Chapter 259: Planting the Fuse for Lusha's Self-Destruction |
On the night of June 13, the Admiralty office building in London remained brightly lit.
Clearly, Admiral Spee's hit-and-run, mocking raid at the mouth of the Suez Canal had slapped the Brit Nation's Admiralty hard across the face, forcing them to work through the night.
Even the fish and chips takeaway shops on Downing Street saw a surge in sales.
First Lord of the Admiralty Edward Carson sat in his office, his face ashen as he stared at the battle damage report in front of him. He hesitated over whether to send a telegram urging Rear Admiral Osmond Brock—whose fleet had sortied two days ago—to disregard his ships' engine lifespans and rush to the Eastern Mediterranean at full speed.
On the Earth plane, the post of the Brit Nation's First Lord of the Admiralty at this moment should have been temporarily held by Foreign Secretary Arthur Balfour until after the Battle of Jutland.
In this timeline, however, the disastrous defeat in the Gallipoli campaign the previous year had been far too catastrophic. It had not only dragged down the former Admiralty Minister, Wharton Spencer, but also caused Prime Minister Asquith's government to collapse prematurely, bringing the opposition leader Bonar Law into power as Prime Minister.
Replacing someone in a critical post like the Admiralty Minister naturally required choosing an official from Bonar Law's faction. Since Balfour and Bonar Law did not belong to the same faction and had a poor relationship, the position ultimately went to Edward Carson, who shared Bonar Law's political affiliations.
Of course, Edward Carson's competence was not in question. If history had followed its original trajectory, Lloyd George would have appointed him as Admiralty Minister after becoming Prime Minister to clean up the mess left by the Battle of Jutland. Now, he had merely taken office over half a year early, elevated immediately after the Gallipoli failure.
As a Brit Nation politician, Edward Carson was also infamous in history for another point: he was the Brit Nation's number one "Irish traitor." Although he was Irish himself, born in the southern region of Ireland, he vehemently opposed Irish autonomy.
In the current Brit Nation cabinet, Edward Carson was also the minister who most fanatically championed the idea that "the Irish should also serve as soldiers for the Brit Nation and fight against Demania for the Brit Nation." It was practically the zeal of a convert, or as the saying went, "the turncoat is more detestable than the true enemy."
At this moment, after weighing his options, Edward Carson decided to break radio silence. He summoned the battlecruiser fleet's chief of staff, Rear Admiral Horace Hood, and ordered, "Send another telegram to Brock. Tell him he must sail at maximum speed to Taranto to assist the Italians in battle!
"Do not worry about the lifespans of the warships' engines.
"After completing the mission in Italy, divide the forces and head straight to the Aegean Sea to blockade the Dardanelles, and protect the Port of Alexandria and Port Said. We absolutely cannot let Spee's fleet appear in the Eastern Mediterranean again!
"Also, draft an application for me. I will speak to the Prime Minister about coordinating with the Francia navy to deploy their Mediterranean Fleet from Toulon for joint operations."
Rear Admiral Horace Hood was slightly startled and couldn't help but offer a reminder. "But—although Admiral Brock's squadron can tune their Radio Sets to receive-only mode, so even if we transmit, the enemy cannot pinpoint his location,
"However, as long as this telegram is sent, the enemy will at least learn that Admiral Brock's squadron has already headed south. This will tip them off that our Home Fleet's strength has been weakened somewhat—"
Minister Edward Carson waved his hand impatiently. "If they know, they know! It doesn't matter; it's only a difference of a few days anyway. Even if we don't send the telegram, won't the enemy find out when our fleet carries out its combat missions in the Adriatic Sea?
"Letting them know in advance might even force Spee to show some restraint. If he mistakenly believes our Mediterranean Fleet is about to be heavily reinforced immediately, he won't dare linger in the Eastern Mediterranean and might retreat back to the Black Sea at once."
Hearing the Minister say this, Horace Hood voiced no further doubts.
He immediately arranged for someone to send the telegram. Soon, Rear Admiral Osmond Brock—who had set sail just over thirty hours ago and had only navigated from the home port of Plymouth to Portuguese waters—received the Admiralty's urgent message.
"Why such a rush? Was there something they couldn't explain before we departed? Did they really have to break radio silence?"
Inside the conning tower of the battleship Barham, Rear Admiral Osmond Brock couldn't help but frown the moment he read the telegram.
Rear Admiral Brock was originally the commander of the Home Fleet's 3rd Battlecruiser Squadron, temporarily reassigned to the Mediterranean theater to assist in the war effort.
Since setting sail early yesterday morning, his fleet had been cruising for thirty-four hours. Maintaining a speed of about sixteen knots the entire way wasn't exactly slow.
Because his fleet wasn't entirely composed of fast battleships and battlecruisers, but also included standard battleships, their top speed was capped at twenty-one knots, with a maximum cruising speed of sixteen knots.
When deploying this fleet, the Admiralty had run the numbers. They knew the Italian navy had a total of six dreadnoughts. To prevent Italy from collapsing and turning coat, the dispatched warships had to be capable of keeping the Italians in check so they wouldn't harbor any treacherous thoughts.
The Royal Navy could no longer afford to dispatch as many as six battleships for this kind of minor mission, as doing so would drastically reduce their naval deterrence back home.
Thus, after weighing their options, they could only choose to send a small number of heavily armed, thickly armored behemoths boasting overwhelming single-ship superiority to hold the line, accompanied by a few damage sponges to share the load.
Ultimately, Rear Admiral Brock was assigned the Queen Elizabeth-class number three ship, Barham, and their strongest battlecruiser, Tiger. One of these ships wielded 15-inch main guns, and the other 13.5-inch. Furthermore, both were extremely fast and could completely crush Italy's 12-inch dreadnoughts across the board, ensuring they wouldn't dare act out.
Moreover, Barham could reach twenty-five knots, and Tiger could hit twenty-eight. As long as these two ships were present, they could continue to pin down Moltke and Goeben after their mission in the Italian theater concluded, ensuring the Demanian Navy's Black Sea Fleet remained sealed away.
Of course, having merely two capital ships wasn't enough. If an accidental firefight broke out with the Italians, they still needed a few iron turtles to hold the line and absorb damage. They couldn't exactly rely on battlecruisers to tank hits, nor could they expect to win a two-versus-six scenario.
Therefore, Rear Admiral Brock also brought along two relatively older dreadnoughts, Bellerophon and Agincourt. Neither ship had any remaining sisters of their class, making their integration into the grand fleet rather inefficient, so they were plucked out and dragged down to the Mediterranean.
As for the very first founding ship, Dreadnought, there was in fact only one of her. But Dreadnought happened to be undergoing maintenance and was not yet ready, so she couldn't head to the Mediterranean—just as on the Earth plane, Dreadnought missed the Battle of Jutland because she happened to be in for repairs at the time.
However, since the Battle of Jutland had not occurred on schedule in this timeline, it was entirely possible for Dreadnought to catch up if another massive naval battle broke out in the future.
At this moment, having finished reading the telegram, Rear Admiral Brock knew that the fact of his southward sortie could no longer be kept under wraps.
He could understand their panic, though. The end of the telegram mentioned that Admiral Spee had attacked the northern mouth of the Suez Canal that morning, sinking several cargo ships and blocking the canal for a period of time. The incident was simply too massive; it was no wonder the Admiralty had lost their composure.
"Where are we right now?" Rear Admiral Brock asked his navigator.
The navigator briefly checked the observation parameters before answering with certainty, "Currently seventy nautical miles due southwest of Porto, and ninety nautical miles from Lisbon."
Frowning, Rear Admiral Brock verified the coordinates on the nautical chart and sighed. "We still have 1,800 nautical miles to go before Taranto. At our original sixteen-knot cruising speed, that would take five days. Even at the Admiralty's demanded twenty-one-knot top speed, it will take over three and a half days. By the time we reach Taranto, Bellerophon will have burned through all her coal."
Complaints aside, Rear Admiral Brock didn't dare disobey orders. In the end, he had all ships raise their speed to the maximum twenty-one knots, and even made an exception for Barham and Tiger to accelerate further and rush ahead to Taranto.
At this pace, it was estimated that Barham and Tiger would arrive in Taranto by midnight on June 16, while Bellerophon and the others would arrive at dawn on the 17th.
The Brit Nation navy's warships could burn heavy oil starting from Dreadnought, but prior to the Queen Elizabeth-class, they all used mixed-firing boilers that could burn both coal and oil. The drawback of mixed-firing boilers was that their efficiency was slightly lower than pure heavy-oil boilers, and they struggled to push the speed up.
It was only by switching to pure oil boilers that the Queen-class further pushed their speed to twenty-five knots.
In contrast, the opposing Demanian Navy had always used mixed-firing boilers due to their oil shortage. But now that Demania controlled the Romanian oil fields and the Baku Oil Field, the Demanians were already considering directly outfitting the fifth ship of the Bayern-class battleships and the final three Mackensen-class battlecruisers with entirely new, optimized small-tube pure heavy-oil boilers.
"The Britannians really did send a fleet to Taranto to assist the Italians. Starting today, have the forces in the Caucasus theater intensify their propaganda warfare against the enemy troops in Tsaritsyn and the Volga region. Let them know that Lusha has already been sold out by their ally, Britannia!
"They're fighting desperately against the Osmans in the Caucasus and the Middle East, yet the Osman lands in the Middle East have already been promised to the locals by the Brit Nation! Even Persia has been promised to the locals! Use the amplified broadcasts to shout at the enemies on the frontlines if necessary!"
Stationed in Milan, Lelouch learned of this situation mere hours after London transmitted the order to Brock's fleet. After all, once radio silence was broken, nothing could be hidden.
Although he didn't know the exact location of Brock's fleet, he could confirm they were en route from the Brit Nation mainland to Italy.
Thus, Lelouch spared no effort, allowing the staff of the Naval Intelligence Bureau to wake him up in the middle of the night. He reviewed the general contents of the intercepted message and handled it promptly.
Lelouch's orders were swiftly and decisively executed. After dawn the next day, the Demanian Army along the standoff line launched a frantic propaganda campaign against the Lusha Army opposite them.
Early morning on June 14, at the Tsaritsyn frontline.
Kliment Yefremovich Voroshilov, a section chief from a workshop at the Tsaritsyn artillery plant, was escorting a batch of newly manufactured 122mm howitzers to the artillery positions on the Don River bend frontline west of the city.
The vast majority of the workers inside Tsaritsyn had already been temporarily conscripted into the militia by the commander of the Southern Front Army, General Nikolai Yudenich, and sent to the frontlines with guns to fill the trenches.
The only reason Voroshilov could still work in the rear was because his factory was an arsenal that built cannons. The frontline needed new artillery every day to hold the line against the threat posed by Lieutenant General Dellmensingen opposite them, so the workers at the cannon factory were exempt from the draft.
Over the past few months, because the factory director and the workshop supervisor were quite afraid of dying, they sent him every time to escort the cannons to the frontlines and hand them over to the defenders. Voroshilov hadn't refused.
—
In his heart, however, he was intensely anti-war. For the past half year, he had been secretly spreading anti-war propaganda among the workers.
He never expected that while delivering cannons to the frontline today, he would hear something entirely different.
"Officers and soldiers of Lusha on the other side, stop throwing your lives away for a tyrant! And stop serving as allies to the faithless Britannians who only know how to backstab and betray!
"Did you think you were fighting to expand the territory of your nation and your people? The truth is, you were sold out a long time ago! The Britannians have already signed the McMahon-Hussein Agreement with the tribes of the Middle East, making it completely clear that Iraq, Kuwait, Hejaz, Najd, and the Levant have all been sold to the locals to establish their own countries.
"You push yourselves to the brink of death, fighting your way south from the Caucasus to expand your borders, but in reality, you are throwing your lives away for nothing. The britannian dogs simply want to watch you Lushans and us Demanians slaughter each other, so that they can reap the spoils and prop up their own puppets.
"Are you truly going to bleed the last drop of Lushan blood for the interests of the britannian dogs? Wake up from your blind folly! Nicholas II is not just a tyrant, but an incompetent ruler—a foolish beast tricked by the Britannians into using his own people to pave the road for foreigners!
"We have excerpts of the McMahon-Hussein Agreement right here. You'll see for yourselves in a moment!"
Voroshilov had never heard such a booming voice before in his life. He even forgot to immediately listen to the contents of the broadcast, instead asking the artillery officer accepting the cannon handover in terror, "Major, what are the Demanians using to shout with? Why does the voice sound so loud and far-reaching?"
The questioned artillery battalion commander looked completely bewildered. "How should I know! But the people at Siemens must have mastered some new technology. That thing is definitely using electronic amplification!"
Half a year had passed since humanity's first electronically amplified speech at the San Francisco City Hall last Christmas.
The Demanians had been working with amplified broadcasts and radio broadcasting for three months now.
Nowadays within Demania, at least in the two cities of Munich and Nuremberg, public address systems had been erected in the main squares where citizens gathered. They had begun broadcasting a radio program called Voice of the Empire. So far, there was only one station, and rumor had it that it was operated by Princess Irmgard, the eldest daughter of Duke Rupprecht, the Crown Prince of Baria.
However, within the borders of the Lusha Empire, not a single person had ever heard a radio audio broadcast, nor had they even heard an electronic amplifier—that is, a simple old-fashioned megaphone.
Hearing an amplified broadcast for the first time in his life, the sheer impact naturally went without saying. Voroshilov was shocked speechless.
The other Lusha soldiers, hearing the commotion, also squatted blankly in the trenches. Driven by a natural, uncontrollable curiosity, they listened intently to the enemy's words.
It was unclear how long the Demanians across the lines repeatedly broadcasted their message. Finally, the drone of airplane engines drifted down from the sky, reminding the soldiers to take cover.
But the airplanes dropped no bombs; they only dropped boxes of leaflets. The contents were indeed printed excerpts of the McMahon-Hussein Agreement, along with some Demanian interpretations. They even included a simple mimeographed map titled: "The territory promised by the Britannians to those puppet Middle Eastern tribes for their own states, and the size of the Lusha Empire's betrayed sphere of influence."
"Those damned britannian dogs actually sold us out! Didn't they agree that as long as we held off the Demanians, the Empire would get warm-water ports in the future? And now the britannian dogs are giving the entire Persian Gulf to their puppets!"
There were still some Lusha junior officers who understood a bit of geography and national interests. Upon reading this propaganda, those with weaker resolve immediately started cursing.
"Then what the hell are we still fighting for! We should just sign a truce with the Demanians and let Demania and Britannia tear each other apart like rabid dogs. We need to hurry and rebuild the country and restore production!"
Voroshilov couldn't help but muster his courage and spit out a curse as well. His words were overheard by the artillery major beside him. The battalion commander shot him a fierce glare, but didn't make a scene at such a critical juncture.
Because far too many people were wavering, and the law could not punish the masses.
Voroshilov realized he had misspoken, but seeing that the artillery major hadn't reprimanded him, his heart stirred. He knew that the number of people opposing the war was growing by the day.
He hastily collected a stealthy stack of the leaflets the Demanians had dropped. After finishing his artillery delivery mission that day, he sneaked back to the Tsaritsyn artillery plant. Then, during a break after work, he quietly spread the word among the workers regarding the broader injustice of the Tsar's war.
"Comrades, the Tsar is a tyrant! And now, he's not just a tyrant, but an incompetent ruler! If he were merely brutal, that would be one thing; at least we could say it was for the expansion of our nation and our people. But what are his actions amounting to now? He is bleeding us Lushans dry just to pave the way for the Britannians!
"We worker comrades in Tsaritsyn absolutely cannot throw our lives away for a tyrant anymore! Not only must we refuse to die for him, but we must also find a way to contact our worker comrades in other cities to expose the Tsar's foolishness together, so that those soldiers who still hold onto simple national pride won't be deceived any longer!"
Within a short span of two or three days, Voroshilov's activities spread across several large factories in Tsaritsyn, before moving outward toward the northern hinterland.
And similar events were unfolding one after another on the Minsk frontline and the northern frontline. Although the exact circumstances varied and the propaganda wasn't as effective as Voroshilov's efforts, it still made some impact.
In less than ten days, the anti-war outcry within Lusha would surely make Nicholas II feel genuine fear. When that time came, he would be forced to make the Britannians formally explain Lawrence's reckless actions in the Middle East.
They had clearly agreed before the war that it would be Lusha's sphere of influence. What right did the britannian dogs have to promise it to the locals?!
The Lushan people harbored a fervent desire for great-power expansion. This wasn't solely the Tsar's ambition; sometimes, the Tsar himself was pushed forward by public sentiment.
If the passion of these patriotic people was crushed—if they felt that the Tsar had sold out the country while bargaining for foreign interests—it would be absolutely fatal to Lushan rule!
