Chapter 24 Section 24

Zhang Peilun's deeds and Dong Weng's troubles are naturally under Master Zhao's cold eyes.Originally thought that He Jing would definitely ask for advice and talk about his sufferings. Unexpectedly, in order to deal with Zhang Peilun all day, He Jing only dealt with the friends in charge of Zhangzuo, Bingbei, and Western Affairs. Master there. So Mr. Zhao cooked a few delicious dishes with his own hands according to Suiyuan's recipe, opened a pot of old wine sent from his hometown, replaced Cambodian with poems, and invited Dong Weng for supper.In the evening, He Jing came to meet the appointment, and the meeting was forced to laugh. Master Zhao pretended to be puzzled and asked: "Why are you not happy?"

"Haven't you heard?" He Jing asked back: "Fengrun is too deceitful! I really have a bad time." "What did the commander-in-chief say?" Master Zhao poured wine and respected each other, "This is God's help for the commander-in-chief's success, why are you looking for trouble?" "If you want me to have a drink, it's fine. If you want to congratulate me, it's self-evident." Mr. Zhao kept quiet, coughed, and glanced to the left and right. The servants who waited on him understood and retreated. "I would like to ask the commander-in-chief," Master Zhao asked in a low voice, "Why is Fengrun here?

Do you want to come to meritorious service? " "That's needless to say! It's not meritorious service, so why use it?" "That's it." Master Zhao asked: "His title is that he can handle Fujian's coastal affairs. If he has merit, is it because he can handle the affairs alone?" "Ah, ah!" He Jing realized something: "Your words are a bit interesting." "It's good that the commander understands." Mr. Zhao dipped his chopsticks into the wine and wrote the word "Li" on the table, "Fengrun's coming here is equal to his coming. Whether it's peace or war, there must be a 'tip bag' to give Fengrun will see its magical effect at that time. Why not sit back and enjoy the success?

Could it be that the commander-in-chief can't remember what happened when Guan Wengong was in Hubei? " It was during the Tongzhi period that He Jing served as the governor of the Hubei feudal clan. Hu Linyi had passed away long ago, and the official document was still the governor of Huguang.At that time, Hu Linyi deliberately had sex with Guanwen, but he wanted to be able to carry out his ambitions and achieve success. He gave in to Guanwen's painstaking efforts. The old officials in Hubei could talk about it, and He Jing naturally remembered it.Although Zhang Peilun is by no means as magnanimous as Hu Linyi, he might as well imitate the magnanimity of official documents and let him carry out his ambitions. Anyway, regardless of military affairs, foreign affairs, or important events, he must be able to give a performance.

"Let's not talk about the future, let's talk about the present. Even if Fengrun is proud of the wind, he can't please the position of the commander-in-chief for a while. Now, everything depends on him, and he has nothing to say. Doesn't the commander-in-chief worry?" This is to imply that He Jing, if he wants to protect his current position, he can only appease Zhang Peilun. Zhang Peilun can't replace him, so he won't fight.Both have room for concessions, so it is possible to live in peace.The key is the word "forbearance". Thinking of this, he nodded deeply.Master Zhao's words are effective, and he can't stop talking, "Let's take a step back and say, if the situation is urgent, Fengrun will hold his hands, Marshal..." He suddenly stopped, and then asked: "There is a sentence, I don't know if I should say it or not. ?”

"Say it! Why can't you say it?" "The words don't please you, I'm afraid the commander-in-chief will be angry." "Joke!" He Jing quickly said, "You and I have known each other for more than 20 years. Could it be that you still don't know my temperament?" "Since this is the case, I will say: If the military situation is unfavorable and Fengrun is tied up, the commander-in-chief will never have a good way to save him. At that time, there will be no way to escape defeat. Why not let Fengrun stand in front, the burden on the commander-in-chief's shoulders Can be much lighter!"

This time, He Jing not only nodded, but also raised his glass.Master Zhao has no plans to spare, and he has the right place to advance and retreat.He Jing surrendered to Zhang Peilun with peace of mind, and did whatever he said, with few objections.The only self-assertive measure was to mobilize an artillery team of Zhang Desheng to guard the Governor's Yamen. France's attitude is quite tough.Negotiations were carried out in several areas. The first one was Paris, where French Prime Minister Jufery presented a note to the newly appointed Chinese Minister Li Fengbao; Scheder, entrusted by Li Hongzhang, is mediating with the new French minister Bardenot who has not entered; the fourth place is Tianjin, and any Frenchman who is responsible for negotiations, from Jufery to military representatives, can directly Deal with him.

Therefore, the situation of peace talks was very chaotic.But the attitude of France is clear. Acting Minister Xie Manlu issued an ultimatum to the Prime Minister’s Office on the 20th day of the leap month, demanding that the Chinese government “follow the simple treaty, specifically order the Beiqi army to retreat, and pay 250 million yuan in compensation.” Tens of millions of francs. Respond within seven days and do so, otherwise, the compensation will be paid by oneself." The so-called "indemnity by itself" is that France intends to occupy a city in China as a pledge.According to Guba's radical idea, he planned to attack Lushun, Weihaiwei and other places, but the French Prime Minister decided to occupy Keelung or Fuzhou.

Yikuang, who manages the Zongli Yamen, maintains internal and external relations with Li Hongzhang, and has always refused to break up with King Chun's wishes, but wants to preserve the peace.They tried every means to invite the new French minister, Bardenau, to Beijing or Tianjin to sit down and discuss, but the French government insisted on not following the agreement, and Bardenau would never go north.When they received the ultimatum, they naturally had to make concessions. The Prime Minister's Yamen took a note to Xie Manlu, guaranteeing that Beiqi's withdrawal would be completed within one month.However, he refused to pay compensation, and still hoped that Badeno would go north as soon as possible. According to the simple rules, "the meeting will be detailed."

France's response was to send a warship straight to Mawei.Although it ran aground as soon as it arrived, it was an alarm anyway. Zhang Peilun sent an urgent telegram to Beijing. After much deliberation, I had to re-entrust Heder to mediate.Hurd finally lived up to his mission, and reached a result through mediation. China will withdraw its troops from Beiqi immediately, and the Minister of Nanyang will discuss with Budeno in Shanghai. However, the situation is one of external relaxation and internal tension. Although the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs told Li Fengbao that the seven-day deadline for Xie Manlu could be ignored, and the amount of compensation could also be negotiated, but French warships arrived one after another in Mawei, and there were also French warships in Keelung, and Liu Mingchuan Arrived on the same day.It's just that the news of the approaching of these powerful enemies has been diluted in an edict.

This edict is to send Zeng Guoquan, the Governor of Liangjiang and the Minister of Nanyang, as the Minister of Plenipotentiary, who will go to Shanghai to discuss the detailed agreement with the legal envoy recently.He also sent Chen Baochen to negotiate, and Su Songtao and Shao Youlian will handle it together.At the same time, he instructed the divisions that should be kept in the negotiations: "The required military expenses and stipends must not be allowed, so I will ask for an order to handle it. The most important thing is that Vietnam will continue to pay tribute. Liu Yongfu's army, as he mentioned, should be handled by me. The boundary should be divided into open spaces outside the customs as a buffer. Goods transported and sold in Yunnan should be opened and closed in Baosheng, and the commercial tax should not exceed the value of the law of 50% off. The above-mentioned sections and actual debates are all determined by Telecom. Zeng Guoquan never imagined that in his twilight years, he would have to deal with foreigners again, and the telegram showed that it was completely different from the requirements of France, and it was impossible to get together.Moreover, everything is "decided by decree", so where is the so-called "full power"?Therefore, Zeng Guoquan was deeply troubled by this new life. Chen Baochen was even more worried.A scholar who is a soldier, knows how to run Nanyang, and at worst will serve on the battlefield. Once he dies, he can repay the emperor's favor and live up to his life.But when negotiating with foreigners, the situation of strength and weakness is clear. If you don't seek perfection through grievances, you will never be able to reach a peace negotiation.Ma Jianzhong is called a traitor, so what has he become?Half a lifetime of fame, and a lifetime of pure festivals, will be ruined, why don't you teach people to worry? With this in mind, I decided not to accept the name of "will do".After drafting the telegram draft, he took it to discuss with Zeng Guoquan, but he was ridiculed, saying that he was alone.This is a heartbreaking theory, Chen Baochen had nothing to answer, and of course he was unwilling to give up his original intention, so he sent out the electronic performance as usual. The "telegram" sent by the Military Aircraft Department arrived very quickly, and Chen Baochen was reprimanded. The wording was quite severe, and the telegram implied that if he did not obey the order, he would be severely reprimanded.Chen Baochen had no choice but to follow Zeng Guoquan to Shanghai. In fact, Zeng Guoquan also resigned once, but in his shogunate, there are senior officials in the shogunate who are worried that they will run into trouble, so they dare not ask for resignation directly. Dare to make peace with Wen."When the military plane received the telegram, it was naturally surprised. The telegram arrived in an instant, and it was a secret order. How could the telegraph office dare to neglect it?After careful research, I realized Zeng Guoquan's magical effect. Of course, it is not appropriate to expose his tricks, so he sent back a telegram, thinking that he had made this telegram before he received the telegram, and now he has notified France of sending Zeng Guoquan to Shanghai to discuss peace.If it is said that warlords of the border should not negotiate peace, then isn't Li Hongzhang a minister of the border?In the end, he was particularly comforted, saying, "If the discussion fails, I will go back to Jiangning to arrange it. It is not a difficult situation. The responsibility should be supervised and must be done." Having said that, since Zeng Guoquan was ordered, he naturally hoped that the peace negotiation would be successful. The most difficult part of the negotiation was compensation for military expenses. If he could not make concessions on this level, the negotiation would be useless.Therefore, before going to Shanghai, we must first find out the intentions of the DPRK and China. What are the plans in this regard? At this time, Li Hongzhang sent a letter and telegram, and first made an explanation, stating three points: first, there was a reason for the delay in Beiqi's withdrawal of troops, and according to the public law of all nations, it was not considered a breach of contract; The proposed time limit for withdrawing troops was already refuted at that time. There was no official document and note, so there was no basis for it. Third, in the Lang Son conflict, the French accused the Chinese army of ambush first. In addition, there was another very important telegram, which was exactly what Zeng Guoquan wanted to know urgently. Li Hongzhang said that if France asked for compensation for military expenses, hundreds of thousands of taels of silver would be allowed.He also said: "The public opinion of all countries is absolutely unreliable." This is because Zhang Yinhuan, who is quite in power at the Zongli Yamen, is the new faction, and he is entrusting John Yang, the US Minister to China, to suggest that Washington should mediate the Sino-French disputes, advocating that the Tianjin contract signed by Li Hongzhang and Frono should be handed over to other countries for arbitrariness.Li Hongzhang was afraid that Zeng Guoquan would place high hopes on this, so he would wait and see, so he made a special reminder. Just as Zeng Guoquan checked his luggage and prepared to make a special trip to the meeting, the Beijing side continued to negotiate.Acting French Minister Xie Manlu sent a note to the Prime Minister's Office, stating that the Shanghai meeting must first allow compensation before discussing the details.It was another ultimatum in disguise, only with a five-day extension.At the same time, the unofficial attitude expressed by France is also very tough.According to newspaper records, once the Sino-French negotiations broke down and there was an armed confrontation, French warships would not only attack Fuzhou and Keelung, but also attack China Merchants' ships.Others didn't pay attention to this news, but Li Hongzhang and the few people around him were shocked, and couldn't sleep or eat. The China Merchants Bureau is Li Hongzhang's profiteer for the public benefit.Firstly, "the provinces in Shanghai's Yin merchants either bought their own ships and sailed in various ports; or relied on capital and attached themselves to the Western merchants. If China established its own China Merchants, all the ship capital of each merchant would gradually return to the official bureau. In the name of "strengthening the country through business conditions", it was approved to be "trial" in the 13th year of Tongzhi.However, this year Zhejiang Caomi was transported to the north, and there was a shortage of ships. Li Hongzhang instigated the general office of the Zhejiang Maritime Bureau, and the alternate prefect Zhu Qimao suggested that the future China Merchants Group should transport 200,000 stones of Zhejiang Cao. Bureau matters. The China Merchants Bureau in Shanghai is not under the jurisdiction of the Governor of Liangjiang or the Governor of Jiangsu, but is controlled remotely by the Minister of Beiyang.Of course, Li Hongzhang also knew that this act of seizing power was too much, and when he met the slightly more powerful governor of Liangjiang, he would definitely fight on the basis of reason.Therefore, at the beginning of the trial operation, it was specially declared: "All profits and losses are fully owned by the merchants and have nothing to do with the officials." If the nature of the China Merchants Bureau is determined to be a commercial operation, it is of course possible to reject any government intervention. However, the China Merchants Bureau is called a commercial office, but it is actually a government-run office. Although the household department only lent 200,000 strings of money and 60,000 taels of silver, the treasury and customs of the southeastern provinces, due to the power of Li Hongzhang, had "idle money." Put it in the China Merchants Bureau to earn interest, and the interest is extremely thin, between seven and eight percent.As for the operating income, for rice alone, five cents and three cents of silver are paid for each stone, and with 600,000 stones of grain transported in a year, you can earn 300,000 silver at once. Business. For the preparation of the China Merchants Bureau, they came from Zhejiang Cao Shipping, and there were not enough sand ships, so they had to win over Zhu Qimao, who had been in charge of Zhejiang Shipping for more than ten years. However, what Li Hongzhang trusted was a scholar in Changzhou who donated to Banzhou County. Distributed to Sheng Xuanhuai in Zhili.Sheng Xuanhuai also contacted Tang Tingshu, a businessman in Guangdong, to fight against Zhu Qimao. Li Hongzhang followed Sheng Xuanhuai's plan. It seems that it is inconvenient to discredit the meritorious service of creating a game. In order to deceive people, it is also included.The China Merchants Group has a general office and a four meeting office, and the real power is in the hands of Sheng Xuanhuai, and indirectly in the hands of Li Hongzhang. Since China Merchants enjoys privileges in operation, it is good to start a business, but it also has disadvantages as soon as it is started, such as excessive expenses, a lot of redundant staff, and unclear expenses in the accounts abound.Fortunately, it is called a commercial office, and no one can interfere.If you want to interfere, Li Hongzhang will stand in front of you and sue in Beijing. The Military Aircraft Department and the Prime Minister's Office are both Li Hongzhang's same year. Shen Guifen was in power. The bad debts were opened, let alone trying to dig out the roots of Sheng Xuanhuai. In just two or three years, China Merchants has set up 19 branches, and 10 ships run the Beiyang-South Sea route, starting from Hong Kong in the south and going to Niuzhuang in the north, and the business is booming.This time, the foreign merchant shipping companies in Shanghai, such as Swire, Jardine, and Qichang, had to unite to squeeze out China Merchants, lower the shipping value, and compete for passengers and cargo.In order to seek resistance, China Merchants must increase its capital and expand its scale. It happened that American Merchants Qichang Bank was not doing well, and its stock price fell. Sheng Xuanhuai planned to buy Qichang Bank, and the negotiation was successful. , The price of the storehouse is 220,000 taels.As approved by Li Hongzhang, Liangjiang allocated 500,000 taels, and Zhekou, Jiangxi, and Hubei jointly allocated 500,000 taels.In this transaction, Sheng Xuanhuai made a lot of money. In addition to the usual rebates, he also "wears a hat".The ships bought from Qichang included nine river ships, seven sea ships, four small ships, and six barges. Although the number was quite large, the performance was not necessarily good, which became a heavy burden for China Merchants. You have to lose as much as 50,000 to 60,000 silver every month. This happened at the end of the second year of Guangxu.In less than a year, there was a censor who accused China Merchants of "buying too many ships, carrying goods, not enough funds, employing too many people, and increasing costs." Dong Junhan's memorial also said: "When the ships of the China Merchants Group are carrying grain every year, the bosses, officials, relatives, friends, and old colleagues recommend people one after another, and there is an endless stream at ordinary times. The people recommended are nothing more than pure For the sake of salary, those who are proficient in office work will not get one out of ten, and even among the officials there are those who are called to work, live in different provinces, and receive salary every month." This is the inheritance of water transportation, and it is used as usual The method of "adjusting" the candidate states and counties is not surprising, but there has never been "a person who is irrelevant after a while can also "respond to a mission by name." The so-called "time after time" refers to Zhili. The wording of this memorial is not harsh, but according to the routine, it should be investigated and dealt with, but because of Shen Guifen's mediation, he only ordered the ministers of Beiyang and Beiyang to make a comprehensive plan and rectify it seriously.On the contrary, this gave Li Hongzhang a chance to openly make big claims about how the British merchant Swire & Co. "cut prices down", and secretly admitted that the ships purchased from Qichang Co., Ltd. "have been decayed for a long time", and the main method of rectification is the provincial officials. The money, which exceeds the "commercial shares" will be three times the 1.9 million silver, and the interest rate will be "suspended for three years". From the sixth year of Guangxu, the capital will be withdrawn in five installments, and 380,000 taels will be paid back every year.In other words, it was the public that lent huge sums of money free of interest for "businessmen" like Sheng Xuanhuai to do business.At the same time, there is also an attached sheet: "Please order the governors of Jiangsu and Zhejiang to allocate 40 to 50% of the rice to the China Merchants Steamship for transportation, and no shortage will be allowed. The rest will be loaded on the sandship as a show of sympathy. In addition, Jiangxi and Hubei buy rice. , still return to the bureau to transport Tianjin according to the case." Li Hongzhang said that these rectification measures "do not harm the country at the top and do not harm the business at the bottom".At the same time, it is stated at the end of the fold that this fold is his "master draft".It implies that the China Merchants Bureau is under the management of Beiyang and has little relationship with the Minister of Nanyang. Those "heads of business" in China Merchants were blessed by misfortune, while Sheng Xuanhuai was even more successful in official career, and he made up for Tianjin Road to organize a telegraph office for Li Hongzhang.However, the case of Qichang Foreign Bank was full of ups and downs, rumors continued, and the inside story was gradually revealed.Sheng Xuanhuai's handling of this transaction has both positive and negative advantages. The obvious one is that he gets a 5% rebate, and the dark one is that Qichang's management is not doing well, and the stock price has fallen.The benefits of both light and dark sides totaled 35%, 2.22 million taels of silver, and more than 700,000 fell into Sheng Xuanhuai's private pocket.As for how much Li Hongzhang got, there is no question, but Li's family has a stake in China Merchants, which is known to all.