As the saying goes, good omens never come true, but bad ones always do. Perhaps it was jinxed by careless words. Only a week later, grim news arrived in rapid succession. Large enemy formations were massing along the French coastline. There was no need to guess who they were aimed at. The British Isles were clearly the target. Upon hearing the news, Swinton no longer bothered with restraint and urgently pressed the head of military intelligence. “Have the enemy’s warships already entered service?” Any attempt to land on the British Isles would inevitably involve naval combat. The Holy Roman Empire had air cover, but Britain was not without an air force either. Even if it was slightly weaker, once both sides fought with everything they had, it was still possible to achieve short-term containment. In order to protect troop transports, the Holy Roman navy would have no choice but to fight. Based on the current balance of strength, the Royal Navy still held a slight advantage. The only thing that could overturn this situation was the commissioning of new enemy warships. Judging by construction timelines, it was admittedly tight. However, the enemy was the world’s foremost industrial power. Working overtime and completing ships ahead of schedule was hardly inconceivable. In fact, more than a month earlier, naval intelligence had already received reports that enemy capital ships had been launched, though these reports had never been confirmed. From launching to commissioning, and then to achieving combat readiness, it certainly could not all be done in just over a month. Still, the landing operation had not yet begun. A major war took a long time to prepare before it could be launched. By the time preparations were complete, training might well be finished too. The Chief of Intelligence, Russell-Daud, nodded and replied, “At present, we can confirm that at least two dreadnought class battleships have entered service. Most of the enemy’s capital ships were laid down at roughly the same time. Even if the rest have not yet been commissioned, it likely will not take much longer.” With this confirmation, Swinton’s expression darkened completely. One step behind, always behind. Britain’s battleships had already been laid down later to begin with. On top of that, shipyards had suffered enemy attacks midway through construction, further delaying progress. Once this batch of enemy warships entered service, at the dreadnought level, the Royal Navy would find itself at an absolute numerical disadvantage. When quality fell short, numbers could sometimes make up the difference. But dreadnoughts possessed an overwhelming advantage against ordinary warships. No one knew what price would have to be paid to erase that gap. If the Royal Navy lacked absolute confidence in victory, then Swinton’s offhand remark about “one man, one plane, one bomb for one ship” would no longer be a joke. It would become reality. Martyrs were easy enough to find. Martyr pilots were not. Though Britain was also an island nation, it was not Japan. There were no crowds scrambling to volunteer for suicide missions. There was no need to look far for proof. The air battles over London said it all. Once an aircraft suffered damage, it immediately turned and fled. If escape proved impossible, the pilot bailed out without hesitation. While this preserved manpower to the greatest extent possible, it also wasted large numbers of aircraft. Many planes that could have been salvaged were simply abandoned. There was no point in condemning this. Anyone willing to take to the skies and fight was already a hero. Some pilots even refused to fly at all. Their reasoning was entirely sound. The performance gap between aircraft was too great. An asymmetric battle was nothing more than a death sentence. If it was certain death, then of course they would not go. Britain did not celebrate dying without fear. The extremely high losses in the early stages of the war left the government without confidence. Aside from active duty pilots, who could not escape their obligations and had to go to the front, hobbyist pilots and civilian aviators still had the right to refuse. The main reason was simple. A compulsory conscription law had yet to be enacted, and the government’s penalties for refusing conscription were very limited. … While Britain was sinking into confusion, the international situation was quietly shifting as well. One piece of bad news after another steadily eroded confidence in the British Empire. The defense of India had already begun. The Holy Roman Empire was advancing from Persia and from the Indochinese Peninsula. Although the distance was still great, few believed that the Persians and a collection of colonial troops could stop the world’s foremost land power. What made matters worse was that the Russians were also advancing from Afghanistan. British India had effectively fallen into a situation of encirclement on all sides. Standing alone against the world’s first and second ranked land powers, relying solely on distance and terrain was not enough. Unless the British could somehow cheat reality itself, there was no hope at all. British Africa was already almost completely lost. If India were lost as well, could Great Britain still truly be called an “Empire”? No matter how formidable the Royal Navy might be, it could not reverse defeat on land. Moreover, it had already lost the Battle of Malacca Strait. The defense of the Strait of Gibraltar had begun. Emboldened by victory, the Spaniards finally worked up the courage to launch an assault on Gibraltar. They were clearly hoping to replicate the triumph of the previous anti-French war, using the prestige of victory to return to the ranks of the great powers. Being a great power was not merely a title. It came with enormous underlying benefits, which were especially important for trading nations. For example, both the United States and the Confederate States possessed considerable comprehensive strength. Yet because they lacked the designation of a great power, they enjoyed no right of first discovery on the international stage. Spain’s actual strength was no longer impressive, but its name still carried weight in this era. Its voice in international affairs ranked just below Britain, Austria, and Russia. Of course, that was only in the early days after the victory of the anti-French alliance. Later, Spain’s prestige suffered heavily during the Philippine War, and was further drained by the suppression of colonial uprisings. As a result, its international influence declined significantly. With both Russia and Spain joining the fight, Europe’s fence-sitters could no longer sit still. Favorable wars had always been everyone’s favorite. What was more, the Holy Roman government had dangled substantial rewards, directly putting “India” on the table as bait. How could the various governments possibly resist such temptation? With the enthusiastic support of multiple countries, the Continental coalition had begun to take shape. All that remained was final integration. Once that work was complete, it would be time for the battle that decides it once and for all. Compared to the concentration of the Continental Alliance, the members of the Oceanic Alliance were far more scattered. Each was spread across distant corners of the world, and assembling them required crossing vast oceans. The difficulty of integrating their strength was more than a full tier higher. Despite the British government’s strenuous efforts, limitations of distance meant that the integration of the Oceanic Alliance lagged far behind. If the war were to drag on for two or three years, the Oceanic Alliance’s strength would naturally come together. But judging from the current situation, the enemy clearly had no intention of granting them that much time. As enemy power continued to grow and the situation on the battlefield became increasingly unfavorable to the Oceanic Alliance, the governments of various countries watched with anxious eyes. Navies across the alliance had already joined escort operations. Air forces had also dispatched elite pilots to reinforce Britain, and armies were beginning to assemble. Even so, all of this was still not enough to defeat the Continental Alliance. In this era, the combined strength of the entire European continent was effectively invincible. More and more clear-minded observers began to realize that getting dragged into this war had been a mistake. Unfortunately, this world contained everything except a medicine for regret. Joining a war was easy. Withdrawing from it was not. On the surface, everyone was still Britain’s good ally, working together for the sake of the war. Beneath that calm exterior, however, undercurrents were already surging. Everything would depend on the final battle. If Britain could shatter the so-called Operation Sealion while simultaneously holding on to India, then everyone would remain loyal allies. But if either of those pillars collapsed, there would be no choice left. They would have to grit their teeth and cut their losses. It could only be said that blind faith in past experience was deadly. Over the past two hundred years, Britain had emerged as the final winner of every major continental war. Long-standing victory had bred confidence. Coupled with the Royal Navy’s dominance at sea and the fact that allied nations were scattered overseas, the worst outcome people anticipated was a stalemate rather than defeat. According to British promises, even in a stalemate, everyone would still be able to divide the overseas colonies of the Holy Roman Empire, the Netherlands, Spain, Portugal, and others. Reality, however, was cruel. The British Empire, having missed the Second Industrial Revolution, was like an aging man in his twilight years, no longer possessing the vitality of the past. … While diplomatic storms once again swept across the international stage, the battlefield itself erupted on all fronts. After the defeat at the Battle of Malacca Strait, the British were forced to carry out a strategic contraction in the Far East. Aside from continued fighting on the Indochinese Peninsula, other regions had already been abandoned at great pain. Even that was not enough. The Continental Alliance gave them no time to catch their breath. Governor William, once brimming with confidence, now found himself caught between suffering and exhilaration. Every man carried a heroic dream of charging across the battlefield. Now that the opportunity to command vast armies had finally arrived, William instead found himself plagued by headaches. Not everyone possessed the talent to command troops in limitless numbers. Governor William certainly did not have the ability to lead an army of a million men. Had the war not broken out, no one would have believed that the Continental Alliance could mobilize over a million troops in the Southeast Asian region alone. Yet reality unfolded exactly that way. The Dutch dispatched one hundred thousand troops. Spain sent eighty thousand. Portugal contributed three thousand. Added to that were one hundred and thirty thousand troops from the Austrian Southeast Asia direct forces. Together with the noble coalitions and civilian armed groups that arrived one after another, total strength forcibly broke past the one million mark. And this was still not the full picture. New units joined every single day, as if the flow would never end. It left Governor William with a pounding headache. Unlike Africa, where organizational structures were complete and forces could simply be arranged according to existing reserve frameworks, the situation in Southeast Asia was entirely different. Most of the troops here were loosely assembled. European settlers alone could never have made up an army of a million. But once the Lan Fang Autonomous Province was added to the equation, the numbers became more than sufficient. If there was anyone to blame, it could only be the military merit and noble title system. After years of careful management, Emperor Franz’s credibility had long since taken deep root in people’s hearts. In the past, many had wanted to participate, but the battlefield was too far away. Conscription orders never reached this region, leaving them no way to get involved. Now that the opportunity had come knocking, the Chinese clans of Lan Fang could no longer sit still. Driven by profit, they overcame their fear of the British and joined the war one after another. On top of that, nobles seeking greater military merit continuously expanded their private armies. As a result, the coalition forces ballooned at a frightening pace. Disliking war only meant that the profits were not high enough. Everyone knew the Emperor was generous. Land was distributed by the hectare. Even without obtaining a noble title, receiving a parcel of land alone was worth the risk. Wealth and status were found amid danger. Any ambitious young man hoping to change his fate appeared in the ranks of the army. A closer look would even reveal the presence of overseas students. Not only did they enlist themselves, they went home to recruit others as well. The momentum of a million-strong army was impressive, but its actual combat effectiveness declined. Aside from the direct forces and the private armies of the nobles, only those units possessed real fighting capability. The rest were little more than rabble. In Governor William’s eyes, even the troops dispatched by Spain and the Netherlands were merely along for the ride. Despite knowing full well that many of these forces were unreliable, William could not reject their enthusiasm for participation. On one hand, interests were tightly bound together. On the other, the sheer scale was meant to apply sufficient pressure on the British. Rabble or not, the numbers were there. Britain would have no choice but to divert substantial forces to intercept them. In any case, this was an era where everyone was competing to see who was less terrible. On the Continental Alliance side, only two to three hundred thousand troops could truly be considered main combat forces. The rest were little more than rabble. The British were not in much better shape. The reinforcements rushed in from the homeland were newly formed units. As for the hastily assembled colonial troops, they were the worst of the rabble. If it really came down to a fight, William felt that his side still held a slight advantage. Even if both sides were dominated by unreliable troops, at least his own forces had higher morale. The massive civilian militias had not been forcibly conscripted by William. He had merely issued a call, and people had come of their own accord. Since they were fighting for their own interests, morale was naturally high. Especially during the oath-taking ceremony, William had gotten carried away with his speech and directly promised the entire army that, if they won this war, compensation for the fallen would be no less than five hundred guilders, or five hectares of land. The newly settled colonists from the homeland and the regular troops felt little reaction. According to past practice, this was standard procedure. Once various subsidies were added up over time, the final amount often exceeded the stated compensation. For everyone else, however, it was a different story. Five hundred guilders converted into silver amounted to well over a thousand taels. Given the economic level of the Far East, it was an astronomical sum for ninety-nine percent of the population. The temptation of five hectares of land was even greater, because this was merit land. In the Holy Roman Empire, as long as merit land was not sold, it was permanently exempt from taxation. Such life-for-money compensation had already reached a sky-high level in the Far East. In a sense, the endless stream of volunteers was something William himself had stimulated. Once the words had been spoken, they had to be honored. Influenced by Franz over many years, William naturally understood the importance of credibility. The reputation of the Habsburg dynasty was not something that could be bought with money. There was no need to save a mere hundred million here or there at the cost of one’s own credibility. Moreover, from William’s perspective, five hundred guilders in exchange for someone risking their life was honestly not that much. As for land, it was taken from the enemy anyway, so there was no need to feel any pain over it. As a king-in-waiting, William also needed to establish his own reputation. Southeast Asia was home to many ethnic groups living side by side. If spending a hundred million or so could establish his credibility among these groups, then based on William’s understanding of his father, it would be money well spent. Besides, it was not even necessary to pay out of pocket yet. War expenditures were always fully covered by the Holy Roman government. At most, the royal family would lead by example with donations at critical moments. Now, there was not even a need for donations. The war had only been going on for a few months, and the Holy Roman Empire’s coffers were far from empty. Leading a force of rabble into battle came with unavoidable psychological pressure. William did not dare dream of carving a bloody path all the way to India. At the very least, he needed to secure the Indochinese Peninsula.
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