The venue of the five-party talks was finally set at No. 292 Changjiang Road in Nanjing, which is the famous place of hegemony in history -- the Nanjing Presidential Palace. In the early years of the Ming Dynasty, it was the Mansion of the Marquis of Guide and the Mansion of the King of Han. In the Qing Dynasty, it was the Jiangning Weaving Administration, the Jiangnan Governor's Office, and the Liangjiang Governor's Office. When Emperor Kangxi and Emperor Qianlong of the Qing Dynasty went down to the south of the Yangtze River, they all used it as a "palace". In March 1853, the Taiping army occupied Nanjing, and the capital was Tianjing, where Hong Xiuquan built the large-scale Taiping Heavenly Kingdom Heavenly Dynasty Palace (Tianwang Palace). After the Qing army broke through Nanjing, they burned down the palace buildings and rebuilt the Liangjiang Governor's Office in the ninth year of Tongzhi (1870). Lin Zexu, Zeng Guofan, Li Hongzhang, Liu Kunyi, Shen Baozhen, Zuo Zongtang, Zhang Zhidong, and Duan Fang all served as governors of Liangjiang.

After the outbreak of the Xinhai Revolution in October 1911, Sun Yat-sen was sworn in as the provisional president of the Republic of China on January 1, 1912, and established the first republican state power in Chinese history, the Provisional Government of the Republic of China. In April 1912, the Provisional Government ended, and the Nanjing Left-behind Mansion with Huang Xing as the left-behind government was established here; In the "Second Revolution" in 1913, it became the general headquarters of the Yuan Army, and Huang Xing and He Haiming successively served as commanders.

From 1913 to 1916, it successively became the Jiangsu Governor's Office, the Jiangsu Military Supervision Office, the Jiangsu General's Mansion, and the Jiangsu Governor's Office. Speaking of which, this is really a treasure of feng shui, everyone wants to come in and live, but no one can live for long.

In accordance with Order No. 4 of the Supreme High Command, military management committees were established in twenty-one designated central cities, including Nanjing, Shanghai, Wuhan, Changsha, Jiujiang, Nanchang, Anqing, Hefei, Yuezhou, Hengyang, Guangzhou, and Shaoguan, among which Nanjing, Shanghai, and Wuhan were first-class cities.

Ma Xicheng, minister of armaments, personally concurrently serves as director of the Nanjing City Military Management Commission, and the office of the Military Management Commission is located in the offices of the five provincial patrol embassies, so the current public name here is the Nanjing City Military Management Committee of the National Socialist Party. The nine delegates who participated in the talks stayed here directly, and although Ma Xicheng has recently been busy taking over the Jinling Arsenal and other units, he has not been sloppy in his reception work at all.

In Wuhan, the first stop of Wang Zhenyu's visit was not the Hanyang Iron and Steel Plant or the Hanyang Arsenal, but the National Wuhan Higher Normal School. The predecessor of this place was the self-improvement school founded by Zhang Zhidong, the governor of Huguang in the late Qing Dynasty, in 1893. In 1902, it was renamed the Dialect School. After the Xinhai Revolution, the Beiyang government established the National Wuchang Higher Normal School in 1913 based on the dialect school.

It is close to East Lake and Luojia Mountain, which is a typical mountain and water, and the scenery is still very good. Wang Zhenyu made a speech to the faculty and staff of the school here, which has a profound impact on China's education circles: "Dear students, it is an honor to stand here and meet you who will determine the future of China. I know that in the eyes of many intellectuals, I, Wang Zhenyu, am probably a warlord or something, nothing more than relying on some troops to grab the territory of a few more provinces, and I also know that in the eyes of others, I may have the ability to determine the future direction of China's situation as one of the five parties in China. So some people praise me, some people scold me, but I don't care about these things now, what I care about is you, you students sitting in front of me, in my opinion, you are the ones who will decide the future of China. ”

As soon as these words came out, the teachers and students of the Wuhan Higher Normal School, who originally despised Wang Zhenyu, a warlord who relied on a big stick to enter Wuhan, broke out into warm applause like a spring breeze.

"For a nation to rejuvenate and rise in the forest of the Shijie nation, such a great goal can never be achieved by having a large army or a strong political party, let alone by a heroic figure. Strength is not the improvement of one level, but the improvement of the whole level. For example, a strong military is by no means achieved by buying a batch of arms from foreigners, it needs a strong industrial base. And what does the industrial base need? It is a talent, it is a jishu-type talent, leaving the talent, blindly emphasizing the equipment, then it is taking the old road of the Westernization movement, but this road has been proved to be impassable. So where does our talent come from? Not from nepotism, but from school. ”

With Zuihou's words, Wang Zhenyu also made a gesture of waving his hand vigorously, and the applause from the audience rang out again.

"Since the Opium War, we in China have been suffering all kinds of humiliation to the outside world, and by the First Sino-Japanese War and the Gengzi Rebellion, this humiliation became a humiliation. weishenme will be like this, what is the problem, how to solve it, can that classmate tell me? ”

After just a few seconds of communication, the students' interactive emotions were immediately ignited, and a tall boy stood up bravely and said: "It's because the great powers are too bad and too strong, and we can't win." Therefore, only by uniting and defeating the great powers can we wash away the shame of the past. ”

Wang Zhenyu shook his head with a smile and said: "If a lion shows off its muscles, it means that it is strong, and if it is a pig that shows off its meat, it means that it should be killed." We are bullied by the great powers, we should not blame other people's barbaric robbers, on the contrary, we should be grateful, to thank others, it is people who have opened the window of shijie for us, it is people who let us know what it means to sit in a well and watch the sky, know what it means to be complacent, and know what it means to be backward and will be beaten? So I am most grateful to the British, it is these robbers from Europe who let us open our eyes to shijie, otherwise we would still be hungry, dragging our braids without clothing, believing in the prosperous era of Kangqian depicted by Ji Xiaolan's shameless literati, and indulging in the good sense of self in the heavenly kingdom. ”

After Wang Zhenyu said this, he paused and looked at the audience, the teachers and students were silent, and their brains couldn't be turned around at once, weishenme his own motherland has endured so much humiliation but still has to thank the Western powers?

At the same time, nine deputies representing the five parties Shili walked into the specially set up venue of the Nanjing Military Management Committee and began arduous but not lengthy negotiations.

Although the Beiyang government still controls half of the country, they have now become the weaker of the five parties because of the loss of the war, and nominally, they are now negotiating with the other four.

Xu Shichang and Cao Rulin, who were negotiators of the Beiyang government, felt a lot of pressure on their shoulders, so they didn't talk much nonsense at first, and directly proposed the negotiation plan selected by Duan Qirui.

Cao Rulin's qualifications naturally cannot be compared with Xu Shichang, so this plan was read out by him:

"First, the central government in Beijing recognized the War for the Protectorate as a legitimate war and did not hold the participants accountable.

Second, Wang Zhenyu was appointed as the patrol envoy of Huguang and Liangjiang, Cai Yi was appointed as the southwest patrol envoy, and Sun Yat-sen was appointed as the patrol envoy of Fujian and Zhejiang.

Thirdly, if the provinces of the South declare independence, they can revoke their independence and return to the central government. ”

Duan Qirui's conditions were not excessive, but it was obvious that he could not meet the requirements of the other four parties, and on the first night, led by Yang Yongtai and Zhao Hengti, the four parties had already reached a basic agreement.

Now, Tang Hualong, the representative of Vice President Li Yuanhong, put forward on behalf of everyone:

"First, according to the provisions of the Constitution, Li Yuanhong is the legitimate head of state of China;

Second, the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd Divisions of the former Hubei Army were reorganized into the 1st to 3rd Divisions of the Chinese Guards, and were stationed in Beijing with President Li Yuanhong;

Third, the establishment of a regional government in the south is carried out with reference to the measures for regional military and political autonomy except that diplomatic power still belongs to the central government, so foreign-related clauses involving the territory under the jurisdiction of the local government are regarded as illegal and invalid without recognition by the regional government.

Fourthly, the tax revenues of the southern region are directly handed over to the Revenue and Expenditure Office of the Presidential Palace, which is at the disposal of the President.

Fifth, the State Council was established, and Xiong Xiling was appointed as the premier, Liang Qichao was appointed as the chief of finance, Duan Qirui was appointed as the chief of the army, and the rest of the cabinet members were appointed after consultation between the president and the prime minister.

Sixth, it is necessary to hold accountable those responsible for the restoration and to commend all those who participated in the war to protect the country. ”

Seeing the six articles proposed by Tang Hualong, Cao Rulin and the others couldn't help but gasp, this is the division of the north and the south in disguise.

In Wuhan Higher Normal School, Wang Zhenyu is trying to explain his views to students: "Many times others bully you, not because of how strong he is, but because you are too weak. It comes down to being too weak. But in a country as big as ours, Shijie accounts for 10% of the economy and has a population of 40,000,000, but it is still a weak country? What's the problem? In fact, it is not a problem in one place, it is a point that causes a face, and there are problems everywhere. We don't care if Confucian culture is right or wrong, but the official-oriented thinking for thousands of years has led us to insist on the so-called Shinong industry and commerce, emphasizing the so-called essence and the end, but in fact, putting the business in the last position is the real inversion. The development of commerce can promote our economic development, and economic development can make our industry stronger and stronger. Look at the rising United States of America, their businessmen can even elect the president, in the past we always emphasized that there are no treacherous businessmen, but why do businessmen commit treachery? In the final analysis, they have no political status, and the value of their existence is the money bags of the government and the yamen, like raising pigs, and they will be killed when they are fattened. In this way, the merchants do not commit adultery and survive in the world, but what about our scholar class? He has been taking and taking away everything, and he has also constantly incited the hatred of the rich among the peasants and workers. For a nation to be strong and develop, it does not mean that the nation is divided into opposing classes according to occupation and income, and then one class can kill the other. There is no difference between that kind of thinking and being lazy and blindly robbing the rich and helping the poor under the guise of doing things for the heavens, but in fact doing everything they can. We must have the love of our compatriots, we must love our compatriots, regardless of class or status, and the gap between the rich and the poor should be adjusted by the government......"