"The ship of the Qing people has caught up!"

"Shoot! Hit with stern shelling! Aim to hit! ”

"Straight ahead! Keep in line! Watch the wind! Keep your distance from the Qing ship, and don't give the Qing people a chance to fire their guns! ”

"Sail down! Sail down! Drop the sails! The northwest wind is coming, hurry up and lower the sails! ”

Similar shouts came and went on the five Japanese steam-gunboats, and although the shouts were obviously panicked, the Japanese sailors running back and forth on the deck and in the cabin still did not see much confusion, and they were still able to basically perform their duties in an orderly manner, handling the sails that should be handled, firing the cannons, adding coal to the boilers, and there were people rushing to repair the damaged hull and extinguish the flames, showing a good state of discipline.

However, the unpredictable wind direction in autumn made all the Japanese steam gunboats miserable, and the sea breeze from the south to the north and the sea breeze from time to time was strong and sometimes weak greatly limited the speed of the Japanese ships, and because there was a gunboat with a side of the paddle wheel that was blown up, the Japanese steam fleet with the advantage of going straight was still unable to shake off the Wu army steamship that was pursuing after turning around, and was gradually drawn closer to the range of artillery battles by the Wu army's steamboat, and had to set up the stern gun and the bow gun of the Wu army to bombard, while desperately moving forward. On the one hand, he and the Wu army steamship bombarded artillery shells at a long distance, competing in artillery combat skills, actual combat experience and battlefield luck. - In naval warfare in this era, luck is indeed very important.

In addition, the Japanese navy is fighting on the mainland, is familiar with the wind direction, currents and shipping lanes, and escapes quickly for life, and has never given the Wu army's steamship guns a chance to exert power, and at the same time, the strict training of the Japanese navy has also largely offset the Wu army's advantage in actual combat experience. After four rounds of artillery battles, Wu Jun successively hit the enemy ship five times with the bow gun, severely damaging an enemy ship, but he was only hit by the enemy twice, and he was slightly injured.

Seeing that the situation was not good, the Japanese commander Katsu Haizhou, who was bent on preserving his strength, hesitated again and again, so he could only be forced to adopt the strategy of breaking the wrist of a strong man, and set the flag to turn on the boilers of the four ships that were intact on the paddle wheel, and move forward at full speed together, throwing away the Xianlin Maru with the destruction of the paddle wheel on one side to defend the enemy alone, in a vain attempt to use the sacrifice of the Xianlin Maru to save the remaining four ships. In order to destroy the Japanese fleet and gain sea dominance, the Wu army decisively divided the Huashana, which was also damaged by one side of the paddle wheel, to deal with the Japanese Xianlin alone, and the remaining seven steam gunboats continued to move forward at full speed, biting the remaining four Japanese steam gunboats.

At this time, luck suddenly stood on the side of the Wu fleet, the wind direction that has been changing gradually stabilized into the southeast wind, the upwind and the sails are intact Wu Jun hybrid ship is faster, the Japanese army suffered a loss in the near side battle The hull and sail were damaged together, including the flagship Chaoyang Maru, the three ships could not open the full sail, the speed of the ship was gradually at a disadvantage, the Wu army took the opportunity to chase closer, and gradually gained the opportunity to bombard with gunwales, and the rear-loading rifled guns desperately bombarded the room, and another Japanese gunboat was hit by picric acid shells on the shipbuilding, The hull of the ship was on fire again, and the officers and men of the Wu army thundered with joy, but the Japanese sailors on the ship on the day of the bullet were shouting and screaming, and the speed of the ship slowed down again.

The pursuit battle continued, in order to gain sea supremacy, the Wu fleet held the desperate momentum of never giving up even if it chased to the ends of the earth, and clung to the four steam gunboats of the Japanese army, and used the powerful breech gunboat to bombard it when it had the opportunity, and tried its luck with the bow gun if it did not have the opportunity, and the shelling never stopped, and the enemy ship was weakened little by little, which successfully caused another Japanese warship to be injured and left behind, and then the Wu army still left only one boat to deal with the enemy ships that had fallen behind, and the remaining six ships were still chasing the enemy's three ships. The Japanese fleet has been trying to escape under the command of Sheng Haizhou, but it still can't shake off the pursuit of the Wu army, and the three warships that still maintain collective action are all damaged by guns, although they are not fatal, but they also cause many casualties among sailors.

Still barely found the opportunity to bombard with the ship's gun, a left-sided gun of the Wu army's flagship Zeng Guofan hurriedly opened fire with an attitude of luck, but the effect of this cannon was greatly beyond the expectations of the Wu gunners - it happened to hit the main sail of the Japanese flagship and exploded in the air, picric acid flamespray, and the main sail of the Japanese flagship Chaoyang Maru immediately burst into flame. The Japanese army was in an uproar, and the Wu army's flagship was thunderous again, and Wang Fu also smashed the handrail of the bridge with an excited punch, and said happily: "Good fight!" Son of a bitch, look how you run! ”

"White flag!" From the lookout, there was a surprise shout from the Wu army's sailors, "Wang Junmen, look, the white flag has been unfurled by the Japanese flag!" ”

"The Woko Flagship has surrendered?" Wang Fu was so surprised that he couldn't believe his ears, and when he quickly raised his binoculars to take a closer look, he saw that the Japanese flagship had indeed put down the three-leaf flag representing the Japanese shogunate and replaced it with a white flag, and at the same time, the speed of the Japanese flagship was also slowing down, and it was obvious that the boiler was already being turned off. Wang Fu was overjoyed when he saw it, and hurriedly shouted: "Raise the flag, suspend the shelling of the Japanese ships, concentrate the artillery fire, and bombard the remaining two Japanese ships!" ”

The artillery battle of the Wu army did not continue for a long time, because the Japanese flagship not only raised the white flag itself, but also issued a flag to order the remaining two steam gunboats to also raise the white flag and surrender. The Kure fleet cheered and quickly surrounded the three Japanese steam gunboats, carefully sending sailors on board to take over the enemy ships.

In history, Katsu Haizhou, who single-handedly organized the bloodless Kaejo city in Edo, was very clever and did not play any tricks, not only personally led the Japanese army to lay down their arms on the flagship deck to surrender to the Wu army, but also pleaded as soon as he saw Wang Fu: "General Wang, please let me immediately send someone to contact the two warships that I have left behind, so that they can also lay down their arms and surrender, and do not sink them, these steam gunboats are the treasures of our Japanese navy, and any one of them is extremely precious." ”

"It may be too late." Wang Fu shrugged his shoulders, pointed to the two black pillars of smoke that appeared behind him and said, "See?" Two of my ships have caught up with each other, and if nothing else, both of yours should have been sunk. ”

As Wang Fu expected, the two Japanese steam gunboats that were wounded and left behind lost most of their mobility and could not withstand the bombardment of Wu Jun's bitter acid shells, and they had already sunk into the sea with billowing smoke, so the two Wu army steam gunboats behind them caught up and joined the main force. After confirming the bad news, Sheng Haizhou shed tears on the spot, first crying and begging Wu Jun to send someone to salvage the Japanese sailors who fell into the water, and then pleaded: "General Wang, please don't abandon or sink our last three steam gunboats, we can redeem them with money, and I can persuade our shogun to let him use money to redeem these three boats." ”

Wang Fu, who was also the commander of the fleet, could also understand Sheng Haizhou's painful feelings, although he knew that it was impossible for his army to return the captured enemy ships to the Japanese, he also nodded and said: "I promise you that I will not sink or abandon your last three steam gunboats." ”

At the same time, the battle on the side of the Jiangkou Shore Pier was also nearing the end, and compared with the naval battle battlefield dozens of miles away, the situation on the side of the Jiangkou Shore Battlefield was more than ten times more miserable and desolate, and on the vast sea, dozens of large and small sea ships were either seriously tilted, or the bottom of the ship was facing the sky, or they were sitting and sinking in the shallow water with flame smoke, and the water was full of floating corpses, and in the undulating waves, there were also sailors and soldiers shouting for help. At the same time, several wooden docks along the rivershore have been set on fire, and the docks, the ground and the beach are also littered with corpses, wounded soldiers and flags, as well as countless abandoned military supplies. The air was filled with the smell of gunpowder and blood, and the stench of burnt human bodies, so thick that even the sea breeze could not disperse, and the scene was as miserable as hell on earth.

Fortunately for the Wu army officers and soldiers, who are all Chinese, these corpses are almost all Japanese corpses, and those soldiers and sailors who are about to be swallowed by the sea are basically all soldiers and sailors of the Japanese army, and the Wu army's sailing fleet with two third-class battleships as the main combat force suffered minor losses, only two armed sea ships were sunk by the Japanese, and most of the sailor soldiers were rescued. However, the losses of ships, personnel, and materials on the Japanese side were so heavy that Japanese generals such as Katsura Kogoro and Yama Prefecture Aritomo burst into tears and almost apologized on the spot.

Of course, the matter was not over, and after finally transferring the remaining army and the materials that could be collected to the range of the Wu army's artillery fire, Katsura Kogoro and others, who refused to give up, were firstly for revenge, and secondly, for the sake of obtaining food supplies and a foothold on Kyushu Island, and still insisted that the army of the Choshu Domain, which still numbered more than 5,000 people, marched to Ishikibein, more than 40 miles away, and the remnants of the shogunate navy, which were lucky enough to land on the coast, basically refused Katsukaishu's order to lay down their arms and surrender, Katsu Haizhou, who scolded for surrendering and misleading the country, followed the army of the Choshu domain to act together. Wang Fu did not dare to slack off when he heard the news, and hurriedly sent the Japanese who voluntarily surrendered to Kagoshima by land to report to Huang Yuanbao, and at the same time hurriedly assembled the fleet and returned to Kagoshima with three Japanese steam gunboats that were already under the control of the Wu army.

More than a day later, the Wu army fleet successfully withdrew to Kagoshima to join the remaining army, but the remnants of the Japanese reinforcements led by Katsura Kogoro and others had also successfully arrived at the Ishiki Palace, and joined the remnants of the Satsuma Domain, forming the Sacho coalition army to jointly hold the precipitous Ishiki Palace, blocking the Wu army land division on the narrow Kagoshima Bay Plain, and at the same time hurrying to build fortifications, putting on a posture of fighting with the Wu army to the end. Wang Fu was not in a hurry when he heard the news, but only held a military meeting on the dock to discuss the next tactics with the generals and the British officers who fought together.

During the discussions, there was a huge disagreement, and the generals of the Wu Army's land division, led by Huang Yuanbao and Li Xiucheng, strongly advocated a strong attack on Ishiki Besin to completely eliminate the hidden dangers around them, first establish a firm foothold in Kagoshima, build Kagoshima as a base for advancement, and then try to forge ahead. The British officers, led by Aspen, advocated taking Edo Castle by sea, forcing the Japanese shogunate to make concessions and compensate the Wu army and the British for their losses. The two sides quarreled over this, each with its own reasoning, and neither could convince anyone.

The suggestions of Huang Yuanbao and Aspen and others do have their own advantages and disadvantages, first take the Ishiki Besin and then try to forge ahead, the Wu army's picric acid weapons must consume a huge amount, if the Sachang coalition army is defeated and continues to entangle, and the Japanese shogunate does not surrender, the Wu army will not be pulled into the most unfavorable war of attrition for the Japanese army. If they directly attacked Edo Castle, the Wu army would either have to abandon Kagoshima Castle on its own initiative, or they would have to continue to divide their forces, and both options had their own advantages and disadvantages, and there were hidden dangers.

The decision was placed in front of Wang Fu, but fortunately, with Wu Chaoyue's strategic secret order to weaken the Japanese local power as much as possible, Wang Fu didn't bother to weigh the pros and cons, and only thought about it for less than three minutes before saying: "Divide the troops!" Huang Yuanbao, you take the main force on board the ship and follow me to Edo. Vice General Li Xiucheng Li, you will take 2,000 troops to stay in Kagoshima Castle and organize the Japanese people to mine coal and raise food and military supplies for me, so that I can use them when I return. ”

"What? Asked Vice Admiral Li to take only 2,000 men to guard Kagoshima Castle? Chen Yucheng, who was standing behind Li Xiucheng, was anxious when he heard this, and said angrily: "Do you want us to raise military supplies?" Mining coal? The Wako have almost 10,000 troops on the side of Ishiki Bessain, so how can we use this little force? ”

Li Xiucheng raised his hand to stop Chen Yucheng's questioning, and said with a smile: "Yucheng, what's the hurry?" The Japanese have been killed by us, and they only dare to hide behind the mountains as shrunken turtles, and they dare to come out and fight us? There were two thousand troops guarding Kagoshima, which was enough. ”

After all, he has been dealing with Wu Jun for many years, and he is also a master of tactics, and listening to Li Xiucheng's strange tone, Chen Yucheng only understood Wang Fu's intentions after a little calculation, but Chen Yucheng was still a little worried, and said: "The sea is not as good as the land, not only is it inconvenient to communicate, but it is also difficult to ambush, and there are eyes of the Japanese Kou everywhere, how to solve these problems?" ”

"It's easy to solve, just agree on a time." Wang Fu smiled and said, "As for how to let the Japanese invaders come to Kagoshima on time and on schedule, General Chen should have a way to do it." ”

"Yucheng is not suitable for this." Li Xiucheng shook his head and said: "Kagoshima Castle was basically beaten down by him, and Shimazu Hisamitsu's brother Shimazu Hiroshi was also killed by Yucheng himself. ”

"Then it's up to General Lao Li to handle this." Wang Fu said with a smile: "Pick your old Taiping Army, to say something that General Li and General Chen don't like to hear, only you old people of the Taiping Army can easily believe it." ”

When Wang Fu and Li Xiucheng answered each other, the interpreter next to him had been interpreting their words into English, but Aspen and British Counselor Bruoney and others present were more and more confused the more they listened, and they couldn't help but look at each other together, and they all said in English: "What are the Chinese saying?" Guess the puzzle? ”