Sir Elgin had returned home, and when he stepped aboard the battleship Determination, he had forgotten a glimpse of the beautiful Victoria Bay on deck, and his feelings were very complicated, remembering that when he first arrived in Hong Kong a few years ago, he had arrived with a powerful navy and army, but now when he returned, it was so bleak.

He did not know whether he had succeeded or failed in the Far East, but he ended the war with the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom by signing a peace treaty, a war fought at the wrong time, in the wrong place, and with the wrong object, resulting in more than 20 million pounds paid by Britain and France to ransom their captured soldiers. This price was the result of repeated negotiations between Elgin and Sir Collington, and it actually included war reparations, but in the better name of ransom. The captured soldiers and generals were being handed over one after another, the coalition forces sent a fleet to the north to retrieve a large number of prisoners, and the brave soldiers were finally able to go home, and from this point of view, Ergin finally felt that he had achieved something.

Then some of the privileges and unequal agreements between Britain and France in China were abolished, and even Hong Kong became a real free port, and sovereignty was returned to the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom, but only the police took over the security here, and the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom was not allowed to station troops and warships, and the British enjoyed the right of first residence, and merchant ships of any country could dock and trade here.

In the end, what made Ergin smile bitterly was that the peace treaty had just been signed, and the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom had come up with a rich trade treaty, and they planned to import up to 100 million US dollars of steel from Britain, according to them, this was only the first phase of the steel import quota, if the British and French steel were of good quality and cheap, they would consider continuing to increase orders.

Ergin knew what they were going to do with so much steel, and the emperor of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom was ambitious, and he planned to build railways all over the country. The railway from Beijing to Shanghai and then to Guangzhou, the railway from Beijing to Harbin in the north, the railway from Beijing to Lanzhou to Xinjiang, and the railway from Beijing to Ulaanbaatar, it can be seen that the people of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom are planning to do a big job.

Lord Corrington was very interested in the matter, and it was hard to imagine that such a large trade could be generated between the two countries that had just ceased the war. But Ergin knew that Britain now needed a market for the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom, which in turn needed steel produced by the world's largest industrial country. Since the beginning of the American Civil War, Britain's steel trade in the United States has fallen sharply, and it is fitting that the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom has taken over the United States' share of exports at this time, and Sir Collington cannot refuse, and Elgin thinks that even the Prime Minister himself cannot refuse, and perhaps they can earn back the losses they lost in the war.

Along the way through the South China Sea, Ergin's battleship Resolve was accompanied by dozens of warships and transports, carrying the first captured soldiers returning home. Most of them were soldiers who had been captured in the Battle of Canton, and they seemed very happy to be able to return home.

Ergin talked with several captured soldiers, and they agreed that the Taiping soldiers were very strong in combat, especially the soldiers who defended several forts, and they were all killed in battle, but none of them surrendered or were captured, and many of them pulled grenades and bombs on their bodies before they died, and died with the allied soldiers. The captured soldiers said that in the future they would rather be deserters than come to the East to fight against this army called the Taiping Army.

Erjin remembered the Qing cavalry who looked at death on the battlefield of Baliqiao, didn't they also rush over with explosives and wanted to die with the coalition army? At this moment, Ergin understood. It is no accident that this oriental country has been able to survive in the East for thousands of years, because they have a heart to defend their land and country at any time.

in the South China Sea. Ergin also saw the navy of the Taipings, a sea guerrilla force that had caused a lot of trouble for the Allied forces' sea transportation lines, and now Ergin saw a strange sight that their fleet had gathered many pirate ships. Ergin knew that the Taiping navy had recruited many pirates in the South China Sea to fight for them through bounties and threats, and believed that the war would end. These pirates will be naturalized by the Taiping Navy.

In the Strait of Malacca, Ergin's fleet encountered a Taiping navy that was fighting against pirates, and the coalition fleet did not intervene, but just watched the Taiping navy defeat the pirates, and after the first battle, Ergin saw at least 20 pirate ships as prisoners of the Taiping army. Both fleets then docked in Malacca to recuperate.

In Malacca, Ergin, he met the commander of the Taiping army, who was also a pirate and told Sir Ergin that the Taiping navy would resolutely eliminate those who committed the most heinous pirates, and that in the South China Sea and beyond, the Taiping navy would fully guarantee the safety of peaceful merchant ships of all countries. Ergin did not reply to this, he knew how the British navy developed, the privateer fleet in the early years was a pirate fleet, when they wanted to rob merchant ships, they would replace the naval flag and raise the pirate flag, when they represented the country in the war, they were regular navy, and I don't know if the navy of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom would develop in the same way as the British navy in the future.

Crossing the Indian Ocean and the Red Sea, Ergin reached Egypt, landed and took a train ride before boarding a British Mediterranean Navy ship bound for England, where they were closer to home. Of course, the number of captive soldiers with him was much reduced, and the soldiers conscripted by the colonies of India and North Africa disembarked and returned to their respective countries along the way, and in the end only the soldiers of the Scottish Highland Corps were left with Elgin, who did not like these Scots very much.

As the British mainland got closer and closer, Elgin's mood became more complicated, he didn't know what kind of scene would greet him in London, and whether he would be scolded as a coward? Sinner? Or something else?

London's Thames Harbour was crowded with people today, and Ergin saw the surging crowd from a distance, and he was a little uneasy, and as a loser he couldn't walk down the gangway with his head held high, and even felt very ashamed. But as he descended the gangway, the crowd erupted in cheers, "Welcome home, children!" ”

It turned out that the cheers were not for themselves, and most of the crowd gathered at the port had come to greet the returning soldiers. The wife found her husband. The child found his father, the mother found his son, and the cries of excitement echoed over the harbor for a long time. No one paid attention to Ergin and others, there were no accusations, no invective, nothing. As if forgotten, Ergin silently got into a black carriage and left the place.

The Downing Street Prime Minister's residence has changed owners, and here Ergin meets the new Prime Minister Stanley, the Conservative leader in a smug manner, seemingly without the slightest sense of humiliation of defeat. After a brief greeting, Ergin first expressed his failure in the Far East, but Stanley comforted him: "Forget the unpleasant experience, we have made a major mistake in our strategy towards China, and the damned Whigs have caused our defeat. But we pulled back from the precipice and bought peace. Sir Elgin, I'm more concerned that we're getting what we wanted through the war, isn't it? ”

Ergin knew what the Prime Minister was talking about, so he solemnly took out a thick trade agreement and handed it to the Prime Minister and said, "Your Excellency, this is a new steel import trade agreement signed between the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom and us, worth about 50 million pounds. ”

The cabinet members present applauded enthusiastically, and the Chancellor of the Exchequer shouted excitedly: "Let's turn the guns back into steel and resell them to the Chinese, they are the same as we need!" ”

Everyone is thrilled by this huge trade deal. In addition to the steel trade agreement, China's railways, telegraph lines, factory construction and other investment projects have also appeared in front of people's eyes. The British were shocked to find that in fact, these were not the last things they wanted through the war. Now that they got it, and they got it after the defeat, that's when they realized what a stupid thing they had done before.

Stanley's face was full of red, and he affectionately called Ergin a hero, praising everything he had done in the Far East, and it was his persistence in the Far East. It allowed the empire to end the war with dignity and at the same time received the full opening of the eastern market. Tianjin, Dalian Bay, Yantai, and a large number of other northern coastal cities of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom officially opened their doors to British trade, which was a remarkable achievement, and the thought of being able to do business with 400 million people made it believed that the second great development of the British Empire was coming.

A few days later, the trade agreements were exposed in the newspapers, and no one mentioned the opium trade. The British Parliament even passed a resolution to gradually reduce the opium trade in the Far East and replace it with a boom in other business with the Chinese in the Far East.

As the captured soldiers returned home one after another, Britain began to gradually forget the pain of losing the war, and a large number of minerals in China began to be developed by foreign capital, and the British were eager to try, and China became Britain's most important trading partner after the United States. As for the ransom of those prisoners of war, no one cared, and those ransoms were distributed to the people of the various colonies, and Britain did not seem to have lost anything.

China is constantly absorbing British capital injection, with the beginning of a large number of railway construction projects, China's transportation has been greatly improved, previously difficult to transport goods from the mainland to export, economic and trade to promote China's own industry, commerce boom, the two sides in fact, for a long time is a win-win situation, this cooperation was not until the outbreak of the First World War was broken.

Sir Elgin, Admiral Grant, Montauban and others returned to England and France one after another, and Admiral Grant was finally promoted to marshal, and Montauban was also promoted. Sir Elgin did not hold any government office and spent his old age in his old home, in which he wrote memoirs of the war in the Far East, which were said to sell well. Grant's fate was the same as that of Elgin, and he remained at home with the title of marshal until his death. Montauban, on the other hand, played an important role in the French army, and performed well in the Prussian War. On August 9, 1866, he became the 31st Prime Minister and Minister of War of France, drew up a plan of adventure that would lead to the defeat of the French army near Sedan and on September 4, when the Second French Empire was overthrown, he retired to Belgium, and since then he has been out of politics, dying in Versailles in 1878, and it is said that he also wrote a memoir that did not sell as well as Elgin...... (To be continued......)