China** has always been opposed to opium smuggling, but because of the huge benefits, it has repeatedly banned it. In the early years of Qianlong, opium was imported into about 400 boxes per year, with each box being 100 catties. In the early years of Jiaqing, the import had increased by about 10 times, reaching about 4,000 boxes.
Emperor Daoguang was most worried about the dangers of opium and had the most positive attitude towards the ban on smoking. But during his reign, opium imports rose the most. In the early years of Daoguang (1821), about 5,000 boxes of opium were imported, and by the fifteenth year of Daoguang (1836), it reached 30,000 boxes, with a commercial value of about 18 million yuan.
People of insight have seen the harm caused by China's use of such huge sums of money in exchange for harmful opium, and everyone believes that opium smuggling is a scourge that affects the national economy and the people's livelihood.
Although there were various opinions on the handling of opium in society at the time, Emperor Daoguang tended to support the idea that traffickers were more hateful than smokers, and that Guangzhou, as a major source of opium smuggling, should be banned at the source.
Based on the above views, Emperor Daoguang appointed Lin Zexu as the minister of the Imperial Mission at the end of 1838 and went to Guangzhou to ban smoking.
After Lin Zexu arrived in Guangzhou, he ordered foreigners to hand over all opium and asked them to write a letter of guarantee that they would never smuggle opium to China in the future. The British are already familiar with the corruption of China's **, and this time they underestimated Lin Zexu's determination and courage, thinking that he was just bluffing, just asking for a sky-high price. As long as the price is negotiated, the future purchase and sale will still be the same.
Therefore, after receiving Lin Zexu's edict, none of the foreigners really took action, but waited and watched and passively resisted.
After more than 20 days of stalemate between the two sides, Lin Zexu issued an order, sent troops to cut off water and land communications, and surrounded the thirteen lines, demanding that all the Chinese in the line withdraw and cut off water and food. In this way, the Thirteen Lines became a prison for foreigners.
At that time, there were about 350 foreigners enclosed in the Thirteen Lines, including the British commercial superintendent Yilu. In desperation, they had no choice but to give in.
However, the righteous law played a trick. He asked the foreign merchants to hand over the opium to him first, and to each person to issue receipts, and then Yilu handed it over to Lin Zexu in the name of the British commercial overseer. In this way, the opium of the British merchants became the property of the British Empire.
Yilu handed over a total of 20,280 boxes of opium, weighing more than 2 million catties. Lin Zexu destroyed all this opium in Humen.
In July of the same year, in Tsim Sha Tsui Village, Kowloon, Hong Kong, British sailors drunk ** and killed villager Lin Weixi. Lin Zexu asked Yilu to hand over ** and kill people. However, Yilu himself sentenced the five sailors involved to prison and fines, and sent them back to the British prison to serve their sentences.
After Lin Zexu found out the truth, he ordered a ban on everything on August 15, 1839, sent troops into Macao, and further expelled the British from the country, stopped the food of the British, and removed their compradors and merceries. Soon the British evacuated Macao and took up residence on cargo ships.
After that, British warships had a number of skirmishes with the Cantonese naval division at the mouth of the Pearl River. Lin Zexu reported to the imperial court that "seven battles and seven victories", which objectively fueled the optimism of the imperial court.
Lin Zexu has always been full of confidence when negotiating with the British, because he believes that the British eat too much beef, which leads to serious constipation, and if there is no Chinese tea and rhubarb imports, the British will not be able to live. As long as the British are choked, there is no reason why China will not win.
Lin Zexu is really cute.
On October 1, 1839, the British Cabinet made the decision to "send a fleet to the China Sea" on the grounds that commerce was hindered and the lives of British people were threatened. Yilu led 47 ships** and more than 4,000 marines to China to provoke.
The British fleet first blocked the mouth of the Pearl River, and when it saw that Guangdong was heavily guarded, it turned to Zhejiang and captured Dinghai. Dinghai was the first city captured by the British during the Opium War, and it was also the first battle in modern history in which a Western army occupied Chinese territory.
But in fact, Dinghai was not armed, so people at that time thought that Britain was invincible. And the British ** team gave up Guangzhou and attacked Dinghai, which shows that the British are afraid of Lin Zexu.
As a result, Lin Zexu's prestige became even greater.
But after the British captured Dinghai and turned to Dagukou, Qing ** panicked and sent Qishan to negotiate with the British. Qi Shan was one of the few smart people at that time, and he found that the British ships were strong and artillery, far from being able to resist the Qing army, so he decided to pacify the enemy. In the end, he persuaded Yilu to withdraw from Dinghai through negotiations.
Emperor Daoguang saw that Qi Shan had persuaded the British to withdraw with just one mouth, so he disliked Lin Zexu's troubles. So, according to the request of the British, Lin Zexu was dismissed from his post and ordered Qi Shan to go to Guangdong to replace him.
After Qi Shan arrived in Guangdong, he found that the British had a great appetite and demanded to pay reparations, cede Hong Kong or open a commercial port.
This kind of major event of losing power and humiliating the country, ** is what Qi Shan can do. Although Qi Shan privately believed that it would be more affordable to open a commercial port than to cede Hong Kong, he could not agree to anything, so he could only grind slowly with the British. Yilu couldn't afford to wait, so he went to war again.
At the time of this war, Lin Zexu had already been dismissed. Originally, when Lin Zexu was in Guangzhou, the British wanted to bypass Guangzhou to fight Dinghai, Zhejiang, but this time Lin Zexu was gone, and the British were asking for compensation and land in Guangzhou to beat us.
Therefore, the British are not invincible, but Lin Zexu is not there.
Lin Zexu's luck is really good, he provoked an incident, but he never really confronted the British ** team head-on, and perfectly preserved his reputation.
If Lin Zexu had confronted the British army head-on in Guangzhou, a fiasco would have been a high probability event based on the comparison of Chinese and British military strength at that time. At that time, will he still be honored as a national hero by future generations?