-grandson.
Although Lucia in this world does not have the Pacific coastline and its territory is far inferior, its power is stronger than in history.
Lucia, the Netherlands, Portugal, and Spain were the first Western countries to be directly beaten by the Ming Dynasty. They were the first Western countries to learn Ming Dynasty technology and then start industrialization.
Lucia, in particular, always maintained contact and learning from the Ming Dynasty, and did not fall behind in the second industrial revolution.
By the thirty-fourth year of the Ming Dynasty, the level of industrialization of the Lucia Empire was very close to the level of the late nineteenth century in the original time and space.
Lucia also gained access to the Baltic Sea and the Black Sea, and controlled more European coastal land than ever before, completing the partition of Poland ahead of schedule.
However, the deepening Minghua reforms also caused Lucia's centripetal force to weaken.
Especially in the territory of Lucia's East, most of the Asians living there are attracted to the Ming Dynasty, which makes Lucia's control of the East always unstable.
At the same time, the rising nationalist forces in Lucia also generally believe that only by defeating the Ming Empire can we truly get rid of the shadow of the Ming Dynasty.
Finally, with the contact and coordination of the British, Lucia joined the anti-Ming alliance as the main force in the land war.
As a result, after the war lasted for more than ten years, although some results were achieved on the battlefield, the anti-Ming alliance could no longer hold on.
What consumes and fights is national strength. The farther away from the homeland, the smaller the advantage. Therefore, after the failure of the Beihai operation, Lucia will try to go to Anxi.
The battlefield on the Mongolian Plateau is two thousand kilometers away from the Ming Dynasty's capital, and Anxi is more than four thousand kilometers away from the Ming Dynasty's capital. If the starting point is Moscow, it is completely the opposite.
The battlefield in Anxi is closer to the mainland of Lucia, but the locals around the battlefield are sympathetic to the Ming Dynasty, making this battle still very difficult to fight.
The Ming army, which was obviously well prepared, quickly prepared the barbed wire trenches and transported the steel monsters over by railway.
Neither Napoleon nor Kutuzov thought there was any hope of a quick victory, and the next step was still a war of attrition.
Now that the news of the withdrawal of the Ming Dynasty was confirmed, Emperor Lucia's heart became even more tense.
By withdrawing the vassal vassal and giving the colonies local treatment, is this to squeeze out the war potential and completely deplete the anti-Ming alliance?
