Rasputin of the East

39

Saint Petersburg Somewhere Mansion, Russian Empire,

“Isn’t it true that no one followed suit?”

“Who am I? Don’t worry.”

“Oh, these bastards are watching us very openly these days.”

“Still, I gave that damn bastard a shot, didn’t it?”

Those who had gathered in the mansion three or three or five congratulated themselves on the victory.

Of course, objectively speaking, their situation has not changed.

In any case, they continued to lose, and it did not change the fact that they had to compete with the winning group.

However, they were celebrating because there was little chance that they could destroy their opponents with this.

“Don’t like ™D too much. If at least he can restore Constantinople, we will all unite and fight against his influence.”

“Is that possible? Grand Duke?”

“I don’t know.”

Archduke Dmitry Pavlovich nervously folded his arms.

“I hate him, but I don’t doubt his abilities are real, for he might be a hero like Hannibal or Scipio.”

“He’s just a tongue-in-cheek swindler who won the Tsar’s trust!”

“Prince Yusupov, I know you hate him, but will the Germans defeat him just because he has won the Tsar’s trust?”

“If I had led his men, I could have done better.”

Of course, no one agreed. The Tsar’s nephew, Archduke Dmitry, who was the host, as well as other nobles, ignored him.

“But Constantinople won’t be easy even if he’s the real Hannibal.”

The Archduke, who had moderately crushed Yusupov’s words, coughed in vain.

“But even if he loses, it won’t be easy to take that power away, but it will be enough to break his myth. So, little by little, I have to slash his feet.”

“Can’t we just grab a gun and shoot him?”

“Who’s going to be in charge? Gong Yusupov, will you do it? He always accompanies an escort unless it’s in a perfectly safe place, and he often hangs out with high-ranking officials and the royal family, so there’s a good chance he’ll be tried for treason rather than murder.

One nobleman made a sound with his hand in the shape of a gun and ‘Doo-doo-doo-doo’ with his mouth.

“There’s a higher chance that the damned submachine gun won’t even save a corpse.”

Of course, it was a bit of an exaggeration, but it seemed that it was enough to break Yusupov’s spirit.

Archduke Dmitry was seated while listening to the voices of the nobles chirping in one ear.

In fact, he didn’t originally feel sorry for him, the Earl of Vostok.

It only bothered me that his cousins and his sisters and the Earl of Vostok were strangely close.

The reason he changed his mind was the last ball.

Watching him dance several times with the princesses there, the Archduke was disbelieving at first, then angry, and tried to understand.

But he could never deny the truth, and in the end he became obsessed with the ominous.

The fear that the Romanov dynasty, which should have reigned over all Europe, and deserved to be admired and respected throughout Europe, might be reduced to a ridicule throughout Europe by a monkey protruding out of nowhere.

For an unfounded fear, he looked into the eyes of his cousin sister. Those eyes remained in his mind so eerie that he could even see them in a dream.

He acknowledges his abilities. He also admits that he may be needed by the Empire.

However, it was unacceptable for him to grow into a threat to the imperial family in any way.

For that reason, from the point of view of the Archduke, whose purpose is to be overthrown, Yusupov’s actions, talking only about assassinations, seemed daunting.

‘Anyway, what can’t be done about a man who isn’t manly? Not some broken-hearted woman.’

Chewing on Yusupov’s bitterness, the Archduke tried to properly control the level of the conversation.

Originally, Yusupov suffered from malicious rumors that he was a sissy, and furthermore, that he was gay, and the reason for leading the assassination of Rasputin in the original history is also in addition to Rasputin’s accusation to his wife, ‘Are you gay, I hate gays? ‘ There is even a theory that the fact that it was thrown head-on was that it happened because Yusupov was unable to touch and ripped it off.

In other words, if the Archduke spit out what he had in mind here, it could have been a sword fight with the royal family or something.

No, in fact, the Grand Duke probably wasn’t the only one who thought of that. It’s human nature to like to gossip behind the scenes.

Had it not been for humans to possess such attributes, the Archduke would not have come to such a position in the first place. Because he was just jumping in to protect the honor of the imperial family.

“If you can’t take Constantinople, you can use it to get him out of the way, and if you don’t, you can keep him from running rampant at the front. And if you take Constantinople… Wouldn’t that be a good thing if you take it?”

Archduke Dmitry was the one who managed to trick the Tsar with Constantinople and come up with the crazy plan to advance into Constantinople, but he wasn’t too comfortable with it either.

‘The soldiers of the Interior Army are not those who will be wasted like that, and the Prince of Vostok is not someone who will recklessly throw away even for the sake of the future of the Empire.’

Suddenly, Archduke Dmitry became anxious about what historians would write about him in the future.

Caesar’s assassins and Brutus also acted with the belief that they would protect the republic, but in the end their fate could not be stopped and they became synonymous with traitors.

He also joined to protect the honor of the imperial family, but he suddenly feared that his name might also be criticized as a patriot who slandered a master in front of history and led to defeat.

***

British Empire, London, Parliament

“Jung-suk! Be quiet!”

“Is it true that Russia is advancing to Constantinople?”

“There is no doubt that the final target of Russia’s offensive is Constantinople. This is the fact that the Russian ambassador directly reported it.

“Do you know what this means? It means the Black Sea is set free! Russia’s Black Sea Fleet is free to go out to sea and go to Suez! Then India will be threatened!”

“Minister of the Navy! If you have a mouth, tell me! HMS Ajincourt, HMS Erin! Those two battleships make it possible to permanently hand over control of the Eastern Mediterranean Sea to Russia, please tell me!”

“The Ottoman Turks are pro-Germans anyway, so it was obvious that they would participate in the war! I was just acting on my convictions to stop potential enemy forces from building up!”

The Navy Secretary, Winston Churchill, raged for his legitimacy, but no one, not even his fellow Liberals, silently turned away from him.

“Navy Minister, it is clear from all circumstances that Ottoman had no intention of participating in the war! And if the Russian Empire hadn’t participated in the war, no, if you hadn’t given the cause to the Russian Empire to come to save our soldiers after losing a few battleships in the Gallipoli amphibious assault and the previous Battle of the Dardanelles Strait. You must have been busy fighting Germany!”

“So is it all my fault?”

“Of course it’s your fault Sir Winston ‘Galipoli’ Churchill!”

“Are you done talking now?”

“Rather than that, I would like to discuss the reality of the attack on Constantinople now…”

“Any prediction is meaningless in the absence of an accurate understanding of the capabilities of the Russian Empire’s internal forces.”

“That weapon called a tank…”

“Is that the Chariot that Sir Churchill so insisted upon and delivered to the amphibious forces with pound and nuggets of gold? Most of them are lost within three days of the battle, and the rest are actually used as fixed bunkers! You were the one who forcefully put in a new weapon that has not been verified and the doctrine has not been established! Minister of the Navy!”

It was going round and round and cracking Churchill.

“Operation Gallipoli was not wrong! It’s because the field commanders are incompetent!”

Astonished, some of the senators shut their mouths, and Admiral Fisher’s eyes widened for a moment.

“Sir Churchill! What a disgrace to the young people on the front lines who have given their lives for the unrealistic and fanciful strategic goal that the whole Department of the Navy objected to as demanded by the Secretary of the Navy, pouring blood, tears and sweat! You should be ashamed!”

“Then is there any way to overcome the current situation? Russia must have invaded the Ottomans at some point! I’m just glad it happened now!”

“….. Relief? Did I say I’m happy now?”

Prime Minister Lloyd George should now have suspected his ears were wrong, but Churchill was more blunt.

“Yes, fortunately, we somehow have a beachhead near Constantinople! If we push in more troops like this, destroy the enemies, and we take Constantinople first, the Russians will have no choice but to eat! They’re not even flying, so if you can move fast enough…”

“Now, did you say Gallipoli as a bridgehead? Why don’t you call it a prisoner-of-war camp?”

“Are you going to put more troops in that siege and break through the coastal defenses? Then, starting with the Minister of the Navy, take the lead and drop off at Gallipoli with a rifle! I will drive the transport myself!”

“I can’t hear any more! Bring that damn bastard full of nonsense!”

A few angry lawmakers ran and grabbed Churchill by the neck, and the soldiers intervened and had to separate the lawmakers who were about to throw a loaf of bread on Churchill and let Churchill go safely.

“You don’t understand what I’m saying now, but later you’ll see that this Churchill was right, and that no other way existed in Great Britain in the first place!”

The answer was a pair of shoes that a legislator, who had lost his temper due to that brazenness and resoluteness, aimed at Churchill’s face and threw it, but the aim was missed and hit the doorway.

***

Russian Poland, the military base of the Interior Forces.

“Isn’t the emperor crazy?”

“Uh-huh!”

“Chief of Staff, you are disloyal, I must say something. Tsar is crazy. The German army is on the offensive right now, and the question is whether or not you can defend Warsaw, but you want to withdraw troops from the northern and southern fronts and attack the not-so-threatening Ottoman Turks? Besides, the goal is Constantinople? Don’t you want to be successful? Or have you never looked seriously at a world map?”

If the black baron, Pyothor Wrangel, openly said that the emperor was crazy, it means that the order was quite insane.

Chief of Staff Kim In-soo still cursed the emperor, or maybe he knew that the king was doing crazy things, but he couldn’t curse the king himself. It seemed uncomfortable, but the commanders of each unit also expressed their agreement.

“I’d rather turn the troops around and take over Moscow and replace the top heads…”

“If that’s the case, then it’s a civil war. And in civil wars, the one who wins the people’s hearts wins, but if we act during the war…”

“I know, I know! Still, this doesn’t make any sense! What does it mean to receive support from those idiots of the Southern Front? Warsaw is strategically a thousand times more important than Constantinople or something like that!”

“Once the personnel relocation of the Southern Front Army’s general headquarters went as I intended, at least it won’t hold you back, but I’m worried about the North.”

“What if we demand a massive offensive from the West through our diplomatic lines? In the midst of a big fight on the Western Front, it is impossible to launch an offensive from the Eastern Front.”

“It’s a good idea if you can, but it’s very likely that France will not like this attack in the first place, if you don’t know about it, Britain. It would not be pleasant for them to see the Sea of Marmara and the Black Sea completely fall into our hands.”

I smiled bitterly and sat down.

I felt that the little handkerchief folded into four was still in my inner pocket. What was written on the note, which seemed to have been written in haste, was simple.

nobles. political trap. imperial affiliation.

Those words alone were too full to comprehend the whole picture. I smiled bitterly at the woman who wrote it down on a handkerchief and handed it over.

“It’s not my taste to step on a trap I know, but rather, it’s my preference to throw a hunter into the trap I dug.”