Xiao Letian is a person who refuses to suffer losses, especially when faced with all the forces in the court, he refuses to give in. Because Xiao Letian knows that looking at the political situation in the late Qing Dynasty, it is enough to summarize it in four words, that is, 'bullying the weak and fearing the strong'.
Yes, this is a declining dynasty that is strong on the outside and hard on the inside. The dynasty itself has already seen the sunset. Domestic land annexation has become serious enough to force peasant uprisings. Coupled with the strong infiltration of Western forces, the entire Manchuria has become even more unstable. Qing's crisis worsened.
This is a major change that has not happened in three thousand years. It is more complicated than the previous periods of the late Ming Dynasty, the late Yuan Dynasty, the late Song Dynasty, and even the late Tang Dynasty. At that time, the world was in chaos, but at least some scholars could still understand the general trend of the revolution. The Chinese could at least launch a new dynasty and end the war by playing behind closed doors.
But it doesn’t work anymore. Maritime routes have closely connected human beings. China’s national destiny is constantly interfered with by the outside world. Let alone the Manchus, even the Han scholars are confused by this mess. .
At this time, the court was a bit like a mad dog that was forced into a dead end. It looked at the countless people on the opposite side who were holding shovels and bricks to beat it, and it was frightened and furious.
It had to grin and bark at everyone, but the fear in its heart was so great that no one dared to imagine it. The most direct example is Cixi's "Declaration of War against All Nations".
A country declares war on the whole world, on all countries on the earth. You can imagine how desperate this kind of mad dog is when it is forced to a dead end. And this declaration of war from all nations is what the Eight-Nation Allied Forces entered Beijing in the Gengzi Year. Caused.
Why crazy? Just because of fear.
Xiao Letian has the pulse of the Manchu Dynasty. He knows what these high-ranking nobles are thinking in their hearts. They are just dawdling around, trying not to catch the collapse of the earth during their lifetime, and let themselves die in the blessed land they have chosen. As for their children and grandchildren, they have no time to care.
Do you want to have a bowl of Ansheng rice? Grandma! I, Xiao Letian, still want to overturn the table, so I am going to be tough on my feet. I will not give you any face today.
You said I raised a new army? Yes, I admit it, the 200 new troops are in Tanggu, come and suppress them!
Are you saying I broke the law? That's right, I admit it, Sun Sanhu was almost hanging as bacon in the dungeon, and the Manchu and Qing spies on the ground in Tanggu filled the cell.
Now I will accept whatever you say to the court. The worst case scenario is that I, Xiao Letian, will shout in front of the whole world that I just want to rebel, I am rebellious, and if you have the guts, you can send troops to suppress me.
If there are too few soldiers, they will not be enough. If there are too many, just wait for the world to be shaken. Zeng Guofan and his two brothers are still waiting for this opportunity.
The six-hundred-mile express horse took only one day to deliver the secret letters of Mr. Qing and Fu Hui, as well as Xiao Letian's chain of evidence to the Forbidden City. When the Queen Mother and the princes saw such a thick pile of secrets, After reading the document, everyone was dumbfounded.
"Pigs and dogs, are these all pigs and dogs? How did the royal family raise such trash? Even if they privately dispatched troops to suppress it, how could they not even know how to escape in the end? They asked Xiao Letian to give him all the secret decrees and waistbands. It was seized, and even the confessions were interrogated..."
At this time, Cixi still had the demeanor of being a mother to the world, and her face turned pale with anger. Ci'an, who was sitting next to her, was also stunned. She never thought that Xiao Letian would deal with the court like this and be so tough. Was he really not afraid of the Qing army?
Prince Gong Yi? rubbed his temples and said to the little emperor, "Forget it, there is no other way but to suppress it. He only has more than 200 soldiers. If Mailer of Tianjin sends out the Eight Banners soldiers, I don't believe in 3,000." The cavalry took them out and they couldn't even eat two hundred..."
Ci'an trembled and put down the tea bowl, "Three thousand! Isn't it a bit too much? Our court still wants to save face. All parties are watching, and the foreigners are also staring at it. If too many troops are deployed, things will get worse and it won't look good. !”
Ci'an was talking about face, but what everyone was thinking about was the foundation of the Qing Dynasty and the foundation of its rule. Changmao was just pacified last year, and the Nien Army is about to be pacified this year. It is the time for all the people to celebrate. If another great master of Western learning is forced to rebel at this time...
Forget it, everyone really doesn't dare to think about it. Now even when there are riots in Xinjiang, the court is keeping a cold shoulder, for fear of giving Zeng Guofan some excuse. The 500,000 Hunan troops were too terrifying. They were a knife in the heart of the imperial court.
"If we want to suppress it, then we need to make it quieter, don't send out too many troops, and don't make it known to the whole country, and do it secretly... In fact, it's best to let the ancestors who protect the law take action to kill Xiao Letian..." Cixi is finally a little calmer now.
But at this time, the little emperor said, "No, I think you missed a very important point... Xiao Letian's true support should be the sea!"
Everyone in the palace couldn't believe their ears. The nine-year-old Emperor Tongzhi actually started discussing politics? And when he opened his mouth, he accused the Queen Mother and Uncle Wang. But no one dared to refute him, because the truth he said was the key point that everyone ignored.
"Then Xiao Letian was born as a foreign devil, and now he is engaged in maritime business. This kind of person must have many ships. If we send troops to destroy him, and he gets wind of the news, what will he do if he goes to sea by ship? He has 200 new troops. Ah, if there is a massacre along the coastline of the Qing Dynasty... hurry up, bring up the globe!"
Tongzhi walked around the hall with a nervous look on his face. After a while, the globe was carried over.
"Eniang, Uncle Wang... Come and see, Xiao Letian's new army is a pure Western army with one against ten. If he goes around like this along the coastline..."
His little fingers traced an arc along the edge of the land on the map: "Yingkou, Huludao, Shanhaiguan, Tanggu, Dengzhou, Yantai, Qingdao..." Emperor Tongzhi's face was covered with small beads of sweat, and each one on the map was The names of seaside cities were mentioned once.
"Going further south, Ningbo, Shanghai, Fuzhou, Quanzhou, Qiongzhou... If Xiao Letian is determined to confront the court, he can just lead his army in such a large circle along the coastline, killing people and setting fires everywhere. The Japanese pirates are just like the Xiyi now... That would be a big event that shocked the world!"
Hiss... The leaders of the Manchu Qing Dynasty took a breath of air-conditioning. The little emperor's prediction might come true. This foreign devil's familiarity with the sea is unmatched by anyone in the court.
Yi? He stuttered when he spoke, "If...if this is true, let's not talk about disarmament. Zeng Guofan's Hunan army will have to rush to the front line along the coast. He...he will definitely expand his army. He will expand his army to one million. He claims to protect the country for the Qing Dynasty, but he just wants to imprison us all..."
"What a vicious plan to kill the whole family! Who told you this, Huang Er? Is it Ermao..." Cixi asked nervously.
Tongzhi shook his head, "No, Ermao didn't say anything. I learned these things from Western learning. Have you ever heard Ermao say that Xiao Letian knows too much about the ocean? Who in our court I can't even compare to him, so I just learned a little bit..."
The little emperor said that he was right. Cixi and the others could not think of this because they had received mainland education since childhood and had a blind spot in their thinking, which was the blind spot of the ocean. So they couldn't figure out Xiao Letian's methods. As for Tongzhi, a nine-year-old child who was interested in Western learning, he had an idea and guessed Xiao Letian's plan.
Cixi looked at her son with joy, and the more she looked at him, the more she fell in love with him. In the end, she even gently touched her son's shoulder. For the first time, she found that her son was already a little manly. It seems that I should be a little more relaxed with my son in the future. As a mother, I was really a bit too strict in the past.
Thinking of this, Cixi nodded and said, "The emperor's analysis is good, so we should assassinate him?"
Feeling his mother's encouragement, Emperor Tongzhi blushed and continued, "In fact, assassination is not very clever. First of all, let's put aside whether the assassination can be successful. Even if it is successful, how can Xiao Letian not prepare a back-up plan with his mind? I'm afraid of him If he dies, his brothers will be even crazier, and things will become even bigger..."
"That's right, that's right, the emperor is really big!" Ci'an also smiled happily. "In the final analysis, none of us here really understand Xiao Letian. If you want to deal with such a person, you have to be careful... …”
At this time, Yi? frowned and said, "Could it be...could this second devil be from Zeng Guofan? Everything he did was to pave the way for the Zeng family? This can also explain why the Ninth Commander Zeng Guoquan moved in the summer." The guards cavalry supported Xiao Letian..."
This sentence blew through the palace like a cold wind, and everyone shivered. If this guess is true, it proves that Zeng Guofan will never disarm, and his half-million troops will gradually evolve into his private army. military.
"The rebellion of Zhao Kuangyin and Chen Qiao is really not far away..."
"Isn't it possible? The cause of this incident was Sun Sanhu's unauthorized action. Otherwise, Xiao Letian's private soldiers of several hundred people would have scared him to death and he would not have dared to take action. Besides, the court had not treated him badly before. Maybe Fuhui gave it to him, the Industrial Zone also gave him President Zhang, and he also accepted the woman from the Jiaofang Division, what else do you want?"
"I just hate it, these idiots and fools who messed up things, forced them to rebel against him..." Ci'an was not so pessimistic. Although she couldn't say anything, she always felt that Xiao Letian and Zeng Guofan were not A class of people.
It took the senior management of the Manchu and Qing Dynasties more than two hours to come to a consensus, and the result was so funny that they were treated coldly. When Er Mao secretly sent the information to Xiao Letian, Xiao Letian was very angry.
"What kind of thing is this? Treat it coldly, just put your head in the sand and pretend it never happened? Did the Green Camp soldiers die in vain? Sun Sanhu also left it to me and let me play with it? I won't suppress the two hundred soldiers?"
"Damn, what kind of court is this? What kind of government is this? If something happens, it will just ignore it and just hide. Just close your eyes and pretend that the thing doesn't exist? I'm afraid your wishful thinking is not easy... "
