On the third day of Deng Shicai's personal command of the troops, and also the third day of the heavy artillery shelling of Houston, some people reported that it seemed that they heard gunfire on the US position, and it was not strange to hear gunfire, but it was just a battlefield, when would the two sides not shoot?

However, the scout insisted that the gunfire broke out in the American position, and that the Americans were hitting the Americans, but the scout could not say any reason, and it was completely based on the scout's intuition, which was difficult for Deng Shicai to judge. Pen fun and pavilion www.biquge.info

If there was really infighting among the Americans, this would be a good opportunity, a good opportunity to capture Houston, but based on the scout's side of the story, he could not make such a big decision, because the situation of the Ming army was not good.

What Deng Shicai is waiting for now is to hope that the navy will regain its combat strength as soon as possible, and then be able to blockade Houston from the sea, thus beginning to form a complete siege of Houston, and he has given up his intention to carry out a large-scale attack.

He does not know whether this siege tactic will be effective, but he believes that it is already the best way under the conditions of modern warfare.

So he continued to let people scout, continued to let the artillery bombard, and at the same time hoped to catch a tongue, but unfortunately more than ten days passed, the scouts still failed to catch a tongue, and the two sides confronted each other for so long, and they both operated their positions into old camps, which are difficult to steal.

The good news is that after a month's rest, the Navy finally said that they could attack, and Navy Chief Chen Ada said that the Navy would try its best to fight for sea supremacy and blockade Houston from the sea. But he told the army that it was impossible for the navy to hold out for a long time, as long as a year, as short as a few months, this is the Americas, not the territory of the Ming Dynasty, and if there is not a point here, the US army will be stronger, and the Ming army will be relatively weakened, at least in the navy.

The Americans are going all out to build new warships, and with their current full-speed mobilization construction capacity, a large number of warships will be launched in a year, and although the Ming Dynasty has also begun to build new ships, it is not easy to get the fleet to sail from the Pacific Ocean. Therefore, the Navy will try its best to fight for sea supremacy before the US military recovers its strength, and cooperate with the Army's actions, hoping that the Army can resolve the battle within a year.

Deng Shicai did not doubt Chen Ada's judgment, and he was very worried, because Chen Ada was sick, very sick, in the fierce naval battle, Chen Ada always stood on the deck, on his flagship, the officers and soldiers were reduced by more than forty percent, but he was miraculously not injured, but after entering the port, he fell ill.

For a veteran over seventy years old, this level of naval warfare is no longer something he can support.

After a month of recuperation, the warships that the Ming army could use were still the twenty ironclad ships, plus twenty armored cruisers, to form a fleet of forty warships, which could go out of port for naval battles.

But the situation of these warships was not very ideal, because they only carried out simple repairs, or even only cleared the bottom and deck, painted a layer of paint to cover the traces of battle, in fact, many warships had a lot of damage inside, and they could not fight at all.

It's just that the Navy can't wait for these warships to be completely repaired, the repair facilities in the port of Corpus are mainly left by the Americans, and the Ming Army has expanded on this basis and added a batch of equipment, the equipment is mainly dismantled from the San Francisco United Shipyard, and the San Francisco Shipyard can directly build large ironclad ships, and maintenance is naturally not a problem, but the problem is that the maintenance capacity cannot meet the needs of all warships to be repaired together.

The Navy decided to temporarily keep the ships that had suffered less damage and still maintained a certain combat effectiveness in combat condition, and pulled those ships that were completely unable to fight without major repairs to the dock, and could not wait to compete with the Americans for sea supremacy, hoping to use the victory of a month ago to frighten the American troops and make them dare not fight the Ming army again, so that the army could completely blockade Houston.

Deng Shicai, who knew about these circumstances, did not criticize the navy for anything, but could only hope that the Americans would be deterred, just like the French navy at that time, Da Nang, where it was located, did not dare to leave the port at all, and if the US fleet could be forced into the port to blockade and cut off the US army's sea supply line, it would be possible to force the US troops to surrender or withdraw.

The fleet went to Galveston, the outer port of Houston, and went around, the American fleet was really here, both sides were very deep, no major naval battle broke out, the American army took the initiative to retreat into the port, and the Ming army did not attack. After turning around in the open sea, he returned to Hong Kong, but this contact made it clear to the Ming army that the US military actually did not want to fight with the Ming Navy again.

It's not that I doubt the courage of the other side, but I just guess that the other side's tactics are probably to avoid a decisive battle for the time being, and plan to recuperate.

The Ming army was not a big loss of vitality, the loss of warships fell second, and a large number of veterans of several years or even more than ten years sacrificed themselves, which was the biggest loss, and the country sent a large number of recruits from the west coast of the United States by sea in this month, but compared with these new soldiers, just looking at them in spirit and spirit, it made people uncomfortable.

The U.S. Navy was already rushing to the army, and the loss of a wave of veterans with three or five years of ship age was enough to deal a huge blow to them.

But the Americans will definitely not admit defeat so easily, they do not fight hard, it only shows that they have more important tasks. Sure enough, the Ming Navy left the port for the second time a few days later, and there was a bloody battle with the U.S. Army, which was an escort fleet, which was captured by the Ming Army in the waters of New Orleans.

The third voyage was already the second month, at this time the Ming army excluded sixty warships, this time it planned to completely cut off the passage between Houston and the sea, and it was impossible to do this kind of thing by hitting the port fortress, but it was still possible to blockade the ocean, and the main force of the US fleet at this time had also arrived in this area, and there was no way to retreat on both sides, and there was no way to retreat, and as a result, a fierce battle broke out again.

The Ming army mobilized 25 ironclad ships and 25 armored cruisers, and used all the warships that could be used after emergency repairs, while the American army used 22 ironclad ships and 34 cruisers.

This time, the Ming army once again repelled the American army, causing heavy losses to the American army, losing seven ironclad ships, thirteen cruisers, and more than one-third of its troops. The Ming army suffered equally heavy losses, paying the price of four ironclad ships and five cruisers, and fighting like this with superior firepower, it is obvious that the American army is also desperate.

After this battle, the U.S. Navy believed that the Navy no longer had the ability to fight a decisive battle with the Ming Army, and hoped that the Navy would not be sent to death in vain. However, Houston's back road cannot be cut off, once the back road is cut off, there is only one dead end in the lonely city. After joint discussions between the Navy and the Army, it was finally decided to let the Houston defenders break through, and they believed that Houston was impossible to hold.

Since the decisive battle with the Ming Navy in the Yucatan Strait, the U.S. Navy believes that they are no longer able to protect the sea lines of communication, so the Houston defenders can only choose to break through by land this time, the plan formulated by the Army is to break through to New Orleans, New Orleans is not only a seaport, but also a river port, even if the Ming army blocks the sea route, it is impossible to cut off the inland river transportation of the Mississippi River, not to mention that there are many railways in New Orleans, once the U.S. army retreats here, the Ming army wants to besiege it again, That's almost impossible.

The Ming army soon discovered the movement of the American army, because the Ming scouts found a large number of troops coming from the direction of New Orleans, and the officers could easily judge that this reinforcement must have come to relieve Houston, but the Ming officers thought that this was to rescue Houston, and they did not suspect that this was to meet the retreat of the Houston defenders, because the Ming army still did not know the situation of the American army very well.

The Americans know very well that the U.S. army is on the verge of collapse, and the defenders in Houston have long been panicked, and the Ming scouts are right, a small civil war did break out in Houston, and it is not one, and there are even routs who have set up barricades on the streets of Houston to fight fiercely with the suppressed army. Some of the new immigrants who were forcibly recruited, the black soldiers, were not very willing to fight, and there have been many rebellions.

The most serious thing is that the U.S. military is seriously understaffed, and the defenders of Houston continue to suffer casualties, and it is difficult for them to replenish in time, because the United States has forcibly recruited new immigrants, and even the number of new immigrants has dropped sharply during this period, and some young people who originally planned to immigrate to the United States have changed their itinerary. At home, there has been a lot of resistance, and although it is not enough to subvert the US regime, it has greatly affected the progress of conscription, and last month it even conscripted only 2,000 soldiers.

Up to now, the Americans have recruited 4 million soldiers, of which 1 million have been lost, including 500,000 in the Rio Grande Valley, 300,000 in the Battle of Houston and more than 200,000 in the field casualties plus surrenders, and more than 200,000 during the siege of Houston and scattered wounds and diseases. Although there are still 3 million troops, 2 million are here in Houston, and the US Congress believes that the US military resources have begun to run dry.

But Houston's personnel replenishment can not be broken, even if there is no large-scale offensive and defensive war here, every month just because of illness and scattered combat losses, are more than 3,000, before these wounded and sick can be sent to the rear by sea for recuperation and treatment, now they are all trapped in Houston, more and more wounded and sick in Houston, Houston's hospital can still accommodate them, but because other soldiers saw the tragic situation of these wounded and sick, the morale of the army was huge, and as a result, more and more troops refused to accept the task, No one was willing to go to the front line trenches to defend, and under forced orders, there were many cases of rebellion.

The U.S. government has come up with various countermeasures, such as increasing the proportion of black soldiers, but not to mention how effective the black soldiers are, they have to endure the humiliation of white soldiers in the army, and their morale has never been raised. The US Government also has common sense in recruiting troops in Europe, and the dismissal of high military salaries is very much recruiting a group of European soldiers, but the arrival of these people not only failed to increase the combat effectiveness of the US military, but on the contrary brought about a bad military discipline.

At this time, coupled with the blockade of the port, the U.S. government made up its mind to abandon Houston and ordered the army to start a breakthrough.

They planned to break through to the east, but the Ming Army was the first to fight fiercely with the American army on the western front.