Romanian Eagle

Eder called the chief of guards to come here mainly to learn about Bessarabia and Western Ukraine.

If Romania wants to expand its strength, it cannot just stare at the Transylvania region in the hands of Austria-Hungary. Russia's Bessarabia and Western Ukraine are the keys to Romania's strength. Of course, the Transylvania region is also essential, which allows Romania to occupy the terrain advantages of the surrounding countries. Only now Edel needs to carefully understand the intelligence of the two places in order to make a good reference for the future.

After Carust was called, he was questioned by Edel in person. "How much do your intelligence services know about Bessarabia and Western Ukraine?"

Calust understood what Edel wanted to ask, so he spoke. "Your Majesty is now in a relatively chaotic political situation in Bessarabia. There are various political ideas, but at present, their political demands can be divided into three main aspects."

"Among them, the main political family, the Bikster in Chisinau, proposed that they obey the order of the interim government in St. Petersburg, and currently occupy the mainstream opinion in the Bessarabia region. And most of these people are landed aristocratic factory owners, etc., We analyze that this is just an instinctive move by these people to protect their own interests."

"anything else?"

"Then it was proposed by several small political parties that we funded to return to Romania. Because our economic development has been exceptionally good in recent years, there are many local people who envy the country, and several small political parties have attracted a lot of local people. The people. Especially after the Russian Revolution, more people joined these parties, and many children of families joined them.”

Edel nodded after hearing this. "Very well, these are smart people."

The way these families operate is the same in the East and the West. For example, the gentry in the late Qing Dynasty also had a good choice. The old university tradition, the second child learns new school, and the third child goes to study abroad. This is all for the inheritance and continuation of the family, there is nothing to worry about, as long as the local people do not block the protection of the Romanian army.

Edel continued to ask. "You keep talking."

Carust continued. "In the end, some Bessarabian scholars proposed to let it be independent..."

As soon as Edel heard that someone proposed independence, he immediately interrupted the captain of the guard. "Are there many of these people? Who brought it up?"

In the face of the king's fierce reaction, the captain of the guard could only answer Edel's question first. "It is mainly based on the sociologist Dostaff of Kyiv University, and a few people, mainly the principal of the Belz Middle School, Swixy. Their propositions are currently not taken seriously, and everyone knows that Bessarabia is impossible. independent."

Edel felt a little irritated after hearing the answer from the captain of the guard. "Let you arrange an accident for these two gentlemen, I don't want to see them."

Facing Edel's order to save lives, Carust did not defend, but just replied. "As your majesty."

After seeing that Edel was not addressing these issues, Carust continued. "Western Ukraine is much more complicated than Bessarabia."

How complicated it is, Edel also knew after listening to Carust's explanation. Under the Habsburg family, Galicia has more than 70,000 square kilometers of western Ukraine, and more than 2 million Ukrainians on this land. They were not killed in the process of being conquered, nor were their homes destroyed in the war, making the West Ukrainians very submissive to the rule of the Habsburg family.

The greatest "good luck" for Ukrainians was the result of the reforms of Queen Theresia and Joseph II after being incorporated into Austrian rule. In the 1880s, Austria began to implement a series of radical reforms.

First of all, in 1782, it announced the abolition of peasants' personal dependence on landlords, and gave peasants the most basic citizenship rights. Then in 1786, the peasants were stipulated that they only needed to work three days a week for the landlords. In 1787, the land used by the peasants and the land of the landlords were used, and the landlords were prohibited from disposing of the peasants' land at will.

Finally, in 1789, it was announced that the abolition of the labor system would be replaced by land rent, and farmers could keep more than 70% of their harvests.

Ninety percent of Ukrainians in Austria lived in the countryside, and before the reforms, they were treated like "slaves" from Polish landowners. Therefore, this reform not only helped them get rid of the exploitation of Polish landlords, but also allowed them to obtain "personal freedom" nearly 50 years earlier than their Ukrainian brothers in Russia.

For, at the same time, Empress Catherine was strengthening the Russian-ruled Ukrainians who had imposed slave-like rule, and their "emancipation had to wait until after the serfdom reforms of 1861."

The Austrian Ukrainians benefited greatly economically, while allowing Ukrainians a great deal of religious and cultural independence. Catholic Ukrainians are grateful for the Austrian emperor's policy of reciprocity between Roman Catholics and Greek Catholics, giving Greek Catholics equal status with Roman Catholics.

At the same time, to free the Ukrainians under Austrian rule from the dominance of Polish culture. The Austrians began to culturally reform the Ukrainian masses, although their purpose was only to cultivate an elite who obeyed Austria. However, with the tacit approval of the Austrians, the Ukrainians succeeded in promoting the Ukrainian language.

In 1893 it had become Austro-Hungarian sanction for the use of Ukrainian in schools in Ukrainian-inhabited areas, and by 1914 Galicia had more than 2,500 Ukrainian-speaking primary schools and 16 higher education institutions.

Although Ukrainian personnel under Austrian rule sought sources from Russian culture, in contrast to Austrian rule, Russia not only prohibited the existence of the Greek-Catholic Church, but even in 1900 Kyiv did not allow the publication of books in the Ukrainian language. Differences in religious and cultural policies undoubtedly made the Ukrainians under Austrian rule grateful and loyal to the Habsburg family, for which they acquired a new one called "Eastern Tyrol" (Austria)

It is precisely because of this loyalty to Austria that the Ukrainians showed a rare "reactionary" in the movement that swept across Europe's national awakening in the mid-19th century. In 1848 the Poles of Galicia tried to seek autonomy, but they were unsuccessful because of the opposition of the "General Roslada" led by the Ukrainians.

After seeing the role of the "General Roslada", the Austrians stingy "grant" the Ukrainians the right to vote for 25 of Galicia's 100 delegates. However, the political rights of Ukrainians under Austrian rule seem to be no more than that, regardless of Hungary's forcing the Austrian Empire into a "binary Austrian-Hungarian Empire" in 1867, and even ethnic groups such as Poland have obtained huge political autonomy. right.

Perhaps in order to fight for more rights, or perhaps being carried away by the gift of Austria, "General Roslada" tried to organize armed forces to help the Austrian government suppress the Hungarian revolution. This is not the first time that Ukrainians have proposed to form armed forces (in 1846, Ukrainians have proposed to establish national army in cities and self-defense forces in rural areas), but it is the first time that Ukrainians have proposed to fight for the Habsburg family. For some reason, Austria did not agree with this suggestion.

With the outbreak of the First World War, Austria-Hungary appeared the first Ukrainian independent army, nearly 70 years after they asked for a separate armed force. It is even more ironic that the Ukrainians who are loyal to the Habsburg family have been unable to realize their desire to form an armed force for a long time, while other ethnic groups have already realized it. The gap between this ideal and reality is actually the distrust of the Austrians in the Ukrainians, and this distrust will bring more serious disasters to the Ukrainians in the subsequent World War I.

In the short period before World War I, the Austro-Hungarian army expanded from more than 180,000 in 1912 to 2.3 million in 1914. In the Austro-Hungarian Empire, there was a split within the Ukrainians under the rule of the Austro-Hungarian Empire.

Ukrainians who fled Galicia hope that their compatriots will welcome the Russian army as "liberators"; Ukrainians, known as the "Ukrainian Liberator Union", hope to rely on Germany to realize the dream of Ukraine's independent statehood. The Ukrainian General Rada called on the Ukrainians to join the Austro-Hungarian army and prepare to fight for the "greatest friend" Austria against its "worst enemy" Russia. Therefore, 250,000 Ukrainians, who accounted for 8% of the population of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, joined the army of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, accounting for about 10% of the army of the Austro-Hungarian Empire.

After the Austro-Hungarian Empire recruited 250,000 "cannon fodder" from Galicia and other places, it still rejected the request to establish a "Ukrainian Legion" composed of Ukrainians, although in order to establish this legion, the Ukrainian General Rada Thirty thousand Ukrainian youths have been mobilized. Moreover, the 250,000 Ukrainians conscripted by the Austro-Hungarian Empire were all dispersed into the regular army.

Although the 15th Galician Infantry, the 24th Galician-Bucowena Infantry and the 30th Galician Infantry Regiment were the overwhelming majority of the soldiers were Ukrainians, But for the Ukrainian General Rada, there is still a huge gap between this and the desire to establish an independent Ukrainian army.

In fact, the Austro-Hungarian Empire refused to set up the "Ukrainian Legion". First, it was worried that the Ukrainians with their own armed forces would embark on the road of armed independence and building a state. The other was that the Polish aristocrats who had oppressed the Ukrainians for a long time did not want the Ukrainians to have an independent country. armed forces.

However, in order to appease the loyalty of the Ukrainians for nearly a hundred years, the Austro-Hungarian Empire still allowed the Ukrainians to form a small-scale armed force. Although this force is only 2,500 people, it is the first armed force formed by Ukrainians in modern Ukrainian history. This unit, which is equivalent to only one regiment of the Austro-Hungarian Wehrmacht, is called the "Ukrainian Sechi Shooting Corps". Judging from the name of this unit, this is likely to be a fortress defense unit formed by the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Because, "Sechi" in Ukrainian means "fortress built with felled logs".

Perhaps, it is precisely because the "mission" originally given by the Austro-Hungarian Empire to this Ukrainian unit was nothing more than a defensive fortress, so it was also extremely "stingy" with this unit in terms of weaponry and equipment. By September 1914, troops guarding the passes in the Carpathians were only assigned single-shot rifles. Unfortunately, on September 25, 1914, the "Ukrainian Sechi Shooters" were dispatched to the Carpathian Ministry.

Perhaps it was because the Austro-Hungarian Empire only regarded the Ukrainians as "cannon fodder", or because of the weak industrial production capacity of Austria-Hungary, its weapon production capacity was completely unable to adapt to the speed of the empire's military expansion. When the army of the Austro-Hungarian Empire had expanded to 2.3 million people, the "M1895 Steyr-Mannlicher rifle" had become a "luxury" for the Austro-Hungarian army, and two-thirds of the troops' equipment could only be equipped with nearly A quarter century old rifle.

However, for the "Ukrainian Sechi Shooters", the advanced or not of the rifle does not seem to matter. Because, as a defensive force, the officers of the Austro-Hungarian Empire always believed that close-range machine gun fire was the most important thing. Therefore, the training level is not as good as that of other countries in the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and the training in shooting is even less valued.

What's more, the training materials and training subjects prepared by Marshal Conrad, the chief of the general staff of the Austria-Hungary Empire, were purely for the purpose of attacking. At that time, the armies of various countries believed that "hand-to-hand assault can force the enemy to abandon the positions occupied". For the poorly equipped and poorly trained "Ukrainian Sechi Shooters", they seem to have only one option on the battlefield - to resolutely implement the tactics of completely annihilating the enemy with a bayonet in an offensive battle

Once the war machine is started, it will become a "meat grinder" that devours life. All the young lives who enter the battlefield after the bloody slaughter, only become the footnotes of the tragedy that testify to the cruelty of the war. The fate of the Ukrainian Seči shooters and the other 250,000 Ukrainians who joined the Austro-Hungarian Empire in World War I was perhaps even more tragic.

After the outbreak of the war, the Austro-Hungarian Empire, which lost nearly 400,000 troops in the Galicia campaign, had to transfer the Ukrainian Sechi shooters, which were poorly equipped and poorly trained, to the Carpathian front line. The 2,500-strong armed force, together with the Royal Hungarian Regional Defence Force and other newly formed units, was tasked with guarding the passes of the Carpathian Mountains.

However, the Austro-Hungarian front-line command did not send Ukrainian Sechi shooters to conduct a positional defense battle. Instead, they were all divided into parts, and a group of 20 people was used to perform the task of infiltrating the rear of the Russian army. Perhaps the front-line commanders of the Austro-Hungarian Empire believed that the identity of the Ukrainian ethnic Ukrainians who shot the soldiers in the Ukrainian Sechi was the best cover, and could obtain a lot of intelligence in the Russian-ruled area.

It is a pity that the opponent of the Ukrainian Sechi shooters who performed the infiltration mission was the elite Kuban Cossack Brigade of Tsarist Russia. As a result, although the Austro-Hungarian Empire successfully blocked the Russian army in the Carpathian Mountains in this battle, the Ukrainian Sechi shooters also lost hundreds of people. In the first battle, although the Ukrainian Sechi shooters completed their strategic tasks, they also suffered heavy losses.

Perhaps for these ethnic Ukrainian warriors, the baptism of war was only the beginning of their tragic fate. In the future battles, they not only fought with the Ukrainians in the Russian army, but also staged the tragedy of the Ukrainians killing each other. It is because they did not have the trust of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, so they have been fighting on the most dangerous front lines.

This Ukrainian force fought valiantly in October-November 1914, April-May 1915 and August-September 1916. In the First World War, there were three famous battles on the Eastern Front in these three time periods: the siege of the Pumigel fortress in 1914, and the Battle of Gorlitz jointly launched with Austria-Hungary and Germany in 1915. and the "Bruhilov Breakthrough" in 1916.

The 2,500-strong Ukrainian Chessie shooter was just a drop in the ocean in these three battles, which often involved millions. However, they showed extremely strong combat effectiveness in the war. They first used bayonets to break through the defense line of the Russian army with the Hungarians and Croats in the siege of Pumigel. Then, in the Battle of Gorlitz, he and his allies, the Germans, annihilated more than 500,000 Russian troops and regained Galicia, which was occupied by Tsarist Russia. Finally, the battle in 1916 blocked the Tsarist Russian army which was attacking like a tide, and pushed the salient to clear it.

It is precisely because of the heroic performance in this battle that the rulers of the Austro-Hungarian Empire had to admit that they were "the best troops in the entire Austro-Hungarian army". However, this Ukrainian Chisai shooter, recognized as the "best army", was completely defeated after the fierce battle with the Russian army in the autumn of 1916, and has since disappeared in the long river of history.

Of course, in addition to this 2,500-strong Ukrainian Chessie shooter, there are as many as 250,000 Ukrainian soldiers in the Austro-Hungarian army. Although, they had a bad record of abandoning their weapons and fleeing in the Battle of Galicia, and they also passively avoided the battle during the siege of the fortress of Primigel.

But after seeing the atrocities of the Russian troops who had invaded Galicia in the spring of 1915, they, along with Polish soldiers, erupted in rare blood in the battle to guard the Carpathian pass. Taking advantage of the natural dangers of the Carpathian Mountains, they used rifles, bayonets and even shovels to fight the Russian army several times larger than themselves for 5 days, which not only killed and wounded the Russian army in large numbers, but also helped the Austro-Hungarian Empire and the German army against the Russian army. It took enough time to fight back.

However, whether it is the Ukrainian Chisei shooters who fought bravely, or other Ukrainian soldiers who were ashamed and brave, they could not exchange the Austro-Hungarian Empire's trust in the Ukrainian ethnic group with their hard work on the battlefield.

After the Battle of Galassi, the disastrously defeated Austro-Hungarian Empire arrested and executed hundreds of Ukrainians without trial, citing their disastrous defeat by selling Austro-Hungarian military intelligence to Tsarist Russia. In addition to executing so-called pro-Russian elements, thousands of Ukrainians were relocated to the west to prevent them from providing intelligence to Tsarist Russia, and more than 30,000 Ukrainians were imprisoned in concentration camps located in Austria, Austria-Hungary. Marshal Conrad, the chief of the general staff, even called the Ukrainian ethnic group "untrustworthy lazy people".

Perhaps, the reason why the Austro-Hungarian Empire recruited a large number of Ukrainian soldiers in the war was just to make up for the lack of troops, and it also hoped to use the bayonet of the Russian army to consume the elite of the Ukrainians in the war.

Perhaps, the "conspiracy" of the Austro-Hungarian Empire succeeded, and countless Ukrainian soldiers shed their blood on the battlefield, and the residential area of ​​the Ukrainian ethnic group was the main battlefield of Austria, Germany and Russia, and was ruthlessly destroyed by the war. .

Eder seems to want to have ideas in Western Ukraine, so some of the practices of the Austro-Hungarian Empire still inspire him. But now there is news that Eder can't let go of his work now. concerned about other issues.