Time flies, it can be said that the white horse has passed through the gap, and in a blink of an eye, it is the late July of the twentieth year of Guangxu. Pen? Interesting? Pavilion wWw. ｂiquge。 ｉｎfo

In the north, July is already the height of the sun, the vast land has long been covered by lush and dense vegetation, and the wheat fields that can be seen everywhere on the Zhili Plain are already rippling with golden waves and rolling wheat waves.

In the training ground of the Yan Regiment in Jinghai, the sound of killing, gunfire, and artillery rumbled, and groups of soldiers of the Yan Regiment with loaded guns and live ammunition were carrying out field offensive and defensive combat drills in companies as units.

On a wooded hill at the edge of the exercise area, more than 30 young staff officers divided into more than a dozen groups were observing the tactical drills of various units in the distance through the artillery trolleys set up on the hill, while writing and drawing on maps and notebooks. Chief of Staff Zhou Dajing kept shuttling back and forth among these staff officers, guiding these young staff officers from time to time.

For more than a year, the young people who were sent by Qin Chuan to study in the Martial Arts Academy have already completed the basic subjects of the Martial Arts Academy, and they are only one month away from graduating.

This is not to say that the curriculum of the military academy is fast-tracked, but the content of military subjects in this era is too little. In addition, Qin Chuan had to teach military courses that were far richer than those of this era to officers above the squad leader almost every night, not only did the military literacy of the officers of the Yan Regiment improve rapidly, but the progress of these young people studying in the Martial Arts Academy was even faster, and it was also more beneficial for them to improve their performance in the Martial Arts Academy.

It is precisely thanks to the "small stove" that Qin Chuan gave them food, these people are among the best in the military academy, and even in the staff subjects that have always been proud of the German instructors, the excellent quality of Zhou Dajing and others also surprised the Germans.

At the top of the hill, under the red pine with a tree trunk towering like a cloud, Qin Chuan, dressed in military uniform, was holding a telescope and carefully observing the drill of the troops under the mountain.

Although only a year and a half has passed, Qin Chuan's complexion has become darker, and his body has become more robust and strong.

After a long time, Qin Chuan put down the binoculars, let the imported German Zeiss telescope hanging from his neck on a cow belt hanging on his chest, leaned on the trunk of the pine tree, took out a paper cigarette and lit one, took a deep breath, and then highlighted a puff of green smoke, squinting heavily at the light blue smoke that spread out in front of him with a heavy expression.

It's only been a year and a half, but a lot has happened.

After being beaten with a military stick on the seventh day of the first lunar month last year, although he did not hurt his muscles and bones, this injury was really not a place, and it really made Qin Chuan suffer a lot of crimes, and he couldn't stand still, and he almost lay on the bed for a month before he could move freely.

Since then, Qin Chuan seems to have changed as a different person, and he has been focusing on salt ball training all day long. He even imitated the example of the Green Battalion and the Beiyang troops, and also recruited more than 2,000 long-term husbands, and they were all recruited according to the recruitment standards of the Yan Regiment, all of them were tall and young men about 20 years old. Except for the lack of epaulettes and caps, these chiefs were the same as the soldiers of the Salt Regiment, not only were they treated the same, but their training was also mixed in various companies.

In addition, in the sequence of the salt regiment, he set up a pistol company, and each pistol company had a shell gun and a saber.

As soon as the Tianjin Aurora Stock Exchange came out of the New Year, it opened as scheduled in a three-story building next to Lishunde.

In addition to Aurora University, middle school and medical school, as well as Aurora Bank, all the factories owned by Aurora have been listed, and it is also noted in the prospectus published in the "Oriental Times" that the total number of shares of all factories will be one million shares at the initial stage, and only 100,000 shares of each factory will be listed for sale, and the rest of the factory shares, except for those that have been owned by other shareholders, will be held by Aurora Bank, and will be sold at a later date without further announcement.

The trading rules clearly require that all customers who purchase stocks must convert various currencies into vouchers issued by Aurora Bank before they can participate in stock trading.

Domestic customers did not care, and the stipulation that foreigners, banks, and foreign banks must pay in foreign currency or gold for the purchase of stocks, under the strong demands of foreign banks, foreign banks, and individual investors, aroused collective protests from the consuls of the foreign powers, and the foreigners strongly demanded that foreign businessmen and foreigners should have the same national treatment as the Qing nationals. After receiving a tough response from the exchange, the lawsuit went from Zhou Fu's inspection to Li Hongzhang's governor's yamen. In the end, Li Hongzhang pushed it on the grounds that the exchange was located in the concession and was not under the jurisdiction of the Yamen, the governor of Zhili.

The exchange also stipulates that all shares will be priced in a call auction on the first day of issuance, and all shares will be sold in a registered form, and subsequent transactions will be subject to market transactions, but the transfer transaction must be handled on the Aurora Stock Exchange and approved by the stock exchange, and the exchange will handle it after paying a transfer fee of 1%. Only then can the shareholder receive the dividends that are paid twice a year.

The so-called call auction means that all people who want to buy stocks on the first day must submit to the exchange through the counter trader of the exchange a sealed voucher or a certificate from Aurora Bank to prove that they have deposited the corresponding amount of money in the bank through the exchange counter trader through the exchange counter trader before the opening of the new stock market.

In other words, the value of the stock is the price that the customer predicts to be acceptable, not the final value of the stock, and the exchange only provides an indicative reserve price before the call auction. After collecting all the amount of shares purchased by the customers themselves, the exchange will open the opening price of the stock according to the amount most recognized by the largest number of people participating in the call auction.

All clients participating in the call auction will only purchase the stock on the basis of the full amount paid on the first day only if the previously submitted bid is equal to or higher than this price. Clients who bid less than this amount will not get the stock. Of course, the deposit of those who did not get the stock needs to be returned.

Since the opening of the stock exchange, more than 20 Aurora affiliated companies, including Yinlou that makes high-end jewelry, fine chemical companies that make high-end perfumes and fragrances, leather goods companies that make high-end bags, and pharmaceutical companies that produce and sell Chinese patent medicines, and even watch companies, glass companies, and machine manufacturing companies that have just announced their establishment and are still installing machines, have been trading very prosperously. The wealthy people, squires, merchants, and even hawkers and ordinary people who had some money left over grabbed it.

All stocks, without exception, are offered at a high price.

Especially in July last year, after the first half of the dividends were paid by the factories owned by Aurora, the stock owners who were happy to get rich real money returns played a good role in exemplary. Investors from Beijing, Qingdao, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Hankou, and Taiyuan flocked to Tianjin to participate in stock investment with huge sums of money, and the stock exchange was overcrowded, so they had to build a new magnificent four-story stock exchange with a huge trading hall in the concession. That's it, still exhausted.

Fortunately, some nimble-minded compradors headed by Wu Tiaoqing, Liang Yanqing, Zheng Yizhi, and Wang Minghuai relied on the exchange to set up a number of large and small securities brokerage companies, and Jin Lisan and Hanen implemented the trading seat system in the exchange in a timely manner according to Qin Chuan's instructions, and this was able to cope with it.

This year, that is, after the first month of the 20th year of Guangxu, the exchange distributed a year-end dividend, and the shares of the listed companies to which Aurora belonged were pushed to a new high, and the shares of the pen factory soared from 18 yuan per share to 92 yuan at the beginning of the market.

Other businessmen who were hot to see also approached Hann and Li Mingfang to discuss the idea of implementing a shareholding system for their companies to be listed on the exchange. There are also some shrewd people, such as Huang Xianting of the British Renji Foreign Company, Gao Bohai of the Lihe Central Bank, and a large group of compradors, who also specialize in stock speculation and speculation to earn the difference. Even provoked those banks, foreign banks, and some domestic money banks and silver accounts to join in.

After the opening of the stock exchange, the vouchers issued by Aurora Bank gradually increased in circulation among major cities in China. As for the voucher in Tianjin Wei, it is almost the real currency, and the people who buy goods with the voucher on the market have long been accustomed to it. Of course, when a large amount of surplus money is deposited in Aurora Bank, these wealthy merchants are still accustomed to exchanging it into Dayang before depositing it.

It's just that no one uses the term voucher anymore, because there is a legend that it has a large amount of gold in the vault of Aurora Bank, and the amount of vouchers it issues is not arbitrary, but is issued in equal amounts according to the amount of gold in its vault. The reason for this is that in order to maintain the credibility of the voucher, in the event of an accident, the bank can use the gold to turn into enough ocean for all voucher holders to realize.

With this statement, the gold scroll was also called the Golden Yuan Coupon by the people, which made Qin Chuan cry and laugh.

And last May, as Qin Chuan expected, under the manipulation of the British Rohr Royce family and the American Morgan Stanley and other oligarchs of the Great Ocean Bank, a large-scale financial panic in the United States finally broke out ferociously, and almost all banks and private borrowers in the United States began to refuse to accept silver.

This huge financial panic quickly spread to Europe, and even India, an Asian colony with deep economic ties to the British Empire and the world's largest amount of silver in circulation and reserves, was also affected.

Against this backdrop, the international silver price has fallen catastrophically by more than 50 percent.

This catastrophic financial panic also triggered the economic depression in the United States, with demand loan interest rates soaring to 70 percent, and a large number of factories and small business owners going bankrupt. In August, the U.S. government, under tremendous pressure, had to announce the repeal of the Sherman Silver Act and the formal implementation of a single gold standard, and the dollar began to be called the dollar. This, in turn, has led to a further strengthening of gold around the world, and the speed at which the gold-silver ratio has opened up has also accelerated.

Qin Chuan, with the help of Citibank and the British bank HSBC, issued huge silver bonds in the United States and India at the same time, because long before the panic broke out, he had exchanged the 10 million taels of silver raised by the United States and the 16 million taels of silver finally raised by India for dollars, pounds sterling, and gold.

At the height of the panic, in addition to setting aside almost half of the funds needed to repay the loans, the rest of the dollars raised from the issuance of bonds were used to buy a large number of stocks in the United States that had depreciated sharply in steel, railroads, oil refining, machine building, chemical and other companies. In other words, these stocks did not cost Qin Chuan a dime, and they were all millions of dollars of shares given to him by American creditors for free. The reason why he bought American stocks was because Qin Chuan knew that although the value of the shares of these companies he bought in the United States was like garbage, in a few years, the face value of these stocks would be shining, and it would earn him a steady stream of huge profits.

The bonds issued in India were even more optimistic, because India had banned silver from circulation, and the bonds marked for repayment were simply scrap paper, and the bond bearer, the British Empire East India Company, had to negotiate the aftermath with HSBC and Qinchuan.

After negotiations, in the end, the same disposal method as Citi in the United States was adopted, and Qin Chuan only paid the matter with a pound equivalent to one-tenth of the value of 16 million silver. This is not over, Qin Chuan took advantage of the fact that the Indian people were crying anxiously with a large handful of white silver in their hands, and used the funds raised by the bonds to buy back more than 28 million taels of silver at a low price and transport them back to China.

Because Qin Chuan borrowed a large amount of foreign currency from various foreign banks and foreign banks in China, it was written that he would pay in silver. There is also a huge amount of silver that he has raised at high interest rates in China and North Korea, which he has exchanged for gold and foreign currency, and seeing that the repayment deadline is approaching, this will also need to be paid with a lot of silver, and he needs a large amount of cash.

In order to appease the two British Empire consortia, HSBC and the East India Company, which were so anxious that they blushed and had thick necks, Qin Chuan once again entrusted them to use a part of the foreign currency that Qin Chuan borrowed from those foreign banks and foreign banks that had not yet had time to be converted into gold, and bought back tens of millions of white eyes in India. Of course, this requires Qin Chuan to pay them a fee, which can be regarded as making up for some of their losses.

After the financial panic and the sharp depreciation of silver, the managers of these foreign banks and foreign banks, who knew that they had lost a lot of foreign currency to Qin Chuan, all hurriedly came to Qin Chuan, Qin Chuan had already led the salt group out for field training. When they found Jin Lisan in a hurry, Jin Lisan just took out the contract with their autographs to show these foreigners and Oriental dwarves who were about to jump off the building to wipe their necks, it was clearly written in black and white, and as for the rest, everything was not to be discussed.

When the managers of these foreign-funded banks and foreign banks made a fuss, they naturally alarmed the depositors who had deposited money in the Aurora Bank at high interest rates, and while they were in amazement, the "Oriental Times" in the concession published another piece of news that was said to have come from Chile, saying that the large silver mine invested by Qinchuan had been ascertained, and that it was not a rare and rare large rich mine at all, but a small and poor mine with almost no mining value. That's not all, that place is inaccessible, and the roads and railways built by Qinchuan with a lot of money in the early stage have also been abandoned.

In a word, the tens of millions of silver invested by Qin Chuan have all been lost.

For a while, all kinds of rumors came one after another, and it was said that Qin Caishen lost a lot of money this time, and the money he earned some time ago was almost lost this time. There are also people who say that Qin Caishen is going bankrupt and is preparing to sell the factory.

As soon as the news broke, it immediately caused a big uproar among the depositors who had deposited money in Aurora, and these depositors flocked to the head offices and branches of Aurora Bank in Tianjin, Beijing, Shanghai, and Hankou to clamo for early withdrawals, and a run on the bank occurred.

According to the rules, depositors ask for money in advance before the maturity of the deposit, and the bank does not pay interest.

Qin Chuan said in the statement that no matter what the situation is, Qin Chuan will do everything possible to raise money to pay depositors' deposits, and hopes that depositors will not panic and withdraw in advance, otherwise the bank will not pay interest according to the regulations, which will cause depositors to suffer.

As soon as the statement was published, the panicked depositors became even more panicked.

Because in this statement, although Qin Chuan did not say it explicitly, it was almost a disguised admission that the investment had suffered huge losses. In other words, it is possible that Aurora Bank may really go bankrupt, and if the bank goes bankrupt, then the silver they deposited will be wasted for Qin Chuan.

Suddenly, the front office and branches of Aurora Bank were crowded with people, and these people resolutely withdrew money in advance regardless of interest.

The branches of the Aurora Bank, which had been prepared for a long time, no longer dissuaded them, but required all depositors who had withdrawn their money in advance to write a letter of voluntary renunciation of interest, and then returned to them the principal of the silver deposited by the depositors in the bank without a penny.

And just half a month after the depositors queued up for a few days to get back the silver, that is, at the end of July when the high-interest savings of Aurora Bank were repaid, a small number of depositors gritted their teeth and insisted on not withdrawing the silver in advance, and when they took the deposit receipts to the bank to withdraw the money, they not only got back the deposit principal, but also got the original high interest in full, which suddenly surprised them. After this incident was reported by the "Oriental Times", the depositors who had received the news and withdrew the silver in advance suddenly beat their chests and lamented again.

And at this time, the "Oriental Times" once again published Qin Chuan's statement.

This time, Qin Chuan said in the statement that although the depositors who withdrew the silver in advance voluntarily gave up the interest, he deeply felt that he was indebted to the majority of depositors, and in order to reduce the losses of the majority of depositors, and also for the credibility of Aurora Bank, he decided to sell part of the stocks of the factory owned by Aurora to raise funds, and to compensate for the high interest rate that exceeds the interest of the silver bank in the market for all depositors who have deposited in Aurora Bank for more than three months but withdrew cash in advance.

Specifically, as long as these people go to Aurora's bank and find their own words to renounce the interest and confirm the principal amount of their original deposit, they can get 5% of the interest paid on the deposit at that time.

According to the estimation of some people, but for this compensation, Qin Chuan will have to take out several million taels of silver.

This statement immediately attracted praise from all walks of life for Qin Chuan, and Qin Caishen also became a good person of Qin. The golden fat man of Fulong Silk Village in the capital even exaggerated to send a plaque with four glittering golden characters written "Benevolence and Wide Distribution" to Aurora Bank.

Another major event is that the first batch of hundreds of young children selected to study in the United States will go abroad to study in the United States in May last year, and all the expenses will be provided by Aurora University. Before these children go abroad, their parents sign a contract on their behalf, and all of them must volunteer to serve in Aurora's own companies and enterprises, or work in other places according to the requirements of the Aurora University Board of Trustees.

In addition, there was another major event that kept Qin Chuan awake at night, that is, in the twentieth year of Guangxu, that is, on January 11, 1894, the first year of the Chinese calendar, the Dongxue Party uprising broke out in Korea, a vassal state of the Qing Dynasty in the east.

The leader of the uprising of the Donghak Party in North Korea is named Jeon Ng-joon, who joined a religious sect in North Korea in his early years - Donghak-do, which means to advocate Confucianism and Western Catholicism, and put forward the slogan "Punish corrupt officials and corrupt officials, rebuke the Japanese and foreigners", and the Donghak Party first captured Gufu County, Jeolla Province, and then directed its troops to Jeonju, the capital of Jeolla Province. The Joseon Dynasty of the Lee Dynasty hurriedly dispatched Hong Qixun, the chief officer of the Zhuangwei Battalion of the Beijing Army, as an envoy to lead the Zhuangwei Battalion to Jeonju by land and water.

Before leaving, Hong Qixun had made a proposal to King Li Xi and Concubine Min, suggesting that the Qing army be invited to enter the court to quell the rebellion, but was refused.

Although the number of troops is less than 1,000, the Zhuangwei Battalion is a DPRK unit trained in imitation of the Western-style army under the personal training of Yuan Shikai, Minister of Representation and Trade Affairs of the DPRK Prime Minister, and is the most combat-effective unit in the DPRK.

It's just that Quan Fuzhun did not confront Hong Qixun's troops head-on, but dragged Hong Qixun's Zhuangwei battalion around in circles, and finally defeated Hong Qixun in Yueping Cave, and took advantage of the situation to capture Quanzhou in one fell swoop.

Yuan Shikai, who felt the strength of the righteous army, persuaded Concubine Min, the actual ruler of the Li Dynasty in Korea, to invite troops to the Qing Dynasty court, and on the other hand, sent a telegram to Li Hongzhang asking Li Hongzhang to decisively send troops to extinguish Dongxuedao. At Yuan Shikai's request, in order to calm down the situation in Korea as soon as possible, Li Hongzhang immediately approved it and ordered Ding Ruchang to send Li He's Pingyuan to Korea on 12 May.

According to Article 3 of the Treaty of Tientsin, signed between China and Japan in 1985 after the Kashin Incident in Korea, "If there is a major incident of chaos in Korea in the future, Japan and China or one country should send troops. Although the Qing Dynasty recognized itself as the suzerainty of Korea, and the Treaty of Tianjin was only a temporary diplomatic measure of the Qing Dynasty at that time, the Qing court, which was full of loopholes and had no knowledge of international law, left a foreshadowing for the First Sino-Japanese Disaster.

On June 1, the Korean government officially submitted a document to the Qing court asking for help, and after Li Hongzhang played the Qing court, on June 6, he sent Ye Zhichao, the governor of Zhili, to lead the Gubeikou training army, and the Wuyi army of Nie Shicheng, the chief soldier of Taiyuan Town, a total of 910 people to board the "Tunan" merchant ship to go to Korea. At the same time, Li Hongzhang instructed Wang Fengzao, the minister stationed in Japan, to send a note to the Japanese government, "Sending troops to aid is an old practice for our Celestial Empire to protect its vassals。。。。。。 As soon as the matter is completed, it will still be withdrawn and will not be left behind. ”

Li Hongzhang, who originally thought that according to Article 3 of the "Treaty of Tianjin," it would be enough for the Qing Dynasty to send troops to routinely follow the news of the other side, but what he never expected was that on the same night that Ye Zhichao and Nie Shicheng landed in Korea on the same night that Ye Zhichao and Nie Shicheng landed in Korea on 9 July, Keisuke Otori, the Japanese minister to Korea, led hundreds of Japanese policemen and sailors to land at Incheon. Just when Li Hongzhang, who received the news, urgently asked Wang Fengzao, the minister stationed in Japan, to ask why the Japanese government had brazenly sent troops to Korea without knowing that the Qing Dynasty would be in the Qing Dynasty, Keisuke Otori braved the heavy rain all the way to force his way into Seoul in the evening of the next day. What surprised Li Hongzhang and Yuan Shikai even more was that on the 12th, a brigade of the 11th Wing of the Japanese regular army and some engineers landed again at Incheon.

At this moment, Wang Fengzao, the minister stationed in Japan, once again reported that he had heard news from Japan that a large number of regular Japanese troops had landed in Busan, Korea.

It was only at this time that Li Hongzhang and Yuan Shikai finally understood that the Japanese army was not a matter of sending troops at the same time in accordance with the treaty, but that there was another major conspiracy.

However, at this critical moment, the Qing court was in a position to retreat on this issue, and only blindly sent a note to the Japanese government, first repeatedly explaining that the Qing army was only at the request of Korea to help quell the rebellion, and now that the rebellion had been decided, it would withdraw immediately, and then seeing that the Japanese army insisted on complying with the ambiguous content of the treaty and delayed in every way, and asked Yuan Shikai and the Japanese representative Keisuke Otori to negotiate the withdrawal of both sides at the same time.

Although it was clear by this time that the Japanese would not just wave their hands, but when they sent troops to fight back and shock the Japanese with a tough attitude, or they still took the lead and resolutely withdrew their troops to make the Japanese army lose the reason for relying on Korea, on July 3, Keisuke Otori went so far as to arbitrarily demand that the Korean government implement the Japanese government's demand for reforming the Korean government and issued an ultimatum.

and so on, all these dazzling changes caused an uproar in the Qing court, and the main battle lords did not give in, and some people even proposed to investigate Yuan Shikai's responsibility.

The main reason for the war and contention is that at this time, no one thought that Japan, whose national strength was far weaker than that of the Qing Dynasty, would win this war, not to mention that there was also the old record of Yuan Shikai in the year of Jiashen who quelled the rebellion in Korea and fought the Japanese who ran back, and there was confidence in the support of the strength of the Qing army and navy. In particular, at this time, the foreigners, including all the great powers, also overwhelmingly believed that the Japanese, with more than 100,000 troops, were definitely not the opponents of the Qing Dynasty, which had an army of one million.

Even Li Hongzhang, who knows the strength of the Beiyang Sea best, although he knows in his heart that the Beiyang Fleet is really inferior to others compared with Japan, he still has absolute confidence in the Beiyang Army.

Because of the relationship between the Sino-Japanese Treaty of Tianjin, and because of the Dongxue Party's hostility to foreigners and Japanese, Qin Chuan wrote to Li Hongzhang through Zhou Fu several times. First of all, it was suggested that in order not to give Oriental Japan any excuse to send troops to Korea, Beiyang resolutely did not send troops to Korea to quell the rebellion, but only participated in the counterinsurgency by means of weapons and equipment and help in training the Korean army. When Beiyang sent troops to Korea, Qin Chuan suggested that he should increase his troops in Pyongyang as soon as possible and gather a large army to prepare for a solid defense. and to increase the number of troops that can be fought in various parts of the country to the Liaodong Peninsula and Shandong, in case they are needed from time to time. It was also suggested that the two fleets of Guangdong and Nanyang should be quickly mobilized to Beiyang, and that the three fleets should be combined into one, not seeking to attack the enemy, but only seeking self-protection, and to swim exclusively in the left and close areas from Lushun to Weihai, so that the enemy would not dare to let go and land in Lushun, Shandong, and Tianjin to open up the battlefield.

In the last letter, Qin Chuan invited himself to lead the salt regiment to participate in the war in Korea, and it was still the same as all the previous letters, and he did not get a reply from Li Hongzhang, and he was like a stone sinking into the sea.

Although Qin Chuan's words did not receive any reply without exception, and the rhythm of the Beiyang military rearmament war was still unhurried, Qin Chuan clearly felt that the fierce storm brewing over the Korean Peninsula had gradually swirled, and he had even smelled the strong killing aura in the wind.

"Commander."

Zhou Dajing's shout woke up Qin Chuan who was in deep thought. (To be continued.) )