From the end of February 1883, France passed Guò in the British Straits Settlements (Singapore. The route from Penang to Jiāo Toe China had been cut off, and after receiving the news that nearly 3o French merchant ships had been captured or sunk, all French ships were very conscious of stopping at several ports in the Straits of Malacca.

The British caravan took advantage of the opportunity to make a big windfall, and a large number of supplies were sent through Guò in Singapore,

After the transshipment between Penang and Penang, it was still transported to Saigon and other important ports in South Vietnam, and when the governor of Jiāo Zhinan, Lo Mai, was anxious, this solved some minor problems.

It's just that he is not only facing the problem of war, at this moment, there are two people he wants to raise his middle finger to deal with, one is the lone lieutenant general who swore to him before he went out of the expedition to defeat the Qing army quickly, and the other is the old opponent of the lone lieutenant general, Qin Kai, the Nanyang minister of the Qing State.

In just two months, Lieutenant General Gu Ba sent him back nearly 3ooo Fu from the front line, and the dead did not need to be sent to bury on the spot, and the lightly wounded soldiers could be treated in the military hospitals on the side of Ha Tinh and Yi Road, while the seriously wounded were sent to Saigon and other big cities through the Guò Red River waterway for treatment or transfer to the country.

And what is even more outrageous is that the hostile Qing minister Qin Kai actually sent a captured French merchant ship, which is naturally not a good thing, a boatload of wounded soldiers, and they are all moderate and severe wounded, hearing the news, the governor Lu Mei almost couldn't help but scold his mother.

In addition, there was an official letter agreeing to a cease-fire, in which the very gentlemanly stated that "in order to show the sincerity of the Nanyang Naval Division, the Penang-Saigon route will not be blocked for two days from the date of delivery of the letter, but if there is no reasonable response from the French side after two days, Governor Loh Mei will be fully responsible for the subsequent escalation of the war......

Of course, the content of this letter made Lu Mei's liver surge again, and he drank several times the ice water to calm down a little, and he was really shameless, after baptizing the port of Jiāo Zhina with artillery fire in turn, he remembered the ceasefire, and put forward such a lot of unreasonable compensation demands!

However, he also lacked confidence in the advancement of the four brigades under the commander of Guba in northern Vietnam, although from the front situation, it seemed that the progress was good, but those results were achieved in early January, "It has been the end of two months now, except for the northward attack on the small cities on the Sino-Vietnamese border, which is quite smooth", and the progress in other aspects is very slow and almost no progress.

Moreover, in the course of more than a month, a large number of wounded were sent down from the front line, as can be seen in the jī martyrdom of this battle, and according to the information of the brigade officer, "many more soldiers than wounded, died on the way of the attack, where they encountered a much stronger military force than the tens of thousands of Qing troops before."

The destruction of the mighty French Far East Fleet undoubtedly provided a footnote to the war in North Vietnam, and he could almost conclude that the emerging powerful military force must have a certain connection with the Nanyang minister, and soon news of the predicament of Jiāo Toe China was sent to Paris by urgent telegram.

At this time, Qin Kai was sweating profusely and squatting in the boiler room of the 5o1 ship, the temperature here was not ordinary warm, it was completely comparable to the sauna of later generations, and it was the kind of high-temperature dry steaming type Squatting with him on the side was Lu De, a senior boiler technician of Mawei Shipbuilding, and behind him were two Lu De's apprentices.

In this naval battle, the 5O1 ship "has already come out of the degree of deficiencies, and after more than two years of launching, it finally began to be challenged by the strict challenge of the degree advantage that it was proud of."

"Lude, you have been in the boiler room for more than a year, how is the progress of your research project?" Qin Kai took the note that Lu De had just handed over, and asked as he flipped through it.

Lu De was originally a worker in the steam engine workshop, and after Qin Kai became the owner of the Mawei Shipyard, he won the review of two high-tech workers of the steam engine and boiler in one fell swoop with his outstanding skills, and then put forward a series of improved technologies in the research of the double expansion steam engine, and won the first prize of the new technology of the year.

Then, with the first use of the water-tube boiler, the horsetail steam engine workshop set up a research team for the water-tube boiler, and made a lot of improvements in the process, and he quickly became an expert in this area because of his excellent technology and full participation, but the overall efficiency of the water-tube boiler has not been greatly improved since the completion of the development. ,

Therefore, Lu De accepted this technical problem a year ago, practice is the source of technology, this sentence is the truth refined by thousands of tempers, around the process and technological transformation, a large number of workers under his leadership quickly grew into a technical backbone, and he from a craftsman with no status, transformed into a technical jīng Ying in the shipyard system, what he got is not only a earth-shaking increase in salary, but more importantly, personal dignity and value, which makes him admire the young adults around him with all his heart.

At this time, he can squat next to the governor without a shelf, talking about the technical problems of the boiler, although he does not have any inferiority complex and timidity, but he is naturally still a little nervous in his heart, but when it comes to the problem of the boiler, this tension has long been dissipated, he immediately took stock of the improvements and effects of the boiler technology in the past year, and Qin Kai was also excited.

"My lord, the transformation of the boiler on the 5o1 ship was completed in October last year, but only one of them was transformed into a water tube boiler, the test at these times, there have been some results, now we use the furnace is lower, which affects the combustion of high-quality coal, if it is changed to a blast furnace, I expect to increase the steam pressure by 15% In addition, this water tube boiler can provide more than fifty percent of the steam pressure compared to the fire tube, but the coal consumption seems to be greater! ”

Qin Kai nodded, and retrieved the information mentioned by Lu De in his head, and really found some" "Lu De, do you mean that the utilization rate of heat in this boiler is insufficient" I have an idea, the entire furnace is a heating surface, if it is changed to a curved water pipe, it may be able to improve the efficiency! ”

Ludd shook his head, "I've thought about this method, and it seems good logically, but I asked people to customize a few curved steel pipes, but they all burst in the test" It doesn't seem to work! ”

I didn't expect what I said to be an afterthought, but we have the successful experience of later generations as the basis, this curved water pipe must work, the problem should lie in the process of this water pipe, our Mawei shipbuilding can make 1o inch heavy cannon place, can not get such a steel pipe?

"Lud, you may not be able to get accurate results after experimenting, so try again if you fail!" Qin Kai pondered for a while, this research method of tackling key problems "has his advantages, that is, the concentration of professionals, it is easy to make a breakthrough from a certain technical point, of course, there are also his shortcomings, that is, it is easy to go to the end of an alley, in case it is not through, then it will be wasted."

The technical research system implemented by Qin Kai in the Mawei Ship Administration Department was largely based on the research system of the early days of the founding of the new Chinese People's Republic of China, and he used all his strength at hand to tackle certain professional problems.

If he hadn't known that this curved water-tube boiler would be the direction of high-pressure water-tube boiler, Qin Kai would naturally accept Lu De's actual results, and if this was the case, wouldn't it just happen to block the correct direction of research in the future.

To change this situation, it is natural to get out of the previous special research model of scientific research institutes, "to support the entire industrial research and military research with a new scientific research system, fortunately, Qin Kai can be said to be the most vocal in this regard, in his own era, the Chinese nation can reoccupy the subversion of science and technology, a large part of the process is to carry out a big change in the national research system."

Factories, scientific research, academies, the military, media institutions, legal institutions, and even the final actual users are included in the overall research system, forming an integrated parallel scientific research system, so that any engineering research "is no longer a closed car by a scientific research unit, and the demand institution will not be trapped because it cannot find a research group."

In the same way, such a system extends to the military industry, and it can gather advanced civilian technology and military technology, and in this parallel jiāo fork system, each node only needs to complete the part of the content that it is good at, so as to achieve a high-level technical model, Qin Kai's implanted light brain is the final product of the famous top-secret "Shengtang Plan 1", of course, he is already the nth type of product.

However, such a research system is not what Qin Kai can support with this little bit of technical strength in his hands, for the horsetail industrial system that has just started for three years, on the contrary, the research team can produce more achievements and results, but there is an increasingly prosperous horsetail real yàn room in operation, and the research system of the jiāo fork body is practiced in practice, so what's the matter! ,

Thinking of this, the corners of Qin Kai's mouth rose slightly, and he patted Lu De's shoulder, "Old Lu, let's do it, go back this time, you will take my warrant, all the difficult problems in your boiler research plan, you go to the country, find Wu Yun, find Wang Fei, whatever you want, as long as they get what you want, you can okpk......"

Lu De obviously didn't fully understand what Qin Kai meant, and after thinking about it carefully, the more he thought about it, the more he felt that it was very meaningful, in that case, as long as he focused on the problem with the boiler, the pipe he wanted, and found the steel mill to go to nòng, Wang Fei couldn't handle it, then let Wu Yun's artillery bureau go to nòng, the cannon would not burst, and this little hot water could still burst the chamber!

When you think about it, there are a lot of things on this boiler that may be improved, and the effect of each improvement may not be obvious, but if the whole thing is improved, it is an amazing improvement......

The more he thought about it, the more he became fascinated, and he couldn't help but dance with his hands, took the brush on the table and began to calculate the perfect boiler he designed, and when he turned his head, Qin Kai, who was still squatting next to him just now, was gone, looked at the two apprentices behind him, and frowned, "Liu Gang, Dai Jin, what about the governor?" ”

The two apprentices had strange expressions, and finally Liu Gang spoke: "Master, you were stunned and smirking here just now, and you didn't care about the governor, so Governor Qin went up first, saying that it was too boring here!" ”

“……”

On the North Vietnamese front, in the camp of the French Expeditionary Force that is slowly encroaching on the position of 6 Er Traung, on the high batteries erected, the field guns of the 1omén 12omm army are being towed by hundreds of soldiers"

Slowly turning the muzzle, a new day of battle began......

Soon, the first batch of Algerian black battalions that participated in the attack on the west side of 6 Erzhuang were routed from the front line, and immediately an officer sent a message asking for an artillery bombardment of the two fortifications on the west side. Don't fight more! ”

The officer who came to ask for artillery support had a black line on his face, the fortifications of the Qing army on the other side were so well-built, not to mention the twists and turns, and there was a bunker to hide from the artillery, covered with more than two meters of thick soil, these 6 shells worked, but he couldn't command the artillery troops, so he had to go to his boss to complain.

In the headquarters of the French army, Lieutenant General Gu Ba brought Major General Bo Slip of the 4th Brigade, Major General Saler of the 11th Brigade and the senior officers of the General Staff Headquarters to the Lieutenant General who was slender at this time, but his face was black, and a telegram was passed between several generals, and everyone who saw it had a very surprised expression.

"General Guba, could this news be a rumor?" With the strength of our Far Eastern Fleet, how could it be possible to suffer such a crushing defeat in East Asia? ”

"Could it be that Major General Miller encountered a storm, otherwise how could the whole army say ......,......?"

“……”

All kinds of speculation immediately spread among the officers, but Gu Ba did not express his position, he just watched the telegram being circulated one by one before waving his hand to signal solemnity, "Outstanding soldiers of the republic, about the accuracy of this news, I can only regret to tell you, according to my repeated confirmation with Governor Lu Mei, the news is true, and the external route of Jiāo Toe China has been blocked by the Qing Nanyang Naval Division, and the other party even asked us to lay down our arms...... Go and surrender! ”

As soon as these words came out, the senior officers below were already angry, but these were all officers of high rank, and no one scolded their mother, just quietly listened to Gu Ba's words.

Gu Ba was obviously quite satisfied with his opening remarks and nodded and continued: "Now we have encountered great difficulties, although there are still a lot of shells and bullets and munitions in Hanoi, but it is very difficult to continue to supply from the sea, so we must do our best to defeat the [Zhong] ** team, according to my expectation, this army in front of us must be the army of the Qin governor of the Qing State who is good at naval warfare, they are equipped with jīng liang, they must have a plan......"

Major General Thaler of the 11th Brigade on the side asked, "General, what do you estimate the intentions of this [Medium] ** team in front of you?" They've been here for a month! ”

Gu Ba looked at Major General Sailer, who was holding a beer belly, this person's combat ability, it was really not a compliment, let him send troops from Yicheng to the right flank, but after he defeated Bac Ninh, he turned back to clean up Hanoi and repaired the troops, this one had just arrived.

"Major General Sailer, I naturally don't know the exact plan, but in the process of attacking these 6 villages, after careful observation, I came to a conclusion that the [middle] ** team here did not fight back with all their might, and the only thing they are doing is to rely on fortifications to consume our army!" ,

"General, the ** team is also being consumed by our heavy artillery, every day the fortress is conquered and collapsed, in front of our heavy artillery, they seem to have no chance to fight back at all!" Major General Thaler was clearly under the illusion of crushing the Qing army in front of him with heavy artillery.

Gu Ba was obviously a little disdainful of Major General Thaler's ignorance, his face was solemn, he stared at the beer-bellied man, and said coldly: "General Thaler, now is not the time to discuss this issue, I will make a plan for the decisive battle of the enemy1, a qiē guess, after the decisive battle, it will be clear This is my order, you understand!" ”

The beer-bellied man obviously figured out the situation, and immediately responded loudly: "Understood, General! ”

Gu Ba nodded, came to the wall and landed a military map of the north of the country, which had been marked with various flags Many army establishments, and at the same time, on the east bank of the Songdong River, the blue flag was used to mark the various departments that are now participating in the war.

"Ladies and gentlemen, I will now give the battle order" Gu Ba stood up, picked up the command bāng and tapped on the map, the long beach of the Songdong River, "Major Marin, Major Thomas"

"Here!" ”“…… Arrive! ”

"You are responsible for directing the four artillery battalions to begin withdrawing at once, and within two days they will cross the river to the a-high ground at the appointed position and set up positions!" ”

"Major General Bo Slippery!"

"In!"

"Your department will open early tomorrow morning, and after crossing the Songdong River pontoon bridge, you will immediately deploy in Ousongling, no need to build fortifications, and conceal your whereabouts!" ”

"Understood, General!"

“……”

"General Sale!" Seeing that the orders were completed one by one, and the troops were ready to take the orders, Lone finally remembered the beer-bellied man.

"General, I'm here!" The beer-bellied man seemed a little unhappy, but the commander-in-chief of this battle was alone, and he had never thought of such a stupid act as disobeying military orders.

"General Sailer, you lead the twelve battalions of the Eleventh Brigade to deploy with me in that village in the west three miles of Ousong Ridge as a general reserve!"

"Understood! ”

Since February 27th, Liu Yongfu on the front line of 6 Erzhuang has received news from the position, the French offensive has almost stalled, and the scouts sent out have also brought back the news, a large number of troops have gathered near the French ** battalion on the opposite side, and even see that the artillery is being pulled away by animal carts, is it that the French can't beat it and are going to run!! a。