empress ch49

Tsardom of Rus’ on the Galacia front could be summarized as being in a state of, so to speak, ‘overexpansion’.

A front line stretched out to the point where it was impossible to maintain stably, a massive bulge, and countless ragtag soldiers crammed inside it.

It was truly like sticking one’s head into the maw of a giant beast.

And that beast had no intention of quietly letting go of the enemies it had bitten even once.

“Hoo… hoo… those incompetent Polish bastards…”

Pyotr cursed the innocent Polish Regiment as he loaded ammunition into his rifle.

The Polish Regiment’s breakthrough had failed, and the Tsardom of Rus’s million-man army had instantly turned into a massive lump of meat.

And where there was a lump of meat, wolves would come. Just like in East Prussia.

“Shit…”

Click, clack!

He pushed the bolt. The ammunition clip sprang out with a ting, and the bullet was loaded. He immediately poked only his head above the trench and began shooting at the approaching cavalry.

Bang! A cavalryman, hit in the chest by a bullet, fell. Bang! This time, he missed. He gritted his teeth and loaded the next round. Bang! This time, the horse was hit. The horse fell, and the cavalryman also tumbled down.

And… Click. Click.

“Goddamn it.”

Another malfunction. He threw his rifle to the ground in annoyance and approached his junior, who was trembling in the corner.

“Hey! Give me your rifle!”

“B-but a soldier abandoning his weapon is unthinkable…!”

Thwack! He struck his junior’s head and said,

“Who doesn’t know that, you think I’m doing this because I don’t?! I know it well, so just hand it over!”

“Ah, uh… b-but…”

Thwack! He hit his junior’s head again and said,

“Are you looking down on me because I’m from some backwater Ukrainian village?!”

“N-no! Here you go!”

Click. He took the rifle his junior handed him. An Imperial Steiner Rifle. The smooth grip was a work of art compared to the Mosin-Nagant he had been using.

“Huh. So you were using such a good one all along?”

“S-sorry!”

“That’s a compliment, you idiot. I’ll buy you a meal someday, so keep that in mind.”

He shouted that to his junior and then aimed at the Imperial Bow Cavalry charging toward them. And… Tsk. He clicked his tongue and lowered the gun.

“Hey! Recruit! Follow me!”

“Yes? Yes!”

He ran through the trench, thinking. It was already too late.

The reason trench warfare was hell was because the combination of barbed wire, machine guns, and trenches created a synergy that was terrifyingly perfect.

But currently, the Tsardom of Rus’ army in Galacia lacked the time to even set up barbed wire or bring machine guns to the front lines.

Through long experience, Pyotr could tell. All that was left for such an army of the Tsardom of Rus’ was a helpless death.

Clatter. Clatter. Amidst the loud shelling, the sound of countless cavalry hooves could be heard. He gritted his teeth and dragged his junior through the mud.

Then. KABOOM! A large explosion occurred in the trench in front of him. It seemed like the stacked gunpowder had been hit. For a brief moment, orange flashes lit up the sky, and fragments of dismembered human bodies floated in the air.

“Ha… God… damn…”

Was it really possible to survive in this hell again?

He didn’t know.

The prairie, once filled with shouts of “Hurrah!”, was now filled with the screams of the Ivans.

The 9th Army’s cavalry strongly struck the backs of the Ivans fleeing from them.

This type of pursuit was very familiar to the 9th Army. After all, it was what they always did.

“Damn it…”

General Voroshilov frowned deeply. This offensive was a failure. Far from inflicting maximum damage on the enemy, they would be wiped out by the onrushing enemies if things continued like this.

Of course, manpower itself wasn’t the problem… The problem here was conscription. For the Tsardom of Rus’ army, suffering from a chronic shortage of equipment, the equipment losses that had occurred and would occur in this battle were nothing short of fatal.

“Retreat! Retreat!”

But there were those who were holding back these actions of the Tsardom of Rus’.

“Our Polish Regiment refuses the Tsardom of Rus’s proposal.”

Although it was only a small part… How could they give up their recovered homeland? To hand it over quietly to the German bastards was an absurd order for the Polish Regiment.

“We’re all going to die if we stay here!!”

In the end, they reluctantly decided to escape at Voroshilov’s pleading command, but it was already too late. No. It was already too late from the moment Voroshilov ordered the retreat.

“T-the Imperial bastards aren’t stopping!”

“R-run away!”

The Tsardom of Rus’ army hastily began to flee from the approaching Imperial army.

They tried to bring up heavy machine guns to stop the enemies, but… without trenches to cover them or barbed wire to block the enemies’ movements, the small number of machine guns exposed to the outside were… an easy target compared to those on the Western Front.

Of course, their firepower was strong. But it was also true that they were perfect sniper targets for the Dragoons.

Bang!

“Ugh!”

The head of the machine gunner, sniped from a long distance, burst open. The machine gun, which had been spitting out bullets so diligently just a moment ago, stopped moving.

“Charge! Charge!”

In the end, the Imperial army cavalry, having removed the last obstacles hindering their movement, began to advance straight toward their target.

“Cut off their lines of communication!”

The Tsardom of Rus’ was shocked by the Imperial army’s relentless advance. It felt like the nightmare of East Prussia was being repeated. Back then, it had been possible to withdraw the army through the Kingdom of Poland, but the situation was very different now.

“Retreat!”

In the end, General Voroshilov hastily ordered the army to retreat.

Fortunately, or perhaps not, the machine guns, ammunition, and Field Guns, as well as other supplies, were deployed far enough to the rear that a significant portion could be preserved.

Conversely, it meant that they had no choice but to escape, abandoning most of everything else within the encirclement.

Countless personnel, warhorses, and even food. Everything.

The soldiers of the Tsardom of Rus’, realizing that they had been trapped inside the encirclement, soon lost all morale.

They rushed to raise white flags and surrender to the Imperial army cavalry.

The large-scale battle in Galacia ended in victory for the Empire once again.

The failure of the Galacia offensive, which had gathered everything the Tsardom of Rus’ had, came as a great shock to the Tsardom of Rus’.

This meant that the Tsardom of Rus’ had lost the ability to conduct offensives any further. Now, all that was left for them was to not die until the other Allied nations led the war to victory. There was really nothing else they could do.

“Hmm~”

It seemed that our cousin had become quite small. To throw away their offensive capabilities with their own two hands.

Well, it’s good for us, though.

“You think so too, don’t you?”

I looked up at the bald man in front of me and smiled. Of course, it was a bit of a chore to look up at an uncle who made me want to vomit just by looking at him and give him a friendly smile… But what did it matter? I had even smiled at my great-uncle before.

Was there any reason why I wouldn’t smile at a commie?

Yes. The man standing in front of me now was the giant who would lead the Soviet Union, the original commie.

And at the same time, the Imperial dagger that would collapse the Tsardom of Rus’ in the name of revolution.

Vladimir Lenin.

Of course, I didn’t like the situation of having to cooperate with Vladimir Lenin, the cockroach leader, but… the territory of the Tsardom of Rus’ was too vast for the Imperial army to occupy. Excessively so.

The best thing was to collapse it from within. And the experts in this field were none other than the commies.

“Yes. Thanks to you, a good environment for revolution has been created.”

The people’s dissatisfaction was boiling over, the army was repeatedly suffering helpless defeats, and the nobles were beginning to have other thoughts.

Considering that the most important puzzle piece for starting a revolution was chaos, the current Tsardom of Rus’ was in a state that was more than suitable for starting a revolution.

“Soon, we will deliver the final blow to them.”

When that time came, the people’s trust in the Tsardom of Rus’ imperial family would be shattered. If trust in the government was broken, what awaited in its place was… the new world that the commies so desired.

‘Well… whether the new world is a utopia or a dystopia… we’ll have to experience it to know.’

I thought to myself as I looked down at the map.

“First of all, there are two things you must keep in mind.”

Thump. I drew two lines from Estonia to the Caspian Sea, from Petrograd to the White Sea.

“Do not desire anything beyond this.”

He could understand the true meaning behind my words.

“…But if it becomes like this… this isn’t the Tsardom of Rus’, but…”

Yes. Something half-baked.

“Unfortunately, I consider the contracts I have with the vassal states to be more important than the leniency I show to revolutionaries.”

“…At least, Ukraine. At the very least, Kiev…”

“No.”

I was going to place a dagger that would screw you over in the king’s seat over there. There was no way I could give up so easily.

“…I understand. Then I will give up the western territories.”

Very good. I nodded in satisfaction.

“Secondly, spare the imperial family.”

“What?! B-but the imperial family…”

“Do you perhaps enjoy having your family and revolutionary comrades buried alive?”

I deliberately spoke strongly. The keyword I emphasized here was family. Yes. I was acting like a contradictory girl who wanted to end the war in victory, but didn’t want to kill her family.

Unless he was a mind reader, there was no way he could know my true intentions.

“…I understand. Instead, I will add one condition. The Tsar’s family will not receive any position in the future and will live quietly in that countryside.”

“Of course.”

That was obviously a lie.

Keeping promises with commies was something only fools did.