"That's it, let's go back to Shanghai first. Seeing that the situation was not right, Bafur hurriedly spoke out to divert everyone's attention.

The four diplomats were all smart men, and they had already seen through Li Xian's ambition in this meeting, that is, to firmly grasp the three state capitals of Hangzhou, Jiaxing and Huzhou in northern Zhejiang, and then they would inevitably continue to send troops and occupy all of Shanghai, which was close at hand.

When the time came, Li Xian implemented the plan in these two booklets, and foreign merchants who came to Shanghai to trade could not refuse even if they wanted to, and some people would even be happy, seeing this as a rare opportunity to make a fortune.

The four foreign consuls were worried about the current situation in China, feeling that things were going out of control, and when they returned to Shanghai, they found that the situation was more severe than the most pessimistic estimates.

It turned out that during the visit of the four consuls to the leaders of the Huaxia Army in Hangzhou, there was an uprising in Shanghai County, and tens of thousands of people led by the Little Knife Society united to rebel, driving away or capturing Qing court officials in Shanghai, and even Baoshan, Jiading and other county towns not far from Shanghai were also captured.

At first, the foreigners in the Shanghai Concession thought that this was the instigation of the Huaxia Army behind their backs, but after careful investigation, they found that this matter really had nothing to do with the headquarters of the Huaxia Army.

The Little Knife Society is theoretically a branch of the Heaven and Earth Society, at least a peripheral organization, but this uprising has no clear connection with the Heaven and Earth Society or even the Huaxia Army, but is a real spontaneous rebellion.

Chen Jinhua and Qin Rigang of the Heaven and Earth Society are currently in Ningbo, actively taking various measures to consolidate their rule in Ningbo, and at the same time preparing for trade with Fusang, and at this point in time, they really don't care about any uprisings on the periphery.

After the Xiaodaohui raised troops to gain control of Shanghai County, they immediately contacted the Huaxia Army in Hangzhou and expressed their willingness to cooperate and jointly overthrow the Qing Dynasty.

This is also the first team to take the initiative to rebel outside the Huaxia Army and the Wulin Sect, which has very important propaganda significance and tactical value, Li Xian was overjoyed and immediately sent people over.

When a communication channel is established between the two sides, the background of the knife will be on paper.

It turned out that in Fujian, Guangdong and other places, there have always been many ordinary people who have gone to sea to make a living, that is, to run sea transportation or fishing.

After the army was raised in Guangzhou, especially after the opening of the port of Shanghai, this traditional transportation business was gradually replaced by foreign ships, and even the Huaxia Army in Guangzhou also had its own special transport fleet, so that the sailors of these traditional ships were gradually unemployed.

These unemployed sailors worked hard to go north to Shanghai to find work, so that there were many migrant workers in Shanghai.

These 19th-century migrant workers had the most simple hatred for the foreign ships and foreigners who made them unemployed, and in order not to be bullied in other places, they formed groups with each other and formed large and small associations.

These associations and gangs have thousands of people in large numbers and only a few dozen people in small ones, and although they are collectively called small knife clubs, they are actually more semi-allied relationships formed by each other according to regional relations, and they themselves do not have a rigorous organizational structure.

However, it is true that the middle and upper echelons of these organizations are inextricably linked to heaven and earth.

This time, Li Xian led his people to occupy three prefectures near Hangzhou, which formed a huge deterrent to the nearby areas, and Shanghai County, which is only a few dozen kilometers away from Huzhou and Jiaxing, bore the brunt of the attack.

There were only a few ways for Qing court officials to consolidate law and order, that is, they called the leaders of various gangs in their jurisdiction to give lectures, and a few of them were directly arrested and put in prison for example.

This trick is usually nothing, but in this situation now, it is not prudent, after Shanghai Daotai and the county magistrate Yamen arrested several leaders and key figures of the knife club, the knife club is not at ease, for fear that the government will come to a troubled era and punish him, and he feels that such a big Hangzhou has been occupied by the Huaxia army, and the hundreds of poorly trained green battalion soldiers in the county alone do not have enough deterrent ability.

It was also in this context that several big leaders of the Little Knife Society united with each other to revolt, and they easily defeated the Qing soldiers, occupied the Daotai Yamen and the Zhixian Yamen, controlled the whole city, and achieved the actual occupation.

This is the part of the uprising that is about migrant workers, and many people in later generations know about it, but not many people may know about the role of local farmers in Shanghai in this uprising.

Seriously speaking, the uprising was divided into two parts, namely the uprising of the migrant workers' gang led by the Little Knife Society, and the anti-grain movement of the local peasants.

The Qing court had always leaned heavily on taxes in the areas around Shanghai, and even pulled away all the grain and other agricultural products paid by the peasants in this area, and forbade them to be sold locally, so that the prices of agricultural products in the Shanghai area remained high, but the peasants were unable to profit from them, and they were quite miserable.

After the uprising of the Huaxia Army, the Qing court used troops many times, and the taxes in the entire Jiangnan region naturally rose steadily, and the tax rate in the Yangtze River estuary area centered on Shanghai County was particularly high, even to the point that many middle-class peasants went bankrupt directly.

Against this background, the peasants led by Zhou Lichun united and besieged the county towns of Baoshan, Taicang, Qingpu and other places with thousands of people, demanding tax cuts.

After the decisive refusal of the government, the anti-grain movement soon turned into an armed rebellion, and soon became out of control by taking advantage of the fact that Shanghai County was captured by the Little Knife Society.

After all, the Xiaodaohui is a foreign gang, and after occupying Shanghai, it stayed in Shanghai, contacting the Tiandihui in Ningbo and Li Xian in Hangzhou, but the peasants led by Zhou Lichun made a decisive attack and directly attacked the surrounding counties, and captured a total of six county towns such as Jiading and Baoshan in a very short time, and announced the establishment of the Ming Kingdom.

At this moment, not only the Qing court officials in Suzhou and Changzhou were caught off guard, but also the foreigners of the three countries in the northern concession of Shanghai had complicated expressions.

Originally, the Huaxia Army was well-equipped, well-trained, and had absolute numerical superiority, and the concession was barely acceptable to foreigners in Shanghai with such a strong army.

It's just that the reality is even more bitter than imagined, and the concession is going to be occupied by a group of low-level mud legs, and then packed and tied with ribbons as a gift to the Huaxia Army, what a shameful thing.

God, your trials of your servants are not over, are they?

When the foreigners in the concession were speechless and asked the sky, the wheel of history was still rolling rapidly.

A few days after the uprising, 10,000 Qing troops from Suzhou who were originally going to attack Hangzhou turned around and went straight to Shanghai County after receiving the news of the uprising, trying to take advantage of the rebel army's unstable foothold to recapture Shanghai County.

As a result, the Xiaodaohui fought with it and defeated the so-called imperial army, so that the Qing army could only be stationed on the outskirts of Shanghai County, and failed to recapture the county seat as planned.