The prospect of this canal is not only valued by the Chinese, but also by the Egyptians, and by the Europeans.

Even in the era when there was no canal, Egypt has always played the role of a commercial channel, because for the Mediterranean countries, the distance to Asia by sea is too far, from Italy, Venice and other places to India by sea, than directly to Egypt, almost more than 80% of the route, which is why after the opening of the new route, the world trade route quickly shifted from the Mediterranean to the Atlantic, the Netherlands, Britain with the help of this east wind quickly rose, replacing the role of Venice and other cities in the past between the East and the West.

Therefore, when the shipping route was transferred to the Atlantic, Venice and other Italian cities declined rapidly, and they still had to rely on commerce to make a living, and they were still trying to maintain this land commercial route, but they could not recover their former strength.

Now the Chinese have suddenly announced that they are going to build a canal connecting the Red Sea and the Mediterranean, which makes the Mediterranean countries unhappy, which means that the commercial routes will pass through their countries again, their prosperity will be restored just around the corner, and their trade routes to Asia will be closer than London and the Netherlands.

After the news was confirmed, real estate in Venice, Genoa and even Marseille in France, Florence in Italy and other places near the port began to rise.

All the Italian commercial cities, the French port cities on the Mediterranean coast, and even the Russian cities on the Black Sea coast are discussing the opportunities that the construction of this canal will bring to their development.

Only the British, who had lost out to the Chinese in their political offensive against Egypt and had begun to fool the Ottoman Empire. Tell the Ottomans that once this canal is opened, Cairo will quickly replace Istanbul as the center of the Muslim world.

However, at this time, the Ottoman Empire, in the Napoleonic Wars, was beaten by the Russians again, making them at war with China again, and they absolutely did not want to come forward unless Britain promised to provide full support. Mahmud II, the thirtieth sultan of the Ottoman Empire who ascended the throne in 1808, had in mind that the greatest enemy was not a foreign enemy, but the Janisseri army, which had been interfering in the Ottoman government. The former Sultan was even assassinated by military forces for trying to absorb the advanced experience of Europe to reform the country.

If it is said that it is impossible to convince the Asian countries to oppose the canal, and the British cannot even convince the European countries, the British are beginning to feel a little panicked, their influence in Europe is so weak, almost empty of the reputation of a great power, and almost no influence on the continental countries.

The French will benefit from this canal, they are not against it, Spain will also benefit from this canal, and they are not against it, then the Prussia, the Baltic and the Nordic countries, which will be damaged by the opening of this canal, which will lead to the diversion of the great shipping route, they are not far from standing up against it.

In fact, Britain is really embarrassed for these countries, just woke up from Napoleon's nightmare, all countries are licking the pain of the war, they are not like Britain, has been isolated from Europe, but paid a lot of money for losses, a war in addition to increasing hundreds of millions of pounds in debt, but played a Europe's strongest heavy industry system.

Other countries were either ravaged by Napoleon's armies, or their economies withered and nearly bankrupt under Napoleon's continental blockade policy, and it was only a fool to let them come forward to cooperate with Britain's international policy. It is understandable that Britain paid for the war with Napoleon, and they paid for it, after all, they protected their own territory, but now they want to send troops to continue to send the British to death overseas with the British naval expedition?

If military means are not considered, the influence of other European countries in Asia will really be gone. Where they can help the UK, there is very little.

The British would have no choice but to go to war with China alone, and then risk an all-out war with China on land and sea at the risk of India's growing interests. The British did not think about the land war, they were bound to be defeated, and the Russians were an example, they were beaten by the Chinese with a million troops in the heart of Russia, and the British could not squeeze out a million troops by killing them, and their manpower could not do it to this extent. They were confident of victory in the naval battle, but China's increasingly large fleet made Britain feel very dangerous, and if the British navy suffered too much loss in the battle with the Chinese navy, how could it continue to ensure naval superiority in Europe.

So when diplomacy and politics failed, Britain began to sit on the sidelines to see if the canal could be opened and how much impact it would have on Britain.

Of course, the British did not really do nothing, they kept a lot of back-up, after the Napoleonic Wars, they and each established sea power in the Mediterranean, a ruined Spain, a divided Italy, and a dying France, all posed no threat to Britain, and the Mediterranean is now the British sea.

Not only do they occupy the island of Malta, which is at the heart of the Mediterranean, but they also occupy Gibraltar, the main route from the Mediterranean to the Atlantic, and they control Portugal.

In particular, it was important for Britain to control Portugal, a country with exports from the Atlantic Ocean on one side and the Mediterranean Sea on the other. The British weren't really interested in continental Europe, but they didn't want to get involved in too many wars in Europe.

Countries like Portugal, which are easy to control and which have long maintained close political and economic ties with the UK, are of great interest to the UK. So after defeating Napoleon, the British army did not withdraw from Portugal, and kept 100,000 troops stationed in Portugal.

And with the military as a backing, he supported a Directory in Portugal, and the Portuguese royal family could only stay in Brazil and could not return. This move has caused both the dissatisfaction of the Portuguese royal family and the political forces loyal to the royal family in Portugal, but the British are unmoved, because Portugal is really powerless to resist the British. This led to an uprising, with Portuguese liberals coming to power and Brazilians rebelling against the king and demanding independence.

The canal was built in 1815, the second year after the end of the Napoleonic Wars, and they recruited a large number of excellent river workers from China, who had extremely rich construction experience in the fields of harnessing the Yellow River and canals, building water conservancy facilities, etc., many of whom were descendants of the younger generation of river workers, who had studied with the French for nearly ten years, on the one hand, they were rich in traditional experience, and on the other hand, they had learned modern scientific knowledge.

For most of them, digging the Suez Canal is no easier task than maintaining the Grand Canal and harnessing the Yellow River.

As a result, the construction speed is unusually fast, and many of the engineering and technical problems encountered by the French in the construction of the canal in history, these river workers have long mastered the relevant solving skills, such as the problem of quicksand, by driving two groups of wooden piles on the sand, and then solving the problem of quicksand collapse.

The Governor of Egypt, Governor Ali, was the founding king of a dynasty, a man whose prestige and ability and power over the country were unmatched by later kings, and he conscripted 300,000 Egyptian laborers. These laborers, under the command of 3,000 Chinese river workers, were paid better than the historical French workers.

Historically, when France dug this canal, on the one hand, the white people did not take the lives of Egyptians seriously, and on the other hand, they mainly did not have the knowledge and experience to organize such a large project of hundreds of thousands of people working at the same time, but in the process of controlling the Yellow River, the Chinese river workers often worked together in several counties, and 300,000 people were not many. Chinese managers also pay more attention to the protection of workers, not because they have more conscience, but because of the problem of river repair, which has triggered too many peasant uprisings. The Beijing-Hangzhou Grand Canal is an example, and the peasant uprising at the end of the Yuan Dynasty was not the first to break out from the river construction site, and the laborers dug up a stone man, which has three eyes......

The experience of ensuring the basic living materials of the engineering team was mastered by China River Gongmen, and the funds to ensure the basic needs of 300,000 people were solved by the Chinese European company through the issuance of bonds.

Since the prospect of this canal is optimistic about the world, as long as it can be repaired, everyone thinks that it is a hen that lays golden eggs, so they are willing to invest. But it is impossible to buy stocks, and bonds have opportunities.

European companies were given the right to issue bonds in China and Europe, and only Britain refused to issue canal bonds in London, no matter how strong the creditworthiness of the bonds was, the British government simply did not approve the issuance.

As a result, European companies had to issue bonds in Paris, France, and Amsterdam, the Netherlands, and investors in both places enthusiastically bought them. Even a large number of British banks rushed to buy bonds in both places, and the price of the bonds soon exceeded par value.

In the end, the European company managed to raise 100 million pounds of capital at a low interest rate of five cents. Historically, the French built the Suez Canal at a cost of 400 million francs, and the franc at that time was the franc of the Latin Monetary Union, and the gold content was 0.2903225 grams of gold or 4.5 grams of silver, 1 pound is equivalent to 2.5 billion francs.

This cost is five times more expensive than when the French built the canal, but it succeeded in saving a lot of time, the French took ten years, the Chinese European company only two and a half years, the French died tens of thousands, and the Chinese company kept the death toll below 10,000.

The British had just signed an agreement with China on Australia's replacement of India when they received the news of the opening of the Suez Canal.

Under the special arrangement of the Chinese European Company, there were fleets waiting to cross the river in order, the first fleets went to the French port of Marseille, some to the port of Venice under the Austrian Empire, some to Barcelona in Spain, and even tried to cross the Dardanelles to the Black Sea, but none of them went to England.

The open and covert struggle between China and Britain over the canal has only just begun.