?
"These barbaric Chinese!" Erkin, the British plenipotentiary in China, scolded angrily. The British civil and military officials next to Erkin were either excited or uneasy. For the proud British Empire, the messengers sent, even if they were unofficial messengers, would certainly not let it go after being scolded with "f * * k cum mama".
Of course, the Empire of the Unsetting Sun was not an empire made up of good-for-nothings. The British representative also detailed Hong Ren? The content of what was said was conveyed to Erkin. In the last war, the British went up the Pearl River. In order to prevent the Liberation Army artillery from attacking the British fleet from the river bank, they burned thousands of houses along the river. There was no doubt that the Viceroy's Office made full use of this incident to stir up China's nationalistic sentiment. The British missionaries were attacked by the Chinese people when they entered the area where the British army carried out the atrocities.
Even after knowing this, Erjin didn't make any comments. Wherever the English fought, it was the same, let alone in barbaric China. Even after Waterloo, when they invaded France, which was also a "civilized country," the English army, after the defeat of Napoleon, plundered France and raped French women everywhere. The Viceroy's Office showed strong hostility to these actions, which made Erkin a little surprised.
Everyone was waiting for Erkin to issue the war order. Since the British and French allied forces went north, the British side did not do nothing. In the past few months, with the consent of Queen Victoria of India, 4,000 Gurkhas who were very good at fighting were transported from India, where the war was gradually subsiding. Now the naval fleet of the British, French, American and Russian allied forces had not been disbanded, and the large fleet had arrived in Hong Kong. The allied navy had a total of more than 200 warships, and France also sent about 4,000 troops to Hong Kong.
Since then, the entire strength of the allied forces had reached more than 36,000 people. Although there were more than 16,000 people in the navy who could not fight on land. There were also 20,000 troops who could participate in the land war. More than 200 warships, 20,000 troops, this force could turn the world upside down in any area outside of Europe. Erjin heard from the representative who negotiated with Vézé last time that Vézé said that if two hundred thousand British soldiers entered Guangdong, Vézé would be defeated. Erjin felt that this was nonsense. With 200,000 troops, it would not be difficult for England to defeat China. There was no need for two hundred thousand soldiers. Twenty thousand soldiers would be enough.
After cursing the barbarism of the Chinese, the representative of Erjin did not immediately order his troops to attack. He changed a representative and went to see the Liberation Army again.
Coincidentally, this representative's surname was also Cameron, and the priest who had been seriously injured was called David Cameron. Cameron, this representative's name is William Butler. Donald? Cameron. He was a distant relative. However, this Cameron representative fully intended to avenge his distant relatives. When negotiating with the Liberation Army, Mr. Cameron hoped that the Liberation Army would be civilized people. In other words, when the British representative did not do anything out of line, the Liberation Army could face and solve problems with a rational attitude.
The ship sailed into the Pearl River and soon entered the area under the jurisdiction of the Liberation Army's navy. A patrol team composed of two propeller steamships soon appeared in front of the British ship. In the past few months, more and more China steamships had been launched. And the type of ships were all iron-boned and wood-hulled ships. The tonnage ranged from the patrol ships of more than thirty tons to the two or three hundred tons. The large ships all went south, and the small ships mainly cruised on the Pearl River.
Seeing these ships, Cameron, who came from the British Navy, felt that the world changed really fast. The ships of the Liberation Army Navy were obviously not as sophisticated as those of the British Royal Navy. They were also wooden hulled, but the British Royal Navy had the best wood. They had the best craftsmen. Those behemoths on the sea were not only powerful military weapons, but also a kind of art. Looking at the Liberation Army's steamships up close, many of the planks on the hull were made of old wood, and it was the kind of old wood of quite poor quality. This kind of wood reminded Cameron of the wooden sailing ships of China that he had seen when he was sailing on the Pearl River on a steamship. The hulls of those ships were made of this kind of wood.
But Cameron also knew that that era was gone and could not be returned. The Liberation Army did import a lot of steam engines from Britain, but the Liberation Army did not import steam engines for ships. Although steam engines were all based on the same principle, different steam engines had their own purposes. It was not to say that a steam engine used on land could be moved to a ship and then connected to a paddle wheel and it could be used normally. Not to mention that the Liberation Army's steamships were propeller-driven. There were definitely British engineers who came to China to design warships for the Liberation Army.
"Damn traitors!" Cameron's representative cursed in his heart. However, cursing was just cursing. Before Britain and the Liberation Army entered a state of war, even the British Empire could only temporarily accept the status quo.
After passing through the inspection of the Liberation Army, the British ship was able to move forward. The Liberation Army's steamships also followed the British ship, obviously in the posture of monitoring and escorting. Cameron's representative did not receive the order to destroy, so he completely ignored the warship's vigilance. Soon, Cameron's representative raised his binoculars and looked ahead. Even the speed of the British steamships slowed down. Because what appeared in front of them was the Tiger Gate Fort. It was the Tiger Gate Fort rebuilt by the Liberation Army.
The Tiger Gate Fort was a system that was distributed on both sides of the Pearl River in Big Horn Mountain, Wu Mountain, and Da Hu Mountain. After Lin Zexu and Guan Tianpei, the navy commander, mobilized the people to prepare for defense, reinforced and built 11 forts, and set up more than 300 cannons. The Sand Corner and Big Horn Forts were the first gateways. Weiyuan, Zhenyuan, Jingyuan, Zhengyuan, Yongan, and Hengshan were the second gateways. Da Hu Fort was the third gateway. The Tiger Gate Fort was destroyed in the First Great Smoky War.
After the First Great Smoky War, the Tiger Gate Fort was rebuilt and fell into the hands of the Liberation Army after Vézé led his troops to conquer Guangzhou. Before the outbreak of the war in 1856, Vézé removed all the cannons in the fort. Moreover, he did not leave any defensive forces inside the Tiger Gate Fort, so the British were able to easily break through the mouth of the Pearl River and go straight to Guangzhou. From January 1858, the Liberation Army began to rebuild the Tiger Gate Fort on a large scale.
On July 29, 1958, before Cameron's representative went to negotiate with the Liberation Army, Erkin's instructions had two contents. First, he questioned the purpose of the Liberation Army building the Tiger Gate Fort. Although the Liberation Army would not dismantle the Tiger Gate Fort at the request of the British, the British felt that it was necessary to put on a show when it was time to scare them. The second was naturally to find a way to collect information about the newly built Tiger Gate Fort.
The British had already begun to collect relevant information. In the past, as long as the British sent the Hong Kong Chinese who had defected to the British side and paid enough money, they could collect almost all the information about Guangdong. Since the Liberation Army began to rebuild the Tiger Gate Fort on a large scale, the British had sent a lot of people and spent a lot of money. However, after spending a lot of effort, the British were still unable to collect relevant information. This result was completely incomprehensible to the British compared to the past.
So now, even if it was just a visual observation, Cameron's representative had to seize these opportunities. When he looked as far as he could, he found that he saw nothing. When the Liberation Army built the fort, they used a lot of cloth and fine bamboo fences to form many long rows to hide the fort. Cameron, who had seen these before, felt that behind these shelters should be the long and high anti-artillery wall in his memory. The Liberation Army would strengthen these anti-artillery walls higher and thicker.
In Cameron's eyes, the Tiger Gate Fort didn't look any different from before. Perhaps the biggest difference was that after the repairs, the fort looked a lot newer. This result was far from satisfactory to Cameron. Based on the information the British had collected, the amount of work involved in the explosions should be unimaginably huge. The fort wouldn't look the same.
But Cameron didn't have the chance to go up to the fort to see. Not to mention the Chinese steamship next to the British steamship, there were people in the infantry sentry posts in front of the fort. After all, a fort was a fort. If the steamship approached it, it would definitely be shot. Cameron valued his own life very much.
He met the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Hong Ren? Cameron found that Hong Ren was calm. His attitude was steady, with neither anger nor bravado of indifference. In general, the Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Liberation Army negotiated with Cameron with a frank expression.
First, he gave the contents of the Treaty of Tianjin to Hong Ren. Hong Ren? He took it and looked at it carefully. The British wanted to open the door to China through the Treaty of Tianjin. Therefore, most of the content revolved around this.
① The envoy was stationed in Beijing;
② The opening of Niuzhuang (later changed to Yingkou), Dengzhou (later changed to Yantai), Taiwan (later changed to Tainan), Tamsui, Chaozhou (later changed to Shantou), Qiongzhou, Hankou, Jiujiang, Nanjing, and Zhenjiang as trading ports;
③ The foreign missionaries were allowed to freely preach in the interior;
④ The foreigners were allowed to travel and trade in the interior;
⑤ The foreign merchant ships were allowed to travel through the ports of the Yangtze River;
⑥ The tariff was changed to reduce the tonnage tax on merchant ships;
⑦ The reparations to Britain were four million taels of silver, and the reparations to France were two million taels of silver.
…
Hong Ren? After reading it, he didn't get angry as Cameron expected. He stared at Cameron and asked, "I wonder what the purpose of the British side in showing us these contents of the treaty?"
"We suggest that you accept the same contents of the treaty!" At this point in the negotiations, Cameron naturally couldn't hide anything.
Hong Ren? He laughed as if he had heard a joke. "You want us to accept four million taels of silver for Britain and two million taels of silver for France?"
"Uh!" Cameron pretended to be embarrassed. "That can be excluded."
You've already exceeded your reading limit for today. If you want to read more, please log in.
Login
Select text and click 'Report' to let us know about any bad translation.
