The battle of Bali Bridge to shatter the pride of the Manchu Empire was imminent, and Guo Xing'a was also anxious, but he could only wait, and at the same time prayed that the monk Grinqin would hold on for a little longer. Because his troops had not yet arrived, and the reason why the main force of the Goxinga Division was moving so slowly was somewhat similar to the coalition army, they were also waiting for artillery.

Compared with the coalition army, the biggest shortcoming of Guoxinga is artillery, which is a big gap from others in terms of troops, the number of artillery and the quality of soldiers. No matter how reasonable the arrangement is and how advanced the weapons are, it will not be able to fight thousands of artillery and hundreds of artillery pieces. Therefore, Goxinga urgently needs to expand its artillery unit, even if it cannot surpass the coalition army, at least make the gap smaller, so that when he is beaten, he can fight back, and it becomes urgent for the artillery company to be upgraded to an artillery battalion.

Goxinga's artillery has always been a company-level unit, first of all, because the number of artillery is insufficient, and the weapons and equipment are only enough to equip one company, so there can only be one artillery company. Artillery is not a musket, and casting a cannon requires a lot of raw materials, and it takes a long time. In the past, Napoleon guns were able to be mass-produced, firstly because of the abundant materials, and secondly, because at that time, there was also plenty of time. There was no steel mill in Guoxinga, and it was difficult to buy steel in the Qing Dynasty, so copper could only be used to cast artillery. And copper is very valuable, the basic currency of the Qing Dynasty is copper coins, copper is equal to money. And bullets and shells require a lot of copper, and now the guns can only be repaired and repaired, and the guns can only be abandoned, not to mention that the arsenal has to work overtime to produce ammunition!

And for a long time there has been no major expansion of artillery, and there is a more important reason, that is, it is not needed. In all the wars that Goxinga has experienced in the past, the scale of artillery needed is very limited, and one artillery company can give Goxinga an absolute firepower advantage, so there is no need for artillery expansion. Now that he encounters a regular army like the British and French coalition forces, Guo Xing'a has played the strings, and he can only temporarily hold on to his feet.

Fortunately, after withdrawing from the military grain city, Guo Xing'a can start to study the expansion of artillery. Because a large number of coalition artillery pieces were captured, the number of equipment was basically sufficient, but the human side became a problem. Artillery is a technical job, and it is not something that can be done by just two people, and without long-term practice, the people who are temporarily captured cannot operate the cannon proficiently.

However, Feng Sheng'a, who has taken a back seat, has played a key role, and he has talents in this area, and there are quite a few of them. Feng Sheng'a is in the arsenal, although the main energy is on production, but the training people have not let go. Moreover, because of the terrain and equipment conditions, as well as Fengsheng's personal preferences, the proportion of artillery in Fengsheng'a's garrison corps is very large, with only 1,200 people in total, but there are more than 300 artillery personnel. Although the arsenal itself produces limited artillery, the repair and maintenance of various types of artillery, as well as the development and imitation of Armstrong guns, are all under their control, so there are still a lot of guns in their hands. A large number of artillery pieces captured by Goxinga also fell into their hands, and the advanced ones in the smoothbore guns had to be rifled, and the old ones had to be re-cast. For this reason, Fengshenga also set up a special artillery tester to test the performance of the upgraded artillery, which trained more than 100 artillery soldiers. Therefore, this time, Guoxing A studied and expanded, and Fengsheng A immediately contributed 400 basically qualified artillerymen.

Although there are people, it will take several days to rearrange the structure, arrange officers, and distribute artillery. And during the time they were preparing, the coalition forces of Baliqiao launched an attack, and Guoxinga could only become an onlooker again. However, the French soldiers in the Goxinga telescope were also frightened, they had been walking for almost an hour, and they had not seen a single Qing soldier. This feeling felt somewhat familiar to them, especially with the news that the Qing Imperial Guard had been dispatched, and even more so that they felt that the terrifying ghost army was hiding in a corner around them.

"General, according to reliable information, a large number of Qing troops are gathering near a bridge in front, and in addition to the ordinary Qing infantry cavalry, a large number of soldiers wearing black-edged yellow jackets have also been found. I guess these soldiers should be the royal forbidden army in the capital, those guys who sneaked up on us. Major General Mitchell was still savoring the coffee he had drunk half an hour earlier, but when he heard the news of the forbidden army, he was also a little nervous, and he desperately needed Montauban to give him some comfort.

"Relax Mitchell, they don't have a chance to sneak up on us again, it's going to be a dignified battle today!" Montauban is not nervous, but very relaxed, and the ghost is only terrifying when it is invisible. As long as they appeared in the sun, the warriors of France had no reason to fear them.

Montauban's strategic intent was clear: to seize the official road and go straight to Beijing to rescue the members of the mission. Therefore, he decided to divide the coalition forces into two lines. One is the two brigades of the French army as the front, and the troops are from the southwest to the north, capturing the Bali Bridge, and the other is the British army led by General Grant as the rear, following the French army westward, using the British cavalry troops to make a detour to capture a wooden bridge west of the Bali Bridge. That is, when marching, the 1st French Brigade was on the left flank, and the 2nd Brigade was on the right flank. The British as the rear flank. When it was time for the battle, the British army moved west to form a left flank and outflanked the rear of the Qing army, and the French 1st Brigade served as the middle wing and the 2nd Brigade coordinated to capture the Bali Bridge.

Although the coalition forces have a wealth of battlefield intelligence, Montauban has absolutely no idea how successful his plan is. Only Guo Xing'a, who had a bird's-eye view of the overall situation, could see that the position of the initial attack of the 1st and 2nd French Brigades happened to be a combined area of the Seng Lingqin Division and the Shengbao Division. And the roundabout attack of the British army was almost directed at the rear camp of Seng Lingqin. However, although the French army did not march fast, due to the poor condition of the roads, the baggage of the French artillery unit was unable to keep up with the ranks.

"Send a battalion to explore the front! The road conditions here are terrible! "This time there was finally no one to take credit for him, and Montauban was in a good mood and hoped that the battle would start soon.

"Okay general!" Mitchell nodded in agreement and sent an advance force. However, he made some minor adjustments, and instead of simply sending an infantry battalion, a small force consisting of an engineer company, two infantry companies, an artillery company, and two squads of cavalry acted as the vanguard.

Goxinga and Montauban are not people with good habits, so Goxinga likes to stay up late, while Montauban likes to get up early. So when Montauban approached the position of the Qing army at Baliqiao, the monk Grinqin, who had good habits of work and rest, had just seen his breakfast. The dead foreign devil came to the door, and naturally there was no breakfast to eat, so Monk Greenqin hurriedly arranged to meet the enemy, and by the way, he also notified the two gods who had not yet gotten up.

After all, the coalition army stopped in Tongzhou for two days, and the Qing army prepared for two days, and there was a plan so as not to panic. The plan of the Qing army was to attack the Mongol horse team first, and then move from Dingfuzhuang to the Shengbaosho department at Baliqiao to meet the enemy army on the south road, the Ruilin army to meet the east road, and the Seng Lingqin department to meet the west road, and all the infantry to hide and wait to kill the enemy. Monk Grinchen wanted to use his horse corps to charge the wide front of the coalition army from the left flank to the right flank, and strive to crush the coalition army in one fell swoop.

However, the soldiers are all learning from the main generals, Monk Greenqin has just risen, and most of the soldiers have just risen, where can they get the charging cavalry for a while. In the end, they could only arrest people temporarily, so the first 500 Ugandan cavalrymen who got up could only go hungry to charge. They wanted to delay the vanguard of the coalition forces, give the rear robes, and buy time for the whole team.

Then Goxinga, who was lying on the hill, saw a strange scene, the French, who had always liked to concentrate their troops, suddenly took the wrong medicine, and sent a team of hundreds of people. Then the Qing army also sent an equal number of cavalry to kill them as if they were contesting.

"Before the opening, do you warm up first?" On the battle line more than ten miles long, both sides are moving at high speed, but it is these thousand people who are really fighting, and Guo Xinga is a little confused.

"Scout the enemy!" Pi Runmin didn't have much say in this regard, and he couldn't figure out what these two groups were doing.

"Blind toss! Monk Greenqin can't concentrate his forces and fight again, every time it's like this, always adding fuel to the tactics! "Guo Xing'a can be seen clearly, Seng Greenqin doesn't seem to have the habit of concentrating forces, and always likes to do something evenly matched, of course, this time he wronged Monk Greenqin.

And the cavalry of Zhao Uganda really have good qualities. Goxinga peeped from the sidelines, so he could see them clearly, but the French strikers never noticed them. It wasn't until the two sides approached about fifty meters that the cavalry from Keshketeng suddenly straightened up and fired their bows and arrows at the French.

"Good! Good start! "Guoxinga is very satisfied with the performance of the Zhao-Ugandan cavalry, which is the real elite cavalry.

However, after applauding, Guo Xing'a immediately regretted it, these cavalry with good quality, the commander was obviously a fool. With such a close distance and such a good opportunity, he actually did not charge, but played the old trick of the Mongols and shot around the formation. Five hundred cavalry ran around the coalition army, circling in circles and tilting a rain of arrows at the coalition army, hoping to kill or crush all the enemy.

At this time, the French army showed a high degree of discipline and bravery, and when the opposing brigade of cavalry rushed to a distance of only fifty meters from them, the French army still maintained a neat formation and a clear head. The cavalry of the Qing army lined up in a dense formation, let go of their horsepower and galloped, except for the deafening sound of horses' hooves, there was no sound in the formation, including the voice of command, and all the French soldiers obeyed the silent command of the military flag. Although the situation was extremely unfavorable, the French immediately formed a phalanx, set up all their artillery, and fired back.

The French army was still a stubborn Gallic rooster, but the Mongol cavalry was no longer a perfect descendant of Genghis Khan. In the era of Genghis Khan, the Mongolian cavalry used a strong bow with a tensile force of 15 catties, and in the era of Huang Taiji, the Manchurian cavalry could only use a strong bow of 120 catties, and even in the era of Kangxi and Qianlong, a hard bow with a tensile force of 90 catties could also be used. But now Mongolia has been administered by a number of princes of the alliance, and for hundreds of years there has been no tribal fighting, and all tribes are not allowed to leave their pastoral areas, but can only graze in their own small pastoral areas, and the opportunity to shoot hunts is extremely rare.

Many of the Mongolian banners close to the interior were already mainly cultivated land, and the Mongol cavalry recruited this time were actually farmers and herdsmen under the various princes, not the Eight Banners Army at all, not a regular army, and neither they nor their war horses had been strictly trained. Their riding and archery skills have dropped to a very low level, and they can only use weak bows with a pulling force of twenty or thirty catties, which has neither range, nor penetration, nor rate of fire. These improvised Mongol farmers and herdsmen had almost no bow and arrow skills, they usually did farm work and raised livestock, and they were not trained in white-knuckle warfare, and in fact they did not know how to break through the bayonet formation, how to enter the enemy line for white-knuckle combat. The militia Mongolian cavalry, which is not good at cavalry and white-knuckle combat, has little combat effectiveness except for courage. Just like the first battle of Guoxing's crossing, except for a few people such as Changlu and Fengsheng'a, most of the people shot arrows could only join in the fun, and they couldn't kill people at all.

Therefore, under the bombardment of artillery, the Zhao Ugandan cavalry, which was superb in horsemanship but had little offensive power, retreated. With their defeat and retreat, Goxinga's heart also slipped to the bottom, and this battle seemed to be clear in the morning, how long would his troops be!