Hearing such a question, Li Hongzhang could only lower his head and look at the bluestone slab, and then said after a while: "Qin Xuan, everyone else can say this, but you can't...... Now the Mengtoban military gate is not recruiting, and is ready to do a big job!"

This Li Hongjian called "Qin Xuan" is none other than Pan Dingxin, who fought bloody battles with the French army in Fengjing Town, counting, he can almost be said to be the most trusted Chinese in the entire Shanghai French army, when Fengjing Town fought bloody battles to the end, Pan Ying almost suffered a devastating blow, and only more than 100 people remained in the end, but these more than 100 people persevered with the French army to the end, and the French praised Pan Dingxin's name as soon as they mentioned it.

But now Pan Dingxin questioned whether the French could achieve the final victory, he lowered his voice and said softly: "Shaoquan, what we thought was not like this at the beginning, at the beginning, I thought with you that once the soldiers arrived, they would be able to achieve a great victory, but I didn't expect to fight into the current situation." ”

"But it's evenly divided!" Li Hongzhangyun made an excuse for himself: "What the Mengtuoban military gate owes is just too few troops." ”

"There are a lot of troops, definitely a lot!" Pan Dingxin saw it very clearly: "Not counting the Chinese soldiers, just the foreign soldiers near Shanghai, including the Japanese and Little Luzon, there are nearly 20,000 people, but so far, there is still no progress, no clue, to put it more ugly, that is, they are completely led by the nose by Liu Jiehu, and they are tired of running for their lives!"

Li Hongzhang agreed with Pan Dingxin's opinion in his heart, but as the supreme commander of the Huai Army, he could only say with a not very objective attitude: "But the soldiers of the Mengtuoban Army have never lost a battle, they have been fighting for thousands of miles, and they have never suffered a major setback. ”

He attributed the reason for not achieving the final victory to Liu Chang, the supreme commander: "Although our army has not recovered Chang Hangjia now, the red thieves cannot take Shanghai, it can be said that they are evenly divided, and the reason why the red thieves can hold out to this day is entirely because Liu Jiehu is alone!"

"Liu is a thief. It is indeed a rare thief since the Han and Tang Dynasties, fighting with the Chinese soldiers, winning a hundred battles, and fighting with the Yi soldiers. can also be evenly divided, the previous battle of Fengjing Town, if he hadn't personally supervised the battle, the thief army would have been broken by Meng Junmen! And Meng Junmen used 20,000 soldiers and traveled thousands of miles, and he couldn't recover an inch of land, also because Liu Juehu was too cunning. It's not like an ordinary thief. ”

Li Hongzhang can only think in an optimistic direction, but Pan Dingxin is the one who personally leads the troops, but his views are different: "The red thief and the Yi soldier can be equally divided, and they have the strengths of the willow family, but the thief army is brave, the thief is vicious, and it is beyond the reach of the long hair, although the two armies are now holding each other." But for a long time, I ...... to Meng Junmen"

He didn't say more, but everyone knew it was tragic. And Zhang Shusheng on the side shouted: "There is no need to be so pessimistic, Qin Xuan, now that the soldiers of Meng Junmen are everywhere, the thieves are defeated, as long as Meng Junmen can invite several battalions of elite soldiers from the country, then Jiangsu and Zhejiang can be restored!"

"Can Jiangsu and Zhejiang be restored?" Pan Dingxin said a cold truth: "Now that I have been using troops for several months, and more than 10,000 soldiers have been killed and wounded, can I recover an inch of land in Jiangsu and Zhejiang?" ”

This is said ruthlessly, but it is a real truth, until now. Meng Toban had not yet scooped down an inch of land in Sujia and Jiafu, and he had also wanted to help the enemy with food and set up his stronghold in the depth of the enemy's army, but he tried to advance his stronghold to Jiaxing Mansion several times, but the result was to provoke the hornet's nest, and the three troops sent in were immediately attacked by the Hong army at any cost. As a result, the losses were great, and a small army was even completely annihilated by the Rainbow Army.

In this case, Meng Tuoban could only honestly fight in Shanghai, and did not dare to go beyond Shanghai, and Zhang Shusheng said: "But it is good to hold Shanghai, now Shanghai is as stable as Mount Tai, Shanghai is here, everything is hopeful, we can wait for the turnaround to come, the long-haired red thief will inevitably infighting, and then it will be our chance!" ..., "The soldiers are all tied, not to mention the long hair!" Pan Dingxin's attitude became thicker and thicker, and he even told some of the real situations of the French army and the Russian army: "Shaoquan, Zhenxuan, you have little contact with foreign soldiers, and you don't know their actual situation, but in fact, Meng Junmen is also very embarrassed now!"

"Now there are more than 1,000 wounded and sick people being treated in the hospital, plus those who died in battle with the red thief, Meng Junmen's troops have been injured!" Pan Dingxin continued: "Don't look at the 11th Battalion of the French Infantry Battalion as soon as Meng Junmen is dispatched, in fact, this is all his capital, and this capital is still earned by the Russians who are desperately defending outside!"

Now the French army near Shanghai and the Russian army have a lot of contradictions, with the advantage of troops, Montoban started the idea of sacrificing the Russians, and now the garrison of the first line of Sujia is almost all served by the Russian army, they directly bear the fierce impact of the rainbow army, and the French army has become a mobile force, with superior forces.

According to Pan Dingxin's observations: "Since the beginning of the war, no less than 2,000 people have been killed or wounded, that is, there are almost no four infantry battalions, so the formation of each battalion and each company is not very complete, and even one infantry battalion has only half of the soldiers left. ”

As for the Russian army, it has repeatedly suffered from the impact of the superior strength of the Rainbow Army, and many of their company and platoon units have been directly damaged or annihilated by the Rainbow Army, Pan Dingxin made his own judgment: "The reason why the red thief does not fight to the death with Meng Junmen is completely inopportune, as long as Meng Junmen misses slightly, I am afraid that the horse will miss the front hoof!"

Li Hongzhang didn't expect the situation to be so bad, and he couldn't help but think of the actual situation of the Huai Army.

Compared with the French army in Mengtoban, the situation of the Huai army is even worse, the Huai army that entered Shanghai has 3,600 names before and after, but now there are less than 2,000 soldiers, and the Hong army seems to have specially recognized the Huai army and beat it more than once, and even Li Hongzhang himself has serious pessimism, but he is different from Pan Dingxin, and the contact with the French is not deep enough, I did not expect the situation to be so bad.

"So, the French are having a hard time going through a big battle?

"It can't be said that it is difficult to fight!" Pan Dingxin said: "Even if they are damaged, they are only very badly damaged, but our Huaijun's capital is too small, so it will be different!"

He talked about a recent battle: "Like the previous battle with the Red Thieves, the French lost 70 soldiers and the Russians killed 60, which is bearable for them, but in this battle, our Huai army lost 170 people, that is to lose their vitality!"

The battle he said took place on the border between Jiangsu and Shanghai, and it was a battle commanded by Jin Peilun, who had just taken office, and all the coalition forces guarding the stronghold were annihilated, and the annihilated were 130 French and Russian troops, 170 Huai troops, and 300 Qing troops.

The annihilation of 170 people at one time is equivalent to the loss of nearly one-tenth of the Huai army's strength, which is indeed a loss that Li Hongzhang cannot bear, so Li Hongzhang said: "The French can still bear the death of 70 people, we can't bear it, so we have to make plans early......

But he didn't expect that for the French, this was also an unbearable loss, of course, it was just a little bit of a problem in the news report.

This expedition was never the headline of the newspapers in France, and news of it was often only seen in the second edition, and in this era, Scoop Poleon III had an astonishing prestige, and he was able to suppress dissent in the country.

As a result, only a great deal of praise for the expedition can be seen in the domestic newspapers, but most of the time these reports do not make the first edition, because, quite simply, the French have little interest in reporting about the expedition, even if it is related to the mystery of China. ..., and the news brought by this expedition did not qualify for the first edition, compared to the vigorous Crimean War, it was only a touring marching exercise, the enemy's combat effectiveness was poor, and in the midst of a civil war, everyone was concerned about the spoils of this expedition.

According to the news brought by Major General Mentoban and the reporters accompanying the army, within a few months of the start of the expedition, only a few hundred French soldiers were killed or wounded, but the French army won all the battles, including the most critical battle of Fengjing - this was another glorious victory for the French army, the elite army of 20,000 rebels fled in a hurry under the heavy attack of the French army, although the French army was damaged to a certain extent, but the corpses left by the enemy were dozens of times that of the French army, and the rebels fought this battle. Already on the verge of collapse.

The Montoban expedition was a game of scouts, and the public paid less attention to him than to adultery, and few people in France knew that the leader of the rebels was called "Liu Jiehu" or "Yan Wang" or "Liu Chang", and for them, the matter was insignificant.

On December 8, 1856, such inconsequential things were forever a thing of the past, and an explosive news appeared on the front page of the newspaper, a report from the British News Agency, but it made the hearts of the whole of France beat, and everyone circulated such reports and searched for all the material related to the Montoban expedition.

Newspapers in some of the outlying provinces even devoted the entire front page and the second page to the factual material of the Montoban expedition, although they knew that this news had not been officially confirmed by the French authorities, and that it was only an unconfirmed report by a British press agency, but whoever did not increase the tone at this time would lose the entire newspaper market.

The explosive news was: "The 600 French troops under the command of General Montoban suffered the fate of total annihilation near Shanghai, China, and no one survived!" (To be continued.) If you like this work, you are welcome to (.) to vote for recommendation, monthly pass, your support is my biggest motivation. )