November 22, 1848, the city of Beijing. The huge city is still the best place in the Qing Empire.

Cigarette smoke and the sound of whipping.

Huanghuang Taihe Palace, a big court meeting is being held!

According to the dynasty system that has been implemented in the Qing Dynasty for many years, ordinary court meetings will not gather a large number of officials such as the six ministries and nine secretaries outside the military aircraft at one time, and these officials are all on a daily basis. However, today's big court meeting is a gathering of officials above the fourth grade in Beijing. The sky is not clear, the sedan chairs outside the Longzong Gate are strings of them, the lanterns are even more dotted, and the neatly dressed officials of all sizes gather, all waiting for the court meeting.

It's just that the color on the faces of the officials of the Qing Dynasty is either gray or iron-blue, not like a court meeting, but like an execution ground!

In fact, the gap between the two is really not big.

These days, it is no longer a situation where bad news comes one after another, and the Jingshi is shaken and shaken. It's that there isn't much news coming from all over the place at all! Around October 27 of the Gregorian calendar, the "hundreds of thousands" army under the banner of Yang Xiuqing, the eastern king of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom, and Xiao Chaogui, the western king, were divided into two routes from the east and west sides of Beijing City! By the 28th, the two armies met in Changping County, north of Beijing, and completed the strategic encirclement of Beijing!

At this moment, there are nearly 50,000 banner people and some civil and military officials in Beijing who have time to run away, and they have all become turtles in the urn! Emperor Daoguang just figured it out that it was too late to go to Guanwai - in fact, he could still run away, because the Taiping army besieging Beijing was not elite at all, and the number was not hundreds of thousands, it was just a bluff.

However, how can the 20,000 New Army of the Eight Banners with the Yellow Banner, the less than 100,000 banner people who have not yet had time to run away, and the more than 50,000 Green Battalion soldiers who are surrounded in Beijing dare to leave the city of Beijing? Mu Zhang'a, the minister in charge of defending the city, was even more at the time when the vanguard of the Taiping Army appeared in the suburbs of Beijing. He ordered the nine gates of Beijing to be sealed with stones. Hanging baskets can also be used to lower them from the top of the city to the outside of the city. Marco couldn't get out. I just thought about finding out the truth of the Taiping Army. Those who haven't left Beijing yet, just stay in the city and wait for death - anyway, except for Daoguang, Mu Zhang'a, and Nerjing, there are not many important people in Beijing.

Prince Gong Shengjing's general Yixin should have arrived in Shengjing and began to preside over the overall situation. Moreover, Emperor Daoguang has publicly announced Yi Xin as the future king of the Qing Dynasty in front of hundreds of civil and military officials, and also gave him half of the new army with yellow flags and the Eight Banners of Shengjing, and also named him Prince Heshuo Gong. This candidate for the future king of the Qing Dynasty. There shouldn't be any more suspense. This is probably the only thing Emperor Daoguang has done in the past two years, right?

In addition to arranging the future king of the Qing Dynasty and evacuating the people of Jingshi, what Emperor Daoguang did in these days was to add officials to his subordinates. Although most of the more important officials have run away, there is no shortage of officials and people who want to be officials in Beijing. And now those who are still accompanying Emperor Daoguang to guard the Beijing Division are undoubtedly loyal and good to the Qing Dynasty that can stand the test, so Emperor Daoguang is also generous, and he has sealed thousands of officials in one go. The seats left by the officials who followed Prince Gong to Shengjing were filled.

Therefore, when the court meeting started today, both sides of the Taihe Gate had to be pressed in black on both sides of the Great Qing Dynasty with flowers and feathers. However, for the sudden call of the court, these loyal ministers always have an ominous premonition in their hearts.

"The emperor has arrived!" With the voice of a male duck of a eunuch. The loyal ministers of the Qing Dynasty, who were worried in their hearts, immediately shouted and worshipped. I heard footsteps, and then the hoarse voice of Emperor Daoguang: "Flat." Let's all go flat! ”

Everyone got up and peeked at Emperor Daoguang, who had become the lord of a city, and saw Emperor Lao Tzu sitting on the throne in court clothes, with an expressionless face, dull eyes, and no trace of blood on his sallow face. Seeing that the ministers had already gotten up, he said: "Today's call is to announce one thing to everyone, the brigade of Cantonese bandits has set up camp outside Beijing!" The king flag of the puppet East King Yang Reverse Xiuqing has appeared in the Old Summer Palace in the north of the city! ”

His tone was very light, but the civil and military officials standing in the main hall of the Taihe Hall still heard it word for word. The main force of the Cantonese bandits has arrived in Beijing, and Yang Xiuqing, the king of the east, has also arrived! In other words, the big guy is not far from death......

There was a sudden sound of gasping in the main hall, although everyone in Beijing City knew that there would be this day sooner or later, but at this time, everyone's mind was blank.

Seeing that the ministers below were all silent, Emperor Daoguang snorted coldly, and then said: "What is this Forty-Nine City like, the big guy must also know the Dao, and it is not an exaggeration to say that it is the strongest city in the world. There were also many soldiers defending the city...... The new army of Zhenghuangqi has expanded to 28,000, there are still 10,000 people in the yamen of the infantry army, and there are 50,000 people in the green battalion and the training army combined, which is almost 100,000 people! 100,000 people, and there is enough food and grass to defend the world's strongest city, do you think you can hold it? ”

Beijing...... Can it be kept? The people below were all calculating in their hearts, and they forgot to answer for a while. Seeing that it was going to be cold, Mu Zhang'a, who served as the minister guarding the city, hurriedly came out of the queue and knelt down with a puff: "If you go back to the emperor, Beijing City will definitely be able to defend it!" With the emperor leading us to defend the city wholeheartedly, how can the Cantonese bandits succeed? Not to mention breaking the enemy under the city, it can also be protracted according to the strong city, dragged until the veterans of the Cantonese bandit division are tired, and the division of the king of Qin from all sides and the Russian reinforcements are so large that they will definitely win a complete victory! ”

Emperor Daoguang seemed to be excited when he heard this, and stood up from the throne at once, walked a few steps, and stood still: "Let me tell you a piece of news, Bai Siwen sent someone to report a few days ago, he has arrived in Petersburg, negotiated with the Russian Tsar Nicholas I, borrowed 100,000 Russian divisions, and the Russian soldiers will be able to reach Beijing City in 6 months at most!" When the time comes, don't say that the Cantonese bandits, even the Zhu Rebellion of Guangdong, will also be unable to escape the end of annihilation! ”

Listening to Emperor Daoguang's encouragement lies, all the ministers bowed down one after another, and the mountains shouted long live. Nar Jing, who was in the same position as Mu Zhang'a, shouted long live, and thought in his heart: "The city of Beijing is strong enough, and there are many soldiers, whether it can be defended depends on morale, I hope that this picture of Tsarist Russia can boost the morale of the big guys......

……

At this moment, in Shanghai, inside the British Consulate.

In the study of Consul Pashali, three foreign devils, the British Minister to the Manchu Qing Dynasty, the British Minister to the Ming Dynasty, Wen Xian, and the British Consul in Shanghai, Pa Xiali, were holding a cup of coffee and looking at each other silently.

A quarrel about the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom has just ended among the three.

Of course, as diplomats of the British Empire in China, the three pursued the same goal, that is, to protect the interests of the British Empire in China to the greatest extent, but there were still differences. Wen Xian, who had just arrived from Guangzhou, believed that the British Empire should support Zhu Ming's unification of China, which would certainly be beneficial to the economic interests of the British Empire. He gave the trade data between Ming and Britain in the first three quarters of 1848 as evidence. This figure is far more than the trade between Qing and Britain during the same period, and even close to the total amount of trade between China and Britain in the same period in 1846, before the start of the Chinese Civil War. Moreover, under the condition of the ban on smoking in the Ming Kingdom, the trade between Ming and Britain was still in surplus with Britain, and the sales of British industrial products in Ming were much higher than the sales of British industrial products in the whole of China. Bonham also boldly predicted that once Zhu Ming unified China, the total trade between China and Britain would soon exceed 100 million pounds!

However, Pasha Li and Ali Guo held the opposite opinion, believing that the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom should be fostered to become the ruler of northern China! That's right, it was the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom, not the Manchus. Although the latter was more deferential to the British, Aliguo, who had returned to Shanghai from Shengjing, believed that the Manchus had no value in supporting them.

He said: "All the support of the British Empire to the Manchus will be in vain unless an army of tens of thousands of men is directly dispatched to support the Manchus." It is impossible to expect the Manchus to hold their strongholds, Manchuria and Mongolia, because the number of banner people is too small, and most of them are old and weak, women and children, and those who can take up arms to fight are only 1............00,000 at most.