Modern Vietnam is also a relatively unlucky country, not to mention its early history, but only the last few decades.

In 1802, Nguyen Phuc Anh defeated the Tay Son rebels with the help of the French, established the capital of Hue, and in 1804, he was canonized as the king of Vietnam by the Qing Dynasty.

However, even if he submitted to the Qing Dynasty on the surface and obtained the canonization, in fact, people have always been unwilling to be a vassal country, except for tributary diplomacy with the Qing Dynasty, at other times people generally do not use the king of Vietnam, and even ascended the throne in 1806 and proclaimed himself emperor.

In the early 19th century, Vietnam showed little sign of subjugating China, and even wanted to send troops to China at one point, calling the Qing Dynasty the Northern Dynasty and calling itself the Southern Dynasty.

Well, that is, to regard the Qing Dynasty and itself as the Northern and Southern Dynasties in Chinese history! So to some extent, Vietnam during this period actually regarded itself as part of China, well, this is not what we Chinese say, but Nguyen Phuc Anh thinks so.

In 1839, the Nguyen Dynasty changed the name of the country from 'Vietnam' to 'Da Nan', with the obvious intention of officially breaking away from the canonization of the Qing Dynasty, because the title Vietnam came from the Qing court's canonization of 'King of Vietnam'.

However, after 1847, the Great Southern Empire, which had dominated Southeast Asia for decades, went downhill, and in 1858, the French army began to invade Great Southern under the pretext of casually and occupied part of the region.

Later, the Second Opium War broke out between the British and French forces and the Chinese Empire, and a large number of the main forces of the French army in Da Nan were transferred to China to participate in the exhibition.

At this time, the impact on Great Southern was that the French army had been unable to increase its strength in the Saigon area of Great Southern Province. At the minimum, there were about 1,000 troops, but even so. The Nguyen Dynasty also had no way to counterattack and retake the Saigon area.

After 1859, some of the French prisoners released by China returned to the Saigon area of Vietnam. In addition, the French army reinforced part of the troops.

By the spring of 1861, the relieved French army had gathered about 3,000 troops in the Saigon area of Vietnam, and then began a large-scale offensive, starting from the city of Gia Dinh to attack Qihetun and other places.

Up to now, the French army has fought many battles with the army of the Nguyen Dynasty in the above-mentioned areas, and there is no doubt about the victory or defeat, it must have been the defeat of the army of the Nguyen Dynasty.

At the same time, a series of French colonial military campaigns in Vietnam also attracted China's attention and opposition.

In fact, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Chinese Empire has never said that it will sit idly by, although the Ruan Dynasty has already proclaimed itself emperor. It's just that they surrender on the surface and are still independent in their hearts, but it doesn't matter what they think in their hearts, the important thing is that they still take the initiative to pay tribute and recognize China as their sole suzerain.

As a result, Vietnam is also the only country in the Chinese Empire that has only three de facto tributaries, namely Korea, Da Nan, and Ryukyu. Other Burmese and Siamese have basically stopped paying tribute, and Nepal still regards China as its suzerain, but it only pays lip service to it, and does not really send tributary envoys.

So anyway. The Kingdom of Vietnam, well, the Great Southern Empire, as they call itself, is still a vassal state of China. So the Imperial Foreign Ministry was strongly opposed to France sending troops to Vietnam!

But in this day and age, if verbal protests were useful, wars would not break out every day.

In the face of the protests of the Empire. The French diplomats were engaged in diplomatic tussle with the diplomats of the Empire while continuing to send troops to step up military operations against Vietnam.

For this case. The empire is naturally intolerable!

Previously, Siam was under the control of Britain and France, and forced Siam to break off its tribute to China. This happened a little early, long before the Chinese army unified China, and the Chinese army did not have enough ability to overthrow Britain and France and gradually infiltrate and extend Siam after the reunification of the country.

In addition, Siam is still maintaining an independent state, so the empire does not have a good excuse, of course, the most important thing is that the empire wants to oppose but does not have the ability to oppose, and the last key point is that Thailand and China do not directly border, and the strategic threat to China is not as great as that of Myanmar.

Therefore, the Imperial Foreign Ministry has always only expressed verbal protests against the Siam issue, and in any case, it absolutely does not recognize the encroachment of Britain and France on Siam and the various treaties signed, and it also denies Siam's unilateral declaration of non-recognition of suzerainty, and the Empire still unilaterally considers Siam to be its own vassal state.

However, it is only limited to verbal protest and non-recognition, and there is no means or ability to directly oppose it.

But Vietnam is different, Vietnam is just south of China, in case the French completely annex Vietnam, doesn't this mean that China will directly border the territory of the French, once the war breaks out, these French troops are estimated to be able to directly attack the Guangdong and Guangxi regions.

This is a great strategic threat to the southern provinces of the Empire!

Therefore, the attitude of the empire towards Vietnam has always been relatively tough!

Whereas this assertiveness had previously been manifested in verbal diplomacy, the Reich no longer intended to continue verbal protests, and they had made concrete gestures to show their presence.

Of course, it is unlikely that such a thing will be sent directly!

Now that the empire is in a stage of ruin, and the army is also at a critical moment of reform, it is really not appropriate to start a large-scale war with a European power, and how to say that the imperial army is sent to fight for the life and death of the Vietnamese and the French? This is unacceptable to many people.

It is impossible to send troops directly, but we can't just watch Vietnam fall into the hands of France!

At this time, in order to resist the French invasion, the Nguyen Dynasty of Vietnam sought support for the purchase of ordnance everywhere.

Anyway, the French only invested two or three thousand troops on the Vietnamese side, and even if the Vietnamese could not fight, but with Chinese weapons and equipment and military instructors, they could drag the French to death with their superiority in strength.

So, under the contact of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, this is the trip to Shanghai of the Ruan Dynasty!

Soon after arriving in Shanghai, these Vietnamese, accompanied by diplomats from the Imperial Foreign Ministry, went to the Royal Arms Company and asked for the purchase of part of the ordnance!

In this regard, the Royal Arms Company is naturally very welcome!

These Vietnamese purchases were supported by the Imperial Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and selling them weapons was not only a business, but also a political task, and the Royal Arms Company, as a royal industry, naturally had to undertake these political business activities.

Soon the Royal Arms Company was saying, "Do you want an 1858 Lind rifle?" No problem, you want to front-loading rifled guns? No problem.

The Royal Arms Company was very bold and even said that as long as the contract was signed, they could send out the first shipment within five days.

But after several envoys led by Ruan Dynasty read the quotation of the Royal Arms Company, they all cried and mourned, why?

The ordnance above is too expensive for them!

The Great Southern Empire, controlled by the Nguyen dynasty, was not a wealthy country, or even poorer than Siam, for example, in the first treaty of Saigon, which paid the French about four million francs in ten years.

A silver coin of one franc weighs five grams and is 90% pure, i.e. one franc contains 4.5 grams of sterling silver.

These four million francs are equivalent to about 740,000 imperial standard silver yuan, which can be exchanged for 160,000 pounds sterling according to the current gold and silver exchange price, and this price can only buy an ironclad ship of about 2,000 tons.

In order to raise these four million francs, the Nguyen Dynasty was so poor that they melted down all the gold and silverware, jewelry, and ornaments accumulated by the dynasties, and then added up all the gold, silver, and copper dollars from the stocks of many provinces, and only scraped together a total of 400,000 francs to pay the first year's indemnity.

This shows how poor the Nguyen Dynasty really is!

A country that can't make up more than 100,000 pounds of national strength and you ask him to buy a rifle of fifteen pounds and a front-loading rifled gun of six hundred pounds, don't be kidding, even if the emperor of their Great Southern Empire sells it, he can't afford to buy thousands of guns and dozens of rifled guns.

So they began to shout poverty, can it be cheaper, is it cheaper or not?

They couldn't afford to sell a few hundred rifles at such a high price, but this time they came to buy at least two thousand rifles, and no less than ten cannons.

A sales manager of the Royal Arms Company who participated in the talks was also speechless, please, don't you all claim to be emperors, can you have a little backbone, Lin Chengting has no fart, even the title of King Ning is the title he gave himself, and now he only dares to buy a thousand in the northeast of Myanmar, and Siam also bought 500 in one breath, and people understand that this is just to buy a little bit first and come back to test the test, if you think it is easy to use, you will buy tens of thousands of sticks when you come back.

But you are a great Southern Empire, and you can't even come up with the money to buy a few hundred rifles, doesn't it mean that you are all fighting with the French, and at this time, if you don't take out the money, how long do you want to keep it?

If it weren't for the officials of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to accompany him, it is estimated that the manager of the Royal Arms Company would have to pull down his face or even drive people out.

Our Royal Arms Company is not a small company, it does a big business of hundreds of thousands of millions, not to mention the orders of the domestic military, that is, the orders of the United States, which are hundreds of thousands of pounds at will.

You can't afford to sell hundreds of guns, isn't that teasing me?

I am a sales manager of the company's headquarters, tens of thousands of minutes and minutes, how can I have spare time to play with you! (To be continued.) )