This time, Qin Zheng made a special trip to Dagukou from Tianjin, of course it was not for the Cavalry Company. In fact, the Cavalry Company was just an incident involving Qin Zheng's visit to Dagukou this time. Qin Zheng's main task to come to Dagukou was to welcome Li Hongzhang's arrival. Yesterday, Tianjin received a reply from Qingdao. Li Hongzhang's fleet had arrived in Qingdao and would arrive at Dagukou tomorrow.

Originally, Li Hongzhang had wanted to visit Tianjin. After Zhang Peilun returned to Shanghai from Tianjin, the court who fled to Xi'an finally issued an edict to commend overseas Chinese. So Li Hongzhang immediately began to prepare for a visit to Tianjin. According to Li Hongzhang's plan, he strived to promote the start of negotiations before the Chinese Lunar New Year. Even if there was no result, he could at least make a good start. The grand tone of the negotiations could be determined, and the empress dowager and the emperor who fled to Xi'an could have a good New Year.

At this moment, various countries started a big fight over Li Hongzhang's visit to Tianjin. First, the UK proposed to Li Hongzhang that it would send an observation team to visit Tianjin with Li Hongzhang, and hoped to meet with overseas Chinese in Tianjin.

It turns out that although the UK has a consulate in Tianjin, and overseas Chinese also allow the British consulate in Tianjin to continue to maintain and perform its diplomatic affairs. It can even send a message to the Shanghai side to report the situation in Tianjin, the consulate's behavior and activities have great restrictions compared with the Qing Dynasty rule. The information collected is limited, and the military rank of the military officers in the consulate is not high, just a captain and limited knowledge. Therefore, Shanghai always lacks an intuitive understanding of the behavior, style and military strength of overseas Chinese. The UK side hopes to use this time when Li Hongzhang visited Tianjin to send an observation team to accompany him, and plans to mix several officers in it to observe overseas Chinese at close range, and through meeting with overseas Chinese, they can understand the attitude of overseas Chinese towards this negotiation, and they are also ready.

From Li Hongzhang's heart, of course he didn't want to take the British Observation Team to Tianjin. Didn't he find a military supervisor for himself? It was so inconvenient to arrive in Tianjin, so he recruited Zhou Fu, Sheng Xuanhuai, Zhang Peilun, Li Jingfang and others to discuss and think of a way to politely reject the British?

Before Li Hongzhang and others could discuss an excuse to push, other countries such as France, Russia, the United States, Japan and Germany had already heard the news, so they were naturally unwilling to fall behind. Moreover, countries were worried that Britain would make a private deal with overseas Chinese when it visited Tianjin and sold themselves. So on the one hand, all countries expressed reproach for the UK's unilateral actions and accused the UK of violating the principle of consistency in action reached by various countries. On the other hand, they asked Li Hongzhang to send an observation team to visit Tianjin with Li Hongzhang, and at the same time they also asked to meet with overseas Chinese. Even Japan and Russia, who were tense on the Korean Peninsula and almost fought, maintained a high degree of consistency.

Seeing that all countries protested to them, the British were a little overwhelmed. After all, they were not doing it properly, so they proposed to all countries, and simply sent several representatives to form an observation team to follow Li Hongzhang to Tianjin and meet with overseas Chinese. This suggestion was naturally unanimously agreed by all countries, so they jointly made a request to Li Hongzhang.

It was originally a UK, which made Li Hongzhang feel very stressed. Now that other countries come together, Li Hongzhang can no longer resist it. But at this time, the newspaper industry in Shanghai actually came to join in the fun and asked Li Hongzhang to send a reporter to accompany him, and asked him to interview overseas Chinese.

Shanghai is one of the earliest trading ports for China to open up to the outside world, and it has superior geographical conditions. In addition, it has a large number of concessions. At this time, Shanghai was the most advanced and most modernized city in China. As a symbol of modernization, Shanghai's newspaper industry is very high, with a total of more than ten Chinese and foreign newspapers, including [Report], [Shanghai New News], [Zai Linxi News], [Damei Evening News], [Shanghai Times], etc. Since most newspapers are published in the concession and the Qing court has also reached the end, Shanghai can be said to be a place with extremely high press freedom at this time. Every newspaper dares to say almost anything and scold anyone. If you encounter such an opportunity, you will naturally not miss it.

In desperation, Li Hongzhang had to let Zhang Peilun call Tianjin, explaining that the countries hoped to send observation teams to Tianjin and the Shanghai newspaper industry had the request.

After a brief discussion, the Executive Committee thought that the observation team was nothing at all, so just come. Are you afraid that they will make a big fuss in their own territory? On the contrary, if you refuse, you will appear to be timid. As for the newspaper industry to send reporters to accompany you, it is even more welcome. The old time and space were an era of extremely powerful talent. How to deal with reporters is a compulsory course for every captain of the navy, not to mention Xia Bohai, Qin Zheng, Xiao Jianjun and others, they are all detachment-level officers, and they have some experience in dealing with reporters, and this is also a great opportunity to announce the time traveler.

So the Executive Committee immediately responded to Shanghai, agreeing to the request of countries to send observation missions to visit Tianjin, and also agreed to meet with the observation missions. However, each country can only send up five people, and military officers can only carry weapons of self-defense. During the meeting, weapons are prohibited. When the observation mission arrives in Tianjin, they must obey the arrangements of the Tianjin government, etc. At the same time, Tianjin also welcomes the visit of the Shanghai newspaper industry, but only three newspapers, and each newspaper is limited to three people.

After the opinions of the travelers reached Shanghai, countries immediately started discussions. The travelers' request was not excessive, so countries immediately began to select members of the observation mission. At this time, the Russian Consul in Shanghai p.a. Dmitryev proposed that in order to ensure the safety of the observation mission, it was recommended that countries send warships and escort the observation mission to Tianjin.

However, after arriving in Tianjin, this request was naturally rejected by the time travelers. The Executive Committee immediately replied to Shanghai that the security of the observation group was guaranteed by Tianjin. Tianjin could send warships to Shanghai to pick up the observation group, but it would never agree to send warships to escort the observation group. If you are not satisfied with the security guarantee of Tianjin, you can not come.

The request of the time traveler was first made by the Russian Consul in Shanghai, p.a. Dmitryev, who expressed strong opposition, insisting that if overseas Chinese refuse to send warships to escort the observation group, Russia will not send people to the observation group. At the same time, it also encouraged various countries. Overseas Chinese have no sincerity in negotiating and should refuse negotiations with overseas Chinese.

The attitude towards the Russians has not yet responded to, but Li Hongzhang was startled. If the negotiations were broken due to this, overseas Chinese and foreigners might not be as good as it was, but the Qing court would definitely not be able to stand it. The Empress Dowager and the Emperor had issued five edicts in Xi'an, requiring Li Hongzhang to do his best to promote this negotiation, and to make decisions in accordance with the conditions. The court did not control it remotely, but only wanted to protect the country and return it to the palace as soon as possible. Of course, Li Hongzhang understood that it would be fine as much as you pay and cut as much land. As long as the Empress Dowager is saved, the Emperor would do it. This also shows that the Empress Dowager and the Emperor did have great expectations for this negotiation.

But Li Hongzhang also knew that overseas Chinese would never allow countries to send warships to escort the observation team. After all, overseas Chinese are now strong, how could they agree to this condition? The Russians actually wanted to muddle the water and make profits from it. Because the Russians did not take any advantage on the Korean Peninsula before, they hoped to rekindle the confrontation between various countries and overseas Chinese so that the Russians would have the opportunity to make some trouble on the Korean Peninsula again and gain some benefits. Anyway, Russia's current goal is Northeast China, and there is no benefit in the front line of Tianjin and Shanghai, and it will not cost Russia anyway.

After a night of hard thinking, Li Hongzhang finally came up with a solution, which was to ask the Beiyang Navy to send a warship to escort the observation team to Tianjin. After Dagukou was captured by the Eight-Nation Alliance on June 17, 19oo, the main forces of the Beiyang Navy: Haitian, Haiqi, Haichen, Hairong, and Haichou five warships, led by Admiral Ye Zugui, fled to Shanghai to berth until now.

But in this way, the overseas Chinese had no reason to refuse, because since the overseas Chinese arrived at 6 o'clock, they have always regarded themselves as descendants of China and claimed to have returned to China. The Beiyang Navy was a warship of the Qing Dynasty. Of course, overseas Chinese could not refuse the Beiyang Navy's escort. The excuses of various countries were only to protect the safety of the observation team. Although the five warships of the Beiyang Navy are not Dingyuan and the iron-clad ships equipped with heavy armor and giant cannons like Zhenyuan, but the task of escorting is still enough. In fact, there is basically no danger from the Sea 6 from Shanghai to Tianjin, and the escort is redundant. Zhang Peilun took a passenger ship twice, so it was nothing to do at all, so I'm afraid there was nothing to say.

So Li Hongzhang first contacted the time travelers and suggested to them that the Beiyang Navy would send warships to escort, which was indeed approved by the time travelers. Because the Beiyang Navy was a Chinese navy after all, and most of the time travelers had a good impression of the Beiyang Navy. To be fair, although the Beiyang Navy was not completely destroyed in the Sino-Japanese War of 1894-1895, although the Beiyang Navy was not defeated, it was much better than the 6th Army. In the Battle of Dadonggou, Deng Shichang drove a ship to hit the Yoshino, which was unfortunately sunk; in the battle of Weihaiwei, Ding Ruchang and Liu Buchan would rather commit suicide than surrender to the Japanese army, which was considered heroic. Therefore, in the old time and space, most of the Beiyang Navy were sympathetic and pity-worthy. Moreover, in the navy of the People's Army, there are some soldiers of the Beiyang Navy. Of course, the time travelers would not refuse the Beiyang Navy's warships to Dagukou.

With the consent of the time traveler, Li Hongzhang breathed a sigh of relief and immediately started negotiations with other countries. In fact, all countries knew the intention of the Russians. Of course, they would not let Russia do what they wanted. They took this opportunity to borrow a ladder and descend the wall, indicating that they could be relieved with the Beiyang Navy's escort, so the matter of sending an observation team was still going on. Although the Russians were still unwilling to give up, they could not speak alone, and Russia did not have warships in Shanghai, and countries were unwilling to send warships and frigates, and the Russians could not hold on.
Chapter completed!