Lucia met the Ming Dynasty's exploration team. On the surface, William III didn't care much, but he was considering it carefully in his heart.
The morning after the banquet, William III got up early and summoned Army General Blücher, Chief of Staff Scharnhorst, and Prime Minister Hardenberg for a meeting.
William III spoke directly:
"What do you think about yesterday's news?"
The three of them had actually thought about it. At this time, Prime Minister Hardenberg was the first to speak:
“Lucia’s exploration has reached its limit, and after we eliminate the Kingdom of Bornu, we will also reach our limit.
“North of Lake Baltic (Lake Chad) is wasteland and desert, which is the natural border between us and the Ming Dynasty.
“We don’t need to be directly neighbors with the Ming Dynasty on the grassland like Lucia, which can reduce the possibility of conflict.
"We have obtained enough land. The area of New Germany is more than twice that of the mainland, and the products are richer.
“We already have resources that are complementary to local resources, and as long as we develop them carefully, we can continue to improve our strength.
“We have secured our borders on land and the focus going forward should be on the sea.
"Ensure the absolute safety of the route between the homeland and New Germany!
"As for what should be done, I hope to hear the ideas of the staff and generals."
William III nodded seriously and looked at Blücher and Scharnhorst:
"Since Lord Hardberg mentioned the staff department, Lord Scharnhorst will talk about it first."
After hearing this, Blücher smiled and waved to Scharnhorst, making a gesture of invitation.
Scharnhorst spoke confidently:
“We need a navy, we need a navy that can stand up to Britain and Spain.
“The number of capital ships must reach at least 70% of the British, so as to reduce the British and Spanish thoughts of being our enemies.
“We have the finances to maintain a fleet of this size, and we have the resources to build a fleet of this size.
“I hope to start vigorously building dreadnought-type capital ships next and quickly increase the number to more than ten.
"Then it continued to expand as New Deutschland was developed, eventually reaching the same size as Britain."
William III was a little surprised:
"In the short term, can the navy only need 70% of the British? Do we only need to consider dealing with the British and Spanish? Don't we need to consider the problems of France and Lucia?"
Scharnhorst immediately said:
“The purpose of developing our navy is not to be a direct enemy of Britain, but to ensure colonial routes.
“There is no direct conflict between Prussia and Britain.
“The Hanover question is the conflict between the royal family of Hanover and the Kingdom of Prussia.
"George III's mental illness has become uncontrollable, and the Prince of Wales is a man with no independent opinions.
"The British bourgeoisie and aristocrats will not make the whole of Prussia our enemy for the sake of the old courtyard of the King's house.
“If the British royal family still controls Hanover, it will become Britain’s weak spot in our hands.
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"Unless Britain can easily destroy our navy and seize our overseas colonies easily.
“Otherwise normal Englishmen would not have fought Prussia for their king.
“In addition to effectively protecting the shipping lanes, our naval fleet also has another mission to dissuade the British from this idea.
"We can build up our navy while maintaining a relatively decent relationship with the UK.
“We also have no conflicts with the Spaniards, not even the royal conflict in Hanover.
"As long as we have the ability to inflict heavy losses on them, the Spaniards will not be enemies with us for no reason.
"We should also be able to maintain a good relationship with the Spanish people.
“The French are of course our enemies, but not now.
“Now the French will worry about us turning against them, rather than us worrying about them turning against us.
“The French have been mired in Yinzhou’s colonial war of independence and cannot extricate themselves.
“What they are most worried about is that we will suddenly attack their homeland now.
“Lucia is also our enemy, but also not the current enemy.
“Until the colonial development and construction of our two sides reaches a bottleneck, we will not want to be enemies with each other.
“Once our two sides go to war, it may be a full-scale war, from the mainland to the colonies.
“Our main enemy remains Austria.
“Even if we defeat France and Lucia, it will be difficult for us to annex the other party’s native land and population.
“Only the German regions of Austria can be absorbed.
"If we target Austria, we still need to continue to build the army and produce more and stronger armored fighting vehicles and aircraft.
“Such an army is also used to deter Lucia and France.
“We have the ability to threaten the French from the ground, so the French will not rashly interfere with our colonial routes.
"Our strength makes the Lucians feel troublesome, and they will change their attack targets to the Ottomans, Austria, and even Sweden.
"Our next goal is still to find the right time to dismember Austria and completely unify Germany."
William III nodded slowly as he listened:
"It makes sense, but when is the right time..."
Then several people at the scene looked at Prime Minister Hardenberg.
Hardenberg said very seriously:
"Of course this time is not now. Our most important task now is to be ourselves, observe and wait for the opportunity to appear."
Blücher said thoughtfully:
"Be invincible first, then wait until the enemy becomes victorious. The invincible lies with oneself, but the victorious lies with the enemy."
William III was silent for a few seconds:
"Pass my order to officially start the construction of the second batch of at least two improved dreadnought-type battleships.
"After the two dreadnought-type battleships are put into service, the existing traditional battleships purchased from the Ming Dynasty will be transformed into dreadnought-type battleships."
Hardenberg bowed and agreed:
"Your will."
William III said that construction of the second batch of dreadnought battleships would start, because most of the first batch has now been built.
After the end of the World War, Ming Dynasty arranged for craftsmen to guide Prussia, Lucia, Ottoman, Austria, and Italy in developing their navies, and led them to design and build capital ships according to the original agreement.
Ming's original plan was, of course, to build them traditional pre-dreadnoughts.
It uses two twin-mounted large-caliber main guns, plus several sub-caliber main guns.
During this design process, Ming Dynasty's Fearless was built and launched.
But this does not affect Ming Dynasty's continued sales of pre-dreadnoughts to Prussia and other countries, and guides them to continue to design pre-dreadnoughts.
Until the news of the British building a dreadnought battleship was confirmed.
And news came that France and Spain had also begun designing and building similar warships.
So Ming Dynasty took the initiative to change the drawings for Prussia and other countries.
The reason is of course not to confirm the news of the British man-made dreadnought, but that "Ming Dynasty has verified the feasibility of the relevant technology."
So Ming Dynasty took the initiative to rebuild the same new warship.
After completing the design in this way, the design was changed, and after the construction started, the design drawings were drastically changed. It took nearly three years of tossing and turning, and now it's finally time to make the decision.
On the distant continent of Tessie, in the northwest of Prussia, there is the royal Wilhelmshaven shipyard.
The launching ceremony of Prussia's first dreadnought battleship is being held.
This brand-new battleship was named Friedrich the Great.
Her full load displacement reaches 20,000 tons, and her main weapons are four twin-mounted 300 mm main guns with a caliber of 45 times.
The power system is a steam turbine equipped with a large water tube coal-fired boiler.
The designed maximum speed is twenty knots.
It was the Ming Dynasty that led Prussia to build capital ships, and the launching ceremony also adopted the Eastern model.
Instead of finding a woman to smash the bottles, I found two little boys to set off firecrackers.
Among the entire Prussian nobility, the two little boys with the highest status were the two sons of King William III.
Thirteen-year-old Frederick William, later known as King William IV of Prussia.
Eleven-year-old Wilhelm Friedrich Ludwig, the historical German Emperor Wilhelm I.
The two naughty kids were very excited to set off firecrackers, and they did so in public.
However, in this formal occasion, both of them were forced by their mother to wear high heels, which almost caused them to sprain their feet.
The whole ceremony was also very lively, and both the nobles and the cabin workers were very happy.
Because His Majesty the King's order has been issued, construction of two more improved warships of the same type will begin immediately.
At the end of the third year of Ankang, the new battleships built by the Ming Dynasty under the guidance of the European and Western countries were gradually being launched into service.
The battleships built by the United Kingdom, France, Spain, and Portugal are already in service or are about to be completed.
Ming Dynasty's target high-speed battleships and the aircraft carriers built during the same period have also reached service time.
Naval ships throughout the world are rapidly entering the dreadnought era.
Apart from the Ming Dynasty, the British, who have made the fastest progress, have completed the verification of the dreadnought battleship.
Consideration has begun to be given to new, larger-scale warships.
The House of Commons in London, the British capital, held a special hearing for the next round of shipbuilding plans.
Admiral Horatio Nelson returned from Yinzhou to attend the hearing.
Nelson held a document and stood in front of the podium and called loudly:
“After a lot of actual testing and verification, most naval generals have now reached a consensus.
"The new battleship we designed is a truly revolutionary warship.
"They have an overwhelming advantage against traditional warships.
"After this new warship enters service, all the original old battleships will enter the countdown to elimination.
“It’s just that there are not enough new capital ships now, so the Navy still has to continue to use those old ships.
“Therefore, future naval shipbuilding plans will all shift to new battleships with large-caliber main guns.
“At the same time, according to the information we have obtained, Ming Dynasty and other major European and Western countries are building warships of the same type.
“This new type of warship, which directly eliminates all old capital ships, puts all naval countries on the same starting line.
“Having completed the actual construction verification, we are half a position ahead in this competition.
“We must continue to consolidate and even expand this advantage.
“We must build more and larger new capital ships as soon as possible.
"At the same time, we have already verified when we discussed that our existing 300mm main gun cannot effectively penetrate the Ming Dynasty's new 300mm armor.
“We must continue to greatly increase the power of artillery in order to cause effective damage to the Ming Dynasty’s battleships.
“Since the manufacturing process of gun barrels and shells is difficult to improve quickly, if we want to increase the power of artillery, we can only enlarge the caliber.
“We should use at least a 330mm, or even a 360mm main gun.
“A larger-caliber main gun requires us to enlarge the tonnage of the warship carrying the main gun.
“At the same time, our size is not comparable to that of Daming, and our production capacity is far lower than that of Daming.
“This makes it impossible for us to compete with Ming Dynasty in terms of the number of warships built.
“We can only focus our limited resources to build fewer but stronger warships.
“In the design of new battleships, the larger the hull and the larger the caliber of the main gun, the greater the role it can play.
“This also requires us to build larger capital ships.
“So my requirement is that the tonnage of the subsequent new capital ships should preferably reach a displacement of 40,000 tons.
“There should be eight to ten 360mm main guns.
“At the same time, the speed should be increased as much as possible, preferably to more than 23 knots, and oil-fired boilers and steam turbines should be fully used.
"That's what I'm proposing and that's what the Navy is asking for."
Nelson's words quickly made the scene lively.
Although most of the congressmen are not very familiar with naval ships, they still have experience and concepts about tonnage and caliber.
The original tonnage of the battleships was less than 20,000 tons.
The experimental ship with all large-caliber naval guns is only a little over 20,000 tons.
The main guns used before were all 300 mm, and they have been maintained for many years.
Now Nelson wants to jump directly to 40,000 tons, and also requires the caliber to be increased to 360 mm.
This directly creates the impression of being very ambitious and overachieving.
The congressmen at the scene discussed chaotically for a while, and Fox, who was an opponent, was the first to speak:
“I don’t quite understand what Lord Nelson meant, but that doesn’t affect my point.
“Building this kind of super capital ship now will not allow us to quickly defeat the Yinzhou rebels!
“On the contrary, it will further worsen our fiscal environment.
“I don’t think we should start building any more capital ships until the Yinzhou War is over.
"Not to mention the super battleship you mentioned!
"The existing old battleships are enough for us to deal with the rebels in Yinzhou."
Nelson immediately said:
“Of course these super capital ships cannot determine the battle situation in Yinzhou, but they can affect our future international status.
“What’s more important is that it affects the safety of our homeland!
"If we stop building capital ships, if we continue to use those old capital ships that are destined to be eliminated, it will lead to extremely bad consequences!
“The gap between our navy and Ming Dynasty continues to widen, and this can only be regarded as a small problem.
“The real serious problem is being overtaken by Prussia and Lucia!
"If our navy is unable to resist the Prussian navy, it will not affect the security of the Yinzhou colony.
"Our homeland, our capital, the city of London where you are located, will be exposed to the Prussian guns!
"You don't want your manor to be directly bombarded into ruins by Prussian naval guns!"
Nelson's words immediately caused a large number of exclamations, and they were heartfelt exclamations with panic.
The security of the colonies and the security of the homeland are not matters on the same level at all.
Fox was obviously stunned for a moment, and then immediately asked Nelson:
"This is impossible, how could the Prussian navy surpass ours?
“They need more land forces and they need to guard against France, Lucia, Austria.
"It's impossible for them to invest a lot of wealth and resources into naval construction."
Nelson immediately shouted back:
“Do you mean to pin the safety of the United Kingdom on the choice of its opponent?
"The Prussians had to pass through our English Channel to get to their colony in Mexico.
“Prussia must contend with our navy if they are to secure their shipping lanes.
“Prussia is bound to vigorously develop its navy, and Ming Dynasty is guiding them to develop their navy.
"I have said before that the current new battleships have made all the original battleships enter the countdown to elimination.
“We are already on the same starting line as countries like Prussia.
“What’s more, the French, Spanish, and Lucians may all become our enemies.
“So, at the very least, we should maintain the basic advantage in the number of new warships over these countries.
"They're building a new capital ship, and we're going to at least build a larger one.
“Or if they build two capital ships, we will build three ships of similar size.
“Compared with any continental country in Europe, we have certain advantages to ensure our leading position in Europe.
"You should choose one of these two directions instead of giving up directly."
Nelson's reality of the situation has convinced most of the MPs.
According to their understanding, Prussia should indeed do that, and Britain must also respond.
There must be enough fleet to prevent Prussia from directly raiding London.
Although this possibility is slim.
But Nelson was right, you cannot rely on your enemy's choice for your safety...
The key is……
"What to do about the Yinzhou War?"
Fox once again issued a soul torture.
