The Qing Dynasty is about to end

Chapter 1002 Belarusian New North

On July 15th, St. Petersburg was blindingly bright. Black smoke billowed over Vasilievsky Island, and the surface of the Neva River reflected the flames rising from the direction of the Winter Palace. Luo Xinbei stood on the bridge of the armored cruiser "Bering Sea," his fingers gripping the gleaming railing. He wore a Russian sailor's woolen uniform, but his epaulets bore the insignia of the Principality of Eastern Siberia-Alaska—a roaring brown bear standing upright on an ice field, a flag designed by his mother, Natalia.

"Your Highness!" Vasily Ivanovich Petrov, sporting a thick beard, rushed onto the bridge, his boots clicking rapidly on the iron deck. "Urgent telegram from the Alaska Palace! Crown Prince Nikolai Alexandrovich has arrived!"

Luo Xinbei turned around abruptly, looked at the "Russian naval captain" who had graduated from the Shanghai Naval Academy, and asked, "How many men did you bring?"

"I only brought two attendants. The carriage was smashed by a mob halfway there, so I ran on foot through the back gate." Petrov panted, sweat trickling down his temples and into his beard. "The captain of the guard said there were at least three hundred people gathered outside the palace walls, waving red flags and shouting 'Hang the Tsar's entire family!'"

"Assemble the Marines!" Luo Xinbei grabbed a Type 37 submachine gun from the table and slammed the butt of the gun heavily against the bulkhead. "Go and fetch His Highness the Crown Prince—no, now it's His Majesty Nicholas II!"

The deck was already lined with sailors. All of them had Slavic faces, red strips of cloth sewn onto their cuffs, and carried Type 34 rifles manufactured by the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom's Jiangnan Factory on their shoulders. These men were descendants of miners exiled to Siberia or fur hunters from the Alaskan tundra, receiving Alaskan gold rubles, and registered in the naval register at Natalia Fortress. The famines, exorbitant taxes, and conscription whips of Tsarist Russia never touched them.

"For the Tsar!" Luo Xinbei shouted, deliberately adopting an Alaskan slang accent. The sailors roared back, their bayonets forming a dazzling torrent of iron under the blazing sun.

The cobblestone street leading to the city was a scene of utter devastation. A horse-drawn carriage lay overturned in the middle of the street, its cargo box smashed to pieces, and the entrails of a dead horse spilled out onto the ground. Workers wearing caps were using crowbars to pry open suitcases inside the carriage, unearthing silk petticoats and gilded tableware. Seeing the sailors rushing towards them, they paused for a moment, then raised their crowbars and cheered, "Sailor brothers! Come and claim the capitalists' ill-gotten gains!"

Luo Xinbei raised his arms and shouted, "Hurrah! Hurrah! Down with the Romanov dynasty!"

He and his Marines all wore red armbands and carried a red flag—the same red flag used by the People's Will party, which also featured a golden axe (or sometimes a hammer).
"Hurrah! Hurrah! Down with the Romanov dynasty!"

Luo Xinbei and his men, waving red flags and shouting slogans against the Tsar, marched through the chaotic city of St. Petersburg.

The closer you get to the city center, the stronger the smell of gunpowder and blood becomes. Palace Square has become a slaughterhouse, with the bodies of Cossack cavalrymen and mobs mixed together, blood soaking into the moss in the cracks of the paving stones. A corpse in a tailcoat hangs from a lamppost, a sign on its chest reading "Bloodsucking Factory Owner." Several teenagers are smashing jewelry store windows with bricks, but the windows are long gone, only a few wooden figurines remain.

The wrought-iron gates of Alaska Palace were tightly shut. Two corpses floated in the fountain pool outside, a layer of dark red oil covering the surface. Hundreds of workers wearing red armbands surrounded the gate, hacking at the oak panels with fire axes. The leader, a man in oil-stained overalls, brandished a Nagant revolver and shouted, "Capitalist lackeys! Hand over the Tsar's son!"

"Comrade!" The man in overalls saw Luo Xinbei's armband and excitedly waved his pistol. "Come and help!" Before he finished speaking, Petrov's rifle sights were already on Luo's forehead. Twelve other rifles were aimed at the other insurgents who were firing on the Alaska Palace, and more than a dozen men in overalls fell to the ground, blood gushing from their bodies. Seeing the situation was dire, the remaining insurgents scattered in all directions.

The oak door creaked open a crack. Captain Igor's face flashed through the gap: "Your Highness?"

"Where is the new Tsar?" Luo Xinbei kicked aside the corpse blocking his way.

"In the prayer room"

In the candlelight, Nicholas II huddled on a velvet kneeling stool, trembling. His crisp military uniform was stained with mud and black blood. He was only eighteen, and he cried like a lost child, tears streaming down his pale face.

“Your Majesty,” Luo Xinbei knelt on one knee, rifle across his lap, “the Russian Empire needs you.”

The young crown prince raised his tearful eyes: "They're all dead. The Imperial Guard has rebelled. Mother is in the Winter Palace."

“The blood of Romanov still flows in your veins!” Luo Xinbei grabbed his trembling shoulders. “As long as you live, Russia lives! Now come with me!” The crackling of gunfire echoed outside the palace walls—the insurgents had clearly arrived. Petrov burst into the prayer room: “Your Highnesses, we must leave quickly and use the back door!”

Upon returning to Vasilievsky Island, the wind direction at the mouth of the Neva River had changed. The smell of burning mingled with the briny scent of the sea, accompanied by the sharp crack of gunfire. Thick black smoke billowed from Pier No. 5, where the Bering Sea was located, and orange-red flames spewed from its portholes. Figures thronged the pier, and red flags fluttered amidst the smoke.

"German ships!" someone shouted, pointing at the beautiful, unrecognizable Bering Sea armored cruiser. "Hang the capitalists!"

Petrov spat out a mouthful of blood: "It was dockworkers and mutinous sailors. What on earth is wrong with Russia?"

Luo Xinbei pushed Nicholas II into the roadside ruins: "Take off his coat!" The young Tsar trembled as he unbuttoned his gold jacket. Luo Xinbei ripped off his fine military uniform and threw it into the fire, then wrapped his own blood-stained sailor's uniform around him. "Head down! Run with me!"

Bullets rained down from the direction of the pier. Petrov led his marines in a scattering return fire, the crisp crack of Berdan's rifle mingling with the muffled thuds of the workers' 34th-year Tianli rifles. Luo Xinbei dragged the future Nicholas II into a pile of empty wooden crates, bullets striking the crates and sending sawdust flying. But luckily and unfortunately, the workers' marksmanship was still a bit lacking.

"Go to the small boat dock!" Luo Xinbei pointed to the east bank. There, a dozen or so pilot boats were moored, bobbing up and down in the waves.

The future Nicholas II suddenly froze. He stared toward Pier 3—several workers were hanging an unfortunate officer upside down from a crane hook, his intestines hanging like ropes as a dagger slit his stomach. “God, are they devils?” The young Tsar’s knees slammed against broken seashells, blood seeping into the gravel.

"Want to see Russia destroyed?!" Luo Xinbei grabbed him by the collar and dragged him up. "Run! Run!"

A pilot boat rocked violently amidst the hail of bullets. As Luo Xinbei slashed the mooring rope with his knife, a bullet grazed his left arm, tearing open his woolen uniform and drawing blood that stained half of his sleeve. Nicholas II screamed and collapsed to the bottom of the hold, his face pressed against the foul-smelling water.

"Row!" Luo Xinbei shoved the wooden oar into the terrified servant's hands. Petrov knelt at the stern, rifle at his shoulder, firing short bursts at the pursuers on the pier. Bullets thudded against the gunwale, and suddenly one of the oars snapped in two.

Flames erupted from the sides of the Bering Sea. A salvo from its 152mm secondary guns sent towering columns of water into the sky. The pier collapsed in the explosion, and people carrying red flags fell into the inferno like ants. This improved Donghai-class armored cruiser, with a standard displacement of 14500 tons, slowly turned its bow, the muzzles of its 280mm main guns pointing menacingly at the city.

"Hold on tight!" Luo Xinbei used his uninjured right arm to hold Nicholas II. As the small boat was tossed by the waves toward the cruiser's gangway, he saw a body hanging from the icebreaking ram at the bow—a sailor wearing a red armband.
The steel cable ladder crashed down. As Petrov climbed, strapping the Tsar to his back, bullets whizzed past their heels, striking the hull with a clatter. Luo Xinbei was the last to grab the rope ladder; the wound on his left arm was raw and bleeding from the rough hemp rope. He looked up and saw that fires had broken out in the harbor area of ​​Vasiliev Island, with gunfire, cannon fire, and screams filling the air. Meanwhile, in the direction of the Kronstadt naval base, wisps of smoke were rising—from the warships controlled by the Baltic Fleet sailors who had participated in the uprising!
"Get out of here quickly!" Luo Xinbei dared not use an armored cruiser to take on the Baltic Fleet alone—besides, he had already completed the mission his mother had entrusted to him.

The armored cruiser sounded its horn. Steam turbines roared to life, black smoke and sparks billowing from the funnels as the bow cleaved through the Neva River, littered with floating corpses, and sailed towards the twilight of the Gulf of Finland. Once he was certain the Baltic Fleet battleships were not in pursuit, a heavily wounded Luo Xinbei collapsed onto the aft deck, hearing Nicholas II vomiting and weeping.

"Where...where are we going?" The young crown prince's voice was trembling with tears.

Luo Xinbei gazed at the last rays of dawn on the western horizon, recalling his mother Natalia's instructions in the telegram: "Go to Murmansk." He licked his chapped lips. "There you'll find the Northern Fleet, the munitions and provisions brought by the British, and gold rubles from Alaska. With these, you'll have soldiers loyal to the Romanov dynasty!"

Nicholas II suddenly grabbed his blood-stained sleeve: "Will you stay with me, Grand Duke?"

Luo Xinbei gazed at St. Petersburg receding into the distance. The firelight of the Winter Palace illuminated half the sky, like a festering wound branded on the horizon. He suddenly remembered his mother's words when they parted in London: "The most important question is that you must know yourself. Who are you? Who do you want to become? Who can you become?"

“I am your most loyal sword, Your Majesty.” Luo Xinbei gently withdrew his arm, leaving a bloodstain on the Tsar’s palm, “until the Romanov’s double-headed eagle flies over the Winter Palace again.”

(End of this chapter)