Europe had plunged into a savage and catastrophic war.
Seven or eight hundred million people were swept up in the conflict. Every nation was frantically mobilizing, swelling their combined troop strength from roughly ten million at the outbreak of war to thirty million — and the numbers kept climbing.
Longcheng seized the opportunity to negotiate with the various powers, offering to let its banks operate within their borders in exchange for supplying whatever resources they needed at the lowest possible prices.
Every one of them refused.
The chief reason was simple: every nation feared the invasion of foreign capital.
You have your own currency, and you're going to let someone else's currency waltz right in? What kind of nonsense is that? What fool would do such a thing — hand over control of their own economic lifeline and let someone else hold it by the throat?
Beyond that, none of the belligerents believed for a moment that they would be the losing side, and so saw no need for outside support.
Longcheng wasn't bothered. If you don't need us now, we'll be here when you do. We've already put the idea in your heads — next time, when you come to us on your own, things will go much more smoothly.
Since the banks couldn't enter any of the major nations for the time being, there were other things to be getting on with.
First, if they wouldn't accept the banks, then Longcheng would simply pay handsomely for their resources. Ships sailed back and forth across Europe in a constant stream, delivering various resources and returning laden with gold.
The Americans were doing the same thing.
Second, Longcheng began working its way into the colonial territories — if the home countries were off-limits, what about the colonies where control was looser? Small parcels of land were quietly purchased from local governors and colonial administrators, one piece at a time. On each parcel, Longcheng built its own settlement and opened its own bank.
Truly small plots, just enough for a township. And the administrators pocketed a handsome sum in the bargain — why wouldn't they?
The great powers gradually became aware of what was happening, but what could they do about it? The fighting was at its most ferocious; no one had the attention to spare for Longcheng's quiet maneuvering.
…
The four great courts had each settled on official dynastic names for use in international affairs.
In this part of the world, there had always been just one dynasty at a time — whoever held the throne was the Celestial Empire, and so there had never been much habit of formally naming the state itself. Reign titles had always been used as a substitute. When a new emperor ascended, his reign title took over; the dynastic name simply continued.
The northern barbarian regime named itself the Qing — the Great Qing, at last made legitimate.
The Ming Emperor named his dynasty the Ming.
Li Xuanji's little southwestern court had chosen rather fittingly: the Song. Did he know something the others didn't?
Li Xuanzong in the southwest had gone with the Tang.
Not the most auspicious choice — glorious, certainly, but did he know how it had ended?
Well, let them call themselves whatever they liked. As long as they were willing to expand aggressively overseas, that was all that mattered.
Over the past decade, Longcheng had held sway over the Central Plains, and factional strife had diminished considerably. With bumper harvests year after year, people were well-fed. Encouraged by favorable policies, the land had seen wave after wave of newborns. The population had entered a period of rapid growth.
Through years of surveys and censuses, Longcheng had finally managed to get a reasonably reliable count of the old dynasties' populations.
Somewhere between 180 and 190 million.
When the four courts had been at their most chaotic a decade and more ago, there had been significant loss of life — but not catastrophic. With the relative stability of recent years, the population had likely grown by around fifty million, bringing the total to roughly 240 million.
This was why the four courts had been able, without undue strain, to dispatch two million soldiers to project power at various points around the world.
…
Germany had reverse-engineered Longcheng's automobiles and was producing them in considerable numbers. Performance lagged several grades behind the originals, but they were still vastly superior to horses.
Using blitzkrieg tactics, they drove all the way to Paris in three months.
There was no helping it — limited by the technology of the age, lightning could only move so fast.
The French government fled into exile, and Germany assumed it had conquered France. The romantic French people, however, had other ideas. Resistance flared up everywhere, and with the government-in-exile directing operations from afar, the Germans found themselves mired in a war of attrition.
Most peoples grow stronger when they stand together — but the French? Their government was gone, and yet every last one of them got feisty on their own.
Magnificent France.
…
A colossal steel vessel lay anchored off the French coastline. German troops converged on it rapidly from all directions.
A group of people disembarked, all dressed in white, each bearing the emblem of Longcheng on their chests — a dragon's head sketched in a dozen or so bold strokes, strikingly vivid. On their backs and shoulders were the markings of a red cross.
A German division commander drove over, took one look at the dragon's head on the great vessel, and recognized Longcheng immediately. As for the red cross — that he couldn't place.
Longcheng: a name Europeans had grown familiar with, yet one they still didn't fully understand. Word had it that it came from the most advanced civilization in the world, and that the automobiles and electricity now spreading across Europe had originated there. Word had it that buildings there rose dozens of stories into the sky.
Europeans — at least some of them — had refused to believe it.
They considered themselves the masters of the world.
But over the past two years, a thing called a photograph had made its way to them, and as people looked at the images and the skylines in the background, mouths fell open — and then slowly closed.
Even with the war raging as it was, the nations had each sent delegations to go and see for themselves. When those delegations returned, Europe fell silent.
"Friends from Longcheng — what brings you here?"
"Love and peace!"
The German soldiers stared at the utterly solemn faces before them and broke into grins.
You've come to a battlefield to preach love and peace — is your brain waterlogged?