Forty-eight years of Qianlong

Chapter 766 Let's Go and Go Negotiations
When Wang Tan came out of Zhao Xin's office, he looked sober, but his mind was still in a daze.In any case, he never thought that such a big change would take place in his life in just one day.

After yesterday's graduation ceremony, he was still worried about his whereabouts.I thought it would be fine if I went to Fengtian or Shandong, but what if I was assigned to Heilongjiang City, Yaksa or even Siberia?As a result, when Huang Chengji told himself in the morning that he wanted to work as a copywriter in the secretariat, he felt that a big pie had fallen from the sky; now that he was sure that he was going to enter the Beihai Navy, he finally felt that his wish had come true.

From the bottom of his heart, Wang Tan, who is consciously full of knowledge and knowledge, does not want to be a copywriter who depends on others. What he desires most is to imitate Jiang Fan and ride his horse in the desert and Tianshan Mountains.Although the work of the secretariat is an expensive and fat job in the eyes of countless people, it is nothing more than drafting official documents and communicating with various departments in Beihai Town; Workers who were killed or injured in the accident wrote memorial tributes.

Although in the eyes of these old-fashioned literati, passing the imperial examination to become an official and engaging in politics in the central or local government is the right way to enter the official career; but because Beihai Town's "imperial examination plus training system" has changed the talent selection mode of stereotyped writing, In addition, Zhao Xin, the "Emperor of War God", directly controls the army, and the officers are paid well, so the Beihai Navy group is very attractive to scholars.

The problem is that the system of the North Navy is different from any other military in the past. No matter who wants to enter the military system, they must first undergo 3-6 months of recruit training, even civilian officers in the logistics and mission departments are the same.

At present, the Beihai Navy is ushering in the climax of military expansion. The huge training plan of 30 troops makes the total demand for officers nearly [-]. However, Zhao Xin insists that he should not be promoted randomly from ordinary people, but must be selected from experienced officers and sergeants. .For the vast majority of scholars who can't carry it on their shoulders, this situation can only be lamented.

The interviews with Zhao Tingjun and Wang Tan were regarded as Zhao Xin's "sneak break" after a busy and tense day.No, just as Wang Tan stepped out, Huang Chengji walked in with a briefcase.Zhao Xin thought he was here to ask about the interview results, but Huang Chengji came up and took out two telegrams from the folder, pushed them across the table in front of Zhao Xin and said, "Jinmen is calling."

Zhao Xin picked up the first page, glanced at the beginning, put it aside, and said to Huang Chengji: "Both of them are not bad, but Wang Tan has other arrangements. He will report to the training base in a month. Go back and talk to Zhong Baoqi. Let's discuss and pick two more students from Shandong to enter the secretariat."

Huang Chengji never expected that Wang Tan would make such an arrangement, he pondered for a moment and asked, "Why don't you let Sun Zixiao?"

Zhao Xin frowned and said, "Sun Zixiao's whereabouts have been decided, and the Civil Affairs Bureau needs manpower in Shenyang."

Just a few days ago, the Civil Affairs Commission issued a decree to restore Shengjing to its old name in the Ming Dynasty.After 160 years since Huang Taiji established the capital of Shengjing, the place name "Shenyang" reappeared on the territory of China.The "Fengtian Mansion", which governed six counties and two prefectures and represented the Qing Dynasty's Fengtian, was also swept into the garbage dump of history and renamed the Liaodong Administrative Office.

When Sun Yuanxiang was nine years old, he lived in Fengtian for four years. His late father, Sun Hao, was an official in Fengtian Mansion at that time.Minzheng asked Sun Yuanxiang to go to Shenyang because he wanted to borrow the legacy left by his father.

Seeing Zhao Xin's expression, Huang Chengji had no choice but to say yes, and then backed out.He will take Wang Tan and Zhao Tingjun to go through the entry procedures, otherwise they will not even be able to enter the government affairs compound tomorrow.

The room was clean, Zhao Xin lit a cigarette for himself and drank some tea.Only then did he slowly pick up the telegram and read it.Lu Qi reported three things in total, with a lot of content, which filled two pages.

At the beginning of the telegram, it briefly reported the construction of the Coloma Gold Mine.

After two months of preliminary survey, an old miner supported by Lanfang Company has roughly determined the direction of the two ore veins; this person was in charge of finding ore veins when he was in Borneo.Although Zhao Xin and the others know the total gold reserves in the Coloma area, they don't know the direction of the veins or the specific mining locations.In short, professional things have to be done by professionals.

However, besides building the mining area, the current main task is to build a road along the fork of the Round House River to the Lushui Plain, and it must be able to travel in both directions, otherwise it will be difficult to transport mining equipment and supplies into the mountains. .As for taking a car, don't even think about it for the time being, the construction is too difficult.Lu Qi predicts that even if there are sufficient manpower and tools, the fastest and fastest time to complete the entire road will have to wait until May next year.

In addition, Lushui, that is, part of the Sacramento River in another time and space, needs to be deepened and widened to ensure the passage of flat-bottomed barges with a loading capacity of more than 500 tons.Assault boats and small boats are no problem in the current river course, but the construction of Lushui plain settlements and roads requires the transportation of a large amount of materials and equipment, so the depth of the river course must reach four meters.

Zhao Xin had expected the problem of the gold mine long ago. In the final analysis, it was necessary to have sufficient manpower and materials.The matter of materials is easy to handle, at worst, he will go there by himself, but manpower is not so simple.It is easy to pick up a few pieces of placer gold from the river ditch, but it is another matter to realize large-scale mining.Even in the modern age of another time and space, it takes one to two years for a small gold mine to go from construction to production.

The second thing is that the negotiating mission sent by the Spaniards will arrive at the Golden Gate Fortress by boat on the 10th of next month to negotiate with Beihai Town on the return of prisoners of war and the issue of California.According to the envoy sent by Monterrey before, the official head of the mission is named Alonso Nuñez de Haro Peralta, who is currently the archbishop of the diocese of Mexico and the head of the Royal Supreme Council of Spain. Representatives in the Americas; Deputy Heads are Captain José Joaquin de Ariraga, Governor of California, and Fermin de Rasun, President of the Franciscan Mission.

The reason why the specification is so high is that Lu Qi captured a big fish in the battle of Mount San Bruno - Admiral Denava, the commander-in-chief of the Western Province.

The Spanish Viceroyalty is ashamed this time. No matter how they retaliate in the future, what they have to do now is to do everything possible to get the captured general and other officers back before the news reaches the British and Americans. To live in the mouth of the world, even the archbishop came out of the mountain for this reason.

It's also very interesting to say that the person in charge of communicating with the Golden Gate Fortress on the Spanish side is a monk who was once stationed in the dioceses of Manila and Macau, called Hilarion Diez.This person went to the Diocese of Manila more than ten years ago, was stationed in Macau for many years, and is fluent in Cantonese Mandarin.Although it was difficult for Lu Qi to communicate verbally with the other party, there was no problem in writing.

If Zhao Xin was mentally prepared for the above two things, the third thing mentioned in the telegram made him frown deeply.

Just five days ago, an American fleet arrived at Golden Gate Bay, led by a middle-aged man named Robert Gray.According to the other party, they set off from Boston in April and were employed by two trading companies in Boston, and they did not have an official status.

The American fleet docked in Golden Gate Bay for two days. First, they went ashore to visit Lu Qi. The atmosphere of the meeting was very harmonious.When Captain Gray introduced himself, they mentioned that their original plan was to go to Nucat Bay to buy a batch of furs, and then go to Guangzhou for tea trade; they had already run the same route in October of the previous year, and returned to Boston in July last year , the benefits are huge.

The reason why they came to the Golden Gate was that when they passed and docked in Acapulco, Mexico, they heard in the tavern on the pier that there was a strange oriental conflict with the Spaniards in Upper California, out of curiosity Come and visit.Before the American fleet left, they also replenished fresh water and vegetables. Captain Gray offered to use the goods on board as the fee, but Lu Qi generously expressed his waiver.A few hundred kilograms of radishes are nothing more than nothing.

"Robert Gray?"

Zhao Xin felt a little familiar when he saw the name, but after thinking about it, he had no idea.He got up and walked to the bookshelf. After a few minutes, he finally found a thick book printed and bound on A4 paper from among the densely arranged materials.I saw the words in large English on the front page: Conflict on the Northwest Coast——The confrontation between the United States and Russia in the Pacific Northwest.

This is the advantage of using foreign language materials. Those old-fashioned scholars in the Secretariat couldn't understand them at all.

He opened the book and first checked the table of contents, then quickly turned to page 12, and finally found the name of the captain.

"I'll wipe it! So it's him!"

Robert Gray, this person is the first captain in American history to complete a circumnavigation of the world.He "discovered" and named the Columbia River, which originates in the Rocky Mountains and flows westward from Nucat Bay into the Pacific Ocean.Of course, the Spaniards had also been here before him, but the carefree Spaniards only saw the sea otters in groups on the coast, and had no time to pay attention to the muddy river flowing from the bank, so the latecomers took advantage of it.

It was precisely because of this person's northward expedition in 1792 that the United States, which had just been established less than 20 years ago, gained a foothold on the Pacific Northwest coast, which is located on Vancouver Island with an area of ​​more than 2600 square kilometers.In the next few years, the U.S. government used this as a reason to propose a territorial claim to the Oregon region to the United Kingdom. Later generations of Seattle and even Washington State also came here based on this claim.

Zhao Xin originally thought that it would take decades for the Americans to establish a stronghold in Xituo, but he didn't expect it to happen now.

This is absolutely impossible!
Zhao Xin, the "Magic Ax of Falling Cherry Blossoms" in Washington, didn't pay attention to him. The old man hadn't had a good life for a few years, but the third president, Thomas Jefferson, was by no means an easy guy to deal with.This person not only founded the predecessor of the future political party in the United States - the "Democratic Republican Party", but also completed the purchase of French Louisiana during his tenure, which nearly doubled the territory of the United States.

Thinking of this, Zhao Xin decided to start as soon as possible, no later than June next year, to take down the American stronghold on Vancouver Island.Buy and sell by force, if you don’t sell it, you have to sell it, or if you can’t do it, you will implement a military occupation of Vancouver Island!
Now give the British ten guts, and they dare not go around the entire Americas and declare war on Beihai Town.You must know that their current main opponent is France, and the "French Revolutionary War" is not over yet!

Besides, whether it is the "Local Governance Treaty" that is being sent to the British mainland, or the mission sent by the Governor General of New Spain, it is enough to prove the military strength of Beihai Town.

After reading the telegram, Zhao Xin felt that he had to go to Jinmen no matter what.Lu Qi is now entangled in many things, and there is a lot of work on the Lushui Plain, not to mention, he is not good at the confrontation at the negotiation table.So he drafted a brief telegram, and then called Chai Rugui, and asked him to send it to the telecommunication room and send it to the Golden Gate Fortress.The content of the draft is just one sentence: "If there is no accident, arrive at Jinmen before the 10th of next month."

Now throughout East Asia, when it comes to who is the top negotiator at the negotiating table, whether it is the shogunate, Li Dynasty, Manchu Qing, or Tsarist Russia, Zhao Xin has to be respectfully called "the boss".This guy is best at messing around with reason and evidence at the negotiating table, and he can often surprise his opponent by surprise.

Just like the border negotiations between Beihai Town and Li Chao, the final players were Wang Zhong and Liu Taigong, but the actual behind-the-scenes mastermind was Zhao Xin.Although it was Ding Guofeng who negotiated between the South Asian continent and the British, he was also the commander behind it.

To put it bluntly, this guy's method is nothing more than a slap and a sweet date, a combination of military and economic means.If you are not satisfied, just flip the table, relying on the gold in your hand, use the advanced weapons of another time and space and your own advantage of "supply beasts" to defeat the opponent.The Shogunate, the Manchu Qing Dynasty, Tsarist Russia, Annan, the Netherlands, the Li Dynasty, and the British have all suffered from it, and the Spaniards and Americans will be no exception in the future.

Apart from these things, the problem of those Russians in Alaska is best solved together this time.

Zhao Xin was thinking about it, and suddenly he had a premonition in his heart, maybe Beihai Town and the United States will fight for the Louisiana area in the future, after all, both sides are determined to win.

Today Louisiana and even Florida are Spanish colonies.The former was ceded to Spain by Louis XV according to the Treaty of Paris after the Seven Years War and became a province of the Governor General of New Spain; the latter was ceded to Spain by the British after the American War of Independence.

There is no Panama Canal in this year and month. If it really starts to fight, it will be nonsense to cross the North American continent. The fleet of the Northern Navy can only bypass Cape Horn and go north to attack Huanglong.Other materials are easy to solve, but fresh water supplies must be obtained from the shore; either a Portuguese colony or a Spanish colony.

As a result, the negotiations with the Spanish mission must be well controlled.

On the bright side, both Louisshire and King Carlos IV of Spain are members of the Bourbon royal family, and now Spain is still a member of the "Anti-French Alliance" and supports the restoration of the French Bourbon royal family, so it must not be allowed to Lost and ceded Louisiana to Napoleon.

On the bad side, it must not be so easy for Spain to obediently spit out Louisiana. Either a large army is dispatched to completely subdue it, or the security of the Philippines can only be exchanged.

But the five massacres, the lives of [-] Chinese!Don't say that Zhao Xin is unwilling to let Manila go, and I am afraid that other members of the committee will not agree.

How to do it?Zhao Xin wandered back and forth in the room for a long time, and the last thing he could think of was to wait for Elizabeth to go to Europe with her siblings after the postpartum recovery period.Get in touch with that fatuous Carlos IV, and then find a way to deal with Queen Luisa, who actually controls the government, and her prime minister's lover.

The problem is that if you go to Spain, you have to go to England, and then you have to go to Europe. You have to go to Belgium and Austria anyway, which is the stronghold of the French royalists.

Next year, the Beihai Navy will go south to enter the customs, and there is still the matter of touching warships. Zhao Xin just feels a little hopeless, and he is about to catch up with the donkey of the production team.

(End of this chapter)