But this group of people is different. They not only have their own army, but also seemingly powerful fleets. Because they themselves founded the country overseas, they cannot be regarded as even more.

After nearly twenty years of Westernization, Zhao Weizhong certainly knew that the foreigners' skills were far better than those of the Qing Dynasty, and the longer they worked in Westernization, the more obvious this understanding was. When the Beiyang Navy first formed an army, the two ironclad ships, the Dingyuan and Zhenyuan, which were bought with huge sums of money, were put into service in 1885, and were known as the number one giant ship in Asia. However, in just 15 years, the title of Asia's No. 1 giant ship has been from Dingyuan and Zhenyuan, which had a displacement of 700 tons, to the Mikasa, which Japan had just purchased and returned to China last year, with a displacement of up to 15,500 tons, and the weapons on the ship were all updated. The Zhenyuan ship, which was captured by Japan during the Sino-Japanese War of 1894-1895, can only be classified as a second-class maritime defense ship among the Japanese navy.

This group of overseas Chinese not only has a powerful fleet, but also has technology that is not inferior to Westerners. I don’t know if this group has any connection with the overseas rebels and the revolutionary party, but I don’t know whether it is a blessing or a disaster for the Qing Dynasty.

Last night, Zhao Weizhong went to fight with the Changbaishan ship. He heard the sound of shelling all night and naturally couldn't sleep all night. When he got up early in the morning, Dagukou had been taken down by the water of the crossing ship. Zhao Weizhong was on the side of the Changbaishan ship, looking at the remaining ship half exposed on the sea, and Zhao Weizhong felt a little scared. This group of overseas Chinese could defeat the Eight-Nation Alliance, so it would be even more difficult to defeat the Qing army. What's more, if the origin of this group of people was as true as Qin Zheng, only the Yashan Mountain had nothing to do with the Qing Dynasty, and whether it was Zheng He or Zheng Chenggong's subordinates, the Qing Dynasty was very jealous. Because Zheng Chenggong had been enemies with the Qing Dynasty for more than ten years and had dozens of bloody battles. Will his descendants recognize the Qing Dynasty as the lord of China?

However, despite thinking this way, Zhao Weizhong would not be stupid. Moreover, this group of overseas Chinese did not express their attitude of being an enemy of the Qing court. Now that his father and daughter are both in the hands of others, life and death are just in the thoughts of others. Who would be stupid enough to cause such trouble for him? Although Zhao Weizhong was loyal to the Qing Dynasty, he did not want to be loyal to the Qing Dynasty.

At this time, Qin Zheng said: "Mr. Zhao, now we have taken Dagukou. The next step is to attack Tianjin and further attack the Eight-Nation Alliance. However, we are not familiar with the situation in Tianjin, so we hope that Mr. Zhao can help us."

Zhao Weizhong hurriedly said, "Where are the father and daughter of the next generation, the father and daughter are all rescued by the noble army. This is the only way to save life. Besides, the eight-nation coalition forces will be punished and solved by the Qing Dynasty. I am even more responsible. I am just a literati, and I don't know what can help your army?"

Qin Zheng then took out the two printed photos and said, "These two photos were taken by Tianjin City. However, we don't know the roads and buildings of Tianjin City, so we also want to ask Mr. Zhao to clarify for us, and it is best to mark every major street with clear names."

After taking the photo, Zhao Weizhong couldn't help but feel shocked. In this era, the photo technology had been introduced to China. There was a photo studio run by foreigners in Tianjin. Zhao Weizhong naturally had seen photos. However, the photos of foreigners were only black and white. Although they could take photos of people and objects vividly, they still looked a little rough in detail. However, the photos given to him by Qin Zheng were not colorful, and the level of fineness was much stronger. Ming's overseas Chinese were also better at photography than foreigners.

However, Zhao Weizhong has now gained some immunity to the technology of this group of overseas Chinese, so he quickly returned to normal. He has lived in Tianjin for nearly twenty years and is naturally very familiar with the layout of Tianjin City and the surrounding areas. Although these two photos were taken by aerials, Zhao Weizhong could still see at a glance that this was indeed a photo of Tianjin City.

But when you look closely, Zhao Weizhong found that these two photos were still a little different from the Tianjin City as you know. From the photo in Tianjin, the Hedong area in Tianjin was originally covered with houses, but the photo was blank; from Majiakou to the concession, there were originally high-rise buildings, and the photos were gone; there were also the road from the French Concession to the city, the two-lilong street at Zhakou, and from Guodian Street to Jiuyi Street, and to the Zhenshi Street, all of which were lively in Tianjin. The houses were dense and there were shops on the street, but only a large area of ​​gray was seen in the photos. Except for a few main streets, the other streets were also blurred. Zhao Weizhong spent a lot of effort, but he could only find two. On the contrary, the concessions of various countries in Tianjin were very clear, and Zhao Weizhong was quickly separated.

After hearing Zhao Weizhong's Ming Dynasty, Qin Zheng's face was calm and said, "Mr. Zhao, the places you just now should have been burned by the Eight-Nation Alliance." According to the information collected by Qin Zheng, after Tianjin City was captured, it was savagely killed, poached and looted by the Eight-Nation Alliance. The number of people who died in all bodies was the same, ranging from 100,000 to 500,000, but words such as "the corpse was accumulated for several miles, several feet high", "there was not cleaned in three days", "the few were hundreds, and the many were thousands", which showed how catastrophe it suffered at that time.

Zhao Weizhong's heart trembled. Before Tianjin City was broken, he escaped from the city and hid in the countryside for more than a month. Therefore, he did not know what happened after the fall of Tianjin City. However, he also wanted to find out what happened in Tianjin City. Since the First Opium War in 1840, China's door was opened by Western powers. Every foreign invasion will bring great disaster to China.

Looking up at Qin Zheng, I saw Qin Zheng's face full of heavy expression. Judging from Zhao Weizhong's eyes, this was definitely not pretending. It turned out that when Qin Zheng read historical materials, he was just a mentality of reading history, because it was more than a hundred years ago after all, so Qin Zheng's mentality was relatively calm, but now he is the party involved, so Qin Zheng's emotions are naturally very different.

Zhao Weizhong's heart was filled with turbulent waves. He suddenly thought that no matter whether this group of overseas Chinese was beneficial to the Qing Dynasty, as long as they could defeat the Eight-Nation Alliance and recover Tianjin from the Eight-Nation Alliance, it might not be a bad thing. After all, they are still Chinese and are much better than foreigners, so they should do their best to help them.

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Just when Qin Zheng was picking up Zhao Weizhong on the Changbai Mountain ship, Xie Teng, the captain of the Taihu ship, led more than 20 officers and soldiers on the Taihu ship, as well as Qin Yuhai, the battalion commander of the Marine Corps, and a group of Beiyang Navy soldiers who had changed their clothes, including Liu Ciming, the release of the Beiyang Navy's official cannon leader, boarded the Trafford, the British transport ship captured by the crossing fleet.

The Trafford is a transport ship with a displacement of 700 tons and can carry about 1,500 tons of cargo. Among all the captured transport ships, it is the largest tonnage. In the naval battle last night, the Trafford failed to hit a single bomb and only suffered two rounds of near-loss. However, the distance between near-loss was far and there was almost no damage. Therefore, the crossing fleet chose this ship to carry personnel and medicines and rushed to Hejiawan Village to support.

When he was captured by the crossing fleet, the Trafford was loaded with about 1,000 tons of cargo, including about 500 tons of grain, and the others were guns, ammunition, cloth, medicine, tents, vehicles and other military supplies. At this time, they were naturally moved to the shore. Twenty military doctors were selected from the captives of the Eight-Nation Alliance, and about six boxes of various medicines were prepared to set off tomorrow morning.

Now that everyone is on the ship, they are cleaning up the supplies prepared on the ship, and on the other hand, they are also looking at whether Liu Ximing and others will mount the ship. Of course, the crossing personnel have also made a reserve plan and found the captain, first mate and more than ten crew members of the ship. One is to solve the driving method of the ship. The other is to use them to drive the ship if Liu Ximing and others are not good, so they will use them to drive the ship.

Although this is just a transport ship, the driving method is basically easy, and there are people explaining it. Therefore, after more than a while of observation and consultation, the officers and soldiers on the Taihu ship who boarded the ship together generally understood the operation method of the ship. Liu Ximing also assured Xie Teng and Qin Yuhai that he could fully start the ship.

So Xie Teng finally decided to set off for five or six tomorrow morning. The people accompanying the Beiyang Navy were soldiers, led by Liu Ximing. All of these Beiyang Navy soldiers were from the Sea Dragon, all of whom were Liu Ximing's subordinates. The captain and chief mate of the Trafford, as well as the other fourteen crew members, were also traveling with the ship. After all, they were the most familiar with the performance of the ship. If there was something at sea, they could have an extra layer of guarantee. At the same time, the crossers also assured the captain and chief mate of the Trafford, and crew that after the war was over, they would give priority to releasing them or reducing their ransom.

The crossing fleet sent twenty officers and soldiers on the Taihu ship, all from the navigation team and the Guantong team. Their mission was to learn and familiarize themselves with the warship driving methods of this era on the ship. In addition, there was also a land platoon soldiers accompanying them.

The reason why the Taihu ship sent the officers and soldiers on this mission was that other ships had combat readiness tasks, and only the Taihu ship was a supplementary ship. Without the demand for ocean combat, the Taihu ship basically became a warehouse floating on the sea and was unlikely to go to battle with the fleet, so they could only draw people from the Taihu ship to take responsibility for this task.
Chapter completed!