On November 14, German media led the Chinese Empire's Navy Pacific Fleet to attack the Ulsan Naval Base of the Tsarist Russian Far East Fleet from the night of November 3 to the early morning of November 4, causing severe damage to the Russian Far East Fleet. As a result, news of the Chinese Empire's undeclared war against the Russian Empire spread wildly and caused a sensation all over the world.

The European and American powers could not believe that this was true. It was too difficult to believe that the Chinese Empire dared to take the initiative to attack the Tsarist Russian Empire. But in fact, the military strategists from various countries soon came up with a series of reasons that were enough to prompt the Chinese Empire to start war on their own initiative, but they were all hindsights.

Governments of Europe and the United States are extremely conflicted about this. This will be the first contest between the East and the West in the 20th century. However, due to the conflicts between Western powers, it is difficult for them to reach a unified idea, and they cannot help Russia in the Sino-Russian War.

As Russia's military ally, France first jumped out to condemn the Chinese Empire's actions, but it was just condemning. The same is true for Germany. In order to divert the direction of Tsarist Russia's military attack and reduce the pressure of Germany facing France and Russia in Europe, the German government also delivered a condemnation speech and expressed its support for Tsarist Russia's actions for this.

Most European countries chose to condemn the rude behavior of the Chinese Empire from the perspective of white people. Only the British government was amazed. The Sino-Russian War that they had been looking forward to finally broke out, so the British government could use the power of the Chinese Empire to attack Russia.

The entire Europe issued a condemnation statement on the issue of the Ulsan Bay incident, and even clamored to support Russia in taking counter-retaliation measures against China. Of course, they were full of thunder and little rain, and they were unable to intervene in the Far East war situation.

However, the Chinese Empire immediately launched a powerful diplomatic counterattack. Tang Shaoyi, Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Chinese Empire, sent a note to the ambassadors and consular personnel in China, and asked them in person why Russia invaded more than one million square kilometers of land in the Chinese Empire. Is this what you call civilization? Faced with the bombardment of the Chinese Empire by the Chinese Empire, European governments were speechless, and the condemnation of China in response to the Ulsan Bay incident quickly became silent.

Subsequently, the British government issued a statement saying that the territorial dispute between the Chinese Empire and the Tsarist Russian Empire should be handled by the two countries themselves and that Western countries should not interfere. Therefore, European countries took the opportunity to find a way out and declared neutrality outside the country.

The Russian government, who was also in the dark, immediately generated electricity and questioned General Alekseyev, the Far Eastern Theater General. General Alekseyev was also unaware of it, so he immediately sent a telegram to ask Major General Makdolovsky, the commander of the Ulsan Naval Base.

Until this time, Major General Markdolovsky had to inform him of the details. He originally wanted to hide it for a few days, and then lead the fleet out of the port to fight the Chinese Empire Navy, sink several enemy ships before reporting to his superiors. He did not want Alekseyev and Nicholas II to know the truth, because in that case he would be sent directly to the gallows.

However, the damn German was the first to steal it out. Markdolovsky had to report it in the face of General Alekseyev's questioning.

The attack on the night of November 3 caused ten warships of the Tsarist Russian Far East Fleet to be sunk, six were severely damaged, and seventeen other auxiliary ships were damaged to varying degrees. Among them, four main battleships, the great Sissoa, Retasrov, Rostislav, Peresvet, two armored cruisers, the Yuqiushiwei and Gangut, as well as the Manchurian and Beaver,

Ten warships including the Sea Dog and the Goryeo were sunk. Four battleships, Osliyabiya, Petropavlovsk, Boltawa, Sevastoboer, and two armored cruisers, Svetlena and Konilov, were severely damaged and stranded. A large number of misfired torpedoes destroyed many dock berths, debris and other naval facilities, causing huge economic and military losses.

After learning the truth, the Russian government was shocked, as if it had fallen from heaven to hell. They had always threatened that the Chinese Empire would not dare to start a war on its own initiative. Now the Ulsan sneak attack caused a heavy blow to the Russian Far East fleet in Tsarist Russia will greatly change the military structure of the Far East, so it was like a slap on their faces.

Tsar Nicholas II was furious and scolded Ulsan for being a group of people. Although Major General Markdolovsky kept expelling him, General Alekseev still faced the roar from Tsar Nicholas II and had to remove him from his post and appointed Stepan.

Lieutenant General Ossibo Olmakarov served as commander of Ulsan Fortress and commander of the Far East Fleet within Ulsan Harbour.

It was naturally a huge matter for Nicholas II to lose face, so in the afternoon of the same day, the Russian government issued the Tsar's imperial edict and ordered the declaration of war on the Chinese Empire.

On the same day, Wang Chenhao, who had already prepared the declaration of war, ordered the formal declaration of war against the Tsarist Russian Empire, and the Second Sino-Russian War officially broke out.

After Tsarist Russia declared war on China, all preparations were not completed, and Tsarist Russia's huge war machine had not yet started to operate.

The top leaders of the Tsarist Russian government only issued strategic defense orders to the Far East and Central Asian theaters, strictly ordered the Tsarist Russian troops in the war zone to defend their territory and wait for assistance. Until this time, the top leaders of the Tsarist Russian Empire only believed that the Chinese Empire was just a dare to attack the Russian navy and did not dare to take the initiative to attack the Tsarist Russian Empire.

This idea led to the Russian army in the two major exhibition areas of the Tsarist Russian Empire in the Far East and Central Asia, and provided the Chinese Empire with an opportunity to take the initiative.

Of course, the Tsarist Russian Empire was also a forced solution.

The Tsarist Russian Empire was now being robbed of funds from international financial players. They transferred financial means to the Tsarist Russian Empire to the Tsarist Russian Empire, causing the Tsarist Russian Empire to be very unstable. Russian people sold rubles to purchase foreign exchange to preserve value, or exchanged gold to deal with the soaring prices during the war.

The Tsarist Russian Empire was not rich in nature. In order to prepare for the war, the people of the Tsarist Russian Empire were scrapped layer by layer by layer by layer by layer by Russian officials, which had caused the people to live in a difficult life. Now that the war preparations for the Tsarist Russian Empire have not been completed, foreign financial forces have entered to grab money again, which has immediately caused the Russian people to be in dire straits. The ruble is legally stipulated to be the ruble to 1 British list, and the market has quickly risen to the one British list for eleven rubles.

To make matters worse, Nicholas II demanded that the war preparations be completed immediately, and war mobilization will begin across the country. The last section of the Siberian Railway, Lake Baikal, must be completed by the end of the year, and all strategic material reserves must be completed before the completion of military mobilization.

Nicholas II did not give Wright any reason to make any excuses, but only asked him to complete the task on time.

Witt had no choice but to start the printing machine and print rubles on a large scale. This move caused the rubles to depreciate further. At the same time, in order to prevent the international financial dog giant from cashing out Russian gold and silver reserves, the Russian government had to order the termination of gold.

The exchange of silver and rubles. Although this move curbed the international financial giants to a certain extent, the consequence was that Witt's hard work in the past few years of gold standard reform failed. At the same time, the ruble became an undepreciable currency, and the international community immediately terminated the ruble's international payment capacity. It severely hit Russia's already underdeveloped foreign trade.

While Russia was preparing for war urgently, the Chinese Empire had already prepared for various wars and began to act before declaring war.

After the Ulsan Bay attack, the Russian Far East Fleet had only seventeen large and small warships left to fight four, including the large armored cruiser Russian, Admiral Nashimov, Azov, Monomach, and the Twelve Apostles survived because they were not in Ulsan Port.

On the morning of the mouth day, Major General Markdolovsky tried to lead the remaining ships out of the port to fight, but was soon shot back by the Imperial Navy's Pacific Fleet. If it weren't for the completion of the fort on the sea-side of the Ulsan Fortress, the outskirts of the port were blocked in time and the Imperial Navy was blocked, blocking the following and pursuit of the Imperial Navy, then the consequences would be unimaginable once the Imperial Navy rushed into the Ulsan Bay.

But as a result, the Russian Far East Fleet lost the opportunity to break through and was surrounded by the Imperial Chinese Navy in Ulsan Port. At the same time, the remaining ships of the Russian Far East Fleet were also divided into two parts, one in Ulsan Port and the other in Vladivostok. The two squadrons combined are no match for the Imperial Chinese Navy, and even more so, they are no match for the Imperial Chinese Navy when they are divided.

Subsequently, the Imperial Chinese Navy dispatched a large number of minecraft to deploy a large number of mines in Ulsan Port and the entire Ulsan Bay, completely blocking the Russian Far East Fleet from the port and unable to get out. At the same time, it sent warships to cruising in the surrounding waters to guard the situation.

As a result, the Chinese Empire Navy easily obtained the sea control power of the Yellow Sea, the Korean Strait, and the Japanese Sea, laying a solid foundation for the subsequent army operations.

On the morning of the 4th, Emperor Chen Hao of the Chinese Empire convened a meeting of imperial fronts. The navy had obtained the power to control the sea. The army would then launch military operations to establish a favorable strategic position in the Far East before Russia reinforced the Far East on a large scale.

The specific strategy is that in the first stage, the Imperial Army of the Chinese Empire carried out strategic defense in the three major military regions in the north, and at the same time, 15 armies and four other military regions were drawn to form the First Front Army, the Second Front Army and the Third Front Army. Among them, the total strength of the First Front Army was 300,000, and the main attack direction was in Boli and Vladivostok, which was twice the strength of the Far East Russian army. The total strength of the Second Front Army was 180,000, and the main attack direction was on the Korean Peninsula, which was three times the strength of the North Korean Russian army. The Third Front Army was an expeditionary force with a total strength of 120,000. Departing from sea, it landed in the areas near Ulsan and Vladivostok respectively, with the main task of conquering the two solid fortresses of the Russian army.

The strategic purpose of the first phase is to use the First Front Army as the main force of the Russian army, strive to restrain the Russian army on the border between the two countries, rely on the superior geographical location of Heilongjiang and Ussuri River to fight, and maintain pressure on the Russian army. The Second Front Army will occupy the Korean Peninsula in the shortest time, use the Korean Peninsula as a springboard, and supply the troops fighting in Vladivostok at close range. The combat mission of the Third Front Army is to capture Vladivostok and Ulsan. Once these two fortresses are captured, the strategic purpose will be basically achieved by the Far East Battle.

On the morning of November 4, 1901, the 5th Army and the Old Army under the Second Front Army were the vanguards and took the lead in launching an attack on the north bank of the Yalu River. Both armies were elite troops of the Imperial Army, and their artillery skills were influenced by General Duan Qirui, the commander of the Second Front Army, and were extremely sharp and ferocious.

At around 9 a.m., the two armies used more than 200 cannons to concentrate their firepower to launch a fierce artillery fire strike at Bitong on the south bank of the Yalu River. The Bitong garrison troops had only one regiment of Russian troops. Faced with the fierce artillery bombardment of the Imperial Army, the Russian army's defense positions were suddenly in a sea of ​​fire, and Russian soldiers were killed and injured.

Major General Sibersky, the commander of the Russian Pyongyang, believed that the Chinese Imperial Army would take the main attack direction from Bitong, so he ordered the Russian garrison troops from Chushan and Qingshui to reinforce Bitong.

However, Sibersky was fooled and hit Duan Qirui's tactic of playing against the east and west.

On the night of the 4th, the Fifth Army carried out crossing the river in the upper reaches of the Hunjiangkou Delta on the opposite bank of Mount Chu.

The Russian army in the direction of Chushan quickly discovered that the Chinese Imperial Team was operating across the river in Chushan. However, most of the forces in Chushan were transferred to Bitong. There were less than 500 Russian troops in Chushan garrison, so the Russian army stopped moving and watched the Chinese Imperial Team build a floating bridge to cross the river.

In the early morning of the fifth day, a regiment of the vanguard of the Fifth Army launched an attack on Chushan. The secret weapon of the Chinese Empire, the lightning cannon, was used on the battlefield for the first time, and immediately played a huge role. The Russian soldiers hiding behind the bunker did not understand why the shells could fall into the back-sloping fortifications where they were, but they had no time to think about it. Facing the fierce attack of the Chinese Emperor's team, the position in the northern part of Chushan was lost after the opponent charged.

Then, the Chinese Emperor's team immediately launched the tactic of flanking detour, which immediately scared the Chushan defenders. Once the opponent successfully detoured, the Chushan Russian troops would fall into a desperate situation. The Russian troops were immediately panicked, and the garrison commander ran away first, and then the other Russian troops gave up their positions and retreated.

Chushan was lost in less than an hour, but it was not until three hours later that Sibersky learned the news.

Chu Mountain is high and once Chu Mountain is lost, the Russian army in Bitong loses the cover of the commanding heights.

So, Sibersky ordered the Russian army to abandon the Yalu River defense position and retreat across the board. Considering the huge gap in force between the two sides and the huge gap in combat effectiveness, Sibersky decided to stick to Pyongyang and wait for reinforcements.

However, what made Sibersky sad was that the attack speed of the Chinese Emperor ** team was too fast.

It turned out that the Fifth Army and the 18th Army of the Chinese Empire were equipped with bicycles, a veritable bicycle-forming infantry army. In the words of Sibersky, he rode a horse to Pyongyang, and every time he walked for a while, he had to stop and let the horses meet and feed them. However, the bicycles of the "China Team" did not need to rest or feed them. The vanguard of the marching rushed even rode his bike while eating dry food, and as a result, he naturally ran in front of the Russian army.

On the morning of the 9th, when the Russian army arrived in Shunchuan, they were shocked to find that the military flag of the Chinese Empire had been replaced on the top of Shunchuan.
Chapter completed!