Chapter 236: Public Opinion War

Master Weng was very depressed, quite depressed, extremely depressed. K's first update is not only because a few of his proud protégés let a bunch of Jinshi and businessmen block the scolding dog blood spray at the door of the house, nor because when he returned home, a few rotten eggs were thrown on the sedan chair. These are nothing, this little thing is not a big deal for Mr. Morality, who shouts benevolence and morality in his mouth, but does all kinds of unseemly things underneath!! Isn't it just a few rotten eggs? Wash it and forget it. You throw me again in the wash. What really worries people is Li Hongzhang's toughness and the change in the direction of public opinion!

In line with the principled task of overthrowing Beiyang and killing Li Hongzhang, Master Weng mobilized all his protégés, old relatives and friends, from the people to the imperial court, to fight a war of words! If the Beiyang Fast Fleet fights well, then scold the Beiyang team for passively avoiding war. The Beiyang team is desperate, and if there is a loss, then go and scold the Beiyang team for delaying the fighter...... The Beiyang Fleet and the new warships have exhausted the Japanese Navy, so they will scold Li Hongzhang for his unscrupulous intentions to order ships!!

As for the Army? That's easier. The navy fought hard, and in the end it fought to the death of the Japanese fleet, and the army retreated again and again in Korea. Now people are surrounded by Pyongyang, a small place, and the hat of fighting is unfavorable must be buttoned up! Coupled with the unwarranted embezzlement of military salaries, hiring merchant ships to transport smuggled goods or something. It's enough to bring Nie Shicheng down. As for whether the people who wrote excerpts in the study understood the situation on the battlefield and told the truth, it didn't matter! What is the truth? As long as you can kill Lao Li, it's true!。 …。

How smoothly this matter began to go, the court and public opinion all said that Li Hongzhang should be killed! But I didn't expect that a few days later, this public opinion changed all of a sudden! First of all, the foreigners and those fake foreign devils who returned from foreign countries first analyzed the comparison of the strength of the Second Beiyang Marine Division and the Japanese. Then he said matter-of-factly. The Beiyang Navy has achieved such a feat, which is absolutely rare in the world. There were no mistakes in many wars, and the command was perfect, but there were too many old ships, which affected the combat effectiveness. As for the Army? The reason is even more sufficient, with tens of thousands of people to meet the Japanese 100,000 people, and still be able to drag the Japanese army to the death, this is a great achievement, where can it be considered a mistake?

If this is the end of the matter, it will not be unlucky. The point is that it's still developing!! And then not only these foreigners and fake foreigners, but even those who raised people and jinshi also coaxed. A few bold people even wrote an article asking why when the war began, the entire imperial court did not allocate funds to purchase additional ships and firearms, and only Beiyang bought warships out of his own pocket? What does the money go to the treasury every year? Is Beiyang's annual allocation in place? Is there enough money to book a boat? The words pointed directly at Weng Tongxiao's household!

Weng Tongyi really has no money. Guangxu's wedding cost 5 million taels of silver, and the Queen Mother Lafayette wants to repair the Summer Palace, which is another expense. There are also those green battalions and eight banners that have no combat effectiveness, which costs at least 20 million taels of silver every year. There are also various embezzlements and cards for financial deletion. This 80 million taels of silver per year is gone!。 …。

But can this be said? Absolutely not! As long as you reveal a word, let alone your own household book, it's a question of whether you can even keep your head! But silence doesn't mean that people will let you go, but it will get worse! Since the 80 million taels of silver are gone every year, how did you become a household secretary? Do you have ink greed?

Back then, Beiyang's purchase of 3 Guiyuan-class warships was obstructed by your surname Weng in every way, did you obstruct it? Look at those of your subordinates, they haven't been to the battlefield themselves, and they are writing and spraying at home, do you want to go to the battlefield and fight the Japanese? As soon as this sentence came out, it scared a group of people, and I was really afraid that the emperor would be angry for a while and throw himself on the battlefield! …。

In fact, the most depressed and heartbroken person is not Weng Tongyi. The really most depressed is the Empress Dowager Cixi who lives in the Summer Palace! It's not those scholars who are bothering him, what are those people? Nothing but writing articles! Once annoyed, you can arrest a group of people. What really made her depressed and worried was the attitude of the officials of the feudal territory and Li Hongzhang's strength and tough attitude!

To be honest, she really didn't expect that Li Hongzhang would be able to raise money to buy 3 warships far beyond Dingzhen! I don't know how much it cost Cixi exactly, but according to the estimation of the people below, she can't buy it without 10 million taels of silver! Let's not say that this data is correct or not, the ability to raise 10 million taels of silver at this moment already made her feel restless. If you count Li Hongzhang's investment in the army and other aspects, this number is not much doubled! With soldiers, Li Hongzhang, who has money, is in Zhili! If he had moved his heart that day, would he have been able to stop it? …。

Eight Banners and Green Camp are definitely unreliable...... Cixi has experienced several wars in the past few decades, as early as the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom period, the Eight Banners and the Green Camp have been rotten to the home, and it is not enough to fight long hair, can you fight the Japanese? Rong Lu's training is still a bit useful, but compared with those who have been on the battlefield in Beiyang and killed in the sea of corpses and blood, they were thrown off N streets all of a sudden! What's more, now that the governor of Taiwan, Liu Mingchuan, and the governor of Liangguang, Li Hanzhang, have also trained the new army to help Li Hongzhang, this dynamic is scary enough!!

What is the concept of two governors? Even in the three dynasties of Kangxi, Yongzheng and Qianlong, where the imperial power was at its peak, if the two governors were jointly signed, the emperor would not easily dismiss it, not to mention that there was also a governor of Zhili among the current governors! The troops of the 2 Admirals and the 1 Governor have been assembled on the Liaodong Peninsula, and the combined forces of each army are close to 70,000 people. How did these 70,000 soldiers not make Cixi nervous? Li Hongzhang didn't need to raise troops at all, as long as he expressed his support for the emperor or Prince Gong, then there were probably some people in the seemingly powerful Hou Party who would have to find another way, right?

Now there has been a rift between the Houdang and the Beiyang forces headed by Li Hongzhang. The Queen Mother wants to make peace. Li Hongzhang wants to fight, and he wants to fight until Japan surrenders and pays reparations. If the Queen Mother does not agree, what will be the result? Cixi didn't dare to imagine. If Li Hongzhang really wants to passively avoid the war, then the hometown of the Manchurians in the Northeast is afraid that it will be turned upside down, which Cixi absolutely does not want to see. Of course, the center can go to sum, but what about the cost of summing? Who will bear the infamy of this land reparation? Li Hongzhang has already decided not to make peace, with 70,000 soldiers in hand, can you still force others to succeed? . …。

And the most infuriating thing is that Emperor Guangxu also wants to fight, is the purpose of fighting? One is the anger of the young and vigorous for the small country of Japan daring to attack the Qing State. On the other hand, why don't you want to take advantage of this war to hold power in your hands? If Li Hongzhang is forced to be in a hurry, this is if he joins forces with the emperor. Does the Qing Dynasty still have the right for her, the Queen Mother, to speak?

Cixi's post-party members are indeed quite many, but in Zhili, Li Hongzhang's army definitely has an overwhelming advantage, and people can directly take the sea and then land in Tianjin to go directly to Beijing! Will the Hou Party be able to resist this strong army? No!!

Cixi's principle is to use people and check and balance at the same time. But checks and balances do not mean that those who need to be used are forced to the side of their enemies. Especially at this sensitive moment, so in this case, the Empress Dowager Cixi had to compromise, whether it was for her own rights or to look good about the Manchu hometown, Cixi had no choice.

However, before compromise, the Empress Dowager Cixi still wanted Rong Lu's training army to go to the battlefield, and she now urgently needed to touch her hole cards. Let's see if the Ronglu training army that I have worked so hard to cultivate is useful! This directly depends on his own plan later, if it can be used, then he can consider reducing Li Hongzhang's troops and transferring Li Hongzhang's ideas out of Zhili. And if it is unusable, then he can only rely on Li Hongzhang to deal with Guangxu who is becoming more and more restless! But no matter what he does in the future, this time, he must give in to Li Hongzhang. …………。

And this public opinion war is not only affected by the central forces, but also the people have a great shock! Under the propaganda of Beiyang merchants and Nanyang Chinese, various Western articles and technical books were widely disseminated in the main areas of the Qing Dynasty.

Through various media and books, people have begun to pay attention to which small country in the east of themselves, and some of them have begun to think about what kind of power can make a small country with a population of only one-third of the Qing Dynasty and not even one-thirtieth of the land area launch a deadly attack on the behemoth of the Great Qing Dynasty in just over 20 years!

It is understandable that it was defeated by the British Empire, the largest in the world, and Russia, which has a vast territory...... So if he is defeated by a guy in the east who was not worth mentioning twenty years ago, the last fig leaf of the kingdom of heaven will be completely gone! As anyone who is willing to open his eyes to the world, he will realize that the so-called Tongzhi Zhongxing in the Qing Dynasty is mostly just a fantasy! What qualifications are there to dream of the Celestial Empire and refuse to change and learn?

However, it seems that God still left a glimmer of hope for the Qing Kingdom, and the performance of the Second Beiyang Marine and Amphibious Division really made people see the hope of victory, and the navy under the leadership of Admiral Ding and General Xu fought with the Japanese fleet in succession. From the initial Battle of Toshima to the later Battle off the Izu Islands and the Battle of Gunsan Bay, the achievements and quality of the Beiyang Fleet have been affirmed by all sides. (Thanks here to the Western media for their great assistance!!) Especially recently, with the help of the purchase of new ships, the Beiyang Fleet actually directly wiped out the Japanese fleet, which is absolutely a miracle! …。

Although the army fought inferiorly, it dragged the Japanese army to Korea with an absolutely inferior force. It's not easy, and the damage is greater than the loss. This is definitely reasonable. And with the emergence of more "revelations", the lack of funds in Beiyang can only pay for itself and rely on businessmen and Chinese assistance to fight against Japan is understood by more people, at this time, people's spearhead is directly pointed at the center of the Qing Dynasty, and those Qingliu who refer to the deer as a horse are also extremely hateful! Some of the forerunners have begun to wonder if there is a need for this dynasty that is backward and regards the state as private property!!

Thank you for the support of the commuter pass. Do you remember Nie Shicheng who stuck to Pyongyang? It's time to write about land warfare in the next chapter~~~. Pyongyang urgently needs your fire support~~~.

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