1890 King of Southeast Asia

"Why did you retreat without authorization?" Alexeev looked at the telegram miserably.

This was an interrogation telegram sent from St. Petersburg, "asking" Alexeev in very harsh words why he was shrinking the defense line when he was constantly winning.

"It must be that despicable villain who bewitched His Majesty the Tsar again. That evil monk has no idea what the front line looks like. Damn it! We should kill him!"

"Let us launch an attack again? What can we use to launch an attack? On average, there are only three shells per cannon on the front line, and we can't even carry out a decent artillery attack."

"The soldiers can only get dozens of bullets, and they have to give priority to machine guns. If we don't shrink the defense line, we can't even defend."

"We should let that evil monk come to the front line, give him a bayonet, and let him attack the German positions to see how dense the German machine guns are!"

In the command center, many senior officers and staff also knew the content of this telegram, and complained fiercely about what Nicholas II did.

However, they did not dare to point the finger at the Tsar directly, and could only attribute the mistake to the evil monk Rasputin.

"Generals, I will make a final suggestion to His Majesty to reform the entire Russian army, temporarily shrink the defense line to the railway line for defense, re-stock materials, etc."

"After the telegram is sent, I will most likely be relieved of the position of Chief of Staff and Campaign Commander of the All-Russian 6th Army Armed Forces, but the war will not end after I leave."

"The Russian Empire needs you generals to continue fighting. I ask each of you to fulfill your duties as a soldier and lead the Russian army to victory."

Alexeyev closed his eyes painfully and said to everyone in the command center.

"I know what you want to do, but it's meaningless. We can't withstand any turmoil. I can at least buy two weeks to stabilize the defense line. We must stabilize it."

"As long as we persist for one month, we can win."

Alexeyev refused his subordinates to write a letter to him jointly. He had no choice but to send a telegram, and he also hoped to use himself to delay time.

According to his idea, even if the Tsar dismissed him, he should be able to have a face-to-face interview with the Tsar. In any case, as long as he could make Nicholas II hesitate a little, it would be fine.

Alexeev was very confident because Nicholas II had always been an indecisive person.

In this way, he could continue to exert influence on the army. As long as he could delay for a while until supplies were replenished, the Russian army would be able to stabilize its position. After a month, the Russian army would be able to launch an offensive again.

As for continuing to stay in this position to command the entire Russian army, this was no longer possible. The Tsar was already dissatisfied with him a lot. If he refused the Tsar's order again this time, the contradiction would have intensified.

Now he had only two choices. The first was to send a telegram directly to make it clear, and the second was to obey Nicholas II's order.

Any other approach would be regarded by Nicholas II as an act of the army being out of control. In this case, after Nicholas II regained control of the military power, the first thing he would do would be to implement his own will, and then everything would be terrible.

…

Two days later, as Alexeev expected, he was relieved of his duties as campaign commander and chief of the general staff, and was asked to leave for St. Petersburg immediately.

The new chief of the general staff had not yet been decided, and Grand Duke Mikhail would temporarily take up the post. In fact, Grand Duke Mikhail did not take care of the affairs, and the former commander-in-chief of the Russian army, Grand Duke Nicholas, would handle the affairs of the general staff.

Alexeev was relieved when he learned about it. Although Grand Duke Nicholas was not inclined to reform the Russian army, he was also a very talented commander. He would not foolishly ask the Russian army to attack, at least he would drag it out.

The reason why Grand Duke Nicholas was demoted to the commander-in-chief of the Caucasus Front was because he was the uncle of Nicholas II and a member of the royal family. Nicholas II was afraid that he would have too much prestige.

Of course, there was also the reason that Grand Duke Nicholas did not respect Rasputin and despised him very much…

…………

On April 2 and 2, the British finally completed their slow military preparations.

In fact, the British could have launched an attack long ago. Haig had proposed an attack more than once, but unfortunately they were all blocked.

It was not until early April that the Russian army stopped the attack and voluntarily gave up many positions. The British realized that they had watched the opportunity slip away in vain.

Under the pressure of public opinion, George Lloyd asked the British Expeditionary Force to start the attack when Haig proposed to wait and see, and asked the French to act together.

The French hesitated. The current situation of the German army was not clear. The Eastern Front had approached East Prussia, but there was no news of a large number of German reinforcements. They suspected that the German army was waiting for them on the Western Front.

However, the German army still occupied a large area of ​​French territory. When the British were working hard, the French army could not fail to respond, otherwise public opinion would be crushing.

So the French army withdrew 38 divisions and attacked Belgium from the north close to the British, together with the British Expeditionary Force.

The British Expeditionary Force also concentrated 50 divisions. The British and French coalition forces totaled 1.6 million troops, plus a large number of logistics personnel, and launched an attack on the German army.

(In the middle of the war, the British army had 19,372 people in one division and the French army had 15,870 people in one division. At the end of the war, most of them were stable at around 13,000 people.)

On the broad front, the German army had only two army groups, 16 divisions and 240,000 people, plus some direct troops and logistics troops, 278,000, less than 300,000 people.

The German army had anticipated that Britain and France would launch an attack (Ludendorff had transferred a large number of troops to the Eastern Front), so they naturally made preparations in advance.

From April 22 to April 29, the German army adopted a strategy of layered resistance, retreated 15 kilometers in succession, and abandoned three lines of defense.

The result was that the German army destroyed 100,000 British and French troops at the cost of 30,000 casualties, and successfully delayed the attack of the British and French troops, providing time for the support troops.

On the 30th, the German army began a feint attack on the remaining fronts to relieve the pressure on the northern defense line, and three divisions were transferred from somewhere to the defense line.

At this time, Ludendorff was very conflicted. He didn't know whether he should transfer the troops that had been transferred to East Prussia back. In his heart, he still hoped to defeat the Russians.

Only in this way could he concentrate on dealing with the French.

The turning point of the matter appeared on May 1. Due to continuous victories, the entire battle situation seemed to have been defeated by the German army since March, and the French army finally couldn't bear it.

On May 1, the French army concentrated 3 armies and 29 divisions to launch an attack from the south to Lorraine. The German army had a hard time defending and eventually lost its position 3 days later.

In this battle, the German army lost 60,000 people (including prisoners), and the French army suffered 130,000 casualties due to the strong attack, which caused a flaw in the south.

Ludendorff made up his mind to evacuate the army in East Prussia, otherwise he would really have no mobile forces available.

But on May 4, the German army of the 8 armies in East Prussia had not yet boarded the train. Nicholas II, who could not sit still, bypassed the General Staff and directly ordered the army to launch an attack.

That afternoon, the Russian army marched towards East Prussia and entered East Prussia on the morning of the next day. Grand Duke Nicholas suggested to Grand Duke Mikhail that he should ask the Tsar to postpone the attack.

Then Nicholas II ordered the Caucasus Front to launch an attack on the Ottoman Empire to support their Chinese allies-in other words, to drive away Grand Duke Nicholas.

Ludendorff quickly revised the order, asking the East Prussian army to stop retreating and prepare for attack. As for the Western Front, he withdrew an army group that helped defend Romania in the Austro-Hungarian Empire to serve as a reserve.

At the same time, given the fierce attack of the British and French coalition forces, the French infantry and artillery coordination was very skillful and crazy (the infantry was less than 150 meters away from the bombing point), and the German army was under great pressure due to insufficient manpower.

Ludendorff decisively ordered the contraction of the defense line, which put him under pressure from many aspects, but the Junker noble group and the emperor supported him very much after listening to his plan.

William II could not support it, because Germany was the Germany of the Junker nobles and the Germany of the German army.

The British and French coalition forces began to achieve more and more brilliant victories on the battlefield. The positions that could not be taken down with tens of thousands of people could now be taken down with only a few hundred people.

The advancement speed, which was once calculated in meters per day, is now calculated in kilometers.

Just three days later, the British and French forces advanced more than 30 kilometers, while the French army on the southern front even advanced 60 kilometers. Compared with the results of the war, the casualties of less than 100,000 people seemed insignificant.

All newspapers in Britain, France, Russia and the United States reported that the war was about to end, including the Huaxia Empire, which was also discussing whether the war was finally about to end.

On May 7, at the urging of Nicholas II, the Russian army's seven armies and more than 50 divisions completely invaded East Prussia.

By May 10, the Russian army had penetrated more than 40 kilometers into East Prussia. It was not that the Russian army wanted to go so fast, but that they were running out of food and were collecting food everywhere.

Alexeev's sacrifice and Grand Duke Nicholas's efforts allowed the Russian army to recuperate for more than 20 days, and there were several good days in the middle. The Russian army recovered and at least did not have to eat wild vegetables to survive.

However, the Russian army was far from recovering to the point where it could attack again. Neither its logistical preparations nor the soldiers' rest were completed.

In fact, by May 7, the Russian army was already using the food they carried. They carried enough food to sustain them for four days, and they could not carry more.

By this time, the commanders of the Russian army realized how big the problem was and began to expand the marching range, not missing any village.

The Russian army allowed the troops to buy "all the food that can be purchased" in the villages. Although the Russian army would pay, they paid in rubles.

However, the Russian army came too late, and the villages here had been requisitioned by the German army again and again. They could only "painfully" buy the remaining rations of the few villagers who did not leave.

Although this little food was not a drop in the bucket for the 700,000-strong Russian army, it was at least a source of food.

On May 10, the German army had basically figured out the approximate distribution and marching direction of the Russian army, and even roughly guessed the size of the Russian army.

On the 11th, the German army concentrated 6 armies with about 700,000 people, more than 3,000 artillery pieces, 1,200 mortars, more than 800 aircraft, 100 fast tanks and 20 heavy tanks, and launched an attack on the two Russian armies in the north with about 160,000 people.

The remaining two armies organized defense to delay the Russian support.

This attack caught the Russian army off guard. The Russian army did not expect that the German army had been mobilized to East Prussia on a large scale, and did not even expect that the German army had such a strong offensive capability.

Because it was a field battle, the Russian army did not have a solid defense line to rely on. After seeing the tanks for the first time, the Russian army also had the same panic as the British, French and German armies. Coupled with the endless artillery fire formed by more than 3,000 light artillery pieces, the Russian army was defeated.

On the second day of the battle, the two Russian armies completely lost their organizational ability and began to surrender or flee in large numbers.

The German army ignored them and continued to advance from the north to the east until they left East Prussia and made a roundabout movement to the south. Although it was just a simple encirclement, the German army, which did not stop for a moment, had the flavor of a large-depth roundabout tactic.

The Russian army's army-level communications were still very good. After receiving the telegram of the German ambush, they realized that something was wrong and began to gather.

However, the Russian army was too scattered at this time, and it would take time to gather together.

The victory or defeat of the war was in time. Starting from the 13th, the German army was divided into four directions and began to march at a speed of 2+5 kilometers per day.

In order to maintain speed, the German army abandoned all large-caliber artillery, all horses were used to transport supplies or artillery, tanks and armored vehicles were used as transportation tools, and airplanes also joined the ranks of airdrop supplies.

After a brief discussion, the Russian army prepared to retreat back to the Russian Empire for logistical reasons, shorten the supply line, and then fight a decisive battle with the German army.

However, the two German army groups left behind did not want to see this and began to attack frantically.

All the artillery weighing more than 1 ton in the eight German army groups were left in the remaining two army groups, and they only carried mountain artillery weighing less than 1 ton and a few small-caliber field artillery to advance.

Therefore, although the two remaining army groups had only more than 1,800 artillery pieces, the number of field cannons accounted for 1,000, and the rest were medium and large caliber artillery.

For example, 150mm heavy howitzers, or 210mm heavy howitzers.

The advantage in firepower forced the Russian army to resist with all its strength. Even though the Germans paid a heavy price, they stuck to the Russians and made them dare not retreat.

The small troops that were separated would be quickly defeated when they met the Germans in the rear.

By the 19th, the six-day march was over. 80 of the German army's 100 light tanks were grounded, and all 20 heavy tanks were grounded, with tens of thousands of people left behind.

But they successfully bypassed the Russian army's rear, occupied the road, and cut off the Russian army's already fragile logistics.

At this point, the Russian commander already knew that he had failed...

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