I am rich in martial arts, but choose culture to win

The beard on his face is no longer the Bismarck-like bulldog beard of earlier days, but the traditional Orthodox beard.

Sitting almost on the same level as Alexander II, only slightly shorter, is a priest wearing a priest's robe and holding a cross in his hand.

His service and his iconic beard speak volumes about his affiliation.

He is Patriarch Joachim of the Orthodox Slavic Orthodox Church, Patriarch of St. Petersburg and All-Russia of St. Andrew the Apostle.

In a short while, the Patriarch will baptize Alexander II, completing the most critical ceremony for the reconstruction of the Eastern Roman Empire.

After that, he will also preside over the wedding of the Russian princess and the British prince.

The wedding, which was held according to the Orthodox faith, was also seen by many Russians as another major diplomatic victory.

However, until now, the British ambassador is still alone in the mission area of ​​the British.

But he didn't panic at all, and even ate the panna cotta on the table gracefully.

Chapter 756 The Romance of the British Prince

Maria held her mother's hand tightly, and her palm was full of sweat.

Queen Maria comforted: "Dear Maria, don't worry, Alfred will definitely come. This is a major international event, and he will not mess around."

"But mom..."

Maria whispered, "There is a voice deep in my heart, it hopes that Alfred will never come, and even hopes that his ship will sink in the Aegean Sea..."

"Oh my God!"

Queen Maria quickly covered her mouth, "Don't say such a thing, Maria, this is Satan's whisper, you must have read too much Ming literature..."

"perhaps you're right."

Maria lowered her head, "I'm just an ordinary Russian princess, I shouldn't expect the beautiful feelings in the book..."

"It's almost time!"

While the mother and daughter were talking softly, the Patriarch put the gold pocket watch into his pocket, stood up, and said to Alexander II, "Your Majesty the Tsar, it is the best time to start the baptism, let's hurry up and prepare."

Alexander II looked down at the empty seat of the British representative office, and frowned.

Are the British really not coming?

Just disrespecting me like that?

Should I condemn them?

What tone should I use?

The use of words is too strong, will it surprise the Allies?

In just a few seconds, Alexander II had thousands of thoughts in his mind.

But at this moment, the British ambassador suddenly put down the panna cotta and took out a telescope wrapped in silk from his pocket.

He extended the binoculars and looked at the western sky.

Sky?

Alexander II froze for a moment, then raised his head involuntarily.

As if it was an infectious disease, one spread to ten, ten to hundreds, and soon tens of thousands of guests in the entire square raised their heads.

Soon, people with better eyesight noticed that in the western sky, there seemed to be a few small black spots that were wriggling and enlarging little by little.

"It's an airship! It's an airship!"

General Mikhail Dmitrievich Skobelev, once known as the "Conqueror of West Asia", suddenly yelled hysterically.

Then, in almost a second, he turned over and fell to the ground, and then rolled over twice, awkwardly, but very efficiently got under the table.

Because the area where he was a Russian general was not far from the area where the tsar's relatives were, he rolled under the skirt of Empress Maria's sister, Princess Julia of Battenberg.

"Oh God, you stinky bastard, what are you doing!"

Julia covered her skirt and screamed, and the scene was very chaotic for a while.

Mikhail shouted from under his skirt: "It's too late to explain, everyone hide quickly, this is the airship of the Ming people, only the airship of the Ming people can fly so high and so fast! There will be tons of bombs falling soon Come on! Everyone hide! I have seen this kind of thing countless times in Central Asia!"

Seeing that Mikhail's words were about to cause widespread panic, the British ambassador laughed loudly: "Everyone, don't worry, this is not the airship of the Ming Dynasty, but the airship of our British Empire!"

The British ambassador proudly announced: "Our British Empire has developed an airship that is no less powerful than the Ming Dynasty, and it has been fully practiced and installed in the Imperial Navy and Army.

Today, our Prince Alfred will arrive in the sky over Constantinople on the airship Duke of Saxony as a special airborne soldier of the First Battalion of the Royal Navy Air Force of the British Empire, and will attend his wedding in the form of skydiving!

Who dares to say that we Brits don't understand romance?

This is the greatest romance of our prince! "

……

The words of the British ambassador brought a sigh of relief.

As expected of the British Empire, it is the prosperity of science and technology!

Speaking of it, there seems to be a grand military parade between the enthronement ceremony and the wedding ceremony.

What's the point of a gray animal taking a goose step? How can it compare with the airship of the British master?

Soon, under everyone's expectant eyes, the three airships grew bigger and bigger.

Sure enough, on their aluminum skeletons, there are huge Mizi flags painted on them.

"It is indeed an English airship."

The envoy of the French Third Republic said sourly to the envoys of the small countries beside him, "But they use French technology!"

Indeed, in the development of airships, the French were the pioneers, and the British bought technology from them.

But so what?

One-third of the country was occupied by the Germans, and the French, who had already ceded the Alsace-Lorraine industrial zone, did not have the industrial strength to refine so many aluminum materials for the formation of airship troops.

Although the United Kingdom suffered a major collapse of aluminum-related stocks a few years ago, the fact that the collapse itself shows that the production capacity of aluminum in the United Kingdom and its overseas colonies has reached a certain scale.

In the past two years, the British military has gritted its teeth and formulated the Portsmouth plan at the Portsmouth secret base.

This plan is also the culprit that forced Churchill to overissue currency.

And its core is to use aluminum, a new material, to develop a series of new weapons across the ages, so as to establish an advantage in fighting Ming and Germany in one fell swoop.

Among them, the aluminum airship and the aluminum high-speed battleship are the two most critical projects.

Today, the Russian Tsar originally summoned countries from all over the world to observe the ceremony and testify to the most glorious moment in the history of the Russian Empire.

But the British said that this is also the best stage to show the powerful military science of the British Empire to the allies all over the world and maintain the glory of the British Empire!

This show of strength was also personally approved by Queen Victoria.

Queen Maria felt angry with Victoria, and Queen Victoria felt angry with you, Maria!

It is your honor that my prince of the British Empire takes your princess.

He actually wanted to place the wedding venue outside the UK, and even overwhelmed himself in the selection of the presiding priest.

The little tricks of the Russians annoyed Victoria to the core.

So she decided to take this opportunity to show the background of the world's largest country.

When my young, promising son from the British army descended from a high altitude on a parachute like a god in Greek mythology, these ignorant Slav bumpkins would all pay homage to him!

Anyway, when Victoria saw her son skydiving for the first time, she was really scared.

In fact, Victoria preferred the clever second son to the clumsy elder son.

She was reluctant to let her son participate in such a dangerous thing as skydiving.

However, Alfred has been an adventurous character since he was a child, and even completed a circumnavigation around the world.

However, Victoria has already made an agreement with him to get married after dancing this time, and never dance again.

It seems that everything is safe!

Chapter 757 Face Change

A nineteenth-century British Empire diplomat spent most of his time with humble compliments and flattering smiles.

In the first 20 years of Ali Guo's diplomatic career, the fact is exactly the same.

Whether he worked as a clerk or counselor at the Danish Embassy, ​​or went to Africa to earn his first pot of gold in his diplomatic career, A Liguo has gone smoothly all the way.

In 1848, A Liguo, who was only 30 years old, ushered in the greatest opportunity in his life because of his successful planning of the civil strife in the emirate of Sudan.

He was sent by Downing Street to the far east, a place that was said to be extremely rich and ignorant, and became a consul in his own right.

During his tenure as the consul of the British Empire in Shanghai, A Liguo forced the greedy and timid Manchu Qing officials to revise the treaty and expand the area of ​​the British Concession to 2820 mu.

But then, those stupid Chinese rioted.

A mob group called the Small Knife Society has taken over Shanghai County.

A Liguo decisively raised funds to build more than 800 simple houses along the coast of the pidgin, and sold them at high prices to Chinese gentry who had taken refuge. In just a few months, the prices of these houses increased by more than 200 times.

Ah Liguo and his friends made a lot of money.

At the same time, they formed a foreign gun team to help the Manchu Qing government suppress the rebellious Chinese.

The success in Shanghai made Ali Guo soar into the sky.

Finally, he was canonized by the queen and sent to Beijing, the capital of the Qing Empire, to become the most powerful person in the Far East—the ambassador of the British Empire to the Qing Dynasty.

That’s right, many people, including A Liguo himself, believed that in ancient eastern Asia, the most powerful person was not the young Emperor Tongzhi, nor the Empress Dowager Cixi who listened to politics behind the curtain, nor was it King Hong, What is the king of North Korea, what is the emperor of Japan, but he, A Liguo, the man who represented Queen Victoria in East Asia!

In the first two years of being promoted to ambassador, everything worked like this.

But soon, things changed.

【Ming Dynasty】，【DaiMing Empire】，【Tubie Zhu the Great】，【Imperial Peverence and Expelling the Barbarians】……

Phrases that should have been buried in ancient Chinese and Portuguese texts reappeared in his case.

At first, Aliguo felt that those Ming separatists were still far away from him.

Even if they attacked Japan and the French, they did not dare to attack the Shimadzu family protected by the British Empire.

It's all just a dispute among these yellow-skinned monkeys.

A Liguo believed that the Ming separatists were just another tool that the British Empire could use to carry out political blackmail against the Manchu Qing government.

It wasn't until one day ten years ago that he realized that he was wrong, and how wrong he was.

A Liguo remembered it clearly, it was the autumn of October 1865, the 30th birthday of Empress Dowager Yehenala of the Qing Dynasty.

On that day, she also summoned envoys from all over the world to attend the party, and everything was like today.

He is very interested in this woman, Aliguo, who has been in charge of the empire at a young age.

At her birthday party, Ah Liguo dressed up properly and carefully prepared a gift, a bottle of wine from Yorkshire.

Although it is not worth much, this is a native wine of the British Empire, and its meaning is priceless.

But soon, Ali Guo found that his thinking seemed a little naive.

In an empire full of scantily clad, emaciated, hungry people, their nobles and officials were extraordinarily rich.

The gifts they presented became more and more dazzling one by one.

Even, Aliguo saw a night pearl that was bigger than a cow's testicles, and...

A priceless set of ancient Roman wine vessels!

But that's not even the most impressive.

Ah Liguo clearly remembered that at that banquet, he saw Daming's airship for the first time.

That huge floating object, like the legendary Leviathan monster, swims in the clouds.

They looked at the earth with contempt and looked down on all living beings.

Although Ah Liguo has never been to the sky, he can still imagine that in the eyes of those Ming aviation soldiers, he must be as small as an ant!

In the end, under the offensive of the shameless dolls of the Ming Dynasty, the birthday party of the Manchu Empress Dowager turned into a farce.

And the image of the airship will always be engraved in Ali Guo's heart.