Chapter 135 Stalemate

"According to our embassy in Germany, the Middle East Railway has been advocated in Germany recently. Could it be related to this matter?" Constantine guessed.

In Europe at the end of the 19th century, once people mentioned railways, they would think of a word - war.

The emergence of such revolutionary land transportation tools as railways has greatly promoted the flow of materials and personnel on land. The officers in the armies of various countries are worried about how to transport huge amounts of supplies to the front-line barracks, or how to quickly show up the army of thousands of people in the place where they are needed. Such problems are answered by railways as a means of transportation.

In the Greek-Ottoman War that just ended, the railway from Athens to Larissa played an important role.

During the war, every day there would be a military train carrying thousands of tons of supplies, including guns, bullets, shells, supplementary soldiers, military rations, etc., to the city of Larissa.

It can be said that the railway played a great role in the victory of the Greek army.

After the emergence of railways, the Ottoman Empire has always hoped to build a railway system that can connect all parts of the empire and strengthen its control over the territory - to prevent the recurrence of things like Greek independence.

Before that, almost all the railway projects of the Ottoman Empire were handed over to the Germans for construction.

Due to the exhaustion of financial resources, so far, almost all the railways built by the Ottoman Empire are in Asia Minor.

Hearing Constantine's reminder, King George also understood why Germany supported the Ottoman Empire at the London Conference that was being held.

"What is the attitude of the Russians?" King George was quite in awe of the huge Russia.

Millions of gray animals almost made the whole of Europe look at them sideways.

Due to the marriage relationship (Queen Olga came from the Russian royal family), George I had hope for Russia.

"The Russians don't have a clear attitude," Augustantiano replied.

"The Russians are now fully expanding to the east."

"In order to build the long Siberian Railway, they have no time to care about other things. I heard that in recent years, the cost of building railways in Russia has even exceeded the annual military expenditure," Constantine added.

This railway is known as the backbone of Russia and is particularly valued by the Tsar. It is precisely because of this that Russia, which has always been ambitious, is the least willing to cause trouble at this stage.

Originally, the Greek government, including Constantine, had high hopes for this meeting with the Ottoman Empire, but the current direction of the meeting is indeed not optimistic.

Greece is a land with scarce resources and lacks even basic agricultural conditions, which is not suitable for industrialization.

Apart from other things, in order to reach the current industrial level, Greece has spent a lot of money on transportation conditions. The main funds of Trikoupis's large infrastructure plan are invested in this aspect.

In other words, due to the limitation of resource endowment, the return on investment in this place in Greece is too low.

If Greece can get the Aegean coast of Albania and Macedonia, resources aside, at least Greece can get some scarce arable land.

This will solve the current dilemma of Greece needing to import a considerable amount of food every year.

Food security is of self-evident importance to a country.

But now the Germans have crossed their feet, which is beyond Constantine's expectations.

As for Italy's opposition, it seems that no one is too worried, so much so that King George asked the attitudes of the surrounding powers, but missed Italy.

There are two jokes circulating in the current European Military Festival. One is the Ottomans defeated by their original vassal state, and the other is Italy defeated by African chiefs.

Almost at the same time as the Greek army defeated the Ottoman army at the border, European countries received news that in the Battle of Aduwa, the Italian army went deep into the country alone and suffered a disastrous defeat. 7,000 Italians were killed, 1,500 were injured, and 3,000 were captured.

Among them were 252 officers below the rank of brigadier general, and the Italian commander Baratieri abandoned his army and fled at night.

After the failure of this decisive battle, the Italian expedition officially came to an end in a shameful form.

This is unprecedented in Europe: a European power was defeated by an African country.

The end of the 19th century was the peak of European pride. Everyone's impression of African countries was that a small number of European adventurers used advanced European weapons to defeat a large number of African natives.

Suddenly, tens of thousands of fully armed European soldiers were defeated by the black uncles in Europe. This strong contrast showed a strong sense of drama.

Bismarck commented; "The Italians have a good appetite but a mouthful of rotten teeth."

Originally at the London Conference, the Italian representatives with a strong attitude suddenly stopped.

Almost no one who attended the conference took the Italian representatives seriously.

·········

In the talks between Greece and the Ottoman Empire on territory, the conditions of both sides were too different: the Ottoman Empire insisted on handing over only Epirus to Greece, while the Greek conditions were Epirus, Albania, the Aegean coast of Macedonia and Crete.

The Ottoman Empire received support from Germany, while Greece was alone and no representative of any country clearly expressed support for Greece.

The meeting came to a standstill.

Rumors about the meeting spread wildly among the people, sparking a lot of speculation among them.

On February 25, the Athens Times reported that Greek Prime Minister Trikoupis planned to return Macedonia and Albania, which Greece occupied, to the Ottoman Empire during the London talks.

This caused a huge uproar in Athens.

After the war, the Greeks were now more confident and were thinking about how to restore the glory of the empire. Suddenly, they heard that the prime minister was going to return the territories that the Greeks had just obtained at a huge price to the Ottoman Empire. They could not accept this at all.

Angry Athenians gathered in front of the Capitol and scolded Trikoupis as a traitor who sold out the interests of the country.

For a time, the Greek government was once again forced into a corner by the people.

On the 27th, Greek Ambassador to Germany Kerrigis received a request from the country and visited the German Chief of Staff, Schlieffen.

Kerrigis said that Greece was willing to use the technology of 75mm rapid-fire guns as a reward so that Germany would not support the Ottomans on the issue of territory.

As early as when Greece and Austria were fighting, Schlieffen received news from German officers in the Ottoman army that the Greek army was equipped with a field gun with a very high rate of fire.

In fact, the Greek rapid-fire guns were no longer a secret in the European military circles. After all, they had already been on the battlefield. Military attachés stationed in Greece and the Ottoman Empire had described the Greek artillery in their reports to their home countries to some extent.

On February 29, Madsen, the German military attaché in Athens who received an order from Berlin, personally came to the parade ground in the suburbs of Athens and operated the artillery in person with the help of the Greek artillery.

The 75mm artillery could reach a maximum rate of fire of more than ten rounds per minute, which shocked Colonel Hudson.