On the other hand, Li Xian came out of Yilu's office, and his heart was also holding back the fire. Pen | fun | pavilion www. ｂｉｑｕｇｅ。 ｉｎｆｏ

In the meeting just now, Yilu's request was very simple, that is, Li Xian should become a British opium commodity agent in Leizhou or a larger area, so that he could obtain all kinds of British support, which was completely contrary to Li Xian's morality and principles of doing things.

"Someday, it will make you understand what you have done. Li Xian secretly gritted his teeth in his heart.

However, anger is anger, and what needs to be done still has to be done.

Qian Dafu, the original second treasurer of the Mixed Yuan Sect, had been sent to Macau by Li Xian a few months ago, and then traveled between Macau and Hong Kong, establishing good contacts with many British businessmen, which happened to be useful at this time.

On Victoria Harbour between Hong Kong and the Kowloon Peninsula, more than 60 British ships were moored at this time, each armed with five or six guns and dozens of muskets, to deal with possible pirate harassment and invasion of the Qing navy (Li Xian personally believes that worrying about the Qing navy is actually completely unnecessary).

What Li Xian had to do was very simple, that is, contact the captains of these ships and buy artillery and muskets at a relatively reasonable price.

The guards of the Mixed Yuan Temple have always used whaling cannons, and with the rapid development of the strength and territory of the guards, this equipment is inevitably too shabby, and it is time to match it with some real artillery.

Originally, if Yilu had agreed to normal trade, or if there were not so many restrictions, Li Xian would have been inclined to buy the British Navy's standard military artillery and firearms, but since the negotiations broke up unhappily, he could only be satisfied with buying commercial weapons.

The Qing court forbade any form of trade in firearms, while for the powerful British government, it was the powerful military firearms that needed to be regulated, and there were no restrictions on commercial weapons, which were more than a step less powerful.

In the end, Li Xian spent nearly 5,000 yuan to buy six commercial artillery guns and more than 100 front-loading flintlock smoothbore guns, most of which were brown basses.

In terms of weapon performance, the maximum firing range of military artillery is 1,900 meters, and the effective firing range is 1,200 meters, while the maximum firing range of commercial artillery is less than 500 meters, and the effective firing range is about 300 meters.

There is no need to look at more performance parameters, the huge gap between military guns and commercial artillery can be seen from the range alone, which is not difficult to explain that Li Xian stroked these guns with crowns printed on their bodies, but his expression was not very good-looking.

The sales of muskets in Britain were a little wider, but unfortunately rifled guns were not popular, so Li Xian could only buy some cheap smoothbore guns.

Having said that, after the Qing and Britain entered the war mode, Lin Zexu also bought a lot of artillery and muskets from Macao, but they were all commercial weapons, and their range and power were far inferior to real military weapons.

However, Li Xian suspected that the officials in Guangzhou did not know the difference between military weapons and commercial weapons, and thought that the two were of the same level.

However, these expensive firearms will not be directly equipped with front-line officers and soldiers, and will not even conduct any actual combat exercises, but will be directly put into the warehouses of Guangzhou Prefecture, and some will be taken out when the fighting is fierce and let the officers and men use them temporarily.

You can figure out what the result will be with your knees.

If only from the perspective of price, Li Xian could have bought some firearms from Macao, but considering some political factors, he could only buy these guns in Victoria Harbour.

In short, the purpose of going to Hong Kong was partially achieved, and Li Xian took these weapons to Macao, and then, after many maneuvers, bought a Western-style sailing ship of about 400 tons in the hands of merchants in Macao.

With a displacement of just over 400 tons, the ship is like a toy compared to ocean-going cargo ships of more than 1,000 tons, but it is still huge, durable, and suitable for long-distance travel compared to most Chinese ships.

When Magellan sailed around the world, the ship used was only about 400 tons, and from this point of view, it was enough to use such a ship to transport goods in the near sea.

This ship cost Li Xian a full thirteen thousand yuan, plus the money for the purchase of artillery and muskets before, Li Xian spent about eighteen thousand yuan on this trip, almost spending the remaining savings of the Mixed Yuan Sect.

After that, there were only two or three thousand yuan of funds in the account of the Mixed Yuan Sect, as well as thousands of cultivation resources such as the Essence Yuan Pill, if they couldn't open up financial resources as soon as possible, they would encounter an embarrassing situation of not being able to pay the salaries of the guards within two months.

Li Xian did not think about the annoying financial situation, carried the purchased artillery, muskets, and gunpowder to the ship, drove back to Leizhou, and before leaving, he told Qian Dafu to publish articles in the "China Cong Bao" and "Guangdong Chronicle" according to his own requirements.

Journalism was in the ascendant of this era, and it was emerging in Europe and the Americas, even in the remote Chinese province of Guangdong, where there were two newspapers, the "China Cong Bao" and the "Guangdong Chronicle" mentioned above.

At the beginning, knowing that there were such two newspapers, Li Xian was also surprised by the advanced nature of this world.

Both of these newspapers were run by Westerners, mainly in English, and they had a lot of useful information and news, and even devoted a large amount of space to recording the prices of various goods in Guangzhou, which were quite practical newspapers.

These two newspapers were not cheap, a copy of about 80 shillings, that is, the price of four pounds and twelve taels of silver, at most a circulation of more than a thousand copies at a time, but usually not so many, and often at a loss, if it were not for the financing of some wealthy British merchants, I am afraid that it would have gone out of business long ago.

In short, these two newspapers are newspapers with good influence, but the financial situation is not very good, and Li Xian wants to spend some money and publish some soft news on them, but there is no difficulty at all.

After Lin Zexu arrived in Guangdong, he sent people to Macao to buy these two newspapers, and then hired translators to translate all kinds of news and commentary documents, and finally compiled them into "Macao newsprint", which is an important material for later historians to study this era.

However, with Li Xian's poor knowledge of history, he would not have known about the influence of "Macao newsprint", and only regarded the above two newspapers as a means to strengthen his own influence.

In short, after Li Xian's operation, both the "China Cong Bao" and the "Guangdong Chronicle" simultaneously published a piece of news to the effect that Li Xian, the leader of the merchants of Leizhou, had made a special visit to the British consul Yilu and solemnly demanded that the British government lift the blockade of Guangzhou and the Pearl River Estuary and resume normal business exchanges.

Of course, the British consul did not agree to this proposal, and the two had a serious quarrel, which was to make Li Xian a national hero who angrily criticized foreign envoys.

In fact, Li Xian met the law of righteousness, although the two sides did not reach a pleasant intention to cooperate, but the quality of the two people was there, and the whole meeting process was calm and normal, and there was no ugly scene like a shrew scolding the street.

However, in the articles of these two newspapers, the two seemed to be slapping the table and blowing their beards and glaring, and they broke up unhappily after a very violent conflict.

After the two articles were published, the reactions were mixed.

Yilu laughed it off, not thinking that such an article had any meaning.

The common people of Guangzhou have no access to these two newspapers at all, and they don't care about this kind of thing, even the well-informed martial arts people rarely care about this kind of nonsense.

Only a small percentage of the Shilin scholars in Guangzhou, i.e., Xiucai, Juren, and retired officials, learned about these two articles, and their evaluations of them were mixed: some thought that Li Xian's move had greatly boosted the morale of the Cantonese people, while others thought that the white body without an official body was too arrogant to advocate for talking about current affairs.