Master Yuan, start!

The Chengdu Church Incident did not occur in this time and space, and the people did not destroy the church.

This is not because the foreigners have become obedient, but because Liu Bingzhang's restrictions are too harsh.

After training the first batch of Sichuan new troops, he felt more confident.

Strict restrictions were imposed on churches, church schools, church hospitals and other places in Sichuan, and people were not allowed to sell grain, supply water or deliver oil.

In order to maintain a basic standard of living, the foreigners in the church were forced to dig their own wells for drinking water and buy food at extremely high prices on the black market.

Without kerosene lamps, they had to spend a lot of money to buy generators and electric lamps from the local area, which had a very high failure rate.

At this time, tungsten filament bulbs had not yet been invented, and the carbon filament bulb invented by Edison was a completely fast-consumable product with an extremely short lifespan.

Buying light bulbs is another huge expense.

Even though the priests adhered to the Lord's will and wanted to spread the gospel, many of them backed down in the face of hostile people and difficult lives.

They applied to the church to be transferred back to Shanghai or Hong Kong to preach to the Chinese there.

It has to be said that after the Qing Dynasty's fall from grace, China's nominal unity but actual division made foreigners feel somewhat at a loss as to what to do.

Without the powerful weapon of the Qing Dynasty, they didn't know how to deal with local powerful groups.

If the Qing government that unified China was still in existence, Liu Bingzhang's harsh treatment of foreigners in Sichuan would have surely led the foreigners to put pressure on the Qing court and send warships to threaten the Yangtze River estuary and the waters off Tianjin.

However, after the split, the foreigners were no longer able to do anything.

Liu Bingzhang bullied the foreigners in Sichuan, and their warships could only stare blankly at the mouth of the Yangtze River. They could not even reach Wuchang, let alone Sichuan which was blocked by the Three Gorges.

In addition, Liu Bingzhang also appointed himself the Pacifying Envoy of Sichuan and Yunnan, and implemented the policy of converting the chieftains into officials in Xikang, hoping to gradually eliminate the pro-British forces among the chieftains.

This move naturally angered the British colonial authorities in India.

While the British Indian authorities increased their support for the chieftains and lamas in Tibet, they also contacted the British consul in Guangzhou through the Colonial Office and the Foreign Office, putting pressure on Li Hongzhang to "restrain" Liu Bingzhang.

Yes, at best it can only be "constrained", but it is impossible to remove or replace people.

However, it just so happened that Li Hongzhang had just offended Spain by attacking the Philippines, and France came to stand up for Spain and hold him accountable.

So he started to use the method of "using barbarians to control barbarians" again.

Li Hongzhang first contacted the Americans and brought them to the Philippines to jointly build the "Manila Sino-US Concession" to respond to Spain's protests.

Then he asked the British to help share the pressure from the French.

It should be noted that at that time, Britain adhered to the principle of being a diplomatic troublemaker, and placed bets among the Huai faction in Guangdong, the Xiang faction in Jiangnan, and Yuan Shikai outside the Great Wall, and maintained good relations with them.

The British then took the opportunity to ask Li Hongzhang to "stop the Governor of Sichuan from sending troops to the border of Sichuan"

Li Hongzhang had no choice but to accept it and asked Liu Bingzhang to temporarily suspend the process of converting the natives into Han people in Sichuan and not to involve the British.

Because of this incident, Liu Bingzhang and Li Hongzhang developed a rift.

If things stop here, perhaps Sichuan Huai and Guangdong Huai will begin to gradually split and eventually evolve into two independent forces.

Chapter 312 Want to play parliamentary politics?

However, after Zeng Guoquan's death, the Hunan clique, led by Liu Kunyi, gradually turned to France, intending to provoke a war between Britain and France so that the Hunan Army would benefit.

At this time, the British strongly supported Yuan Shikai's campaign to conquer the south, providing money, troops and warships, which eventually led to the destruction of the Hunan Army.

The excessive involvement of the British aroused Li Hongzhang's vigilance.

He thought Yuan Shikai was chosen by the British and became a member of the "Green Camp" of the British Eight Banners.

He knew that he could not defeat Yuan Shikai with only the Guangdong and Guangxi regions.

After the National Defense Army settles down in Jiangnan, it is likely that they will be able to break through and head straight to Guangzhou Prefecture.

So, leave yourself enough room to maneuver.

It happened that after Yuan Shikai captured Jiangning, he issued an anti-Manchu telegram.

Li Hongzhang took the opportunity to declare his independence from the Manchus and set up the Lingnan Xinghan Military Governor's Office. He also sent a telegram to Liu Bingzhang, saying that he should not help the British stop him from converting the native peoples into Han people.

After receiving the telegram, Liu Bingzhang expressed his understanding, and the rift between the Sichuan, Guangdong and Huai factions was thus resolved.

Soon after, Liu Bingzhang, who was also from Hefei, followed Li Hongzhang's footsteps.

He established the Sichuan Xinghan Military Governor's Office in Chengdu and allowed Ye Zhichao to lead his troops into Guiyang, officially connecting the Sichuan-Huaihe River and the Guangdong-Huaihe River.

Li Hongzhang knew that supporting Liu Bingzhang would inevitably offend the British, so he took the initiative to contact the nearby French Governor-General of Vietnam.

He asked the French to help him share the pressure from Britain near the South China Sea on the grounds of cooperating in developing coal mines on the Guangxi border.

Although the French were brought in, Yuan Shikai refused to proclaim himself emperor and offended the British.

The Huai Army seemed to be in a dilemma, not knowing what to do next.

...

"Master Quan, I have a plan."

Seeing his father fall silent, Li Jingfang stood up again and said with a salutation, "We can break Yuan Xiangcheng's conspiracy."

"What's the plan?"

Li Hongzhang glanced at his eldest son, picked up the teacup at hand, and asked slowly.

"This plan was arrived at through conversations with Huang Xing and Huang Keqiang." Li Jingfang bowed again.

"Huang Xing?" Li Hongzhang put down his teacup and asked, "Is this the Huang Xing who instigated the students of Nanhai Public School to march in the streets and petition me that day?"

"Exactly!"

"Okay, tell me about it."

Li Hongzhang twirled his beard lightly and said, "I want to see what the leader of the Huaxing Society thinks of Yuan Shikai's decision not to declare himself emperor."

Huang Xing, a man who had read books on the history of Western revolutions and the Social Contract by the great French scholar Rousseau, read them day and night.

He said that Yuan Shikai had the great merit of defeating the Manchus and could have declared himself emperor, but now Yuan was willing to proclaim himself president rather than emperor.

Then, no one in the world can claim to be a king or emperor anymore, otherwise they will face the condemnation of all the people."

Upon hearing this, Li Hongzhang sighed imperceptibly.

As expected, Yuan Shikai's move was to destroy the aspirations of everyone in the world to become emperor.

Although Li Hongzhang once had fantasies about becoming king and emperor, he also understood the general trend of the world.

If he rashly declared himself emperor, it would inevitably cause backlash, and the Huai Army's foundation might be lost.

Just when Li Hongzhang was mentally prepared to accept it calmly, his son-in-law couldn't help it.

"Nonsense!" Zhang Peilun suddenly stood up from his chair and shouted:

"Who says that besides Yuan Shikai, no one else can be king or emperor?

If you think about it, we are all heroes who overthrew the Qing Dynasty. Why did Yuan Shikai get all the benefits?

He was purging the Manchus in Beijing, but didn't we purge the Manchus in Guangzhou?"

"Youqiao, shut up first." Li Hongzhang waved his hand, stopping Zhang Peilun from continuing to speak.

"Listen to what others say first."

"Huang Xing said that Yuan Shikai has already gained world-renowned status, and the position of provisional president cannot be easily replaced.

If he proclaimed himself the president and challenged Yuan Shikai, he would also be disliked by the people.

However, in Yuan Shikai's republican telegram, he also claimed that he would convene a congress to discuss national affairs and select the official presidential candidate in Congress.

It would have been better if Yuan Xiangcheng hadn't said anything, but once he did, it created a hidden danger."

"According to French custom, the National Assembly must elect representatives to it and use these representatives to elect people.

If the representatives ultimately choose not to support him becoming the official president, then Yuan Shikai will be forced to resort to force, but in doing so, he will be cut off from the world."

"There is such a strange thing?" Li Hongzhang didn't know much about parliamentary politics, so it sounded very strange to him.

How could someone, after gaining power, share it with others and then let others authorize themselves?

Isn't this just like taking off your pants to fart? It's a waste of time.

"General Quan, Yuan Shikai proposed convening a parliament just to win over the people.

We can just take advantage of his own tactic and let him shoot himself in the foot!"

"Won't Yuan Shikai choose his own people as representatives to Congress?" Li Hongzhang noticed the loophole and asked.

"The French representatives in Parliament are elected from political parties.

Huang Xing said that since the establishment of his Huaxing Society, it has attracted thousands of people to participate in just a few days.

If we could set up branches in various places and attract tens or even millions of people, it would be no problem.

By then, the Huaxing Society will be the largest party in the country, and also the largest party in Congress.

It’s easy to choose who to elect as president.”

"Oh, I didn't expect that his Huaxing Society has such great power?" Li Hongzhang said with a normal expression.

"Marshal Tsuen, Huang Xing said that he is willing to give the position of head of the Huaxing Society to Marshal Tsuen, and only asks to be a small secretary-general."

"Okay, do you want to use my reputation to recruit talents?" Li Hongzhang smiled and asked, "However, my reputation doesn't seem to be as good as Yuan Shikai's, right?

How can I ensure that everyone in the world is loyal to me and not to him?

"Win the hearts of the people!" Li Jingfang bowed and talked about the strategy he had discussed with Huang Xing.

"Since Yuan Shikai has established a republic, the four provinces of Sichuan and Guangdong might as well join in.

When the time comes, if the British provoke us in Guangdong and Sichuan and Tibet, we will release the news and see how he, as the interim president, will deal with it.

If we lean towards Britain, we will lose the support of the people.

In addition to these, didn’t Yuan Shikai go north to fight against Russia?

We can also send an army to support. It doesn't matter whether it goes to the front line or not. We must spread the news of our support and win the hearts of the people.

Congress cannot be convened in a short time. As long as we find fault with Yuan Shikai from a local perspective, we will find a lot of faults sooner or later.

Many provinces in the Central Plains have been severely affected by disasters and need disaster relief all year round. Outer Mongolia is unstable and areas outside the Great Wall also need large amounts of investment.

Yuan Shikai spent money everywhere, and his income was definitely not enough to cover his expenses, which inevitably made the people dissatisfied.

When the time comes, we can borrow the name of the Huaxing Society and raise our arms and shout, "As long as we have a majority in Congress, what does the President have to fear?"