"Without formal authorization from Congress and no official order from the Admiralty, I have no authority to send any warship north to Hanoi to engage the Vietnamese and Qing people." Colonel Li Weiye, commander of the French Navy in Vietnam, sat on the sofa with a cigar in his hand, looking at Du Bailei, who was sitting behind the desk in the Governor's Palace.

"But the group of Vietnamese monkeys did not seek protection from France according to the contract at all, they went to the Qing people, the reality is that this group of monkeys has torn up the contract, we must teach them a lesson!" Du Bailei said toughly.

"Mr. Governor-General, France is a democratic country, if you need to make a diplomatic protest against the Vietnamese, this is the business of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, if you need to declare war on the Vietnamese, this is the business of the Congress, and my business is to wait for the authorization of the Congress or the order of the Admiralty, unless Mr. Governor can help me get the authorization or order as soon as possible." After taking a puff of cigar smoke, Li Weiye said slowly, "Otherwise, my fleet and marines would not have been dispatched to join the war against the Vietnamese, the Black Flag Army, and the Qing people." ”

"Mr. Colonel, you are committing a crime! You can't see Vietnamese monkeys committing crimes and not stop them! Du Bailei slapped the table and shouted.

"Crime? Suppressing crime in the colonies, I remember, was within the scope of the Doge's Office, and France was a democracy, and France did not allow the army to interfere in civil affairs unless authorized by the Congress. Li Weiye took another puff on his cigar, "Your Excellency the Governor, besides, it is the police's business to stop crime, and you can send your colonial security forces to intervene." ”

"I only have a dozen colony overseas legionnaires in my hands, are you going to send them to Hanoi to their deaths, and let those bandits of the Black Flag Army slaughter them, Mr. Colonel?!" Du Bailei was even more mad.

"No matter how small the number is, they are still soldiers, I seem to remember His Excellency the Governor, who said the same thing to Captain An Ye back then. In any case, Captain An Ye's expedition of a few dozen people only had a dozen professional soldiers, but they also captured the city of Hanoi, didn't they? Li Weiye took another slow puff of his cigar.

Du Bailei immediately understood that Li Weiye was still resentful of his old hatred for instigating An Ye to attack Hanoi and then being beheaded by the Black Flag Army.

Li Weiye looked at Du Bailei sitting behind the desk and staring at him angrily, and said in his heart, "You have been the governor of Jiaozhi for six years, and no one pays attention to the high-spirited ones on weekdays, and now that your term of office is about to end, you want to seek re-election, so you want to ask me to help you." Delusional to let me add merit to your pathetic resume, my friend An Ye was deceived by you to go to Hanoi to die, are you fooling me? ”

"Since you don't want to report the matter of Vietnam to the country, then I'll help you poke it. It just so happened that my friend Lu Mei was trying to seek the position of governor of Jiaozhi. Hmph, even if I were to kill these damn Vietnamese monkeys, it would be after my friend took office. Li Weiye sneered in his heart.

As the smoke of the cigars in the room grew thicker, Du Bailu couldn't help coughing. Li Weiye smiled, knowing that his goal had been achieved, and then stood up to say goodbye to Du Bailei and prepared to leave.

"Mr. Colonel, if the Governor's Office comes forward to organize a team to intervene in Hanoi, can the Saigon Navy provide escort?" Du Bailei's voice suddenly sounded behind him.

Li Weiye was stunned for a moment, stopped at the door, turned to look at Du Bailei's scarlet eyes in the cigar smoke, and hesitated slightly, "If His Excellency the Governor is willing to organize the colonial troops by himself, the navy can provide escort services, but," Li Weiye continued with a smile, "Unless the navy is attacked and defends itself, the navy will not have a single bullet fired at the Vietnamese, the Black Flag Army, or even the Qing Army, please remember Mr. Governor." ”

"If you want to die early, I'll give you a ride." Looking at Du Bailei's unsatisfactory smile, Li Weiye said in his heart.

Later, in the name of the governor of Cochin, Du Bailei issued a recruitment order in Saigon, calling on the French vagrants, adventurers, and sailors in Saigon to organize and march into Hanoi, and the governor's palace was willing to hire them at a high price of three francs a day.

After five days of busy recruitment, more than 500 people of all kinds flocked to the Governor's Palace to sign up, and after four days of careful screening, more than 300 people were eliminated (mainly because Du Bailei felt that the team of 500 people was too expensive), plus the original 12-member French army team in the colony, Du Bailei finally organized a mercenary team of about 200 people.

Under the cover of Li Weiye's warship, the team took about a day, that is, the day before Liu Yongfu and Feng Zicai completely annihilated Li Yangcai, to reach the southern gateway about 100 kilometers from Hanoi, the county seat of Nanding.

Du Bailei's original intention was to take Nan Dinh City first, and then attack Hanoi with Nan Dinh as a base. Just when Du Bailei's troops were preparing to attack Nanding City, Du Bailei received a message from a friend in China, informing him that there had been a rumor in France that Vietnam had borrowed troops from the Qing State, and in order for him to be re-elected as the governor of Jiaozhi, he was advised to deal with the aftermath quickly and not act rashly.

Du Bailei hurriedly stopped the attack on Nam Dinh, hurried back to the Saigon Governor's Palace, gathered his henchmen to organize a telegram, and immediately sent a telegram to the Prime Minister's Office, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and the Ministry of the Navy and Colonies to report the situation in Vietnam.

Under the kind reminder of a confidant, Du Bailei found that the recruitment order issued by her was also suspected of violating the French Constitution, and in order not to cause any more trouble to herself, she ordered someone to go back to Nanding County to disband the mercenary team that was about to attack Hanoi. After the group of outlaws returned to Saigon, Du Bailei found that his twelve-man colony French army was left outside the city of Nanding, because he only cared about disbanding the outlaws he had raised, and forgot to order them to return to Saigon.

On the morning when Ye Chenglin touched the twelve-person squad outside Nanding City, Du Bailei begged Li Weiye to send a warship to pick up his French team, and Li Weiye finally promised Du Bailei to send a warship in the afternoon to pick up the almost forgotten French team tomorrow morning.

Second Lieutenant Terrick is the leader of this twelve-man squad that is part of the Algerian Sniper Unit of the French Overseas Corps, a French regular French infantry corps composed of Muslims formed by the French in Algeria and mainly responsible for the protection of the French colonies, known as the "Turks" in the French regular army sequence.

The Terec squad was armed with the same MLE1878 Crobachak rifles as the French Marines. MLE1878 is a rifle designed by Alfred Krobachak in 1878, as the first repeating rifle in the history of French firearms, the main feature is that it has a lower tubular magazine, that is, the Krobachak magazine, which is a 11mm bolt-action rifle that can be loaded with 8 round-headed bullets at a time for shooting. The gun is about 1.25 meters long, and with the bayonet characteristic of the Algerian sniper unit (borrowed from the Turk's Yakant scimitar), the total length of the gun is nearly 1.88 meters.

As a career officer in the French Army, Second Lieutenant Terrick graduated from the famous Saint-Cyr Military Academy in France, came to Saigon two years ago, is familiar with the climate and geography of Vietnam, and is an excellent professional officer of the French Army in the eyes of Du Bailei and Li Weiye.

After the group of outlaws formed into a noisy dispersal of the group, although there was a feeling of being forgotten by the Cochin Governor's Palace, Tyrek and his team did not let up, and continued to build on the position of the original camp, re-digging the trenches and building the firing position of the 12-man team.

Ye Jiajie lay on the embankment on the south bank, braving the sun of the dry season in Vietnam, watching the French army digging east and west on the camp in a chaotic manner, or going to cut down small trees under the soil slope, or building a fence with earth in front of the dug ditch or hole. In short, the French neither prepared fences, nor traps, nor rejected horses, according to Ye Jiajie's many years of experience in marching and fighting in the Black Flag Army, the French camp was completely foolish.

"Digging ditches, digging holes, cutting down trees, and building earth fences in the ground, what kind of camp is this, don't these French even know the most basic ability to march and fight? It's a whole group of rookies! After watching the work of the French one morning, Ye Jiajie finally commented on the poor performance of the French.