Tianjin Dagukou, here is the mouth of the Haihe River. Pen | fun | pavilion www. ｂｉｑｕｇｅ。 infoSince the Ming Dynasty moved the capital to Beijing during the Yongle period, Zhu Di built the Tianjin Acropolis, and later because of the rampant Japanese invaders, he built a barracks and forts at Dagukou. However, the Dagukou Fort in this era did not have the scale of the later, only 200 people were stationed here, and more than 10 small cannons such as the Franc machine and the Tiger Squat Cannon were placed, and it was almost the same to deal with pirates and pirates, and it was not vulnerable to the regular navy at all.

On the surface of the Bohai Sea outside the mouth of Dagu, a huge fleet rode the wind and waves and galloped towards the direction of the Dagukou fort. This is a huge fleet flying the sun and moon flag, with two second-class battleships, eight third-class battleships, 26 fourth-class cruisers, 32 fifth-class cruisers, and 60 flying scissor troop carriers.

In addition to the sail warships and the sail transports, there were two strange ships in this fleet, which were very low-hulled, with no tall masts, sails, oars, only a few chimneys, and the whole ship looked as ugly as a turtle on the water. The two monster ships themselves were very slow, so they were towed by two second-tier battleships. In fact, these two turtle ships are steam ironclads!

The steam ironclad ship was in fact a kind of wooden hull warship, but it was covered with ironclad on the outside of the wooden plank, which could withstand the bombardment of 32-pounder guns and 64-pounder guns, and they were equipped with four twin gun emplacements, the battery was closed, the whole battery could be rotated, and the guns inside were 152 mm breech-loading rifled guns. In addition to the four main guns, there was a gun deck under the main deck of the modified ship, ten on each side, and behind each of them was a seventy-six-mm rifled gun.

The ironclad ship has fierce firepower and strong defense power, but because of the insufficient power of the steam engine, the speed of this ironclad ship with a displacement of 1,800 tons is only five knots, and it has to be towed by a second-class battleship from the south to the north.

This time, the Qing army fort at Dagukou will become an experimental product for ironclad ships! Wang Yu spent a lot of money to build these two ironclad ships, and the real opponent was the Manila battery, not the knife to deal with the Qing army. In order to verify the power of the ironclad ships, Wang Yu asked the naval fleet to escort the two ironclad ships into the Bohai Bay.

When the huge fleet entered the Bohai Bay, it did not encounter any of the ships of the Qing army and the navy division, originally Shandong and Beizhili had the Qing army sailors, but the last Qing navy division was wiped out in the battle of Wu Sangui crossing the river, and later the two Huai sailors temporarily formed in the battle of Hongze Lake and were destroyed, at this time the Qing army had no sailors, even if there were still a few boats, they either ran early, or had surrendered.

Not a single Qing ship was encountered, and the fleet commander Zhang Yukun was a little disappointed.

"Sir, there is Dagukou ahead!" One of the soldiers said, pointing to the looming coastline ahead.

"Let's go!" Zhang Yukun turned around and gestured, "Let's board the ironclad ship, and use two ironclad ships to destroy the Tartar battery!" The other ships will not move for the time being! ”

Zhang Yukun took a small boat, left his flagship, the battleship Fujian, and boarded the ironclad ship Yue Fei. Then the officers and men on the ironclad ship untied the cable connecting the battleship.

In the engine room of the ironclad ship, the boiler was blazing, the boiler shoveled a shovel of coal into the furnace, the engineer opened the pressure limiting valve, the ironclad whistle whistled, the chimney spewed out billowing smoke, sailing at full speed of five knots, facing the coastline ahead. As we get closer and closer to Dagukou, the blurred coastline ahead is gradually becoming clear.

The Qing troops stationed on the fort heard a long roar that shook the sky from the sea, and saw two black shadows approaching, and the Qing army was frightened.

"What a big ship! What kind of ship is that? There are no sails! Someone screamed in horror.

The ironclad ships are getting closer and closer, looking at these giant ships that are taller than the Zhengyangmen Tower, and then seeing the sun and moon flags hanging on the ships, where do the Qing troops on the fort dare to use small cannons to shoot at the ironclad ships? They threw down their artillery and fled from the battery.

"Boom" The guns of the ironclad ships spewed fire, making a deafening roar, and the rifled artillery shells fell accurately on the turret, as if they had eyes, and a violent explosion immediately occurred.

"It's boring!" After not seeing anyone counterattacking on the fort for a long time, Zhang Yukun said in disappointment.

Wu Haodong said: "There are only a few Franc machines and tiger squat cannons on the Tartar Fort, we are simply bullying people!" With such powerful artillery fire on these two ships, I'm afraid it will be easy to take the Manila battery! ”

Zhang Yukun nodded: "Pass the order, issue a flag order, and all the land divisions are ready to land!" ”

……

Hundreds of miles away, under the capital, the siege of the Wu army has lasted for nine days and nine nights, plus the three days of preparations such as digging trenches and building siege weapons, it has been almost half a month.

In the past half a month, the resistance of the Qing army has been extremely stubborn, and all kinds of weapons such as artillery, guns, birds, flintlock guns, bows and arrows, lime bottles, canisters of oil, and 10,000 enemies have been smashed down on the other side of the moat without money.

The Qing army also took out the captured rifled guns and used them specifically against the Wu army's sharpshooters. The rifled gunners of the Qing army hiding in the arrow tower hit every hundred shots, and the Wu musketeers were killed and wounded heavily.

Although the artillery of the Qing army was destroyed in the end, the artillery of the Wu army could not completely destroy the city wall of Beijing, the wall of this fortified city was extremely strong, with the artillery and gunpowder equipped by the Wu army, if you want to destroy the city wall of Beijing, I am afraid that the gunpowder will run out, and it will be difficult to blow a gap in the city wall.

The Wu army finally filled in many sections of the moat, and a large number of Wu troops approached the city wall with various siege weapons and launched a fierce attack on the city wall.

The Qing army used rolling wood and stones to deal with the Wu army besieging the city, muskets and rockets fired at the Wu army covering the city, and used fire oil canisters and rockets to destroy the approaching large ladder trucks. As for the Wu army sharpshooters who sat on the nest car and shot condescendingly, the Qing army used their own rifled gunners to deal with them. The rifled gunners of the Qing army hiding in the shadows shot cold bullets from time to time, the area on the nest car was not large, and the position was exposed, and the sharpshooters of the Qing army shot bullets through the shooting holes from time to time, killing many rifled gunners of the Wu army.

Wu Jun came up with another method, trying to dig a hole in the city wall and place gunpowder to blow up the city wall. However, the firepower of the Qing army at the head of the city was too fierce, and as soon as the Wu army's carts approached the city wall, the overwhelming fire oil canisters were smashed on the city, and in the blink of an eye, several carts were all burned.

However, although the Wu army suffered great losses, its morale was still high, because the capital was beckoning to them, and Wu Sangui had already opened his mouth to attack the capital and allow them to plunder for three days.