Ye Xin couldn't help but worry about the current situation, his Third Town Army was originally 40,000 people, 20,000 heavy cavalry, 20,000 light infantry troops, all equipped with 647 and 648 rifles and grenade launchers and other light weapons, after the expansion, 20,000 cavalry battalions were added, but they were only equipped with cold weapons and a small number of grenade explosives, so these 20,000 could only be hand-to-hand combat.

And that's not even counting that, except for the Zhoukong Town Army, all the town armies were equipped with only four artillery brigades. Among the four artillery brigades, there was only one seventy-two-pound heavy artillery brigade and a cannon mixed brigade, each with 54 four guns, and three squadrons under its jurisdiction, each squadron under three squadrons.

The three artillery brigades in Zhoukong, two are all 645 modified rapid-fire heavy artillery brigades, one cannon brigade, and two 649 type 80 milli mortar brigades, with fast rate of fire, great power, and fully automated weapons of 20,000 infantry troops.

On the other hand, Ye Xin is nominally four artillery brigades and two mortar squadrons, but in fact, only two percent of the 645 rapid-fire guns have been modified and upgraded, and the rest are breech guns, and the rifles have to be loaded one shot, and the shotgun range is close, and the front is tough with 60,000 people, and the enemy is no more than the rifle in the hands of 20,000 armpit people.

This is only the difference in firearms, the number is not in the same order of magnitude at all, Ye Xin roughly estimated the number of guns used as ships by armpit people, no less than 1,300 guns, even if only one side of the artillery fired, there were nearly 700 guns.

Excluding supply ships and warships, there are at least 500 artillery pieces that can be used for coastal attacks, and all of them are heavy guns moving at sea, although the range is comparable to that of the medium artillery of the Xian army, and the power is also less, but it cannot withstand the numerical suppression advantage.

Putting Zhoukong's elite town army on the second line, Ye Xin was very dissatisfied. No matter how much you protect your wife, you can't be so protective.

At this time, Bai Liyan saw Ye Xin's emotions, and he comforted him

"General Ye must not be able to figure it out."

"Yes, I can't figure it out, the Eighth Town Army is so well-equipped, why should it be placed on the second line, the focus of the landing operation is the anti-landing, and the armpit people will be repelled on the beach, if they gain a firm foothold, and then try to drive them into the sea, it will be extremely troublesome."

"What the general said is extremely true, but the general only knows one thing, not the other. The armpit man's attack on Sangbei is fake, and the intention is to use the fleet in front of him to lure the main force of our navy to intercept its landing, and at the same time, there is also an elite fleet of armpit man in the open sea, if our navy comes to the rescue, it will be wiped out by them.

After our navy was annihilated, it would immediately pounce on Guangxin, and at the same time, our country misjudged that its landing site was in Sangbei, and it would take a month and a half for the troops and horses to gather the main force here, but they were able to take advantage of the weakness to attack Guangxin. Guangxin is the largest port in the North Sea, once Guangxin is lost, the consequences are even more sinister. ”

"But Guangxin is as solid as a rock, and there are huge cannons in the fortress to guard it, and the armpit people dare to approach."

"That being said, if the armpit man had rapid-fire cannons, it would be a different story. Moreover, attacking sea moving targets by land is very passive, so once the armpit people achieve an overwhelming advantage in the number of artillery and the rate of fire, the fortress will be reduced to a sea of fire.

The reason why General Ye's headquarters was placed on the front line was to give the armpit people the illusion that the main force of our army was gathering, and at the same time, it was also necessary to set up suspicious soldiers to make them think that our country had gathered more than 200,000 main forces here.

At the same time, our navy was delayed, and it continued to land and fight, and finally the feint attack turned into a real attack, and then the Eighth Town Army pressed on it again and gave them color. Only in this way can we deter its ambitions in a short period of time and force it to abandon its attack on our country, so as to gain more time to develop domestic economic construction and produce more equipment and weapons. ”

"In that case, Ben will do as he is told."

"General Ye can rest assured that as long as he is well prepared, digging fortifications and bunkers, and evacuating the people, casualties can be avoided to the greatest extent. The day after tomorrow, I will personally go to Qianmianshui, Sheping, and Gaojun to inspect the battle defenses and allocate equipment, so that the armpit people will not yet attack on a large scale, and they are still waiting for the decisive battle of the main force of our navy, so there is still time. ”

The normal thinking of landing operations should be to strike at the enemy's weak links along the coast and carry out beach-rushing landings.

However, the armpit people relied on their powerful physiology and weaponry, and misjudged the communication speed and transportation ability of human beings, so their strategic principle was still to give priority to the annihilation of human elite living forces. Even if they knew that the armaments of the Xian State were comparable to theirs, they could only do this.

This is because it takes three months for basic training and six months to nine months for tactical training to train a modernly equipped army, and the army after the completion of the training is at best a new army with combat capability, and it is necessary to have solid combat effectiveness, fighting will, combat experience, and the army's traditional work style, and it needs to go through bloody battles and accumulation of experience, and this process can be as little as two or three years or as long as five or six years.

However, the basic training of recruits in the traditional cold-weapon army is at least half a year, and the intensive training and tactical training take 18 months, and it will take several years of fighting and bloodshed to become a veteran army with firm combat effectiveness, and it will take no less than 10 to 15 years to develop a cold-weapon infantry army that is brave and good at fighting.

Once experienced veterans and brave warriors are consumed by the war, and the basic military attachés lose serious blood, the further the war is fought, the quality of the soldiers, combat skills, organization, and morale will plummet like a cliff, even if the number of soldiers after that is several times that before the war, the combat effectiveness and will to fight may not even be half of the original.

Coupled with the longevity of the armpit people, they have accumulated a large number of veterans, even veterans who have fought for a hundred or two years.

Therefore, the strategy of the armpit people is to destroy the living combat power of the human race, even if the Xian army is not easy to deal with, they still need to give priority to annihilating the Xian army.

On 17 August, Bai Liyan inspected the battle readiness of Lingcheng, hoarded materials and ammunition, and rushed to Sheping on the 18th to inspect the war readiness work.

Mianshui, Sheping, and Gaojun are the three inland main cities along the northern coast of Sangbei, and each of the three places has seven to thirteen counties under its jurisdiction, and the cities are still adobe city walls, and the height does not exceed two zhang.

After the Sangbei riots subsided, they fell into wartime panic, and there were not a few people who could not escape, and the Changsun Gaochu County in the west was affected by the news of the defeat in the north, and there was already a wave of refugees, and in July and January alone, more than 30,000 people fled with their families to Sangbei and Shutian counties.

From 20 to 26 August, Bai Liyan inspected the counties of Mianshui and Gaojun one after another, and the war preparations were carried out in a rather hasty manner, and only half of the trenches, cat's ear holes, and anti-artillery holes outside the city were excavated, and most of the local auxiliary soldiers, except for a few who had been resettled by the retired Xian army, were recruited and reappointed locally and the local people who had been left behind by the former eldest grandson.

Not only are these people lazy, they don't work hard, they always have a careless attitude, no matter what they drive.

On the twenty-eighth day of August, on the 24th day of the appearance of the armpit fleet in Sangbei County, news came from Leicheng, Pucheng, and Guangxin one after another, and the naval ships of the armpit people were sporadically found on the sea, wandering on the ocean 300 miles away.

Ordinary military high-powered telescopes are not visible at all, and it is thought that the armpit people have discovered that human beings have mastered the lens technology, so they will hide in the far open sea to monitor and search for the navy of the Xian State.

But they never imagined that Bailiyan customized a home-type astronomical telescope, put it into the sky with a hot air balloon, and looked at the open sea at a height of 1,000 meters.

After the initial tension throughout August, it seemed unusually calm, Bailiyan successively used tents to build a large number of barracks within 80 miles of the coast, and transferred a large number of auxiliary soldiers and civilian workers from Sangbei Nanjun to be suspicious soldiers, so camouflaged hundreds of thousands of people, and in September, when the royal guests arrived, they concocted more than 100,000 people in the same way, and easily gathered the main army of "four or five hundred thousand".

The armpit fleet continued to wander the coastal waters, and as expected, it did not rush to land, but kept observing the coastal landscape of Sangbuk County, looking for the most suitable landing site.

Due to the recent continuous heavy rains, which were very unfavorable for its landing and the use of equipment, Bai Liyan judged that if the weather improved in early September, if he could not wait for the Xianguo navy, he would either take the initiative to retreat and pretend to retreat, or force the Xianguo navy to show up as planned.

On the fifth day of the first month of September, when the heavy rain for nearly half a month gradually stopped, and the weather cleared, the Mianshui Xianjun Army came to report that the armpit man fleet suddenly changed its formation, and it was suspected that it was making preparations before landing.

In the afternoon of the same day, another report came to report that the armpit fleet dispatched 73 ships and divided into two routes, all the way to the Bund of Jiaoping County, north of Mianshui City, and all the way to the Mianshui River, in an attempt to take advantage of the afternoon dawn to land after dark, and use its nighttime infrared vision to launch a night raid on the Xian army, and the battle began at dusk that day.

The armpit warship was the first to sail into the mouth of the Mianshui River, but a 13,000-stone battleship hit a mine and sank to the bottom of the river in only two quarters of an hour, blocking the channel, and four battleships were blocked in the river.

Camouflaged that the artillery of the Xian army was arranged within five miles of both sides of the strait, the armpit fleet was unexpected, the fleet turned around and fell into confusion, and a quarter of an hour later the two armies engaged in an artillery battle, and the artillery battle lasted for half an hour, and the Xian army was defeated, and after sinking six ships and damaging five, they withdrew from the battlefield according to the pre-war arrangements, and the armpit men had no choice but to force the landing on the Bund and go ashore.

At the same time as the Mianshui River was fired, Jiaoping County, which was built by the sea, was subjected to continuous shelling, and the Xian army had no artillery fortification, only the fake artillery camouflaged and painted on the logs bluffed, so they failed to fire back.

The armpit fleet fired a large number of solid projectiles, destroying the north wall of the county in only two and a half hours, and after dark, it was changed to shrapnel and flowering shells to cover the landing of its infantry overnight, and the Xian army withdrew from the north of the city into the east, west, and south of the city, and turned to trench fortifications and prepared for positional battles with the Xian army outside the city.

The enemy who landed on the Mianshui River successfully landed that night, and the enemy in Jiaoping fell into the mud, and the landing was very unsmooth.

Bailiyan judged that Jiao Ping and Mianshui were only feints, and strictly ordered all localities to pay close attention to the war and not to reinforce without authorization.

On the sixth day of the first month of September, the number of enemy troops who landed in Mianshui reached more than 1,600 in one night, and the number of enemies in front of Jiaoping increased to more than 2,000.

On the 6th, 7th, 8th, and 94th, more than 5,000 people landed in armpits, and a total of 9,000 people landed on the shore, and Bailiyan deduced that the ships carried at least 60,000 troops and more than 60,000 people, and the 9,000 people were only one-seventh.

The intention of not continuing to increase troops and advance has been clear, and the first line of Jiaoping and Mianshui River is not its key landing site, and it is still focusing on feints at present, cooperating with the navy to put pressure on the Xianguo and forcing the Xianguo navy to rush to the rescue.

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