"Poof......

In the military tent of the Jiangbei camp in Yangzhou, Li Hongzhang squirted out a mouthful of tea, his expression shocked.

"Congratulations, the imperial court has decreed that your lord will be appointed as the Minister of Beiyang Commerce!"

Zhou Fu and other staff members congratulated Li Hongzhang one after another, and their expressions were naturally extremely joyful, because the power of the Minister of Beiyang Trade and Trade was staggering, and he had already surpassed the restrictions of the governor, including foreign affairs, trade, and coastal defense affairs, and was also responsible for handling affairs such as investment promotion, telegraphs, coal mines, railways, training of the Beiyang Navy and Army, and controlling customs duties.

Li Hongzhang was young after all, and his expression was suddenly a little sluggish, this was simply a good thing for pie in the sky, he felt that his brain was not enough for a while, and he was a little suffocated with excitement.

But after being happy, Li Hongzhang gradually felt that something was wrong, if Yi Xin wanted to win him over, it would not give him the post of Minister of Beiyang.

Soon, the ins and outs were clarified, and it was learned that Li Weiguo promoted Li Hongzhang as the minister of Beiyang, and the queen mother of the two palaces naturally had to give face.

"Would King Wu be so kind?"

Li Hongzhang immediately raised questions, but his tone changed significantly, he used to call Li Weiguo's name when he opened and closed his mouth, but now he is called King Wu, which shows his mentality.

Zhou Fu said: "This may be King Wu showing favor to adults!" ”

"No!" Wang Kaitai frowned and said: "The Minister of Beiyang Trade has great power, basically equivalent to the second small court, controlling the military, political, financial and diplomatic power of the entire provinces north of the Yangtze River. ”

Zhou Fu smiled and said, "Didn't King Wu also get the Minister of Nanyang?" He can't be the minister of both the North and the South, right? ”

Qian Dingming said suddenly: "Didn't you ignore one of the most critical questions, if Lord Li served as the Minister of Beiyang, then how should Lord Zeng look at it?" ”

This sentence immediately alerted everyone. Li Hongzhang is a student of Zeng Guofan, and he is the leader of Zeng Guofan, and Li Hongzhang is young, and his officialdom is far less powerful than Zeng Guofan's. Now that Li Hongzhang has climbed onto Zeng Guofan's head all of a sudden, it is not difficult to imagine how ugly Zeng Guofan's expression is at this moment.

Zhou Fu said with a smile: "Blue is better than blue, I don't think Lord Zeng will not blame." Instead, they will be happy. ”

Qian Dingming continued: "Even if Lord Zeng doesn't think much about it, will the Hunan army bureaucrats be willing? This is clearly Li Weiguo's divisive plan, adults should not be fooled. ”

The Huai army originally came from the Hunan army system, and it has always been the head of the Hunan army, if suddenly one day the Huai army generals rode to the head of the Hunan army generals, there will definitely be chaos.

In fact, it is precisely because of this that Li Hongzhang in history really gained the power to inherit the huge family base of the Hunan army, and it was also after the death of Zeng Guofan, and there were many factions in the Hunan army system at that time. Zhang Zhidong, Liu Kunyi, Zuo Zongtang and others were not convinced by Li Hongzhang, otherwise Li Hongzhang would not have come to fight the Sino-Japanese War by himself.

At this time, Li Hongzhang established the Huai Army system prematurely because of the appearance of Li Weiguo, and once Zeng Guofan's support was lost, the Hunan Army system would definitely not make Li Hongzhang feel better.

"W-probably not?" Li Hongzhang suddenly felt as if he had been poured cold water, feeling scared, but he was unwilling, and the right was in front of him. Give up?

Not everyone is so brave enough to give up the temptation of power, especially the young Li Hongzhang. The blood has not yet cooled.

Similarly, with whom Li Hongzhang and these people, who don't want to achieve higher, if Li Hongzhang has been pressed by Zeng Guofan, then they don't want to have a bright future.

Everyone stopped talking suddenly, and Qian Dingming just smiled bitterly and shook his head. He didn't understand everyone's thoughts, and only sighed that Li Weiguo's methods were too clever, and he was full of fear about the future of the Huai Army.

On the other hand, Zeng Guofan naturally also received the news about Li Hongzhang's promotion to the Minister of Beiyang. He was inevitably sour in his heart, and he didn't complain anything at first, but the generals of the Hunan army under his account couldn't sit still.

Recently, the Hunan army and the Huai army have rushed to launch a fierce attack on the Taiping army, for what, isn't it the first to attack Tianjing to be crowned? For this reason, the Hunan army and the Huai army have become competitors, and even hostility arises because of the competition for territory, and now Li Hongzhang directly sits in the position of the minister of Beiyang, which is much higher than the governor, how can the Hunan army not be jealous? Li Hongzhang came from the Hunan army, but now he rode on the head of the Hunan army, how can the generals of the Hunan army be embarrassed?

A Hunan army general came to complain to Zeng Guofan, Zeng Guofan could calmly appease the other party, but a group of Hunan army generals complained together, Zeng Guofan was difficult to appease them, and even the three of them became tigers, and after listening to too many bad words about Li Hongzhang, even Zeng Guofan himself inevitably became suspicious.

So, when Li Hongzhang came to explain to Zeng Guofan, Zeng Guofan asked Li Hongzhang to resign from the Beiyang Minister under the pretext that Li Weiguo must not be allowed to get the Minister of Nanyang. This reason is very far-fetched, Li Hongzhang was reluctant to take the position of Beiyang minister, so he politely refused Zeng Guofan's kind reminder, which made Zeng Guofan very unhappy.

At this juncture, the Hunan army and the Huai army that attacked Dasheng Pass clashed inexplicably, and the two sides accused each other of killing their people and demanded that the murderer be handed over, but both sides did not compromise, so they fought, and soon the situation got out of control, and finally caused thousands of casualties.

In the end, Zeng Guofan and Li Hongzhang had an emergency meeting, because the generals of the two sides were full of gunpowder as soon as they met, which led to endless disputes and almost fought. In the end, Zeng Guofan and Li Hongzhang both claimed that the Taiping army was a ghost for the sake of the overall situation, and they saved face for each other.

After this incident, a rift has already arisen between the Hunan army and the Huai army. The generals of the Hunan army were unwilling to let the Huai army climb on their heads, so the Hunan army's offensive against the Taiping army became more fierce, preparing to be the first to conquer Tianjing and help Zeng Guofan get the reward of being crowned king, because only Zeng Guofan could be crowned king and overpower Li Hongzhang.

The relationship between Zeng Guofan and Li Hongzhang broke down, and this news made Li Weiguo very happy, without him, the Dashengguan incident was secretly created by Li Weiguo under the orders of the China S.H.I.E.L.D., with the purpose of adding fuel to the fire and sowing discord between them, and the results showed that Li Weiguo succeeded.

But. Li Weiguo didn't have time to pay attention to this, his southern expeditionary army was ready, taking advantage of the Hunan army and the Huai army to attack the Taiping army frantically, Li Weiguo would lead the army of eight towns to go out, advance by sea and land, and sweep the south.

False Path. This is a battle plan that has long been set by Li Weiguo.

Originally, it was an excuse to send a large army to recover Hong Kong, but in the end the plan was changed, and the recovery of Hong Kong did not require the use of force, but Li Weiguo still found an excuse to go to the imperial court to expedition to Macao.

The queen mother and the regent of the two palaces were deceived by Li Weiguo's righteous words, and they agreed to Li Weiguo's dispatch of troops to recover Macao, and ordered. Their position is very simple, that is, they hope that Li Weiguo will offend more powers, and in the future, the imperial court can win over more powers to contain Li Weiguo.

This is called borrowing teachers to help suppress. Not only did the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom be exterminated, but even Li Weiguo was included.

However, soon the imperial court was dumbfounded, a small Macau, never thought that Li Weiguo would actually dispatch an army of eight towns, an army of 100,000, and it was by sea and land.

Do you need to make such a big move?

When Li Weiguo's army entered Fujian, a rebellion broke out in Fujian. The titular governor of Fujian and Zhejiang, Qi Ling, was assassinated by the Heaven and Earth Society for some reason.

Subsequently, Li Weiguo launched an encirclement and suppression of the Tiandihui in Fujian. Wherever the Wu army passed, the Eight Banners Army, the Green Camp Army, and the Han landlord armed forces under the original governor of Fujian and Zhejiang were all integrated, and then military control was imposed on all parts of Fujian, just like when Li Weiguo led the Shanghai army to govern Zhejiang.

However, this time Li Weiguo came prepared, when the military was in charge of Zhejiang, Li Weiguo had too few talents in his hands. So much so that for a long time, Zhejiang's government affairs have not been rectified. But this time it was different, Li Weiguo quickly transferred a large number of people from Shanghai to purge the Fujian officialdom, remove those who should be dismissed, and execute those who should be executed.

Some old cases were all turned over by Li Weiguo. On the one hand, he cleaned up the tumors and opposition forces in Fujian's officialdom and won the support of the Fujian people, thus laying a solid foundation for Fujian to sit firmly in Fujian in the future.

Li Weiguo repeated his old tricks, but the court had no way to deal with him, so he could only pretend to be confused.

Li Weiguo's army did not stay, but left the 29th town of the Wu army in Fujian, although the 29th town was established less than three months, but there are veterans with new soldiers, although the combat effectiveness is not as good as the traditional Shanghai army eight towns, but it is enough to deal with the Taiping army, especially most of the soldiers in the 29th town are recruited from Fujian Province, and now Fujian people are used to manage Fujian, saving a lot of trouble. The strategy of reorganizing the army formulated by Li Weiguo at the beginning was immediately reflected, and the effect was very good, helping Li Weiguo to smoothly control the whole province of Fujian.

After entering the boundary of Guangdong, Li Weiguo became even more bold, because Liu Changyou, the governor of Liangguang, had not arrived, and the officials of Liangguang had no leader, and in the face of Li Weiguo's strength, only the Guangdong general Baigui coaxed Li Weiguo to disobey orders, but soon Baigui was killed.

Later, Li Weiguo launched an investigation into Bai Gui's death, and took the opportunity to trap all the Eight Banners Army in Guangdong, and when the Wu army successfully took over the military power of the entire Liangguang region, Li Weiguo announced that Qi Ling had been assassinated by a Portuguese and died, and poured dirty water on the Portuguese in Macau.

All the officials of the two Guangxi and Guangzhou, who have a little brains, understand that this is Li Weiguo's method, but those who oppose him were either killed for corruption and bribery, or disappeared inexplicably, and then some people announced that they had fled with the money, and the charges were confirmed. If it is not to sue the old man and return to his hometown, this kind of person will take the initiative to resign, because Li Weiguo promised that as long as they resign, they will not be investigated for their previous crimes.

So, in the face of Li Weiguo's strength, the officials of the two Guangxi provinces chose to give in.

If you don't give in, you can't do it, you don't have soldiers and no guns, do you have to wait to be shot!

Of course, some officials were not convinced, and secretly wrote a complaint against Li Weiguo, but soon Li Weiguo slapped them in the face with their secret music, and all of them were imprisoned. If the problem is found to be sentenced, they will be charged with collusion or surrender to the enemy during the invasion of China by the British and French forces, and they will not be able to escape the sentence and execution in the end.

On December 3, 1862, Li Weiguo landed on Hong Kong Island and held a handover ceremony with the British Governor of Hong Kong, Bourne, successfully taking over Hong Kong Island and recovering sovereignty, marking the complete abolition of the unequal treaties imposed by Britain on the Chinese people since 1840.

On this day, the whole country celebrated, and finally washed away the shame, and it seemed that the feeling of the heavenly kingdom had returned.

But for Li Weiguo, it is between gain and loss.

Now he has recovered Hong Kong Island, 150 years ahead of history, although the shame has been washed away in advance, but it also means that the development of Hong Kong Island cannot be as brilliant as that of later generations. There are many factors in the prosperity of Hong Kong in history, and it is impossible for it to have such a large population, all because of the invasion of modern China, and the Chinese people have moved to Hong Kong Island in order to take refuge, thus creating the prosperity of Hong Kong.

Nowadays, except for the United Kingdom, a country with a serious island situation, no ruler is willing to spend money on building a megacity in Hong Kong, which is a chicken place, and at most using Victoria Harbour to build a medium-sized harbour city.

However, Li Weiguo did not regret it, he just couldn't get used to the Hong Kong people of that era, and thought he was superior, but in fact, the support of the mainland was nothing. Thinking about being a dog for Britain all day long, a group of people who have forgotten their ancestors is shameful, and Li Weiguo looks down on them. He wants to use his own strength to build 100,000 super metropolises that are 100 times and 1,000 times stronger than Hong Kong.

Standing on the top of the mountain, Li Weiguo called a photographer and took a photo of him and Hong Kong as a souvenir of history.

The military assault on Macao did not begin until the end of the year, and Li Weiguo deliberately took a slow step in order to allow more time for his troops to be stationed in Liangguang and Fujian and to strengthen his rule over these three provinces.

In the past six months, the imperial court successively sent six ministers to Fujian and Liangguang, but these people either had an accident halfway and ordered themselves to take the initiative to call for sick leave, but no one dared to go, for fear of provoking Li Weiguo and their lives were not guaranteed.

Yi Xin was deflated, he knew that Li Weiguo was determined to annex Fujian and Liangguang, and the only way to come back was to start a war.

However, Yi Xin didn't have the courage to start a war with Li Weiguo at all, because his Eight Banners Army was not ready, Li Hongzhang and Zeng Guofan were in deep conflict, and they were fighting the Taiping Army, so they had no energy to help.

Therefore, Yi Xin endured it, and finally directly asked Li Weiguo to nominate the list of officials in Fujian and Liangguang and three provinces, and the imperial court approved it.

In this way, the five southeastern provinces all fell into the hands of Li Weiguo.

Boiling frogs in warm water, Li Weiguo challenged the bottom line of the imperial court again and again, and adopted clever tactics of encroachment step by step, and both sides gradually knew that war would be inevitable. (To be continued.) )