The all-European slaughter continues. On the Russian-German front there has been a long lull, and at the same time Austria-Hungary suffers an irreversible defeat. In the west, in France, after the Battle of the Seine the front stabilized forty kilometers from Paris, and in the Balkans a союз formed of Russia, Serbia, and Bulgaria—its natural enemies being the Turks, the Austrians, and a few Greeks along with the Romanians. For Serbia, this alliance means salvation from the blow in the back; for Bulgaria, it means a war for national dignity; and for Russia, it means an opportunity to seize the Bosporus and the Dardanelles, turning the Black Sea into its internal waters.
And right in this pathetic moment in St. Petersburg, a conspiracy by pro-French elites is brewing, modeled on February of 1917. But the Artan prince is ready for this turn of events as well. The world is on the brink of the moment when nothing will be the same anymore, and England and France will still have to realize the depth of the nightmare they are throwing themselves into in their attempt to overthrow Tsar Nicholas.