Guo Songlin's main infantry, outside the north gate of Mengcheng, suffered heavy casualties after being attacked by Dong Fuxiang's army, Admiral Guo himself was killed by artillery fire, and the troops were crushed under the bombardment of dense grenades and flying thunder artillery.

Dong Fuxiang's army immediately charged the whole army, completely defeated the Huai army in the charge, and rushed into Mengcheng all the way.

The battle ended almost in one round, and more than 3,000 Huaxia Tian** defeated most of the elite of the Huai army of more than 4,000 in a hard encounter, and chased its remnants to the city.

The Huai army panicked, fled, at the gate of Mengcheng, tried to resist, guarded part of the Huai army in the city, carried out a heroic battle, but unfortunately, under the bombardment, it was impossible to parry, only to flee and go,

The Huai army could not, but could only escape to the rest of the city gates, but immediately encountered a head-on attack, foreign gun shooting, flying thunder cannon bombardment, grenade throwing, so that the Huai army had nowhere to hide, after a while of stubborn resistance, most of the Huai army was annihilated, and the rest only surrendered,

More than an hour later, Guo Songlin's troops, who had been brave and good at fighting, were completely wiped out.

The main force of 6,000 people, and other recruits of more than 1,000 people, were actually under the attack, and the losses of the Dong Fu Division of the Huaxia Army were very small, only the cavalry of the Hui army under his subordinates, with 375 casualties, and the rest of the combat infantry, with only more than 140 casualties.

After Dong Fuxiang's victory, he was elated and immediately reported the situation to Luoyang.

Luo Yang has never received a battle report, because his troops have been transferred to attack Xuzhou.

Xuzhou is an important town in the northwest of Jiangsu, and it is also the gateway to Central China, but after the Luoyang army went south, it was discovered that a part of the Huai army was moving south of Xuzhou, and the scale was not small, so he immediately ordered all the departments to turn, one to seize Xuzhou with the Lan Dashun division, and the rest of the troops pointed to the surroundings of Xuzhou.

When Dong Fuxiang's army fought Mengcheng, Lan Dashun's army was fighting fiercely in Xuzhou, and the thousands of Qing army guards in Xuzhou were not foodies, and Xuzhou's city defense was quite strong, as a result, Lan Dashun's plan to run to occupy the city was not realized.

Named King Wen by the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom, Lan Dashun's troops are actually not many, and, as the remnants of the Yunnan Sichuan rebel army, they have more pathos complexes, fortunately, under the auspices of Luo Yang, with the surrendered Hui army, the regimental training of Shaanxi, ordinary Henan people, recruit troops, enrich them, and expand his troops into a division, as a division commander of an infantry division, he has been proven to be good, in fact, in Huaxia Tian**, among the division-level unit commanders out of Shaanxi and Henan, there are very few real Luoyang cronies, is mainly the general of the former Taiping Tian**, which makes everyone admire Luo Yang's mind very much, and everyone can be convinced in the battle.

The Lan Dashun army approached the city wall, and tried to bombard, although the Qing army guarding Xuzhou had foreign artillery, but there were very few, as a local guard force, the strength was very weak, and after a battle, the troops were blown up by the overwhelming so-called large-caliber shells to cry dad and shout mother, and then slipped away,

The Lan Dashun army occupied Xuzhou, immediately deployed defenses, and prepared for a fierce battle.

It didn't take long for Li Hongzhang's cronies to arrive, and under the city of Xuzhou, because of the whistleblower of the defeated army, Li Hongzhang's army did not ambush in the middle, and hurriedly retreated, waiting for Li himself's large army.

On the first day of the first month of February, Li Hongzhang's main force, in fact, was also the remnants of all the Huai Army's troops, more than 23,000 people, all rushed to the city of Xuzhou, at this time, he already knew all kinds of news, for example, there were defeated soldiers who fled back from Yongcheng, and Guo Songlin's so-called captured defeated soldiers, all confirmed that the Huai Army's most elite troops, Cheng Xueqi's troops, had been wiped out, and at the same time, the news that Wu Changqing and Pan Dingxin, the two generals of the Huai Army, had also been killed, which made him angry and ashamed, and he didn't believe in this result. roared like thunder: "Impossible, the bandit army that can eat my tens of thousands of soldiers and horses in one go has not yet been born." ”

Ma Jianzhong advised him to calm down, but his foreigner friend, Bidege was even more worried, but he did not let him calm down, he urged the troops, attack quickly, to enter Xuzhou first, and then explore the situation.

"How can we not defeat the bandit army with so many foreign artillery and guns." Li Hongzhang didn't believe in this fact at all,

Ma Jianzhong and Bieder did not believe in the facts, but, expressing concern,

The striker came with the news that Xuzhou had been occupied by Huaxia Tian**,

"It can't be." Ma Jianzhong couldn't believe it either,

"Could it be that the enemy has a lot of foreign artillery and foreign guns?" Biedge felt strange, in his opinion, only the Qing army with advanced weapons and ammunition was absolutely qualified to win, and in the colonialist actions of the British French ** team, the battle that relied on foreign guns and foreign artillery could almost be said to have won with an overwhelming advantage every time, and he had long thought that the Huai army only needed to send 10,000 men to completely destroy the enemy in Henan, although he did not know who the enemy was, the Taiping army or the Twist army, or the Hui army,

Li Hongxiang finally calmed down, although he didn't believe that several of his cronies and generals had suffered defeats, but it was not good that he had not replied, so he sent a force to attack Xuzhou as a test.

Thousands of Huai troops, carrying foreign guns and cannons, vividly entered the villages in the south of Xuzhou City, and were on the march, when suddenly there was a loud noise, shells flew sideways, and the vanguard of the Huai army of thousands of people was knocked out in half, and then resisted for a while, only a few people could escape with their lives, and reported the news to the governor.

The news of the striker's defeat made Li Hongzhang completely panicked,

"Withdraw the troops, withdraw the troops, withdraw the troops immediately."

Li Hongzhang's Huai army, nearly 30,000 people, had been knocked out of 3,000 first, only 24,000 people, and fled frantically from the south of Xuzhou, but while they were fleeing, a large cavalry unit appeared in the south, blocking the way.

"Someone."

"Lord Governor, that's the Twist Army, the Twist Bandits." The pro-soldier said in horror,

Li Hongzhang knew that it was not good, and he also decided to fight to the death with the Huaxia army, so he reorganized the troops, arranged the formation, and met the battle with a surprise attack of officers and soldiers.

It was indeed the cavalry of the Twist Army, it was a roundabout interception of the troops, all of them were cavalry, and there were more than 10,000 people, Li Hongzhang's Shengzi Battalion Zhou Shengbo Army, swarming in, bravely taking the lead, first bombarding with cannons, and then beating with foreign guns, wanting to completely defeat the Twist Army.

The Twist Army was very cunning, as soon as the Huai army hit, they quickly retreated, and as soon as the Huai army stopped, they came again,

After a fierce attack, the cavalry retreated to the south.

Li Hongzhang finally let out a sigh of relief: "Let's go." ”

As soon as the troops moved a few hundred meters, there were cavalry interceptions in front of them, and, in more places, the Twist army carried out a surprise attack, where foreign artillery and foreign guns could not cover, and the rapid battle of the cavalry would make the Huai army blink an eye, and five or six hundred people were cut down,

The foreign spear team of the Huai army immediately rushed to reinforce it, but the twist army ran away again.

Li Hongzhang was so angry that he smoked, but he didn't know that the Twist Army adopted a new tactic taught by Luo Yang: guerrilla harassment tactics.