After defeating the Qing army's broken troops and capturing at least 1,000 prisoners, Song Xiangtang finally ordered the troops to rest in place, and did not say that the troops would continue to rush forward in one go, because Jinan City, which was already heavily fortified, was already in front of it.

If he wants to conquer Jinan City, he can't rely on the 10,000-strong troops under Song Xiangtang alone, he needs to wait for the arrival of the Sixth Army.

And even if the Sixth Army arrives, it will not be so easy to conquer Jinan City in a short period of time in the face of Jinan City, which is like a turtle shell, and it is very likely to evolve into an extremely time-consuming battle in the end.

Later, when Shi Qingxuan led the Sixth Army to arrive at the city of Jinan, it was also true, he was not in a hurry to attack the city immediately, but began to make various preparations before the siege.

Just when Shi Qingxuan, Song Xiangtang and other Chinese army generals stationed troops in Jinan, Nanjing in the south also ushered in a group of quite special people.

These people are not ordinary Chinese, but a group of blonde and blue-eyed foreigners!

Bao Ling came to Nanjing for the second time, he came to Nanjing once last year, and unlike when he came to Nanjing last year, he took an ordinary passenger ship, this time Bao Ling and the diplomats of Britain and France took a warship of the Chinese Navy.

Although the battleship he was riding on was nothing in the eyes of Bao Ling, and a thousand-ton battleship was nothing in the British Navy, the few guns on board that were covered with cannons were quite interesting to him.

He knew that these guns were the rear-loading guns that had performed quite well in the Battle of Shanghai.

Although until now Bao Ling still has some confusion about how the Chinese developed and successfully put these rear-loading guns into large-scale service, you must know that even the world's largest Britain, which has only begun to install rear-loading artillery this year, has not yet entered large-scale service.

But this did not prevent him from being intimately curious about the Chinese Empire, a new country that revealed strangeness everywhere!

The nascent nation was founded just over a year ago. Even if you count the era of Yu Shengjun, it will only take five years before and after. In the course of five years, they built a formidable army that could defeat the Anglo-French forces.

No. Bao Ling uses the word 'strong' to describe the Chinese army, well, to be precise, it should be the Chinese army, as for the navy of the Chinese Empire, it is not worth mentioning.

The 30,000 Anglo-French troops before and after, in addition to the thousands of people in Guangdong and the more than 5,000 people who fled back from Shanghai, the remaining 20,000 people were all lost in Shanghai, a small place, not only that, but also many high-level allied forces. Dozens of noble generals and commanders were taken prisoner, even the commander of the coalition army, Count Ergin.

Such a fiasco almost caused a violent shock in the Anglo-French coalition army, and now the remnants of the Anglo-French coalition army have returned to Hong Kong, and the French plenipotentiary envoy Gro has resigned, and the British army due to the capture of the Earl of Ergin, resulting in the simple diplomat Bao Ling being forced to temporarily take Ergin's post and act as a temporary plenipotentiary representative to China, of course, Bao Ling is only a diplomat, and he is not responsible for specific operational affairs. The military command of the coalition forces was already under the command of the British admirals. At the same time, he was also the commander-in-chief of the Anglo-French fleet.

After the crushing defeat, although the coalition forces were extremely powerful at sea, they could not go ashore with warships, and the reason why it was even more unfeasible to rely on the blockade of the Yangtze River estuary and so on. Even during the war, the coalition forces did not actually completely blockade the mouth of the Yangtze River, because if the Chinese coast was blocked, it would directly affect the trade between China and the foreigners. And this is something that the businessmen of Britain, France, and other countries must not tolerate.

So the Anglo-French navy, although huge, was actually able to play a rather limited role in this war!

And after heavy losses on the part of the army. At present, the remaining strength of the coalition forces in Hong Kong and Guangzhou in Guangdong is only about 7,000 or 8,000 troops, and such a strength is certainly not small. Holding Canton and Hong Kong is not a big problem, but the crux of the matter is that the coalition forces are no longer capable of launching another landing operation against southern Jiangsu, let alone defeating the Chinese army by land and marching to Nanjing.

Even after the coalition learned that the Chinese army had sent at least 20,000 reinforcements to Guangdong, they were even worried that they would not be able to hold even the current Guangzhou or even Hong Kong.

From any point of view, the Anglo-French army had suffered a complete defeat militarily!

Not to mention that the Chinese army still has tens of thousands of British and French prisoners in its hands, although most of these captives are Indian, Arab, South Asian and other indigenous people, but there are also nearly 3,000 British and French native soldiers, including dozens of noble officers.

Those indigenous soldiers and the Anglo-French army could ignore it, but the more than 3,000 soldiers and dozens of noble officers on the ground could not be ignored.

In the case of military powerlessness, the British and French forces can only hope for diplomatic negotiations, although Bao Ling and others have not yet obtained all the authorization in the country, but in order to solve this damn war and successfully rescue the tens of thousands of prisoners, Bao Ling had to go to the negotiating table again to negotiate with the Chinese Empire.

After more than a month of negotiations between Song Guanqian, the Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Chinese Empire, the plenipotentiary of the Shanghai Trade Zone and the Chinese Empire, he reached a consensus on the question of the prisoners, although he could not reach a consensus on some of the main terms.

That is, the Chinese Empire guaranteed the personal safety of these captives and gave the nobles and officers the corresponding treatment in accordance with their social status.

During the period of detention, the living expenses of these prisoners, such as food and accommodation, were provided by the coalition forces, and the specific treatment was to follow the method of the previous 2,000 prisoners.

Since this was not a war reparation, the coalition forces were even more reluctant to sign the so-called indemnity payment agreement or other documents, but privately paid the corresponding living expenses of these captives through Jardine Matheson and Xinde Foreign Bank, and it was not the Ministry of Foreign Affairs or the Ministry of Finance of the Chinese Empire that received the money, but the royal property under the Finance Department of the Palace Affairs Department.

Moreover, the allied forces would not admit in public that they had paid any money to the Chinese Empire, and that the money was a normal business transaction between foreign banks and Chinese enterprises, and had nothing to do with the war or negotiations between the two sides.

Lin Zhe didn't care much what they said, anyway, as long as the money was in hand!

After all, it costs a lot of money to raise these tens of thousands of captives. If they didn't pay for their living expenses, Lin Zhe would dare to throw hundreds of captive corpses into the Huangpu River every day. Until they give money.

The grain of the Chinese Empire did not fall from the sky, how could it be given to you captives for nothing. If you don't give money, you won't have anything to eat, and if you starve to death, you will be thrown directly into the Huangpu River to feed Wang Ba.

The main purpose of Bao Ling's visit to Nanjing was not to come to Nanjing to negotiate, but to visit Count Ergin and other captured high-ranking generals of the coalition army to confirm whether they were still alive and whether the Chinese army had mistreated them.

As for the negotiations, there is no need to go to Nanjing, and the negotiations between the two sides are mainly held in Shanghai, to be precise, in the Bund Hotel in the former business and trade zone of Shanghai.

After arriving in Nanjing again. Bao Ling also paid attention to this ancient city like everyone else, but unfortunately he couldn't see anything from the surface of this kind of city.

There may be some new buildings in the city, maybe the streets are wider and cleaner, maybe the people have changed a little, but these are very different from those in Shanghai.

If you want to marvel at the changes that China has made over the years, if you want to marvel at the changes that the Chinese Empire has brought to this ancient country, then you should not come to Nanjing, but to Shanghai, which is the city that has changed the most in China in the last three or five years. It is there that is at the heart of China's reforms in recent years.

That's where you can see a country's efforts towards industrialization!

In Nanjing, Bao Ling still sees a traditional Chinese city, although there are slight changes, but to be honest, except for the Zhonghua Palace and the nearby government office buildings. Today's Nanjing is not even as big a change as Suzhou and Hangzhou.

Suzhou and Hangzhou, which are close to Shanghai, have changed much more in recent years than inland cities such as Nanjing and Zhenjiang.

In a compound in Nanjing, Bao Ling saw the target of his trip, Count Ergin, and other coalition generals. looked at Count Ergin and the others, although their expressions were decadent, but they were still full of red light. Obviously, it was a good time to eat and drink, and Bao Ling's mood was a little complicated.

Nima. You bastards lost the battle, and I have to fight for you to be treated as a prisoner in line with your status, all of them eat and drink well, and live more comfortably than Lao Tzu!

Of course, these thoughts in his heart naturally can't be said, he has to make a cordial and concerned appearance to greet them one by one, how does the steak in Nanjing taste, do they serve champagne, whether the whiskey they drink is pure or not, and so on.

Then he acted as a messenger, received some of their letters, and then prepared to send them back to the country on their behalf and deliver them to their respective families.

After a busy day, Bao Ling, accompanied by officials from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Chinese Empire in front of Song Guanqian, went to the Protocol House to stay, and tomorrow they would return to Shanghai by ship, and then continue their long negotiations.

That night, Song Guanqian also took the opportunity to return to Beijing to meet Lin Zhe!

"Now their tone is still relatively tough, they say that they can withdraw from Guangzhou after reaching a relevant agreement, but they say that they will never withdraw from Hong Kong, and state that they need a transit port for trade with China!" Song Guanqian stood in front of Lin Zhe, bowing his head and reporting the progress of the negotiations in recent months.

Lin Zhe frowned when he heard this, these British guys are really stubborn enough, and the excuses they make are not good!

Lin Zhe knew that the Hong Kong problem was not so easy to solve, at least when the coalition forces still had seven or eight thousand troops in Guangdong, and there was a huge fleet to support them, even with the reinforcement of the Second Army, it would be difficult for the Chinese army to conquer Hong Kong, and it was basically impossible for the British to spit out Hong Kong before they conquered Hong Kong militarily.

Lin Zhe, who knew this, did not ask too much about the Hong Kong issue, anyway, the Second Army has not yet arrived in Guangdong, and if there is no more fight in Guangdong, there will be no result on the Hong Kong issue.

"What about tariffs, what do they say?" Lin Zhe put aside the Hong Kong issue for the time being, and instead asked about tariffs.

"As for the tariff issue, they said that at present, we have imposed too high tariffs on some goods such as cotton cloth, and if we do not reduce the corresponding tariffs, then they will implement punitive import tariffs on our country's raw silk, porcelain and tea and other export goods!"

Hearing this, Lin Zhe was also speechless, damn, it's okay now, they no longer ask to meddle in the tariff rate, but they will play the so-called trade barriers, if they raise China's traditional export commodities, especially raw silk, this will have a significant impact on China's export trade.

China is not the only raw silk producing country in the world, Italy in Europe, Ottoman across Asia and Europe, Japan and even North Korea in East Asia are raw silk producing areas and can provide exports, although their output is not much, it is difficult to affect China's raw silk dominance in the world market, but if the import tariff is high, then the price of raw silk products will become higher, thus affecting the entire market of raw silk products.

And this is not a good thing for China, which relies more on raw silk in import and export trade.

Then he listened to other aspects of the negotiations, which also made Lin Zhe frown continuously, although the British and French, especially the British, although they lost the war, they were still reluctant to give in at the negotiating table, at most they gave up some clauses that obviously infringed on China's interests, such as consular jurisdiction, such as tariff rates, etc., but they had a very tough attitude in other aspects.

"You continue to talk to them, and if you can't talk, you drag it out, anyway, it's them who are anxious if you continue to drag it out, not us!" Lin Zhe commanded! (To be continued......)