Lingwei.

The galleys took advantage of a tidal wave to tow the ship out of the mudflats, the sailors untied the ropes they towed, and the divers dived to the bottom of the ship to check for damage caused by the grounding. The mudflats scraped off part of the moth-proof coating on the bottom of the boat, and the damage was minor.

The sailors of the fleet landed and occupied Henan Island (Haizhu District) on the south bank of the main channel of the Pearl River, relying on several villages and towns to establish temporary anchorages and material reserve camps.

The two cruisers, Brenshire and Huberion, supported the marines in capturing the Hunter battery at the cost of hitting the reef, and the two battleships temporarily lost their combat effectiveness, withdrew from the battle columns, and docked for repairs.

The marines can occupy the enemy battery alone, but the losses will not be small, and the guards would rather fight the battleship to reduce the casualties of the soldiers, and a few large planks are not a problem at all compared to the lives of the soldiers.

Staff officers ran up and down the flagship deck, either through signal flags or through heralds, passing orders to the various units.

With some trepidation, Lan Qin boarded the Ling Wei.

The officer on duty politely ushered Lanchin, who was still wearing a Tatar official uniform, to the commanding cabin at the stern of the ship.

Complicated emotions all came to mind the moment he saw Order, and tears gushed out of Lan Qin's eyes.

Shou Xu handed him a cup of tea with his own hands, and said gently: "Dongliu County, it's been 16 years in a blink of an eye, and it's been hard." ”

Lan Qin wiped his tears and said with a smile: "I really didn't expect to have to endure it for 16 years, if I had known this, I would have gone to Taipei with Zhou Luqing." ”

The Shunzhi Dynasty Han people were very dangerous as officials, and all kinds of party cases emerged in endlessly, the remnants of Donglin and the Eunuch Party, the Northerners and the Southerners' Party, and the Imperial History and Science Dao, were arrested and imprisoned in batches, in fact, they were all political methods used by the Manchurian aristocracy to suppress the Han officials, and they were very boring to fabricate charges and punish their crimes, which was very boring, but it was just to set the tone for Manchurian rule.

It was not easy for Lan Qin to protect himself in the previous campaigns, and his way in the Tatar court was Cai Shiying, the governor of Caoyun, whom Qian Qianyi introduced.

Lao Qian contacted the green camp everywhere in Jiangnan, such as Zhang Tianlu, Ma Jinbao and other departments, all of whom had a wait-and-see move at both ends of the first rat. Qian Qianyi has a relatively fixed connection with Sun Kewang, Li Dingguo, and Zheng Chenggong, these things are almost semi-public, and Lao Qian himself does not shy away from the poems he wrote in prison, all relying on Liu Ru to go around outside the prison, and Cai Shiying, Ma Guozhu, Tong Guoqi and other Han military officials to cover up, otherwise he would have been finished a long time ago.

Nanyang had business dealings with many Tatar upper-class people, but those were businesses that knew each other well, and only through the help of Qian Qianyi and others could the officialdom break into some grassroots official positions.

Lan Qin has been in the enemy camp for 16 years, and he has achieved the same knowledge of Guangzhou coastal defense in the treacherous Shunzhi Dynasty, and only he knows the hardships and dangers of this.

Shou Xu put on a set of Ming Dynasty four-grade official uniforms, and said apologetically: "What are your plans next?" Please forgive me, because it is related to the balance of personnel, I can't give you too high an official right away, you can choose the position at will, the province of Zhongshu, the six departments or the external release, you can do it. Don't worry, there are many positions, and soon you will catch up with Zhou Luqing. ”

Lan Qin shook his head, "I'm not used to the central yamen, if I can, I still want to be with my brothers." ”

"Of course, where do you want to go?"

Lan Qin turned the teacup, "Guangzhou Kefu is in front of me, presumably it will soon march into the surrounding provinces, I want to go to Ganzhou." ”

Shou Xuan hesitated and said: "Ganzhou is an important town in Lingbei, and the north-south traffic arteries are probably more dangerous." ”

"For the past 16 years, I have spent every day in danger." Lan Qin's eyes were very firm, but his tone was very indifferent.

Shou Order's heart softened, "I promise you." He turned and walked over to the table and scribbled the warrant.

"Take it and go to the Joint Logistics Department, they will give you 1,000 rifles, first let your soldiers be familiar with weapons, the matter of Ganzhou, we will talk about it in detail after we take Guangzhou."

Lan Qin took the warrant, "Guangzhou is far from Huizhou, but no one can block my way home. ”

"Definitely."

Shou ordered to shake hands with Lan Chin and send him all the way out of the battleship.

After Lan Qin's troops handed over the Haizhu and Haiyin forts, they assembled and reorganized on the south bank of the Yangtze River.

In the north of the Yangtze River, the peripheral fighting has entered its final stage.

Chen Shangchuan commanded the Pearl River Fleet, which consisted of light warships and auxiliary warships, to attack and advance westward, and the Marine Corps was assigned to the Pearl River Fleet, targeting Sanshui County, an important town west of Guangzhou City and controlling the Xijiang, Beijiang, and Jiujiang estuary.

The specific attack on Canton was commanded by the Siege Command consisting of the 2nd Division, with the 6th Regiment responsible for the North Gate and the 7th and 8th Regiments assembled in the east of Canton.

There is no need to hide the direction of the main attack, and in fact it is impossible to hide it.

The 8 24-pounder guns and 8 10-inch heavy mortar guns of the independent heavy artillery battalion were dragged by prisoners of war and slowly marched towards the east of the city.

To the west and south of Guangzhou is the Pearl River, and in these two directions, the fleet sailors are responsible for guarding the city gates, and the enemy forces have completely lost control of the Pearl River, and the water surface is the best front of the coalition forces.

Outside the eastern city, a fire raged in the neighborhood below, and the Tatars cleared the firing boundary.

Many figures struggled in the fire, and the howls reached the sky, and it was clear that the Tatars had not evacuated the people before setting the fire.

The 7th Regiment had 1 battalion formed entirely from the children of the retreating Canton, and the familiar local accent was unbearable for the soldiers, and a spontaneous attack was immediately launched.

Several other battalions would not allow their comrades to attack alone, and soon the entire 4th Brigade was involved in the battle.

The Tatars fired condescendingly from the walls, and the thrilling sound of cannons and heavy exchange of gunfire shook the earth.

The 8th Regiment, under the command of the regimental commander, fired at the head of the city from a distance of 450 meters in a dense battalion formation, which was a trick they had learned from the Qiongzhou Brigade, but it was not necessarily suitable for use here. The area on the city wall is small, and it is not known how many bullets can land in the target area, so it must be very few.

The rifled gun was more effective, and the commander of a hunter company stood in the center of the battle line with his head held high, raising his gun and firing at the city, but the enemy shells did not move him in the slightest.

The soldiers in the company helped the company commander to reload, and he fired 12 shots in a row. The telescope was moved in an orderly manner, and the entire battery position of the city defense artillery was emptied by the company commander.

Without the cover of siege heavy artillery, this spontaneous infantry attack was clearly fruitless.

The enemy army had battlements to rely on, and arquebuses were handy. The soldiers could only shoot at the enemy under the city to save some of the civilians who had been burned.

Filhoff intervened at the right time to abort the attack. The soldiers heard the truce and were a little discouraged.

Shou Xuan said to the adjutant: "Remember the commander of the chasseur company, the first knight's medal of the Guangzhou attack was his. ”

Siege warfare was boring, with sappers carrying prisoners of war to build artillery fortifications and dig trenches and parallel trenches.

The Tatars in the city of Canton were still quite combative, and their attacks during the day were all repulsed, and from this day onwards, they changed to night attacks. The heavily recruited warriors took advantage of their weapons to march down the city and launched a counterattack outside the city, and some of the captives took the opportunity to rebel and destroy many fortifications.

Enraged, Filhoff erected a rack outside the city and hanged 100 prisoners of war on the spot, many of them hapless backers. The corpses hung on wooden shelves, swinging in the wind.

The coalition forces continued to build fortifications, and the artillery built 4 artillery forts. Two of the artillery forts facing the Great East Gate belonged to the siege heavy artillery battalion, and the artillery position was originally the east school field of the Guangzhou Tatar Army, and the ground was flat and hard, which was convenient for heavy artillery placement.

The sappers then approached the moat along the trenches that had been carved out, and then proceeded to construct large parallel trenches to cover the maneuvering movements of the besieging army.

The first two field artillery batteries to complete the formation fired at the head of the city to cover the excavation of the engineers. Two days later, six city defense cannons were dumbed down at the Great East Gate, and then the siege artillery began to fire.

The 12-pounder and 24-pounder guns shot directly into the wall, easily shattering the bricks that encased the wall, wedged deep into the layer of rammed earth inside.

Even the stone foundation at the bottom of the city wall could not block the direct attack of the 24-pound iron ball, and in the first two days, the effect of the artillery bombardment was not significant, and as the stones were smashed one by one, the effect was slowly revealed, and the shells peeled off the hard shell, revealing the immature soil layer inside.

The 10-inch mortar weighed 3 tons, and the shells fired weighed 50 kilograms, and each shell could blow up several Tatar soldiers into the sky. The artillery fought brilliantly, and the rumbling of the cannons continued day and night, forcing the enemy to replace the damaged cannons with new ones several times, and the tower collapsed on the same day, crushing many people to death.

The effect of the 6-pounder gun fire on the main body of the city wall was mediocre, and it was mainly used to shoot at the battlements and destroy the enemy bunkers.

Seventy-two hours later, the more than 10-meter-high wall of the Great East Gate collapsed in an exclamation in the city, and smoke and dust rose into the sky. The coalition forces and the bystanders, who had come from all over the surrounding area and were scattered on the high ground, cheered.

An engineer officer went to the breach to reconnoiter and was attacked by several enemy shooters who were placed along the city walls, and the 7th Regiment immediately sent a platoon to drive out the enemy soldiers and cover the engineer company to clear the area near the gap.

The amount of earthwork on the city wall of Guangzhou is really not small, and even the collapsed ruins are still an insurmountable obstacle for the infantry.

The infantry launched a tentative attack, and the Tatars desperately threw down all sorts of messes to close the breached gap.

The walls were still full of defenders, and their fire caused considerable trouble for the attacking infantry ranks.

Filhoff withdrew this tentative attack, and the artillery continued to bombard, widening the gap in the walls.