I'm playing whack-a-mole in Siberia

Chapter 586 Abyss
During the Russo-Japanese War, the Siberian Railway was attacked many times and the Yenisei River Bridge was also blown up, which took more than three months to repair.

A large part of the supplies George stockpiled in Constantinople came from Amur.

Amur's industrial products are not only exported to the Balkans, but also to St. Petersburg. After the single track is upgraded to a double track, there are as many as 110 trains running on the Trans-Siberian Railway every day. It is no exaggeration to describe the importance of the Trans-Siberian Railway to the empire as an artery.

After George became the Secretary of the Admiralty, he transferred the jurisdiction of the Siberian Railway to the Ministry of the Interior, so this was not George's fault.

After gaining access to the Black Sea, the Trans-Siberian Railway is no longer as important to Amur as it was ten years ago.

On August 8, the ocean-going freighter "Hercules" from Vladivostok arrived in Constantinople.

The displacement of "Hercules" is as high as 2 tons. This ship does not use traditional transportation methods. The entire ship is filled with containers.

The container was not invented by Amur. As early as the 18th century, people began to use wooden boxes to transport goods. However, these boxes were small in size and of irregular specifications, and did not greatly improve transportation capacity.

Due to the different sizes and specifications of the goods, a large number of dock workers were needed to transport the goods at the dock at that time, and sometimes it took a week to load and unload a ship.

Amur's containers have consistent specifications, 10 meters long, 2.5 meters wide and high. After being stacked for transportation, the Hercules is loaded with a total of 300 containers.

Since this is the maiden voyage of Hercules, 300 containers are far from the limit and there is still much room for improvement.

Along with the Hercules arrived in Constantinople were 300 Chinese laborers from the Qing Empire.

After the fall of the Qing Empire, Datou, who held a large number of troops, was elected as the President, and his relationship with Amur also changed accordingly.

Last March, Datou and Mario negotiated a series of rights including the Kanto Railway.

After six months of long tug-of-war, Amur retained a series of rights and interests on the premise that he agreed to pay taxes in accordance with relevant regulations.

According to the agreement when the Chinese Eastern Railway was originally built, by 1940, Amur would gradually transfer all rights and interests in the Chinese Eastern Railway and its affiliated lines.

George arranged all 300 workers to work in the arsenal which had just resumed production.

The arsenals left over from the Ottoman Empire had a good foundation and could produce not only bullets and shells, but also guns and artillery.

It has to be said here that compared with the Russian Empire, the weapons and equipment of the Balkan countries are simply a hodgepodge.

Taking the Kingdom of Bulgaria as an example, the rifles came from the Russian Empire, Germany, Britain, Austro-Hungary, the Ottoman Empire, France, and even Italy.

Its production period ranges from 1844 to the present, and it can be called a universal museum.

The calibers range from 6.5 mm to 13.9 mm.

With so many weapon models, the pressure on logistics is catastrophic. Many weapons are no longer in production because they cannot be repaired due to lack of spare parts.

George equipped the 14th Army with all standard Russian weapons.

In order to meet the demand, some technical modifications need to be made to the arsenals left over from the Ottoman Empire.

Vladimir Fedorov, an engineer from St. Petersburg, was responsible for the transformation of the arsenal. Alexei, as the recommender, presented George with the automatic rifle developed by Fedorov.

As early as 1905, Fedorov converted the Yuriev rifle into a semi-automatic rifle.

Unfortunately, this rifle did not attract the attention of the top leaders in St. Petersburg and is still in the warehouse of the Artillery Academy.

Fedorov was not discouraged. In 1907, he developed a new 7.62mm semi-automatic rifle, which also did not attract attention.

Last year, Fedorov even developed the bullet and designed a new 6.5mm bullet and fully automatic rifle.

After personally testing the automatic rifle designed by Fedorov, George gave Fedorov some suggestions.

Compared with the 7.62mm bullet currently used by the Russian Empire, the performance of the 6.5mm bullet has been improved, but there is no qualitative improvement. Therefore, in order to adapt to the empire's military-industrial system, George suggested that Fedorov should still design based on the 7.62mm bullet.

The automatic rifle designed by Fedorov has a complex mechanism and too many parts, which is not conducive to large-scale mass production and maintenance. At the same time, due to its overly complex structure, there may be some reliability problems, all of which need to be improved.

However, George still gave Fedorov high praise for his design ideas. He not only gave Fedorov a reward of 5000 rubles, but also provided financial support for Fedorov's subsequent research and development.

As an officer, Fedorov earned about 110 rubles a month after the George military reform, which was considered a high income in St. Petersburg.

Fedorov was overjoyed by the 5000 ruble reward. He told George that he hoped to communicate with his colleagues in Amur.

George was very happy, the more talents like this the better.

Meanwhile, George was sad.

The Russian Empire is not really without technology. There are countless untapped talents like Fedorov among the people. The European rhetoric that Russian products are technologically backward is pure slander. In the field of science and technology, Russians' research and development level is absolutely world-class.

George arranged for Fedorov to go directly to Vladivostok to find Karpov, as the two of them should have a lot in common.

The renovation of the arsenal has been partially completed. At present, the bullet factory and artillery factory have gradually resumed work. It will take some time to produce rifles and artillery. George is not in a hurry now. Constantinople has stockpiled 50 rifles, and rifles produced in Vladivostok are still being delivered.

There were also quite a few rifles stockpiled in St. Petersburg. As far as George knew, there were at least 120 million of them, which was enough to at least meet the first round of mobilization.

George personally handled this work after the military reform began, so he was very familiar with the relevant situation. However, it was at this link where problems were least likely to occur that a big problem occurred.

After the empire began its first round of mobilization, Nicholas the Younger was surprised to find that there were less than 40 new rifles left in the military warehouses in St. Petersburg.

Little Nikolai was furious and asked Sukhomlinov directly where the missing rifle had gone.

Sukhomlinov was also helpless.

The disappeared rifle was sold by Nicholas to Britain and France.

The British Army has a size of only 10 people, and these 10 people are stationed in overseas colonies around the world and are not mobile forces.

After the Austro-Hungarian Empire began mobilization, although Britain did not begin mobilization, Secretary of War Horatio Kitchener still smelled the smoke of gunpowder and made some preparations in advance.

Kitchener decided to raise 100 soldiers after Britain began mobilizing.

With Britain's current military industrial capabilities, it would take a full year to produce one million rifles.

Isn't this funny? The Germans will not wait until Britain produces 100 million rifles before declaring war.

So the British set their sights on the Russian Empire.

Kitchener did not come forward himself, but asked King George V of England to send a telegram to Nicholas personally, appealing to his emotions and reasoning, and asking Nicholas for help.

Everyone knew that Nicholas was a soft-hearted person. His cousin from Berlin almost bullied Nicholas, but Nicholas could tolerate it. In recent years, Britain had loaned money to the Russian Empire many times to help it alleviate its financial difficulties. It was not reasonable for Nicholas to refuse George V's request.

After George knew about this, he didn't know what to say.

It's no problem for me to help. There are still some obsolete Berdan rifles in the warehouse in St. Petersburg. It's no problem to give those unsold Berdan rifles to the British.

As the war was about to break out, the imperial warehouses were almost emptied by the British and French. What are you trying to do, Tsar?
What made George curious was that it was okay for Britain to go to St. Petersburg to buy weapons, but why did France also join in the fun?

France is a major land power, and George doesn't believe that the French have no inventory.

Indeed there is.

But the French inventory cannot meet France's demand.

Unlike the Russian Empire, the French Parliament was very stingy and would try to make the most of every penny, so France's arms stockpile was always at a relatively dangerous level, which was just enough.

Although France's military and industrial capabilities are stronger than Britain's, the pressure France faces is much greater than that of the British.

Although Britain promised that if Germany attacked France, it would send an expeditionary force to France to assist the French army in the fight.

But if the war goes badly, the British can just run away, but where can the French run? North Africa?

In Joffre's plan, the first phase of the French mobilization would involve the recruitment of 150 million ground forces.

The British and French were quite generous and offered a good price, which in peacetime would have made the three major countries very happy.

The empire's newly recruited soldiers had no guns to use and could only use sticks to make do with their training.

After learning of this situation, George immediately drew 40 rifles from the warehouse in Constantinople and sent them to St. Petersburg. At the same time, he ordered Mario to work at full capacity, with workers working in three shifts, with people resting while the machines continued, and the new factory was to start production immediately.

Mario has increased production capacity to the extreme, even the machines in the Japanese arsenal were brought to Vladivostok by Mario.

Don't ask why they are not produced in Japan.

The question is single colony economy.

Japan's current role is the same as that of Goryeo, providing human resources for Amur.

After 40 rifles were sent to St. Petersburg, the originally abundant inventory was suddenly stretched thin.

The first batch of mobilized soldiers of the Bulgarian Kingdom numbered more than 10.

The Kingdom of Romania and Greece were also mobilizing, and both needed weapons from George.

To make matters worse, on August 8, the Austro-Hungarian Empire declared war on the Kingdom of Serbia, and the news immediately spread throughout the world.

We have to mention German Chancellor Bethmann and Foreign Minister Gottlieb Jagau here.

After Gyselle left Belgrade, William II, who was on vacation, wrote a letter to Joseph I, in which William II said happily: The Serbs have surrendered, Gyselle should return to Belgrade, and the reasons for war are disappearing.

Bateman and Jagau did not send the letter to Joseph immediately.

So after a few hours, the world finally slid irretrievably into the abyss.

(End of this chapter)