After the Privy Court came to power, the first thing he did was to authorize Li Hongzhang to formally negotiate peace with France, showing the virtues of their hawks. Before the hawks came to power, they were all main battle factions, and their attitudes were very resolute, even Zuo Zongtang, who had worked hard, had to be compared with them. But after coming to power, they were no longer them, and they all became the lord and faction in an instant, and they no longer mentioned anything about the dignity of the nation and the face of the Heavenly Empire.

Zuo Zongtang's main battle was a desperate battle after analyzing the battle situation and the situation of the enemy and the enemy. Li Hongzhang presided over peace, which was also a compromise after calculating the national strength of both sides. The main battle and the main peace of the hawks have no basis at all, and they all fight their own mood to decide, to put it bluntly, they are shouting nonsense. Originally, they were the main battle, but they didn't know the situation on the battlefield, just to seize the moral high ground. Now they are in charge of peace, in fact, they don't know what the international situation is, but they are afraid that they will be responsible for another big defeat.

Cixi was very dissatisfied with the gorgeous turn of Yiyun and other hawks, but there was no one by her side, no one who told her that "France has paid reparations to Germany, France is no longer prosperous, and Changchun resolutely supports us". Cixi could only act according to the advice of the hawks, and at least it was a way to eliminate the disaster. Luan Yu, who represents Changchun, did not express his position on this resolution, anyway, the Qing Dynasty is like this, and it is meaningless to put pressure on it. The government of the Kingdom of Vietnam was still there, and after the dust settled, the Chinese Empire personally stepped in.

Li Hongzhang, who was pushed out to bear the black pot again, signed the "Concise Treaty of the Sino-French Conference" with the French representative Bruno in Tianjin. The main contents are: China agrees to "all concluded and undecided treaties" between France and Vietnam without question, that is, it recognizes France's right to protect Vietnam; France agreed that "it should protect and assist in the protection of the border between China and Vietnam", and China agreed that "all the defense battalions stationed in Beiqi will be transferred back to the border immediately"; China agreed to the opening of the Sino-Vietnamese border to commerce, and agreed that in the future the relevant tariffs for commercial treaties negotiated with France would be "extremely advantageous for French commerce"; The terms of the meeting of representatives of the two sides shall be within three months after the signing of this agreement. Three days later, Bruno handed Li Hongzhang an abridged note, informing France that France had sent Bardeno as plenipotentiary minister to China to meet the detailed terms of the meeting, and unilaterally stipulating a date for the entire territory of northern Vietnam to be "taken over" by the Chinese troops in phases. Li Hongzhang, whose lungs were about to explode, gave Bruno a hand of oriental political art. He did not agree to this regulation, nor did he explicitly oppose it, nor did he report it to the central government of the Qing Dynasty, but instead reported it to Luan Yu.

On the eighth day of the fifth month of the ninth year of Zhongzheng, the French army suddenly went to the Guanyin Bridge area near Langshan to "take over the defense" and unreasonably demanded that the Qing army immediately return to China. The local garrison Qing troops did not receive the order to withdraw their troops, and asked the French troops to wait for a while, but the French troops advanced strongly, shot and killed the Qing army representatives, and shelled the positions of the Qing army. The Qing army was forced to return fire, and the two armies clashed for three days, with nearly 1,000 French casualties and more than 200 casualties. The French are also looking for their own bad luck, and the garrison of Guanyin Bridge is the first-class strong army of the Qing Dynasty.

The French were angry and happy at the same time because they found an excuse to expand the war. The French government sent an official note to the Qing government demanding a speedy withdrawal of the troops stationed in Vietnam and compensation of 250 million francs (about 38 million taels of silver) for military expenses, and threatened that France would occupy one or two of China's Haikou as collateral for reparations. Although the Qing government considered this to be unreasonable extortion, it still sent Zeng Guoquan, the governor of Liangjiang, to negotiate with Badeno in Shanghai in early June to resolve the dispute.

The French stopped and walked in Vietnam, in fact, they had been waiting for Changchun's attitude, and if the Chinese Empire intervened, they could only accept it when they saw it. However, Changchun was slow to take an attitude, and although he condemned the French aggression against Vietnam, he did not take any substantive action. Paris speculated that the dispute between the Chinese Empire and the Qing Empire had not been completely resolved, and the two countries had not yet returned to their original honeymoon period, so the Chinese Empire would no longer stand up for the Qing Dynasty. It was precisely because of the speculation that Changchun would not intervene that they dared to kick their noses in the face, preparing for the full annexation of Vietnam and further pressure on Yunnan and Guangxi of the Qing Dynasty.

While the French sent Badeno to negotiate with Zeng Guoquan, they continued to stir up trouble and provoke war again, this time extending the war directly to the southeast coast of China. France combined its fleets in China and Vietnam into the Far East Fleet, appointed Gu Ba as commander-in-chief, and took the opportunity to sail into Fuzhou and Keelung, respectively, to coerce China to accept French conditions, and on the other hand to be ready to attack and occupy these ports at any time. On 23 June, French ships bombarded Keelung and forcibly landed, but the Qing army resisted stubbornly under the traditional leadership of Liu Ming, the minister in charge of Taiwan affairs, so that the French army had to retreat to the sea and wait for another move. Subsequently, the French parliament authorized the government to bring the Qing to its knees "by all necessary means", and the French government drew up new conditions to extort from the Qing Dynasty, demanding an indemnity of 80 million francs, to be paid over ten years. Yiyun was a little tempted, but Cixi and Li Hongzhang resolutely could not accept it, and Sino-French diplomatic relations basically broke down.

And because the Le army made the French army disgraced at the Guanyin Bridge, the confidence of the imperial court hardened again, the hawkish bigwigs were reinstated one after another, and the French became paper tigers in their mouths again. Li Hongzhang also made a suggestion to Cixi, now that he was on the verge of war, the Qing Dynasty must be ready to engage in war. But at the same time, we must try to avoid conflicts, and we must not provoke ourselves! Li Hongzhang is also thoughtful, the Qing Dynasty's family background is still too weak, and he must always be on guard against this Changchun behind his back, it is better not to do it or not to do it.

The situation is basically clear, and Cixi has nothing difficult to decide, everyone is ready, the negotiations cannot be interrupted, but they must be ready to start at any time. The battle situation is also very clear, the French army is just a two-handed action of sea and land. Vietnam on land wanted to continue to increase troops, and the imperial court ordered Cen Yuying to be the governor of military affairs on the front line in Vietnam, and Peng Yuxuan held the minister Guan Fang to sit in Guangzhou, and at the same time transferred Su Yuanchun, Feng Zicai, Wang Xiaoqi, Wang Debang and others to Vietnam for reinforcements. In terms of coastal defense, Taiwan is fixed, and Guba has just beaten Keelung, and although it is a temporary rudeness, it will certainly make a comeback, so Taiwan's defense has become the focus of coastal defense. For the defense of Fujian and Taiwan, the imperial court sent an upstart Zhang Peilun, who ordered Zhang Peilun to handle Fujian's maritime affairs with the title of Sanpinqing, and concurrently acted as the Minister of Shipping, handing over all the defense powers to him.

Zhang Peilun is a well-known figure, he was born in the second class of Jinshi in Tongzhi for ten years, a famous leader of the Qingliu, and one of the representatives of the hawks. He had close relationships with Li Hongzao, Zhang Zhidong, Pan Zuyin and others, and was known for impeaching ministers. He also has a father-in-law who is so awesome that he can't do it, Li Hongzhang, the big leader of the Huai family. If there is no appearance of Guo Xing'a, his cousin Zhang Renjun will successively serve as the governor of Liangguang and Liangjiang, and become Yuan Shikai's in-laws. And Zhang Peilun himself will also have a famous granddaughter - the talented girl Zhang Ailing.

When Zhang Peilun was a teenager, he reacted quickly and wrote thousands of words in one stroke. In the first year of Guangxu, when he took the big test for Han Zhan, he ranked third in the second class, and he was promoted to speak, and he talked about living and paying attention to officials every day, which shows that he is really good at learning. Zhang Peilun is tired of Chen Jingguo's major politics, generous and good at discussing world affairs, is a hawkish cadre in the imperial court, and is also the first-class main force of Qingliu. In response to France's invasion of Vietnam and the coveting of the Qing Dynasty's frontiers, Zhang Peilun did not speak less, and wrote more than a dozen chapters, advocating armed resistance to France, and was a staunch main battle faction.

At the beginning of the Sino-French dispute, Zhang Peilun played many times and published the main battle rhetoric, emphasizing that China and Vietnam would depend on each other, and the more they died, the Qing Dynasty would suffer. Moreover, Zhang Peilun believes that China has three major reasons for victory: First, the Franco-Prussian War has just ended, France has ceded land and paid reparations after its defeat, and its national strength is quite poor. If he could also consider the national strength of the Qing Dynasty, perhaps he would not say that France was poor. Second, the distance between China and France was far away, and it took 20 or 30 days for the French army to reach Fujian from the mainland, while the Qing army could reach Fujian in three days and 10 days at the latest, so they had an advantage in numbers. It's a pity that Zhang Peilun only calculated the distance, and forgot to consider the transportation methods and logistics supplies of the two sides, the French army would not be so slow, and the Qing army would never be so fast. Third, after the French occupied Vietnam, they exercised tyranny, and as long as they sent people to call for it, the Vietnamese people would respond to it, and the French army would be surrounded by enemies on all sides. It is true that the French army is trapped on all sides, but the Vietnamese have almost no equipment, how to fight the French army, which is armed to the teeth. Zhang Peilun is hot-blooded, but unfortunately it is difficult to escape the actual confinement of the hawks, but his kindness may not have done a good thing.

Zhang Peilun talked eloquently in the court, everyone thought he was good, and Li Hongzhang praised his son-in-law even more, and then it was a bad thing. The war situation in Fujian is ever-changing, and the affairs involved are even more complicated and abnormal, which is by no means something that Zhang Peilun can study in the book. Without long-term experience and practical experience, how can we afford such an overall situation? The court sent Zhang Peilun, a hot-blooded student of three good students, to Fujian to lead the overall situation, which not only killed Fujian and the imperial court, but also destroyed a good seedling that could be cultivated.

Zhang Peilun, a white-faced scholar, was already young and vigorous, arrogant and arrogant, but now he suddenly took charge of one side, but he really died. He originally served as a cabinet official in the court, and he was doing the work of a troll, and naturally no one could beat him with sharp words, and when it came to literary affairs, Zhou Zhao was just like that, and when it came to military preparations, Sun Wu also had to respect him for three points. After his arrival, Chinese and foreign bureaucrats said that the imperial court was very good at selecting talents, and Li Hongzhang, the prime minister of Hefei, also praised him because of his versatility, and Zhang Peilun was even more dismissive and empty-eyed. After arriving in Fuzhou, when he met with Governor He Jing and Governor Zhang Zhaodong, Zhang Peilun talked loudly, and if there was no one around, he made the governor and others inexplicable.

Both inside and outside the government and the opposition said that Zhang Peilun was very talented, and he came from the mandate of heaven, and his background was hard, and the two governors who didn't want to take the blame simply handed over the military affairs of the province to him, Zhang Peilun actually did not shirk, and suddenly caught the military and political affairs of a province in his hands. After more than a month in office, Zhang Peilun did not rectify the military defense, and only drank and chanted poetry all day long, and played chess and prostitutes. Some people say that he is a famous general, and he is still calm in front of the tsunami, and many people also think that this is the case. But some people say that he is a literati maniac and has no name.

When Zhang Peilun was drinking a lot of wine, Guba came to the door, and the French Far East Fleet was going to come to Mawei Port for a trip.