Guangxu could only transfer Weng Tongshu to assist in the defense of Tianjin, Weng Tongshu and a literati who knew what military affairs, and had never been liked by the officers of the Xianghuai Group, as a result, the army he transferred was not willing to sell his life at all, and the angry Weng Tongshu jumped to his feet and scolded, but there was no way, and he transferred a unit to artillery without waiting for the enemy to come, and the Japanese soldiers took Tianjin City bloodlessly, which was easier than the British and French coalition forces back then. Pen "Fun" Pavilion www.biquge.info

Weng Tongshu did not wait for the Japanese to hit Tongzhou, he himself ran back to Beiqicheng, he said that the gang of bastards in the Xianghuai army refused to sell their lives, they were all instructed by Li Hongzhang, and asked the emperor to take Li Hongzhang.

Emperor Guangxu said that at this time, it was useless to talk about Li Hongzhang, and the top priority was to quickly find someone to resist the enemy, or negotiate peace, and he wanted Weng Tongshu to negotiate with Japan, but Weng Tongshu would rather die than give in, saying that he would fight to the death with the Japanese to the end, and refused to bear the notoriety to negotiate with Japan.

The Japanese army was approaching the north step by step, and a group of Manchu princes and ministers were in a hurry, and they took turns to cry in front of the emperor and the empress dowager, but Cixi said that she had returned to the emperor and asked them all to go to the emperor.

The emperor had a half-dime solution, and in a hurry, he also ran to kneel and beg the emperor's father to come out of the mountain, Cixi reluctantly came out, and immediately sent someone to find Li Hongzhang and told Li Hongzhang that now is not the time to be hypocritical, and if you are hypocritical, this country is going to be over.

At this time, Li Hongzhang saw that the situation was not good, and he didn't dare to continue to screw it, but he knew that he didn't have any good fruit to eat when he went out of the mountain, so he wrote a letter and recommended Liu Kunyi, the governor of Liangjiang.

Cixi immediately adopted this opinion, transferred Liu Kunyi, the governor of Liangjiang, to supervise the military affairs inside and outside the Guan, gave him full power to command the military affairs inside and outside the Guan, and appointed Wu Dacheng, the governor of Hunan, and Song Qing, the governor of Sichuan, as assistants. Among these people, in addition to Wu Dahan, who was born as a Jinshi, Liu Kunyi was born in the suppression of the Taiping Army, and was the governor of Liangjiang, and was a general under Zeng Guofan, who could rely on military merits to reach the position of governor, and only Zeng Guoquan and other figures could do it, but unfortunately Zeng Guoquan died a few years ago, otherwise he was the best candidate. Song Qing was born in the Huai Army, but he did not follow Li Hongzhang, mainly served under the governor of Anhui, but by virtue of his identity as an Anhui person, he could also be recognized by the Huai Army.

There are these two veterans who are proficient in military affairs, and soon reorganized military discipline, the Hunan and Chu army stopped the Japanese army in Tongzhou, and the two sides launched a fierce fight, and finally the Japanese army of Bushido crushed the brave Hunan people, and the people alone have been unable to defeat the highly organized modern army, but their performance is much better than the Eight Banners and the Huai Army, they not only did not run, but also played the characteristics of the Hunan army good at defense, and killed and wounded a large number of Japanese people with machine guns and artillery, the battle was calm for two months, and the Japanese army lost 30,000 troops, More casualties than the Japanese army has suffered since the beginning of the war combined.

But this battle also caused heavy losses to the Hunan and Chu army, and the Hunan and Chu army, which had been hit hard, were defeated by the four fields at this time, looting everywhere, and even happened that several princes fled from the north to the west, and were hijacked by the Hunan army.

At this time, the whole Beiqi people were panicked, because Tianjin was occupied, there was only one way to flee to the south, that is, the Jinghan Railway, but there were too many people to squeeze it out. Moreover, I heard that the Japanese fleet has entered the Yangtze River, and everyone does not dare to run to Wuhan, many people choose to take the car to Henan to get off, and those who can't get in the car plan to run west, the traditional route of the Eight Banners nobles is to run to Zhangjiakou and go to Chengde to escape the summer, and the emperor is called a hunting patrol.

At this time, the magnates not only wanted to run their own way, but they also had the queen mother and the emperor in their hearts, and encouraged the queen mother and the emperor to run together.

Cixi was also a little flustered, where did she think that the Japanese were so able to fight, how could they hit the Beijing Division, he still wanted to let the little emperor play, he had enough fun, he knew that he was two pounds, and he would not toss, she should hang the curtains, listen to the government, and there would be no noise from the ministers, who would have thought that the game would be so big.

If you can run Cixi Of course she didn't want to run, he sent someone to greet Li Hongzhang, it's time for peace talks.

Li Hongzhang still did not go out of the mountain, he advocated moving the capital to fight again, and also recommended Weng Tongshu to lead the troops.

Isn't this nonsense, let the university scholar lead the troops, in this life, in addition to writing articles and saying big things, how can he have this ability. Cixi knew that Li Hongzhang was angry, if it weren't for Weng Tongshu's impeachment, he would not have been deposed, and now she is begging Li Hongzhang, and Li Hongzhang is waiting for an opportunity to retaliate.

Cixi also saw that this group of imperial parties was not pleasing to the eye, and immediately convened a court meeting, reprimanding Weng Tongshu and other officials for blindly fighting the main battle, misleading the country and the people, and questioning Weng Tongshu and beheading him. At the same time, he took the opportunity to crack down on a large number of imperial party elements, including some Eight Banner magnates who could not recognize the situation clearly and stood on the side of Guangxu.

After quickly killing Weng Tongshu, and then going to invite Li Hongzhang, Cixi knew that at this time, there was no other way but to negotiate peace. The Eight Banners are unreliable, even if they recruit another 200,000 Eight Banners, what role can they play in addition to letting the Japanese take prisoners, the Xianghuai Army is disabled, and it is too late to recruit temporarily. As for the garrison Eight Banners and Green Battalion soldiers scattered all over the country, they have no combat effectiveness, and they can only compare with the Eight Banners New Army.

So there can only be peace talks.

Please Li Hongzhang go out of the mountain, the official will be reinstated, he is still the minister of Beiyang, the governor of Zhili, and he also has full powers, and he will be rewarded with a yellow coat, what? I've already appreciated it, so let's change it and wear it.

This time, Li Hongzhang no longer held it, and immediately came forward to negotiate with the Japanese minister.

The Japanese have wanted to talk for a long time, they can't fight anymore, the domestic economy is on the verge of collapse, the common people are hungry, and there is a commotion all day long, these people will definitely cheer if they win, but they can't fight the result, they can't starve to death.

Britain has already owed more than a billion debts, everything that can be mortgaged has been mortgaged, tariffs, railways, and coal mines have all been mortgaged to the counters of British capitalists, and once defeated, it is equivalent to selling Japan to Britain.

The Qing Dynasty dragged on and didn't talk about it, the Manchu Dynasty civil and military forces of the Qing Dynasty continued to eat fragrant and spicy food, and the Japanese emperor had to drink gruel to survive.

Therefore, Japan is even more anxious, and they don't dare to fight Beiqi in a hurry, for fear that if they are in a hurry, these people will run away and have nowhere to talk to someone.

The newspapers in Japan were clamoring to destroy the Manchu Qing Dynasty and rule the Central Plains, but the Japanese government knew too well that whoever could accept Japanese rule over the Central Plains, at least the terrible Ming Dynasty in the south could not agree.

So they warmly received Li Hongzhang and escorted Li Hongzhang to Maguan with the main force of the Japanese fleet to negotiate with Ito Hirobumi.

During the negotiations, in order to level the gap with Li Hongzhang, who was tall, Ito Hirofumi deliberately let Li Hongzhang sit on a low chair, and Li Hongzhang didn't care.

The Japanese opened their mouths, they demanded that the Manchus cede Manchuria, Shandong, and Tianjin to Japan, basically they wanted all the land occupied by Japan, and they also wanted the places that they occupied and the border they occupied, not only land, but also money, and they took the treaty between the Ming Dynasty and the United States as a reference, and demanded two billion pounds in compensation, they said that the United States was a big country, and the Qing Dynasty was also a big country, and they could afford to pay for it.

In addition, they also wanted markets and privileges, and demanded that the Manchus open Wuhu, Shashi and other places as ports, and that the Manchus allow Japanese merchants to set up factories and open mines in the interior; Claim extraterritoriality, claim possession of the concession.

Almost all the privileges that foreigners have obtained from the Manchus in the past half century, Japan cannot be less, and it wants more.

Li Hongzhang was directly dumbfounded, Shandong, Tianjin, and Northeast China were all ceded to Japan, and he had to be beaten to death when he went back.

So Li Hongzhang dragged and delayed, and counted a sum of money with the Japanese.

Ito Hirobumi was domineering and told Li Hongzhang to either agree or continue to fight.

Li Hongzhang said that he did not have full power and could not be the master, but the Japanese told Li Hongzhang that he could send a telegram at any time.

There are always some patriotic young people who do not want to see the peace of their own government, since they have already hit Bei Yacheng, why not occupy Bei Ya and occupy the Central Plains, they also published a road map in the newspaper, and if they occupy the Central Plains, they will have the capital to compete with the Ming Dynasty for hegemony in China, and if they compete for hegemony in China, they will have the capital to dominate the world.

Therefore, in the eyes of some patriots, peace is absolutely unattainable, so an accidental and inevitable incident occurred, Li Hongzhang was assassinated, shot in the face, and did not die.

There were also patriots in the Manchu Qing Dynasty, who praised the good killing, and this kind of traitor should be killed, and he should not have made peace talks, he should continue to fight, but he hated but did not kill.

Li Hongzhang was injured and began to refuse to negotiate, envoys from various countries came to visit, and Ito Hirobumi came to apologize.

The Ming envoy also came to visit him and told him the news that in the countryside of Anhui, his family's ancestral grave was almost dug up, and said that once he signed an excessive treaty, his ancestral grave would definitely be dug up, and he would never want to enter the ancestral grave after his death.

Li Hongzhang is under a lot of pressure.

The British envoy persuaded Li Hongzhang to sign a treaty as soon as possible and restore peace, otherwise Japan would likely take Beijing.

Li Hongzhang had no choice but to continue the negotiations, and this time Japan made concessions, and when he heard that Britain had done the work from it, he told the Japanese that they were too greedy.

Japan gave up a large number of demands for the cession of land, no longer demanded the cession of the whole of Manchuria, only demanded the cession of the Liaodong Peninsula, no longer wanted Shandong, and did not want Tianjin, because Tianjin was the stronghold of the great powers, and Britain told Japan that unless Japan wanted to offend Britain and France, it would not move Tianjin's mind, and Japan instead demanded the cession of Changli County.

In terms of reparations, Japan also made a large concession, demanding only one billion pounds in reparations, which was half of the original demand.

In terms of privileges, there were no concessions, and it was clear that the more Japan demanded, the more the powers could be equalized, so why oppose it.

Li Hongzhang saw that he was worth so much to take a shot, and he wanted to agree, but he didn't dare to agree, he was really afraid that the ancestral grave would be dug up, as for the patriots who dug his ancestral graves, or the people of the Ming Dynasty, he didn't want to dig deeper, the ghost knew if there were any patriots, but he was already afraid at this time, he felt that the demise of the Manchu country was a foregone conclusion, he either chose to be a loyal minister to accompany the burial, or chose to keep himself and his family's wealth.

I don't know how he chose it, but the telegram from Cixi's side was already in a hurry, because the Japanese began to attack the city.