Since both sides were fighting in urban areas, the fighting was mostly street fighting, and the casualties on both sides increased sharply.

At first, the Anglo-French forces were able to hold on to the outlying parts of the inner city, but soon abandoned a large number of them due to heavy casualties and began to gradually retreat to the riverside areas of the outer city.

At this time, the Anglo-French fleet, which had been anchored on the Pearl River, suddenly launched a large-scale artillery bombardment of the outtown area under the personal command of West Malaysia, and some of the Chinese troops who rushed forward suffered many casualties.

However, due to the loss of the inner city and the loss of most of the outer city, the top brass of the British and French forces believed that Guangzhou had no value to continue to defend, so they began to abandon the outer city on their own initiative the next day, and the remaining nearly 3,000 remnants of the British and French troops boarded a large number of ships anchored in the Pearl River, thus officially withdrawing from Guangzhou.

This time the counterattack on Guangzhou, that is, the third battle of Guangzhou between the Chinese army and the British and French forces, the Chinese army relied on the absolute superiority of troops to recapture Guangzhou from the British and French forces.

In this battle, the British and French troops suffered more than 2,000 casualties, while the Chinese side of the Second Army and the Third Army combined, the Royal Army soldiers suffered more casualties, accounting for about three-quarters of the total casualties, about 3,000 Royal Army soldiers were killed or wounded in the battle, more than 1,000 were killed on the spot, and more than 1,000 soldiers belonging to the Third Army were killed or wounded.

The reason why the Royal Army suffered more casualties than the Allied Defence Force was that the Allied Defence Force was of no use in this battle at all, and the senior generals of the Chinese Equilibrium did not transfer too many Allied Defence Forces to the front line.

And the casualties of more than 1,000 soldiers of the Allied Defense Army were also directly ignored by Xu Yanqing and others, who cared about the deaths and injuries of 3,000 Royal Army soldiers, although the number was a bit large. However, considering the gap in training between the two sides, the Chinese army is still fighting a tough battle. In such a battle fought with the support of the enemy's dense naval artillery fire, it was not easy to achieve a casualty ratio of 2 to 3.

Regardless of casualties on both sides. But this is no longer important, the important thing is that the Chinese army has recaptured Guangzhou, and this will make Bao Ling lose an extremely important bargaining chip at the negotiating table, because he can no longer exchange Guangzhou for any benefits.

The loss of Canton plunged the Anglo-French forces into a state of despair, and soon after, the Second and Third Armies, which had just conquered Canton, were again in Hong Kong, and despite the naval and artillery support of a large fleet, they were still in a state of despair.

Even within the military, there was already a sense of war-weariness over a series of military defeats, and many middle- and lower-ranking officers began to demand that they withdraw from Hong Kong and leave China, where they had lost their troops.

Even the British Admiral West Ma, who was in charge of Hong Kong's defense, wrote to Bao Ling in person. Let him try to end this senseless war diplomatically as soon as possible.

This made it quite difficult for Bao Ling, who was in Shanghai to negotiate, because on the one hand, he had to defend and even compete for more interests, but on the other hand, successive military defeats made him have no confidence to compete for interests.

In this pessimistic environment, the Anglo-French negotiation team headed by Bao Ling finally reached a preliminary agreement with the Chinese Imperial negotiation team led by Song Xiangtang.

On November 8, a formal agreement was signed at the Bund Hotel in Shanghai, including the Sino-British Treaty of Shanghai and the Sino-French Treaty of Shanghai.

The main points of the above treaties are as follows!

One of the most important points is that the Chinese Empire and Britain and France officially ended the state of war!

Then came the decision to abolish a series of treaties between Britain and France and the Manchus that had been signed up to 1858 during the First Opium War and replace them with new ones.

The complete abolition of the tariff-related agreements also represented the revocation of China's tariff autonomy, and as a subsidiary agreement on tariffs, the Chinese Empire signed friendly trade agreements with Britain and France. Countries recognize China's tariff autonomy, and China does not impose discriminatory tariffs on merchants in these two countries, and in response, Britain and France will not impose unfairly high tariffs on Chinese exports.

However, this subsidiary agreement does not strictly have any rights. Because the tariffs of each country are independent, they can be levied as they want to be levied when the time comes, but this kind of thing will be slowly pulled off in the future.

At the same time, China abolishes any form of consular jurisdiction. Citizens of all countries must abide by the laws of the Chinese Empire when doing business and living in China, and will be arrested by the law enforcement agencies of the Chinese Empire if they violate the law. Trials, imprisonment, etc.

At the same time, there is a more important aspect of the opium trade. The two countries, especially the United Kingdom, recognize and respect China's anti-smoking policy and refrain from any interference.

Then there are a few more important issues, such as Britain and France will formally recognize the Chinese Empire as the sole legitimate government of China, and will be allowed to build their respective legations in Nanjing, and the two countries will send ministers to the Chinese Empire, and the Chinese Empire should also send diplomatic personnel to Britain and France, and establish legations in London and Paris.

Britain and France have the right to fly their respective national flags in their respective consulates, and the consulates of the Chinese Empire in Britain and France also have the right to fly the national flag and send armed men of no more than 20 men to defend the consular officers with light weapons, but such armed personnel are not allowed to carry weapons out of the embassies.

Subsequently, China officially opened up a total of 14 coastal ports of Qiongzhou, Chaoshan, Guangzhou, Xiamen, Fuzhou, Ningbo, Hangzhou, Shanghai, Nantong, Taiwan, Haizhou, Qingdao, Tianjin, and Yingkou as treaty ports. As for the merchants of the Chinese Empire who went to England and France, they said that they could go wherever they wanted, as long as they did not violate the local laws.

Then there was the religious affairs that Britain and France insisted on, and the Chinese Empire allowed British and French missionaries to establish churches and carry out missionary activities in the treaty ports they had specified. However, foreigners were not allowed to enter or leave outside the treaty ports, so missionary missions were naturally not allowed.

Moreover, the establishment of churches must be approved by the Chinese Empire, and no form of religious activity may be carried out in public places outside the church without the permission of the local government and the Religious Affairs Section of the Ministry of Civil Affairs. Violators will be arrested and tried for the crime of unlawful assembly. If Chinese want to join a foreign religion, they must go to the Religious Affairs Division to report. At the same time, missionaries are not allowed to use coercion, inducement and other immoral means to attract Chinese people into foreign religions, and given their young age, Chinese people cannot make their own judgments. Chinese under the age of 14 are not allowed to join the religion on their own unless they have the formal written permission of their parents.

For this agreement, the Ministry of Civil Affairs of the Chinese Empire even set up a special religious department to deal with matters related to Western religions.

In addition to the above problems, there is also the Hong Kong issue, because Britain insists on not wanting to withdraw from Hong Kong, and its attitude is very tough, and at the same time, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs also asked the military to recover Hong Kong through military means, and after receiving the military said that it will make every effort. But after the unsure reply, Song Xiangtang knew that it was unlikely that the military would conquer Hong Kong, which had been built like a fortress, in a short period of time.

Therefore, in this case, in order to take into account the overall situation, Song Xiangtang did not insist on the condition of taking back Hong Kong, but Britain also made certain concessions on the Hong Kong issue.

He expressed his willingness to discuss the Hong Kong issue separately, and said that he could follow the model of the previous Shanghai Business Zone and set up a Sino-British joint municipal government in Hong Kong to carry out municipal management of Hong Kong.

Therefore, in the memorandum of understanding signed between China and Britain in Hong Kong, the agreement stipulates that the Chinese government will send two representatives, and the British government will send three representatives. The local residents of Hong Kong elected one Chinese representative and one British representative, a total of seven representatives to form the Hong Kong Municipal Council, which has all the municipal management rights over the existing Hong Kong area.

As for the other issues, they have basically been put on hold. Because since Hong Kong cannot be completely recovered through military or diplomatic means now, Lin Zhe's idea is to simply wait, wait a few years and then find an excuse to fight a war. This is not the twenty-first century, but the nineteenth century. As long as he Lin Zhe is willing, he will be able to start a war tomorrow.

Now. After signing other agreements, the protracted negotiations at the provincial level have affected the military, industry, and commerce in the country.

After all, for the current Chinese Empire, the unification of the country is the top priority, and everything else can be put aside first.

In addition to the above conditions, there was also the issue of prisoners, which was written in the official document that the Chinese Empire was willing to release all prisoners of war unconditionally, provided that all agreements were signed and implemented, that is, after the two sides formally renewed the treaty.

Privately, the Coalition forces had to continue to pay for the captives, who could have lived in excess of £2 million from before to now, given the lengthy contract period.

These fees were to be secretly delivered to the Chinese Empire through normal trade and commerce, as in the past, without any official written documents.

Although these expenses are not war reparations, in fact, most of this money has to be spent on these prisoners, after all, tens of thousands of people eat and drink for more than a year is very expensive, and those so-called aristocratic prisoners have very high requirements for the quality of life.

In fact, the data of these two million pounds was also put forward by the coalition forces, anyway, the Chinese Empire means that you can give as much treatment as you want, if you give 10,000 pounds, you will use 1,000 pounds to feed these 10,000 people, if you give 1 million pounds, you will use 500,000 pounds to feed them, if you give 2 million pounds, it is estimated that 1 million pounds will be used to feed them, and the remaining 1 million cannot be said to be privately swallowed by the Chinese Empire.

Because managing these more than 10,000 captives requires the energy of many imperial officials and officers, and you have to count their salaries and various expenses.

Do you think that the soldiers who are armed and guarded do not need to be paid?

The text and ancillary clauses of the Sino-British Shanghai Treaty add up to more than 100 articles, and it took negotiators on both sides more than two months to argue with each other.

Either way, the negotiations were finally over.

With the signing of the Sino-British Shanghai Treaty and the Sino-French Shanghai Treaty between the Chinese Empire and Britain and France, the United States also approached China, saying that it was to follow the example of Britain and France to sign relevant treaties, the Americans were pragmatic, they were here to do business, and there were not so many messy requirements with Britain and France, so soon the Sino-US Shanghai Treaty was signed, the main content of the treaty was trade, and the most important one was that the Chinese Empire also opened the 14 treaty ports to the United States.

This news made Bao Ling almost vomit blood after knowing it, they worked hard to obtain these fourteen treaty ports, and you Americans didn't do anything, and they didn't even negotiate for a few days to obtain the trade rights of the above-mentioned ports, which made Bao Ling and others quite unhappy.

But the treaty has been signed, and the war can finally be declared over, and the next step is to enter the long phase of treaty exchange.

The so-called exchange of treaties means that these treaties must be ratified by the parliament or emperor of each country, and these treaties are considered formal when they are formally ratified by all countries.

However, before the two sides formally ratified it, the Shanghai Trade Zone was stimulated by the end of the war and the signing of the treaty, and in November foreign banks from various countries set off an upsurge of investment in China, and many foreigners were grinding their fists and preparing to enter Hangzhou and other newly opened treaty ports to seek opportunities to make a fortune.

And after Lin Zhe saw these treaties signed, he said something that Song Xiangtang couldn't understand: "An era is over!" (To be continued......)