(Every one of your subscriptions, recommendations, and favorites is a great support for "Iron and Blood"!) It's not easy to get a new book, so please support it, thank you! "Iron and Blood" Novel Group: 150536833, welcome book friends to join and discuss the plot together!! ）

Just after New Year's Day in 1855, six warships of the Rebel Fleet that had been anchored in Hakodate Bay escorted seven merchant ships into the Pacific Ocean and headed north, all of which were British merchant ships hired from Hong Kong, carrying 800 soldiers reinforced from Guangzhou, which was actually the strength of a reinforced battalion. Pen % fun % Pavilion www.biquge.info

In fact, after the signing of the Edo Treaty, after Japan withdrew from Hakodate and recognized Ezo as belonging to China, the rebels sent an infantry regiment to Hakodate, and this reinforced battalion was a temporary infantry battalion whose mission was to seize Russian naval positions in order to prevent the Russians from encroaching on Sakhalin.

Such an order involves the fact that all their actions are aimed at guaranteeing "military operations against Sakhalin", at least officially, their task is not to "occupy Russian territory", but to "block the reinforcement of Russian troops to Sakhalin".

In a word, play on words!

The Governor's game is just a play on words!

But for Zhao Shulin, who is the commander of the infantry battalion, he doesn't care about this word game, the only thing he cares about is whether the navy can blast away the Russian fortress, and then he leads the troops to rush up and capture the Russian city.

"Old Qian, then, what is that city called?"

Again, Zhao Shulin forgot the name of the Russian city, so he asked Qian Fakui beside him, he is the sergeant major in the battalion, and he is also the oldest veteran, he joined the righteous army as early as Huangzhou, and he put it aside, this is a veteran from the dragon, and he will definitely not treat them badly when Han Du becomes the emperor in the future.

"Petropavlovsk!"

Qian Fakui replied casually, he said as he wiped the rifle in his hand, this is a Han-style rifle, the best rifle in the world, a skilled soldier can hit a target hundreds of meters away with 12 bullets a minute, and even 15 bullets. However, due to the limited production of this new rifle, only the best can now hold it, and only one company of troops in the entire reinforced battalion is equipped with this rifle. As for the others, they still use front-loading rifled guns, but they still have an advantage over the smoothbore guns used by the Russians.

"The city is built on a hill and surrounded by volcanoes, so the horizon cannot be clearly seen from any corner of the city......"

After a pause, Qian Fakui said the information he had mastered, and then shook his head.

"This piece of meat is not easy to chew!"

"Hmph, if any meat is as easy to gnaw as Merlin meat, then there is still a fart to eat......"

Although Merlin's canned lunch had only been in the army for a few months, Zhao Shulin, the officers and soldiers of the expedition, were already somewhat disgusted with this kind of canned food, which they had eaten every day for the past two months, and in the winter there were neither vegetables nor fresh meat in the Ezo field, unless they went inland to hunt deer.

After eating it for a few months, the Merlin meat, which was "like a delicacy" at first, had already changed its taste in their mouths.

"It's easy to gnaw or bite, as long as we can take it down when the time comes!"

The battalion commander's words made Qian Fakui smile, and then he continued to wipe the extremely clean rifle that had been wiped.

It was about January 6th, and the white of the sea and sky told people about the arrival of the first iceberg, which was drifting ****** under the action of ocean currents, although they had seen icebergs before, but this huge iceberg made the lookouts more vigilant at this moment, because avoiding collisions with icebergs is a matter of life.

For the officers and men of the Rebel Fleet, this was their first time sailing in the North Pacific in winter, and such a calm day was extremely rare. The sailors were divided into two groups for observation, which lasted only two hours, because in the area of ice and snow a person's energy would be reduced by half. These experiences in the North Pacific, on the one hand, were taught by the fleet's British adviser instructors, and on the other hand, they were learned from the captains of the American whaling ships, and perhaps the Rebels defeated the American Far East Fleet, and hundreds of American prisoners of war were still held in the prisoner of war camp in Guangdong, but this did not prevent the American whaling ships from entering the box house.

In fact, those American captains cared more about interests than "patriotic", and even the intelligence of this dispatch was collected from those American captains and sailors, who had sailed into Petropavlovsk countless times, and could be said to know very well about it, and they were willing to sell everything as long as they provided enough money.

It is also their charts that allow the fleet to sail smoothly all the way to its destination.

Although it is winter, rain and snow are abundant in the North Pacific. When the weather is fine and the wind is not too strong, Li Guowei will always stand on the deck, and as a midshipman naval officer, he is gradually getting used to the sea and the wind and waves at sea. For him, who grew up by the river, he had never experienced the ocean before leaving Chongming, and now, he has adapted to everything on the sea.

On January 10, he was walking up and down the deck as several Army officers talked. At this time, the fleet was passing through a field of ice floe, and clumps of ice were drifting south along the strait.

"When will we see the land?"

Zhao Shulin asked Li Guowei.

"At least three or four days."

Li Guowei replied, in fact, he did not know the specific time, this is just a figure calculated by the fundamental nautical chart operation, because there are many factors to consider, after all, at sea, the ship relies on sails, not steam engines.

"What are your tactics then? Direct shelling? ”

As a veteran, Qian Fakui has always been most concerned about fighting, and this is the first time he has cooperated with the navy.

"Maybe, the entrance to the bay is only about 2 miles, and the Russian army has batteries on both sides of the bay, which means that if we don't solve the batteries, we can't enter the bay at all, and Petropavlovsk is built on the side of a small bay in the bay, surrounded by mountains on three sides, and if you don't enter the bay, you can't reach them at all, so in any case, the batteries on the cape must be solved."

"Solving the ...... of the Battery"

Zhao Shulin added.

"It's not easy to solve the fort when the fort is well defended."

It's not that it's not easy, but it's very difficult to do, because compared to naval guns, the heavy guns on the batteries have a longer firing range, and the warships and the batteries can't take advantage of each other, let alone ...... The artillery of the rebel fleet is not a battery at all.

"That doesn't have to be ......"

Li Guowei said with a smile,

"It would have been like that in other places, but here...... The Russians' cannon casting technology is very average, and the artillery here is also very backward, of course, there is no problem with changing to other places, we use rifled guns! Hit more accurately, and far away! ”

"And we're using explosive bombs, which will definitely blow up the Russian batteries to smithereens,"

A sailor next to him chimed in.

"Just like we are on the Lingding Ocean, those foreign devils' cannons are not as good as ours."

In fact, the excellent gunnery of the fleet is entirely due to the superiority of the breech-loading rifled guns, but this technical superiority has brought about a psychological superiority, so that the officers and men of the fleet, like the army, have faintly developed a kind of belief that "Lao Tzu is invincible in the world" after the victory of the army.

Sometimes faith is even more important than equipment, and it is precisely by taking advantage of the superiority in equipment that the Righteous Army has enabled the officers and men to form this psychological superiority in a very short period of time, and that kind of arrogance that comes from the bones of the army used to exist only in the army, but now through the victory of two naval battles, this atmosphere has begun to permeate the fleet.

Of course, this is not complacency, but an arrogance, an arrogance that dares to defy everything.

"When the time comes, we will definitely bomb the Russians to pieces, and we will definitely not let you go ashore with Russian bullets."

One of the gunners continued.

"I hope so."

Qian Fakui smiled, as a veteran, he knows very well that artillery is not of great significance in the war, although the artillery seems to be powerful, but in fact, after a battle, the best killing effect is the bullet, and the bullet and bayonet determine the outcome of the war, and the bullet and bayonet are killed by a few rounds of bullets every three or four hundred meters, and then a bayonet charge, the battle is basically solved, as for the shells...... Unless it's a shotgun at close range, grenades don't mean much. However, the rifled gun made the effectiveness of the shotgun greatly reduced, but the power of the shrapnel was okay, although he knew more about land warfare than these navies, he still thanked them, after all, he still pointed at them to bombard the fortress.

"If that's the case, I'd really like to thank you......"

As he spoke, suddenly a voice came from the top of the mast.

"It's here!"

The lookout shouted loudly.

"Look, there's an island...... We're here! ”

"No,"

Shen Ming, who was at the stern of the ship, corrected after calculating the position of the warship with a latitude gauge.

"We're only in Kamchatka, it's still very close to Petropavlovsk, and if all goes well, we'll be almost there, tomorrow at dawn, but there's a lot of ice floes here, so be careful when sailing at night!"

As the commander of the fleet, in Shen Ming's view, the biggest threat to the fleet now is the ice floe in the mouth of the American whaling captain, and the floating ice masses on the sea surface, more than 50 groups have appeared on the horizon, and they are getting closer and closer to the fleet. The helmsman clung to the rudder, and the lookout steered him on the mast beam.

By dusk, the schooners were completely surrounded by drifting ice floes. The destructive power of ice floes is irresistible, so avoiding ice floes and icebergs is crucial for the fleet. Another difficulty was that the ship's course could not be accurately grasped, because the things around it were unpredictable and the fog was getting thicker. All the sailors of the fleet, following the captain's orders, remained on deck. Each was fitted with a long pole and a steel fork to avoid collisions between the boat and the ice.

Throughout the night, the hull of the ship was often scratched by drifting icebergs. At night, you can only hear the icebergs crashing against each other, making bursts of explosions. But despite this, the fleet still headed towards the goal...... (To be continued.) )