At this time, it was the end of May, and the Ming fleet, escorted by most of the capital ships in good condition, with ten damaged warships, cautiously passed through the waters of Vietnam, and did not see any French warships all the way, because at this time France also needed to rest. Pen @ fun @ pavilion wWw. ｂｉｑUｇE。 ｉｎｆｏ

The biggest reason why France agreed to a temporary truce was the French themselves, who sent 400,000 people from Europe all the way, requisitioned more than 100 long-distance ships, stuffed with soldiers, weapons and equipment, food, coal and other materials, and finally got to the East, but they didn't want to be intercepted, and fought a large naval battle, and they lost the battle.

With a high level of sacrifice among the officers and men of the navy, the troop carrier managed to escape Malacca and return to the Indian colony, but it was already a frightened bird. The navy has suffered a particularly serious blow, there are still 25 remaining capital ships, all of which are large ironclad ships, with a tonnage of 8,000 to 11,000 tons, it should be said that it still has quite strong combat effectiveness, but the morale of the military is low, at this time and the Ming Navy will start a war, the navy itself does not say, the key is that the politicians in France do not dare to take this risk, at this time the Ming proposed that the two sides stop military operations, the French are eager to do it.

The Ming Dynasty needs to create a safe environment for the navy to go north, so why doesn't France need an environment for transporting troops safely.

In letting them risk an ambush that the Ming didn't know where to send 400,000 people to Jiaozhizhina, no one dared to take this risk.

So the Ming naval fleet returned to Guangdong safely, and then boarded the port to rest under the warm welcome of the local people, and the warships were dragged into the shipyards one by one, repaired and maintained in good condition, and seized the time to restore all the warships to the best condition.

At this time, the main theme was peace negotiations, and the Ming expressed to the British that they were willing to let the French withdraw from Cochinchina with dignity, but the French did not want to withdraw, and they expressed their willingness to restore the situation in Vietnam to the situation before the war, to the situation of 1873. That is, France continued to hold the whole of Nam Ki in Vietnam. On this basis, France was willing to negotiate a new treaty with Vietnam and the Ming Dynasty, and France's bottom line was to give up its claims to North Vietnam, but to guarantee the Ming and Vietnam the legitimate authority of France in Nam Chi.

The Vietnamese themselves could accept this article, but the Ming Dynasty could not accept it, and if the Ming did not accept it, the Vietnamese representatives did not dare to nod their heads. The Ming demanded that France must fully withdraw from Nanqi and return Vietnamese territory to Vietnam. What the Ming could guarantee was that France would continue to retain certain commercial interests in Nanqi.

The bottom line between the two sides is too different, and the negotiations are very intense, but they cannot reach a consensus.

After a month of intense negotiations, the two sides regretfully announced that they could not reach an agreement, and the negotiations broke down.

At the same time, the two sides blamed each other, with the Ming saying that the French were insincere and did not want to make reasonable concessions at all, while the French said that the Ming was ambitious and hoped that Western countries would be wary of this aggressive country.

The negotiations broke up unhappily, and the Ming delegation told the outside world that unless France was willing to negotiate on the basis of withdrawing from Nanqi, the Ming would not hold any more negotiations with France until the French forces were completely expelled from the sacred land of Vietnam.

In July, the two sides resumed fighting.

In this month, France calmed the panic and uncertainty of the army, and the French government reformed a new cabinet to quell the protests of the people at home. The Ming Dynasty seized the time to repair the damaged battleships, and successfully drove back to China five seriously injured ironclad ships, and the four injured cruisers were all repaired, restoring their combat effectiveness again.

The five French ironclad ships that were heavily damaged in the battle were captured and restored and incorporated into the Ming fleet, but these complex ironclad ships, the Ming Dynasty did not incorporate them into the main fleet, but formed a new fleet together with the Ming army's old Guangdong, Guangxi, Fujian, and Jiangxi, four ten- to twenty-year-old ironclad ships, plus four armored cruisers Guangzhou, Huizhou, Gaozhou, and Shaozhou.

Although this new fleet has the shortcomings of old ships and slow speed, the combined tonnage should not be underestimated. Together, it is almost 100,000 tons, and as long as it does not meet the main force of the French army stationed in Da Nang, then it can still run rampant on this sea.

As for the French fleet in Da Nang, the new fleet composed of 30 ironclad ships and armored cruisers of the Ming Dynasty will be blockaded in Da Nang, and the main fleet of the Ming Dynasty will cruise around Da Nang all day long, as long as this French fleet dares to leave the port, the Ming Navy will dare to fight a decisive battle with them.

Through two naval battles, the Ming navy completely showed confidence, while the French army became unconfident, and they were very worried that once they set sail, they would be met with the fate of the escort fleet.

After blockading the French fleet in Da Nang, the Second Fleet, composed of old warships, could safely and boldly go south, not only going south to the area around Saigon to completely blockade the French army, but also sailing out of the South China Sea to fight in the wider ocean after discovering that the French army planned to defend it completely.

At the end of July, they arrived at the two ports of the Pan and Wu families on the island of New Guinea, one south and one north, and continued eastward into the island-rich waters of the South Pacific, where the French established several colonies, with New Caledonia and Tahiti being the two sites of the final outline.

The population is not large, the development value is not large, New Caledonia has nickel mines, Tahiti only black pearls are worth mentioning, New Caledonia's nickel mines will not be developed on a large scale until World War II, Tahiti's black pearls are completely wild, and the production is limited, so the French did not operate it on a large scale, only as a place for missionaries and exiles.

The coastal defense cannons of Noumea, the main port of New Caledonia, were even breech-loading guns, which could not withstand the huge cannons of the ironclad ships at all, and as a result, after the Ming Second Fleet destroyed their batteries and fortresses, they chose to surrender, and the Tongwenxing colonial administrators who came from the island of New Guinea immediately took over the place with the mercenaries of the Pan family.

France and the Ming were at war, and they had nothing to say, but the British expressed their concern, because it was close to the British colony of Australia, and the British could allow France, a familiar old rival, to continue to be neighbors here, but they felt uncomfortable with the arrival of the Ming Dynasty.

Britain does not want the balance of the region to be broken, they expressed their attitude that they do not want this place to change owners, the Ming Dynasty thought that this was a French colony, and attacked here to prevent France from using this as a base to threaten the security of the Ming expatriates in New Guinea, although the Ming did not declare New Guinea to be a Ming colony, but where there are a large number of Ming expatriates to colonize, it is a well-known thing.

The British also needed the Ming to help them block Russia, and did not express a tough attitude, temporarily acquiescing to the Ming occupation.

But the military operations of the Ming fleet after that made it unacceptable to the British. After the Ming fleet captured Tahiti and New Caledonia, it returned to the north, passing through the northwest to the south of the island of New Guinea, and the port of Jardine (Port Moresby) established by the Wu family, passing through the Indonesian archipelago from the north of Australia, and then crossing the Strait of Malacca, and approaching India.

Before the Seven Years' War in Europe (which began in 1756), France and Britain were expanding their colonies around the world, and France occupied no fewer colonies than Britain, because France was the most populous country in Europe at that time.

Before the war, not to mention Canada, France was not at all defeated by Britain in colonial penetration of India.

After the war, Britain returned several Indian colonies to France for balancing reasons, but France had lost the qualification to compete with Britain for hegemony in India, and these colonies were only used as bases and lost their role in infiltrating India.

To this day, these colonies, centered on Puducherry are only a few trading houses, with a combined population of only a few tens of thousands, and a total land of only a few hundred square kilometers, like a few flies in front of the British power that occupies all of India.

But the question is, these flies are lying next to India, next to the most important cream cake of the British Empire, how can they reassure the British? They need the Ming to block Russia in the Pacific Ocean, but the significance of the Ming is limited to the Pacific Ocean, if the Ming infiltrates the Indian Ocean, I am afraid that Britain will give priority to blocking the Ming Dynasty.

The British immediately expressed their solemn attitude, and they made it clear that they did not support any territorial movement within the Indian Ocean, and hoped that the Ming would refrain from military action in India.

The Daming fleet had been ordered to leave the port, and the Daming Foreign Affairs Department refused to stop the military operation on the grounds that the fleet could not be contacted. But it was stated to Britain that the Ming had no ambitions for the territory of India.

The reason why they attacked French India was to force France to submit as soon as possible, so that France could recognize the reality as soon as possible.

Britain accepted the attitude of the Ming Dynasty, but strengthened the Indian fleet, announcing the transfer of a new fleet of four ironclads and twelve cruisers from the mainland to strengthen the Indian Ocean Fleet.

Although it has no future for a long time, it is an old colony after all, and the defense of Puducherry is much stronger than that of New Caledonia, and the Ming fleet did not take advantage of the shelling of the fortress here. After escorting 3,000 troops to land from nearby, they forced the French colony to surrender.

The capture of Pondicherry was the real severance between mainland France and Vietnam, and the French had little choice but to withdraw from Vietnam.

The Second Fleet, however, did not stop its actions and began to continue its westward advance, this time directly attacking Madagascar, which France had only succeeded in forcing Canada to deceive and turn it into its own protectorate last year, targeting the French naval base Port Diego Suares in northern Madagascar.