Commitment: Two changes a day, ten plus one more in the collection this week! Ask for a recommended collection!

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When the British army arrived, and when they learned of the situation, an inspecting division commander called the British company commander, who was busy tying up the Taiping army and making a fortune, and took all the prisoners away after a scolding scolding. This British allied soldier with no background gritted his silver teeth with hatred, but he couldn't resist the oppression of the division commander, and could only vent his anger on the Indian soldiers under him.

The atmosphere at the coalition command was oppressive and frightening.

"Damn, I let them run anyway!" General Steveri was very depressed.

"Commander, I didn't expect the Taiping Army to be so cunning, fortunately they are just rebels!" The commander-in-chief of the French army, Baron Jean-Baptiste Louis Gross, said with an angry face. Who would have thought that in the Far East there would be an armed force that dared to fight with the British and French forces, their weapons were not good, and their combat effectiveness was not strong, but their tactical arrangements were extremely appropriate, and they gave full play to their own military superiority, and also used the terrain advantage to weaken the combat effectiveness of the British and French forces. It is no wonder that the Manchu Qing Dynasty has been unsuccessful in killing for so many years. At the same time, he was also glad that the soldiers of the Manchu government were not so tenacious, otherwise their Chinese dispatch army would not have been able to enter Beijing if it was doubled.

Soon the battle damage report was sent to the Allied Command, which made the faces of the British and French commanders even darker.

The Anglo-French army of 25,000 men went on the expedition, and lost 8,000 men in the battle of Jiading, of which more than 5,000 were killed or missing. This has never been seen in the history of the Anglo-French alliance since they joined forces. Of course, the losses in this battle were mainly Indian soldiers, but the British and French also suffered more than 2,000 losses among their own soldiers.

"Let's underestimate the Taiping Army!" Whether he wanted to admit it or not, Baron Gro had to recognize the strength of the Taiping Army after seeing this exaggerated report of battle damage that was too much for them to accept.

"The other party is different from the previous enemy! Whether it is combat methods or troop allocation! "General Steweili had a deal with Li Xiu, and at that time the Taiping army had more troops than now, but they did not pay enough attention to firearms, and the artillery was not only backward but also small in number. But this time there were hundreds more artillery pieces inside the Taiping army. Of course, these guns were only earthen guns, and their range and power could not be compared with those of the British and French forces. But when the number reaches a certain level, these earthen cannons can also cause great damage to the British and French forces, such as this time, the Taiping army used the height of the city wall and the houses in the city to give the British and French troops a big surprise.

"It seems that we will have to be cautious in the future!" The army of more than 20,000 lost 8,000 in the first battle, and the captured Jiading City was still an empty city. The most important thing is that the Taiping army's calm withdrawal allowed them to take away a lot of wounded and killed in battle, except for the last capture of 500 wounded soldiers, they found only 5,000 Taiping corpses, even if all converted into Manchu rewards.

General Steveri nodded, and the confidence that had been inflated by the arrival of reinforcements completely dissipated.

They did not send troops to pursue, fearing that they would be ambushed by the Taiping army again. They were stationed in the city of Jiading, and then sent scouts to investigate the movements of the Taiping army, and at the same time sent people to urgently obtain a map of this radius of several hundred miles from the Manchus.

The British and French forces could not retreat, but the plan of Li Xiucheng, who was ambushed in front, failed. Li Xiucheng was an extremely decisive man, and after seeing the cautious attitude of the Anglo-French army, he immediately abandoned the ambush, and the army quickly rested.

At the time of the Army's sorting, the combined fleet of the British and French navies also made some moves, and they formed a fleet of twenty medium-class steamer warships to sail up the Yangtze River.

Soon after entering the mouth of the Yangtze River, he was discovered by the scouts of the Heavenly Kingdom, and then urgently sent to the hands of Lu Shunde, the commander of the Heavenly Navy stationed in Jiangyin.

Looking at the battle report in his hand, Lu Shunde sighed, the enemy is still coming! And since then, it has been 20 advanced iron warships. And this intermediate steamer is advancing faster in the Yangtze River than they imagined.

"Immediately follow the plan made by the Heavenly King, and sail the battleship full of sediment to the designated waters."

At the beginning, Xie Zhihai took the Jiangnan Navy to escort hundreds of merchant ships to Nanjing City, all the materials and personnel were unloaded, and these warships and merchant ships were all allocated to Lu Shunde's navy by Hong Tiangui, so that Lu Shunde's navy, which originally had only 100 small boats, quickly became stronger, and was originally only active in the waters of Zhenjiang and Nanjing, but now it has expanded its scope of activities to Jiangyin.

Lu Shunde was full of confidence to fight the foreigner navy, but Hong Tiangui was not hot-headed enough to rely on the wooden sailing ships of the Manchu Jiangnan Navy to fight against the foreigners' iron warships. The enemy's warships are steam-powered and not affected by the weather, and if you really want to fight, I am afraid that it will not take a few rounds for the Taiping Army, and these wooden sailing ships will be broken to pieces by the foreigners' navy. The firepower and combat effectiveness of the real British and French warships were not comparable to those previous merchant ships.

Therefore, in view of the possibility that the enemy might send warships up the river to carry out the decapitation plan, Hong Tiangui formulated a defense plan, a crazy but helpless plan.

Hong Tiangui gathered all the large and medium-sized sailing ships that the Kingdom of Heaven could concentrate, and obtained a total of 40 large wooden sailing ships and more than 80 medium-sized sailing ships, of which most of the medium-sized sailing ships were merchant ships, and some of them were made by the Kingdom of Heaven itself. It's a pity that these backward things don't play much role in modern water warfare, and Hong Tiangui himself doesn't look down on them.

The warships were all loaded with stones, and then connected by three thick iron chains between the ships, and the more than 100 warships were photographed horizontally in three lines, and sank together in a narrow place in the upper reaches of Jiangyin, enough to cut off the entire waterway of the Yangtze River.

Once this strategy is implemented, it will be difficult for large ships to pass through the Yangtze River up Jiangyin, and it will be a disastrous result for the southwestern provinces that use the Yangtze River as a major transportation route.

Hong Tiangui also has no choice, the strength of the naval army is not as good as others, so he can only keep the enemy out of his home as much as possible.

Hundreds of sailing ships moved, and the entire river was majestic.

The British and French warships that were heading up the river were like sharks smelling blood, frantically chasing the sailing ships of the Taiping Army.

After all, it was prepared, and the fleet of the Taiping army rushed to the narrow place of the river early, and then, according to the predetermined plan, the sailing ships crossed the Yangtze River in three lines. Then the huge anchor was lowered, after which the soldiers of the boat lowered all the sails and cut a small hole in the bottom of the boat, so that the river could slowly enter the cabin from the bottom of the river. The soldiers left in small boats. In addition to the earth and stones, there are also a lot of scarecrows on the boat, and it seems that there are many people on the boat from a distance.

The combined fleet of Britain and France was excited, and before they had penetrated into the hinterland of the Yangtze River, they saw the sailors of the Taiping army, and the other side was some large wooden sailing ships, which could not outrun their steamers in the absence of wind.

The Anglo-French fleet was like a shark smelling of blood, and it took them just over an hour to reach the place where a hundred sailing ships were stationed.

"Huh? What are these sailboats loaded on? Why is the draft so deep? The captain of the British Pioneer watched curiously as the water line was about to spread to the Taiping galleon on the deck of the sailing ship.

"Send someone to check on the ship immediately!" As they got closer, they could already see that the figures on the sailboat were nothing more than scarecrows.

The British steamer approached, and then a small boat with twenty heavily armed soldiers rushed up.

Without the resistance of the Taiping Army, everything was so eerily quiet.

The captain of the vanguard warship suddenly had a bad premonition, but he couldn't think of it.

The scouting British soldiers boarded the sailboat safely, and they rushed into the cabin, but soon they rushed out in terror and fled frantically to their own boat.

"Those ships are sinking! Those ships are sinking! ......" shouted the British soldiers in the small boat in horror.

The captain of the vanguard warship shook his head, and finally realized that something was wrong. The ships are all sinking.

With a bang, the waterline of a sailboat finally crossed the first class, and the speed at which the sailboat sank quickly accelerated.

"Turn the ship's bow, let's get out of here quickly!" The commander of the British vanguard fleet shouted. Unfortunately, it was too late, as if a chain reaction had begun, and more than 30 sailing ships in the most downstream sank one after another, setting off a huge wave.

Then the second boat began to sink as well, and the already turbulent water suddenly became even more chaotic.

The water level in the upstream was instantly raised by half a meter, and the water level in the downstream plummeted due to the decrease in water flow. The three closest coalition warships caused a great shock, and the Vanguard ship that turned out of control crashed into a French mid-class steamship on its side.

With a bang, the bow of the vanguard ship snapped, and the unlucky French ** ship was also knocked out of a big hole, and then the turbulent river rushed into it crazily.

The third warship made an emergency turn, but fortunately reacted quickly enough to avoid the two colliding warships.

The warships that followed in the rear were also in a mess because of the drastic change in the current.

There was chaos in the river, and the people on the two damaged warships did not jump ship, not because they didn't want to, but because they didn't dare at all, and now the water flow is so chaotic, jumping down and not being swept away by the river, the danger is too great.

The sinking of the three ships formed an underwater barrage, and the water was arched up when it reached this point, and then the drop increased, and the current became extremely turbulent.

The two damaged warships began to sink at an angle, and the coalition warships in the rear were also in disarray.

"Retreat!"

The coalition flagship gave the order to retreat, and a number of lifeboats were lowered to pick up the men on the two silent warships.

The enemy lost two warships without seeing the shadow, and the commanders of the combined Anglo-French fleet were more tired of eating dead flies in their hearts.

The most important thing is that although the Sandaochuan Dam did not cut off the Yangtze River, it made the water surface wider and shallower, and with the tall masts of those sailing ships, God knows what the situation was underwater, even if the ships of the British and French combined fleet were covered with a layer of iron, they did not dare to pass through the wrecks of unknown circumstances.