Capítulo 2: Make the Japanese Emperor bow down for me.
Nikolai had more important things to do.
"How can we make the Japanese pay?"
Late that evening, Nicholas called several staff members of the Russian cruiser "Azov Memorial" to discuss the matter.
Nicholas looked furious and annoyed.
Ukhtomsky was surprised by Nikolai's perverse initiative.
Nikolai refused to lie down after his attack and sat in front of the Japanese shopkeepers' stores along the street and smoked.
But things got worse on the way to Nikolai's transfer to the Otsu City Hall. Before he fell unconscious, Nikolai told Ukhtomsky, "I hope the Japanese won't think this will change my attitude." Could the attitude he spoke of be negative?
Nikolai fainted before he could finish his sentence, and his angry words made Ukhtomsky think that Nikolai had been prejudiced against the Japanese for a long time.
"We don't have enough military power in the Far East to deter the Japanese."
Before Ukhtomsky could finish, the other military attaché, Major General's valet, Duke Bariaginsky, commented on Russia's lack of power in the Far East.
"What about reparations? Is the scar on my forehead just going to go away?"
Nikolai, not disgusted, took a deep breath and looked at his teacher Ukhtomsky.
"The Japanese government is at fault," said Ukhtomsky, after much thought. "We can submit reparations, but there is no other way to punish the Japanese."
Nikolai was disappointed, but he knew it was one of the few demands that could be made.
"Also, the Japanese will pay a lot because they admit they were wrong."
The Undersecretary of the Ministry of Internal Affairs added after Ukhtomsky had finished his speech.
Nicholas did not make a hasty decision. He thought about everything before he acted. He realized that the Siberian Railway was only just beginning its construction phase. To really take "special military action" against Japan, according to the construction period at least ten years later. It would be the Russo-Japanese War. Since it would take at least another ten years and there were too many variables, Nicholas gave up on the idea.
Ukhtomsky thought that the Crown Prince was still in a bad mood and could only interrupt Nicholas's rambling thoughts with his voice.
Nikolai wasn't useless. He seemed to have a bit of facial paralysis!
As the saying goes, don't talk and act like you know everything. But Nikolai, who was lost in thought, wasn't embarrassed. He kept asking the audience, "What's going on in Japan?"
"The Japanese Emperor Mutsuhito wants to come aboard to see you."
Another military attaché, Volkov, stepped aside and said a Japanese name that Nikolai had missed in his broken Russian pronunciation.
"Mutsuhito?" "Emperor Mutsuhito?"
Nikolai froze again. The name was clearly over the top. His expression showed he was not ignorant.
"Your Highness, it's Emperor Meiji."
"Are all our men back on the ship?"
"Yes, Your Highness, no one is hanging around the shore anymore after hearing about the attack on Your Highness."
The captain of the warship spoke up to answer Nikolai's questioning.
"Is it time to leave Japan?"
"Your Highness, we appreciate your misfortune, but you're unharmed by God's blessing. Please don't be angry, it will only make things worse."
Ukhtomsky understood the unusual meaning in Nikolai's statement and urged him not to take his anger personally.
"Yes, I'll be careful."
Nikolai always felt nervous when he thought he'd meet the Emperor of Japan. Perhaps it was because he was meeting a famous person in history.
The Japanese government was shocked when they learned about the attack on Crown Prince Nikolai of the Russian Empire.
In 1891, Japan was still trying to change the unfair treaties with Europe. As a weak country, Japan was afraid of the European powers, just like its neighbors in Northeast Asia.
The foreign minister, Chozo Aoki, was worried about the tension between Japan and Russia. He sent a telegram to the embassy in Russia, asking them to protect the people.
Emperor Meiji was shocked.
"What patriots? They are all traitors!"
"My country's efforts to repair the treaty over the years will be wasted by this fool!"
Aoki Chouzou understood Emperor Meiji's anger.
Tsuda Sanzo was a police officer in Otsu. He was in charge of protecting Crown Prince Nicholas and the Greek Prince on the day of the attack. Tsuda was from a lower-class samurai family and was patriotic. He was angry that the Japanese Imperial Family had treated the Western invaders well. He hated foreigners and wanted to show his loyalty to the Emperor and his country.
While Nicolas was unconscious, the Meiji Emperor rushed to the place where the Crown Prince had landed to ask for sympathy. The Crown Prince's doctor asked for a postponement.
The Emperor heard from the Russians that the Crown Prince had awakened from his coma when Nicholas was transferred to the harbor of Kobe.
The Emperor rushed to Kobe without stopping to wait for the time to offer condolences.
"My government is sorry for this attack and will do whatever we can to help."
The Meiji Emperor bowed and apologized to Nikolai in the Crown Prince's cabin. Nikolai was in a trance.
However, because of Nicolai's silence, Mutsuhito said to the Crown Prince, "I have heard that Your Excellency has purchased these items in Kyoto and Otsu, so please accept the apologies and gifts that have been prepared by the Japanese."
Some traditional Japanese dolls, fans, and lacquerware had once intrigued and satisfied the former Nicholas.
"Well..." Nikolai didn't know what to say. He was confused for a moment, but he was a trained diplomat, so he said, "I understand the Japanese people's feelings, but I'm still confused and dissatisfied."
Emperor Meiji looked sincere.
"First, traitors should be severely punished."
"This matter is natural. The attack was highly reviled by the Japanese nation."
"Secondly, I came here with goodwill, but the Japanese government's security is flawed. I should be compensated for this incident."
"This is my country's fault. I understand. How much compensation do you need?"
"I'm still recovering from my coma. Please wait a few days to negotiate."
Emperor Meiji was more human than Nicholas. Since Nicholas' education had been poor, he left diplomacy to his entourage.
The Meiji Emperor gently told Nicholas to be quiet, which was a common courtesy.
The Meiji Emperor is uglier than the movies showed. He has an abnormally protruding jaw and thin face.
Nicolai's forehead hurt from looking at this ugly man all the time, so he rested.
"Ugh."
When Emperor Meiji bowed and left, Nikolai sighed.
After crossing over, Nikolai's mind was in turmoil.
Just let it go?
The wound on his forehead reminded him of the oath he'd made. Taking over from his predecessor Nikolai had come with a price. Nikolai hadn't promised a specific date, which gave him more time to think. Should he break the Japanese neck first? Or should the domestic rebels be eradicated first?
Nikolai suddenly found his 180° turn somewhat amusing, but when Nikolai thought deeply about it, he realized that at this moment the heart of the Russian Empire was not in the Bolsheviks, and even the name Bolshevik had not yet been shadowed.
Populism.
The very thought of the name instinctively raised a complex mix of disgust, resistance and fear in Nikolai's body as he lay recuperating from his injuries.
An image surfaced in Nikolai's memory, and although as the current Nikolai didn't recognize the scene, his predecessor's memory naturally suggested that it was from the assassination of his grandfather, Alexander II.
Alexander II, who was attacked by the populists with a bomb, collapsed in a pool of blood, his appearance made unbearable by the bomb's shrapnel and waves of air.
Even though Nikolai was only a few years old at the time, the tragedy of his grandfather's death was fresh in his mind.
Populism was a peculiarly Russian trend of thought, and these intellectuals saw the socialist elements possessed by the Russian village communities and believed that the Russian Revolution could skip straight to the capitalist stage and build a socialist Russia on the basis of communal ownership of the village communities.
There was a current of Russian intellectuals in the 1970s who went to the countryside and called on the peasants to revolt against the Tsar, although the old peasants, who had already been given land and a degree of emancipation, didn't give a damn about the wishful thinking of these intellectuals.
While the call for an uprising was met with a chilly reception, there was another, even more alarming move by these populists, who presumed to carry out their revolutionary activities through the mass assassination of high-ranking government officials.
Alexander II died in a campaign of populist terror, not the first and not the last.
The funny thing, though, is that Alexander II was pushing for constitutionalism in the Russian Empire before he was assassinated, and these populists calling for freedom, land, and revolution personally blew up the Tsar who was pushing for reform.
"Your Highness."
The man who interrupted Nicholas' thoughts was the messenger on the warship, who handed a telegram to the Crown Prince.
It's a telegram from Alexander III.
Hearing of the assassination of the Crown Prince from as far away as St. Petersburg made Nikolai's father anxious, and in a telegram he urgently asked Nikolai to return home quickly.
The second person Nicholas admired was his father, Alexander III, who was also shaken by his grandfather's death and immediately halted all reforms, suppressing any demands for change and populists with an iron fist.
So honestly, Nicholas may not be safe even if he returns to the country, and almost the whole world loved to revolutionize by engaging in assassinations in the 19th century, it was the fashionable physical key political link.
Nicholas's father, Alexander III, had told Nicholas that it was much easier and more comfortable to recuperate at his estate in Denmark than at home.
"My father's telegram is known to all of you compared to the others, but about the compensation, is it called to the ambassador to Japan?"
The following morning, after a memorable first day of traveling through the country Nikolai rarely slept through the night, and in his previous life as a working clerk he hadn't had such a cozy routine.
"Yes, Your Highness."
The man who answered back, still Ukhtomsky, the highest-ranking civil official among those present, gave a figure of which Nikolai had little conception.
"A million rubles? How much is that?"
"It's about 700,000 yen." After Ukhtomsky converted it to yen Nikolai still couldn't understand it, for which Nikolai's teacher added a few more words to add, "The financial situation of the Japanese is probably about 60 million yen a year or so, and this compensation is about less than one percent."
With that math, getting one percent of a country's income as compensation sounded pretty good to Nikolai's rudimentary level of understanding, so the Crown Prince nodded.
"Then get the hell out of Japan."
When Nicolas talked about Japan now, the wound on his forehead that had gradually healed would still ache a few times now and then, so he couldn't wait to get out of this small, bulletproof country.
"About those condolence letters and gifts forwarded by the Japanese ..."
"Do these things mean anything to me? These Japanese macaque things can just be thrown anywhere when the time comes."
To the accompanying people, Nikolai's resentment of the Japanese has been overflowing, so piggybacking on the mention of a few words after no one said anything about it for fear of angering the Crown Prince.
Bang, bang, bang--
The three Russian warships in the harbor of Kobe soon rose up in smoke, and steam engines powered by coal propelled the ships out to sea.
The Japanese, in a strong gesture of welcoming courtesy and apology, even sent off Crown Prince Nicholas with a big salute as he left.
Looking at the gradual disappearance of the Japanese islands in the line of the sea and the sky, Nicholas was not in the mood to enjoy the endless seascape, he went back to the cabin to the Oriental faction of the staff officer Mr. Ukhtomsky to tell him some of the conception of the Japanese.
"United Qing against Japan?"
It was a surprise to Ukhtomsky that the stuffy Nikolai, who in the past hardly spoke his thoughts or ideas to others, had dragged himself into an in-depth discussion of geostrategy.
The so-called Orientalists in Russia were also chauvinist fanatics, and Ukhtomsky was particularly fond of the so-called "cultural blood relations" between Russia and the East, and if Russia did not act as a white "liberator" of the yellow Asians, then it would be abandoning the "sacred duty" of the Tsar. "sacred duty".
This is one of the ideas that Nikolai remembers his teacher telling him when he remembers, translating the grandiose words into a naked vision of expansion that was almost a precursor to the "Yellow Russia" program.
"Yes, the Japanese have been coveting Korea for more than a day or two, and after the invasion of Korea I don't think these barbarians will stop there, and the territories of Manchuria ... cough the northeastern part of the Qing Dynasty will also be in their greedy minds."
Nikolai is practically converting a summary of the history he knows into his own words for Ukhtomsky to say.
"In this, Your Highness, I am of a similar opinion to all my colleagues," said Ukhtomsky, appreciating with considerable approval the far-sightedness of the Crown Prince, "the Japanese ambitions for Korea and Manchuria are almost openly known."
This, too, was in some way connected with Russia's Far Eastern policy.
In Europe, the German-Austrian alliance seriously hampered the expansion of Russian power in the Balkans; in the Mediterranean, the British dragged the Austrians and Italians into signing the Mediterranean Concordat to prevent the Russians from entering the Mediterranean; and in Central Asia, the Great Game between Britain and Russia brought to naught Russia's vision of owning an outlet to the Persian Gulf.
For an aggressive military feudal state like Tsarist Russia, the only two possibilities were to be beaten back or beaten over, so the Far East became the new center of gravity for Russian expansion.
The opening of the Great Siberian Railway became a stimulus for the Japanese to intensify the armament process of planning for the annexation of Korea and the occupation of Manchuria, and from this point of view, the assassination of Nicholas can also be explained in the context of Russophobia and Russophobia.
"Yes, yes, I don't think it's far off for the Japanese to go to war with the Qing court."
The Sino-Japanese War, which Nicolas still remembers.
"Well, is Your Highness trying to get Russia to join in with a pro-Qing stance when the Qing and Japanese go to war in the future?"
Ukhtomskiy reacted to that, but he didn't seem to approve of it.
"What's the problem? Is it because the Siberian Railroad isn't finished?"
"Not only that, but the Qing have no intention of making any alliances with our country at this time."
Ukhtomsky's words woke up Nikolai, right Oh, now the Qing dynasty engaged in foreign affairs movement framed self-consciousness is quite good, the Japanese seem to look down on the model.
When his predecessor, Nicholas, met Zhang Zhidong, the governor of Hukou, he also seemed to express his disdain for the "Japanese".
"So, only if the Qing court is defeated again will they come closer to our country voluntarily?"
"Precisely, but whether the Qing court is allied with our country or not, by that time the construction of the Siberian Railway will be completed, and the army can be transported immediately by rail to the Manchurian region, and neither the Qing nor the Japanese will be able to do anything about it."
But we lost the Russo-Japanese War.
Nikolai looked with a headache at Ukhtomsky, who was once again preaching to himself about occupying the territories beyond the Great Wall of the Qing Dynasty and accomplishing the conquests of Tsarist Russia's providence, and who had fallen into a chauvinistic frenzy.
"What about the British?"
Nicholas throws in another query; there is no doubt that Imperial Russia's geopolitical conflict with Britain is almost all-encompassing, and as a land power and a sea power, these two are natural mortal enemies.
"If the British, what can they do? Can only do nothing to watch us occupy Qing territory."
Well, one could not overestimate these chauvinists, and Nikolai could only sigh inwardly.
It is not that Nicholas has any Anglophobic complex, just on the Tsarist Russia in the end a few pounds, Nicholas from his shallow but know the results of the historical knowledge has been derived, not to mention the British, even if the British little brother of the Japanese are playing up to the strain, can only be said to be a human vegetable addiction.
"Regarding the forceful invasion of China I think this is a matter that should be kept in step with the Western European powers."
Nikolai's euphemistic assertion made Ukhtomskiy blink, not unlike the old Nikolai, who was fond of romanticism, i.e., immersed in the Tsar's "Divine Mandate" to rule over the yellow race.
Could it really be that the Japanese had knocked his brains out? Ukhtomsky thought about that rumor.
Because the former Nicholas was a self-disciplined man who woke up every day at 8:00 a.m. on time, while the current one was so scatterbrained that some of the officials accompanying him on the warships said that Crown Prince Nicholas was like a new man.
"Well, if the pace is the same, then we'll just have to take advantage of it by following the Onsarians."
"So, what's our reward for occupying so much Chinglish land? Enlightening the yellow people? What about our military expenses? What about occupation expenses? Will it anger all the powers? Is it going to repeat the lessons we learned in the Crimean War?"
"..."
Nikolai's barrage of questions silenced Ukhtomsky for a long time; there was no doubt that the Crown Prince before him was indeed not quite the same as he used to be, or at least a lot wiser in his vision.
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