Qin Zheng and his entourage arrived in Beijing from Xi'an at the end of October, because the two sides had reached an agreement in Xi'an, just a few days ago, Yuan Shikai personally led more than 8,000 Beiyang New Army to Beijing, and fully took over the defense of Beijing's surrounding areas, and all the people's troops stationed in Beijing were withdrawn to Beijing and stationed, and prepared to evacuate. Of course, in Shandong, the remaining Beiyang Army was also evacuated to the vicinity of Jinan Prefecture, and all the garrisons in other areas were handed over to the People's Army.

Before the Beiyang Army arrived in Beijing, the work of evacuating the crossing group from Beijing had also been carried out in an all-round way. The crossing group recruited about 17,000 troops and more than 1,600 other staff members in the Beijing area, and the soldiers were basically willing to move their families to settle in the areas controlled by the crossing group.

After all, most of these people used to be ordinary people, and they worked under the hands of overseas Chinese, even if they were not officials, they could be regarded as officials, and they could have a good income. The behavior was very different from that of the Qing court, and it also won the praise of many people in Beijing, so most of the staff were willing to follow the group.

Naturally, the Crossing Group welcomes this group of people to come to their own ruling areas, because these people have nearly half a year's work experience in Beijing, and they are familiar with the working habits of the Crossing Group, and now the Crossing Group is about to control the entire territory of Shandong, and when it is necessary to employ people, this group of people are very useful.

However, there are more than 70,000 soldiers, staff and their families, so it is not easy to move so many people to Tianjin, even Shandong. Originally, there were two trains from Beijing to Tianjin every day, and now there have been two more shifts, specially used to relocate the families of the personnel, and by the time Qin Zheng arrived in Beijing, more than 25,000 people had already been moved, and the remaining personnel would be evacuated one after another.

After Prince Qing and Li Jingfang arrived in Beijing with Qin Zheng, they immediately met with Li Hongzhang and Yuan Shikai and told them in detail about the experience of overseas Chinese in Xi'an, and of course also talked about the turmoil caused by Wan Haicheng's solicitation of bribes from overseas Chinese.

In fact, Li Hongzhang knew all these things from the telegram sent by Li Jingfang, and after listening to Prince Qing's speech, Li Hongzhang said: "Lord, I don't know how the Queen Mother will deal with Wan Haicheng?"

Prince Qing was stunned for a moment and said, "When we left Xi'an, the Queen Mother only imprisoned Wan Haicheng and had not yet dealt with it. "Actually, Cixi doesn't plan to deal with Wan Haicheng, it's not that she intends to protect Wan Haicheng, but that she deliberately can't get along with overseas Chinese.

Li Hongzhang naturally understood Cixi's intentions, so he had to smile bitterly and said, "Lord Wang, you don't know it in Xi'an, and now this matter has spread in Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou and other places. ”

Prince Qing was also a little surprised, and said: "It has spread so far, we don't know anything about it in Xi'an." ”

Yuan Shikai said: "It was the overseas Chinese who first reported this incident in Shanghai through newspapers, so other newspapers reprinted it one after another, and it spread like this, Xi'an is located in a remote area, so I don't know about it until now, which is a blessing." ”

It turned out that Wan Haicheng asked for bribes, and the traverser naturally reported back to Tianjin a long time ago, and the executive committee was like a treasure, because this material was too useful, and the traversal group was ultimately going to overthrow the Qing court, and now due to the actual situation, it had to be attached to the Qing court in name, so when it broke with the Qing court in the future, it would definitely bear the name of rebellion, after all, the current China is a semi-feudal and semi-colonial society, and it is still dominated by the feudal system. The inertia of the concept of monarchs and ministers is still very strong, so in order to win the support of public opinion when breaking with the Qing court, from now on, it is necessary to spare no effort to smear the Qing court and promote the Qing court's suppression of the crossing group.

But relatively speaking, it is easy to find information to smear the Qing court, in fact, there is a lot of information that does not need to be found, but the Qing court has almost no material for the suppression of the crossing group, after all, everyone knows that in the relationship with the Qing court, the crossing group occupies an absolute advantage, and if the Qing court suppresses the crossing group, who will believe it? Therefore, Wan Haicheng's bribery is simply a good material that fell from the sky, and it can just make a big fuss.

About a week after Qin Zheng and his entourage left Xi'an, the crossing group first made a detailed report on Wan Haicheng's bribery incident in [New China News], of course, it added fuel and vinegar to the content, not only exaggerating Wan Haicheng's arrogant and arrogant attitude, but also deliberately leading the spearhead to the imperial court, so it deliberately fabricated what Wan Haicheng said, such as:

"This is the rule left by the ancestors of the Great Chun Kingdom, the real price is clear, 10,000 in the middle hall, 8,000 in the governor, 5,000 in the governor, 3,000 in the Taoist, and so on, don't want to be an official if you don't have money. ”

"Now there is no surplus food in the palace, the queen mother, the emperor, the queen, the little master, the elder brother, and Gege are all masters, they want to eat and live, drink and pull, don't ask for money from you, and who wants to go. ”

"With this money today, won't we be able to get it back from the grass people after taking office? ”

............

As soon as it was reported, it immediately caused a sensation in Shanghai, and other newspapers reprinted it, and the incident was continuously stirred up, and soon spread throughout the southeast coastal area, and by this time the Qing court's control over speech had been greatly weakened, and the people were very interested in matters involving the imperial court.

At the same time, the traversers also arranged for many gunmen to write commentaries and criticize the imperial court in a big way, and the lines of criticism were mainly two: one was to criticize the corruption of the imperial court, and at this time they did not forget to accept bribes and solicit bribes, and they did this kind of thing under the nose of the imperial court, so the system must be changed; the second was to detain the theme of the imperial court's suppression of overseas Chinese, saying that because the merits of overseas Chinese were too great, the imperial court was suspicious of the meritorious heroes, so they deliberately asked the eunuchs to ask for bribes, whether the overseas Chinese gave it or not, the imperial court had an excuse to suppress it, and if it was given, it was to collude with the ministers, and if it was not given, it was to despise the imperial court, and then find an excuse to reduce the overseas Chinese, and so on。

Eunuchs asking for bribes is an unspoken rule that everyone knows, so everyone is convinced of this matter, but the unspoken rule is the unspoken rule, and it cannot be put on the table. When Li Hongzhang found out, public opinion had already been formed, and Li Hongzhang couldn't control public opinion, so he had to order the governors of various places not to spread the news to Xi'an, and sent a telegram to Rong Lu and Wang Wenshao, asking them not to tell the Empress Dowager Cixi if they received the news.

After listening to Li Hongzhang's introduction, Prince Qing understood, and he was secretly surprised in his heart, it turned out that when he left Xi'an, the overseas Chinese did not ask about Wan Haicheng, and thought that they would no longer pursue it, but they did not expect that they would make the matter bigger and make it known to everyone. Although Prince Qing has no talent, after all, he has also worked in the Yamen of the Prime Minister's Office for several years, and he knows a little about the general trend of the world.

And for Li Hongzhang's request not to tell Cixi about this, Prince Qing raised his hands in favor, in case the Queen Mother knew about this matter, and let herself get up again, and fell out with overseas Chinese, it would be troublesome, although now the Queen Mother's temper has been more restrained, and overseas Chinese did not get angry when they were in Xi'an, but no one can guess the Queen Mother's mind, so it is better to have more than one thing, and now everything is to return to Beijing as soon as possible to settle down.

After unifying his thinking, Li Hongzhang immediately made an appointment to meet Qin Zheng and started talks, of course, he kept silent about Wan Haicheng's bribery, the capture of the palace maid, and so on, and only negotiated the time of handing over to Beijing.

In fact, at this point, there were no major differences between the two sides, so an agreement was quickly reached, and finally the two sides agreed: at 10 o'clock in the morning of November 30, the traverser formally handed over the administrative and military management power of Beijing to the Qing court, and all the administrative and military staff of the traversal group were evacuated from Beijing, except for the staff and guards who left behind the office. On the same day, the Qing court also withdrew the officials of the Beiyang Army, the two departments of the Shandong Governor, and the Jinan prefect from Jinan Prefecture and withdrew from the territory of Shandong Province, and the crossing group will formally take over Shandong Province, but the officials of other prefectures, prefectures and counties in Shandong will still remain in office until the end of their term of office, and the local garrisons will remain unchanged and will be reorganized by the crossing group itself, and the local officials and garrisons in Shandong will still perform their respective responsibilities and maintain normal local order.

At present, the railways from Tianjin to other regions will be jointly managed and operated by the Crossing Group and Chunting, of which the railway from Tianjin to Beijing will be run by the two sides in the morning, noon and evening, and the other railways will run three trains in the morning, noon and evening; and the relevant departments of the two sides will conduct detailed consultations on the number of trains on the remaining railways; the Qing court will admit that the Kaiping carbon mine, Railways and other assets are owned by the traverser, and the crossing group can open the train to the Kaiping coal mine on its own, and can garrison troops in Kaiping, but the Qing army along the railway line is defended, and the train can be escorted by the army, but if there is no danger, the soldiers are not allowed to get off.

In fact, now most of the Beiyang Army has evacuated Shandong, and there are about 7,000 people left, temporarily managed by Xu Shichang, and after this batch of Beiyang Army evacuated Shandong, it did not rush to Beijing, but stationed part of Cangzhou, Hejian Prefecture, to prevent the People's Army from crossing the border, and the other part was stationed in Zhengding Mansion, ready to welcome the two palaces back to Beijing.