Chapter 91 Chapter 91 Secret Conversation

Sheng Xuanhuai walked in with strides, first saluted Li Hongzhang, then reported the errands he had done for the day, and then said "Congratulations" repeatedly: "Master Xiang, is this wedding wine in the capital or in Baoding? Your boss Set a plate, and the job can be arranged. This is a blessing from above, and it will take a few days of excitement to be considered passable." Li Hongzhang stroked his beard and pondered for a long time, then said slowly: "Xingsun, it doesn't matter whether the queen mother gave the old man a blessing or a curse, you, I have to go back to Baoding overnight for the old man, and tell my wife that the queen mother has rewarded the family with a new family." At the same time, let the wife choose a larger room in the upper room, and let the servants tidy up, and the furnishings in the room should be done according to the rules of the aunt. After breakfast tomorrow, the old man will take Miss Hong back. By the way , and one more thing, you have to make it clear to Madam, the old man bought two maids to serve Hong'er in the capital, and I haven't seen them yet, but I think they will bring them here tomorrow. Also, don't give the Queen Mother It’s better to be more cautious in everything. After arriving in Baoding, you can set up a few tables in the yamen, and the people around us can make up their minds.”

Sheng Xuan left joyfully, and soon took a few Wu Bian with him, and rushed back to Baoding by night.That night, Xiaohong followed the Queen Mother's instructions, scalding Li Hongzhang's feet and beating his back. After breakfast the next day, Li Hongzhang hired another person to hire a horse-drawn sedan for Xiaohong. The two maids he bought waited on him and sat in it. The group quietly left the capital for Baoding. When they arrived at Baoding governor's yamen, his wife Zhao Lian had already tidied up Xiaohong's room, it was exactly the same as her own bedroom, and appointed two older maids to serve inside and outside the room, very thoughtful.Xiao Hong was greatly moved, and thanked her again and again. From then on, she regarded Zhao Lian as a relative, and forgot about the tasks assigned by the Queen Mother before her departure, and served Li Hongzhang with Zhao Lian wholeheartedly.

You said that before Xiaohong left, what did the queen mother tell her that she wanted her to do?It turned out that the emperor is about to get married, and after the wedding, he will be in charge.According to the ancestral system of the Qing Dynasty, once the emperor took charge of the government, the queen mother who listened to the government would return to the government and should not interfere in political affairs.The Empress Dowager has arranged all affairs in the court properly, but Li Hongzhang is the only one who is worried.Because the Li Hongzhang at this time is no longer the Li Hongzhang at that time.At this time, Li Hongzhang was the governor of Zhili, a scholar of the Wenhuadian University, and the Minister of Beiyang Commerce. He not only held military power, but also had two military powers on land and water, posing a great threat to Gyeonggi.

At that time, there were 40,000 soldiers in the Hunan Army, 20,000 of whom were stationed in Xinjiang with Liu Jintang, and 10,000 of the other 20,000 were stationed near Jinling to guard Nanyang. The other 10,000 had followed Li Hongzhang for many years and became the Huai Army. .Most of the Chu army in Zuo Zongtang's hands has been dismissed, not to mention that after Zuo Zongtang's death, the dragons have no leader, so naturally they can't make a difference.There is also the green battalion stationed in the provinces. Although they are the divisions of the national economic system, they have little combat effectiveness due to poor equipment.

The banner battalion is also the main military department of the Qing Dynasty. It is distributed in various provinces, but it is also poorly equipped. In addition, there has been no war for a long time, and they are not willing to practice hard.Right now, the Qing Dynasty has the best equipment, and although it has a small number of people, it has the most combat effectiveness. It is the Huai Army and the Beiyang Navy, which have been transformed into the divisions of the war system in the hands of Li Hongzhang. The Huai army currently has 40,000 troops on land, all of which were deployed around the capital by Li Hongzhang in the name of defending Jifu.The Beiyang Navy has expanded over the years, and its number has exceeded 4,000. In addition to the logistics personnel such as battalion and food platforms, the number is nearly 10,000.

The Qing Dynasty was established for a hundred years, and the military system emphasized that the banner battalion was the mainstay, and the green battalion was supplemented. Han people were not allowed to own private troops.Especially after Kangxi quelled the San Francisco rebellion, it was even more taboo for the Han people to be in charge of the army. But with the rise of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom, this ancestral system gradually ceased to be effective, and the Han people's army was not only acquiesced by the court, but also became the main force.With the increase of age and deepening of experience, Empress Dowager Cixi became more and more disturbed by the Han ministers who were in charge of military power.She had conceived of many ways of layoffs, but they were all interrupted by foreigners' troubles again and again.Although Li Hongzhang, who has power over the government and the public, has asked to rest, and although this person has posed a certain threat to the century-old foundation of the Qing Dynasty, after repeated thinking, she dared not agree to him.She was afraid that once this person retired, the Great Qing Congress would be destroyed by all countries in an instant.She has already realized that with Li Hongzhang around, the Qing Dynasty is indeed more threatened, but she has to admit that with Li Hongzhang around, she and her dynasty have added another layer of protection!

Li Hongzhang served as Prime Minister of the Navy Yamen, but he refused to be on duty in the capital, but the Empress Dowager Cixi wanted to know what this person was thinking and doing every day in Baoding and Tianjin; especially after returning to power in the future, she wanted to control Li Hongzhang even more. what they do and think.The Empress Dowager Cixi has even reached a conclusion that as long as Li Hongzhang is firmly grasped, the century-old foundation created by the ancestors will not collapse easily. She decided to choose someone to go to Li Hongzhang's side, not only to grasp Li Hongzhang's actions, but also to know what Li Hongzhang said in his sleep.So Xiaohong came to Li Hongzhang's bed and acted as the eyes and ears of Empress Dowager Cixi.

But the smart Xiaohong didn't want to fulfill her mission wholeheartedly. She clearly knew that no matter how sweet she was in the eyes of the Queen Mother, she would never escape her status as a slave, but Li Hongzhang returned her qualifications to be a human being. she. Xiaohong doesn't want to be famous, she just wants to be an honest person. The Queen Mother stabilized Li Hongzhang, and began to repair the garden with great fanfare. Although Prince Chun and Prince Qing had already transferred the seven million taels of coastal defense donation from the Navy Yamen to the account of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, the Queen Mother still had to do it seriously. Red tape.

She called Prince Li in, and asked the Military Aircraft Department to issue inquiries to the provincial governors. At the same time, she asked the Military Aircraft Department to organize a group of princes and ministers in Beijing to discuss whether this garden should be repaired, and whether the ancestor's foundation should be maintained. Naturally, the governor's response would take some time before arriving in Beijing, and the first to respond was of course a group of princes and ministers in Beijing. The first one to stand up should have been Li Hongzao, the leader of the Qing school, but Li Hongzao played a trick this time and asked his superiors for a few days' leave.Obviously, Li Hongzao wanted to see the situation before expressing his attitude.

The first one to turn up became Yan Jingming, the No. 2 person in Qingliu's administration.Yan Jingming was the left servant of the household department. After Weng Tonghe, the secretary of the household department, was transferred to the secretary of the Ministry of punishment, he succeeded Weng Tonghe as the temporary secretary of the household department. Yan Jingming's book talks about things from the perspective of financial management, saying that the household department is dry and foreign debts are not cleared. After the zhezi went up, the Empress Dowager Cixi ignored her, but Yan Jingming refused to let her go, and even tried to force the Empress Dowager to express her position in the morning court for three consecutive days.

The queen mother was forced to have no choice but to express her position: Yan Jingming, who played indiscriminately, was dismissed from his post and ordered to return to his hometown, and he would never be used again.Minister of Military Aircraft Sun Yuwen and Xu Gengshen had originally agreed to make a proposal together to dissuade this matter, but when Yan Jingming was dismissed from Beijing, they knew that the wind was not in the right direction. Probably the Queen Mother was determined to repair the garden, so she no longer proposed the proposal thing. Zhang Zhidong, governor of Guangdong and Guangxi, originally drew up a document against the garden repair, but by chance, he received a secret report from the Hanlin Academy in the capital, saying that Yan Jingming had been deposed and returned to his hometown because of his false proposals. Zhang Zhidong hurriedly burned the notebook, so he decided not to discuss it.The other governors were all waiting for Li Hongzhang to make a statement, but Li Hongzhang never made a statement, so the governors did not dare to speak out. Seeing that no one objected to the repair of the garden, Xu Tong, the co-organizer of the Grand Master's Ministry of Rites, suddenly became energetic, and even agreed to the repair of the garden for three consecutive days, and said that not only Qingyi Garden should be repaired, but also a scale that exceeds the past. Weng Tonghe didn't agree to repairing the garden at this time, but in order to keep the queen mother away from the palace after returning to power and stop interfering in politics, he also expressed his approval of the garden repair against his will, and praised the queen mother's decision as a wise move. The Empress Dowager was overjoyed when she heard that, and the next day, the Military Aircraft Department drafted an order, Jin Xutong was the Tiren Pavilion University scholar to manage the official department, and Weng Tonghe was appointed as the household department secretary again by the Minister of the Ministry of Punishment.The capital then calmed down, and the Ministry of Internal Affairs soon began to rebuild the Qingyi Garden. At the end of the fourteenth year of Guangxu (AD 1888), the Beiyang Navy officially changed its name to the Beiyang Navy in accordance with foreign models.The fleet size of the Beiyang Navy is still the fleet size of the Beiyang Navy; the admiral of the navy is still Ding Ruchang, the admiral of the Beiyang Navy. After more than a year of construction, the renovation of Qingyi Garden has come to an end, and at the same time it was renamed the Summer Palace. On the third day of February in the 15th year of Guangxu (AD 1889), the 18-year-old Emperor Guangxu issued an edict to the world and announced that he would formally pro-govern. every day.On the same day, Miss Xiaohong, Li Hongzhang's concubine, went to Beijing to visit the Queen Mother under Yi's order. Three days later, Xiaohong came back from Beijing.After serving Li Hongzhang to lie down that night, she said: "My lord, this servant saw the Queen Mother. The Queen Mother first asked how your old body is, and this servant replied that you are fine. Suddenly, the Queen Mother talked about the emperor's personal governance. Young, only eighteen years old, can't manage such a big mess. If you really entrust everything to him, something will happen." Li Hongzhang smiled and said, "Then why did the queen mother announce that she would no longer be in political training? In the thirteenth year, the emperor was in charge, and the queen mother changed back to political training because she was worried." Xiaohong said in a low voice: "The Empress Dowager has a reason for announcing that she will no longer train the government this time. According to the Empress Dowager, a group of princes and ministers have repeatedly offered to persuade her to go to the garden to spend the rest of her life, saying that she is tired. For the rest of my life, it's time to rest. He also said that the emperor is eighteen, and there is a group of princes and ministers to support him. It is estimated that there will be no trouble. The queen mother knows that Prince Jin and Weng Tong and they are behind the scenes. The queen mother said to the slaves, Prince Jin is the emperor's father, and he wished to be the king of politics as soon as possible; Weng Tonghe is the emperor's tutor, and the emperor has to make up his mind about everything. Of course, he also hopes that the emperor can truly rule in person, so that he can cover the sky with one hand. I want to ask your opinion. The queen mother said, you can ask Li Hongzhang, he thinks I should let go, or not let go. These are the words of the queen mother. Master, what is your idea all the time? The queen mother said to the servants, You are always a scholar of the Wenhua Palace and the head of the governor. Your old words are always worthwhile, and what others say doesn't count." Li Hongzhang asked with a smile: "Did the queen mother say so much?" Xiaohong nodded. Li Hongzhang immediately put on his clothes and got out of bed.Xiaohong hurriedly got up and asked, "Master, it's so late, what are you still doing?" Li Hongzhang replied: "Hong'er, you light the lamp for the old man. The old man wants to pay it to the emperor overnight, so I implore the queen mother to continue to educate the government. The queen mother is right, the emperor is still young and prone to trouble."