Defeated!

At the end of 1862, just as the British wanted to welcome Christmas as usual, a telegram came from Dublin, albeit a secret message, but soon the ubiquitous newspaper reporters learned of the news through many sources, and they immediately published the news in the newspapers. Pen "Fun" Pavilion www.biquge.info

Of course, there was a fresh phrase in all the newspapers - "the fog of death" or "the breath of death", and it was this poison gas that led to the debacle in Dublin.

In normal times, there might have been someone to hold the leak accountable, but this time, surprisingly, no one held the newspaper accountable, and for 11 Downing Street, it was the news they needed right now.

This is especially true for Prime Minister Palmston, who has been called the "political tumbler", who needs poison gas, who needs this sensational weapon, which he needs to prove that failure is no personal fault of his own.

For Palmston, who has been on the rise since he stepped onto the political stage, it seems that he has always been able to keep himself in an undefeated position at any given time, and it is precisely because of this that he has been able to hold power in British politics for a long time. The various changes in the political world have been standing firm in the complex political arena, and he has been in the political arena for decades, which has an important relationship with his tumbler character who has always been good at catering to others and opportunistic. No matter what the moment comes, he will ensure that he is invincible, and his slick political skills and instinct to see the wind and steer the rudder are beyond the reach of the dust.

And now, of course, no exception, Dublin's defeat can be said to have put Palmston in an unprecedented crisis, and his political opponents can easily make him lose his prime ministership with just a light push.

But Palmston found the panacea for saving himself from the fire almost immediately from the telegrams he received from the front, and he realized that this was exactly what he needed, and he was even glad that the Chinese had used poison gas instead of a normal attack, poison gas, at least gave him a reason to escape responsibility.

Because China released poison gas in the early morning, the British troops who escaped by luck could not clearly describe what happened at that time, basically they felt poor breathing and stinging throats, just when they found that the fog was different from the usual, they suddenly found that the enemy on the other side of the battle line easily broke through, and then tens of thousands of Chinese drove towards them, and it was natural for the rear of the battle line to suddenly suffer such a blow and flee, All they could provide was that the troops on the front line had put up little resistance, or even no resistance at all, when the enemy began to attack. Tens of thousands of soldiers even died directly in the strange mist,

As Prime Minister, Palmston obtained very limited information about the truth, but everyone, including the generals at the front, put the blame on the poison gas, and it seems that for everyone, the only consensus is - it was the poison gas that defeated them, not the Chinese!

In order to shirk their responsibility for this heavy loss, both Palmston himself and the generals on the front line exaggerated the role of poison gas in this battle as much as possible, and in their description, this poison gas was simply the breath of Satan, which was not at all resistible to human beings, and it could even be said that once the poison gas was used, all people would be poisoned.

In order to be able to make it impossible for political opponents to attack, Palmston deliberately spread the news, and those news were half-truths, but this did not prevent those reporters from exaggerating its power, and all kinds of gossip soon spread throughout London, and soon everyone knew that the Chinese had a powerful weapon, plus the newspapers deliberately exaggerated the cruelty of this weapon, although they had not seen this weapon with their own eyes, but everyone was still full of fear of this weapon.

After all kinds of absurd rumors, the British generals did see the existence of a terrible weapon, which made them very worried, and now the morale of the British army is extremely low, and all the reasons for the defeat of the Battle of Dublin are finally reduced to two words - poison gas!

Whether it is the cabinet or the generals at the front, they have succeeded in putting most of the blame on the poison gas. Pushing the Chinese to the despicable use of this inhumane weapon, Palmston convinced his political enemies who tried to remove him from the prime minister's position and the British people who were indignant about the defeat, and with his incorruptible tongue, he once again successfully survived the difficulties and kept the position of prime minister. But what he definitely didn't expect was that when all this was over, another serious sequelae appeared.

The gossip about poison gas did not end with Palmston's success in escaping the crisis, but only intensified, and the whole of Britain was talking about poison gas and the fog of death, especially when the British soldiers who returned from Dublin returned home, which further contributed to the spread of this poison gas fear.

For those British soldiers who abandoned their comrades and responsibilities on the battlefield, they also need a reason to prove their helplessness, is there any better reason and excuse than poison gas? There is nothing more appropriate than poison gas.

At first, when they said that the poison gas would make people cough and gasp, it was just the cynicism of the people around them, the sarcasm of the people around them, as if this was the proof that they were cowards. Later, in order to prove that they were not cowards, the soldiers immediately began to add fuel to the blood, constantly telling people about how powerful the poison gas was.

The gas, which used to make people gas, immediately changed, in the midst of the gas, people would cough violently, and then their throats would melt - this is the reason why the dead would tear their throats, although this is only a very small number, poison gas can easily make people blind, of course, this is also there. Even poison gas can melt people's skin, and some burned soldiers become victims of poison gas.

It is under this exaggeration that poison gas has slowly evolved into a "weapon of destruction" with unprecedented power, which can even easily destroy the entire United Kingdom, and even in some distant countryside, people will be cautious to use "it" to describe poison gas, for fear that it will cause harm because it is also named.

It can be said that when 1863 arrived, the whole of Britain was in an unprecedented terror, and even some nervous Britons screamed loudly in fear at the sight of the fog, after all, everyone knew that it was the "fog of death" that appeared in Dublin.

The harm of these exaggerated gossip about poison gas is serious, and what is even more serious is that those British actually believe these things, not only ordinary Britons believe the rumors that Chinese poison gas can destroy everything, even many British scientists, also believe in the existence of this poison gas, otherwise, this simply cannot explain the casualties on the front line. And the stubborn character of the British in their bones makes them do everything possible to find various reasons to prove their correctness once they believe in something, and the first to prove the correctness of these rumors is not the reporters of the third-rate newspapers, but the chemists in various universities in Britain, because of the relationship between the poison gas, those chemists became the most concerned people in 1863, and almost every chemist will be questioned by others as soon as he goes out, asking what poison gas is and the power of poison gas.

In the face of these questions, the chemists' answers at the beginning were just "of course there is this possibility, some toxic gases are amazing, but they often only exist in the laboratory", but slowly, in people's continuous inquiries, they seem to believe this, believe that the Chinese do have a poisonous gas that they do not know, that poisonous gas can melt everything, of course, once believed, they will prove their correctness through various channels and convey to people what they believe”。

In less than a month, the morale of the British army and civilians fell to the bottom, and for a time defeatism began to spread rapidly throughout the British government and opposition. No one now dared to assure the population that Britain would be able to win the war. Everyone thinks that if they continue to fight with the Chinese who possess the terrifying poison gas, they will simply let the British go to death in vain, and in the face of the poison gas that can destroy everything, the British will not be able to win the final victory no matter how much they fight.

Many times, once the rumours have spread, they cannot be stopped, as is now for Palmston, when he knows that the whole of Britain is in a "gas panic", his first reaction is to rejoice, to rejoice in his own choice, as for the second reaction, it is a bit more complicated.

Now that the Irish resistance has failed - just after New Year's Day, in the face of the attack of the Sino-Irish coalition, the British troops defending Northern Ireland abandoned their positions in the fog - almost without firing a shot, throwing the whole of Northern Ireland to the Chinese, if for the people of England the "gas scare" is just a "panic", for Northern Ireland, the "gas scare" can turn the whole of Northern Ireland into hell at any time.

When the Chinese appeared in Northern Ireland in the fog, tens of thousands of British soldiers guarding Northern Ireland immediately suffered a rout, tens of thousands of British soldiers fled to the port, and hundreds of thousands of Protestants, all with only one thought - escape!

In the end, the Chinese simply seized Northern Ireland without bloodshed, and as for the local Protestants, they took the initiative to hand over their weapons, for fear that if they were not careful, the Chinese would release poison gas. For Britain, Ireland's defeat was simply a disaster.

However, the disaster in Northern Ireland, for Palmston, saved him, because it further proved the power of poison gas, as for whether the Chinese used poison gas in Northern Ireland, I am afraid only God knows.

But one thing is for sure, poison gas, which may not have destroyed the British line, certainly destroyed the British will to fight.

It is precisely for this reason that Palmston, who has managed to get through the difficulties, is so complicated in the face of all this - on the one hand, the poison gas has kept him as prime minister, and on the other hand, because of the power of the poison gas, the British army is losing the will to fight.

The failure of Northern Ireland is proof of that!

"Now, those who call for resistance to the end will be blamed and even scolded by people, and they will accuse those who call for resistance as "opium dealers" and "slave owners", but God knows, Britain has long stopped trading opium with China, and even we need to import a lot of opium ...... now."

As he said this, his expression was a little sad, and he was also in favor of the fight, but he was also ridiculed because his family was involved in the opium trade, so people accused him of supporting the fight because of the export of opium to China.

But God knows, the biggest importers of opium are now Britain and France, which is simply the disaster of the Crimean War, where hundreds of thousands of British soldiers developed the habit of smoking opium-containing tobacco, and after the war, they brought this habit back to England, and spread throughout England, and now Britain, like France, has millions of opium addicts in the country, and cheap Turkish opium ensures that smokers in both countries can get enough and cheap opium.

"Now, many civilians, and even many people in the upper echelons, are expecting the government to come up with a countermeasure to calm everything in front of them as soon as possible, and they hope that the war with the Chinese can be ended through negotiations, and in their opinion, as long as Chinese have poison gas, then we will never be able to defeat Chinese......"

"Unless, we're poisonous!"

Palmston interrupted suddenly.

"As long as we have poison gas and break the monopoly of the Chinese on poison gas, then all this will be reversed, and people's courage will return to them, and the reason why they don't have courage now is because we have no way to resist the killing of poison gas, but my friend, soon, all this will be changed!"

Palmston said this because, as soon as he learned of poison gas, he summoned Britain's best chemists to work together on countermeasures, how to defend against poison gas, and of course, more importantly, Britain also needed poison gas.

"Now that we've made some progress in our research, it's going to be clear that poison gas isn't the preserve of Chinese, what we need now is to stick to ......"

"Your Excellency, how can you insist now? Europe, the defeat of Dublin has made the whole of Europe have abandoned us, your Excellency, now that France has declared war on us, only God knows who the next wolf will be! Your Excellency, how can we win in such a situation! ”

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