On March 18, Wang Chenhao and his fleet entered the Mediterranean Sea through the Suez Canal.

On the same day, Wang Chenhao received the latest telegram from Wang Shizhen in the telegraph room of the British Residence in Port Said, which reported important events in and around China in the past month.

Wang Shizhen categorized and summarized all kinds of events on the telegram, concisely and clearly.

In terms of military affairs, the new army of the eight towns of Beiyang is what Wang Chenhao is most concerned about. Wang Shizhen said in the telegram that Tie Liang had not made personnel adjustments to the Beiyang Army, and that the rules and regulations set by Wang Chenhao before he left were still maintained, and that the training of the New Army was proceeding in an orderly manner. Wang Shizhen analyzed that the reason why Tie Liang did not act was because Guangxu, Cixi and Li Hongzhang all put pressure on him, and Tie Liang wavered in the short term, so he did not intervene in the Beiyang Army.

After Liu Kunyi recuperated, he had already returned to Jiangning Mansion and began to act as the political affairs of the Liangjiang Army. Zhang Zhidong left the Ziqiang Army to Liu Kunyi, who reorganized the Ziqiang Army into the Jinling New Army, and carried out some reforms and corrections in response to the problems exposed by the Yongping Autumn Rebellion. At present, the combat strength of the Jinling New Army has been improved, and Liu Kunyi does not seem to want to wait for the training of the Liangjiang New Army after the training of the Beiyang Eight Towns New Army, so after he goes back, in addition to reorganizing the Jinling New Army, he will expand on the basis of the Jinling New Army, and the goal is to build the Liangjiang New Army after the Beiyang Eight Towns insist on the establishment of the Liangjiang New Army. At the same time, Liu Kunyi established the Jiangning Lian Jiang School in Nanjing, imitating the establishment of the Beiyang Military Academy and the classics, hiring foreign instructors to teach, and recruiting children from Liangjiang to enroll.

Liu Kunyi's actions were obviously aware of the strong competition and threat that the new army of the eight towns of Beiyang would bring to him, so the first thing he did after returning to office was to reorganize and expand the Jinling New Army in order to achieve the goal of competing with Li Hongzhang.

Zhang Zhidong left Jiangning and returned to Wuchang, he and Liu Kunyi basically had the same idea, Li Hongzhang had Wang Chenhao's help, once the new army of Beiyang Eight Towns was completed, Beiyang would be pressed to Nanyang again. Zhang Zhidong was very unwilling to lose face in the Yongping Autumn Festival, so he would not wait for the imperial court to set the first Beiyang Eight Towns to train into the twenty-eight towns in the local area, he was the same as Liu Kunyi, the first thing he did after returning to Wuchang was to train the Huguang New Army, and Zhang Zhidong also set up the Hubei Wubei Academy in Wuchang, which was also modeled on the establishment and canons of the Beiyang Wubei School, and recruited Huguang's children and cultivated Huguang's own military talents, so as to compete with Li Hongzhang.

Zhang Zhidong and Liu Kunyi's actions made the imperial court somewhat dissatisfied, but the Qing court's control over the local government had long existed in name only, and it could only turn a blind eye to the actions of local officials. The internal strife between Cixi and Guangxu made the imperial court only implement a policy of softness towards the localities, and Cixi, who held great power, was inferior to Empress Wu Zetian's ability and iron-blooded wrist, so she could only find a balance of power between Li Hongzhang, Zhang Zhidong and Liu Kunyi, so that they could check and balance each other, so as to maintain her power in the center.

Zhang Zhidong and Liu Kunyi's actions naturally couldn't hide from Li Hongzhang, but Li Hongzhang was not idle. In addition to putting pressure on Tie Liang so that he would not interfere with the construction of the new army in the eight towns of Beiyang, Li Hongzhang was also vigorously rectifying the Beiyang Naval Division, because that was the biggest political bargaining chip for him to always lead Nanyang and maintain the first governor in the world.

As early as when the Dengyun-class battleship was ordered, in order to determine the candidate to receive the Dengyun-class battleship, the Beiyang Naval Division began large-scale training and exercises, and all the generals and officers worked hard to earn the selection. Similarly, Li Hongzhang's loan with the British set aside a part of the funds for the upgrading and reconstruction of the entire fleet of the Beiyang Naval Division.

All the ships of the Beiyang Naval Division are very old, and the youngest is the Flying Thunder destroyer (destroyer) that returned to China last year. The ship is a three-rise reciprocating steam engine produced by the city of Cowes (cowww.xstxt.orguelwww.xstxt.orgessrsbelisandpany). The power is 3000 hp and the maximum speed is 21.45 knots. Armed with two 4.7-inch 120-mm MK3 Armstrong rapid-fire guns, four 47-mm Habekis single-barreled rapid-fire guns, and three 14-inch torpedo tubes. The staffing is 68 people.

The ship had great firepower and was also top notch for its time. Before the First Sino-Japanese War, the Qing Empire realized that the warships of the Beiyang Naval Division were old and inferior in speed and firepower, so the ships were originally used to participate in the First Sino-Japanese Naval Battle. However, after Ben found out, he considered various factors to start the war in advance, and as a result, the British detained the Thunder at British Customs.

After the First Sino-Japanese War, in order to adapt to the long-distance sea storms, the Flying Thunder was refitted with a high freeboard before returning to China. As the fastest destroyer of the late nineteenth century, the Airship was astonishing in terms of firepower and speed, but her design did not become the mainstream destroyer of the early twentieth century.

However, in order to fill the gap in the speed and firepower of the Beiyang Naval Division, Li Hongzhang still ordered seven other hunting destroyers from the British, which were numbered as Feizi, and the Western code name was Feiting-class hunting ships.

The remaining seven destroyers will be used as frigates for the Dengyun-class battleships, and will return home with the two Dengyun-class battleships, taking care of their safety along the way.

Li Hongzhang also wanted to buy a few armored cruisers and protective cruisers as ships to be used as supporting the Dengyun-class battleships, so as to build a new fleet and meet the needs of future naval warfare. However, the cost of European and American warships is rising every day, and the international silver price has dropped sharply, and Li Hongzhang's millions of taels of silver are not used at all.

Li Hongzhang counted on Wang Chenhao, and he gave the Jiangnan Manufacturing Bureau to Wang Chenhao, so that Wang Chenhao could pay to build Shanghai Shipbuilding Heavy Industry Co., Ltd. to provide maintenance and maintenance for the Beiyang Naval Division. Li Hongzhang used the saved funds to upgrade the ships of the Beiyang Naval Division. The main thing is to replace the large-caliber rapid-fire gun, improve the main gun mount equipment to increase the firing rate, use new gunpowder as the propellant, improve the boiler and steam engine and transmission equipment, and try to restore the speed of the ship when it left the factory.

Although Li Hongzhang vigorously upgraded the ships of the Beiyang Naval Division, due to the lack of maintenance and maintenance of the ships for many years and the serious aging of the equipment, even after the transformation, the speed of many warships could not reach the standard of the factory at that time, and the Yangwei could not even reach half of it, and finally dismantled the weapons and became a training ship.

Political aspects. Wang Shizhen mainly reported to Wang Chenhao the latest decisions of the Qing court. Since Wang Chenhao told the imperial court about the large-scale sale of silver in the United States, the imperial court has begun preparations. After Guangxu and Weng Tongyi studied, they felt that this was an opportunity to control the financial power of the imperial court, so Guangxu and his imperial party group strongly advocated the implementation of the gold standard, and this call was strongly supported by Britain, France, the United States, Germany and Russia.

Guangxu's views have always been opposed by Cixi, and this time it is an obvious seizure of financial power, and Cixi is naturally unwilling. The favored views of the great powers have always been opposed by a group of stubborn old-fashioned factions in the imperial court.

In this way, the reform of the gold standard, which Guangxu and the great powers agreed to, became the focus of contention, and the plan for the reform of the gold standard was obstructed by Cixi and a group of conservative ministers. However, Cixi and the old-fashioned elements also knew that this crisis was related to most of the imperial court's revenue, and that a depreciation of more than half would not be a joke, and would deal a heavy blow to the already fragile economy. In the midst of the controversy, Cixi and the old ministers tried to find another way to survive the crisis.

Considering that silver could not fall indefinitely, the two sides eventually reached a short-term agreement. The imperial court temporarily switched from the original silver and copper standard to the gold and copper standard, leaving aside silver in the short term in order to cope with the silver deficit crisis, and then changing back to silver prices when the price of silver stabilized.

This compromise was finally agreed upon, so the imperial court ordered that the silver remaining in the household departments and provinces be exchanged for gold to Britain, France, the United States, Germany, Russia and other countries, so as to temporarily enforce the gold and copper standard. At the same time, the private tax refused to accept silver, so that the private sector gave up collecting silver and exchanged gold for gold in domestic and foreign merchant banks to preserve its value.