However, the Chinese diplomats were unable to open the situation for a long time, because among the Manchu political forces, there was always this force that wanted to fight back to the Central Plains. Under the lobbying of the British, this force is now extremely fierce, believing that this is a once-in-a-century opportunity, and if it is missed, it may never be seen.

The British lobbied the Manchus in a simple way, that is, to let the Manchu powers see the hope that they could fight back China, they revealed that Russia could enter the war, and let the Manchu powers consider Russia's entry into the war. The Manchus now bordered Russia across the Caucasus Mountains, and they had close trade relations with Russia, with a large number of Russian merchants and advisers in the country, and their knowledge of Russia was the highest among all Western countries.

So the Manchus knew that Russia was a very powerful country, with a well-trained standing army of 500,000, and if Russia entered the war, then defeating China would not be a luxury.

According to the British vision, Russia and the Manchus attacked northwest China from the direction of Central Asia, and Britain would compete with the Chinese navy at sea and China in the Americas and India.

The British believed that they could hold 500,000 Chinese troops in India and 500,000 Chinese troops in the Americas, and that China's military forces for operations in Central Asia could never exceed one million.

Moreover, Britain also promised that once the Manchus entered the war, they would also send at least 300,000 British troops to Central Asia to cooperate with the Qing army, and the total strength of the coalition forces in Central Asia would likely reach two million at that time.

The political system of the Manchu Qing Dynasty was highly elite. The policy of the Jiaqing period was mainly led by the Manchu and Mongolian Eight Banners, followed by the Han Eight Banners, the Manchu and Mongolian Eight Banners as the magnates, and the Han Eight Banners as the backbone.

With the evolution of thirty or forty years, the people of the Manchurian and Mongolian Eight Banners and the Han Eight Banners have flourished, multiplying several times.

At first, the Manchurian and Mongolian Eight Banners were mainly composed of soldiers drawn from the outer Mongolian vassal and the Turkut Mongols in the Ili region, with less than 100,000 people. Later, with the Manchu Qing Dynasty's withdrawal from Ili and the signing of a peace agreement with China, a large number of children of the Eight Banners in the Beijing and Tianjin areas came to serve Jiaqing, and the number of banner men in the Beijing and Tianjin areas was as high as 200,000, half of whom had no skills to make a living after losing their hardcore crops, and they refused to work as coolies, so they all chose to join Jiaqing. These people were all incorporated into the Mongolian Eight Banners and formed the Manchurian and Mongolian Eight Banners.

The old Mongolians in the Eight Banners of Manchuria, Mongolia and Mongolia are all herders, and they have allocated pastures for grazing for a living. But those hardcore crops were not used to life on the grassland, so they stayed in the capital and continued to be soldiers as a profession. And through the oblique imperial examination system, it was easier for them to become officials at all levels in the Eight Banners, so the descendants of the Manchus were still relatively well-off, either eating hardcore crops or serving as officials at all levels, and those Mongols who were foreign vassals enjoyed the same privileges as the hardcore crops, and the others were still mainly herdsmen.

More than 30 years later, the number of Mongols in the steppe increased from the original 100,000 to 200,000, the biggest reason is that they believe in Lamaism, too many people become lamas, resulting in unhappiness even if there is material abundance. But the hardcore crops in the cities have grown from 100,000 to 300,000.

These 500,000 Manchu and Mongolian Eight Banners serve as the current Manchu elite class, and the other Eight Banners, but all the upper-class people who have contributed, whether it is the Hui Eight Banners, the Persian Eight Banners, or even the Han Eight Banners, will be carried into the Manchu and Mongolian Eight Banners.

The Manchurian and Mongolian Eight Banners are the powerful, and the Han Eight Banners are becoming more and more the backbone. One of the main problems is the large population base.

Compared with the increase from 200,000 people at the beginning to 500,000 in the Eight Banners of Manchuria, the increase in the population of the Eight Banners of the Han Dynasty is simply a miracle; The population of the Eight Banners of the Han Dynasty did not occupy an absolute advantage at first, the earliest Eight Banners of the Han Dynasty were the Xiangyong who fled to Yili from Shaanxi and Gansu with Jiaqing, the number was less than 100,000, and later there were a large number of loyal and filial sons of the Manchu Qing Dynasty who were unwilling in the new dynasty to serve Jiaqing, and the number of the Eight Banners of the Han Dynasty grew rapidly, and the number of people who took refuge was as high as 200,000.

After more than 30 years of reproduction, these 200,000 Han people have reached 5 million, and the population has increased more than tenfold. How does this miracle work?

Unlike the Manchu and Mongolian Eight Banners, the Han Eight Banners were primarily committed to cultivating land and providing food for the Manchu regime from the very beginning. When he was in the Ili region, the Han Eight Banners were formed and went to the Fergana Basin to open up wasteland and farm. In order to stabilize those Shaanxi and Gansu singles, the Manchu court even directly assigned daughters-in-law to them, and later after it was more stable, the agricultural production of the Han Eight Banners was relatively good under the condition that the amount of land was sufficient. The daughters-in-law assigned to them in the early days were mainly Hui women who were widowed in the war, and these women were a little disliked, so they began to take concubines. Han wives don't have to think about it, but as long as they can afford to spend money, the ethnic concept in Central Asia is weak, and those herdsmen are even willing to sell their daughters directly, and they don't care whether they are wives or concubines.

As a result, there were a large number of concubines in the Eight Banners of the Han Dynasty. With fields and wives, the hearts of the Han people in these northwest regions are stable, and they immerse themselves in the land during the day and their daughters-in-law at night. That's it, farming, marrying a wife, having children, children continue to farm, marrying a wife, and having children.

It is common for a person to have three or four wives, and it is not too many to have seven or eight children, and it is normal to have more than a dozen children. In two generations, the number of people has grown from 200,000 to 5 million, but the bloodlines are very mixed. Some of the third or even fourth generations have not seen much of the Han people, their hair is not black, and their eyes are colored. But they are paranoid that they are Han Chinese, because their male direct ancestors are Han Chinese.

Their way of behaving is also closer to that of the Han Chinese, speaking Chinese that has become sour, mixed with a lot of foreign words, and some Chinese businessmen who have just come here to do business always have the feeling that they listen to the dialects of Shaanxi and Gansu, but even the merchants of Shaanxi do not hear anything at all. But after a little contact, you can understand their meaning, which shows that the language is indeed Chinese, which can be counted as another dialect.

There may be differences in spoken language, but the text has not changed at all, and the wealthy Han Eight Banner families still adhere to the tradition of cultivating and reading heirlooms, especially the large number of pedantic and foolish and loyal Manchu literati at the beginning, or the old bureaucrats who were depressed in the Great Zhou Dynasty of the New Dynasty, or some speculators, no matter what the purpose, the early Manchu Qing Dynasty absorbed a large number of literati and bureaucrats who had been exiled from China to the Manchu Qing Dynasty, and these people became the backbone of the Han Eight Banners. They set up private schools, taught Confucianism, built Confucian temples, and transplanted traditional Han culture to Central Asia.

These traditions gave the Han Eight Banners a relatively high level of culture, and the Manchu Qing Dynasty also adopted the imperial examination system to select officials, so that the number of officials in the Han Eight Banners was much higher than that of the other Eight Banners, and even more than the Manchu and Mongolian Eight Banners. The Eight Banners of the Han Dynasty held up almost the entire Manchu bureaucracy.

As a result, such a political structure was formed, and the military general class, mainly the Manchurian and Mongolian Eight Banners, even if there were Hui tribes and Persian ethnic groups, they would all be carried up like the Manchurian and Mongolian Eight Banners; The civil service class is mainly from the Eight Banners of the Han Dynasty.

Because the Manchu and Mongolian Eight Banners controlled the army, most of the Manchu and Mongolian children who had mixed up to the top were the second generation who fled from Beijing and Tianjin, and even a few of them were the first generation who moved with their parents when they were young.

What is embarrassing is that the Han Eight Banners insist that they are Han Chinese, but the young Zhuang officials among them are also the main combatants. They are completely different from the Han Chinese in China today, who have received more than 30 years of nationalist education and have begun to reshape their national identity by blood; The Eight Banners of the Han Dynasty under the rule of the Manchu Qing Dynasty were still traditional and culturally distinctive. The concept of the country is still the traditional view of the world, this emperor of the Great Zhou Dynasty can do it, and of course the emperor of their Qing Dynasty can do it. For young civil officials, chasing the Central Plains is always the most worthwhile achievement.

Of course, because of the relationship of sinicization, it is impossible for Chinese diplomats in the Manchu regime not to win over a group of pro-Chinese forces, but this force will never be able to compete with the ambitions of the Central Plains.

Chinese diplomats, seeing the increasingly unfavorable situation in the Manchu court, had already sent a warning to the country, hoping that the country would be prepared to attack China with Russia once Russia entered the war.

At this time, the Greek king made a surprise visit to the Manchus, and the two had a secret meeting. No one knew the content of the talks, but then suddenly Emperor Daoguang began to refuse the British consul's request to see him, and began to alienate the British. One gets the impression that the British diplomatic activities in the Manchus seem to have failed.

This was extremely frustrating to the British, who saw in the emerging second generation of Manchu officials the ambition that the country had never lost, and that as long as there was ambition, it was impossible not to behave. If you want to behave, isn't the timing good enough? Their military strength was at its peak, and those officers who were the sons and daughters of the nobles, who had maintained their military ability under the training of the regular military academies, mainly in the wars that had never been broken, led the loyal tribal cavalry and the simple peasant infantry, they had a lot to do. And the British promised to provide them with weapons and equipment for 500,000 people, as well as financial assistance for them, what else do they have to worry about?

Could it be that the words of a king who had effected Greece and a prince who had no ambition in China changed the ambitions of the Manchu emperors? Let him be willing to give up this God-given opportunity!

The British felt that there must be another reason for this.