"Your brigade?" As soon as Liu Chang saw Yu Lingdong, he could only sigh: "Old Yu, you are also an old man during the Yueqing Uprising, can you grow a little ......?"

Anyway, Yu Lingdong's qualifications are here, and such a big faction as the teaching regiment and the reserve brigade is also here, Liu Chang had to be appeased a little: "Fortunately, there was no big leak this time, but I just lost some equipment and the remains of the martyrs, and the wounded and troops were withdrawn, so I don't care about you for the time being, but ......"

Liu Chang's tone became intimidating: "The number of the reserve brigade cannot be retained for the time being, and it will be temporarily reduced to an infantry regiment.

This is the first downsizing incident in the history of the Hong Army, and it was reduced from an old infantry brigade to an infantry regiment, but Yu Lingdong could only express his emotion: "Thank you for giving us such a chance to turn over, please rest assured, our reserve brigade will definitely fight back!"

"That's right!" Liu Chang said loudly on the horse: "We must fight back." ”

During this period of time, it is not only necessary to wait for the movement of the troops of the First Division to be in place, but also to move up the Hongjun units located in various prefectures and counties in Zhejiang Province, and at the same time to replenish the units that have suffered large losses in this campaign.

At the same time, skirmishes continued to be frequent, with both sides expressing their intention to negotiate through the Westerners in Shanghai on the one hand, and attempting to make a small slot of money on the battlefield on the other, and as for the consequences, both sides had nearly 1,000 casualties in three weeks.

However, all this was not known to His Excellency Muravyov, the Governor-General of Eastern Siberia, who would never agree to St. Petersburg's plan if he could get some definite information on the Chinese battlefield.

Even nothing is known about the actual situation on the Chinese battlefield. With only some early successes, Muravyov's brows were still tightly locked, and a noble colonel next to him was already impatiently putting pressure on Muravyov: "The ship is ready, if you don't send troops to China now, then there is no hope of sending troops to China this year!"

The Russian Empire in this time and space has not yet obtained such a perfect ice-free port as Vladivostok, and the ports they control are to be stopped in winter, so it is urgent to send troops to China. If you miss the present, you can only wait for the thaw next year.

Seeing that the governor did not react, the colonel Andrei could only exert a little more pressure: "Your Excellency, St. Petersburg has agreed to all your requests, a native army will be sent to the Far East, and St. Petersburg's request is only to send five hundred more reinforcements......"

"That's right. This will be the last batch of reinforcements from East Siberia to the Chinese side this year!" Muravyov agrees: "I'm just worried about whether St. Petersburg will be able to send reinforcements from Europe in time......"

The reason why he offered the price of an army was completely to intimidate those domestic bureaucrats, but he never expected that those bureaucrats would actually agree, not only agreed, but also happily promised that this infantry army would be the most abundant and well-equipped infantry army in Russia's history.

Muravyov still has an illusory feeling that before the Crimean War, he had gone to great lengths to ask the state to increase its investment in the Far East, but in the end the bureaucrats did not take the Far East seriously at all. And now, when the whole country is entering the most difficult time, these bureaucratic masters suddenly have the idea and are willing to send an infantry army to the Far East. ..., how difficult it would be to launch such an expedition in the absence of railways, and Muravyov even doubted that the finances of the entire country would be squeezed clean, which was not a good thing for the Russian Empire.

You know, outside the Crimea. Russia is already on the verge of both economic and political collapse. According to Muravyov's understanding, not only Finland and Poland are showing signs of moving. There are even signs of skirmishes in the once mighty conquered Caucasus.

Even though he was one of the most powerful men in the empire, he expressed great confusion about the current situation: "Colonel Andrei, I will transfer the troops promised to St. Petersburg to Shanghai as soon as possible, but I want to know one thing, that is, why St. Petersburg would be willing to transfer an infantry corps to the Far East!"

He knew that this Colonel Andrei, this was a true son of nobility, and the history of their family could be traced all the way back to Peter the Great, and after the Great Patriotic War, they were one of the most powerful families in the country, this colonel, who was only twenty-eight years old, had been in the army for twenty-eight years.

True, the colonel had served in the Guards from the day he was born and was constantly promoted with age, which was the most reasonable practice for the nobility of the Russian Empire, the best expression of patriotism.

And Colonel Andrei had his own channels of information, and he lowered his voice and said: "Your Excellency, you should know that the system of the sacred state for which we once fought is to some extent no longer sustainable, whether in Finland, Poland or in the mainland, there are all kinds of criticism......"

By what he called the "sacred state system", he naturally said that the serfdom that had been completely integrated with the entire Russian Empire and the Russian aristocracy over the past few hundred years, but this serfdom, with its astonishing vitality, was on the verge of collapse due to the defeat in the Crimean War.

"I know ......" Muravyov's tone was heavy: "There must be a change in the country!"

Even the most conservative aristocracy had to admit that serfdom Russia had to change, as Peter the Great did, but the question was how to change, to which Colonel Andrei replied: "Yes, it must be changed, but change cannot be an excuse for a civil war, and after the Crimean War, the whole country was already in a crater......"

Not to mention the different opinions of the various strata on the reform, that is, the disagreement on the reform within the strata, and even between the big nobles and the big nobles, it was enough to start a hundred civil wars, Colonel Andrei continued: "Reform is necessary, but it takes time, but what Russia lacks now is time!"

Muravyov had already understood that this was the inevitable choice of the bureaucrats, to launch a war of conquest in the Far East, to transfer the elements of instability abroad, and to get a good booty, and he admitted that it was a good choice, and he just wanted to ask the question: "Can St. Petersburg really send an infantry corps?" Is this as simple as a newspaper headline? ”

"France will help!" Colonel Andrei smiled: "We are negotiating a loan with France. ”

Muravyov nodded: "In that case, I agree to send two and a half thousand to China...... No, in order to please the lords of St. Petersburg, I can add a thousand more soldiers. ”

"The French will be very satisfied, too!" Colonel Andrei continued: "Russia is in dire need of a loan from the French to support it......"

In another time and place, since the Crimean War, the fate of the whole of Russia has been closely linked to the old enemy of France, whose factories, railways, roads and all construction undertakings are inextricably linked to the gold franc loan, and the collapse of Russia in the First World War also marked the complete collapse of the entire French rentier class. ..., and in this plane, the combination of the two will be faster and more violent.

……

Fierce clashes have erupted along the entire border between Shanghai and Taiku, but in the fierce clashes between the two sides, a large number of Western merchants can still be seen, who are now under the banner of Britain, the United States, or other countries, selling all the goods that can be used and what cannot be used to the two sides of the war.

The French tried to close the way for these Western merchants to sell supplies to the Hongjun-controlled areas, but they soon discovered that this was impossible, not only would Shanghai be a dead port, but also that the British and Americans might be involved in the war, and they were forced to make concessions as long as the Westerners did not sell arms and strategic supplies.

But many times, these Western merchants would sell the French troops some goods at very inappropriate prices, and even if they were not military goods, these merchants would tell the quartermaster that if the French did not buy them, they would sell them to the Chinese.

Under such a threat, the quartermaster had to pinch his nose to buy a large number of non-essential supplies, and soon this forced became the quartermaster's initiative to ask for bribes, and the two sides tried to collude with each other, and soon it developed to the extent that the quartermaster only needed to get the right remuneration, and even the fleets that transported military supplies were ignored, and some of the fleets were intercepted by other French troops, but they were soon allowed to go under the negotiation of senior officers.

Therefore, the Hongjun troops, which had suffered great losses in the Battle of Fengjing, recovered in a few weeks, and the Jiaxing detachment was even expanded into an infantry regiment, and the 11th Marine Regiment was transformed from a light infantry regiment into a heavy infantry regiment, not to mention the tens of thousands of reinforcements from Zhejiang and Jiangxi provinces.

This made Liu Chang full of confidence, looking at the large group of officers present, he cleared his throat and said: "Although there were some deficiencies in the reserve brigade and the third division before, our army still perfectly completed the mission of the Sujia defense battle, and gave the French and Russian armies a major blow, and then our mission is to strive to annihilate the main force of the enemy......"