The Americans who were completely dead to the rescue of Houston once again proposed peace negotiations, but at this time the Ming army refused to negotiate, because it was very simple Deng Shicai's attitude was very resolute, he believed that the Ming army had paid a heavy price to completely surround the American troops in Houston, and if there was to negotiate, it must be after the end of this battle to be the most beneficial to the Ming Dynasty. Pen & Fun & Pavilion www.biquge.info

As for the Ming government, in fact, it also wants to negotiate at this time, because the domestic situation is also very unstable.

The anti-war sentiment among the people is growing louder and louder, including the public opinion that supported the war in the past and is also overwhelmingly opposed to the war, and how enthusiastically they advocated nationalism in the past, and how fiercely they support pacifism now.

The reason for this situation is that Daming's economy is in trouble.

In this war, Daming failed to get the support of the British financial community, because the British financial community is obviously closer to the United States, and the British and American financial giants can be said to be basically a group of people, Britain's largest investment object is the United States, the first exporter of British capital is the United States, and British financiers have a huge investment in the United States, so after the outbreak of the war, Britain directly provided financing to the United States, not Daming.

The French had fought a war with the Ming Dynasty for a few years, and they were not willing to provide financing for the Ming, and German financial capital was more willing to cooperate with the United States. It can be said that in the financial war, Daming lost to the American financial forces from the very beginning. As a result, they can only rely on domestic debt.

The Ming government has issued two billion treasury bonds in five times, although the treasury bonds can still be sold, after all, the Ming army has always maintained a dominant position, and the winner's bonds are not worried about selling, but the interest rate is also getting higher and higher, and it has reached nine percent.

Interest rates are not the most terrible, war is a project that does not consider costs, the past practice is that the loser will pay for all costs in the end, and the most terrible thing now is the problem of economic collapse.

First of all, the war completely cut off the United States, the second largest export market of the Ming Dynasty, and the export of raw silk and tea fell into difficulties, affecting the livelihoods of millions of people. What is even more terrible is that the war caused a financial crisis, which had been spreading since 1890, and was exacerbated by the fact that the export market fell by more than a quarter after the outbreak of a war. But a deeper crisis in the country finally erupted in the third year of the war.

The biggest cause of this crisis is financial. As a result of the financing of the war, most of the floating capital in the market was withdrawn, and because of the war, the deformed heavy industry that had been stimulated by the war in recent years was once again put into the war, and more than eighty percent of the machinery industry forces were invested in the production of weapons and equipment, and the heavy industry made a fortune, but the light industry fell into the dilemma of investment and profitability.

Investment is obviously insufficient, because the price of machinery and equipment has skyrocketed, Daming machinery enterprises are processing lucrative munitions, no one has the heart to produce machinery and equipment, the result is a large number of imported expensive foreign equipment, on the other hand, the economic crisis makes the profits of the light industry itself very low, the increase in costs and the reduction of profits make the light industry prohibitive, the old equipment that should be replaced can not be replaced, the necessary expenses that should maintain production can not be raised, a wide range of factories are closed, and workers are unemployed.

In addition to the basic characteristics of these economic crises, they are accompanied by financial crises, in which prices fall in the market, and the price decline is often worse than the price increase, which means deflation. The reason for deflation is the loss of a large number of precious metals, although the Ming currency has been paper-money, but the issuance of the Ming Dynasty is based on gold. Through financing, the state spends a large amount of money on the import of strategic goods, such as iron ore, coal mines, and copper ores and ingots, which consume huge quantities. This has led to the loss of tens of millions of taels of gold every year, and the loss of gold will reduce the issuance of paper money, and the shortage of money in the market will inevitably lead to the passage of contraction.

The Ming government was unwilling to issue paper money at the cost of another collapse of the currency, so all these shocks made the economic system stiff, when an economy that had just entered the industrialization suddenly undertook almost all kinds of economic crises, in fact, the collapse is not far away.

More than 30 percent of the cotton mills have stopped production, 40 percent of the silk reeling factories and silk factories have been suspended, nearly 2 million industrial workers have lost their livelihoods, most of them have returned to the countryside, but hundreds of thousands of them are still wandering in the cities, looking for their jobs, theft and robbery incidents are frequent, Guangzhou has been under martial law three times, and began to declare a long-term curfew.

While the economy is sluggish, the government still has to keep taxes high, not intending to use taxes to support this war, to be honest, the era of fighting wars without borrowing money has long passed, but if you don't maintain a healthy finance, why let the financial market lend you money? Maintaining stable tax revenue is to give confidence to the financial market and support the government's credit. This is the reason why Western governments pay heavy taxes during wartime, but in fact, most of their investment is not based on taxes.

If the economy is in a recession and heavy taxes are being levied, there is only one result, and that is to force the economy to become even more sluggish. The merchants, who bear the vast majority of taxes, have carried out many actions to put the market in place. All walks of life are anti-war, and this war is actually almost impossible to fight.

However, Deng Shicai's suggestion, Zhu Jinglun decided to support it, the reason is very simple, there have been too many examples in history of giving up after only one step away from winning the province. If during World War I, Tsarist Russia could hold out for another year, or even only a few months, until the United States entered the war, I am afraid they would not have collapsed. Then the Tsarist Empire will take the Turkish straits, which they have dreamed of for a long time, and completely improve the geopolitical disadvantage of the Russian nation. But in just a few months, they made a revolution.

In Chinese history, after the Battle of Changping, Bai Qi advocated destroying Zhao in one go, but the king of Qin refused, and as a result, he went to attack the capital of Zhao the next year and returned defeated, delaying the unification of the six kingdoms of Qin for at least several decades.

But Zhu Jinglun was also extremely worried, and the example of Tsarist Russia was a counterexample. He thought more about why King Qin Zhaoxiang ordered Bai Qi to withdraw his troops on the premise of destroying all the elite troops of Zhao State, and the reason was not that Qin's national strength was also exhausted, and all the young people in the country went to the front line. He had to face a huge problem and keep going, with the possibility of a great victory, or the possibility of his country being dragged down.

Faced with great risks and benefits, King Qin chose to avoid risks, and as a result, Qin's cause of destroying the Six Kingdoms was greatly delayed, and even caused King Qin Zhaoxiang to lose the opportunity to dominate the world during his reign. But if King Qin Zhaoxiang chose to insist, who would dare to guarantee that the situation of the tsar more than a thousand years later would not happen in the Qin State. In other words, if the Tsars, seeing that the situation could not hold on, no longer reluctantly continued the war, but chose an armistice, even if Russia lost the opportunity to break through the straits and the Tsarist regime was maintained, their strategic situation after the war would not be worse than during the Soviet period.

What is now in front of Zhu Jinglun is such a dilemma.

Therefore, although he supported Deng Shicai's opinion, he began to intervene in the war again, and he told Deng Shicai that he could only give him three months, and within three months, if the Houston fighting was not ended, the government would negotiate with the United States without a decisive victory.

There are only three months left for Deng Shicai.

Deng Shicai was very depressed after receiving the recovery in China.

He felt that he had seen the dawn of an unprecedented glorious victory, but he also saw the possibility of this brilliant victory slipping away in front of him.

He was in great pain, and it was no longer a matter of forcible order for the army to attack, but as long as he could continue to hold on, the chance of victory was inevitable.

What to do?

Deng Shicai couldn't sleep all night, he had insomnia all night, he felt that he was a lot older, although his hair was not white overnight, but a lot of hair fell out.

But he was still waiting, after all, there were still three months, and although every day was torment, he was still suffering.

He hoped that he could survive the US army, because the situation of the US army was not good, and after the failure of the breakout battle, there was finally a situation where the US soldiers secretly surrendered, and Deng Shicai also learned that the situation inside the US army was not as bad as he imagined.

Although it is true that there have been cases of organized refusal to attack, and there are mostly black troops, all of whom are white, but the soldiers are all black, and there have been many cases where black soldiers have been suppressed for disobeying white officers. But black soldiers make up only a tiny minority in Houston, and there are only about 200,000 black soldiers in the two million American troops, only one-tenth.

The U.S. military's material reserves are extremely rich, and although the munitions have begun to run short, the food reserves are extremely abundant, enough for them to eat for a year. In the United States, a major grain exporter, Houston was a wartime material transit point before it was surrounded, and at the same time, during the Ming army's attack on Houston, the United States sent too much grain here, and it was obviously unrealistic to force them to surrender by running out of food.

This situation made Deng Shicai very worried.

But the low morale of the American army gave him a glimmer of hope, and the shelling of Houston continued every day, which had become routine, but fewer and fewer shells were being fired, and more and more leaflets were being fired.

Write a letter of persuasion to the US troops, telling them that they will be treated well if they surrender, and that if they do not surrender, there is only one way to die in battle, exhaustion, and disease. Tell the U.S. soldiers that they have been abandoned by the U.S. government. There was no hope that they would be able to save their lives by surrendering.

They also persuaded or forcibly ordered some surrendered soldiers to sneak back to Houston to persuade more soldiers to surrender, of course, most of these people ended badly, basically there was no return, and most of them were executed on the spot by the US military police, but the information they brought back was enough to make the US soldiers have a trace of illusion.