Chapter 225

This steamship, the Anqing Arsenal has long been in preparation, but because of the fierce war between the Manchus and the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom, it has been delayed again and again. （）

Zeng Guofan originally planned to move the Anqingnei Ordnance Station to Tianjing after capturing Tianjing, and then officially build it.

However, now that the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom has been revitalized and Anqing has become the territory of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom, this idea can only be abandoned, and the Yellow Bird was built ahead of schedule.

And its launching ceremony is tomorrow, which is also the reason why Hong Tianhui temporarily postponed his return to Beijing, in order to witness the launch of China's first self-built steam ship.

Anqing is empty, on the shore of the wharf, the crowd is dense, and the launching ceremony of the Yellow Bird has begun.

Hong Tian personally watched the ceremony, and Zeng Guofan, the manager of the Anqing Ordnance Institute, Xu Shou, the chief designer of the Huanghu, Zhu Ming, the representative of the General Staff, and Qiao Songnian, a senior official in Anhui, were all present.

The Yellow Bird was launched, Anqing was jubilant, Hong Tian, Zeng Guofan, Xu Shou, Zhu Ming and Qiao Songnian all got on the boat and cruised.

Because it is steam-powered, the speed is quite fast, of course, this is compared to the Manchu Qing Dynasty, phew! The Manchu Qing Dynasty has fallen, it is the sailing ship of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom, if it is compared with the express steamer that Hong Tian took in later generations, it is naturally a snail ship.

But in backward China, it is already a very high achievement, after all, it is the first Chinese self-made steamship.

In addition, the craftsmanship of the Yellow Bird is really not very good, and Hong Tian is not stable enough to sit. According to Xu Shou, this may be because of the cannon.

That's right! A small-caliber gun was installed on the ship.

Moreover, it is a new type of artillery made of imitation of foreign artillery, which was named Taiping artillery by Hong, referred to as Taiping Cannon, and it was later called the 1864 Taiping Cannon, which was imitated by artillery experts from all over the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom on the basis of the artillery of various countries.

In addition to the Type 1864 Taiping Cannon, the Type 1864 Taiping Gun has also been developed and put into large-scale production at gun factories in the area controlled by the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom.

This is the work of Hong Tian's urgent order, the guns of the Manchu Qing Dynasty are too backward, and the purchase of foreign guns and foreign cannons can not solve the problem of the shortage of guns and artillery in the Taiping Army, although the guns of various countries are extremely powerful, but the price is generally high, and relatively old, most of them are obsolete.

If there is friction between the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom and other countries, the other side can also block the source of armaments of the Taiping Army at any time, which will be a heavy blow to the Taiping Army.

All the major powers in the world produce their own armaments, and they cannot even make their own armaments, so how can they be called powerful countries?

The 1864 Taiping cannon and the Taiping gun, although the quality is still relatively inferior, can not be compared with the foreign gun and the foreign gun, but after all, this is made in the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom, as long as the quality is better than the previous Manchu guns, Hong Tian is quite satisfied, and in the future, with the improvement of the technology of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom, it can be updated.

The current Taiping Army is constantly changing equipment, swords and other cold weapons are gradually eliminated, Hong Tian believes that soon, the Taiping Army will completely become a hot army, weapons troops, instead of the current hot and cold, nondescript freaks.

Later, the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom did follow this step, and soon after, all the Taiping army used were Taiping-style armaments, and the unification of armaments was completed, and all the armaments of the Taiping army were self-sufficient, but the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom at that time was barely an industrialized country.

The Taiping cannon was installed on the Yellow Bird, the initial design was not there, and there was a later modification plan, which is said to be a request made by Wei Zhijun, who was still stationed here at that time, when he was ready to lead the army to attack Hubei, because of the lack of warships, he could only take the land route, so he was dissatisfied with the proposal that China's steamships should be given priority to military use, whether as warships or troop carriers, they should be equipped with artillery, so that they have the power to protect themselves.

As a result, the Yellow Bird was installed with artillery and became a dual-use ship, but because of its special significance, it was not only the first steamship, but also the first Chinese steam-type warship, so it was originally supposed to be mainly civilian, and it was forced to abandon its original design, shouldering the heavy responsibility of the first naval warship built by the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom, and has been engaged in the work of transporting soldiers and patrolling along the river and even along the coast.

And, because of its special significance, the Admiralty of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom has kept it, and whenever it is about to be scrapped, it will be repaired, so it has become the world's longest service ship, until Hong Tian died, the Yellow Bird still did not retire, but it is said that at that time, none of the parts on it appeared on the Yellow Bird that Hong Tian rode on, so it has nothing to do with the Yellow Bird except for the same name.

The present life of the Yellow Bird represents the arrival of the steam age of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom, starting from the Yellow Bird, a series of steamships were built by major shipyards in China.

Of course, the Anqingnei Armory did not manufacture this new type of steamship later, and their manufacturing locations were transferred to the major coastal ports, because that was the place where large ships could really be built.

The ships built at that time were of course much more high-level than the Yellow Bird, but even if the later ships were much larger and more advanced than the Yellow Bird, they could not hide the brilliance of the Yellow Bird, because the Yellow Bird was the first steamship built by China.

On the Yellow Bird, Hong Tian, Zeng Guofan, Xu Shou, Zhu Ming, Qiao Songnian and others had quite mixed feelings.

Hong Tian looked at the Yellow Bird, his eyes were full of expectation, this is the first steamship built by the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom, and it is also the first modern warship, although there were British warships captured before, but after all, it is not a self-built thing, so the Yellow Bird is the real starting point of China's modern shipping and modern navy.

Although the quality of the army of the Taiping Army is low, and the armament is far weaker than the great powers of various countries, but the number is amazing, hundreds of thousands of troops, and it is the more elite one, if you really want to expand the army, the soldiers who can fight can reach millions of people, after all, many of them are strong, and they have participated in the Taiping Army, the Twist Army and various regimental exercises in various places before, such a huge number, so that the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom can be regarded as a large army power.

But the navy is really not very good, only relying on a few captured British warships, and those sail warships to support, not to mention that one day to defeat the war, after a few warships are destroyed, the entire Taiping Heavenly Kingdom Navy will be destroyed, just after these warships are aging and decommissioned, the Chinese Navy will also disappear.

But the Yellow Bird appeared, and as long as the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom continued to invest in this area, then the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom's warships would be built one by one to form a Taiping Heavenly Kingdom navy built by itself.

The Yellow Bird is just the beginning, definitely not the end.

And Zeng Guofan's expression was slightly sad, sitting on the Yellow Bird, he remembered an old man, Hu Linyi.

Hu Linyi's death actually had something to do with the steamer, when Hu Linyi was recuperating in Wuchang, and saw foreign steamships crisscrossing the river by the river, overtaking Chinese ships, and even if the Chinese ships chased with all their might, they were beyond their reach, which made Hu Linyi extremely worried.

The skills and strength of foreigners far surpass China, but China is in the midst of civil strife, the distance between China and the world will be farther and farther away, Hu Linyi is one of the rare people of insight in China, he deeply understands this truth, so he feels extremely worried about the future of China, he was already seriously ill, the illness is even more serious, and finally passed away.

Zeng Guofan thought of this old man, his eyes were a little moist, he remembered that Hu Linyi had written to him before he died, asking him to work hard to pacify the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom, eliminate turmoil for China, and then develop China's industry to catch up with the Taixi countries.

He looked at Hong Tian in front of him, and there was an inexplicable throbbing in his heart, Hu Linyi's entrustment back then, he couldn't complete it, because he had already invested in the Tianping Heavenly Kingdom, but the turmoil in China is believed to be eliminated soon, because the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom at this time is stronger than the Manchu Qing at this time, although the territory is not enough for the Manchu Qing at this time, but whether it is morale and people's hearts, it is by no means comparable to the Manchu Qing.

And now that China's industry has gone further, the Chinese can build steam ships themselves, although they have not yet caught up with the ships built by those foreigners, but he believes that in the near future, this dream will definitely come true.

Zeng Guofan clenched his fists tightly, and ambition faintly appeared in his heart.

Xu Shou was quite dissatisfied, he felt that the Yellow Bird had too many shortcomings, although there were temporary modifications to the artillery, so that the design was not as perfect as before, but fundamentally it was still because the Yellow Bird was not good enough, compared to the foreign ships he had seen before.

The Yellow Bird is poor, the problem is naturally that he is the chief designer of the Yellow Bird, although no one will blame him, but praise him for having a home, after all, it is the first steamship built by the Chinese, and the quality is not very good.

But Xu Shou is a person who is extremely strict with himself, and he is extremely dissatisfied with the current situation of the Yellow Bird, and he secretly swears in his heart that he will never build such a bad ship again, and not only that, but also build a ship that is faster and more advanced than a foreign ship, and build the most advanced ship in the world.

Zhu Ming didn't care about the Yellow Bird, all he cared about was Hong Tian, the Yellow Bird was a legend for China's maritime industry, and Zhu Ming attributed this legend to Hong Tian.

Following Hong Tian all the way, he admired Hong Tian more and more, not that he knew Hong Tian more and more, on the contrary, he couldn't see Hong Tian more and more.

Before he met Hong Tian, he had guessed what kind of person Hong Tian was, why he was just a teenager but created such great feats, he was full of curiosity about Hong Tian, and subconsciously felt that Hong Tian was a very great person.

And when he really met Hong Tian, he knew how great Hong Tian was, as if nothing in this world could stump Hong Tian, all kinds of problems in the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom, no matter how difficult they were, he could solve them one by one, and all kinds of whimsical ideas opened Zhu Ming's eyes.

Tianhou mailbox, high-ranking official mailbox, mayor's mailbox, this way of direct listening to the sky is shocking.

Improving armaments and building new types of ships seemed to overthrow everything, and there were all kinds of strangeness, which made Zhu Ming feel that Hong Tian was incomparably extraordinary, and he had a certain sense of convincing for Hong Tian.

As for Qiao Songnian, he is an old-fashioned character, whether it is for new ideas or new things, but after sitting on the Yellow Bird, he suddenly found that it seems that Western skills are also extraordinary.

This seemed to have planted a seed in his heart, and he did change his views like many conservatives and became a member of the Westernists.

The news of the fall of the Manchu Qing Dynasty spread all the way south, not only shocking the whole of China, but also the rest of the world.

The Manchu colonial empire stood in East Asia for more than 300 years and was a well-deserved giant, although it began to decline in recent decades, and suffered disastrous defeats in the previous two foreign wars, which became an international joke, and the civil strife was also very serious, especially the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom established in the south.

However, the influence of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom was mainly in the south, and even if the new Heavenly King was born later and revived the Heavenly Kingdom, it was only rampant in the southern provinces, and it was still far from Beijing, the political center of the Manchu Qing Dynasty.

So they never thought that the Manchus would suddenly fall, and not long ago they were ready to support the Manchus against the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom.

Because the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom is so hateful, for the treaties signed by various countries and the Manchu Qing Dynasty in the past, they all said that they do not recognize it for the time being, and the matter continues to drag on, and the ambassadors of various countries in Shanghai at the beginning thought that this is the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom is being discussed internally, but there has been no response, anyone can think of the real mind of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom, which is simply fooling people!

They jointly asked the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom to reply, but the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom rejected their request quite firmly in a Chinese tone, declaring that the treaties signed between the countries and the Manchu Qing would never be recognized by the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom, saying that because the Manchus were only colonizers, they had no right to sign any agreement on behalf of China.

The countries were outraged by this act, and the British ambassador Bruce fanned the flames and demanded that the countries jointly send troops to the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom and get him to recognize the treaties signed between the countries and the Manchus.

However, the other countries did not accede to the British invitation, because although the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom refused to recognize those treaties, it did not stop the matter, and still temporarily reserved the rights enjoyed by the countries in the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom area, in fact, it recognized the privileges of the countries in China in disguise.

Although this is not guaranteed, it also leaves countries without too suitable excuses for war.

Of course, this has to do with the fact that other countries are not domestic enough to support the war against the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom.

The Taiping Heavenly Kingdom was already quite powerful, and the territory of several provinces and the army of hundreds of thousands were not easy to defeat, and it had to spend considerable manpower and material resources to support.

In addition to Britain, the only powers that can support the sending of troops are Russia, France and the United States.

However, in the Crimean War a few years ago, Russia was besieged by Britain, France, the Ottoman Empire and the Kingdom of Sardinia, and suffered a crushing defeat, and Tsar Nicholas I committed suicide, which caused Russia's national power to plummet.

Although the new Tsar Alexander II was ambitious, in 1861 in Russia to implement serfdom reform, so that Russia's national strength gradually recovered, but only a few years, Russia has not been revived, is still in the stage of licking the wound, and the British have no enthusiasm for Russia to send troops, and are mortal enemies between Britain and Russia throughout Asia, Britain does not want Russia to send troops to China, further influence on China, so Russia did not propose to send troops.

The French army, at this time, was in the midst of the war of aggression against Mexico, which broke out in 1861, France united with Britain and Spain to attack Mexico, because Mexico stopped paying its foreign debts because of financial difficulties, and the following year Britain and Spain both withdrew, but the French army remained in Mexico.

Although the French army occupied the main towns in Mexico, Mexican President Juárez relied on the base in the north to fight guerrilla warfare with the French army.

At this time, the French Emperor Napoleon III was racking his brains about how to defeat the Mexicans, and where to take care of the East.

As for the United States, it is even more incapable of participating in the war, at this time the United States is engaged in the Civil War, the situation is chaotic, although the North now has the advantage, but if it is really to end the war, no one knows how long.

Therefore, Britain tossed and turned, and was still a single man, facing the increasingly powerful Taiping Heavenly Kingdom alone.

Since Bruce brought the news back to England, there has been a heated debate in the British Parliament about whether to punish the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom for war, with Palmerston, the leader of the Liberal Party and now the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, strongly in favor of war against the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom.

From 1830 to the present, Palmerston, who was almost single-handedly responsible for British foreign policy, was the formulator of Britain's aggressive policy against China during the First and Second Opium Wars.

Conservative at home and expansion abroad was his basic strategy, so after learning that the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom had attacked the British Concession and defeated the British fleet in Shanghai, he did not hesitate to stand on the side of the war.

The British Conservative Party, on the other hand, naturally stood on the opposite side of the Liberal Party, vigorously opposing the war, calling it an unjust war, and demanding a solution to the problem by peaceful means.

It is worth mentioning that Nightingale also expressed in the "Times" that he did not want to see war and hoped to resolve the dispute peacefully, which was naturally due to Hong Tian's conquest of Nightingale's disciple Aisha in Shanghai, causing the latter to influence Nightingale.

Although this had a certain impact on the decision of the British Parliament, in the end the Conservative Party still failed, and the Liberal Party won the victory, and at the end of the year, the British Parliament finally decided to launch an armed attack on the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom after some games on all sides.

However, perhaps due to Hongtian's efforts, Britain was slow to make decisions, and Britain did not declare war on the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom, but claimed that it was a military attack on the Taiping Army, a local armed force of the Manchu Qing Dynasty, to retaliate for the damage caused by the Taiping Army's attack on the British Concession and the British fleet.

In this way, the British Indian Ocean Fleet and the Pacific Fleet transferred a number of warships to form an invading fleet and assembled in Hong Kong.

However, this fleet did not go north immediately after it was formed, because of the continuous unfavorable news from Shanghai, the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom changed from controlling Jiangning and southern Jiangsu to a large force across several provinces, which was not an existence that could be defeated by a small force.

Therefore, the British side of London adjusted the plan to invade China, expanded the size of the fleet, gathered a large number of capital ships of the Indian Ocean Fleet and the Pacific Fleet in Hong Kong, and also formed a British army of 25,000 people, intending to subdue the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom in one fell swoop and let the Orientals learn to respect the British.

And when the British fleet was on its way north, the news of the fall of the Manchus came, which shocked the British again, because in this way they were not conquering a local Manchu army, but attacking the only power in China.

The British were quite annoyed, and originally thought that they were only attacking a local armed force entrenched in Jiangning and southern Jiangsu, accounting for only one-third of Jiangsu's territory, but now it has become a large country spanning several provinces, sitting on hundreds of thousands of soldiers and horses, and the only power in China at this time.

The British fleet was on its way north, and was wondering whether it should consult the London government before proceeding further.

And at this time, news came from Hangzhou.

Zuo Zongtang, the former governor of Fujian and Zhejiang in the Manchu Qing Dynasty, wanted to meet with them and jointly attack the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom.

After learning of the incident, the commander of the British invasion fleet, Ho Bo, asked the British ambassador to China in Shanghai for his opinion.

Bruce said that the Chu army under the command of Zuo Zongtang had been fighting against the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom, and had detained Peng Yulin, the special envoy sent to Hangzhou by the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom, and had serious bad relations with the Taiping Army, which was a target that could be co-opted, and that it was very beneficial for the attack on the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom to have the help of the Chinese, and believed that the British invasion fleet could go to Hangzhou to negotiate with Zuo Zongtang.

After getting Bruce's opinion, Hober immediately sailed the fleet to Hangzhou.

Outside Hangzhou Bay, the British fleet was anchored here, and the commander of the British invasion fleet, He Bo, and the commander-in-chief of the army, Shi Deavo, had landed and headed for the capital city of Hangzhou.

Speaking of He Bo and Stifley, they are also quite famous in China, and even the Taiping Army is quite familiar with them, because they actually have a history of invading China, and even fought with the Taiping Army, and it is precisely because of these experiences that the British London side will let them serve as the commanders of the naval and land forces of the British Expeditionary Force.

Ho Bo, another translation as Hebu. As early as 1859, he served as the commander of the British invasion fleet and launched the Second Opium War.

From the end of 1860 to the spring of the following year, Wu Song led his ship from Baoshan to Hankou, Hubei Province along the Yangtze River to investigate the opening of the port, and ordered the captain Yaling to send a note to the Taiping Army, requesting that the Taiping Army not enter the area within 100 miles of Shanghai.

Later, he ordered the captain of the ship, Binghan, to propose to the Taiping army that it was strictly forbidden to enter the area within 100 miles of Shanghai, but the Taiping army refused.

In the spring of 1862, he commanded the British army, together with the French army and the Huayang Rifle Corps to fight against the Taiping Army near Shanghai, invaded Gaoqiao Town, Fengxian Xiaotang and other places, burned, killed and looted, was wounded in the area of Luojiagang and Qibao Town in Qingpu, and negotiated a Shanghai defense agreement with Stevenley, then the commander of the British Invasion Army, and Brod, the commander of the French Invasion Fleet.