It turned out that the People's Army fleet attacked the Port of Saigon, which caused great shock to France. After statistics after dawn, the attack caused great losses to Saigon. A total of 83 merchant ships were sunk, 16 were injured, and 5 warships were sunk. The settings of the Port of Saigon were basically destroyed, and the entire port was almost razed to the ground. In addition, more than 100 houses were destroyed on the shore, more than 150 were damaged, the death toll reached more than 700 people, and more than 2,500 people were injured. The direct losses were as large as hundreds of millions of francs.

Moreover, Saigon Port will not be available from now on, and it will take at least 2 years to restart. It will take at least 5 years to rebuild and restore to the level before the attack. The total losses during this period can reach more than 2 billion francs.

Guan Jian has no end to the loss. Not to mention that East China ** was still intercepting French merchant ships at sea at this time, and the Indo-Shanghai Federation was not the only port of Saigon, as well as port cities such as Da Nang, Hong Ki, and Jinlan. Now France does not have enough power to protect these areas. In other words, if the People's Army launches attacks on these port cities, the Xiyuan of these port cities will only be the same as Saigon Port.

The Indo-Shanghai Federation is the most important overseas colony of France. Most of the capitalists and consortium owners behind the French parliamentarians have significant interests in the Indo-Shanghai Federation. Therefore, the Port of Saigon was hit by the People's Army. These people were the first to be unable to bear it. After all, their property would suffer significant losses. Therefore, under the instructions of the financial owners behind them, many members of parliament strongly criticized the French parliament in parliament, demanding that the ** take effective measures to end the war as soon as possible.

Some members of parliament directly proposed that they should ask ** to negotiate with East China immediately to end the war and restore peace in the Far East; some people have made some calculations. During the Puttsmouth negotiations, East China ** raised compensation to Russia and Japan for 50 million pounds, which was about 1.1 billion francs, while the losses caused by the People's Army's attack on Saigon Port have reached 2 billion francs, and France's losses are not over yet. Since this is the case, why not choose a smaller price to end the war.

In short, attacking Saigon Port did hit France with pain points. Under the instructions of the financial backer, the parliamentarians no longer were as passionate as they had asked to fight to the end a few days ago and had already begun to accept the conditions for paying compensation to East China. Under such pressure, the French president immediately recruited a cabinet meeting. After more than 6 hours of negotiation, the French president finally decided to accept the conditions for paying compensation and negotiate with East China.

However, France and Britain are now considered to be one of the alliances, so France's decisions have undergone a major change, so we must naturally know the United Kingdom. Of course, France's decisions have been decided now and will not be changed by Britain's opinions. This is just out of respect for the alliance countries, so I will tell the United Kingdom first.

So France informed the United Kingdom through its ambassador to the United Kingdom that France was preparing to hold negotiations with East China to resolve the dispute between the two countries due to its own national interests.

Britain's reaction was somewhat unexpected to France, and did not show anger due to betrayal. It only asked France to postpone its resolution for one day, let Britain discuss countermeasures, and also invalidated a large set of explanations prepared by the French ambassador. As an ally, of course, this face must be given, after all, only one day, so France quickly agreed to Britain's request.

A day later, the British *** replied to France, and the British ** also planned to hold negotiations with the East China **, so it was recommended that the two countries negotiate with the East China ** so that they could take care of each other.

It turns out that France is under tremendous pressure, and Britain is actually not better. Although East China is not as good as the British colonies in Southeast Asia and does not attack British colonial ports, the sea interception in East China has also caused huge losses to Britain. Since Britain's maritime transportation power is much greater than France, the sea interception in East China has caused more than twice the losses to Britain than France.

Of course, if East China only intercepts British merchant ships in East Asia and Southeast Asia, Britain can still hold on for a while. After all, Britain's colonies in Southeast Asia do not occupy a major position in the entire British colonial system. Therefore, it is only Asian colonies affected, which will not suffer much damage to Britain as a whole. Although the United States, Germany, Italy, and Austro-Hungarian Empire took advantage of the setbacks in East Asia and Southeast Asia and tried their best to expand their influence in these regions, Britain and France have been deeply rooted for many years and are deeply rooted, but in a short period of time, other countries will find it difficult to explore the foundations of the two countries in East Asia and Southeast Asia, and at most they will only be divided into some leftovers.

But just a few days ago, the British *** received a report that five merchant ships were intercepted by the People's Army fleet in the Andaman Sea. This news shocked the British *** because the Andaman Sea was already in the Indian Ocean, which shows that the East China ** expanded the maritime interception from the Pacific Ocean to the Indian Ocean, which means that the route from India to Britain will be under the danger of the People's Army fleet. India is the most important overseas colony of Britain, an important resource for Britain, a place for raw materials and commodity exports. Once the route from India to Britain is affected, it will have a significant impact on the British domestic economy. Therefore, Britain can no longer remain indifferent.

Some people suggested that another fleet should be sent to the Indian Ocean to escort, but after the British evaluation, it was believed that the difficulty of escort was too great. First of all, the size of the escort fleet was difficult to determine. The size of the fleet was small and it was difficult to achieve the effect of escort. If the fleet was too large, how could the defense in the European direction be handled? Although the British Royal Navy was huge, a total of 14 battleships were lost in the Battle of the Taiwan Strait. In addition, the Natuna Islands Battle, this number would rise to 19, which exceeded one-third of the number of Royal Navy battleships. For the Royal Navy, although it was not a serious injury, it was also a major loss and there was no need to lose any more.

And even if we organize another fleet that is not inferior to the expeditionary force, what can we do? Didn’t the expeditionary force be wiped out? The Royal Navy can’t bear the losses of another battle in the Taiwan Strait.

Guan Jian has not understood how this battle was lost until now. Although the warships and soldiers who escaped from the battlefield through telegrams learned some of the situations, the number of escaped warships was too small, and they were basically destroyers. They had limited knowledge of the overall battlefield, and they could not explain clearly when they sent back to the UK. Therefore, to understand the entire situation of this naval battle, only by waiting until the war is over, peace is restored and the East China ** will be released to the prisoners. In the current situation, it is not a rational choice to blindly organize a fleet to participate in the war in the Far East.

Of course, the British cabinet also made a special trip to consult the Admiralty. In fact, the Secretary of the Navy Fisher and the Admiralty were also under tremendous pressure in the defeat of the Battle of the Taiwan Strait. This was the most serious failure in the history of the British Navy. In the days when the news of the failure was received, a group of ** asked Fisher to resign. More than 100,000 British people gathered at the door of the British Navy, throwing stones, eggs, etc. at the Admiralty building.

But Fisher was a responsible person after all. He knew that it was not easy to start a war against the East China at this time. If he organized a fleet to go to the Far East, he would bet and win a few lucky battles, he might be able to save his own way. However, this approach was too risky. Therefore, in consultation with the cabinet, Fisher only stated that if the cabinet ordered another fleet to be dispatched, he would obey the cabinet's resolution, but he could not guarantee victory. So the cabinet completely gave up the plan to use force again and began to seriously consider whether he should accept the conditions for paying the compensation and negotiate with the East China China.

At this moment, France notified the UK to prepare for negotiations with the East China ***, which also strengthened the cabinet's determination. As a veteran player of the international ***, the British knew very well that if failure was a foregone conclusion and there were multiple allies on their side, the earlier they negotiated with the winner, the smaller the loss; and the more they fell behind, the greater the loss, because at that time the pressure of the winner decreased, and the higher the price was naturally higher.

Now the Netherlands has first negotiated separately with East China and basically finished the negotiations, and France can't stand it anymore. If France succeeds in negotiations with East China again, then it will not be a good situation for Britain. If it is negotiated with East China with France, at least there is a companion who can help share the pressure. It is just that if it wants to negotiate with East China, it must first convince parliament, so Britain asks France to wait for another day.

So the British ** immediately discussed in Parliament. After a fierce debate, the Congress voted and finally agreed to negotiate with the East China ** by a majority on the terms of paying the compensation. The British ** immediately informed France, and France ** was also very supportive of the result. After all, having one more companion is of course a good thing. At least you can bargain together and pay less.

After Britain and France unified their opinions, they immediately launched an action. Of course, the two countries would not take the initiative to issue negotiation requests to East China **, but they still had to find an intermediary to mediate. The Netherlands was looking for Germany to act as the mediator. However, Britain and France now had a deep conflict with Germany and were hostile to each other for the Monaco crisis. Naturally, it was impossible to find Germany as the mediator and give a favor for nothing, so they finally came to the United States.
Chapter completed!