The landing operation of the coalition forces finally ended in the complete defeat of the army, and in the fierce battles after several landings and the previous battles of attacking the forts, the coalition forces suffered more than 30,000 casualties and more than 30,000 were captured, including a large number of senior British and French generals such as Baron Sidon, and the only ones who missed the net were a group of senior naval generals. The Taiping army suffered more than 39,000 casualties, especially the troops guarding several forts, which were almost a formation of casualties, and the troops of several forts, such as Shajiao, Dajiao, Jingyuan, and Weiyuan, exchanged prisoners after the war, and only after exchanging prisoners from the coalition forces did they exchange more than 100 wounded and captured defenders, and 26 people survived from the Humen Fort.

The total casualties in this battle exceeded the total number of battlefields in which the Taiping Army had fought against the remnants of the Qing army last year. But as Xiao Yungui said before the war, through this war, at least more than ten years of peace can be guaranteed, and the power of Britain and France and other powers can be clearly recognized.

Later generations Taizu was right, Britain and France and other powers have always been paper tigers, when you are weak and can be bullied, they are tigers, but when you are strong, they are just a group of paper tigers.

The allied army was defeated, and the navy saw that there was no hope of rescue, and Admiral Dundas led the fleet out of the Pearl River estuary on the same day, and the navy was also very afraid of the local elusive local soldiers, who would come out in small boats and lay mines at night. In the past few days when the coalition navy entered the Pearl River estuary, there would be suspicious boats near the Pearl River estuary every night, and then the next day the coalition navy would find more than a dozen mines on the channel, and the coalition forces had to send ships to clear the channel again. Clearing mines is a very dangerous job, and in the past few days, the coalition navy has suffered more than 100 casualties and some small boats because of the mine clearance, which has made the coalition navy disgusted. So. When the army was completely defeated, Dundas immediately withdrew from the Pearl River estuary and returned to Hong Kong Island without any hesitation.

After the Allied Navy returned to Hong Kong Island, the new Minister Plenipotentiary Sir Corrington could hardly believe the news of the defeat brought back by the Navy, the more than 60,000 army soldiers were all composed of the elite of Britain and France, and they were eaten clean in less than half a month.

At the meeting held that day. Sir Ergin said bitterly: "Gentlemen, we should think about the post-war problem, and the people in the country should clearly recognize that we are no longer facing the Manchu government of the past, we are fighting against a large country with a population of 400 million. A country of 400 million people, even if they only mobilized one percent of the troops, had four million troops at their disposal, and note that these four million troops were not the indigenous soldiers of the Manchu Qing who were armed with swords, guns, bows and arrows. It's an army with similar weapons to the ones we use! ”

Sir Corrington felt very unhappy, but had to admit that what Sir Elgin said was true, and adding the number of people who were captured in the defeat of the last expeditionary force, there may now be at least about 30,000 British and French prisoners of war in the hands of the Taiping army (Sir Colrington did not know the specific defeat of the Allied army, but only speculated that a total of 30,000 people were taken prisoner). Among them were more than a dozen marshals and generals, and it can be said that this fiasco in the Far Eastern War was a disgrace to the Pacific.

But Sir Colrington was unconvinced: "We can do a national mobilization, and so can France." We only need to mobilize two million troops to come to the Far East......" Speaking of this, Sir Colrington also felt that what he said was too whimsical, and that Britain itself, including the troops mobilized in the colonies, might be able to mobilize a million troops. The same is true for France, but how much supplies would it take to launch an expedition of this magnitude? How many ships are needed? How much military money is needed? These astronomical logistical preparations would not have been approved by Parliament in any case, and if Palmerston's cabinet dared to make such a stupid motion for war, then even the Queen would not be able to keep him this time.

French Admiral Hamlin glanced at Sir Colrington with disdain and said, "I'm sorry, Sir Sir. I hope you will be sobered that we in France are not going to carry out a national mobilization for the interests of the so-called Far East, our interests are in Europe, and there are Prussians around us who are eyeing us, and the Russians who may also want to be able to take a break from the defeat of the Crimea. We are not going to mobilize the whole country and come to China to fight against an army of four million. No, absolutely impossible, it doesn't need our Congress to decide, I can tell you right now. ”

The British understand very well the thoughts of the French, in fact, to put it bluntly, France's interests in the Far East are not as good as those of Britain, and have even been surpassed by the United States, and now the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom and the United States are fighting fiercely, and the trade quota between the two sides has far exceeded that of France. In addition to Napoleon II's desire to divert internal conflicts, some French fantasized that the second expedition would bring the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom to its knees, and that a risk might make up for the failure of the previous expedition. But this time the army was completely defeated, and I believe that after the news reaches home, there is no need to say anything about organizing another expedition, and the French army may all return home to prepare to suppress the revolution that is about to break out in the country. You must know that the French bourgeoisie is waiting for this day, but Napoleon II has had better luck before, and has not lost foreign wars, and his rule over France in later history has continued until the defeat of the war against Prussia, and this time the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom played the role of Prussia, and perhaps the French bourgeois revolution was advanced.

Sir Elgin also said: "I have no intention of offending, Lord Sir Corrington, but I am sure that neither House of Parliament will agree to a national mobilization to wage war against the Far East, which is so far away from us that the interests of the colonies elsewhere and in Europe cannot be guaranteed if our army is trapped in the Far East. ”

Sir Colrington also knew that he had made a mistake, and after coughing, he looked at Dundas and asked, "Admiral, is it possible for us to bring the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom to its knees through naval blockade or other means?" ”

Admiral Dundas shook his head and said: "This is very difficult, the coastline of the enemy's territory is long, we need to divide a lot of fleets and ships to blockade every port and shipping lane of the enemy, and this blockade is very slow, the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom is not an island country like Japan, he is a land power, in the Manchu era, they didn't even need to trade with the outside world to be self-sufficient." Besides, they still have tens of thousands of our soldiers and important people in their hands, so that those soldiers and generals will not be able to return home? ”

Sir Elgin added: "And the blockade of trade, which will be very strongly protested by other countries, and our own trade will be greatly damaged, will we go back to the Manchu era after two wars, and the huge market of China will continue to be closed off from the rest of the country?" ”

Sir Colrington waved weakly and said, "Then what are we going to do?" Sir Elgin said meaningfully: "Actually, everyone should have known when they heard the news of the defeat, we can only end this war through negotiations, and end this war as soon as possible, of course, the country needs to know what is happening in the Far East, I can only hope that His Excellency Palmerston's cabinet can hold up this time......

A month later, the British and French galleons brought the news of the defeat in the Far East to Egypt, and the British colonial authorities in Egypt immediately sent the news back to China by telegram, this time Britain and France broke out in large-scale anti-war demonstrations, the people of the two countries demanded that the authorities of the two countries end the war as soon as possible, and the families of the soldiers asked to know the whereabouts of their relatives immediately, but unfortunately, no one in the army broke through, which people were killed in the battle, and which people were captured, The government knows nothing.

On the day the news reached London, Palmerston convened an emergency meeting, but this time there was a rare recrimination among the cabinet members. War is a continuation of politics, and conversely, defeat in war also means defeat in politics. Some members of the Cabinet began to accuse Prime Minister Palmerston of making a mistake in his China policy from the beginning, and then several of Palmerston's hardcore supporters got into a fight with the critics, and the Cabinet itself was already quarreling within itself, so one can imagine what the two houses of Parliament would quarrel about.

The Second Expedition was already a great adventure, as the Cabinet members were aware, and unlike the later British war against the Boers of South Africa, the British gritted their teeth and prevailed, although the British suffered a major blow at the beginning of the later Boer War. Because the Boers occupied gold mines and diamonds, the number and area occupied by the Boers were quite limited, and South Africa was not as far from the British mainland as the Far East, the British lost at the beginning of the Boer War, but they were able to turn the tide through the subsequent war.

The war in the Far East was somewhat similar to the American Revolutionary War in person, one was that the United States was across the Atlantic, and the other was that the land and population of the United States at that time were relatively large, and the French secretly supported it, so Britain was finally defeated and the United States became independent.

War is always a continuation of politics, and politics comes from class interests, and the British in the Far East did not want to occupy those lands, they just needed stable trade channels, and when the cost of war was much higher than the benefits, it was a good choice to abandon the war.

When the Queen of England heard the news, she locked herself in her bedroom and did not come out for a whole day, and Napoleon II was even more so angry that he almost jumped from the balcony on the second floor of the palace. The cabinets and parliaments of the two countries were also in a quarrel, but Palmerston's cabinet did not survive, and all the members of the cabinet resigned on the third day after the news reached London. France, on the other hand, was more troublesome, and the new bourgeois aristocracy began to connect with each other to think about how to carry out a major change.

After calming down, everyone in Britain and France, from the emperor and queen to the peddlers and pawns, was thinking about how to deal with the aftermath, did they really want to admit defeat to the yellow people in the Far East? (To be continued......)