The War Court and Lap Pillow, Austria's Mandate of Heaven

Chapter 1244 Russian Trouble

As expected, Paskevich's public trial was very ineffective. The bloody massacre not only failed to have a sufficient deterrent effect, but instead made those people heroes.

This is the consequence of using too few means, and people's tolerance for bloodshed will continue to increase. In fact, people are not stupid, they know who the good guys are, but they dare not express it or just go with the flow.

Since he did not achieve the desired results, Paskevich did not dare to take any risks.

The current situation in Poland is very similar to that in Chechnya, except that the Chechens will not be so shameless as to attack the rear baggage. But the Poles will, and from previous combat records, we know that the Poles like to attack the supply team very much.

The advantage of attacking the supply team is that it can cause the Russian army to lack supplies and thus reduce morale, while at the same time it can also replenish the supplies that our side lacks and boost morale.

Most of the Poles are militiamen and brave volunteers, and morale is particularly important to these people.

Russian Poland may seem like a tiny country to Russia, but there are four to five million soldiers and civilians on this land. If it were placed in the German Confederation, it would definitely be considered a powerful country, and even in Europe it would be a medium-sized country.

Paskevich's 100,000-man army was still not enough to fight against the entire Russian Poland.
However, Russia's troubles at this time were not limited to Poland. The Cossacks on the southern Russian steppes had long been accustomed to taking advantage of the situation and raising the price.

As soon as they discovered that Russia's war in Russian Poland was getting tense, they immediately put forward their own demands. They asked for tax reduction, reduced years of military service, and more rewards and land.

However, no monarch would be willing to accept such blatant robbery, let alone the hot-tempered Nicholas I?

But Nicholas I also knew that now was not the time to deal with this group of Cossacks, so at the suggestion of Prince Uvarov, he decided to send someone to negotiate with them to ease the situation.

Duke Uvarov's idea was to appease these Cossacks first, and even temporarily agree to some of their conditions, and then deal with these troublesome guys after the Polish issue was resolved.

Uvarov believed that the Cossacks were a group of scattered individuals, and they would agree as long as the conditions were beneficial to some powerful tribes.

Once these people agreed to Russia's delaying tactic, the Cossacks' fragile trust would be gone, and once internal divisions occurred among them, the so-called alliance of the Cossacks would no longer exist.

It is impossible for a group of guerrillas to compete with the powerful Russia. Once the Russian army has time to deal with a few troublemakers, the rest will behave themselves. There may even be no need for a war, as the Cossacks will optimize themselves and choose to be loyal again.

However, man proposes, God disposes. As soon as the Russian envoys entered the grassland, they clashed with a group of drunken Cossacks and were killed in the fighting.

This made things complicated, because the troops of several Cossack tribes were mixed together, and no one was willing to admit that it was their own people who killed the Russian envoy, and the Tsar was even less likely to choose to swallow his anger.

After all, the murder of the ambassador was a very serious matter. It was not only a threat to Russia's reputation and the Tsar's personal prestige, but also a serious challenge to Russia's rule.

At this point, there was no room for maneuver for either side. War broke out again on the southern Russian steppes, and Nicholas I decided to send Duke Uvarov to completely suppress the Cossack rebellion in southern Russia.

At this time, the Cossacks in southern Russia were in a panic. After all, they didn't really want to start a rebellion, they just wanted to make some money.

In addition, news of the return of Imam Shamil also spread from the Caucasus region. When faced with the siege of Paskevich, Imam Shamil fled into the mountains with only 14 people.

No one thought that Imam Shamil could make a comeback. Almost all of his men were killed, and there were only a few men left in Dagestan and Chechnya.

Paskevich was not a good man. Before returning to St. Petersburg, he insisted on the policy of leaving the land but not the people, moving the locals to southern Russia and then moving the Russians to Chechnya. Any Chechen who resisted the migration was severely punished, either exiled to Siberia or directly sentenced to death.

This kind of cruelty has exceeded the threshold that most people can endure, and even an unyielding nation like the Chechens has temporarily succumbed.

So at first no one believed the news of Imam Shamil's return, but soon he did several major things that forced the Russians to believe this cruel fact.

Imam Shamil's army quickly grew to thousands of people, and was equipped with a lot of new equipment and almost endless supplies.

In fact, Imam Shamil is not a magician who can turn beans into soldiers, but he has the support of certain countries.

The Russians' encroachment on the Ottoman Empire caused panic in the Persian Empire. It happened that Imam Shamil was seeking support after his defeat, and the Ottomans and Persians hit it off.

Imam Shamil's troops were immediately restored to strength and gained a long-term channel for obtaining supplies.

Instead of worrying about the Russians attacking, it is better to find something for the Russians to do so that they will have no time to continue their invasion of the south.

Therefore, both countries welcome people like Imam Shamir. After all, this saves much more manpower and effort than they would have to provide on their own.

The current situation of the Persian Empire is not much better than that of the Ottoman Empire. After the Treaty of Turkmenchay, Persia also ceded large tracts of land to Russia.

Even worse than the Ottomans were the British who set their sights on the Persian Gulf, and the Persian Empire had to suffer from a double attack from Britain and Russia.

The Qajar dynasty was also in its twilight years, and the feudal dynasty was plagued by drawbacks and increasingly acute contradictions. The internal royal regime, local family separatism, and external unequal treaties restricted the dynasty's economic development and reform.

The Qajar dynasty also carried out reforms in order to save itself, but the religious and conservative forces in the country were too strong, making the pace of reform extremely difficult.

If the turmoil in Russia continues, they can finally breathe a sigh of relief.

Although Imam Shamil's troops were few, the new Governor of the Caucasus had already begun to have a headache. As the Governor of the Caucasus, Anatoly Petrov had an army of 50,000, but he felt like he had no idea where to start.

The person who could succeed Paskevich was certainly not an incompetent person, but Anatoly Petrov needed to protect the newly arrived Russian immigrants on the one hand, and at the same time he had to persist in the migration work left by his predecessor.

On the other hand, Imam Shamil's main activities are in the mountainous areas, and an effective encirclement and suppression would require a large number of troops.

At this time, the troops in Anatoly Petrov's hands seemed insufficient. If the rear was lost, all previous efforts would be wasted. If the roaming Imam rebels could not be eliminated as soon as possible, the consequences would be equally serious.

Although Anatoly Petrov did not know that someone was behind the scenes, it was not difficult for him to see that the Imam rebels were growing rapidly from the fact that they were becoming stronger and stronger.

Although all this was somewhat unreasonable, Anatoly Petrov didn't care. In his opinion, the most sensible thing to do now was to ask for help from St. Petersburg.

(End of this chapter)