Author's words: The third update, ask for a few monthly passes! There is a fourth watch before midnight!

???? Dividing line ????

"The Second Fleet is trying to enter the Yangtze River waterway? You repeat, are you sure it's the main force of the Second Fleet? ”

"The Second Fleet headed by three cruisers? The commander is Yuzaburo Kato, who once served as the vice minister of the Ministry of the Navy? What the? Prince Fushiminomiya is also on this fleet? ”

Receiving an urgent telegram from the Shanghai Consulate, the British Legation blew up, and it was not a great thing that a few foreign ships appeared on the Yangtze River waterway, and during the Xinhai Revolution, in order to prevent the revolutionary army from harming foreign nationals, the great powers were about to use the Yangtze River as their own vegetable garden, and they always came and left whenever they wanted.

But at that time, the war situation was unclear, and now that the Republic of China has been established, whether it is the Nanjing Provisional Political Axe or Yuan Shikai's Beiyang Political Axe, including the Jianghuai Army that actually controls the Yangtze River, there has never been a direct conflict with the foreign powers, and Chai Dongliang has also expressed a considerable degree of welcome to foreign investment. Foreign merchants even gained commercial freedom that was hard to come by during Manchu rule.

The concessions in Jiujiang, Wuhu and other places have even been revoked by foreign patrols, and the Chinese can enter and exit at will, and the Ministry of Industry and Bureau of the concession even asked Jiujiang and Wuhu municipal axes to connect the tram tracks to the concessions, otherwise the concessions that once stood out because of their deformed prosperity would become slums.

Even during the Xinhai Revolution, the great powers did not sail their fleets into the main channel of the Yangtze River in an organized manner, not to mention that the relationship between the Republic of China and the foreign powers is not bad now.

At the end of the Qing Dynasty, Britain originally controlled eighty percent of China's shipping and sixty percent of foreign trade, and after the Gengzi Revolution, with the United States' open-door policy being responded to by the foreign powers, Britain's monopoly position was affected to a certain extent, and after the Jianghuai Army controlled Jiangnan, this proportion further declined significantly. By the beginning of 1914, Britain's shipping and foreign trade had fallen to less than 40 percent, but although the proportion had fallen, actual trade was expanding. With the New Deal in the late Qing Dynasty, especially after Chai Dongliang took control of Jiangnan, the economy along the Yangtze River began to take off, and commercial activities developed on a large scale, and the actual trade volume between China and Britain increased instead of falling.

Traditional trade has been followed by a massive uptick in direct and indirect investment, with British-owned and Sino-British joint ventures dotting the Yangtze River. Now the middle and lower reaches of the Yangtze River are more important to Britain in terms of economic status than in the late Qing Dynasty.

Now he brazenly wants to sail the Second Fleet into the main channel of the Yangtze River, which is too great a damage to economic activities along the route, and this is something that Britain cannot allow.

British Minister Zhu Erdian was furious, pointing at the nose of Minister Lin Quanzhu and scolding and threatening, just Lin Quanzhu, a small minister, how dare he ambush the tiger whiskers of Prince Migong? However, the British Empire could not afford to provoke it, and poor Minister Lin Quanzhu became an angry little daughter-in-law, losing her hair one by one, and could only send countless secret telegrams to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs every day, but they were all sunk in the sea, not only did the Ministry of Foreign Affairs not move, but even the military department and the political axe turned a blind eye, and even the Ministry of the Navy, which was directly in charge, just said: "Pay close attention to the development of the situation", and there was no more follow-up.

Zhu Erdian also sent an urgent telegram to London, but unexpectedly, the British Foreign Office also became a gourd with a sawed mouth, and also asked him to pay close attention to the development of the situation, not to mention that there was no expected force pressure, not even a word of protest.

The entire Western world was silent about the war between China and China, even China and Japan, both of the warring parties???? Until now, the two sides have neither severed diplomatic relations nor officially declared war.

In contrast to the apparent calm, the embassies of the European and American powers sent a large number of intelligence officers and military attachés, the military counselors of the embassies flocked to the Yangtze River, and the fleets of the great powers in the Far East gathered on the waters beyond the Yangtze River. Beneath the surface of indifference, there is a surging undercurrent.

There will be a war on the European continent, and it will be a big war, this is the consensus of the great powers, and even the Russian court of the [***] of the army recognized this, but for the scale of the war, the great powers generally believed that it would not exceed the Crimean War of that year. Thus, Tsar Nicholas could still hunt in Poland at leisure, while Archduke Ferdinand of the Austro-Hungarian Empire carried out constitutional reforms while parading troops outside Yugoslavia. The British, for their part, showed unusual concern about the impending war, hoping to weaken the hated Germans and maintain the balance of power on the continent.

No one realizes that this war will change the power structure of the world, and that Europe, as the center of the world, will inevitably decline. The British Empire, which has ruled the world for 300 years, will become a yellow flower, the seven seas have changed masters, and the great powers of the European continent are also scarred, whether it is the winner or the loser, the strength will be greatly weakened.

And a few countries far away from Europe will make a large amount of war money and become the world's great powers.

However, the Yangtze River waterway is obviously not easy to enter, and the swarm-like aircraft bombing is everywhere, from the oldest "Feng Ru III" biplane wooden aircraft to the semi-metal "Huaxia-style", the air raids of the [***] team are almost never over. Moreover, the intensity of the air attack was obviously increased, and instead of using five-pound bombs or 100-pound aerial bombs, the narrowest channel of the Yangtze River was chosen, and when the warships' maneuverability was at its weakest, the planes carried shells from 380 mm Krupp coastal defense guns as bombs to bomb the cruisers of the Second Fleet. This kind of shell, which weighs half a ton, as long as one shot falls on a warship, is enough for a battleship to drink a pot, not to mention a cruiser, even if a battleship is not killed by one shot, it is also seriously injured. The provinces along the Yangtze River recruited pilots from the aviation clubs one after another, and all kinds of new and old planes loaded with bombs launched frenzied attacks, and even some fanatical young people stuffed the old planes with explosives and crashed directly into the warship.

After the loss of an old cruiser and two destroyers, Yuzaburo Kato no longer had the guts to take risks.

The Yangtze River is not a vast sea, and it is unlikely that warships will maintain a high mobility here, so Yuzaburo Kato wisely chose to withdraw from the Yangtze River channel and instead attack cargo ships trying to enter the Yangtze River in the sea outside the Yangtze River Delta.

In just three days, five freighters were sunk, including a small steamer of the Mingyuan Steamship Company, and the boss of this company was none other than Chai Dongliang's old acquaintance, Li Xiehe, a native of Hunan who was once the commander of the Liberation Army. The angry boss Li jumped in the office and scolded the little devil's mother, eager to gather the old department and say that he was fighting to the death.

The Jianghuai Army sent a large number of planes to search for the Second Fleet in an attempt to strike at the Second Fleet with even more frantic air raids, but how easy was it to find a fleet without a fixed route on the vast sea. What's more, the flight radius of the aircraft is very limited, and it cannot search deep into the ocean.

Five freighters were sunk, the loss is not very large, but the psychological impact on the businessmen is huge, the former busy Yangtze River waterway suddenly became deserted, many factories can not transport raw materials and products can not be shipped out, the boss is so anxious that he stomps his feet, and his mouth keeps scolding those little people.

Chai Dongliang, who was far away in Dagukou, couldn't help but have a headache every day after the emergency telegram forwarded by the Anqing Military Advisory Office.

However, Yuzaburo Kato and Prince Fushiminomiya also took great political risks, and the great powers protested one after another, demanding that Masatake Kamoto compensate them for the losses they had suffered due to the cut off of the shipping routes. It is said that the pressure on this political axe is unprecedented, and Prime Minister Okuma Shigenobu wanted to simply resign several times, but he was afraid of the retaliation of Yama Prefecture Youtomo, so he barely supported it. The Ministry of the Navy is under tremendous pressure, and if China cannot be brought to its knees, the Minister of the Navy will have to disembowelment to thank the countrymen!

Yuan Shikai put on a political axe, pushing China and the country into a lose-lose situation, and in the end, even he couldn't control the situation, and he didn't even keep the halo of his own national hero.

Yuan Shikai's lack of control over China was also undoubtedly exposed in this battle, and the great powers began to re-select those who could control the situation and end the chaos in China, and the only candidate had surfaced, that is, Chai Dongliang, who was in Dagukou and was having a headache for the guerrilla warfare of the Yueben Navy.

In Wusong Harbor, two cruisers flying the red, white and blue flags of the white five-star slowly sailed out of the port, these two armored cruisers with a displacement of 5,000 tons, three oil-fired boilers, a speed of 28 knots, equipped with two 10-inch (254 mm) main guns, two 6-inch secondary guns, two 18-inch torpedo tubes, and a new nickel alloy double armor below the waterline. The outer armor is carburized and hardened on the surface, while the inner armor is made of ordinary high-quality alloy steel, and no hardening is used.

In the captain's room, Liu Guangtai was smoking a cigarette triumphantly, this latest cruiser made him love it to the heart, and he couldn't wait to sleep on the warship every day with the steering wheel.

"Deputy Commander, our governor is really evil, these two new ships have been making trouble for a long time, they are made for our Yangtze River Fleet!" Liu Guangtai touched here and looked there, and felt that he couldn't put it down everywhere.

Deputy Commander Cheng Biguang glanced at him: "This is satisfied?" Look at your little bit of talent! ”

Liu Guangtai's eyes lit up: "What, the governor still has a backhand?" ”

Cheng Biguang smiled faintly: "Go back and get you a 20,000-ton battleship, do you want to?" ”

"Yes!" Liu Guangtai jumped on the high road.

Cheng Biguang said with a smile: "This battle is fought, I will let you be the captain of the battleship when I turn back!" ”

"Really?"

"Can Lao Tzu lie to you a bastard?" Cheng Biguang scolded with a smile.

Cheng Biguang, who once followed Baylor to the United States to sign the "Bethlehem Contract", Cheng Biguang knew the content of the contract too well, and the Dreadnought-class battleship that was now being built at Guanghua Shipyard was part of the contract.

The contract stipulates that eight battleships and 20 cruisers will be built for China, the materials will be provided by the United States, and China will repay the principal and interest within 35 years.

As a naval admiral, Cheng Biguang dreamed of leading such a fleet and also going on a round-the-world trip to declare his national prestige. However, it seems that Chai Dongliang does not care much about the manufacture of battleships, and so far only two plans have been formulated, and only one has been started, but it is a strange-looking seaplane aircraft carrier, but three have already started construction, and one of them can be launched for sea trials in the next few days.

Seaplane aircraft carriers, to put it bluntly, are transport ships with an extra deck for seaplanes, which are much easier to manufacture than battleships, and the other two seaplane aircraft carriers will probably be delivered in August this year, and the eight battleships and 20 cruisers, except for the two cruisers that have already been built and one battleship that will start construction soon, do not know that the rest will be able to start construction in the Year of the Monkey, and it is even more uncertain to say that they will be delivered for use.

Cheng Biguang had already learned by telegram about the battle of Dagukou, and he was overjoyed by the victory of the Chinese [***] team, but at the same time worried about the fate of the navy. Although the air raid of the first regiment of the Air Force sank five warships, only one destroyer with a displacement of 600 tons was considered a warship, and the "Wakamiya Maru" seaplane carrier could barely be regarded as a military ship, and the remaining three were all transports that were powerless to fight back. None of the main ships of this book suffered serious losses.

Isn't this another verification that the weapon that can sink a battleship is only another battleship!

Airplanes, of course, are very sharp weapons used against the army, but for warships with steel and iron bones, airplanes are not a very serious threat.

The formation of the two warships sailed away from the port of Wusong and gradually entered the open sea, and the sailors tore down the Chilean flag with three colors and five stars, and raised the naval flag with a blue sky and white flag.

The new warships were painted the black-and-gray of naval traffic, and wisps of white smoke were rising from the boilers, and the wisps were torn by the sea breeze that were almost impossible to detect. The warship sailed on the sea for more than a day, and the further it went east, the thicker the water vapor in the air became, and it gradually disappeared into the fog that had lasted for many years.

The task of this small fleet of two armored cruisers was very simple: to take advantage of the fog in the Sea of Yuben and imitate the Russian fleet of Puyan in those years, and to severely attack the sea transportation lines of Yuben. Once the main ships of the Yuben Navy were discovered, they took advantage of the high speed of these two cruisers to quickly escape, and to put it bluntly, they wanted to fight a naval guerrilla war with Yuben.

China said that neither side had declared war, that is to say, Cheng Biguang's two ships could enter Shanghai and Weihaiwei ports at will, and even go to the French-controlled Haiphong and Cam Ranh Bay to resupply without being hindered.

The two fast cruisers that had no fixed route and ran away without a fight, it was difficult to touch their shadows even if they were to send the main force of the combined fleet to search for them.

China is a landlocked country, even if it loses the Yangtze River shipping, it is just a huge economic loss, although it hurts but it is not fatal, if it is said that it has lost sea transportation, Chai Dongliang sent a telegram to Cheng Biguang at the end of seven big characters: Come and not be rude!

China said that the two sides used the sea to break the engagement at the same time, let's see who can't hold it first, and whose losses are greater!

(To be continued)