The sky is clear, and the warm sun shines on the earth.

The north is still frozen for thousands of miles, but the south of the country is as warm as spring.

Between the mountains and rivers of Guangxi, a railway extends to the north and south, like a strong link, connecting Hunan and Guangxi more closely.

"Woo-"

A few short whistles rang out, making the silent sky cheer.

"Bang bang...... Boom Boom Boom ......"

A train full of 'battle results' spewed black smoke from the north to the south, and the sound of the steel wheels and the rails crashing was like a sonorous march, making the already jubilant wilderness even more boiling.

This is not an ordinary train, this is a military train, full of soldiers, but these soldiers are not soldiers as they are commonly understood, but a group of prisoners of war.

To be precise, the carts were loaded with Qing troops captured by the Qin army in the Lianghu area, and a considerable number of people in it were soldiers of the Xianghuai army. Just because of the different generals who followed and the different time of fighting with the Qin army, these Xianghuai troops were doomed to a completely different fate from the Xianghuai army after Zeng Li surrendered.

The train did not carry a large number of prisoners of war, but more than 500 people, because the whole train also had only eight carriages. The current steam train is not as good as the steam train of World War I and World War II, not only has fewer carriages, the locomotive power is small, and the speed is also very slow.

The prisoners of war in the car will be escorted to Qinzhou, and the purpose is unknown. However, these more than 500 people were all prominent 'pacesetters' in prisoner of war camps and labor reforms. And the home address is clear!

As one of the more than 500 Hunan and Huai prisoners of war, Chen Quan sat in the corner of the stuffy tank carriage and raised his head. Look up at the bar-clad window. He could see the two human legs hanging from the car window, and the leggings on the legs. It was the leg of a Qin soldier escorting a car. Apparently, he was sitting on the side of the roof at the moment. Leisurely admiring the scenery between the mountains and rivers of Guangxi, maybe he is a Guangxi himself.

Even though the climate in Guangxi is only mild in winter, the seventy or eighty people are sweating profusely sitting in the stuffy tank carriage, which is far less comfortable than on the roof of the car. Therefore, almost all prisoners of war, including Chen Quan, are now open.

Chen Quan looked at the two legs outside the car window for a while, until a companion handed over a cigarette, and then Chen Quan regained his mind and looked at the companion.

"Brother Chen. Thank you for taking care of you all the way, these are the last two cigarettes, let's divide them! The man said with a smile, handing the cigarette in his right hand. The leg under his body seemed to be fine, but in fact, he was squeezed off the platform when he got on the train, and the fall was not light.

But it's not a big injury. After almost two days on the train, this man's leg has improved a lot.

"Thanks!" Chen Quan's eyes lit up, and he took the cigarette with a smile. I took out a box of matches from my pocket. With a clatter, a little flame ignited two cigarettes. Chen Quan took a deep breath, and the cigarette came out, he felt so comfortable.

As a person with a smoking addiction. It's very hard to smoke without a cigarette. It was also Chen Quan's bad luck, before he came, he had already bought two packs of cigarettes with the labor allowance issued by the labor reform team, but after getting on the train, he scattered in a circle. He smoked the first pack of cigarettes and then he was gone. Chen Quan is not the time to do pipe tape now, and the labor allowance is very precious and valuable. Although there was another pack of cigarettes in the coat, I couldn't bear it. And don't dare to smoke it again.

And for a smoking gun, the taste of having cigarettes in his pocket but not daring to smoke them is too difficult.

"Brother, listen to your accent, it's from Anhui, right?" The sick and wounded man asked.

"Yes, from Luzhou, Anhui."

"Huh. Is that still Li Zhongtang's hometown? ”

"It's all at this point, what else do you say about whether you are related or not?" Chen Quan shook his head and smiled bitterly. He originally followed Liu Bingzhang in Jiangxi, Ganzhou was defeated in the first battle, he didn't run fast, the road ahead was blocked by the Qin army, so he ran to the west, and ended up in the Hunan army, and then followed Peng Yuju to be captured in Hengzhou.

"Listen to your accent, brother, you're from Hunan, right? Caught there?! Don't look at me as a Huaijun, but I am in a prisoner of war camp in Hengzhou. Chen Quan said teasing to himself.

"I was captured in Gyeyang. The brother's surname is Liu, Liu Erde. It is the people of Guiyang. Originally, I didn't prepare this bowl of rice for being a soldier, but my military salary is very high, so I came to be a soldier to eat after thinking about it. Less than two months after eating, he was caught alive. Liu Erde's words revealed a sense of remorse. His name was Liu Erde, but his brother Dade died when the Taiping army passed through Hunan on its way north. There is also a younger brother named Sandezi in the family, but he is not yet fifteen years old. He's the breadwinner of the family.

Liu Erde and Chen Quan both remembered their bad things, Liu Erde regretted not being at the beginning, and Chen Quan also regretted why he wanted to run to Hunan in the first place. Each is a handful of sad tears!

It wasn't until a cigarette turned to ashes that the two of them started talking again. They also feel a little closer to each other.

"You say, where are they going to take us with this steamer?" After Liu Erde knew that Chen Quan was a pipe band, he was impressed by Chen Quan. Pipe band, official, this is knowledgeable and capable.

"Who knows. When you think about it, you won't kill it. It doesn't take so much effort to kill us. ”

It's the truth. As a pipe band, a middle-level officer in the Qing army, Chen Quan's mind was very normal to think of this. But what about Liu Erde? He didn't realize it. was so little by Chen Quan, I only felt that this pipe belt was really level. The two of them continued to speculate more and more, and time passed little by little, until the train entered the station and stopped.

The door of the stuffy tank car was pulled open from the outside. The light suddenly became dazzling, making Chen Quan, Liu Erde and others squint, and they couldn't see anything clearly for a while, and they could only hear someone shouting loudly outside:

"It's here, it's here! It's all out! Lined up! Stand still! Clothes are all on! ”

Chen Quan buttoned up and helped Liu Erde to stand up, his leg was still a little painful. More than five hundred captives soon took up seven columns on the platform.

"Now all of them, stand upright! I'll take a roll call, and when I read your name, I'll shout 'yes'!" Do you hear that? ”

A Qin officer strode to the front of the prisoner of war queue, and around the entire perimeter of the platform, at least 200 armed Qin soldiers were eyeing each other. All the prisoners of war were extremely obedient, standing honestly, without a single murmur.

The officer cleared his throat with a pamphlet in his hand, and immediately began to take the roll call to the sound of the train's whistle.

"Zhang Wei, Zheng Dayong, Cao Liran......" The officers of the Qin army named first counted more than ten people and ordered them to go out of the ranks, and Chen Quan was among them.

"Liu Junxiu!"

"Here!" A second lieutenant officer came out of the ranks. Then the Qin army officer who named him waved his hand: "A few of you, follow him to run the luggage, don't be lazy and slippery!" The higher the score, the faster you will be free in the future! You should all know that. ”

Just as this group of more than 500 prisoners of war was being circled by the command, the roof of a small two-story building at the railway station. A major general officer of the Qin army whispered something to a man with tied hair in a civilian Hanfu next to him.

The man with the bundle of hair was over forty years old and dressed in civilian clothes, but his bearing and demeanor did not let the Qin army general next to him dominate at all. Wearing a hat on the top, revealing a sense of elegance.

The head is the prototype of the initial evolution of the black gauze hat of the Song and Ming dynasties. A kind of Han hat ornament that became popular in the Sui and Tang dynasties. It is much better looking than the six-in-one hat made by Zhu Yuanzhang, that is, the melon skin hat.

The Qin army wiped out the Qing Dynasty, and the Manchu robes and coats were swept into the garbage heap immediately. Hanfu has re-become the mainstream, and with the evolution of short clothes from military uniforms, it has become the two major casual clothes in China today.

Among them, short clothes are not very popular, just like short hair, and most of them are civil servants and veterans or military personnel in low-level institutions. In the evolution of Hanfu, although Liu Xian did not make any regulations, the self-division ability of social classes is very strong. For the people at the bottom and the common people, a headscarf is enough, and then one layer up, that is, a melon skin hat, and then a head, a square scarf, etc.

The identity of the middle-aged man next to Major General Qin Jun is definitely not ordinary.

"It's Siam now, it's going to be Myanmar, right? The army is pressing forward step by step, so where will I go in the future? ”

After the complete withdrawal of France from Indochina, the British began to intensify their activities in Burma and Siam. They pressed Burma step by step, and when King Myinton finally died in grief last year, the future of Myanmar seemed to be predictable. The current Burmese king Xipao cannot even completely rule the existing Upper Burma of the Gongbang Dynasty.

The danger to Myanmar brought to Myanmar by the murder of Prince Ghanang in the first place is now unmistakable. The throne of the tin robe is very precarious.

On his deathbed, Min Dong proposed that Prince Yangyeon, Prince Song Zhu, and Prince Mikye be the joint regent, but the queen and ministers opposed it. As soon as Min Dong died, they proclaimed the tin robe as king. In order to consolidate the throne, Tin Pao arrested and killed royal family members on a large scale. Prince Ryobuchi and Prince Ryoyu hid in the official residence of the British garrison and were sent to Calcutta by the British. Now the British are using these princes to interfere in the internal affairs of Burma and exert all kinds of pressure on the tin robe.

Therefore, if Burma had to deal with the British on its own, its fate would have been decided.

And what about Siam? What kind of different fate would this country, which historically served as a buffer state between Britain and France, have a different fate? The British Straits Settlements, which strangled the southern gate of Siam, were already ready to move.

If Afghanistan and Burma had not been involved in part of the British forces in the Far East, and China and Japan had involved another part of the British forces in the Far East, Siam would not have been as simple as the land cession of 1877.

In 1877, the British, who had lost the control of the French in Indochina, forced the so-called Chulalongkorn the Great of the Bangkok dynasty in Siam to cede sovereignty over the province of Malay, namely Kedah, Kelantan, Terengganu and Perlis.

Liu Xian did not know what the situation in Afghanistan had developed. He received information that the situation of the British in Afghanistan was very good. Liu Xian did not know when the Second Anglo-Afghan War would take a turn, so he could not let the British unscrupulously attack in Siam. He's going to force Bangkok to do what his ancestors did! (To be continued......)