Master Yuan, start!

Seeing the French speaking, many of the excited people shrank their heads and dared not speak. Seeing this, Kang Guangren could only take half a step forward.

"Mr. Consul, this place is indeed the French Concession, but it is also Chinese territory.

Anyone can enter the Municipal Council Garden, but why can't we Chinese enter? We are even treated like animals. Consul, where does this put the 4 million Chinese people?

"This... sir." Lü Liuban looked at Kang Lu Guangren and said in a calm but not arrogant tone, "I'm afraid you have misunderstood. Although the concession is rented in name, it has long been my French territory.

It is not the Chinese people's business to decide who is allowed to enter French territory."

After saying this, seeing a group of Chinese people in front of him who were furious but did not dare to refute, Lu Ban's rating of them dropped another point in his mind.

Humph, you want to be a Chinese patriot? You're far inferior to us French people!

Just when Lu Ban was about to mock again.

"Snapped"

With only a gunshot, the French consul in Shanghai fell to the ground, bleeding profusely.

300 red envelopes have been sent out, everyone can collect them

I'm so sorry, I've been procrastinating more frequently in the past two months.

There is no update today. Let me think carefully about the subsequent plot.

I'm sure everyone is very dissatisfied with my delay in updating. I have been feeling restless recently and have been unable to concentrate on writing.

I owed 2 words in February and 2 words in March.

Thank you all for your support. I will make up for what I owe you in a while. I will make up for it.

But I have to delay the update, and I can’t let everyone down, so I choose to send everyone red envelopes to express my apology.

Go to the discovery page of the Dudu Reading app, open it and receive the shared red envelope. You don’t have to actually share it. Just return when the pop-up window appears and you can receive it.

This Saturday and Sunday I plan to write 9000 words every day. If I can’t finish it, I will send out 500 red envelopes.

Chapter 207: Past events reappear?

As usual, Liu Kunyi still lived in the Governor's Mansion in Zhongshan, enjoying the rare summer shade.

To this end, he specially pulled a telegraph line from Jiangning City to the mountain.

In addition, there is a single-track railway leading to Jiangning Railway Station, which is specifically used for Liu Kunyi's daily travel to Zhongshan for office.

This railway was not included in the commercial route map of the Shanghai-Nanjing Railway, but was only used as a "private railway line" exclusively for the Governor of Jiangnan.

Tun's situation was not unique in the south. It was different from the policy advocated by Yuan Shikai of state-owned enterprises as the main body and private enterprises as the supplementary body, and using official power to control the operation rights of railways.

When Liu Kunyi was the governor of Jiangnan, he did not have a deep understanding of the importance of railways. He only thought of them as a means of transportation that was "convenient for traveling between the north and the south and accessible to all directions." He did not realize that they contained enormous military and national defense value.

After he took charge of Jiangnan, he only built one Shanghai-Nanjing Railway, one Shanghai-Hangzhou Railway and one Nanjing-Hangzhou Railway, forming a triangular railway network.

An Liezheng first set out from Yongning to the west, and the "Yangtze River Railway" passing through Wuhu, Anqing, Jiujiang and other places seemed to him to be not worth the effort and benefits.

The Xu-Pu Railway heading north from Xuzhou to Nanjing and Pukou was also not completed.

On the one hand, this was because Xuzhou was captured by the National Defense Army, and on the other hand, although the flow of the Grand Canal in the northern part had been cut off, the section from Xuzhou to the south still played an important role.

With the food and clothing of millions of workers at stake, Liu Kunyi did not dare to build a railway along the canal easily.

Novel 9+758744(

However, although the main railway line could not be built, the branch railway line ushered in further development.

In the economically developed Jiangsu and Zhejiang regions, in addition to private trains, private railway lines have even been developed.

Please note that it is a private railway line, not a private train.

Q The main railway connecting the three major cities of Shanghai, Jiangning and Hangzhou is covered with densely packed branch railways.

Some of them lead to mines, some to certain county towns. These are relatively good, at least they can allow ordinary people to take them.

There were even wealthy families in the south of the Yangtze River who chose to build a single-track railway leading directly to their doorsteps. It didn't matter if there was no locomotive, they would just use horses to pull it to demonstrate their unique status.

: Liu Kunyi's inspiration for building the Jiangning-Zhongshan single-track railway also came from this.

This situation is unimaginable in later generations. Even if most of the railways in Japan are privately owned, there would not be so many single-line "broken ends"

The most important thing about building a railway is that it can run in both directions. Building so many broken railways will undoubtedly be a huge obstacle and waste for traffic scheduling and railway transportation capacity.

Overall, Liu Kunyi did not attach as much importance to the role of railways as he did to battleships and cannons, but rather took a laissez-faire attitude towards development.

Of course, from a historical perspective, this can also explain why Liu Kunyi had such an idea. This is not unrelated to the fact that he lived in the south for a long time where water transportation is convenient.

The Yangtze River Basin, where Anhui, Hubei, Hunan, Jiangxi, southern Jiangsu, northern Zhejiang and other places are located, has a very developed water transportation system, while early railways did not have significant advantages compared with water transportation.

The railways that the officials in the original time and space were keen to build were either the Beijing-Guangzhou Line connecting the north and the south, or the Longhai Line connecting the east and the west in North China.

There is no convenient water transportation available in these places.

The only railway along the Yangtze River is the Sichuan-Hankou Railway, which connects the upper reaches to the Bashu region.

Li Bai had already clearly described the harshness of the hydrological environment in the upper reaches of the Yangtze River in "The Road to Shu is Difficult", so compared with water transportation, railways are more stable and safer in the Bashu region.

In the middle and lower reaches of the Yangtze River, the river channel is flat and wide, and water transportation can completely crush the loading capacity of early railway transportation.

This is also why neither the Qing Dynasty nor the Republic of China was very enthusiastic about the horizontal railway extending eastward from Hubei.

Even after the founding of New China, Wuhan did not have an ordinary railway line directly connected to Nanjing. To get from Wuhan to Nanjing, one had to go through Hefei in the north or Jiujiang or Wuhu in the south.

　The second is: high-speed railway.

Liu Kunyi had no idea that a small railway had so many details. At this moment, he was sitting comfortably in the Governor's Mansion in Zhongshan. He picked up a lychee with his right hand, peeled off the uneven red shell, revealing the tender and crystal clear flesh, and put the whole thing into his mouth.

"Hyun Commander, something bad has happened!"

A scream came from outside the room, and Liu Kunyi, who had just swallowed the lychee, almost choked. He quickly patted his chest and finally recovered his breath.

"What happened?!"

Liu Kun looked unhappy. It was just some negotiation-related matters. Was there any need to be so flustered?

"Marshal Xian, the French consul is dead!"

"What?"

Liu Kunyi picked up the telegram and took a look at it. He felt that the lychees that he had tasted sweet and delicious just now now had an extremely bitter aftertaste.

"How could this happen? Who fired the gun?!"

Liu Kunyi almost fainted, but he still suppressed the discomfort and asked.

But unfortunately, no one answered him. All the information was on the telegram, and the messenger did not know any more detailed information.

"French Consul, French Consul again"

Liu Kunyi held the telegram tightly and muttered to himself. The messenger who was kneeling in the hall with his head down did not dare to breathe, for fear of angering the Governor of Jiangnan.

"Let them in," Liu Kunyi finally sighed and pointed outside.

The messenger felt relieved, kowtowed and took his leave, and called in a group of civil and military officials stationed in the Governor's Mansion in Zhongshan.

"Hyun Shuai!"

"Xian Weng."

Chen, Zhu Hongzhang and Yu Lianyuan walked in, wanting to know what had happened.

"Take a look at it," Liu Kun handed the telegram to his aide and governor of southern Jiangsu, Yu Lianyuan, and they quickly passed it to each other.

"This"

After reading it, several people looked at each other, not knowing where to start.

The information in the telegram was incomplete. We only knew that the people, unable to bear the humiliation they suffered, gathered together and attacked the French Concession. Then came the news that the French consul was shot dead by six people.

Who did it, why did they do it, what did the British think, would the French go to war, all these questions need to be answered.

"Mr. Xian, I think we should quickly send a telegram to Shanghai and ask Brother Qu Lin and Tao Senjia to calm the French and wait for Mr. Xian to arrive before making a decision."

Yu Lianyuan spoke first, thinking that they should delay time and wait for the truth to be revealed.

In the original time and space, he served as the Shanghai Dao and signed the Southeast Mutual Protection Treaty with foreigners as the chief representative of China. In this time and space, he was appreciated by Liu Kunyi and transferred to Jiangning to serve as the governor of southern Jiangsu.

After Yu Lianyuan finished speaking on the civil side, General Chen on the other side also spoke:

"General Xian, no matter what, the Jiangnan Navy must weigh anchor and set sail. We shouldn't stay in Zhenhai Harbor for too long. Otherwise, we'll inevitably be trapped in the harbor and used as targets by the French, just like during the Yiyou Year."

Chen is now the admiral of the Jiangnan Navy and is also in charge of coastal defense. The Yiyou period he mentioned refers to the 1885 incident in which the French attacked the Zhenhai Port in Zhejiang and annihilated the Nanyang Navy at that time.

Yes, the navy must hurry up and move. Liu Kunyi nodded in agreement.

"Yes, send a telegram to the Jiangnan Navy and tell them to rush to Jiangning Port without delay!"

"Yes!" Another messenger hurried to the telegraph room next door.

"General Xian, I believe that delaying the French and sending back the navy for defense are not fundamental solutions. Our only option now is to find a solution."

Zhu Hongzhang bowed and suggested that he was now the infantry commander of the Jiangnan New Army and was stationed in Jiangning Prefecture.

"What's Huanwen's plan?"

When Liu Kunyi asked, he naturally knew that the method just now was only a temporary solution, but he did not have a perfect plan. After all, the person who died was a French consul, not an ordinary foreigner.

"General Xian, why don't we see what the French say? If they ask us to punish the people, then we have no choice but to do it."

Zhu Hongzhang saw clearly that the Jiangnan New Army had not seen any war in the past few years and was immersed in the glamorous world of Jiangnan, so it was absolutely impossible to stop the French.

Unexpectedly, as soon as he finished speaking, Yu Lianyuan quickly spoke up to stop him.

"Mr. Xian, you absolutely cannot do this. The telegram clearly states that the cause was the French humiliating the Chinese. If Mr. Xian continues to side with the foreigners, it will inevitably arouse public outrage.

"Xian Weng should think twice. Yuan Shikai is still lurking in the north, and stirring up public anger now would be like handing him a knife."

To be fair, Liu Kunyi was more in favor of Zhu Hongzhang's approach. He had never agreed to confront foreigners head-on.

But Liu Kunyi had to take into account the word "public outrage" mentioned by Yu Lianyuan. After all, the old general Zeng Guofan had once fallen into a big trap because of this.

In 1870, the eighth year of the Tongzhi reign, the Tianjin Incident broke out. The people beat the French consul in Tianjin to death. Zeng Guofan, the governor of Zhili who was stationed in Tianjin at the time, suffered a great setback because of this incident.

Back then, he was praised as a famous minister who saved the country and defeated the Taiping Rebellion. Who in the world would not praise him?

However, just because he compromised with foreigners on the Tianjin Church Incident, he was severely accused of being a traitor by Li Hongzhang and Zuo Zongtang.

The old coach is a famous general of ZTE!

But it only took a few months for him to go from being a famous minister to being regarded as a traitor by the people and wanted to be killed by the whole country.