The political center of the Qing Empire was gripped by a strange atmosphere: the old emperor died, and the new emperor ascended the throne, a natural succession of emperors, as if there was no need for a very special ceremony - yet the young emperor, who had recently ascended the throne, announced an enthronement parade, and was so unusual that lower-ranking officials and ordinary people were allowed to observe the ceremony, so that everyone, regardless of his position or knowledge, was confused by what was going to happen. Pen | fun | pavilion www. ｂｉｑｕｇｅ。 ｉｎｆｏ

As for the ten auxiliary ministers who were in charge of preparing for the parade, they were more anxious than to understand what the emperor wanted to do and why he agreed to the inexplicable and absurd proposal made by the American and British ministers to hold the parade and allow civilians to observe the ceremony.

Organizing a grand military parade with 20,000 soldiers is a headache in itself. It was not the traditional kind of review, in which the emperor or the minister inspected the army of a certain general, but it was a very Westernized group activity, which had never been done before, and only five auxiliary ministers knew what it was going on—in fact, only one person understood it perfectly, and only a little shallow knowledge remained.

It took almost an afternoon for Liangbi, a twenty-three-year-old young man who was in his first year at the Zhanjiang branch of the Virginia Military Academy, and who had to travel a lot between the two cities—and which was an important reason why he had become an auxiliary minister—to convince a few of his old-fashioned colleagues, who had no contact with the military, what the two foreign ministers were suggesting the emperor to do, and how complex it was.

At that time, all the auxiliary ministers wanted to persuade the emperor to cancel the parade. But it's just an idea.

No one had the guts to oppose the proposal made by an American and British minister...... Strictly speaking, it is not a suggestion, it is a requirement, it cannot be questioned, and no opposition is allowed.

They had to bite the bullet and do the hard work.

Thankfully, they didn't need to pick the troops to participate in the parade, and the two ministers had already done it, and the 20,000 soldiers who participated in the parade were almost all from the four divisions of Yuan Shikai's Beiyang New Army and the three independent infantry brigades of Zhang Shaozeng, Lan Tianwei, and Wu Luzhen.

It must be said that the arrangement of the two ministers was neither just nor reasonable: the three young generals sent too many soldiers. There were 40,000 people in the Beiyang New Army, but only a quarter of them were able to be reviewed by the emperor, but 9,000 of the 24,000 people in the three independent infantry brigades were able to enjoy this honor, as if to prove the injustice that Yuan Shikai had been emphasizing, protesting, and suffering from him.

And then, in addition to them, there were the Guards, none of which had the opportunity to participate in this activity. The old generals were full of complaints about this, and their tempers were already cursing a few scum who colluded with foreigners. Of course, these unpleasant complaints are made in private, after all, in the current situation, the derogatory word "collusion" is enough to make people lose their hats, although the people who use it may not really be hostile to Western friends, but just an act of venting that grapes are sour when they can't eat grapes.

"There is no way to betray the country with four hatreds", this short sentence that Liangbi learned in Zhanjiang describes the mentality of these people very well.

In any case, however, there were real problems with the arrangements of the American and British ministers, and the tendencies were too obvious to expose their true intentions in proposing a military parade. It's just that none of the Vice-Chancellors really cared about it, not only because they were incapable of intervening, but also because it was not worth mentioning compared to the larger problems created by the two Ministers.

The bigger problem was that, for the sake of their country's face, they had arranged for the parade to be attended by the same headache number of American and British soldiers: 600 American soldiers from the California Volunteer Army - though everyone knew it was the Umbrella Mercenaries - the 14th Infantry Regiment of the Federal Army, the Marine Corps, and the United States Navy, and 700 British soldiers, including a Gurkha company, an Anglo-Indian infantry company, a Marine Corps company, a Royal Marine Company, and a cavalry company.

It was too much -- according to the original arrangement, the number of American and British soldiers participating in the parade was two hundred, so that everyone could accept it. But when the U.S. Department of the Army protested that mercenaries could not be allowed to represent the United States and demanded an additional federal Army force, the number of soldiers invested by the two countries ballooned as if they were competing with each other -- if it were not for the fact that the U.S. military could not draw more soldiers, they would continue to increase until the governments of the two countries intervened.

Everyone is unhappy with such a thing. The German, French and Russian ministers directly criticized and condemned, and the Austro-Hungarian and Italian ministers also kept spitting sour water in private, and only Japan, apparently well aware of its position and therefore not qualified to comment. And all these voices gave the auxiliary ministers of the Qing Empire a headache: most of the accusations were directed at them. They can ignore the complaints of their own generals, but they must not neglect the opinions of Western ministers, and they must do everything in their power to prevent their requests for their own country's troops to participate in the parade.

The American army and the British army alone are already serious troubles, and if we add the German, French, and Russian armies, then the emperor's military enthronement parade will become a miniature version of the military parade held by the Eight-Nation Coalition in Beijing two years ago, and then the emperor's majesty and his happy mood will be damaged.

No more Western troops can be brought to the parade. In order to do this, the Auxiliary Ministers exhausted almost all their energy and did nothing else for twenty days in a row. And when they finally persuaded the ministers of several major countries, they were just relieved, only to find that there were more troubles waiting for them.

With more than 20,000 soldiers, plus tens of thousands of relatives of officials and children of the Eight Banners who had to watch the parade in order to decorate the festive atmosphere, plus the civilians who either celebrated sincerely or just to watch the excitement, I don't know how many civilians would spontaneously watch the parade, it is obvious that such a large-scale event cannot be carried out in the Forbidden City, not even in Beijing, and it must be transferred to other places, and this is only the first step.

Choosing a venue, building a viewing platform, looking for a military band, and finding someone to compose the music to be played during the parade -- the military music of the troops under review is easy to solve, and Western music can be used, but the Qing Empire did not have a national anthem[Note], and it was necessary to compose a piece of music instead—to arrange the travel routes of the emperor and ministers of various countries, and to deploy security forces at the parade site......

None of these jobs are easy.

In particular, the last item is the security deployment of the military parade. Initially, the Auxiliary Ministers thought it meant sending soldiers to maintain order on the ground, something they were familiar with to the Beijing garrison and did not need to be particularly concerned, but Umbrella's military advisers were quick to criticise it, claiming that in addition to maintaining order, the focus of security efforts should be to prevent "terrorists" from dropping bombs or using automatic rifles, machine guns and submachine guns to strafe the viewing platform, which is something that the Beijing garrison does not understand and is not equipped to solve.

The decadent soldiers, who struggle even with knives and spears, will never perform better than an unarmed civilian when confronted with a rebel who wields bombs, automatic rifles, machine guns, or submachine guns. Only a few soldiers of the new army could deal with such a scene, but the range of those advanced weapons was so vast that no one could guarantee that the emperor or any minister would not be hit by stray bullets.

Moreover, military advisers continue to exaggerate the complexity and danger of "terrorist attacks", emphasizing that carefully camouflaged bombs are difficult to identify by conventional methods, that those "suicide bombs" that explode at the cost of self-death with bombs and steel balls strapped to their bodies do not need to approach their targets to complete their mission, and that there is a drug called "amphetamines" that can paralyze "terrorists" so that they do not feel pain and continue to attack without self-forgetfulness...... Finally, the military advisers cited the example of the Philippines, proving their point with the heavy casualties of the US Army, and even came up with some extremely horrific photos, as a result of which several ministers were terrified.

They were not unaware of the possibility of assassinating the emperor, a member of the imperial family, or an important minister, and knew that there were some rebel parties engaged in the overthrow of the Qing Empire, and that these people had already created several unsuccessful riots. However, the methods of assassination mentioned by the military advisers were unheard of, and even ministers like Li Hongzhang and Zhang Zhidong, who had interacted with the Western world, had heard of such a ferocious and brutal method of attack. In the face of these means, no army can protect the emperor, the members of the imperial family and their safety, and only by eliminating them before the "terrorists" can they attack.

Several auxiliary ministers devoted all their efforts to strengthening the security of the parade and deployed every soldier who could, but they still felt that it was not safe enough, and always felt that there was a lapse, because even the soldiers of the three separate infantry brigades were not trained to protect against "terrorist attacks". So in the end, after repeated consideration, the matter obtained a result: at the suggestion of Li Hongzhang and Liangbi, the security work of the parade was handed over to the Umbrella company.

It's professional, it's enough to have that, money is just a small meaning.

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Note: It was not until 1906 that the Qing government selected a generation of national anthems, and the official national anthem "Gong Jinou" was not determined until 1911 (to be continued, if you want to know what happened next, please log in to the www.qidian.com, more chapters, support the author, support genuine reading!) (To be continued.) )