Li Hongzhang wrote a letter of introduction to Song Xiaofei, asking him to go to Hefei on his behalf to ask Liu Mingchuan to come out of the mountain, the letter said: "The situation in North Korea is difficult, once it is lost, the southeast coast is in danger, and the country depends on the great talent of the public, so as to become a sea god needle", he patted Liu Mingchuan a fart, but told Song Xiaofei not to be too anxious, but to live in Liu Mingchuan's house for ten days or half a month before giving it to him.

Song Xiaofei received the letter and was about to leave, Li Hongzhang stopped him, wrote another letter and handed it to him, sealed it with wax, and the recipient on the envelope was the General Taxation Department of the Qing Customs, the Englishman Hurd.

Hurd was born in Ireland in a peasant family, the family surplus grain will also make wine and sell, reading changed his fate, after graduating from Queen's College Belfast in 1853, 19-year-old Hurd came to China, successively worked as a translator and assistant in the British Consulate in Ningbo and Guangzhou, in November 1863 as the General Department of Customs, the full introduction of the Western customs management system and experience, according to the rules and regulations, created a miracle: that is, two or three thousand people in the majority of the ministries, no one is corrupt, Customs revenue reached 4.96 million taels in 1861, 11.21 million taels in 1871, and 30 million taels in 1902.

Hurd came to the Qing Dynasty not to learn from Bethune's internationalist humanitarian spirit. He lived in Yanjing for a long time, and also had a part-time job, that is, as a "salesman", selling all kinds of British machines and gunboats to Qing officials, and the kickbacks were naturally lucrative, and he was the one who arranged for the purchase of the Aspen fleet in 1863. Li Hongzhang often asked Hurd to buy ordnance and machinery, and the two knew each other very well. Li Hongzhang handed the letter to Hurd to Song Xiaofei and said: "You go and ask Liu Mingchuan to go to sea, you can't go empty-handed, otherwise, it will seem that I am too insincere." Since you know foreign languages, you are responsible for going to Hurd to buy gunboats, and I said that I bought three ships from the British, so you can buy four, you tell Hurd, the old rule, the silver for buying ships is directly drawn from the customs duties of the five mouths, and when the 500,000 taels of silver allocated to Yue Ben by the household department arrives, I will make up for him, you should try to keep the price down this time, and the rest of the money will be used as the military salary for you and Liu Ming to go to North Korea. ”

Song Xiaofei thought to himself, Jiang was still old and spicy, and hurriedly thanked Li Hongzhang.

There is an old Yanjing courtyard house next to the North Sea, gray walls and green tiles, green willows, Song Xiaofei saw the bearded Hurd, he personally went to the main gate to greet Song Xiaofei, Song Xiaofei learned Chinese-style dumb English, spoken is not very good, and said a broken English for a long time: "nicetomeetyou!" ”

Hurd laughed and replied in fluent Chinese, "Hello! Master Li Hongzhang had already greeted me and said that you were going to come and see the gunboat. ”

Song Xiaofei nodded, handed Li Hongzhang's handwritten letter to Hurd, and said with a smile: "I really didn't expect that you are an Englishman, and Yanjing dialect is more slippery than mine." ”

Entering the living room, Hurd took out a stack of thick English drawings from a black leather case, and gestured with his hand to sell it to Song Xiaofei: "This kind of Rendall gunboat is the latest high-grade gunboat researched by my British Empire, with a displacement of 440 tons and 320 tons, and a warship is equipped with an 80-ton cannon, no matter how thick the iron armor of the other party's ship is, a cannon is such a big hole in the past." ”

Hurd stretched out his arms and gestured to the big hole, the power of the artillery was limited at that time, Song Xiaofei felt that he was a little exaggerated, half-convinced, and continued to look at the English drawings.

Seeing that Song Xiaofei was not very excited, Hurd continued to sell: "This ship also has an advantage, the rudder rotation time is short, it only takes two minutes and forty seconds to complete the rudder for a week, and the maneuvering surname is three to four times that of ordinary warships. ”

Artillery ox fork, mobile surname is good, this is exactly what Song Xiaofei wanted, he was moved, but he saw the caliber of the artillery on the drawing: marked 16, he didn't pay attention to it at first, thinking it was 16 centimeters, at that time, the caliber of the artillery of small and medium-sized warships was 16 centimeters, which was the largest, like the "Yunyang" gunboat and the Chinese "Meiyun" gunboat. Later, I thought about it, no, this drawing is in English, the caliber of the gunboat should be 16 inches, and 1 inch is about 2.54 centimeters, so the caliber of the gun's guns on this warship is 40.64 centimeters, which can be regarded as a giant among small and medium-sized gunboats!

Song Xiaofei's eyes widened and confirmed with Hurd: "The caliber of this warship's artillery is 16 inches?" ”

Hurd immediately hesitated and continued to introduce the advantages of this ship, such as the low price, you can buy one for 100,000 taels of silver, the price is one-tenth of that of an ocean-going warship, and the freight is also included, and the transaction is very cost-effective.

Before Song Xiaofei went to find Hurd, he did some homework, and he was introduced by Li Hongzhang to the French minister to learn about the situation of the [***] ships at that time. After listening to Hurd's introduction, Song Xiaofei immediately understood that what Hao De was selling to himself was the famous "mosquito boat", a new type of warship, which was developed by the British designer George in 1867. Rendall's design was to add large-caliber guns on the small hull that were only equipped with the main warships at that time, which was amazingly powerful, like a mosquito, seemingly inconspicuous, and a sudden bite would also make people very uncomfortable.

Many amateur historians in China always feel that the naming of the mosquito boat indicates that the hull of this kind of ship is small and weak, but in fact it is ignorant. This kind of ship is very suitable for coastal defense, which is equivalent to a mobile artillery battery, and can run over to reinforce at any time if the situation in a certain port is tense. If a few mosquito boats are arranged, a group of batteries at sea can be formed in a short period of time, and the only disadvantage is that the ships are too small to go to the open sea to fight, and if the wind and waves are high and the sea conditions are not good, it will also affect the combat effectiveness.

Song Xiaofei thought to himself that this kind of "mosquito boat" is suitable for guarding North Korea, Ryukyu, and Taiwan, but he wants to take the opportunity to lower the price, and he can't show that he wants to buy it too much, so he spread his hands and said, "No, Lord Zhongtang asked me to buy a warship, not a gunboat." Such warships cannot conduct ocean-going operations, but can only hold the sea. It is okay to cooperate with the defense of land batteries and carry out coastal defense, but as the capital ship of the navy, it is not applicable. ”

Hurd hurriedly said: "The delivery time of the warship is too long, and it needs to be ordered by paying a factory deposit in advance, which can be as short as one or two years or as long as three or five years. This gunboat is in stock and can arrive in a month. ”

Song Xiaofei pretended to leave: "That's no way." If you don't have it in stock, I'll have to go to the Germans or the French. ”

When Hurd heard this, although Song Xiaofei was young, he was not easy to deceive, so he hurriedly stopped him and said, "I can give you a cheaper." ”

Song Xiaofei said: "You make an offer." ”

Hurd said, "You say." ”

Song Xiaofei: "You come!" ”

Hurd said, "You name a price! ”

Bargaining is a technical job, whoever bids first will lose, Song Xiaofei smiled, "If you don't bid again, I'll leave, Lord Zhongtang is still waiting for me to go back and restore my life." ”

Hurd saw that Song Xiaofei understood foreign languages and gunboats, so he said a real price: "A 440-ton gunboat is 100,000 taels of silver, and a 320-ton gunboat is 70,000 taels of silver." ”

Song Xiaofei shook his head and began to bargain: "80,000 taels of silver for 440 tons, 50,000 taels for 320 tons of silver, buy two ships each." ”

In the arms market at that time, the unspoken rule of the 5% rebate was an open secret, and if you didn't take it, it would go to the foreigners. Therefore, although many Qing court officials opposed foreign affairs and were particularly active in buying foreign goods, they did not spend their own money anyway, so they generally did not bargain, and the higher the price, the more rebates. There are many people looking for Hurd to buy things, Prince Gong, Li Hongzhang, Wen Xiang, Zuo Zongtang, and Zhang Zhidong are all big customers of Hurd, and the first time they saw the Chinese buying arms and bargaining, they thought about it and said: "In this way, according to the four gunboats you said, a total of 300,000 taels of silver, and if the price is reduced, I will have to pay for it myself." ”

In 1863, the seven warships of the Aspen fleet were only 800,000 taels of silver, which also included the labor expenses of 600 officers and sailors. And silver is hard currency, inflation is almost negligible, so 300,000 silver in 1875 is also a large order, Song Xiaofei thought about it, said that he was about to start in North Korea, and had to go to Hefei to find Liu Mingchuan, time is running out, this price is fair, so he stretched out five fingers, said, "Delivery in Tianjin Port before July, the old rule, give me this amount of kickback (kickback), I came to buy it on behalf of Lord Zhongtang." ”

Hurd laughed and said, "Of course, follow the old rules." ”

Song Xiaofei heard Hurd talk about the old rules, and then he knew that it was true that it was recorded in history that Li Hongzhang bought arms and got kickbacks. How much money Li Hongzhang made in his life, when he was alive, no one dared to check, and after he died, it was rumored that there was about one million gold, about 1 billion yuan now. Li Hongzhang is such an official, the number one political axe and administration, and several ministers, compared with the modern tiger, he is a big witch.

At that time, the corruption of officials in the late Qing Dynasty was a kind of corruption of the system surname, and the salaries of civil servants in the Qing Dynasty were very low.

Through this purchase of the "mosquito boat", Song Xiaofei gradually understood that this world is realistic, as Li Hongzhang said: "The world is bustling, all for profit, no one is a fool, even if the mountain farmer, there is the benefit of fighting rice, but also flock to it", therefore, dealing with most people, whether foreigners or Chinese, it is normal to talk about interests first, and then talk about morality, rather than doing the opposite, otherwise it will be difficult to achieve anything, and we cannot expect everyone to be as conscious as Zeng Guofan, after all, there are too few readers in this era.;