Bi Yuntao and Mitchell, who started fighting in Haidian Town, are both confident and confident, and they both have the confidence to win. But neither the two men nor their subordinates knew that the orders they had received were all wrong. Goxinga, who thought he had a golden finger, and Ergin, who was stubborn, misjudged the situation and then gave the wrong battle order.

Ergin did not believe that the elite ghost army would abandon the city of Beijing, and even if they were really stationed in the Old Summer Palace, they would definitely return to the division to rescue the French soldiers because of the arrival of the city of Beijing. Ergin refused to believe that there would be an army in the world that would abandon the capital in order to protect the emperor's private garden, so the ghost troops must have just made a show in the Old Summer Palace. Their cunning commander, who is as cunning as a fox, must have an insidious plan, and the Old Summer Palace is just an illusory decoy. And Ergin also had a sinister idea, he wanted the British army to destroy the Old Summer Palace, so that the British could get the glory of crushing the pride of the Manchu emperor. Leave the desperate drudgery with the ghost troops to the French, and let these hateful people die together. So Ergin ordered the British army to attack the Old Summer Palace with all their might, in a vain attempt to force the ghost troops to the French army. He felt that there was absolutely no possibility of a large-scale battle with the British army, and that the ghost troops would definitely ensure their mobility under the premise that Beijing could not ensure safety, rather than getting entangled with the British army.

Guo Xing'a believed too much in the historical knowledge of his previous life, and he always felt that he had the golden finger to foresee the future, and thought that he could foresee the movements of the coalition forces. Historically, the coalition forces did not do anything to the city of Beijing, but burned down the Old Summer Palace, and both Britain and France had lucky people who got rich because of the robbery of the Old Summer Palace. Therefore, Guo Xing'a thought that the coalition forces would not be entangled in Beijing at all, and would definitely concentrate all their efforts to fight for the Old Summer Palace. On the premise that he did not understand why the coalition army marched into the Old Summer Palace, he stubbornly believed that the coalition army would definitely do its best to destroy the Old Summer Palace, and deployed it in full accordance with the preparations for the decisive battle here. Although the scouts had already reported that the French army was still on the outskirts of Beijing, Guo Xing'a still felt that the coalition forces would continue to attack the Old Summer Palace. He completely ignored his influence on history, and forgot that his historical knowledge was not reliable at all, and there were too many details that he was completely unclear about.

Bi Yuntao and Mitchell, who also faithfully carried out the commander's orders, will not find out their mistakes until a long time later. As soon as Mitchell came up, he launched a fierce attack on Haidian Town with all his strength, stunned the first infantry battalion defending Haidian Town, and kept asking Bi Yuntao for help, claiming that the main force of the coalition army launched an all-out attack on Haidian. Bi Yuntao carried out Guoxinga's order to carry out flexible defense of the position, and began to carry out the strategy of luring the enemy into depth. Instead of ordering the 1st Battalion to hold the outlying positions of Haidian Town, it took the initiative to abandon some defensive disadvantaged areas, took advantage of the terrain to divide the British army, and began to harass and delay the scattered British army.

The tactics of both armies have once again deepened the wrong judgment of the other side. Mitchell's onslaught made Bi Yuntao feel that the main force of the coalition army had really been killed, and the French army outside Beijing was a suspicious soldier. Moreover, because the observation was not in place, and they simply relied on firepower to judge the strength of the enemy's troops, they erroneously estimated the strength of the British army at about 8,000 men. And Bi Yuntao's repeated retreats, using the depth to kill the living forces of the British army, also made Mitchell feel that the ghost troops really did not have the heart to fight, and they retreated one after another after touching it. With more confidence in Ergin's judgment, the British army could launch a full-scale attack on Haidian Town without any scruples.

The British army played as old-fashioned as the English gentlemen, the infantry still lined up in dense hollow phalanxes, and the artillery advanced with the synchronized troops, because of the loss of all cavalry, the assault ability of the array was greatly limited. This tactic is the most tried and tested tactics of the British in three centuries around the world, and the British army has conquered almost half the world with this tactic, but this time they completely did not take into account the difference in the weapons used by the ghost troops. The breech-loading rifle far exceeded the ultra-high rate of fire of the breech-loading rifle, which had made the dense infantry phalanx a target on the battlefield, and the high-explosive shells and machine guns had turned the war into a complete slaughter. The British army's habit of preemptive, accurate shooting has completely lost its usefulness due to the lack of proper tactics. The intensive firepower of the Gu'an army has made it impossible for them to get to the position of shooting. However, fortunately, Bi Yuntao has not yet figured out the situation, and the outer positions took the initiative to retreat under a little pressure, so that the casualties paid by the British army have some results.

Gohinga's demand for resilient defense is precisely a defensive tactical idea, not an exact battle strategy. There are three types of defense thinking: forward defense, defense in depth, and resilient defense. Forward defense is characterized by keeping the enemy out of the world and gathering heavy forces on the front, but it can lead to a possible extreme emptiness in the rear, such as the Great Wall defense line of the Ming Dynasty. Needless to say, the advantages are that at least they can keep the enemy out of the country, reduce their own losses, and facilitate the army to carry out battles on the periphery. But it also has a fatal weakness, and a single tear in the long line of defense could lead to catastrophic consequences. If you choose forward defense, you will generally have an inseparable strategic and tactical interest, and once you abandon forward defense, you will fall into an extremely passive situation. For example, when Seng Lingqin defended Tianjin, he had to complete the defense at the front, otherwise the enemy would directly attack the city of Beijing. Generally, only the strong side, out of a sense of confidence in their own strength, will prefer forward defense. Of course, if it is Monk Greenqin, this is not the case, he is fighting against the water, and it will not work if he doesn't fight like this. The reason is very simple, the Qing army lacked depth and had no way back.

The intention of defense in depth is to maximize the difficulty of the enemy's occupation and advancement, so as to consume the enemy's sharp energy, and to achieve the goal of exhausting the enemy army in depth. However, defense in depth is the most helpless choice, exchanging space for time, and this style of play is easy to turn your defense area into a broken tile kiln. Defence-in-depth is often a desperate choice, and while it is possible to defeat the enemy in the end, it often ends up in ruins that need to be repaired, so defending in depth is usually costly, even if it is successful. Monk Greenqin fought all the way from Tianjin to Beijing, which can also be understood as a kind of defense in depth, if he can even throw Beijing City, he feels that he can consume the coalition army. However, the price to be paid is also obvious, the Old Summer Palace will be burned, the Forbidden City is estimated to be on fire, and the people along the way will also be unlucky.

The essence of elastic defense is actually a hybrid defense model in which defense in depth and defense in front complement each other. Its intention is to rely on the material and personnel support of the rear in a certain flexible space, to capture fighters in motion, and finally defeat the strategic idea of the invading enemy. Resilient defense can be both strategic and tactical. Starting from Tianjin, Guoxing'a has been continuously wearing down the strength of the coalition army, which is a kind of elastic defense, but the Qing army of Seng Lingqin and other departments who cooperated with Guoxing'a was too much of a failure, resulting in the entire defense process also being very unsuccessful. Tactically, it can be applied to the defense of the position, the main force holds the main position, and the other divisions are flexible and mobile, and the enemy is killed in the position. The defenders can concentrate their superior forces on the inner line and break through several groups of the enemy advancing one by one, or they can rely on their familiarity with the terrain to hide a certain number of troops, or send a force to detour behind the enemy's flank, and cooperate with the large forces in front of them to flank and flank at the same time. It is also possible to make a large retreat, lengthen the enemy's line and then attack it, weaken the enemy's overall combat effectiveness, and then concentrate forces for a decisive battle.

The three defensive ideas complement each other, and in fact, they can be converted into each other. If the enemy succeeds in breaking through the forward defenses and you are unable to close the gap, it can lead to the collapse of the entire line of defense. Therefore, when the forward defense fails, elastic defense becomes the inevitable choice, and in-depth defense is the last and most helpless choice after even elastic defense fails. Monk Greenqin and Guo Xing'a used these three ideas to make a convenience, first Monk Greenqin defended at the front of Tianjin, and then from Tianjin to Tongzhou, the two departments carried out elastic defense together, and finally the Qing army under Seng Greenqin was defeated, and could only retreat to Beijing for in-depth defense. Of course, because the Monk Lingqin's troops were defeated again and again, the three defenses had actually failed, and Guo Xing'a could only become the security captain of the garden.

Because Guoxinga was worried that the main force of the coalition army would be overwhelmed, and the Gu'an army would fall into a decisive battle with the coalition army, he ordered all units to adopt a flexible positional defense. Regardless of the gains and losses of one park and one place, he took advantage of the huge depth space around the three mountains and five parks to start a fight with the coalition forces. Drain the coalition's vital forces in the movement until the coalition's supply lines are crushed and the main forces of the coalition are exhausted, and then the final decisive battle will be fought.

Bi Yuntao inherited this idea of Guoxing'a, and also carried out the traditional Chinese innovation of this thought. He set up several defensive points on the front line of Wanquan River, Haidian Town, and Changchun Garden in the defense of his regiment, and then the other troops all moved flexibly in the improvised position, forming a giant Bagua Array with the defense points as the eye. The mobile forces moved according to the formation, and the British attacking forces were able to occupy only part of the proposed positions, and then fell into the gossip array.

The so-called Bagua Array is, simply put, a means for foot soldiers to deal with the impact of cavalry. The change in formation is actually a deliberate relinquishment of a vacuum in certain positions of the battle line when the enemy cavalry is attacking, and induces the cavalry to subconsciously concentrate on these routes. After it entered the formation, although our formation was broken, it did not disperse, gathering on both sides along the way, giving up space in front of the enemy to charge. The core of the formation lies in the fact that this path can be determined in advance, and through conscious guidance, the opponent's original straight line at both ends of the battle formation will become a continuous contact in the formation under the leadership of our side. The enemy cavalry will be trapped, and our endless infantry will gradually consume the momentum and physical strength of the cavalry, and over time, the enemy forces in the formation will eventually be gradually exhausted.

The slightly changed Bagua Array is in line with Goxinga's idea of elastic defense. The position consciously ceded is the vacuum area in the Bagua Array, and the movement of the formation has become a roundabout intersperse. The British troops who attacked the defense line of the Gu'an Army actually became the turtle in the urn of the Bagua Array.

"The force is wrong!" Bi Yuntao, who was on the main position of Haidian Town, held a telescope and observed for a long time, and found that the strength of the British army was not as strong as he expected.

"Come as much as you want, do as much as you want! It's like this sooner or later, a bite is a bite! Acton also felt that his initial judgment was wrong, but Guo Xing's request was to kill as many foreign devils as possible, and get a batch of them first.

"That's right, get those generals out!" Bi Yuntao smiled proudly.