Rasputin of the East

19

the moon is receding

The taste of the vintage port, which was only sweet today, was as bitter as the taste of soju I drank in Korea.

Looking back on the past, the past few years seem to have been happy nonetheless.

Still, there was someone I could talk to openly, and even though there was only one person, I had someone to drink with, and I had someone who relied on me.

It all seemed like a one night dream.

This afternoon, the German envoy to Russia visited the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

The minister, who stood before the Foreign Minister, assessed, assessed, assessed, and finally bowed his head and knelt.

He only asked for one thing. cancel the general mobilization order.

But as foreign minister, there was nothing he could do. He did not have the power to revoke the general mobilization order.

In the end, after crying, the German minister took the German Empire’s declaration of war out of his arms and delivered it, lamenting why this had happened.

I, too, had a sore throat at a meeting to withdraw the mobilization order, and Nicholas II was also terrified. strongly requested.

Of course, I persevered that I couldn’t do that until I came in with an order signed by the tsar.

There is no such thing as data. The tactics and deployment of the German army during World War I, and all the battle conditions on the Eastern Front, I have compiled a few years ago.

All future knowledge was mobilized, and the lack of it was filled by mobilizing all the information collected through the intelligence network.

But if you share this information, those idiots will be barking at you to start the war right away.

“Two-headed bastards, two-headed bastards, crippled boys in military uniforms who don’t even know that the blades of the guillotine are loose on their branches!”

War should be avoided if possible. World War I is not a war between winners and losers in the first place.

Vae victis, there is a saying that there is only sorrow for the loser, but World War I left only sorrow for the loser and the victor.

France had lost a third of its youth male population, and Germany had to spend a turnip winter. Britain’s national finances collapsed, Russia’s revolution collapsed, and the dual empire was torn apart.

Even if it were a country that was glorified in World War I, it was only after the war was over that the United States and Britain, who made huge profits by selling military supplies from the beginning of the war, did not send a single ground force in the end and did not send a single ground force. Only Japan, which dispatched a few ships or a few ships, devoured the Eastern colonies and made huge profits by selling huge military supplies, was the only one.

Then, he signed the Treaty of Versailles, saying that he would squeeze Germany to compensate for the damage caused there. As a result, Germany burned with revenge and eventually created a monster called the Nazis.

And the Nazis and the Japanese Empire started the Second World War and burned the whole world.

“The world will remember your recklessness.”

Belle Epoque, that damn age.

An era that was supremely happy for the Europeans, but at the same time a series of blood and oil-squeezing pains for the colonists, put rubbish and dung in their brains.

Poetry and novels sang epics of heroes like Napoleon, and how effectively technology developed in the Crimean and Civil Wars could kill humans was consciously ignored.

Their brains are imbued with the ideas of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, when war was once a sacred sport.

Changing this damn mobilization order to a partial mobilization order would have ended in a local war.

If World War I happened, there was no way to win. There is only one way to survive.

It’s hard to be sure if you can even go that route.

For Europeans, World War I was a wake-up call.

I, too, am a bell that signals the time when I have to struggle to survive. It wasn’t that I didn’t work hard until then, but from now on, I literally had to look ahead and run.

Don’t run, walk, the world is not only in front of you, but also behind you and on either side.

Those words would have nothing to do with me from now on.

“… Count.”

I looked back like a soulless machine.

“Princess, it’s late at night.”

“……”

She just stared at me with gray eyes like a cloudy sky.

“I fear scandal if I see myself alone with a man late at night.”

“If you were worried about our scandal, you shouldn’t have kissed your sister.”

“That’s what happened to me… Wait, did you know?”

“I heard it from my sister. Don’t worry, Mom and Dad don’t know.”

“… So, why did you do that?”

“I ask, why are you struggling so much? You… I felt like you were a steel giant who was not shaken by anything, but of course it could be because I saw you when I was too young.”

“What do you think of this war?”

“…isn’t it a common war? Well, like the Prussian-French war, it will end in moderation and one side will lose.”

“no.”

“No?”

“It has been a long time since I made a prediction, but absolutely not. There are no real winners in this war. No, there must be, but that victory will not go to the countries that break through the battlefield fire and raise their allies’ flags on the enemy lines. Only those countries that call their ships across the sea selling weapons and supplies are the true winners, and that All other countries will be the losers.”

“…what does that mean?”

“Hell is unfolding. Blood will flow like a river on the Som, Ypres, and all fronts of the world. Millions of soldiers die meaninglessly in the trenches, mud pits, and shell pits, but so do your opponents. The whole world will be turned into a slaughterhouse. France alone will lose a third of the adult male population, and Britain, Russia, Germany and Austria will bleed a lot.”

“Is that… makes sense?”

“I am supplying gas masks and training on CBRN to the internal affairs forces under my command. Sooner or later, all fronts will be covered with a mist of poison gas, and no one will be able to retrieve the corpses of someone’s father, son, husband, brother, or brother who have become meat in front of a machine gun. Neither the enemy nor our allies can go to collect the corpses because of poison gas and enemy fire.”

I prophesied. He spoke bluntly like Cassandra, who shouted that Troy would be destroyed. I don’t know why. Perhaps because of drunkenness, the tongue never listened to control.

“Empires will fall one by one. After countless years of meaningless pouring of lives and supplies without a day off, each country’s national treasury will be completely empty, and people, furious over rising taxes, will rise up under the agitation of the communists, and the ruled peoples will also rebel against the empire. The Ottomans, Austro-Hungarians, the German Empire, maybe even this country, the Russian Empire, will not survive.”

“Will the peace negotiations be reached before then?”

“Until that situation happens, an enormous amount of blood will flow, and if the result is a ceasefire and the status quo, the people will immediately rise up in any country and put all the imperial families and nobles on the guillotine.”

mouth wrote. But it smells like marmalade I’ve tasted before.

She came over and sat down.

“Are you going to the battlefield too, Count?”

“Perhaps it is. I wouldn’t go out as a junior officer or enlisted, but if the situation worsens, the internal affairs army will also be sent to the front, so I will lead them.”

“Then are you here until then?”

“Perhaps. It won’t be long in St. Petersburg though. Even if I send an agent, the work in wartime and peacetime is very different, so considering that all my nobles in my age group will die on the battlefield, I will have to bear with the job.”

Neither Lenin nor Trotsky are in the country. Trotsky is currently wandering around Europe and Lenin is in exile in Germany. Neither of these will come back until World War I is rushing to an end.

Lenin was dropped by Germany on a sealed train, so he had to track the sealed train as well.

“… The Count’s prophecies were never wrong. You don’t do it often.”

“……”

“If the empire falls, what will happen to us? Will he be on the guillotine like the royals of France long ago? Or will I somehow continue to live a tough life?”

“I don’t know anything else, but I will save the princess.”

As I joked, she got serious.

“Can you promise me?”

“……?”

“I, my older sister, my younger brothers, my father, my mother, can you all save me?”

“I can’t say for sure.”

In fact, in the whirlwind of the Russian Revolution, which is difficult for even me to guess, I cannot say with certainty that someone will survive or die.

But beyond the imperial family and the political values they have… Can’t they be called friends?

It’s only natural to try to save a friend.

So I had no choice but to say this.

“I’m not going to say for sure, because I don’t know if that’s possible either. But I promise to do my best.”

“That’s it.”

She said so.

“I’ll believe you, there’s nothing wrong with what the Count said you would do. So I will trust you and wait.”

There was trust in her eyes.

“The war is just beginning. It’s the second Thirty Years’ War.”

The Second Thirty Years War, a term used by some scholars only rarely.

Because World War I, World War II, and the interwar period are so closely intertwined, some scholars refer to the period from 1914, when World War I began to 1945, when World War II ended, as the Second Thirty Years’ War.

“When that war is over, the world will be completely changed, just like the first Thirty Years War, unlike the Thirty Years War, which was only a change in Europe, the whole world will change. Is there an answer?”

Without answering that, she muttered something else.

“My sister did.”

“……?”

“My sister said she would wait, whether it would take 10 years or 20 years, she said she would wait until the Count is ready.”

“10 years… isn’t it too long? Long enough to find a better man than me.”

“No way, I don’t think there is a better man than the Count. The Count said that he would come to rescue us no matter what danger we were in, so I will wait just as my sister waits.

“What if I end up failing?”

“Then I will wait for you even in the sky. Can we meet there?”