Chapter 405 Negotiations between Beihai Town and Tsarist Russia
In mid-February 1789, Tsarist Russia’s special envoy for negotiations, Count Kirill Vladimirovich, arrived at the salt industry town of Usoriya, 70 kilometers north of Irkutsk, and demanded that he negotiate with the local
The top military commander of the North Korean navy launched negotiations.
Usolye is a salt industry town located on the left bank of the Angara River. The salt produced in the local salt springs supplies the entire Eastern Siberia. The purpose of the Northern Navy's occupation here is self-evident.
Different from the Manchu Qing Dynasty, the power of cooking salt under Tsarist Russia was controlled by merchants or monasteries. After the Northern Navy captured Usoliya, in order to ease local conflicts, it did not take back the privileges of the priests at first. After Zhang Jingxuan took office
, his first solution was to negotiate with local religious forces, and semi-forcibly completed the unified purchase and sale of salt at a mid-range price.
On the fourth day after Count Mujin arrived, the newly appointed Governor of the Beihai Special Region Zhang Jingxuan and Liu Sheng came from Irkutsk to meet with the favorite of the Russian Empress. Count Mujin arrived so quickly for the two of them.
He was deeply surprised, as this reminded him of the speed of troop deployment by the Northern Navy. At the same time, he was also quite surprised by the youth of Liu and Zhang.
After a brief exchange of greetings, the two parties quickly entered the negotiation phase.
Basically, all invaders in history have followed the bandit logic of "hitting them with a rake". Count Mujin did not mention Tsarist Russia's long-planned aggression at first, but expressed strong protest against Beihai Town's wanton attack on Novosibirsk, accusing it of this.
This behavior destroyed the long-standing mutual trust and economic and trade cooperation between Qing and Russia.
Faced with such shamelessness, Liu Sheng finally couldn't help but slapped the table, jumped up, pointed at Count Mu Jin's nose, and spewed out a series of curses from Beijing and the country, making the missionary translator behind Mu Jin turn pale and couldn't stand it at all.
I don’t know how to translate it. As a noble, Mu Jin was very disapproving of Liu Sheng’s irritability. He thought it was a sign of his lack of education.
In the subsequent negotiations between the two parties, Count Mujin made the following demands to the Northern Navy on behalf of Queen Catherine II:
1. Release the Russian soldiers captured in the battles of Aihun and Jacques;
Second, the Northern Navy returned to the east of the Ergun River and restored the original borders between the Qing and Russia;
Third, in view of the fact that the Northern Navy has become the actual ruler of the upper reaches of the Amur River, Russia is willing to sign a bilateral treaty with Beihai Town, like the Qing Dynasty, to regulate the exchanges of border residents, criminal punishment and extradition terms, and to resume economic and trade exchanges in Nerchinsk City;
Fourth, the Northern Navy handed over the four sailing ships captured on Bitterleaf Island and released all captured crew members.
Zhang Jingxuan suppressed his indignation and listened to the missionary's translation, and then ordered his subordinates to read out the conditions of Beihai Town in northern Mandarin:
1. The Tsarist Empire compensated Beihai Town with 500,000 taels of gold, equivalent to 6.7 million rubles of silver, to compensate for all human and property losses caused by the Russian invasion to the border residents in the middle and upper reaches of Heilongjiang;
Second, as a representative of the new Chinese forces that will replace the Manchus in the future, Beihai Town requires Russia to return to the west of the Yenisey River and demolish the Russian fortresses set up in the upper reaches of the Angara River and the Yenisey River;
Third, after Russia agrees to the above terms, the two sides will start discussing prisoners of war and economic and trade issues.
Of course Count Mujin would not agree, and he had no right to agree. He requested an interview with the captured Russian Eastern Front commander Suvorov and other generals above the rank of colonel.
After that, the two sides started wrangling for several days over their respective conditions.
During this period, Count Mujin threatened the 600,000-strong army of the Tsarist Russian Empire and bluntly stated that if the Northern Navy did not retreat, the Russian army would use an unprecedented powerful offensive to retake the occupied territories.
Zhang Jingxuan, who had previously learned about the current situation in Russia through Zhao Xin, responded, unless you don’t want Crimea and the Black Sea coast, and you have to abandon your ally Austria.
As soon as this statement came out, Count Mujin was greatly surprised. He did not expect that these remote "Tatars" actually knew about the war taking place in Crimea.
On December 6 last year, the Ekaterina Army, commanded by Duke Potemkin, had captured Vochia at the mouth of the Dnieper River after six months of siege. The situation was excellent. It would have been great if a large number of troops on the Western Front had been allowed.
Transfer back to the east and abandon the "Greek Plan". Not to mention the ally Austria, even Potemkin would not agree.
The so-called "Greek Plan" is also called the "Byzantine Restoration Plan". Its purpose is to expand the southwestern territory of the Russian Empire to the Dniester River and establish a capital in Constantinople, echoing the north and south of St. Petersburg. By
The empress's grandson Constantine became emperor, ruling the new empire including northern Greece, Albania, Macedonia, Thrace and Bulgaria. Duke Potemkin would serve as the governor of Bessarabia, Wallachia and Moldova.
The king formed the "Kingdom of Dacia". The plan also agreed to assign Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina to Austria to gain Austria's support for the plan.
Before leaving, the Queen told her mother, Earl Gold, that taking into account the climate and transportation factors in Siberia, the troop size on the Eastern Front could be maintained at a maximum of 50,000 people; and for this offensive, the government was bound to issue huge national debt and print more banknotes.
To maintain huge military spending.
Not counting the waterway, there is only a 6,000-mile long post road from Moscow to Siberia. It is muddy in the spring, waterlogged in the summer, and puddled in the winter. According to Rumyantsev's estimate, just mobilizing a huge army and logistics team from Europe will complete the task.
Operational deployment will take more than a year.
Since the outbreak of the Fifth Russo-Turkish War in 1769, the Queen has found an effective means to improve her financial situation, which is to print banknotes. As of 1788, Catherine II had issued a total of more than 100 million rubles in banknotes.
Behind this is an annual fiscal revenue of 48 million rubles and a national debt of 50 million rubles.
At this time, except for the United Kingdom, there was no such thing as a "gold standard" in Europe. The issuance of banknotes by the country relied entirely on the power of the government.
Beihai Town wants Tsarist Russia to pay 14% of its annual fiscal revenue as compensation, unless the old lady is crazy.
As time entered March, Earl Gold gave up the negotiations. He knew that this war was inevitable. However, he really wanted to fight. Only large military expenditures and massive purchases of materials could make the nobles make a fortune.
Later, Count Mujin and the Orthodox Patriarch who came with him, accompanied by a Lianbei navy, crossed the cold windy Lake Baikal on an ice sledge and headed east to Yaksa to visit the captured Russian officers and soldiers.
.
For more than half a year, the Russian troops in Yaksa have been "repairing the earth" under the guns of the Northern Navy, enduring mosquito bites and biting cold. Specifically, they are engaged in road infrastructure construction from Yaksa to Heilongjiang City.
, in order to prepare for future railway construction.
When Count Mujin arrived in Yaksa and saw the hungry prisoners being driven out to work before dawn every day, he immediately lodged a strong protest.
It is said that in the history of another time and space, in order to build the Trans-Siberian Railway, Tsarist Russia recruited hundreds of thousands of Chinese from Shandong, Henan and Northeast China, and they completed most of the construction. It is similar to the famous "Great Western Railway"
"Similarly, the entire Trans-Siberian Railway was built on the bones of Chinese workers.
They endured exploitation by the Russians and advanced at an average speed of 587 versts per year. However, when the railway was opened to traffic, many Chinese workers had no food and clothing, and ended up wandering along the railway line, begging for a living.
As history has shown, Wu Siyu, the commander-in-chief of the Yaksa Russian Prisoner of War Management Department, had no sympathy for these seemingly pitiful prisoners. He repeatedly told the officers of his troops that these Rakshasa were "afraid of power but not virtue."
", they must be treated harshly.
Come on! Each of you has a steel pick and a shovel, and the hard frozen soil is waiting for you! Anyone who dares to escape and resist will be shot, and the strong wind and ice and snow will help bury them. If you want to slow down the progress of the project, food will be stopped for two days!
The prisoners in the prisoner of war camp lived in sheds made of logs and birch bark. The beds were on two floors, with only 0.5 meters of space for each person. This kind of house was definitely not rainproof, but it was still enough to keep out the cold.
Yes, just put an iron pot on the fire before going to bed at night.
The staple food of the prisoners was brown bread and white boiled potatoes dipped in salt, and the construction team that performed well was given canned meat from the North Navy once a week.
Apart from that, it is not so demanding to dress for the Northern Navy. After all, Zhao Xin wants to work, and if it freezes to death, no one will repair the roadbed. For this reason, he specially purchased a large number of winter clothes and cheap clothes before winter.
Thermal underwear made all the Cossack prisoners burst into tears of gratitude.
On the second day after Earl Mu Jin arrived in Yaksa, Zhao Xin quietly arrived in the city of Yaksa and met with a selected Cossack prisoner.
"Do you know Pugachev?"
"I know, sir, that he was a rebel. The mother of the country took him to Moscow and hanged him."
Opposite Zhao Xin sat a Cossack from the Don River. His name was Krutogorov, who was less than thirty years old. At this moment, he was shrinking on the stool timidly, with a somewhat flattering expression on his face.
smile.
"Yes." Zhao Xin nodded, and what he said immediately made the other party almost fall out of his chair. He only heard him say slowly: "From today on, you are Pugachev's son..."
"What?!" Krutogorov's chin hit his foot, and he was so surprised that he was completely speechless.
Just listen to Zhao Xin continue: "Look, Pugachev said that he was Peter III at the beginning, so you are the son of Peter III."
Krutogorov stammered and said: "Big, big, sir, what he said is fake and fake!"
"I said you are true, and you are true." Zhao Xin said with a smile and squinted eyes: "Inherit Pugachev's legacy and build a country without serfs from the east of the Ural Mountains to the west of the Yenisei River.
A Cossack utopia without capitation tax."
Krutogorov was stunned after hearing this. He was a tenant farmer from the Don River. He did not expect that the Chinese man in front of him actually wanted to support him in rebellion.
For Zhao Xin, Tsarist Russia is too big. With the current strength of the Northern Navy, even if he can cross the Ural Mountains to teach the old lady the Queen a lesson, he cannot hold such a large territory at the moment. After using railways to connect the outer Northeast and the North Sea, especially
Before the region was firmly locked, the demarcation requirement to use the Yenisei River as the boundary was simply a castle in the air.
"Everyone is deceitful, the priest deceives the people, the servants deceive the lord, and the great nobles always want to deceive the Tsar... This is the current situation in Russia. And your old lady wrote to Voltaire, saying that if the peasants want to eat chicken, they can
Eat whatever you want, you know the facts better than me."
Zhao Xin finally said without distinction: "Klutogorov, go back and think about it carefully, and then reply to me in a few days."
Who is Voltaire? Krutogorov thought to himself: How could the Holy Mother say that? As a bankrupt farmer, before joining the army, his family could not even eat chickens, let alone eggs!
On the other side, Count Mujin finally saw Suvorov in jail. However, what surprised him was that there was no Northern Navy surveillance in the reception room.
This made him extremely puzzled. He didn't understand what the Beihai Navy thought about allowing them to meet alone.
However, what neither of them noticed was that on the ceiling in the four corners of the reception room, several "gadgets" hidden in wooden boards were closely monitoring their every move, and even every word they said could be heard.
Heard clearly.
In fact, Suvorov has been enjoying this kind of treatment since he was captured. He had planned several resistance actions against the North Korean Navy, and they were all easily collapsed in the end. This made Suvorov have feelings for several of his subordinates.
I was deeply suspicious and thought there must be a traitor among them.
When Suvorov heard from Count Mujin that the Russian army had won a victory in Vodia, he couldn't help but sigh deeply.
This chapter is not over yet, please click on the next page to continue reading! If Yaksa had not lost, if Aihui City had not been lost, or even if there was not that strange Zhao Xin, he should be galloping on the western battlefield now, right?
"The mother of the country is very concerned about your safety. When she got the news, she immediately recalled the governor of Little Russia."
Suvorov said in surprise: "The Marshal has returned to St. Petersburg?"
Mother Jin spread her hands and said: "There is no way, there was a conflict between His Excellency the Duke and the Marshal on the direction of attack."
Suvorov thought for a while and asked: "Is Suvorovchka okay?"
Suvorovchka was his daughter. After Suvorov and his wife finally divorced in 1784, his only emotional sustenance was his daughter. Since separation from his daughter, Suvorov felt extremely painful. He was living day by day.
Counting the days, waiting for the reunion with my daughter.
However, Suvorov actually had a younger son, but because of his cheating wife, the admiral did not recognize him as his own flesh and blood for a long time.
As an aside, this was a real "era of lasciviousness" in Europe, and Catherine II was very evil in this regard. Many "cuckold" husbands would rather pretend not to know about their wives' willful behavior.
In order not to offend the empress and her favorites, Suvorov broke with his cheating wife publicly despite Catherine II's repeated attempts to mediate. This shows that he has both a strong character and a strong will.
, which is also an indirect rebuke to the old lady’s own character.
Earl Gold took out a letter from his pocket and handed it to the other party: "I went to Smolny Girls' High School to see Natasha before I left. This is the letter she wrote to you."
...
On the other side, Zhao Xin obtained the content of the conversation between Suvorov and his mother, Earl Jin, after the meeting. He looked at the record and asked the officer in charge of surveillance: "Can you confirm that this is a letter from his daughter?
"
"It should be possible." The officer replied: "He read the letter while crying."
Zhao Xin nodded, and after reading the record, he said: "When the Count of Gold returns, take Suvorov with him."
Wu Siyu, who was drinking tea at the side, asked curiously: "What are your plans?"
Zhao Xindao: "There is no plan. Since he misses his daughter so much, then I will use the North Navy's cannon to completely extinguish the admiral's fire of revenge."
Wu Siyu said: "You don't want to take prisoners anymore? We don't have enough people to build the railway right now."
Zhao Xin rolled his eyes and said: "Brother, bullets and shells are free of charge?! If the problem can be solved with ten shells, why should I use a hundred rounds?"
Wu Siyu: "..."
After meeting with Suvorov, Count Mujin asked Wu Siyu who met him what price it would cost to return the admiral. Wu Siyu said with a straight face: "10 poods of gold, I think the admiral is worth this amount.
"
According to the unit of measurement in Tsarist Russia at the end of the 18th century, 10 poods was equal to 40 Russian pounds, which was equal to 163.8 kilograms, which was approximately twice the weight of Suvorov.
After hearing this, Count Mujin let out a sigh of relief and said to himself that these people are really a bunch of money-hungry misers and have no gentlemanly manners at all!