On March 19, 1853, the Taiping army conquered Jiangning, and Lu Jianying, the governor of Liangjiang, the feudal official of the Qing court, was killed. Reuters reporters and editors of the Telegraph did not understand the significance of Jiangning, and Tang Ning told them that Jiangning was once the capital of the Ming Dynasty and had an important political and historical position, and that the capture of Jiangning by the Taiping army meant that a southern regime strong enough to counter the Qing court had been formed.

Since the jurisdiction of Jiangsu and Anhui provinces in the early Qing Dynasty belonged to Jiangnan Province, the governor was in charge of the administrative affairs of Jiangnan and Jiangxi at the beginning, so he was called the governor of Liangjiang. The Liangjiang region was originally the richest region in China, and the reason for the rise of neighboring Shanghai in international trade, and the governor of Liangjiang was one of the most important feudal officials in modern China.

Xu Rongcun, a Chinese intelligence collector arranged by Tang Ning, also specifically told Tang Ning that Yuan Mei's Suiyuan in his favorite "Suiyuan Food List" was destroyed by the Taiping Army, because one of Yuan Mei's grandsons had been a county magistrate in Suzhou and had fought with the Taiping Army, which greatly injured the Taiping Army's spirit, and the Taiping Army hated Yuan Mei's grandson, loved the house and Wu, and hated Yuan Mei and destroyed the Suiyuan.

The founder of Suiyuan is Cao Yin, the grandfather of Cao Xueqin, the author of the Dream of Red Mansions, and it is likely that Suiyuan is the prototype of the Grand View Garden in Dream of Red Mansions. Cao Yin served as the Jiangnan Weaving Bureau, which was set up in Jiangning Mansion by the Qing Dynasty to provide royal and official satin.

All smart emperors know what "fat poor" is, but they always send their henchmen to the post of fat poor, and the cronies can be said to be corrupt by order, if the cronies are no longer pro, it is very simple, and a reason for anti-corruption will be killed. Cao Yin is Kangxi's cronie, and Emperor Kangxi let Cao Yin work in Jiangning Weaving, not only to make him rich, but also to let him play a role in monitoring local officials, otherwise this cronie is not a waste?

In order to maintain the status of his cronies, Cao cronies spent a huge amount of money every time Kangxi went to the south of the Yangtze River to make the emperor's itinerary gorgeous and colorful, and as a result, the Jiangning Weaving Department had a huge deficit, and the governor of Liangjiang, Kali, participated in Cao Yin, and secretly reported to Kangxi that Cao Yin and Li Xu owed three million taels of silver to Lianghuai Salt, and asked for public impeachment of him. Kangxi regarded Cao Yin as a "family member", and Kali asked for Cao Yin's public impeachment, but Kangxi certainly would not approve it. But the stakes were so high that Kangxi had to privately warn Cao Yin and his brother-in-law Li Xu that they must try to make up for the shortfall.

Cao Yin is facing a vast sea of debts, which is no longer able to make up for it, and he has no ability to save the situation. In July of the fifty-first year of Kangxi, he fell ill and died in Yangzhou. Li Xu folded it and said: When he was dying, he calculated a deficit of 230,000 taels of silver, and Cao Yin had no assets to make up.

Far from it. In short, Cao Xueqin's grandfather was a politician, poet, lyricist, and Kunqu opera writer. After the fall of the Cao family, the garden was transferred to another tasteless weaving hand, this person's surname was Sui, and the garden was named "Sui Garden", because of neglect, Sui Garden gradually abandoned. Yuan Mei knew the value of the garden, and spent 300 taels of silver to buy it from the descendants of the Sui family, carefully repaired it, and named it "Suiyuan".

When Yuan Mei resigned in the fourteenth year of Qianlong, he had savings of 3,600 taels of silver, and only spent 300 taels of silver to buy the principal of the garden. However, Yuan Xianggong has his own way of making money. The first is to rent the gardens, fields, forests, and ponds to 13 households for them to grow grain, vegetables, fruits, and trees, and to collect land rent. The second is to sell articles to get paid. Yuan Mei is "a generation of altar masters", and his reputation is growing, and there are many people who ask him to write biographies and epitaphs, and he has contributed a lot of money. Yuan Mei's pen fee income is quite large, and it is not surprising that he sells a few taels of silver for a penny. The third is that Yuan Mei carved the complete works of the small warehouse for sale, wrote his own books, printed his own books, and sold his own books, Yuan Mei's works belong to best-selling books, and his income is naturally not low. Fourth, Yuan Mei also opened accounts to teach, recruited students, and the tuition income was also very considerable. The fifth is the celebrity effect, being invited to play around for free, getting gifts, and making a lot of profits.

Yuan Mei once said in his will: "With the garden is a wasteland, I open a pond and marsh on the ground, build a platform, build three changes, and the cost is not calculated." Strange peaks and strange stones, purchased at a high price, green bamboo poles, planted by hand. The utensils are sandalwood pear, carved lacquer gun gold; The playthings are Jin Ti Tang Tablet, Shang Yi Xia Ding, and the book is Qingtian Yellow Freeze, and the famous hand is engraved with carving; Duan inkstone is banana leaves and blue flowers, and many ancient styles, for the rich and noble families in the north and south of the river are unprecedented. It can be seen that the extravagance and cost of the utensils and antiques supporting the garden are huge.

It's a pity that such a high-quality garden was destroyed by the peasant army.

Downing became more and more concerned about the situation in his homeland, and went to visit Viscount Halifax twice in three days, or invited him to have a drink in the Stoke Garden. Viscount Halifax is the former Chancellor of the Exchequer, the one who gave Downing the "poison stock" of the Bank of England, the East India Company and the South Sea Company, and now he is the chairman of the Indian Control Council in the new cabinet, above the Viceroy of India. Downing hopes to build a good relationship with Viscount Halifax and add leverage to the idea of continuing to fight the Straits Settlements.

Friends with wine and meat are obviously not a long-term solution to build a good relationship, and Downing still makes the "partner program" he is familiar with, first showing the chairman the fuel cell technology he is developing.

Downing registered the company name of his laboratory for the research and development of steam engines and fuel cells as "General Dynamics", and the technology of the General Dynamics laboratory has made breakthroughs, and the power output of fuel cells has reached "one horsepower". This unit was made by the steam engine modifier James? Watt invented it to express the power of his steam engine relative to the pulling force of horses. Now that hydrogen fuel cells have reached this "tipping point", it means that it is already practical, at least it is completely fine to pull the Round Table Rider bicycle to run. Of course, fuel cells are precious, and it is too wasteful to use them to pull bicycles, and it is easy to attract thieves, and Downing has no plans to use it on bicycles for the time being.

Today's inventors are still keen to tinker with the steam engine-powered vehicle, and they can't have a future, because the size of the steam engine is difficult to shrink, and the hydrogen fuel cell has changed the inventors' dilemma in one fell swoop, and it is incredibly light, even smaller than the internal combustion engine, which is still in the experimental stage. This also means that vehicles equipped with it can carry more fuel and run longer.

Downing predicted for the Viscount: "In about a year, the first hydrogen fuel cell vehicle will be on the market and will become the most important means of transportation for the middle class." It's big business. The biggest trouble with the Round Table Rider bike is that it is afraid of rainy days, and the car uses a fully enclosed space to overcome this problem. Travel around the clock, faster, more stable, and safer. There are so many rainy days in London, and the inhibition of the bike is too severe. The Knights of the Round Table have slowed down lately. Of course, it's still a business of hundreds of thousands of pounds a year, and cars will soon reach millions of pounds in the future. I'm looking for investors for car companies, because rubber and oil will play an important role in the development of automobiles, both of which are available in the Straits Settlements, so I remembered you. ”

As the chairman of the Indian Control Council, he didn't know that the Straits Settlements had these two good things, Charles? Wood was a little ashamed: "Isn't the rubber in Brazil?" The Straits Settlements actually have one! ”

Downing: "Not yet, but you have probably heard, I have already offered a reward for rubber tree seeds, and I have already received 80,000 seeds in October last year, and my friends who sent them to Singapore to engage in plantations said that the progress is good, and the era of rubber being ridiculously expensive will not be too long." ”

Wood: "That's a good way to put a bounty, the Portuguese are going to look good." ”

Downing smiled: "You can also try, I estimate that the oil palm from West Africa can also be transplanted to the Malay Peninsula, which is also a good business, you have to do it as soon as possible." ”

The oil palm fruit is so high in oil that it is eaten by many animals, including two species of carnivorous birds, the vulture and the harrier. Palm oil is an important industrial raw material, with praline oil used in the manufacture of margarine, chocolate, ice cream and edible oils, and baklava as feed. Special attention should be paid to the fact that fried instant noodles must be made with palm oil; Pulp oil is widely used in the manufacture of soaps, soaps, candles, detergents, lubricating oils, glycerin, pigments, cosmetics, hair creams, iron anti-slug agents and motor fuels. The husks can be used as fuel and to pave roads in oil palm plantations. Palm oil can be used to refine vitamins, proteins, antibiotics, etc.

Palm oil is so useful that it has even replaced the slave trade as the most valuable commodity exported from Africa. Some people believe that the rise of African commodities such as oil palm is the root cause of the sharp decline in the slave trade in Africa, and that there is a better and more humane business, who wants to hurt the virtues of God, and how many boatloads of black slaves have to die before they are transported to the Americas, and people who have a little bit of heart glass can't stand it. When capitalism develops to a certain stage, the cost of hiring is more cost-effective than the cost of buying black slaves, morality begins to play a big role, Britain passed the "Slave Trade Act" in 1807 to prohibit all ships carrying slaves at sea, even if they are not British, due to the maritime supremacy of the British Empire, the Royal Navy has the right to fire cannons, of course, because the slave trade was still very profitable at the beginning, so there are still many people who trade slaves, and when they meet the Royal Navy, they tie stones to black slaves and sink to the bottom of the sea! It also shows how important it is for African crops such as oil palm to surpass the value of black slaves.

Tang Ning: "If I had an ideal plan for the automotive industry, Singapore would be one of the most important places. There is oil as fuel, rubber as tires, palm oil as lubricating oil, and in case of emergency, it can be directly used as fuel. Palm oil production is huge, one hectare can produce one ton, and it can be harvested every year, never extinct, it is a living cash cow, I say this is a good business, I really don't blow. ”

Often encouraged by Downing, Wood finally got his heart moved, at least he wanted to start an oil palm plantation, which was a business he could see and understand, cars, this old man was not very confident. Downing thought that the most attractive thing was not put in Wood's eyes, but fortunately he inadvertently mentioned oil palm, which can also play a certain role in binding partnerships, and Wood does not know how to plant, and Downing already has a relatively mature team of transplanting tropical plants, which can give technical guidance to the plantation that Wood wants to build, and incorporate his plantation into his own automobile industry chain in the future.

Over the past few days, through planning the transplantation of oil palm in West Africa, Downing and Chairman Wood have become more and more familiar, and finally got to the point: "The Malay Peninsula is very unpeaceful, there may be conflicts between the indigenous people and the local plantations, and some cultural differences are inevitable, in order to protect our plantations, I want to form an armed security force for the plantations." Of course, a big conflict can be solved by the East India Company's army, and a small conflict can be solved by our plantations themselves, what do you think of this idea? ”

In the colony, private armies are very common, the key is scale, what Tangning wants to form is a private army of 1,000 people, which is not small. It was a bit unusual to have such a big battle without rubber, oil palm and oil still in sight, so Downing had to seek the support of the Control Committee.

After some discussion, Wood felt that it was relatively low-key to control the team at 500 people, and Downing had to agree with him.

The quota for recruiting soldiers is there, but where do they come from? Downing himself didn't know how to fight, and he didn't have the energy to manage the soldiers himself.

Wood advises Downing: "Have you ever heard of the Hessian mercenary group? ”

Downing: "No. ”

Wood: "This is when the Yankees were fighting for independence, and the German mercenaries recruited by our England were mainly Hessian troops, so the Yankees liked to call all these GIs Hessian mercenaries. England paid £3,000,000 for 22,000 Hessian mercenaries. These people are good at fighting, and it just so happens that there are some retired Hessian mercenaries living in England, and you can ask them to help you recruit German mercenaries. ”

Since Wood had a recommendation, he must know some of the soldiers, and Downing decided to meet these mercenary leaders to see if they were reliable.

At first sight, Downing was overjoyed, and the two soldiers recommended by Wood were the Hesse-Kassel Hunters, and this class was Downing's favorite.

Hunters, as the name suggests, are elite troops that carry out hunting missions. They were the prototype of the sniper unit, and unlike the heavy infantry with muskets that used muskets with no accurate head to form a platoon to kill in pieces, the hunters used rifled guns, and their marksmanship was accurate, and they did not need to be arrayed, attacking their opponents in a skirmish manner outside the range of their shotgun rifles, or attacking them in the shadows.

It sounds like a hunter is more powerful than ordinary infantry, and shooting in a skirmish is indeed the direction of future infantry development, but it is not an option for regular armies in this era. The reason for this involves rifle technology. Due to the current tolerance of the barrel caliber can not be controlled within a certain range, the rifled gun bullet must be used to fit the rifle, it must be used to poke through the breech forcefully, and the existence of the rifle makes the removal of gunpowder residues by the through strip more troublesome, and the rifled gun of the hunter is not superior to the smoothbore gun in a sense. The Chasseur can only exist as a support class.

Of course, support classes can also deal a lot of damage to enemy troops. During the American Revolutionary War, the most troublesome thing for the British army was the guerrillas composed of hunters, who used long-range rifled guns to snipe at the British army, and fired black guns in the shadows from afar, like terrorists. The British army also had this kind of sniper special forces, and it was even more skilled, and the firearms designer of the time, Ferguson, invented a breech-loading rifled gun with a range of more than 180 meters. For a long time, rifles used black powder as an explosive as a ******, and breech loading meant a small explosive right in your face, a dangerous design that required the design of a strong, secure locking mechanism, and apparently Ferguson's invention overcame this shortcoming, making his sniper special forces the most advanced hunters of the time. Breech reloading allowed Ferguson's snipers to reload in a recumbent concealed position, and to reload much faster than North American guerrilla snipers who wielded breech shotguns.

Ferguson himself was a great sniper, and he went around when he pitched his designs, such as shooting a cow's eye 90 meters away. He is best known for aiming his sniper rifle at General Washington, the Founding Father of the United States, and if he had fired that gun, the United States might still be a British colony.

Only a little more than 100 Ferguson rifles were produced, and the British abandoned this advanced but unreliable firearm. Most likely, this was due to the fact that the problem of residual gunpowder was not resolved.

Perhaps everyone has seen that the biggest problem with the current smoothbore gun is still popular is black powder, once smokeless ****** is invented, the breech-loading rifled gun will rule the battlefield, and this historical task naturally falls on the shoulders of Tangning. The Hesse-Kassel hunters he intends to recruit will be the first armed force in the world to be equipped with modern rifles.