The situation on Li Xiucheng's side is not clear at present, because it is a war zone, whether it is a war zone, Daming businessmen, diplomats have all withdrawn, the Chinese do not have the spirit of playing with their lives, this kind of thing they generally hide far away, to really understand the situation, it must wait for the battle to be over, at least after the armistice. Pen "Fun" Pavilion www.biquge.info

Anyway, Li Xiucheng suffered a big loss, how to suffer a loss, then I don't know.

Zhu Jinglun felt that he seemed to underestimate the British, and he originally thought that Li Xiucheng should be able to deal with 10,000 or 20,000 British-trained Indian soldiers plus a rabble recruited temporarily, after all, they even captured the French Concession, and there was no reason why they couldn't defeat the British.

In recent years, Daming's understanding of the West is much more sufficient than in the past, especially the understanding of Western military affairs is more thorough, because of the reason that a large number of military students have been sent to Western countries, and even now most of those students are serving in the armies of various countries, and the internal information of the armies of various countries that they have seen with their own eyes should be very reliable.

What is amazing is that the news sent back to China by these professional officers shows that everyone agrees that the French army is the strongest. Of course, the intern officers in the Prussian army also generally believed that the Prussian army was very well trained, the discipline was very resolute, and the discipline of the troops was very strong.

Zhu Jinglun also believed that the Prussian army must be a powerful French army, but everyone said that the French army was strong, and everyone unanimously agreed that the British army had no deterrent power at all, and there was nothing to be afraid of at all.

couldn't help but Zhu Jinglun didn't believe it, because the news sent back by the officers was very detailed, and the chain of evidence was very clear.

They think that the French army is strong, which is recognized by the West, and a group of officers studying in France interned in the French army, which is infected with the self-confidence exuded from the heart of the officers and soldiers of the strong army, in this era the French army has fought almost all over Europe, and since defeating the Russians with the British army, the French have a sense that they have returned to the strength of the Napoleonic era.

They defeated Austria in Italy and Russia in Turkey, and Prussia was just a small country. The combined strength of the Austrian and Russian empires was not comparable to that of the two empires, so there was a general illusion in Europe that the French army was substantially superior to all the armies of the other countries.

Exposed to their arrogance among the French army, coupled with the misleading public opinion of the outside world, it is easy for the officers studying in France to have the impression that the French army is extremely powerful.

Although Zhu Jinglun did not think that the Prussian army was weaker than the French army, he also had to admit in the face of this series of facts that the French army was still the first-class army in Europe, and it was not comparable to other armies.

The British Army, on the other hand, was generally ridiculed.

The news sent back by the Ming officers said that there was a lack of a spirit of sharing happiness and sorrow between the officers and soldiers of the British army, that the officers generally did not love the soldiers, that the soldiers mostly fought for money, and that the military discipline was corrupt, and that they were simply a group of rabble.

It's no wonder that they have this impression, Britain practices a conscription system, the army is a profession, plus the navy is strong, people with status are often more willing to serve in the navy, which leads to the general low quality of officers and soldiers in the army, especially soldiers, most of whom join the army for money are either outlaws or Irish outcasts.

To say that their military discipline is corrupt is not to wrongfully accuse them, because drunkenness and troublemaking are prevalent in the army, and they are completely hooligans.

In addition, they also smoked opium, which Zhu Jinglun had long noticed, and after the reconquest of Guangzhou ten years ago, few of the British officers he captured did not eat opium tincture.

As for the corruption of the British army, Zhu Jinglun didn't know about it before, and he thought that the management of the British army was very scientific. But the news sent back by the Ming officer was that the British army was selling officials, the logistics were corrupt, and the generals did not know the soldiers?

Since European history has always been a political system ruled by the aristocracy, in the first half of the 19th century, the British army still legally implemented the "gift system", and most of the officials appointed by the king were filled by the children of the nobles, especially in the army. The most outrageous thing is that these noble children are officials, and they don't take it seriously at all, they take spending all day and drinking as a serious matter, and if they are officials, they can spend some money to hire people to help them handle official business.

In 1786, for example, the treasurers of the Admiralty and the Comptrollers of the War Office spent £500 and £1,000 respectively a year to hire people to act as agents, and the remainder of the official staff was used for his own use. Charlie Briezick, the chief clerk of the Home Office, was paid £81.13 shillings, and was paid £227 and 3 shillings a year for the work he did and substituted for the senior civil servant of the Chancellor's Court.

In this case, it was not until February 1854 that the British government put forward the "Report on the Establishment of a Permanent British Civil Service", and the system of selecting civil servants through examinations began to be put on the agenda, which was the famous British civil service reform, and after a long quarrel, on May 21, 1855, the British Privy Council issued the "Privy Council Order on the Recruitment of Civil Servants of the Royal Government", and Britain began to change.

In the 14 years after the introduction of the civil service system, of the 9,826 civil servants hired from 1855 to 1868, 7,033 were directly appointed without any competitive selection, and only 28 had passed an open competitive examination, an average of two a year.

Benjamin Franklin, the founding father of the United States, once inspected England and commented that "absolute decay is prevalent among all the ranks of the people of this ancient country, and is completely depraved and corrupted from head to toe!" ”

This is still the case for civilian officials, and especially for officers, because in ancient and modern times, the power of the army is more concentrated, and the so-called absolute power leads to absolute corruption, and this law is not only for China, but also for Britain.

The corruption of the army is outrageous, although the civilian officials implement the appointment system, but most of the people who have been appointed are nobles, and the nobles have at least basic education, but there is a popular system of selling officials in the army, and military ranks can be bought and sold, which is still unique in the whole of Europe, and the reputation of selling officials in Chinese history is not good, and those who really dare to blatantly sell officials are the early Han Dynasty and the Manchu Dynasty, and even if other dynasties do, they are special cases, and there is absolutely no system.

The British's behavior of selling officials alone was enough to make the officers of the Ming Dynasty look down on them.

Compared with continental European countries, such as France, even in the aristocratic era before the Revolution, anyone who wanted to become an officer had to be approved by the court genealogist and had 1/16 aristocratic blood, so almost all the officers above the colonel level in the French army were from the big nobles or nobles who had a family history of hundreds of years and could be introduced to the king, Napoleon was able to become an officer because his family was a small nobleman after all, and the emperor wanted to encircle the natives of Corsica at that time, so he was allowed to go to military school.

Although the British also attached importance to the noble lineage, with the growth of the new aristocratic class, those capitalists who made a fortune through capital expansion did not have a prominent background, and hoped to serve the king by joining the army in exchange for a decent status, so their voices slowly formed a system of buying and selling officers, which itself was a new way for the wealthy class, and in the face of money, what qualifications and talents stood aside.

Before the Opium War, the only time Britain restricted the sale of military ranks was in 1760, prohibiting the purchase of officials for young children and fixing the transaction price.

Until now, Zhu Jinglun received the news that the promotion of British military officers is still decided by money, and in addition to the fixed-price letter of appointment, he also needs to buy his own military uniforms and equipment at his own expense, which is indeed only affordable for the rich.

This system allowed the British to always win less and lose more when facing the French army in the Napoleonic era, not because the number of troops was insufficient, not because the British army was not equipped well, in fact, the British army was highly paid at that time, and the weapons and equipment connected with the entire crime were British aid.

But officers are not good, some nobles who buy officials, during the march, will even order soldiers to carry them across the river, the Duke of Wellington, who defeated Napoleon, once ordered soldiers to throw these delicate noble officers into the river.

Not to mention the general low quality of officers, the key is that officers have no interest in military affairs at all, and they are also like aristocratic civil officials, keen on drinking parties, ballroom dancing and literary salons, and rarely communicate with soldiers, and those soldiers from the bottom are completely different circles.

Not only did ordinary British officers look down on soldiers, but even famous generals like Wellington regarded soldiers who were recruited entirely from the poor at the bottom, or even forcibly recruited, as "inhuman" and "recruited scum of the earth, who only knew how to drink." ”

The management of the army was also very chaotic, and when Wellington led soldiers from Scotland, Ireland and other places to fight Napoleon, there was even a tradition in the British army to allow soldiers' families to accompany the army, and the soldiers marched with a large group of women and children, which was probably related to the cultural legacy of the pirate era.

Once the officerhood could be bought and sold, it was almost certain that corruption would occur, and the British would be paid nothing.

The British army is a conscription system, and the way to form an army is often that after an officer buys a rank, the government issues a letter of appointment, and then authorizes him to form his regiment, the government will provide full salaries and weapons and equipment, and the officer is responsible for the recruitment, management and training of soldiers.

Due to the lack of visibility into officers, the British army had a widespread shortage problem, as in the Chinese army during the Ming and Qing dynasties.

But the strange thing is that there are so many problems in the British army, and it seems that the British army's record is not bad. Zhu Jinglun was puzzled, his officers would not lie, and he figured out a truth, that is, the long-standing war in Europe saved the British army.

In history, Europeans have to fight a big war every few years, which not only greatly tempers the army, the key is to form a general martial culture in European countries, so in the Age of Discovery, European adventurers in other places seem to be more playful, they call it bravery, think it is a quality, or a kind of cultural stress reaction to frequent fierce wars, and so on in the 21st century, after the general life of Westerners is stable, then it is not Westerners who show their so-called "brave" spirit, It was the hijab-wearing peoples of the Middle East who went to the West to show their "brave" spirit, and at that time Westerners said that it was uncivilized behavior.

Another reason is that the mercenary system was popular in Europe in history, so as long as you get paid, you can hire a large number of professional Swiss mercenaries, which also hides the fact that Britain's own army is weak.

What really made the British army cowardly was that when it was fighting with Russia in the Crimea, all kinds of corruption problems were discovered and exposed by the flourishing newspapers, and this kind of supervision of public opinion was also helpful to the British army. However, the situation has not yet been reversed, but the news from the UK shows that the British have been reflecting on the situation in recent years and have great intention to initiate reforms.

Because he has continued to receive negative news about the British army in recent years, Zhu Jinglun really thinks that the British Army is scum, and he was able to agree to the Opium War only because their opponents were more scum, and the Ming officers even thought that the Ming Army could completely crush the British Army.

But why did Li Xiucheng obviously defeat the French army, but he couldn't do anything with the British army? Was it simply because the British army was more numerous than the French army?

Zhu Jinglun believes that this is a very important news, let the front find a way to find out as soon as possible, understand these news, help Zhu Jinglun to make appropriate decisions at all times, yes, he does not want to see the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom and the British war continue, it is really a stalemate, it will only allow the Manchu Qing to find an opportunity, whether it is the Xianghuai group taking the opportunity to become bigger or the Qing court taking advantage of the situation to integrate, it will break the current balance of power in China, so that the Ming Dynasty will lose valuable development time.

Previously, Zhu Jinglun felt that Li Xiucheng could easily handle the British army, so he said that he remained neutral and told Li Xiucheng that he could no longer sell weapons to him, Li Xiucheng was a proud person, and he clearly told him that he would not sell it to him, and he still opened his mouth to sell, so he was really in a hurry.

I used to think that Li Xiucheng could easily deal with the British army, and he didn't need his own help, but only needed to intervene at the right time to mediate between the two sides, but now it seems that Li Xiucheng can't handle the British, so he really needs to help him.

Even from a political point of view, but from an emotional point of view, Li Xiucheng's attack on Shanghai was to regain the lost power of the Chinese nation. When Chiang was willing to let the mainland's navy go through the Taiwan Strait to fight the Vietnamese for Nansha, Zhu Jinglun could certainly help the Taiping army to let them get rid of the British army.

As for the threat of war from the British, Zhu Jinglun felt that it was a joke, and a few months later, Prussia violently beat the French Empire, Germany unified with an unexpected high-profile attitude, and the new European political situation would give the British a headache for a while, and it is even very likely that the reason why the British made a tough threat before was to expect France to solve Prussia as soon as possible, and then form an alliance with them to fight in the East.

France has suddenly fallen, and Britain will definitely focus on the big rear of Europe, and the strategy of balancing Europe will be their goal in the next few years, and it will definitely not radiate power to other places.

This is the meaning of geopolitics for politics, and any change in geopolitical power will cause a chain reaction.

So before this war, Zhu Jinglun felt that Li Xiucheng was really good at picking time.