Hong Tianguifu had already taken Hong Xiuquan's head and Li Rongfa and other Taiping Army veterans on a cruise ship to the Americas, and at this time, the whole world was still debating whether the Ming Dynasty would choose to the United States and whether it would dare to declare war on the United States. Pen × fun × Pavilion www. ｂｉｑｕｇｅ。 ｉｎｆｏ

Whether you dare or not is not a problem in the Ming Dynasty, but in the West, in Europe, in the United States it is a problem.

The Ming Dynasty's repulsion of the powerful France in Vietnam did shock the whole world for a while, and the Yellow Peril was immediately raised, but then with the soothing of time, Westerners slowly forgot about it, and some afterthought military experts began to stand up and deny the defeat of France, because the defeat of France is the defeat of the entire white people, especially the French who denied it the most.

They attributed the reason for their defeat entirely to geographical disadvantages and the chaos of the political situation in France, and the French began to refuse to admit that they had lost the battle on the battlefield, and they came up with a lot of data to speak.

After the fiasco of the naval battle, they said that it was mainly the old French cruisers that were sunk by the Ming Dynasty, and the French capital ships were basically intact, and they did not mention that the reason why the main force of their navy still existed was because they did not dare to come out of Da Nang even a single step.

Compared with the pale reason for the navy's defeat, the army's evidence of denying defeat is much harder, because they found that in the final battle damage statistics, the Ming army suffered 300,000 casualties, of which 100,000 were killed, 200,000 were wounded, and 50,000 died of wounded, which means that the Ming paid for 150,000 lives; The French lost only 200,000 men, less than 70,000 killed on the battlefield, 50,000 captured, and 80,000 wounded, of whom 30,000 died from wounded. France only died 100,000 people in total, but it cost the Ming 150,000, and all this was achieved when the French army was far less powerful than the Ming Dynasty, so the French army did not admit defeat.

The mentality of the French is easy to understand, the defeat of the Franco-Prussian War has dealt a great blow to their national confidence, and they were defeated by Germany, which has been pressed and bullied by themselves for hundreds of years, just like the national psychology of the Manchu Qing Dynasty after being defeated by Japan, but now it has been defeated by an Eastern country, and admitting this defeat is already a burden that the French nation cannot bear.

Therefore, a large number of French experts denied that the defeat was a failure of the war itself, but attributed it to a political and diplomatic failure, just as the Germans never admitted defeat after World War I, and the Japanese never admitted defeat to China after World War II.

And the French government, for the sake of political stability, has also vigorously promoted the argument that France has not failed.

France itself has a great cultural influence in Europe, and in the control of European public opinion, it is only inferior to Britain and has a strong influence, so the French say is very popular in Europe, that is, France has not failed.

Because the army was concerned about casualties, Zhu Jinglun did not intend to completely drive France out of Cochinchina out of diplomatic considerations, and he needed France to temporarily put pressure on Vietnam to bring Vietnam closer to the Ming Dynasty, and the result was that the army never launched a general offensive against the encircled enemy.

And the victory of the navy was far less complete than the victory of the Japanese against the Russian navy, so it is still unconvincing for the Europeans to recognize that the Ming Dynasty has won an absolute victory.

Coupled with the fact that white supremacy racism was on the rise at this time, Europeans generally did not recognize the victory of the Ming Dynasty.

So although they were shocked, they did not see the Ming as a country that could compete head-on with the European industrial powers, even if someone recognized the defeat of France, nor did they recognize the strength of the Ming Dynasty, it was just a failure, and the British went to attack Afghanistan and wiped out the whole army, which was worse than the defeat of the French army, who would think that Afghanistan was a powerful country?

Therefore, they suspected that the Ming would not dare to declare war on the United States at all.

For the first time, the United States at this time, which was in the era of the fastest development, caused a strong impact in Europe, and before the Ming Dynasty, the most popular theory in Europe was the American threat theory.

Because the United States has been affected by the speed of development of the United States, the demonization of the United States by European public opinion circles has been very prevalent as early as the Civil War.

During the American Civil War, the theory of "clash of civilizations" emerged in Europe, advocating the clash of Anglo-Saxon civilizations and Roman and Latin civilizations. There is a pamphlet entitled "Pan-Latinism – The Necessity of an Alliance between the Confederacy and France", which clearly proposes a clash of three civilizations, "three forces, forces and civilizations that today develop and try to divide the world, and this is Russian Slavism, Anglo-Saxonism and Gallic Latinism". France is the representative of the Roman-Latin civilization, Britain and the United States are the Anglo-Saxon civilization, and the United States mainly represents the bad aspects of the Anglo-Saxon civilization.

At this time, the theory of "axis of evil" also appeared, claiming that Lincoln cooperated with the Russian tsar to form the axis of evil in the world, because Russia supported Lincoln to fight the South at that time, and the mainstream public opinion in Europe at this time believed that Tsarist Russia was the most evil country in the world, and it was evil to combine with him.

After the Civil War, the United States rose rapidly. The United States quickly surpassed all European countries in industrial power, and Europe began to worry about the American threat. In the aftermath of the Spanish-American War, this argument finally exploded, and in 1899 Octav Noel wrote a book, The American Scourge, arguing that the United States had "just taken a new step toward global interventionism—a small step in Cuba and a giant in Manila," and that the United States had "always had a deep hostility toward the Old World," which had now finally erupted. "Everywhere in the world, the United States will soon inevitably come into conflict with Europe".

Although the Spanish-American War had not yet broken out, Europe's previous perception of forces outside Europe was mainly worried about the threat of the United States.

At the same time, the United States is at least a white country, is the representative of the Anglo-Saxon civilization, the United States not only fought with Britain many times in history and was not completely defeated, but also proved itself through a civil war has the ability to organize a large-scale army, plus the United States has a population of up to 60 million, strong industrial strength, Europe feels that the power of the United States is far greater than the Ming, so it is very doubtful that the Ming really dares to declare war on the United States.

The United States also has this suspicion, otherwise their president would not dare to risk signing that letter, even if he chooses to resign, he will not choose war.

Because in the eyes of the Americans, although the Ming Dynasty defeated France, although it proved its strength, but the Ming Dynasty defeated France at home, and the United States would not stupidly run to the East to fight against the Ming, they did not believe that the Ming had the ability to cross the ocean to attack the United States.

For countries other than the United Kingdom, whether it is the Pacific Ocean or the Atlantic, it is an insurmountable barrier.

If the Ming also crossed the ocean to attack the United States, the Americans thought that they had the ability to make the Ming fleet come and go, and they really couldn't imagine how the Ming fleet could rush to the American coast without an intermediate base.

Therefore, American politicians generally believe that the biggest means of the Ming Dynasty is nothing more than the severance of diplomatic relations and the withdrawal of the embassy, and the most that the United States has lost is some commercial interests, and then they can negotiate with the Ming Dynasty and finally give the Ming a certain amount of compensation, and the two sides can restore diplomatic and trade relations.

That's what they were going to do.

But distance is really a problem, the French Navy's cruisers are generally equipped with sails, because of the consideration of saving coal for ocean voyages, in fact, the world's warships, except for Britain completely abandoned the sails, other countries have maintained the design of sails, American warships have sails, German warships have sails, Russian warships also have sails, even the warships before the Ming Dynasty are mostly with sails.

The reason why the new ships built during the war with France did not have sails, the first is because the Ming naval officers are mainly from the British military academy, influenced by the British naval combat theory, that the pure steam-powered warships have a greater advantage over the sail warships, and the second is that the Ming Dynasty at that time was seriously lacking confidence in whether it could defeat the French navy, after all, the French navy at that time was too powerful for the Ming Dynasty, and to fight against the world's second largest navy, everyone thought that they should seize any small technical advantage. Therefore, the design of the British warship was fully adopted.

However, the main fleet of pure steam power greatly affects the endurance, although the capital ship of the Ming Dynasty, in the case of full load of coal, low-speed cruise, theoretically endurance of up to 5000 nautical miles, but still can not cross more than 6000 nautical miles of the Pacific channel, and this is only the theoretical endurance, it is impossible to guarantee the theoretical state in the war, even in the safety state does not dare to guarantee, because once the warship leaves the port, it will have to fight against the wind and waves at sea, and different wind directions will affect the combustion efficiency of the boiler. Therefore, when the Ming fleet sailed to the coast of the Americas, it was necessary to refuel at least once, and it was best to refuel twice when it was safe to do so.

As for the shipping route to the Americas, the Ming Navy is very familiar, because the Ming has an Alaskan colony in the Americas, where the navy has been stationed in a small detachment, before the winter will go south for the winter, in addition, during the disaster relief period, a large number of merchant ships of the Ming Dynasty also sailed through the Sino-American route.

Now that this route has been mastered, the vast ocean is not an obstacle, just a little troublesome. For example, you need to make a stop in Japan once. It's better to do it in Tokyo, or in Hakodate, and you can go straight to the Americas in one go.

But the question is, once the war breaks out, will Japan be forced by the neutrality law to prohibit the Ming fleet from entering Japanese ports?

It was as if the French fleet rushed to Vietnam from Europe, when the French navy was not allowed to be stationed in British ports. However, the Ming found the support of the port in Siam and achieved a huge war advantage.

Therefore, obtaining the support of Japan and allowing the Ming fleet to use the Japanese ports will be quite important for this war, and all this will require diplomatic means to achieve.