Conquer Europe from the West

Chapter 168 Premonitions of War

The empire, of course, would not release these modification records.

Even though the kingdom now commands a massive fleet of over a hundred ships, the empire would never release its records of warship modifications over the past three months.

This is a matter of face.

It has nothing to do with whether the empire actually did it or not.

But for the kingdom, this is also a matter of face.

However, this act of saving face also took into account their actual needs.

Furthermore, this stands in stark contrast to the kingdom's restraint over the past few months.

In the first few months, the kingdom, under the threat of the empire, changed its former role as a troublemaker in Europe and became a major power that openly supported peace.

But as the number of naval ships they recalled worldwide increased dramatically, the United Kingdom's previous forbearance vanished, replaced by its usual domineering and repulsive bandit attitude.

This perfectly matches the nickname everyone gave them—Angsa Barbarians.

A barbarian is a barbarian after all. When he is powerful, he displays the attitude of a bandit, but when he is weaker than others, he becomes a groveling and begging creature.

Three months ago, under the manipulation of the Empire, or rather, Raine, they were forced to abandon the plan to use Falland's interests to ensure that the Empire would not attack them, and instead chose a peace agreement plan that was extremely out of character for the Kingdom in the eyes of George V and the whole world.

Although this event was a good thing for the people of the kingdom and the various colonies at the time, after all, the peace agreement was backed by large-scale commercial trade with the empire.

But as time went by, the kingdom's initial incomprehension of why the Empire was able to capture two Lion-class ships in one go gradually turned into a "the Empire is nothing" mentality after one warship after another returned.

Their powerful fleet and twice the number of dreadnoughts as the Empire certainly provided them with the strength to have such a mentality.

The location of the British Isles in the Atlantic Ocean also blocked the Empire's only sea route to the Atlantic.

The Empire's fleet is currently divided into the Baltic Fleet and the High Seas Fleet.

The first one is the Inland Sea Fleet, while the second one is more like the North Sea Fleet.

Because from the day it was established, the Empire's high seas fleet has never truly entered the Atlantic Ocean and become a fleet that truly sails the high seas of the Atlantic.

All they could do was patrol this small bathtub of the North Sea under the watchful eyes of the United Kingdom's fleet, waiting for the hammer from the United Kingdom.

Both the previous and current emperors of the empire are well aware that the empire must make a breakthrough in naval power, and the current emperor is a fervent supporter of the navy. Unfortunately, environmental issues prevent him from truly supporting the empire to become an absolute maritime power.

The Empire has too much land to manage, and dealing with the land threats from the Imperial State in the north and Farland in the west is more urgent than dealing with the navy of the United Kingdom.

But now, the Empire seems to have a good excuse to wage war against the United Kingdom on the ocean.

On the morning of January 20th, Renne walked into a café in downtown Ostend as usual. After ordering two croissants and a coffee, he sat in the corner of the restaurant and quietly watched the noticeably larger crowd outside the window.

This café was opened by civilians of the Empire in Ostend, so unlike most common restaurants that hold a certain prejudice against Imperial soldiers, most customers try to dine here as rationally as possible in order to avoid any unexpected incidents.

But in reality, most soldiers don't have the time to eat in the city, and they are unwilling to eat in the city.

Paratrooper training continues at maximum intensity, with each soldier equipped with a parachute required to complete more than 400 jumps per month on average, while those without parachutes must achieve 100 jumps per month.

All told, as soon as they open their eyes, they have to start preparing for today's skydiving training, and they simply don't have any extra time to think about anything else.

Therefore, after Christmas, no Imperial soldiers other than Rein, Captain Schmidt, and Lieutenant Brinkman ever appeared in this downtown café.

And Renn and his men were too lazy to wear their military uniforms to eat. They would just wear any of their own clothes and go out, not even driving a car, at most riding a bicycle.

Colonel Schmidt had even had his bicycle stolen before—because he forgot to lock it.

Today happens to be Brinkman's day off, and Colonel Schmidt was also forced to enter frontline leave because his flight duty time exceeded the Imperial standard monthly maximum of 150 hours.

"Your hot coffee and two croissants, Mr. Frieger."

The café owner's daughter, dressed in a snow-white dress, moved around the restaurant, placing Ryan's meal in front of him with a happy and slightly excited expression.

Colonel Schmidt sat diagonally opposite Renn, glancing at the girl who kept smiling at Renn while reading his newspaper, his face beaming with barely suppressed laughter.

There's nothing we can do; what can we do when Ryan is this age and still hasn't found a partner?

Even if we're not on Earth, in Europe in 1915, a normal young man would have gotten married around the age of 19, and by the time he was 29 like Ryan, he would have had at least two or three children.

But that's not actually the most important thing.

Importantly, the café owner and Renn were both from Ruhr, and before Christmas he asked Renn to write a letter of recommendation for his daughter so that she could study at the national university in the capital.

Because the boss failed to explain this clearly to his daughter, the girl ended up thinking that Ryan liked her but was too embarrassed to say it outright.

Ryan was helpless about it, while the shop owner seemed to be happy to see this happen, which eventually led to the current situation.

After a while, when Colonel Schmidt was also served his Talia pasta (I think I misspoke and wrote about spaghetti once before, but I've corrected it here.) and a full bowl of meat sauce, plus a large glass of soda water, he finally spoke to Renn: "If you keep going like this, sooner or later people will think you're Nantong."

"Go to hell."

Ryan was already in a bad mood because of that incident, and when Colonel Schmidt teased him like that, he immediately uttered a classic Chinese curse.

"Hey, wait, you shouldn't blame family members. Why are you insulting my mom?"

Colonel Schmidt looked shocked, but he knew that Ryan wasn't really talking about his mother, so he quickly changed the subject: "The people over there in the kingdom are getting restless lately."

"Is it that navy thing again?"

Renn, clutching an oversized coffee cup, tried to ward off the chill of the journey, so his voice sounded somewhat absent-minded: "That's how those people in the Kingdom are. They think they can take on three cannons just because they have two guns." Colonel Schmidt was amused by Renn's remark. Knowing that Renn was referring to the Wave-class destroyers, not naval guns, he burped several times while eating his noodles. After holding his breath, he blushed and said, "You make it sound like the Imperial Fleet can actually defeat the Kingdom's navy."

"Then we need to look at it dialectically."

Ryan took a sip of his hot coffee, which made Colonel Schmidt sigh with emotion.

"After all, the Empire's fleet is no worse than the Kingdom's navy now. Even if it is smaller and has poorer overall performance, the North Sea is not a very large sea area. The Kingdom can not deploy too many fleets there at once."

Setting down his coffee, Ryan forked a croissant, took a bite, and continued, "In the end, their initial plan to besiege the North Sea was flawed."

"If the Kingdom really wants to block the Empire's access to the Atlantic, it doesn't need such a large fleet. Instead, it can treat other countries as its gatekeepers, building military bases in other people's territories while having them pay for its fleet to be stationed there."

"In this way, they can effectively control all the seas surrounding the empire without spending a single penny of their own money."

"You're making it sound like other countries are all suckers."

Schmidt neither confirmed nor denied Ryan's statement.

Then Raine delivered a blow to his head: "Then let's fight a war first, knock that country down, and then force them to pay for the kingdom to station troops there themselves."

Schmidt was so shocked by his words that he couldn't calm down for a long time. It wasn't until Ryan had almost finished his croissant and was about to sneak a taste of Schmidt's ice cream cake that he belatedly realized: "I think you are more suitable to be their prime minister than Churchill of the United Kingdom."

"Forget it then."

Raine quickly stopped and stuffed the ice cream cake he had taken into his mouth: "I want braised pork knuckle, I don't want to look up at the stars."

"Speak like a human being!" Although Colonel Schmidt was used to Ryan's occasional strange remarks, there were some things he just couldn't understand.

Renn didn't hold back either, directly using the Talia noodles in front of Schmidt as an analogy: "You have a plate of freshly baked pie, and then you evenly stick a lot of fish heads on it, the fish heads facing the sky, their eyes bulging out and white, you can't smell any aroma, it's all fishy smell..."

Before he could finish speaking, Colonel Schmidt was so exasperated that he spat into the nearby trash can.

The shop's staff were startled by Colonel Schmidt's appearance, but out of respect for Ryan, they didn't actually go forward to clean up the mess, instead standing far away in a corner watching.

"You're disgusting, you're her mother."

Colonel Schmidt wiped his mouth with a handkerchief and immediately changed the subject: "Let's not talk about that. What do you think the Empire will do this time?"

He was already afraid of Ryan, afraid that he would say something even more unacceptable to him.

Raine, who had nothing better to do, nodded and picked up his newspaper from the seat next to him. While scanning the contents, he said, "It seems like war is about to break out. After all, the navy has a bad temper. Even if the kingdom has a strong fleet, it will have to be careful when facing the Imperial Navy and the sea conditions in the North Sea."

"Will the army also start fighting?"

Schmidt was from the Air Force Fleet, and he didn't think he would be involved in the operation because of the Navy. However, the 502nd Regiment's job was to directly destroy the enemy's rear command post, so it was understandable that he would say such things.

The United Kingdom's North Sea Fleet headquarters and home port are both in Scapa Flow. Once war breaks out, the 502nd Regiment will inevitably be deployed to the operation. The mission is obvious: air strikes and the capture of Scapa Flow.

If Rennes were even bolder, they could even parachute directly onto Buckingham Palace and Westminster Palace in Lundorn, giving the Kingdom a new era of shock.

Given the current firepower of the 502nd Regiment, they would most likely be able to wipe out the entire high command of the United Kingdom in one fell swoop, and also take down several major districts of London.

I'm not kidding, it's really possible to do that.

But Ryan had already said he wouldn't do such a thing, so the army Schmidt was referring to was clearly not the 502nd Regiment.

"It's hard to say about Farland."

Ryan was also unsure how to answer Schmidt's question.

He then looked towards the western sky.

Along the border between Perij and Farland, the blizzard clouds that had persisted for months still hadn't dissipated; the sky was filled with a dark, heavy mass of clouds, making the whole place look like hell.

However, this is not a problem from the perspective of the empire.

Because the border between the Empire and Farland is basically blocked by mountains or highlands, it is not visible at all.

Such a scene can only be seen along the coastline like Perijk.

"So, they might not necessarily cooperate with the kingdom in launching an attack?"

Schmidt pondered the meaning behind Rein's words: "But why do I have a feeling that the Kingdom has lost its mind and is making a stupid mistake this time?"

"Are they ever not stupid? Hey, let me tell you, back in the day they were catching goddesses every time."

"Who told you that?" Schmidt rolled his eyes at Renn. "Don't you think the Kingdom's request this time sounds like they got intelligence about the Imperial Army from somewhere?"

“How come you see?”

Although Ryan said that, his eyes clearly told Schmidt to shut up.

Schmidt didn't pay attention to that, and continued, "I mean, it's like they suddenly heard some rumors, and without verifying them, they demanded that the Empire do this and that, looking like they had something to hide."

Seeing that Schmidt hadn't gotten to the point, Ryan felt relieved and then hesitated before saying, "A little? But haven't they always been like this?"

"Demanding that the Navy provide its modification records over the past few months either means they've found a pretext for the Navy's expansion, or they're preparing to use it to incite the Empire to go to war with them."

The image of confronting Churchill flashed through Ryan's mind. Before Churchill had become so overweight as depicted in textbook photos, he always looked shrewd and cunning.

He said, "Churchill shouldn't be that stupid, so I don't think he wanted the Empire and the Kingdom to go to war. It can only mean that he had something to hide, and going to war was just a natural consequence."

(End of this chapter)