"Oh? In this way, this Saigo Takamori is a loyal minister, but why did he raise troops to rebel later? Renxi listened to Prince Jing's answer and was slightly stunned,

"Saigo Takamori is loyal and righteous, and he is very virtuous in Japan, and is known as a model of samurai, so this time the army was raised, and the Japanese warriors responded to it." Prince Jing replied slowly, "The reason for the rebellion is because the Japanese government since the Restoration, for the sake of prosperity, treated the Shi clan harshly, abolished the Shi clan, and the Shi clan had no livelihood, so there were many troublemakers, before Saigo Takamori raised troops, there was the 'Saga Rebellion' headed by Eto Shinpei, and then there were 'Kamikaze Rebellion' and 'Ogi Rebellion', all of which were quickly suppressed by the Japanese government. ”

"I see, this Saigo Takamori is really a faithful minister, and his intentions can be described as good, but it is a pity that the Japanese lord can't use his ears." Empress Dowager Renxi sighed and said.

"The Japanese lord is quite talented and strategic, but he is in a hurry to do things, and appoints ministers such as Okubo Ritsu who are eager for quick success, which has provoked this change. Prince Chun said on the side.

"The Japanese government is not effective in quelling the chaos, the sea and land are mourning, and there is already an unstable foundation. Empress Dowager Rentai, who had not spoken, suddenly asked.

"Back to the Empress Dowager's words, now Saigo Takamori has occupied the southwest half of Japan, and the army is extremely strong, but he still respects the Japanese lord, and is kind-hearted, in order to prevent military disasters, the killing is too heavy. It was after the capture of Kobe. Then the army stopped. The lord of the country pleaded and wanted to negotiate peace. Prince Jing replied, "Although his intentions are good, but from the perspective of the art of war, there is a suspicion of 'the army mistaking the battle', and the sea power is now in his hands, if the navy escorts the army to land in Tokyo Bay, it will go straight to the capital of Japan." It was a success, and it did not use such a good opportunity, giving the Japanese Government a chance to breathe and borrow troops from foreign countries. From the minister's point of view, although Xixiang Takamori now has an advantage, it may be difficult to ensure that he is undefeated because of his pedantic behavior. ”

"Oh, that's the case......" Empress Dowager Rentai listened to Prince Jing's explanation, only nodded slightly, and did not speak again.

"Sixth Master. As it stands, I look at the Japanese government. Dealing with the lack of people, this Saigo Takashi has a good reputation, and there are many followers, so it's impossible to say if it can be done. Empress Dowager Renxi said, "Since the Japanese government changed the country's authority, it has great ambitions, and a few years ago it actually killed the boat people under the pretext of Shengfan, wanted to get involved in Moss Bay, fought with our cadres, killed the officers and soldiers of our land division, cut off our sea lanes, and bombarded our ports. The government is like this, and if it can be replaced, I think it would be a good thing. What does the sixth master think? ”

Hearing that the Empress Dowager Renxi seemed to have the intention of supporting Saigo Takamori, Prince Jing was shocked, and he hurriedly replied: "Back to the Empress Dowager's words, the minister thinks that the Japanese wolf ambitions, no matter which side presides over the government, once they sit in a stable situation, they will still expand to the outside world and bring disaster to other countries." ”

Listening to Prince Jing's answer, Rentai and Renxi glanced at each other quickly.

"Is the sixth master saying that if Saigo Takamori comes to power, it will also be detrimental to me?" Renxi asked.

"Back to the Queen Mother's words, it is exactly so. Saigo Takamori once served as a senator for the Japanese government, and during his political participation, in order to find a way out for the domestic nobles, he advocated the expedition to Korea, and then was obstructed by Okubo Ritsu, and in a fit of anger, he resigned and went into hiding. Prince Jing replied, "It can be seen from this that if he comes to power, it is difficult to guarantee that he will not recruit the Han army again, and it will be a disaster for me at that time." ”

As soon as Prince Jing's words came out, the two queen mothers, Rentai and Renxi, all looked stunned.

"The queen mother still remembers that a few years ago, the chief who led the troops to invade the moss, and the person who was beheaded by Lin Wenxiang was the brother of this Xixiang Takasheng." Prince Chun also interjected at the right time.

"In this way, it's better for Lin Wenxiang's method." Empress Dowager Renxi nodded, "Take advantage of the civil strife in Japan to weaken its strength and greatly damage its vitality, even if the rebellion is quelled, it will be difficult for me to be the enemy of the Great Cadres." ”

"The Empress Dowager Shengming." Prince Jing and Prince Chun replied in unison.

"However, the Japanese government has now decided to borrow troops from Russia, and the Russians are mixed in, which will do us a lot of work, but I'm afraid it won't do us any good, right?" Empress Dowager Intae asked.

When the Empress Dowager Intae said that Japan had decided to borrow troops from Russia, Prince Kyung and Prince Jun were all taken aback.

What the two of them know now is that the Japanese Government has sent separate notes to various countries and put forward a request to borrow troops to quell the rebellion, and the countries have had different reactions to this, and they are in the process of consultation.

"If Russia wants to make a big deal for us for a long time, and used the battle of the British and French coalition forces to invade and annex a large area of China's northeast territory, and now it is forcibly occupying Ili, and there are many threats. Prince Jing said.

"I think it's the same, Emperor Xianfeng was because of the Russians, and unfortunately the dragon controlled Bintian." At the mention of the Russians, a hint of resentment flashed in the eyes of the Empress Dowager Rentai.

"The minister dared to ask the queen mother, where did the news of the decision to borrow troops from Russia come from?" Prince Jing asked.

"Zuo Jigao made a secret recital, which talked about this." Empress Dowager Renxi said quietly, took out a notebook from the "Dianshizhai Pictorial", and handed it to Li Jintai, who was standing aside, "Li Jintai, take it to the sixth and seventh masters." ”

Li Jintaitai took Zuo Jigao's recital with both hands, stepped forward quickly, and presented it to Prince Jing, who opened it with both hands and watched it carefully.

“…… I am in Dingding, Yandu, Mongolia is in the north, and there has been no beacon alarm for more than 100 years...... The situation is very different from the past. The Russians are expanding their territory day by day, from west to east for more than 10,000 miles, connecting with our northern border, and only the middle section is covered by the Mongolian department. The salary should be far away, and the curve should be the first, especially for those who are not prepared. ”

“…… Those who value Xinjiang protect Mongolia, and those who protect Mongolia protect Beijing. The northwest arm fingers are connected, and the situation is complete. There is no gap. If Xinjiang is not solid. Non-Shaanxi, Gansu and Shanxi sides of the Yu invasion. It is impossible to prevent it, that is, Guanshan in the north, and there will be no day of sleep. ……”

Seeing that Zuo Jigao had once again forced his old tune of "those who value Xinjiang protect Mongolia, and those who protect Mongolia protect Mongolia, so they guard Jingshi", Prince Jing's brows habitually furrowed. He couldn't help but speak, but continued to look at the following.

“…… I heard that the Russian consul said that Japan exchanged the land of Hokkaido for the Russians and sent troops to help it quell the Saigo Takamori Rebellion. When I heard that there was an initiative to send troops to our court, I asked my ministers to make a statement on their behalf, saying that the Japanese mustard rebellion was peaceful for the Russians and did not work for the troops of the Celestial Empire. The minister knew that the Russians had plans for Japan, so he made this statement. However, for my plan, the affairs of Japan and Russia, the minister thought that he could not intervene, and he should withdraw from the matter and wait and see what happened. …… Japan's previous conquest. Our dynasty fought for its life, and although it was victorious, it was also damaged. The soldiers were paid a lot of money, and the Japanese did not suffer any major losses, and our great plan to consolidate the border in the northwest has already hindered a lot. Don't forget the past, the teacher of the future, this time the Russians will march on their behalf, but we will not listen to it, the Russians will not provoke for no reason, then the northwest can gather military strength and pay to act single-handedly......"

Prince Jing frowned and finished reading Zuo Jigao's secret recital, and handed the recital to Prince Chun's hands, Prince Chun looked at it for a while, but he didn't frown like Prince Jing, but his eyes also flashed with dissatisfaction.

In the impression of the people of the time, since the death of Zeng Bohan and Hu Linyi, among the capable ministers of the Great Qianguo, only Zuo Jigao and Li Shaoquan remained. And Zuo Jigao is compared to Li Shaoquan, whether it is prestige or achievement, it seems to be more than that.

Zeng, Zuo, and Li were once known in the world. Zeng Bohan is a senior figure in age and merit, and the prominence of Zuo and Li also depends on Zeng Bohan's support. However, Zuo Jigao is a person with an upright temperament, a temperament like fire, and he is arrogant and arrogant, and he doesn't even pay attention to Zeng Bohan on weekdays, and he is ruthless, and his children's in-laws and life-saving benefactor Guo Yunxian have all been impeached by him.

Zuo Jigao is arrogant, arrogant, and domineering, but he does have real achievements. Prince Chun also admitted in his heart that not to mention the merit of "suppressing the hair and flattening the hair", in terms of the rectification of coastal defense, Zuo Jigao can also be called one of the earliest and most courageous figures in the period of Xianfeng and Tongzhi to understand the issue of coastal defense.

But no one expected that only a few years later, Zuo Jigao's attitude towards coastal defense would take a sharp turn and be regarded as revenge!

Because of Guan Long Xinping, Zuo Jigao began to prepare for the invasion of Xinjiang again.

As early as the beginning of the fourth year of Tongzhi, Aguba, the military leader of the Central Asian state of Kokand, took advantage of the armed rebellion in Xinjiang to invade Xinjiang with the support of Britain and established a so-called "Zhedeshar Khanate" in an attempt to completely separate Xinjiang from the territory of China. Russia also seized the opportunity to forcibly occupy Ili and other places under the pretext of "recovering on behalf of Middle Earth". And 10 years later, in the thirteenth year of Tongzhi, after the pacification of Shaanxi and Gansu, Zuo Jigao suddenly advocated-for-tat, led troops into Xinjiang, completely quelled the rebellion, and recovered Xinjiang.

The reason why Zuo Jigao is so active in asking for the recovery of Xinjiang is to achieve a lifetime of fame and completely overwhelm Zeng Bohan!

Many people at the time believed that Zuo Jigao's biggest weakness was his obsession with "striving for merit". For Zuo Jigao, merit is more important than everything. Proving that he is the most capable person in the world, or in other words, proving that others are not as good as himself is the first driving force in his heart.

In February of the third year of Xianfeng, Zuo Jigao occupied Hangzhou, and he was crowned prince because of his merits. Around this time, Zeng Bohan said in a twist and turn that his army "swept away the south." Shenan belongs to Zhejiang, and after Zuo Jigao read it, his first reaction was that Zeng Bohan was competing with him, and he consulted Zeng's family to make a big crusade. In fact, as long as you read it carefully, you will know that Zeng Bohan's Nanxiang refers to Nanxiang County, which is in Anhui, and is not competing with Zuo. Zeng Bohan then "reinstated the consultation and ridiculed". This incident was a joke for a while.

What led to the final break between Zeng and Zuo was actually Zuo Jigao and Zeng Bohan's struggle for merit. And this way of fighting for merit was repeated again after the battle of "Pingqiao".

The battle of "Pingshui" was led by Li Shaoquan, with Zuo Jigao commanding the Chu army cooperating. After the end of the war, the Huai army naturally took the lead. But Zuo Jigao was not convinced, "I don't take it as a matter of course that the Huai army annihilates the thieves, and search in many ways", wanting to catch Li Shaoquan's handle. The symbol of the pacification of the army was that its commander Zhang Zhongyu committed suicide by throwing himself into the river, but the problem was that although some people saw Zhang Zhongyu throwing himself into the river, Zhang Zhongyu's body was never recovered. Zuo Jigao therefore suspected that Zhang Zhongyu might have escaped, so he repeated the old trick and ordered his subordinates to quietly go out to search and arrest, and he must get Zhang Zhongyu's whereabouts as soon as possible. Zuo Jigao's actions angered Li Shaoquan, and Li Shaoquan sent a letter to Zeng Bohan, scolding Zuo Jigao for being Cao Cao. said: "The destruction of Zhang Xuan this time. The right time, the right place, and the right people have both. Only one left public to the end. Concealing his true colors, he is revealed here, and I don't know why Hu Wenzhong pushed it so hard that day. ”

Although Zuo Jigao has always paid attention to coastal defense, now that he wants to enter Xinjiang and achieve a new "great cause", of course he will not sit idly by and watch the imperial court make the strategic choice of "supporting the east and turning the west"!

As early as the imperial court handed over the articles of the Prime Minister Yamen and Ding Richang on coastal defense to the governors for detailed discussion, it used Zuo Jigao to "pay attention to foreign affairs". He was invited to participate in the discussion. As a result, centering on the question of "coastal defense" or "blockade defense," two major camps emerged in the Qianting court, and various political forces were reorganized.

In addition to supporters such as Shen Youdan, Lin Yizhe, Ding Yusheng, and Li Xiaoquan (Li Shaoquan's elder brother), the "coastal defense faction" also included Bao Yuanshen, governor of Shanxi, Qian Dingming, governor of Henan, Yixuan, the prince of Zhongchun in the inner court, Shangshu Chongshi of the Criminal Department, Huang Jue, the left attendant of the Criminal Department, and Yu Shanghua, the imperial historian, who also joined this camp.

The "Sai Defense faction" with Zuo Jigao as the backbone had the strong support of Wang Wenshao, the governor of Hunan, Wen Bin, the governor of Caoyun, Ding Zhihuang, the governor of Shandong, and Wu Yuanbing, the governor of Jiangsu. The representative theory of this school is that "the east is coastal defense, and the west is fortress defense." Equal emphasis on both". In fact, fundamentally speaking, it is still advocated to concentrate limited human and financial resources. Priority should be given to solving the problem of blockade defense in the northwest, so as to reap the merit of "the northwest is safe and the southeast is self-consolidated."

Zuo Jigao launched a fierce attack on Li Shaoquan's proposal to stop the defense of the northwest:

“…… If we plan to stop the army at this time and withdraw the fence ourselves, then we will retreat an inch and advance the foot, not only will Longyou be worried, that is, the northern road Kobdo, Uriya Sutai and other places may not be able to be clear, because the cease-of-war and the salary may not be beneficial to coastal defense, but it will be greatly harmful to the defense of the fortress. ”

Li Shaoquan pointed out-for-tat, pointing out: "Xinjiang is no longer alive, and the vitality of the limbs is not injured (Agubai has occupied Xinjiang for seven or eight years, and now except for Hami and Balikun, which are still in the hands of the cadres, most of Xinjiang has been occupied by Agubai's forces, but the Guanlong area has not been harassed, and with Agubai's little military strength, it is already great to be able to occupy the whole of Xinjiang, and he is not capable of attacking Guanlong at all. If the sea frontier is not guarded, the trouble of the heart will become more thorny. There must be someone who can discern which is more important than the other. "Advocate stopping the payment of blockade defense," all of which should be paid for coastal defense. Otherwise, only this financial resources are prepared for the southeast and thousands of miles of sea frontiers, and the northwest is for thousands of miles. ”

Having said that, Li Shaoquan has no intention of giving up Xinjiang in fact, and the solutions he gave are: First, stop the army. It was suggested that the imperial court should stop withdrawing the troops that had already been out of the fortress and were preparing to leave the fortress in the northwest region, so that they would "strictly guard the existing borders, and cultivate the land without rushing to make progress", and stop the withdrawal of the excess salary, and transfer it to coastal defense. Second, management. Li Shaoquan's strategy for running Xinjiang was: "Recruit the Hui chieftains of Ili, Urumqi, and Kashgar, and allow them to become tribes of their own, such as Miao Yao Tusi of Yunnan and Guizhou, and Feng Zhengshuo of Vietnam and Korea." Li Shaoquan believes that this will not only thwart the desire of Britain and Russia to annex, but also eliminate the need for an expedition to Middle Earth, which is actually "the way to endure for a long time."

Li Shaoquan's suggestion that Xinjiang should be managed as "such as the Miao Yao Tusi of Yunnan and Guizhou, and the strategy of Vietnam and North Korea is Fengzhengshuo" is not a problem in placing it in the Celestial Empire of this era. Because in this era, the traditional "view of the world" is far from being replaced by the modern "world view", and the "Vietnam" and "Korea" in Li Shaoquan's context are not sovereign states in the modern sense, but the vassals in the traditional "world view" of China, which can be seen by comparing "Vietnam" and "Korea" with the "Miao Yao Tusi of Yungui" in the Central Plains. In other words, Li Shaoquan never said that he would abandon Xinjiang, and the proposal he put forward was based on the "view of the world" held by the government and the opposition in the Daqian court. This "view of the world" seemed absurd to later generations, but at that time, it was the orthodox ideology that the scholars of the Central Plains tried their best to abide by.

In contrast, there is no difference in understanding of Zuo Jigao's opinion. Zuo Jigao was praised for advocating that "coastal defense in the east and defense in the west should be equally important." However, in fact, Li Shaoquan and other so-called "coastal defense theorists" did not think that defense was not important, and their differences were only about who should give priority to defense and coastal defense under the existing financial resources. Unlike Li Shaoquan, who believed that the coastal defense crisis was even worse and should concentrate financial resources to deal with it first, in Zuo Jigao's view, the cost of coastal defense could save the cost of buying and hiring ships, because the Fuzhou Shipping Administration Bureau could already build its own ships and no longer had to use the money from the westward expedition; Moreover, even if we do not march westward and draw land to defend it, it is impossible to save money for coastal defense. In order to emphasize the importance of Xinjiang, Zuo Jigao did not hesitate to take the Beijing division as the title, and offered the theology of "those who value Xinjiang so they protect Mongolia, and those who protect Mongolia so they defend Beijing" to intimidate the imperial court.

Zuo Jigao's theology of "those who value Xinjiang protect Mongolia, and those who protect Mongolia protect Jingshi" came out, and it really had the effect he wanted. Important ministers like the late scholar Wen Bochuan were inevitably influenced by Zuo Jigao's theology.

If we say that Xinjiang is valued for the sake of protecting Beijing, then shouldn't the sea, which is closer to Beijing, where "ships from various countries travel through the sea" and "can be reached at night", also be paid more attention?

Zuo Jigao, who used to be an active advocate and practitioner of coastal defense construction, has now transformed into the biggest opponent and obstructor of coastal defense construction! (To be continued......)

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