Sir Colrington felt an unprecedented anger when he received the news that the Russians had made peace with the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom alone, and he loudly denounced the Russians as traitors, but he did not have the slightest sense of shame.

Sir Ergin only casually echoed a few words, and he was more concerned about the reasons for Russia's initiative to make peace and the content of the peace treaty between China and Russia. The intelligence information sent by the Americans was accurate and exceeded the scope of the Americans' intelligence capabilities, and Ergin believed that this must have been leaked to the Americans by the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom on its own initiative, and hoped that the Americans would pass on the news to Britain and France in order to put pressure on Britain and France.

First of all, the reason for the Russians to make peace alone, it turned out that the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom not only fought against the Russians in Siberia, but also attacked the Central Baikal region and the western Central Asia region by the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom army.

Northeast China was one of the main battlefields of the Russo-Russian War, while Central Asia on the other side was a much larger battlefield. As early as the first half of the 19th century, Tsarist Russia began a full-scale conquest of Kazakhstan in Central Asia, on the one hand, sending a large number of troops to suppress the rebellion of the Kazakh tribes, and on the other hand, inducing the Kazakh upper leaders of the small, medium and large accounts to submit to themselves. In 1822, the Tsarist government authorized the Governor of Siberia, Speransky, to promulgate the "Regulations on the Kyrgyz of Western Siberia", announcing the abolition of the original political ruling system of Kazakhstan (khan), and dividing the Kazakh region into several administrative regions, all ruled by officials sent by the Russian government in accordance with the Russian political system. At this point, the Kazakh Khanate, which had lasted for 366 years, came to an end. With the conquest of Kazakhstan, Tsarist Russia launched a powerful offensive against the khanates of Central Asia and the Xinjiang region of China.

In 1834, the New Aleksandrovsk Fortress was built on the Mangeshlak Peninsula. In November 1839, Petrovsky, the then governor of Orenburg, sent more than 5,000 men on an expedition to the Khiva Khanate, but was hit by a snowstorm and suffered heavy losses, but still failed. After that, the direction of the Russian attack shifted to the northern part of the Kokand Khanate. Year 1847. Construction of the Reimburg at the mouth of the Syr Darya River. On July 28, 1853, Petrovsky, who had re-elected as the governor of Orenburg, again sent more than 2,000 Russian troops to occupy the famous white mosque of the Kokand fortress after a 22-day siege, Akmejit, forming the Syr Darya bunker line.

At the same time, the Russian army marched south from Semipalatinsk, 1847. Along the southern Aegus River, he secretly built Kopal Castle between the Lebush and Kukwusu rivers in China, southeast of Lake Balkhash. From 1851, taking advantage of the Qing government's internal and external difficulties and the chaos in the Altai Mountains, Russia invaded the areas of the Chanas, Khatun and Biya rivers in the upper reaches of the Obu River, and gradually advanced to the Altai hinterland and the upper reaches of the Irtysh River, hoping to take China's inner lake Zaisangbo as its own.

Because the then Xianfeng Emperor listened to Xingzhen's advice and took strong precautions against this, Russia's plan to annex Zaisan Lake was not realized. But in the summer of 1854, he occupied Almaty in Gurban, between the Fui River and the Ili River at the northern foot of the Tien Shan Mountains, and established the Vilne Castle near Gurban, Almaty. In October of the same year. He added the Kopal and Vilneburg forts to the newly established province of Semipalakinks in Western Siberia, arbitrarily included the area east and south of Lake Balkhash (then the largest lake in China) into Russian territory, and continued to expand its influence eastward to Lake Issyk-Kul (then the second largest lake in China). In 1856, the city of Vilneburg was made the capital of the newly established Alatave region, forming another line of bunkers to outflank the Kazakh steppe and attack the Central Asian khanates, that is, the Siberian line, which was mostly located in China at that time.

Compared with the northeast region, the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom's military use in the northwest region started relatively late, and the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom's winged king Shi Dakai opened more than 100,000 Yidian troops after advancing into Qinghai and Xinjiang in 1860. The local opposition was quickly swept away, and then in early 1861 an offensive against the Russian pillbox line in Central Asia began.

Yiwang also implemented the new policies of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom in Xinjiang and other places. Under the double pressure of bayonets and the New Deal, Xinjiang and other places quickly stabilized, of course, this is indispensable to the historical pain of the integration of various ethnic groups. Subsequently, Yiwang Shi Dakai adhered to the practice of the West Temple, united all the anti-Russian forces that could be united, and he recruited tens of thousands of coalition troops composed of local ethnic groups in Xinjiang and other places to participate in the war against Russia. With more than 100,000 Yidian troops and the newly formed local army in Xinjiang, the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom gathered nearly 250,000 troops to launch a large-scale attack on Central Asia.

An army of 250,000 is quite deadly for the Russian army in Central Asia. The entire line of bunkers outside the Kazakh steppe was attacked by the Taiping army on multiple fronts for several months, and then Shi Dakai united many khanates and tribes in the Kazakh steppe that had been invaded by the Russians against the Russian army. Between April 1861 and March 1862, the Russians' offensive line was forced to retreat to its pre-1847 starting positions, with losses of 120,000 troops, plus the resistance of the population during their previous conquest of Central Asia. The Russians lost hundreds of thousands of people.

Under this strong pressure, the Russians were powerless to stop, the Russian army in Central Asia was insufficient, and hoped to mobilize reinforcements from Eastern Europe, but Tsar Alexander II found that his country was in a crisis of serf reform, a large number of serfs revolted, they refused the country's call, Russia could not draw enough troops to Central Asia to fight, you must know that the army organized by the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom in Central Asia reached 300,000 at its peak, known as 500,000 Central Asian coalition troops. So in Central Asia, the Russian army can only struggle to support.

And the last fuse to crush Russia was in the north of the Far East, where the Russian army was again dealt a major blow. Yakutsk, the largest stronghold of the Russian army in the Far East, was captured by the Taipings, and four divisions of the Russian army were completely annihilated, and the Russian governor of Siberia, Muravyov, was taken prisoner. The last vestiges of the Russians in the Far East were gone, and the Taiping army and the Mongol cavalry galloped freely across the vast Siberian land, invincible in the coalition forces of the Central Asian Wing Kings, and the Russians were almost driven east of Lake Baikal.

At the same time, the Ottoman Empire and Austria-Hungary, seeing the decline of Russia, were also preparing to attack the Russians, in which the Russians could only sue for peace, they were now in a weak period of defeat in the Crimea, and they were also at a critical point in the reform of serfdom at home, and they were really unable to cope with a war of this scale. So the tsar had to order peace talks with the Chinese, hoping to stabilize the front on the present basis and not lose large swaths of the country.

In April 1862, a Russian delegation of more than 100 people came to Ili in Xinjiang to negotiate peace with the Wing King of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom, and the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom Beijing also sent an envoy to participate in the negotiations.

After more than 10 days of negotiations, the two sides reached the Sino-Russian Ili Treaty, the first of which was that the eastern territory of the two sides was bounded by Lake Baikal and the Yenisei River, and a large area of territory to the east became the new territory of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom, while the central part was bounded by the Tangnu-Uliang Sea, Lake Balkhash and Lake Issyk-Kul. The second is the restoration of the status of the Kazakh Khanate by China in Central Asia, which Russia recognizes. Third, Russia compensated China with 30 million pounds of war reparations, and because Russia was now very poor, it had to use the territory of Alaska to offset part of the war reparations, and the remaining 20 million pounds to be paid within 20 years. Fourth, the two sides have also opened up several major cities in the north as trade ports. Fifth, Russia spent more than three million pounds to redeem prisoners of war in the Far East.

At this point, the eastern head of the Russian double-headed eagle was completely cut off, Russia lost its access to the Pacific Ocean, and the Russian Pacific Fleet ceased to exist from then on.

After listening to the treaty signed by the Russians, Sir Colrington and Sir Elgin were very surprised, the Russians were not surprised by the peace with them, but they just made the Russians feel a little abandoned, but they were surprised that the Russians, who had always had a huge appetite for territory, actually succumbed this time, it seems that the strength of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom has reached a peak, and it is not beneficial at all to fight the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom at this time.

Sir Collington looked at Hong Kong's location on the map and muttered, "Are we really going to give up Hong Kong?" Sir Elgin also found it very difficult, and after the establishment of the base in Hong Kong, the British declared Hong Kong a free port. British merchants, including opium dealers, gradually established Hong Kong as a hub for free trade with the East, and American opium traders and bankers also came to Hong Kong to participate in trade with China. At the same time, Hong Kong was also the anchorage of the prime mover fleet, the most important port of Britain in the Far East, and it was really difficult to choose to give up.

But the Russians have already made peace alone, can Britain and France force the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom to submit with their fleets alone? Since the establishment of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom, they have not been willing to back down on territorial sovereignty, and Sir Ergin is well aware of this. The frequent nuisance of the Kowloon Peninsula to Hong Kong Island made the British irritable, not only military pressure, but also people-to-people exchanges and nuisances often bothered them, even if they did not return Hong Kong, then it would be difficult for Hong Kong to develop steadily under the military nuisance of the Kowloon Peninsula.

After some negotiations, Sir Ergin put forward a more decent condition, considering whether the British could make the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom pay a sum of money to redeem Hong Kong Island, and at the same time calculate the loss of investment and construction, and at the same time Hong Kong is still a free port, but the warships of various countries are different berths, and can only dock merchant ships, to see if this can make the two sides reach an agreement.

Sir Collington pondered for a while and said: "We can only report this consideration to the country first, and I think this is our final limit, and it is up to the Parliament to vote on whether to continue the war or to sign a treaty according to the results of our negotiations in the past few days......" (to be continued......