Time passed quickly in the busyness, and it was the Year of Jiawu in a blink of an eye.
This year, the relationship between Daqing and Xiaoli has deteriorated to a certain point, and the dispute must be resolved through a battle.
Ahem, of course this is just Wu Dong's idea. Although my senior officials in the Qing Dynasty are wary of Xiaoli, they don't take it to heart at all.
The eyes of the senior officials of the Qing Dynasty have always been focused only on the European powers. As for the little people around me, how could they care about them?
Who could have known that in order to devour my Qing Dynasty’s flesh and blood to strengthen himself, Xiaoli would bet all his life on the fate of the country this year.
If it succeeds, it will rise up and become the new overlord of East Asia; if it fails, all previous reform efforts will be exhausted and it will continue to lie dormant and act as the underling of the overlord of East Asia.
But I, the Qing Dynasty, had no idea about this, or I didn't expect that I would dare to do it in my childhood, which is simply unreasonable.
"Senior brother, we caught a few more spies sent by Xiaotian!"
Wu Dong, who was looking at the blue sky and white clouds in silence, was awakened by the report of his confidant.
"Let's deal with it the same way as before, remember to inform Weihaiwei!"
Wu Dong felt helpless and waved his hand: "Tell Admiral Ding of Weihaiwei, is this the first batch of spies we have captured?"
"You can see that I have been plotting evil things in my childhood, so let's have some snacks!"
After I finished explaining, I asked people to leave, which made me feel a little complicated.
Ordinarily, according to the popular saying on the Internet in this modern era, wearing a chrysanthemum set with an electric drill will not lead to rebellion.
It's just that when you really get to the late Qing Dynasty, you will find that the situation is not as simple as imagined.
To put it bluntly, the old witch Cixi in the capital and Li Zhongtang, the minister of Beiyang, are just the leading representatives of the world's gentry.
If you want to rebel, you just have to deal with the gentry group. You can imagine the resistance you will encounter.
When the Qing Dynasty is in disarray, the possibility of a successful rebellion is extremely low.
This is only an internal factor. External powers are eyeing him, and it is impossible for him to give the powers the slightest opportunity to take advantage of him.
In addition, without the endorsement of the government, the speed of his power development was not as smooth as imagined.
Even if he had the strength to sweep through the Lu region at this time, facing the Qing army of more than 800,000 troops by sea and land, he was not sure that he would be able to defeat them all.
After all, Lu is the core area of our Qing rule. Once something happens, we will definitely suppress it with all our strength. I can't judge whether I can withstand Wu Dong by then.
In recent years, as more and more foreigners have come to Lu Di, conflicts between his subordinates and foreigners have also become more and more frequent.
Generally, Wu Dong would use hidden horse bandits to deal with such matters.
As long as the rubbish that dares to be treated as dogs by foreigners are removed, foreigners will have to fight alone without helpers and will not be able to make much waves at all.
However, the sequelae of such a method are not small. Not only the foreigners jointly targeted it, but even the government did not like it very much.
Under such circumstances, Wu Dong had no intention of completely overturning the Qing Dynasty.
At present, it is obvious that external troubles are more serious than internal troubles, so it is better to follow the trend of the times.
In areas that are not within his sphere of influence, the relationship between the local government and foreigners can only be described as boiling with anger.
Villagers besieged churches every now and then, and the number of bloody conflicts was not too frequent. It was just that the number of casualties and the scale were not large, and they were suppressed by the local government.
What is depressing is that almost every time there is a conflict between villagers and foreigners in the church, it is the villagers who are injured and unlucky. The conflicts become more and more serious, and the anger becomes more and more intense.
Many villagers couldn't bear the anger and directly took their families and defected to Brother Wu.
In the past few years, Wu Dong's power has expanded rapidly, with a large population spread across several Ludi prefectures, and he is definitely a local bully.
However, the way he behaved and dealt with things still made the government and mainstream gentry confused as to what he wanted to do.
In the past few years, the number of Boxer farms has exceeded sixty, all of which were built in the wilderness and have no connection with towns at all.
Just like a real private kingdom, if it weren't for the Boxers who controlled most of the bargaining rights for vegetables, meat and eggs in these state capitals and towns, there would really be very few connections.
Before, when Wu Dong acted like this, he was often secretly scolded as a fool.
However, as the conflicts between the foreigners and the local people in Ludi deepened, some weak gentry landlords spent a lot of money to buy houses and farming rights to small plots of land in the nearest Boxer farm.
In the Boxer Farm, the land is almost allocated based on head count, and private buying and selling is not allowed. It is very similar to the style of the later production brigade, but there is not so much public land.
The official number of boxers under Wu Dong has always been around 15,000.
This number, compared to his power and momentum at this time, is quite small, even less than some of his brothers who have just emerged in the legal world.
But in fact, those who knew the inside story all gasped at the astonishing strength of Senior Brother Wu.
The 15,000 official boxers must practice boxing for more than three years, and must also undergo literacy education, have certain arithmetic skills, and have some outdoor survival skills. Only after passing these requirements can they become official boxers.
As for the official boxers, they are the core force under Wu Dong, and they are completely out of business.
The management of the Boxer farm, the core of the guard force, and the main force in maintaining local order are all official Boxers.
Enjoy the best resources and treatment, and the status is equivalent to the military and police special constitution of the government.
However, as time went by, I saw that my Qing Dynasty was becoming more and more incompetent, and my life in the East became more and more stressful. Wu Dong was never in a very happy mood.
Knowing clearly that the Sino-Japanese War of 1894-1899, relying on gambling to win the country's fortunes during his childhood, the Qing Dynasty suddenly snatched away the Qing Dynasty's dominance in East Asia. From then on, the land of China would be plunged into lasting turmoil.
He couldn't tell anyone yet, he could only keep emphasizing the bandit nature of the great powers, and don't have any expectations for them no matter which great power they were.
There is no way, the cynics who dominate the mainstream public opinion still have the appearance of being a celestial country. In addition to being in awe of the Western powers, they don't even take a serious look at the younger brothers of the East Asian vassals.
As everyone knows, Xiaori is mobilizing the whole country to fight for hegemony in East Asia, and at the same time using various methods frequently.
For example, send a large number of spies, or spies, to the Lu region to find out the layout of the Qing army, draw accurate maps, etc.
As the base of the Beiyang Navy Squadron, Weihaiwei, also known as the Jiao'ao area, was naturally the hardest hit area for spies in the early days.
In normal history, neither the government nor the people had any precautions and allowed spies to wreak havoc in their childhood.
But the situation is different now, Wu Dong is the local emperor in Jiao'ao area.
The Boxer Farm system is no joke. Whatever outsiders want to find out will be exposed immediately and cannot be hidden at all.
From two years ago to the present, the number of little-time spies caught in Boxer farms alone is in the dozens.
These were all talents who could draw maps by hand, and Wu Dong directly sent them to the Dragon Palace as errands.
Of course, before being sent to the Dragon Palace, they will be informed by the Beiyang Navy of Weihaiwei.
The purpose, of course, is to remind the top management of the Beiyang Navy that Nima has started to have frequent activities in his childhood. Do you also need to be more vigilant?
However, what disappointed him was that even though the warning was so obvious, the senior officials of the Beiyang Navy stationed at Weihaiwei still didn't take it seriously.
According to a certain senior navy general, the navy in its young days is not worth mentioning at all. What is there to worry about?
hehe……
Wu Dong had nothing to say about this. Knowing the general course and results of the Sino-Japanese War of 1894-1894, he naturally would not do anything at all.
It didn't matter that the Beiyang Navy was not on guard. At this time, his brothers had already infiltrated into the Weihai Weijun Port and Lushun Military Port. Most of them had become sailors on warships or warships, and a few outstanding ones were already low-level officers.
Wu Dong's request for these brothers was very simple: learn to operate warships and use the equipment on warships as soon as possible, in order to follow up the Sino-Japanese War of 1894-1894.
When nothing happened, of course it was hello, hello, hello to everyone, but once the small warships rushed over, Wu Dong would never allow the two bases of the Beiyang Navy to surrender directly without any resistance.
No matter how bad it is, if we really can't do it, all the warships in the navy will have to be scuttled, or they will die together with the warships in their childhood.
For this reason, in the process of contacting a group of senior generals of the Beiyang Navy, he spent a lot of money to facilitate his subordinates.
Is it effective? It can be seen from the fact that the two major naval bases combined have more than 3,000 official boxers, and the number is still increasing.
The generals of the Beiyang Navy collected a lot of money and turned a blind eye.
Naturally, Wu Dong had nothing to say about this.
Because of this, he has a relatively good understanding of the internal situation of the Beiyang Navy.
When the English General Counsel is around, both combat effectiveness and training are pretty good.
It's just a pity that the General Counsel of England was driven away by the Beiyang Navy. The officers and soldiers of the Beiyang Navy are really ready to attack Kuma and release Nanshan with swords and guns.
It seems that, except for the European powers that are difficult to defeat, it is the only one in East Asia, and there really shouldn't be too many messy things.
These have little to do with Wu Dong. He only needs to know whether the Beiyang Navy can fight and whether he has the courage to fight.
As for Xiaozhi's invasion, he has other plans. Not only to give Xiaozhi a head-on blow, he also wants to make them suffer, so that they know that the land of China is not empty of people.
Back in the day, it was just a modern army. Regardless of the navy, the army's equipment was just that, so don't overestimate it.
This is also the news he found through some channels in his childhood.
As long as he knows this, Wu Dong is confident that his arrangement will have good results. How much accumulation over the years can be used depends on the performance of this Sino-Japanese War.
However, this feeling of fighting alone is not very wonderful...