When the 48th year of Qianlong passed, the entire land of East Asia was on fire and smoking.

After the defeat of the Qinwang army jointly organized by the northwestern provinces, with the death of the Minister of Military Aircraft A Gui, the governor of Shaanxi and Gansu, Li Shuyao, could only barely pack up the defeated army and retreat to Taiyuan. After the news came out, the governors of the world were in an uproar, but the governors of Shaanxi and Gansu were defeated like a mountain, the governors of Zhili were captured, and the governors of Huguang were assassinated.

Sichuan, Hubei, Yunnan, and Guizhou provinces all had religious uprisings, and in the rebel armies that emerged one after another, you could always see several troops led by Taoist priests. In a bunch of White Lotus tribes that worship their motherless mothers and believe in Maitreya's birth, these Taoist soldiers seem to be out of place.

On the snowy plateau, the Gurkhas, who claim to be descendants of the moon god, are taking advantage of the strength of their armaments to beat the slave owners who twist the Buddha beads on the top bones of people to cry and call their mothers. The current minister in Tibet is another waste who can't do anything except give butter tea to the lamas. The new owner of the Potala Palace, the 8th Living Buddha Qiangbai Gyatso, could only endure the pain and hemorrhage while writing to the Qianlong Lafayette incarnated by Manjushri for help.

It's a pity that when the envoy arrived in Zhili with great difficulty, he found that Manjushri Bodhisattva was now studying hard from Liu Chan, the late emperor of the Shu Han Dynasty, and as the guardian of Manjushri Bodhisattva, neither Wei Ye nor Murong Parrot had any interest in giving a group of bald donkeys in the late stage of necrophilia. Murong Parrot didn't directly criticize "The bald donkey stays behind", even if he is extraordinarily self-contained.

The matter of the snowy plateau, Murong Parrot can only put it on hold for the time being, waiting for the future to connect the Gurkhas and the roof of the world.

But Wei Ye found that he had something to do again - the remnants of the Zhehe Renye Blood Neck Sect in Shaanxi and Gansu did not let go of this good opportunity when the vitality of the Shaanxi-Gansu Green Camp was greatly damaged, and a few hidden imams took the Hui of the Blood Neck Sect to make an incident in Shifeng Fort, and in a blink of an eye, it swept the entire Gansu!

However, when Li Shiyao reluctantly divided a group of soldiers and horses to come back, all people saw was the charred corpse left behind by the rebels.

People with good deeds visited afterwards, and the blood-necked sectarians in Gansu seemed to have been uprooted by someone, leaving not a single living mouth, and the Gansu households were waiting for an unknown number of adult males after this winter!

The troubles of the henchmen withdrew in this strange way, but Li Shiyao, the governor of Shaanxi and Gansu, did not feel relieved at all, but became more and more suspicious, and rarely asked about political affairs, but became quite interested in Buddhist scriptures, and copied the "Mahayana Theory of Belief" by hand. This important minister of the Qianlong Dynasty, who had great ups and downs in his life, probably didn't expect that he would suddenly change his temperament in his twilight years, let alone that in the early spring of the 49th year of Qianlong, he received the Bodhisattva vows in Qingliang Temple on Wutai Mountain and became a white-clothed layman with the body of a minister.

Li Shiyao's fame has collapsed, and he has the intention of escaping from the Zen world to be an outsider, but the world is surging, and it is not the time to calm down.

Although the Manchu royal family always had a sense of distrust and crisis towards the outside world, in Guangzhou and Macao, the every move of this dominating empire in the East was always hidden from the eyes of those who cared about it.

Although the Portuguese living in Macau have lost the enterprising spirit of their ancestors, their trading houses in Guangdong have often become real estate for which they enjoy dividends. But their partners don't see it that way—

The Dutch merchant ships were spread across most of Asia, from Nagasaki on the island of Kyushu to Temasek in Malacca, where red, white and blue merchant ships could be seen busily shuttling around.

Although after the Anglo-Dutch War and the Franco-Dutch War, the sea coachmen, who once monopolized the benefits of the world's ocean-going trade, also came up with their eyes, but as an old colonial power, the Asian colonial officials who served it still had a keen sense of smell. From the Thirteen Lines in Guangzhou, they could get enough news.

From the Dutch Merchant House in Nagasaki to the Governor's Palace in Batavia, Java, letters are passed back and forth, some of which are also insightful to onlookers:

“...... The rule of the Tatars in this country was coming to an end, and although the matter was kept secret by the Manchus of Canton, the magic of the Spanish silver coins was irresistible to anyone, and neither were the Qing people. Poor governor of Canton, the Tatar nobleman had not appeared in public for three months, and his aides privately circulated that the descendants of the imperial family of the former dynasty had assassinated the Tatar emperor and had the northern Tatar nobles executed en masse. This image is reminiscent of the bloody story of how the French Jacobins treated the Louis XVI family. If I were a painter with acceptable skills, I would do everything I could to go to the capital of the Qing Kingdom and depict the scenes of this rebellion in every possible way......"

"More than a century ago, we lost Formosa because of the army of the Lord, but with the help of our country, the Emperor of Tatar was able to quell the terrible rebellion of the Lord. This brought certain benefits to our commercial activities, but with the destruction of the Tatar Empire, the goodwill of the Tatars that we had once obtained became the greatest burden......" "If the new dynasty had maintained the panicked and overly sensitive nature of the Tatars, the country was likely to embark on the path of a hermit who had forbidden all foreign trade, as the Wa kingdom had done. I have to feel deeply worried about this......"

But the end of these letters is either to be reduced to the talk of social circles, or to the wastebasket of an office. At a time when the traditional sphere of interests was being eaten up by the British East India Company, the dismal operation of the Dutch East India Company was in a precarious situation, and at this moment, the dangers and opportunities brought about by the political change of the Eastern Empire could only be "discussed again", "discussed again", and "discussed again".

The Dutch East India Company was powerless, but the British East India Company, which had already encroached on most of India, was powerless.

Warren Hastings, the first Viceroy of India from the British East India Company, is facing a parliamentary question. The East India Company's attacks on the French Expeditionary Force and the Indian kings in India, as well as allegations that he himself had taken bribes in the colonies, made the colony's high-ranking official feel exhausted. It seems that his ouster is only a matter of time.

In addition to the Viceroy of India, some of the colonial officials also set their sights on the lands of East Asia.

Diplomacy and trade in East Asia are important topics, but the most intuitive problem is a new report from London.

The whole of England consumed 20 million pounds of tea a year, and in contrast to the large amount of silver that flowed into the Qing State through the Thirteen Lines of Guangdong. Although both Java and Brazil have tea plantations transplanted from East Asia, their annual output is not comparable to that of the world's largest tea producers.

Botanist Joseph Banks tried to persuade the directors of the East India Company to open a new tea plantation in India. It is a pity that at this moment, the East India Company monopolized the British tea trade with China, and in the face of such huge profits, the East India Company had no intention of opening up new tea plantations.

On the other hand, British Prime Minister Pitt Jr. was trying to take back some of the colonial power of the East India Company, which was carrying cheques and going up and down for its own benefit.

After all, there is no behemoth like the empire on which the sun never sets, the "third new Rome" of the United States, where every corner of the earth can jump out and declare itself a stakeholder, tirelessly in front of a-stirring stick.

It wasn't until Warren Hastings stepped down and returned home to face impeachment and investigation that the new Governor of India, the Earl of Cornwallis, remembered the incident.

The Earl of Cornwallis, as a member of the British House of Lords, did not have a very good reputation in London. In particular, when he was lieutenant general in Britain and America, after being besieged by the North American Independence Army in Yorktown, he had to lead 8,000 British troops to raise the white flag against George Washington, the leader of the Independence Army, who was later known as the "Father of the United States of America."

The surrender of Mr. Earl was also considered by later generations to be a landmark event for Britain to abandon its North American colonies. Although this defeat did not hinder the Earl of Cornwallis's continued prosperity, the defeated general of Yorktown did not want to wash his reputation as "Yorktown's capitulation", and he was not so keen to take the post of Governor of India.

There is no doubt that the Earl of Cornwallis will have to make up for the reputation lost from the North American colonies.

Diplomacy with China is undoubtedly an important step for the Earl of Cornwallis to wash away his stigma.

First, unlike India, which has always been a geographical term for the division of the land king, East Asia, the largest empire in Asia, has maintained unity for thousands of years, and has an unquestionable size. Knocking on the country's locked doors is far more important than setting up a few artillery pieces on the coastline and conquering a few ignorant indigenous nations.

Second, the letters and travelogues of those Jesuits in the late Ming and early Qing dynasties, from Matteo Ricci to Long Huamin, caused a century-and-a-half-long Chinese craze in Europe in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. At least in the eyes of Europeans in this era, removing the curious eyes of "ancient mystery", China is still an out-and-out civilized country, at least better than the Ottoman Turks, a group of barbarians from the Celestial Sect!

In this era, although Britain was already very large-scale in the expansion of overseas colonization, it also sent the old colonial countries such as the Netherlands and Spain to the garbage heap of history one by one, and only France could compete with it. And the independence movement of the North American colonies made the future empire feel a little short of breath at this time.

So under the leadership of King George III and Prime Minister Pitt Jr., the steps of this nascent empire were not too big, and in many places even conservative. The main themes of this period were the supervision of the East India Company, the revocation of some of the decision-making powers of the colonial officials, and the adoption of some more "humane" methods of rule for the people of the colonies than the Spanish religious fanatics, so as to better control the existing colonies.

After all, Britain had not yet reached its peak in this era, and there were not so many madmen who pursued ship-gun diplomacy in the Prime Minister's residence in Downing Street.

"In order for the Chinese semi-civilized court to come into order, troops must be sent every ten years to teach them a lesson. These are the famous words of Prime Minister Palmston, who led the two opium wars sixty years later. Sixty years later, however, the words of wisdom that had been revered by the English people from top to bottom would have been dismissed as madman's nonsense sixty years ago, and the speaker would have been strapped up and sent to an insane asylum on the outskirts of London where he could only discipline the sick in restraints.

Between George III and the British politics held by Pitt Jr., and the Earl of Cornwallis, who was anxious to make a mark, the decision to send a mission to celebrate the establishment of the new dynasty was finally made three years later.

No way, before the invention of the telegraph, and even at the moment when steamships did not exist, little Pete of Downing Street and the Earl of Cornwallis of Calcutta only spent three years in contact to agree on this matter, which was already a rare efficiency.

Contrary to the original estimate of the East India Company leaders, when they set foot in the city of Guangzhou through the relationship of the Thirteen Lines, the new Guangzhou prefect Li Ruilin directly agreed to their request, and even returned the inlaid treasure music box that the foreign merchants had to meet with officials every time.

The new regime's approach, which was completely different from the previous one, made them uneasy for several days.

However, only the next day, Li Ruilin held an official letter and officially conveyed to them the imperial court's reply: allow the British ambassador to visit.

The word "visit" was a little unacceptable to even the employees of the East India Company, who had lived in Macao for a long time. These people, who have been dealing with Chinese merchants and yamen, know that as the sole suzerainty of all the small Asian countries, the only form of diplomatic relations that China can accept is in the form of tributary by vassal states. But when did these Chinese bureaucrats change their minds?

There is even a suspicion that they have been deceived by the governor of Guangzhou, Li Ruilin, the gauze-hated governor of Guangzhou, although he looks more amiable than the Tatar officials with pigtails behind their heads. But in deceiving foreigners, these Chinese officials can only be a virtue!

However, the owner of the foreign goods store who was invited to be the translator showed a countryman's expression to them, pointed to the Yangwen seal under the official document and said: "Have you seen this big seal? This is the Zhu Mingdan Tianfu seal under the Daohai Zongyuan Gate, and it is the Dharma seal shared by the Daomen Majesty Envoy of the Daomen of the Four Roads of Guangzhou, Fujian and Zhejiang, and it is not allowed to be used without permission. What does this mean? It shows that your affairs have been played to the heavens, whether it is the one in the north or the one in the south, they have already been clear and nodded their heads!"