Chapter 782: The Twelfth Year of Chengtian

The sea breeze blew the French tricolor flag flying on the merchant ship, the blue sea was rolling with small waves, and a large harbor was vaguely visible in front.

Twenty French officers gathered at the side of the ship at this moment, looking at the harbor in the distance, imagining their broad future.

White seabirds passed by the bow, and their crisp calls were so pleasant. After sailing tens of thousands of miles from France, they finally arrived in the East.

The Chinese Jinghai Port was just ahead, and the golden sunlight shone on the sea, turning the waves in the distance into a glittering gold.

The sea was like a blue mirror, reflecting everything on the mirror very clearly. The arrival of two French merchant ships, the white sails were so conspicuous on the blue sea.

When the warship was only five or six miles away from Jinghai Port, four Chen Han warships that gathered near Jinghai approached the French.

China and France had already ended their war relationship. The two sides fired salutes to each other. After the Chinese naval liaison officers boarded the sampan and made initial communication with the French merchant ship, they quickly contacted their own fleet. Naturally, everything went well.

Napoleon Buvanaba, 16, looked at the Jinghai port area with a telescope. It was just like the news circulating in France. The Chinese were very clean and all parts of the port area were cleaned up. It was really refreshing!

Look, large areas of gray and white flat ground are cement floors.

Cranes, carts, tracks, steam engines, a different style is everywhere. In addition to the lighthouse and turrets in the port, many things cannot be seen in the French port.

As a left-handed shorty from Corsica, Buvanaba did not think of himself as a Frenchman at first, but hoped that one day Corsica would be independent from France.

Seven years ago, he left his hometown and went to mainland France. He was not yet ten years old and first entered the Auton High School. Soon, under the arrangement of his father Carlo Bonaparte, he transferred to the Brienne Military School in France for education.

Brienne Military School is a juvenile military school that specializes in training reserve talents for the army and senior military schools, and the requirements for students are very low. As long as you are healthy, you can go to school, and many people can also get special scholarships from France. You almost don’t have to pay tuition, food and accommodation are cheap, and you can even get a little pocket money every month. There is almost no financial pressure to go to school here, which is undoubtedly the best way out for many children from poor families.

Buwanaba is studious, but as an "outsider" from remote and colonial Corsica, he is short and often bullied by other local students, but he has a very tough and tenacious character. Through his unremitting efforts, he often takes the lead in fighting, and finally wins the respect of many local students. During this period, he showed extraordinary talent in mathematics, especially geometry.

His excellent grades also made him finally selected as a "Chinese student", becoming one of the twenty people, and the youngest one.

When he set out from France, Buvanaba had not yet turned sixteen. His father was not in good health at the time, but he still supported his son's journey to the East. Because this is a well-known bright road.

Although France has not really fought with the Chinese, the first army in the European military at this time is still the crown of the Gallic rooster. Even though many people think that the combat effectiveness of the British lobster soldiers and the Prussian army is not weak, France is the first in the European land war.

The Chinese have never fought with France, nor with Britain or Prussia. The Spaniards and the Dutch are all second-rate countries in Europe, and their military combat effectiveness is not even in the forefront of the second-rate. But the Russians also fell under the swords and guns of China.

The combat effectiveness of the Russians is still very good, and the Prussian army also suffered a defeat under their guns in the Seven Years' War.

In the definition of the European continent, Russia, located in the northern ice zone, is a "barbarian". But looking through the history of the East and the West, the combat effectiveness of the "barbarians" has always been strong.

And the main point is that China had advantages in manpower and logistics in several battles with Europeans, except for the war in Southeast Asia. In the earliest war against Russia and the Central, Western and North American war that just ended, the Chinese were at a disadvantage. They won with fewer troops, which greatly improved the value of China's army.

The proud Gallic rooster certainly would not think that the Chinese army was stronger than the French army. The reason why people were sent to study in the military academy in China this time was under the banner of communication and exchange, and more to show the closeness of relations with China and repair the past rifts.

The other 20 students also took the opportunity to truly assess the current situation of the Chinese military.

Over a million regular troops, just thinking about it makes people want to pee in their pants.

How many people are there in the whole of France now?

How much more than this number can be obtained by pulling all the French men of the right age to the battlefield? France's standing army is less than 200,000. The previous war made the number of French army alone reach 200,000, but the war is over, and it is inevitable to cut the army. And the government has this huge financial burden, the number of troops may be lower than before the war.

For a country with a standing army larger than five France combined, Paris needs to know it no matter how far away it is. Don't forget North America, the Chinese are only a few steps away from Louisiana.

Chen Ming, who didn't know that Napoleon Buvanaparte was Napoleon Bonaparte, fully exposed his attribute of being a history novice. He was a person who was half-full of knowledge and didn't know what transliteration was, and didn't know the allusions about Napoleon's name.

Therefore, Emperor Chen had no idea that the future great god, the real son of the plane and the son of luck in the next 30 years, the dwarf emperor who played with a broken wheel, would soon go to the Central Military Academy he established to study.

Moreover, as a poor student with a tight family economy, Emperor Chen had no idea that the three years that the future great god spent in China were not only three years of study, but also three years of working part-time.

Military school students have food allowances, and they don't need money to eat and sleep in school, but they always need money in daily life, right? When Napoleon set out from France, the coins he carried with him were not enough for his three years of consumption.

So he first took advantage of his days off to work and study at school, and when he got familiar with the surrounding area and spoke Chinese more fluently, he extended his working life to the surrounding areas. In this process, Napoleon also had a deeper understanding of Chinese society, Chinese culture, and Chinese traditions, rather than just knowing China militarily.

…

Time came in the twelfth year of Chengtian, which was 1786 in the Western calendar.

This year, something happened in the East and the West. First of all, in the West, the Kingdom of Prussia ushered in uncontrollable grief. In January, two Prussian marshals with outstanding achievements came to the end of their lives. Hans von Lewald, a Prussian marshal, had the feat of blocking the 80,000 Russian troops attacking East Prussia in the east during the Seven Years' War, and also suffered the tragedy of being defeated by the Russian army commanded by Aprashkin in the Battle of Great Jaegersdorf. But no matter what, this is a veteran of Prussia.

Just four days after Marshal Lewald passed away, another Prussian marshal, the famous cavalry general Count Hans Ernst Karl von Zieten, took the last step of his 87-year life.

In the War of the Austrian Succession, Count Zieten, as a major general, led 6,000 Prussian cavalry in the southern section with Lieutenant General Nassau to defeat 7,000 Austrian cavalry. Zieten personally led the elite of the elite of the Prussian cavalry, the 10 squadrons of the Bayreuth Regiment to charge. Within 20 minutes, they captured 9 cannons, 67 flags, and captured 2,500 Austrian soldiers, with only 94 of his own men killed.

He participated in a series of battles in the Seven Years' War, including the Battle of Prague, the Battle of Kolin, the Battle of Leuthen, the Battle of Liegnitz, and the Battle of Torgau. He participated in most of the wars in the 40 years when the Kingdom of Prussia established itself as a European power. His numerous achievements were recorded in the annals of European history as the most capable general under Frederick.

The death of the two veterans plunged Prussia into sorrow, but this was not the point. Two months after the news of the earthquake in Kangding, China, in early May of the lunar calendar reached Nanjing, Frederick the Great, who led the Kingdom of Prussia to quickly leap into the ranks of European powers in just two or three decades, also closed his eyes forever after 46 years of succession.

This is a great event.

Frederick II was a famous military strategist, politician, writer and composer in European history. He ascended the throne in 1740. He launched the Silesian War twice. In 1756, he launched the Seven Years' War against the Kingdom of France, the Russian Empire and the Austrian Empire. The lucky victory made the international status of the Kingdom of Prussia on the European continent have a qualitative improvement. In 1772, he took advantage of the internal crisis of Poland to divide the territory of Poland for the first time with the Russian Empire and the Austrian Empire, and obtained the territory of West Prussia. In 1785, he formed a league of princes consisting of 15 German federal states. He died in Potsdam in 1786.

He was a representative of "enlightened despotism" in Europe. He made great achievements in politics, economy, philosophy, law, and even music, and was an important figure in the Enlightenment. Under his iron-fisted rule, Prussia's national strength rose rapidly, and in a very short time it became one of the European powers.

It can be said that Frederick II is one of the templates of "wise rulers" in the monotheistic world of Europe. If Napoleon had not ended in failure, he would have been a grassroots struggle version of Frederick II.

The two people's times were so close, but even so, Napoleon's dazzling light that made people unable to look directly at it could not completely cover the figure of Frederick II.

This is a figure engraved in the entire history of Europe. His death can be said to be the end of an era.

In the world history of later generations, the biggest and most important events that happened in the West and the West in 1786, the 12th year of Chengtian in the Han calendar, were the death of Frederick II in the West and Chen Ming's attack on Annan in the East.

…

Since the 11th year of Chengtian, the situation in Annan has been somewhat unstable.

Whether it is North Zheng, South Nguyen, or the remnant Qing, all kinds of problems have arisen on the road of political reform.

South Nguyen is a standard political reformer, taking the capital road, and constitutional monarchy is a major premise. Russia, Germany, Japan, and even the Qing Dynasty and Siam in the original time and space history are its teachers.

However, although the Southern Nguyen royal family succumbed to Nanjing and played a constitutional monarchy, it was no different from cutting off his flesh to let a monarch of a country deeply influenced by Chinese traditional culture voluntarily give up his power, even if it was not completely given up, and only a small part was given up at the beginning.

However, the Southern Nguyen official group, which was deeply influenced by Confucianism, was like chicken blood. Isn’t this constitutional monarchy similar to the "holy emperor ruling with ease"?

So the Southern Nguyen messed up. Fortunately, the Tây Sơn army did not dare to attack the Southern Nguyen again, otherwise the Southern Nguyen would have really softened.

And if the Southern Nguyen was an internal power struggle, and both sides could not be ruthless because there was a mountain pressing on their heads, but instead formed a situation of "fighting but not breaking" under necessity.

Then the Northern Zheng, which took the national capital route, was the real "capital" route that had problems. They were too capital and too monopolistic.

After the reform, the economy of Beizheng had a certain development at the beginning. However, many private enterprises had backers behind them and were closely or distantly related to the military and political groups, while the old-fashioned merchants were eliminated one after another.

When the emerging monopoly economy reached a certain scale, they began to expand into other industries. They began to eat small fish and merged constantly. From the beginning, they were all relatively profitable industries, such as salt industry and grain export, and then quickly expanded to all aspects of life, just as Marx described "capital" in Capital: capitalism came to the world, and every pore from head to toe was dripping with dirty blood and dirty things!

There are many minerals in Annan, but most of them are in the north, especially in the north of the Red River, which is now occupied by the remnant of the Qing Dynasty. The minerals in the jurisdiction of Beizheng are mainly coal and iron, which are all taken by the government for themselves, and they are taken for themselves by force. Did the Beizheng court have loans from China? They knew that to be strong, they must develop steel and military industry. In addition to these, the most impressive thing about the economy of Beizheng is that salt, sugar, grain, iron, cloth and other daily necessities are "monopolized" by the government.

It is difficult to say who influenced whom in this regard, Beizheng and the remnant Qing Dynasty. Anyway, both sides started with this kind of "state monopoly" economy. And it was a large-scale government monopoly.

Relatively speaking, Beizheng has not played as thoroughly as the remnant Qing Dynasty. The latter even incorporated paper and medicinal materials into the monopoly model.

There is no way, people are greedy, not to mention the state capital route of Beizheng that has gone astray. In the past two years, I have not seen Beizheng concentrate its efforts on doing big things, but on the contrary, it has entered the economic field on a large scale, and the government and business have been completely combined.

How did the state capital route and even state monopoly capital come into being in history?

That was when the Western world was facing the threat of war - World War I, when the national government began to intervene in economic activities, allowing capital to have initial development. There are some state-owned and semi-state-owned enterprises in the Western world. In order to prepare for war, some countries have expanded their fiscal budgets and increased military procurement. They have built or expanded steel mills, shipyards and other military factories through state investment or nationalization. These are the embryonic forms of state monopoly capitalism. Their emergence is based on the fact that capitalist European society has already developed and accumulated to a certain extent.

It is completely different from Beizheng.

The political reform in Beizheng was completely forcibly catalyzed by Chen Ming. It is a distorted political system developed on the basis of agricultural society.

In the end, Beizheng's route was biased towards the "monopoly business" of making profits.

The final consequence of such a result is that the economy in Beizheng is gradually declining.