The Imperial Age with the Resurgence of Han Style

Chapter 147 Da Qin’s Mission to Russia ()

“To the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the only eternal Son of the incomparable, awe-inspiring and inaccessible God, who ascends the heavens and dwells in the unattainable heaven, and who rules over all the gods with great wisdom and wisdom, and created all things visible and Intangible things, the God who gives them life and soul, always watches over the earth, makes all things find their place, and bestows mercy and love on mankind. We are the one who is revered by heaven, earth, and hell. We are unique and divided into three persons. Yuan Ge praises God, who unites as one and is worshiped by all living beings. By His grace and love, and by His power and will, I have been given the authority to hold the authority of the Orthodox Church, to rule over the Great Russian Empire and many newly attached countries, and to rely on God's protection. May you live in peace and happiness forever, and live in peace and harmony with the world. Our great monarch, Ekarina I Alexeyevna, hereby sends this letter of credence to the ruler of the Forbidden City and the sacred monarch of the Qin Empire: I have decreed to the Privy Council, The Military Commission handles military, commercial, and religious cooperation matters between your two countries, and studies, discusses, and approves the detailed terms of follow-up coordination between the two countries’ Holy Alliance.…”

"In order to curb and combat the evil Kalmyks (Dzungarian Khanate)'s invasion and shameless attacks on our two countries, I have ordered General Marichioff to lead 800 shooting soldiers and 300 Cossack cavalry. Reinforce Omsk and Tomsk, and relocate 2,500 households to engage in military farming and farming nearby. Preparatory work is expected to be completed in June next year. By then, when will the attack on the Kalmyks be launched? My most loyal general, Commander Marichiov, will conduct friendly negotiations with your country and ask the great monarch of the empire to cooperate and assist and jointly send troops..."

"On the other hand, the great Russian Empire was attacked by the barbaric Tungus indigenous country (Bohai State) in the Lena and Angara river basins. Innocent people were massacred, and countless properties were destroyed and plundered. In order to demonstrate Your two countries are friendly and ask the imperial monarch to mobilize powerful military forces to deter the country's border areas, so that the Russian Empire can be protected from attacks by barbaric natives and can calmly deploy military counterattacks..."

"Last year, because our country was caught in a war, we did not send a caravan to the east for trade, resulting in a large amount of goods being left in the Tomsk War District and some Siberian garrison points. I hope that the great monarch will inform me to allow the Russian caravan to set off. Go to your country for free trade and be given access and protection.…”

"The road to your country may be difficult due to river flooding and chaotic public security. If businessmen from our country find a more convenient road to your country, I hope you will allow it and do not stop it. ..."

"I will send Priest Purmakov, a monk of the Assumption Monastery in Omsk, to Suiyuan to preside over divine services in order to comfort the hearts of my subjects. Please assist me..."

Cui Zuyao hurriedly read the Chinese version of the letter of credence delivered by Tsarina Catherine I to the mission. Then he curled his lips in a subtle way, sealed the letter of credence again, handed it to his deputy, and kept it in a specially made official document. In the bag.

Putting aside the long and stinking titles of this Russian monarch, it makes people confused after reading them. However, seeing the specific content written in the certificate of credence, it also makes people quite speechless. If it is presented to His Majesty and the cabinet, Most people will be disappointed.

Although the Russians agreed to the Qin State and agreed to send troops to attack the Dzungar Khanate, they only sent a mere thousand armed soldiers. This showed a strong sense of pettiness.

Who are you kidding?

In the past few decades, the Qin Dynasty and the Junggar Khanate have fought against each other. In each case, thousands or even tens of thousands of troops were dispatched, and a considerable part of them were dragoons - well, the Qi people called them horse-riding musketeers. After the formation of the Dragon Cavalry, Da Qin also adopted this name. In addition, behind these dispatched troops, there are hundreds of thousands of handymen, civilians and other logistical support personnel. If we include the inland people mobilized for this war, there are probably millions of them.

Even so, our Qin Dynasty still has more than 1,200 troops stationed in these two remote places of Kulun (today's Ulaanbaatar) and Darkhan, to defend Bohai State in the north and Junggar in the west. Not to mention, in order to control the northern part of the Western Region, a huge cost was spent to build more than ten forts and cities, and to relocate tens of thousands of households.

It is said that in order to better control the northwest frontier, His Majesty also intends to extend the Long-Henan Railway (Kaifeng-Xi'an-Lanzhou) under construction to Jiayuguan, and at the same time, he is also planning to build a railway from Beijing to Suiyuan. However, these projects were too vast and far beyond what the imperial government could afford in a short period of time. Most of them would take several years to extend the railway bit by bit.

To be honest, since the 1704nd year of Qianyuan (), the first railway in Daqin, the Jiaoyan Line (Penglai-Jiaozhou), invested by Qi merchants, was completed and opened to traffic amidst much controversy. Realize the huge benefits of this era-defining means of transportation.

Damn, it’s amazing. The distance of nearly 400 miles used to take at least ten days to walk and five or six days to take a carriage. If you take a boat, you have to go around most of the Shandong Peninsula, which takes even more time. Once ice floes form on the sea in winter, it will not be navigable.

But now, after this railway is opened to traffic, it can be done morning and evening, regardless of day or night and season, to Denglai Zhili Prefecture (because this place has the imperial mausoleum of the Qi State and many factories invested and established by the Qi State). Many industrial products produced in the area were continuously transported to the southern tip of the peninsula and then exported to the Jianghuai region, which greatly promoted the exchange of people and materials in the region and created an unimaginable economy. benefit.

In the 1712th year of Qianyuan (), with the joint investment of many local businessmen and the Jiangnan Trading Company of Qi State, the construction of the Susong-Songsong Railway (Shanghai-Wuxian) in the Jiangnan area was started, which was designed and constructed by the Northern Railway Trading Company of Qi State. After it was opened to traffic, it was operating at full capacity in less than half a year, rapidly increasing the circulation speed of local materials and commodities, like a chicken that lays golden eggs, allowing those investors and businessmen to make a lot of money.

The railway was so beneficial to the country and the people that it immediately attracted great attention from the imperial court. Therefore, the Railway Transportation Department was established under the Ministry of Industry to be in charge of domestic railway planning and construction. At the same time, funds were raised to gradually build the Su-Song railway to Nanjing, which made the imperial government decree It will be delivered to the beach in the shortest time.

In the forty-one year of Qianyuan (1723), the State of Qin sent a delegation to visit the State of Qi. They used Dengzhou Customs and Tianjin Customs as collateral to reach a loan of million yuan, which is equivalent to almost one yuan in silver. Ten million taels to build the strategic railway from Kaifeng to Lanzhou via Xi'an.

According to the strategic vision of the Qin Dynasty, as long as finances allow, the railway will eventually be built to the northwest border areas. By then, with the continuous support of materials and personnel from the Central Plains, not to mention prairie barbarians like Junggar, even in the face of the huge Russia As a great Western country, our Great Qin court will not be frightened at all and will beat you to the point of running away with your head in your arms.

Yes, after staying in Russia for more than half a year, coupled with what he saw and heard along the way, Cui Zuyao has become less and less fond of Russia. Their previous monarch, Peter I, is said to have implemented a profound reform, seeking to reshape the entire empire through changes in law, state finances, and the military. Taking the systems of Western European countries as a model, he established an administrative system to control the country's economic activities and national taxation. He also established a military hierarchy to ensure the reliability of the army and navy, and granted various preferential policies to advance The handicraft manufacturing industry develops and commodity exports are encouraged to increase national fiscal revenue.

In order to supervise the huge territory, this promising monarch established more than ten systematic imperial organizational departments, with positions filled by professionals rather than hereditary nobles or businessmen who bought offices.

However, when this monarch passed away, many reform measures were suppressed or changed. His queen was the one who succeeded, and the government was controlled by a group of stupid and incompetent royal nobles and ministers. It can be seen that those nobles and ministers They have no loyalty to the court. The female tsar on stage did not have the political skills of the Empress Wu of the Tang Dynasty. She seemed to be unable to control the court and the nobles who owned large amounts of land, nor could she influence the dignitaries of the city. This also resulted in her not having enough financial revenue to establish a more efficient court bureaucracy that would obey her orders.

It is also a kind of helplessness. The Russian monarch could not control the land-owning nobles, so he had to rule the entire country through them. Although the reforms of the wise and promising Peter I had some effect and slightly improved the country's strength, overall, the country's nobles not only did not lose various privileges but gained more rights.

However, what is speechless is that the country's aristocratic elites obviously have no sense of responsibility in serving the empire, and there is no more efficient recruitment and promotion mechanism for official promotion in the court.

As for Da Qin, from the chief minister of the cabinet to the people-friendly officials of prefectures and counties, it was only through ten years of hard study, brutal imperial examinations, and strict screening and inspection by the court that we were able to step up step by step. Go to officialdom.

Oh, that's not entirely true. In the past twenty years or so, those scholars who were assigned to study in Qi State have also begun to be promoted to various administrative offices of the imperial court in large numbers, embarking on a completely different promotion channel.

Cui Zuyao believes that Russia, a country of barbarians in the West, is not actually very powerful. There are only two reasons why it has been able to avoid heavy blows from hostile countries. One is because this country is geographically far away from other countries, and it is remote and desolate, and its territory is vast enough (it can withstand blows); , the European powers to the west of it are constantly arguing with each other and have not yet spared their hands to attack it.

You see, the country called Sweden that was defeated by Russia and many neighboring countries a few years ago suddenly sent troops to invade this country after they were beaten hard by Qi in the Caucasus Mountains. The Russian capital where their mission was located was less than sixty miles away. Oh, riding a fast horse, you can reach the city in half a day.

Well, this is probably because when the Russians faced such a severe threat of foreign invasion, they could only send a pitiful more than a thousand soldiers to the borders of Junggar power to cooperate with our Qin Dynasty in attacking the Mongols.

It's ridiculous to say that they actually asked us, Daqin, to gather heavy troops to threaten Bohai State in order to ease the security situation on Russia's eastern border.

Don’t you know that the one standing behind Bohai State is Qi State?

We, the great Qin Dynasty, are rich all over the world, have hundreds of millions of people, and millions of soldiers, but we are still somewhat afraid of Qi.

What's going on, are you guys, Russia, going to take the initiative to provoke them?

In addition to giving a letter of credence to the mission, Tsar Catherine I also sent a gift note to Cui Zuyao as a parting gift.

The gifts to Emperor Qianyuan were: six expensive carpets of various colors, three sable skins, ten sable skins, thirty fox skins, fifty gold coins with the image of Peter I printed on them, and thirty pieces of Armenian silk.

The gifts given to Cui Zuyao were: one sable skin, two bundles of ordinary mink skins, five fox skins, and five ermine skins.

The gifts to the other members of the mission were: twenty bundles of ermine skins and twenty-five bundles of ermine skins.

The total value of the above gifts is estimated to be about 7,000 to 8,000 rubles, which is not a huge sum, but it is definitely not small. The rude Russians are quite particular and know how to reciprocate.

However, compared to the gifts that Da Qin gave to the Russians - more than thirty pieces of precious porcelain, more than one hundred pieces of silk, two loads of high-grade tea, as well as a large number of gorgeous brocades and exquisite handicrafts, the total value exceeds thirteen thousand taels of silver , but it is also much inferior,

On September 9, amidst the constant rumble of artillery fire from the northern suburbs of St. Petersburg, a team of more than 18 people from the Daqin envoy, escorted by more than officers and soldiers of the Semyonovsky Guards, meandered toward the southeast. OK, we embarked on the long and distant journey back.

On the third day after the Da Qin mission set off, a huge government convoy also drove out of St. Petersburg. Empress Catherine I and many noble officials rode in a carriage toward Novo in the southwest with uneasiness. Fugorod left to avoid the fierce offensive of the Swedish army.

The entire city of St. Petersburg has carried out mass mobilization. All young and middle-aged men are not allowed to leave the city and evacuate to the hinterland. Children from nobles to ordinary citizens, and even countless strong women have been recruited by the army to accompany the retreating front lines. The army and the Imperial Guard were stationed in various parts of the city, preparing to fight a difficult battle to defend the capital against the invading Swedish army.

Although everyone knew that the departure of the Tsar and the Privy Councilors from St. Petersburg at this time would undoubtedly cause a serious blow to the morale of the soldiers and civilians defending the city. But no one dared to take the risk and let the tsar stay in the city to inspire the officers and soldiers to fight bravely.

If by accident, the Swedish army captured the Tsar and the head of government, it would definitely be a huge disaster for the empire. Not to mention the possible destruction of the Nomanov dynasty, it might also bring the Russian Empire, which had finally gained some momentum of rise, to the brink of disintegration and destruction.

Unfortunately, the Empire has fallen into its most dangerous situation.
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(End of this chapter)