The situation of the "Queen Elizabeth" in Halifax Harbor was about the same as the French expected. Although Khalifa Sachs is the most important British naval base in North America, when it comes to port facilities, it still cannot be compared with the port on its own. At most, it is a cruiser-class warship, and a warship like the "Queen Elizabeth" is difficult to maintain well.

"A large part of the Navy's strength comes from the ports that support it. If there are no suitable ports, if the ports do not have the ability to maintain warships, then the combat effectiveness of the Navy will be greatly reduced. Once the ships of the Navy are damaged in battle, they cannot be effectively restored. So what looks like a powerful fleet becomes a kind of disposable fleet. In fact, the naval fleets of other countries in the world today, with the exception of us and the French, can basically be counted as disposable fleets. This is due to the fact that once they participate in the battle, they will inevitably suffer damage, and their damage cannot be recovered, so the fleet will have full combat effectiveness only in the first battle. And after an important battle, the entire fleet loses its combat effectiveness. In fact, if we move away from Europe, in North America, our British fleet, to a large extent, has also become a 'disposable fleet'...... I have heard that the French have quite luxurious port facilities in New Orleans, with facilities for the maintenance of the 'Anbrado-class' battleships, and the French are again ahead of us in this respect, and if our army and the French fleet are at war in North America, our disadvantage will be even more obvious. In addition, in today's world, the general backwardness of the coastal defense system is also a big problem, especially the batteries in the military port, because of the backward equipment, many times do not have the ability to fight enemy warships......" Nelson wrote down some such words in his notebook, and then sighed and put down the pen.

A few days ago, he received an order from the country to be sent by clipper. The domestic command fleet led the fleet back to the mainland as soon as possible after sending the land to Canada. Although the letter does not explicitly state the situation on the mainland. But Nelson could have imagined on his heels that it must be those French who were making trouble for the United Kingdom again.

Today, the "Queen Elizabeth" has not been completely repaired, and in fact, in Halifax Harbor, the "Queen Elizabeth" will never be repaired. The British still haven't figured out what the explosion was all about. However, because when the "Queen Elizabeth" was built, it adopted a compartment design. So although a hole was blown under the ship. However, because the compartment was closed in time, the amount of water entering was not much. The ship was just slightly rolled.

When they arrived in Halifax, the British plugged the big hole from the bomb from the outside, and then used a water pump to pump out the water in the cabin. So, just look at the roll and disappear.

However, due to the lack of equipment in Halifax, the temporary patch was not tight, and the water leakage was quite serious, and the pumping machine always needed to be turned on non-stop. And this patch is not strong enough, if you encounter high sea conditions, the probability of patch problems is very high.

But that's the limit of what Halifax's maintenance force can do. So the "Queen Elizabeth" could only return home sick.

Because of the fear that the speed of the ship would be too high, it would cause damage to the patch, so the speed of the "Queen Elizabeth" was limited to less than six knots, so the speed of the entire fleet was slowed down by the old virgin. All at once their speed dropped to the age of sails.

By the time the British fleet arrived in Halifax, the USS Free Trade and USS Common Market, which had been leased to the US Navy, had already received radio information from the French cruisers that were tracking the British fleet all the way. They left Cabot Strait and returned to New Orleans for overhaul.

The two ships even approached Halifax under the flag of the American army. The last time they passed through Halifax, they already knew that the Halifax battery was still using old artillery, so the Halifax battery had nothing to fear. One of the obvious weaknesses of steam-powered ships is that it takes a long time for the boiler to start - boiling water does not boil in an instant, and even more so for the boiler of a steam engine. If the British were unprepared and the warship's boilers were not pressurized, it meant that they could be left without power for nearly an hour. In such a situation, although the British fleet was far stronger than the two French supercruisers, the French could also take advantage of their vulnerable time to beat them up as the American Navy.

Because both the "Free Trade" and the "Common Market" are steam-powered warships, and when they sail, there will be black smoke. The enemy could rely on this black smoke to detect them at a considerable distance and thus prepare in advance, so the French chose to approach the port at dawn. However, as they approached the harbor, they were spotted by a patrol ship arranged by the British, and Nelson had long been alert to such situations.

The British patrol ship shot alarm fireworks into the sky as it charged towards the two supercruisers, trying to buy more time for the fleet in the harbor with their fearless attacks.

The outcome of this British patrol ship was no different from that of the American patrol ship that attacked the British fleet outside the port of Savannah. The French cannons easily turned the British ship into a flaming torch.

However, the sacrifice of the British patrol ships did buy time for their fleet, and by the time the two "American warships" approached Halifax, some of the British warships had already left the harbor and began to line up outside the harbor. There were more plumes of smoke rising inside the harbor - apparently, the plan to beat the British while they were burning the boilers had failed.

So the two American warships were out of range of the British, made a light turn, and then headed south.

As for the British fleet, they did not try to pursue - none of their ships, could not catch up with these two "American warships".

A few days later, Nelson said goodbye to General Wellesley and embarked on the long journey back to England with the fleet.

Just as the British fleet was leaving, in the United States, a rumor was spreading like wildfire. The rumor claimed that the US federal government had sent a special envoy to Europe. But the mission of this special envoy is not to win the support of European countries for the United States, but to make peace with the British government.

The rumor said that the U.S. federal government, after a series of successive defeats, had completely lost confidence in victory, and was preparing to ask the King of England for forgiveness for daring to offend Britain at the cost of land reparations and the unconditional opening of markets to Britain.

In fact, no one with a little brain, who knows the situation of the British today, would believe such rumors. In the present state of Britain, the Americans are willing to sue for peace and end the conflict, and the British are afraid that they will pinch their thighs with joy. Where will the Americans still need to pay compensation for land cession or something.

But there is a prerequisite for being able to make such a judgment, and this premise is that the person who makes the judgment must have a brain. However, among Americans, at least among those of that era, there were not many people with brains. Especially in those states in the South.

This is actually normal, plantation owners, because of their old-fashioned production lifestyle, so that they are generally relatively dirty turtles, and they know little about the changes in the outside world. A direct consequence of a closed life is that the brain becomes dumb. It's like the American red necks of later generations, who told them that they could inject disinfectant, and they really believed that they could inject disinfectant.

The second is that the South suffered badly in this war. Yes, originally the war seemed to be a matter of the North. But what I never expected was that the British Navy actually killed from the south, and they killed people and set fire to Sanguang along the coastline along the way, causing heavy losses to the south.

Because the mines purchased by the federal government later played a very big role, so that the British army never succeeded in completing the victory like Savannah, but when the mines were delivered, many southern states were already ravaged by the British.

The guys in the South don't think that the North is getting less attacked because they have bought more mines, and they think that the reason why the cities on the northern coast are being attacked less is because there are more troops in the North. And the northern army is more, because the federal government has transferred the troops of the southern states to the north, so the southern states have no troops at all, of course, they can only let the British wreak havoc.

Now that the South has paid such a big sacrifice, the federal government is actually going to betray the country?! This is simply what the uncle can bear, but the aunt can't bear it!

As a result, a large number of media reporters surrounded Jefferson, asking him if he wanted to make peace with the British, and even did not hesitate to cede land to the British for reparations.

Jefferson certainly knew that at this time, as long as he showed any intention of wanting to compromise with the British, he would immediately usher in a political storm, not to mention that if he really wanted to make peace with the British, Georgia would immediately declare its secession from the Union.

So President Jefferson, of course, immediately denied it, telling reporters that the British had gained a little upper hand for the time being by despicably attacking civilians. But the American people, blessed by God, will surely win the final victory. As for the envoys he sent, there was absolutely no contact with the British. His actions in Europe are all about gaining more support.

However, President Jefferson's statement did not reassure the American people, because all kinds of rumors continued to emerge. This continued until Spear, the president's envoy, returned from Europe and brought back various overt and secret treaties he had signed with the French, Spanish, and Irish.

Those secret treaties certainly cannot be made public, as the Americans are fighting in Spain today; But mere treaties that could be made public, such as an alliance with the Irish, made it clear that the president's envoys were indeed working to win the war, not to surrender on their knees.

This, of course, freed President Jefferson from the suspicion of being a "traitor to the United States." But in order to get rid of this suspicion, President Jefferson had to exaggerate a little bit of the diplomatic support he had received, such as the fact that the Irish would launch a massive counterattack to win independence once and for all. And this exaggeration also makes the American people believe that they will definitely win. As a result, peace talks are less likely.

Of course, it is not all an exaggeration that the Irish will launch a massive counterattack, and after the previous defeat, the Irish have recently received a lot of assistance, and they do need to conduct an offensive operation to improve their offensive strength and boost their morale.

However, this offensive was not a "large-scale", "decisive battle" level operation as advertised by the Americans. Neither President Russell, nor their French friends, thought that the time was ripe for such an action. This is evident from the fact that the operation was named "Study Plan".

In short, the plan of attack was actually quite limited, and that was to constantly attack the Trans-Irish Railway, and eventually make it impossible to sustain the side of the Railway.

"This railway of the British is a noose around our necks. But the railway line was so long that it was impossible for them to maintain enough troops at any one point. Now that we have more weapons, our ability to attack the fortifications has been significantly strengthened. We don't yet have the ability to quickly take the strongest core positions, but we do have the ability to quickly destroy a few small strongholds, destroy a section of the railway, and take advantage of the opportunity to send small reinforcements before they can react. "How long can we keep the railroad going on if we carry out such an attack every day on the railroad line, killing a few, a dozen, dozens, or even more British soldiers?" ”

The reason why Russell has such confidence is largely due to the fact that they got another new weapon from the French - light infantry artillery.

It was a flat-firing gun designed with a series of weight reductions, such as a short 60 mm barrel (which made it have a limited muzzle velocity and a relatively curved trajectory), and a longer 40 mm barrel. And each part needs to be able to be quickly disassembled and carried by the soldier.

Although the relatively short barrel makes the muzzle velocity of this gun not high enough, it is after all an authentic flat-fire gun, used to hit pillboxes and the like, and has a longer range, higher accuracy and rate of fire than recoilless guns. Even, if necessary, with a long barrel of 40 mm caliber, this thing could be used to ambush the armored trains of the British from a relatively safe distance.