Hearing that Li Haotong actually said that he was coming to propose marriage to the second prince of the Tining Dynasty, this made Song Guanqian a little surprised.

You must know that although Lin Chengting of the Ning Dynasty of Myanmar and a large number of powerful people in the dynasty are serious Chinese, the relationship between the Ning Dynasty and the empire is two countries established by the same nation, but there is no fraternal country as outsiders imagine, on the contrary, the relationship between the two has always been very tense.

How did Lin Chengting end up in that ghost place in Myanmar?

It was not driven by the Chinese army, you must know that Lin Chengting's starting place was in southern Anhui, and then he fought for most of China, and after the Chinese Empire moved westward, he was defeated by the Chinese army, and finally lost Yunnan before leading the remnants of the army to retreat into Burma.

After Lin Chengting entered Burma, under the influence of the British, in order to avoid unnecessary hostility from the British, the Chinese army stopped pursuing Lin Chengting and stopped at the Yunnan border.

Without the strong army of the Chinese Army chasing behind him, Lin Chengting was able to relieve himself in Burma, and then did the matter of occupying the magpie's nest, and directly cleaned up the Burmese Kingdom in the upper Burma region, and then fought with the British for several years, and after many years of hard work, it was not until the three countries of China, Britain and Ningbo signed the relevant agreement that Lin Chengting really grabbed a piece of territory, thus laying the foundation of the Ning Dynasty.

In this process, although Lin Chengting bowed to Lin Zhe several times in the early years to obtain assistance from the Chinese Empire, everyone knew that this kind of bowing was not sincere, and the Chinese Empire did not believe in Lin Chengting, and Lin Chengting was even more unwilling to bow down.

This began when China, Britain and Ningbo were engaged in relevant armistice negotiations. Lin Chengting changed his previous submission to the Chinese Empire and refused to become a vassal state of the Empire. insisted on obtaining the status of an independent kingdom, and even more so put the secret agreement signed with the empire in the past. For example, the construction of railways and the contents of the concession port were revealed to the British, which caused a strong backlash from the British.

At that time, many high-ranking civil and military dignitaries of the empire just thought that Lin Chengting was crossing the river and demolishing the bridge, and several radical military generals were clamoring to send troops to Burma, so that Lin Chengting would know what the great power of China was.

Unfortunately, the affairs of Ningguo have never been simple foreign affairs, and there is also an Englishman here, who is more concerned and nervous about the situation in Burma than the Empire. In order to protect India's strategic security, in order to protect the security of Lower Burma, the British could never tolerate the empire to penetrate its military power directly into Upper Burma.

In this way, the interests of China, Britain and Ningbo are intertwined, and Lin Chengting is walking on the wall, he did not say that whoever supports his independence will fall to that side, but put on an attitude that whoever opposes my independence, I will fall to the other side, and China and Britain are both rat throwers. In the end, both China and Britain had to let Lin Chengting's Ning Dynasty become completely independent and have complete sovereignty, and no longer insisted on making the Ning Dynasty their own vassal state.

But at that time, the two sides also joined forces, that is, they were asking for the right to garrison troops in the Ning Dynasty. Although Lin Chengting wanted to oppose this, he couldn't oppose it.

After the signing of the trilateral agreement, peace was restored in Myanmar. However, in fact, the military hostility between China, Britain and Ningbo has not eased much, and the Chinese army has been deploying heavy troops in Yunnan and other surrounding areas. More than two infantry divisions and a number of garrison regiments and battalions were deployed on the Sino-Ningbo border line, and in the rear. That is, in Dali, Kunming and other places, there are still two divisions and a number of garrison troops, with a total strength of more than 60,000 troops.

Although these 60,000 troops are not all prepared to deal with the Ning Dynasty, in fact, these 60,000 troops are mainly used to suppress the border people in the southwest region in peacetime, and assist the local government to carry out the work of changing the land and returning to the stream, the imperial cabinet in order to strengthen the rule of the southwest borderlands, especially the Xikang region, but directly open the way for the army, those who dare to rebel against the central authority, shout that the power of the Tusi cannot be lost, and even dare to kill officials and rebel, etc., the attitude of the empire has always been firm and unified, that is, suppression!

Since the founding of the empire, the military has carried out at least 100 armed operations in southwestern Yunnan, Xikang, Tibet, Xinjiang and other areas where the central authority cannot effectively penetrate.

After these five or six years of strong suppression, the empire has basically achieved what the Ming and Qing dynasties could not do, that is, to change the land and return to the stream!

Sometimes, what do you want to do, you say that hundreds of years is better than a real knife and a real gun for a few years, afraid that the toast will oppose it? If you kill all the opponents, no one will object.

Of course, killing the capital will also cause some backlash, there is no rebellion on the surface, but there must be a lot of dissatisfaction in the heart, it can be said that the empire's ruling situation in this area is relatively severe, and this is one of the reasons why the imperial military maintains a large number of troops in these places.

And another willingness to station heavy troops in these places is to guard against the Ning Dynasty and the British!

Although the Ning Dynasty was weak, the army under Lin Chengting had fought for so many years, and its combat effectiveness was still considerable, but the number of troops was less, and the quality of weapons and equipment was not very good.

At the same time, the British have been stationed in Lower Burma with a lot of troops, and at the same time, there are hundreds of thousands of British Indian troops in India next door, and this is the real threat to the southwest of the empire.

Therefore, stationing heavy troops in the direction of Yunnan has been the established strategy of the empire in recent years.

In the face of the two strong enemies of China and Britain, the Ning Dynasty is naturally as hard as it is, if the Ning Dynasty and Thailand accept their fate as a buffer zone between a strong country, then there is nothing, but Lin Chengting is not a person who is willing to fail, he does not want to see the kingdom he established be completely annexed by the Chinese Empire or the British after a few years.

So he has been trying to maintain the situation at the same time, but also do not forget to develop himself, through a series of reforms in Upper Burma, the Ning Dynasty in recent years to establish teak, rice as the core of agriculture and primitive processing industry, such as wood processing factories.

At the same time, in order to expand the proportion of Chinese in the Ning Dynasty. The Chinese have been brought in through various means, some of which are secretly attracting immigrants from the Yunnan border. On the one hand, it is recruited from the Nanyang region to encourage Chinese to have children. He also adopted a marriage law with considerable characteristics, that is, polygamy was legally allowed, and at the same time, he formulated another very interesting tax, called marriage tax, and anyone who wanted to marry a wife had to pay a marriage tax.

On the surface, this kind of policy seems to be strange at most, saying that Lin Chengting has lost his money.

But if you analyze in detail the ethnic and demographic problems in the Upper Burma region, there are also some problems faced by the Ning Dynasty itself. Then you will find that the foundation of this Burmese regime established by the Chinese is actually quite unstable, and most of the people under his rule are local natives, and the real Chinese are actually only tens of thousands.

Therefore, Lin Chengting tried his best to expand the proportion of Chinese, on the one hand, to encourage Chinese to marry more wives, especially native wives, in order to give birth to more offspring of Chinese blood, and on the other hand, to limit the population growth rate of the Turen. The collection of marriage tax is actually to deprive the natives of their reproductive rights.

This marriage tax is not discriminatory, and this marriage tax is not worth mentioning for the Chinese living in the upper class of the Ning Dynasty, but for the natives who account for the majority of the poor population, it is a bit painful. Of course, it will not be to the point where it cannot be paid, at most it will be the same as the housing price in later generations. The family has struggled for decades, piecing together words. I can still afford to marry a wife.

The rule of the alien race knows no time and place. In fact, they all have a lot of unreasonable policies, and even seem to be obviously digging their own graves, but they still do it, is it because they are short-sighted and do not see the risks?

No, they know how fucked up they know what they know, but if they don't, they're the ones who die.

To rule over millions of natives with tens of thousands of Chinese, this is not ordinarily difficult!

Of course, there is a simpler way, that is, to abandon the ancestors of the Han people, like most of the Chinese in the Nanyang region in later generations, no longer regard themselves as Chinese descendants, and willingly degenerate into a member of the local aborigines, reduced to barbarians despised by everyone.

In this way, it will be much easier for Lin Chengting to maintain the rule of the Ning Dynasty, because there are many examples, such as the Xianbei people after entering the Central Plains, they gave up the identity of the Xianbei people and took the initiative to integrate into the Han people, and the later Li Tang is also a clear example, and the current Vietnamese Nguyen Dynasty is also counted as one, and the later generations of Singapore are even more so.

However, Lin Chengting and a large number of upper-class Chinese nobles of the Ning Dynasty were unwilling to give up the Han tradition, but Lin Chengting, who turned himself into a barbarian and killed in the sea of corpses and blood, had his own pride.

There are many things he can give up, but there are some things that he can't give up.

In the past two years, the Ning Dynasty has also had some turmoil in the country, but Lin Chengting still attaches great importance to military strength, and the country of projectiles has 50,000 soldiers, and it is all equipped with Chinese or British breech-loading rifles and front-loading rifled or smoothbore artillery, and its combat effectiveness is not weak.

In the past two years, the Ning Dynasty and the Chinese Empire have not had much contact, anyway, you are guarding against me, I am guarding against you, at most there is a small amount of border trade, for example, Yunnan will import tea through the Ning Dynasty to the British in Lower Burma, and then form a very special caravan culture.

In addition, the strategic focus of the empire in the past two years was not in the southwest, in 1866, it was placed in Hawaii and Hong Kong, and in 1867, it was the Russians who fought for the Far East and Alaska, and there were many domestic development affairs, so Lin Zhe and other cabinet members in China had actually left Lin Chengting behind.

And in this context, Li Haotong suddenly came to Nanjing, but said to Song Guanqian that he would ask for the second prince of the Ning Dynasty!

Immediately, Song Guanqian was silent for a moment, and then cautiously asked Li Haotong a few words, although the age difference between these two people is more than thirty years, but they are both politicians in high positions, this conversation is naturally you test me, I test you, this is not enough information before you know too much, everyone will definitely not reveal too much.

But since this Li Haotong belongs to the person who took the initiative to talk about proposing, he is naturally on the weak side, so although he still has something to hide, he still said something that shocked Song Guanqian!

And this thing is that Lin Chengting is seriously ill!

According to Li Haotong, Lin Chengting has been infected with wind chill since the year before last, and then he couldn't afford to get sick, at the beginning it was just an ordinary wind chill, and later it became tuberculosis, what is tuberculosis? This is tuberculosis, in the era when there was no penicillin, this is a 100% terminal disease, once infected there is absolutely no possibility of cure, the only question is how long can it last?

The health of the king of a country is naturally an absolute secret, but Li Haotong still learned the news through various channels, that is, Lin Chengting should be difficult to survive this winter.

Lin Chengting's life is not long, and it is naturally impossible to leave a mess for future generations, so last year he made his eldest son **** and officially determined the heir.

This should seem very ordinary, and there is nothing wrong, but for Li Haotong, the crux of the problem is that the **** is not his nephew, the second prince!

As a result, Song Guanqian suddenly grasped the key to the problem, that is, now the Ning Dynasty must have set off a struggle for the throne.

Lin Chengting had two sons, both of whom were born after the Nanjing civil strife in 1856, the eldest son was only nine years old, and the second son was only six years old.

The prince is young, at this time, the forces behind the two princes will definitely stand up, and Li Haotong, as the uncle of the second prince, is naturally on the side of his nephew.

Of course, this has nothing to do with family affection, because now whether Lin Chengting's eldest son or second son ascends the throne as king, then it is impossible to recruit in person, as for the harem, Lin Chengting is a ruthless person like Lin Zhe, and it is strictly forbidden for the harem to interfere in politics, plus Lin Chengting's parents have long died in the Nanjing infighting, and there are no elders.

Therefore, it is basically impossible for the harem to listen to the government, and it can only be assisted by the imperial family or ministers, or simply serve as the regent.

Now Li Haotong just wants the position of regent!

However, it is not very difficult for his nephew to squeeze out his brother and become king, but Li Haotong was able to solve the food and salary needs of Ning Jun by himself at a young age, and later became an associate minister and the Ministry of Industry and Commerce.

In his opinion, if he wants to sit in the position of regent, there is only one opportunity, and that is to gain the support of the Chinese Empire.

Why?

Because now the prince of the Ning Dynasty, that is, the eldest son of Lin Chengting, has been engaged, and the object of the engagement is the woman of a large Chinese family in Nanyang, this Chinese family is naturally rich and powerful, and there are family elders who hold important positions in the Ning Dynasty, and more importantly, this Chinese family has a strong British background, and its properties are mostly in Singapore, Lower Burma, and the British have a close relationship.

In other words, the engagement partner of the Ning Dynasty **** has a strong British background.

And this kind of thing may not be anything for the Ning Dynasty itself, but it is a major event that cannot be ignored for the Chinese Empire. (To be continued.) )