Mandalay, inside the Imperial Legation in Ningbo.

A man of about forty years of age dressed in Chinese costume stood in front of the window, and from his vision he could see columns of smoke rising in the distance, accompanied by columns of smoke, and occasionally the sound of explosions.

Looking at his eyebrows in the distance, he didn't stretch his eyebrows, and he turned around after half a day, and then walked out of the office, and in the office hall outside the office, five or six people wearing Chinese or military uniforms all turned their heads to look at him.

"Lord Hao, if we don't act now, I'm afraid it's going to be too late, I just got the news that Li Haotong's troops have been defeated from the palace, and the Praetorian Guard has begun to launch a counteroffensive!" The man who spoke was an army colonel in his thirties, named Ning Jiajian, who originally served as the commander of the infantry regiment in the 16th Division, and was appointed as the head of the merchant regiment at the beginning of this year.

This person has served in the southwest region for a long time, according to the words of the people on the military side, that is, this person is good at fighting in jungles, mountains and other terrains, and has been active in the front line for a long time.

Ning Jiajian said this, which also made several people next to him look sad, and even Hao Mubai was silent for a long time after hearing it.

Now Hao Mubai's mood can be described as terrible, since the day before yesterday Li Haotong sent to inform him that Lin Chengting died of illness, he knew that the time had come to test himself, from that time, Hao Mubai began to gradually implement the plan, trying to help Li Haotong, and directly put the second prince on the throne.

On the first day, he ordered the merchant group to enter a state of combat readiness, and urgently notified the Nanjing side by telegram, but before he could wait for instructions from Nanjing, the Ning Dynasty Janissake, who had always maintained a neutral attitude in the struggle for the throne, suddenly declared allegiance to ****, and then declared martial law. and sent troops to take control of the telegraph room, and then the people controlled by Li Haotong tried to recapture the telegraph room, but the battle between the two sides led to the complete destruction of the telegraph room.

And the battle between the two sides for the telegraph room also completely caused a full-scale civil war between the two sides!

That night, an infantry regiment loyal to Li Haotong urgently entered the city, and the infantry battalion stationed in the city on the latter principle was also co-opted by Li Haotong. and then declared allegiance to the second prince, and then a battle broke out between the two sides at the city gate, Li Haotong's troops successfully broke through the city gate, and then fought all the way to the palace, trying to conquer the palace, capturing or simply killing the eldest prince.

The two sides fought fiercely around the palace for more than a day, but because Li Haotong's troops did not have any advantage in numbers, and the Praetorian Guard was the most elite army formed by Lin Chengting during his lifetime, this battle was more than one win or too little. Now the Praetorian Guard is not only defending the palace, but also trying to launch a counteroffensive.

When the fighting broke out between the two sides, the whole of Mandalay was also in chaos, some mobs began to loot and set fires, and last night, several streets in the south of the city were in flames, and now they are burned and only ashes remain.

These are the movements of the Ning Kingdom itself. As the two most important forces in Mandalay, the British army and the Chinese army did not act rashly.

Instead, they kept each other in a state of confrontation!

According to the relevant treaties of China and Yingning. Both China and Britain had the right to station no more than 1,200 troops in the Kingdom of Ning, to protect the expatriates of the two countries, and in order to maintain consistency, but also to avoid the opposition and hostility of the ordinary people of Ning, the armies of both sides were very low-key, and the signs played were relatively less colonial.

The garrison unit of the Chinese Army. It is called the 'Myanmar Ning Merchant Group', or 'Merchant Protector Group' for short.

The British, on the other hand, simply called the 'Consular Guard', but this guard was larger, with a total of 1,200 men. And there were cavalry and artillery.

When the situation in Burma was tense, the Chinese army concentrated all the merchant groups in Mandalay, and the British naturally did the same.

And it is very interesting that the garrisons of these two armies are very close to each other, because the embassy area assigned to China and Britain by the Kingdom of Ning is adjacent to each other, and the barracks of their respective armies are naturally also in the embassy area.

So Lin Chengting just died, these two armies received orders one after another, and this order did not mean directly intervening in the civil war of the Ning Kingdom, but to monitor the Chinese army \ British army.

As a result, the two armies dug trenches with each other less than a thousand meters apart, and then stared at each other.

In this case, if the merchant group wants to directly fight to support Li Haotong, it is quite difficult, and as soon as the front foot goes out, it is estimated that the embassy guards of the British on the back foot will be killed.

At present, neither the Chinese merchant corps nor the British embassy guards dare to act rashly.

Thinking of this, Hao Mubai couldn't help complaining about Li Haotong, who had been preparing for more than a year in advance, why did there be so many accidents when things came to an end.

You must know that according to Hao Mubai and Li Haotong's previous plan, this Praetorian Guard should remain neutral, and even most of the high-level generals of the Ning Army will also remain neutral.

These senior generals of the military were basically brought by Lin Chengting from China back then, and most of them only had loyalty to Lin Chengting, as for Lin Chengting's death, as long as the interests of the military were not damaged, then they didn't care whether the eldest prince or the second prince became the new king.

Of course, these senior military generals remain neutral, and there is also the huge pressure from China and Britain, in the eyes of many senior generals of the Ning army, the dispute between the eldest prince and the second prince is just a small fight at home, and the real mortal enemy of the Ning Kingdom is still Britain and the Chinese Empire.

Whether it was Hao Mubai or the British, in fact, they were constantly putting pressure on the senior generals of the Ning Army before, forcing them to fall to their side, which made many senior generals of the Ning Army feel deeply embarrassed.

Those politicians can be the grass on the wall, but they can't do it in Ningjun, what if this falls to one of them, which causes the other party to be dissatisfied, and then directly sends troops to Ningguo?

Therefore, in order to avoid the direct dispatch of troops by China and Britain, and also to protect the military's own interests, several senior generals of the Ning Army have privately stated that the Ning military will not participate in the battle for the throne, but they resolutely oppose any invasion between China and Britain, and frankly say that once China or Britain sends troops into the Ning Kingdom. Then Ning Jun will fall directly to the other side.

This is Lin Chengting's usual threat: whether it is Britain or China, if anyone hits him, he will immediately fall to the other side.

And I have to say that this threat is still relatively effective, although the number of Ning troops is small, but there are more than 50,000 people. This is a significant military force in Burma.

However, the fact that the Ningjun military is not involved does not mean that the Praetorian Guards are also not involved.

As mentioned above, the Ning Kingdom established by Lin Chengting is a great copy of the various systems of the Chinese Empire in all aspects, both politically and militarily, the Chinese Empire has a guard army independent of the navy and army, Lin Chengting set up a Praetorian Guard, but the number is much smaller, only more than 2,000 people.

This Praetorian Guard has always been firmly controlled by Lin Chengting before. Whether it is the force to which the eldest prince belongs or the power of the second prince, it is basically impossible to penetrate into it.

However, what Hao Mubai didn't expect was that this Praetorian Guard would fall to the eldest prince's side at the last moment, which made all Li Haotong's plans fall into ashes.

According to Li Haotong and Hao Mubai's previous plan, once Lin Chengting died, then an infantry regiment loyal to Li Haotong would directly enter the city, and then directly kill the eldest prince and those ministers loyal to the eldest prince, in this process. The Merchant Corps had to contain the British embassy guards.

It's a simple and violent scenario without too many pinnacles. Directly enter the palace to kill the eldest prince and some of the ministers who supported him, and then support the second prince to ascend the throne as the new king, the whole process does not even take a day.

However, the sudden defection of the Praetorian Guards completely disrupted Li Haotong and Hao Mubai's plans.

What's even more depressing is that until now, Hao Mubai didn't know why the Praetorian Guard suddenly defected.

Although the situation was developing in a bad direction, Hao Mubai still endured and did not use the merchant group. Because he knew very well that once the merchant guards were used, the British embassy guards on the opposite side would definitely not be indifferent, and it might eventually lead to a war between the Chinese and British armies.

And this kind of fuse is enough to trigger a large-scale war between China and Britain.

So until the last resort, he won't use the Merchant Protector Group!

"Go and contact Li Haotong. I want to know what's going on! After Hao Mubai's words fell, a person walked out of the consulate quickly, and then went directly to the direction of the palace.

The consul was in the carriage of the embassy, and there were a few army cavalry who acted as escorts, and some of them recognized this as the carriage and cavalry of the Chinese Empire along the way, so they generally walked around, but there were also some short-sighted thugs who tried to storm and even plunder them.

These thugs are either robbers who plague the streets on weekdays, or rebels, who want to take advantage of the current chaos in the city to make money and kill them.

For these people, the guards and cavalry were not polite at all, they didn't even bother to shoot, and directly drew their sabers and slashed and slashed, which made dozens of corpses more on the street.

One of the leading second lieutenant cavalry officers looked left and right, and while wiping the bloodstained saber in his hand with a cloth, he said, "Keep going!" ”

Although Mandalay was the capital of the Ning Kingdom and the capital of the Gongbang Dynasty before, it was actually not large in scale and did not have many residents, and it was considered a big city in Southeast Asia, but in fact the population and urban area were not as large as the county towns in the south of the imperial river.

It didn't take long for the group to come to a small mansion with a group of soldiers wearing Ning Army uniforms but with red bands tied around their arms, most of these soldiers were dark-skinned and short-stated local natives, but the officers were Chinese at a glance.

This is a common phenomenon in the Ning army and even the entire Ning Dynasty!

There are more than 50,000 people in the Ning army, and almost all the officers are Chinese, and those natives can only serve as the majority soldiers.

Enlarged to the entire Ning Dynasty, most of the upper echelons such as officials, merchants, and landlords were Chinese, and the officials among them were all Chinese, and there was not a single indigenous official in the entire Ning Dynasty.

The merchants and landlords were somewhat native, but most of them were also Chinese.

In recent years, Lin Chengting has vigorously attracted Chinese immigrants, and the conditions given are very generous, as long as the scholars come, they will become officials if they want to enter politics, and if they want to join the army, they will study for a few months in their own military school, and they will immediately become officers.

It can be said that the current Ning Kingdom is a typical regime of a foreign nation ruling a local nation, and it has a great similarity with the Manchu Dynasty that has disappeared in the long river of history.

After the carriage stopped, a young man in Chinese clothes came down, this was the messenger sent by Hao Mubai, but as soon as this person got off the carriage, he showed a look of surprise: "Brother Qian, I didn't expect you to be here!" ”

After hearing this, an officer wearing a military uniform of the Ning Army in front of him immediately took a step and walked over: "An Da talent? I haven't seen each other in China for two years the year before last, but why are you here? (To be continued.) )