Due to the 3rd Army's private change of battle plan, the 3rd Army's troops on the northern front were too small, allowing a large number of Brazilian soldiers who had withdrawn from the front line to break the line and pour into Rio de Janeiro. www.biquge.info General Chen Dezhi was very angry about this, and this would make it more difficult to occupy the Brazilian capital, and he gave the commander of the 3rd Army a demerit; at the same time, he was very dissatisfied with the small actions of the Americans; the battle to capture Rio de Janeiro was handed over to the commander of the 2nd Army, Lieutenant General Ren Xueyuan, under the command of Lieutenant General Xueyuan, and the 3rd Army must fully cooperate.

Rio de Janeiro is the capital of Brazil and the second largest city in Brazil, second only to São Paulo, and is the largest port in the country.

Rio de Janeiro is surrounded by mountains on three sides and Guanabara Bay on the outside.

For such a good city, Chen Dezhi was unwilling to let him be destroyed by the artillery fire of the war, so he ordered Ren Xueyuan to besiege it without attacking it, forcing it to surrender.

Brazil had already built a large number of improvised fortifications on the hills on the outskirts of the city, preparing to resist the attacks of the Tang Kingdom and the American army, and in those fortresses, the frightened little hearts of the Brazilian soldiers felt a little safer.

The Tang Kingdom invested 200,000 troops, plus 4 brigades of Japanese mercenaries and more than 100,000 white mercenaries, totaling more than 350,000 people; Instead of rushing to attack, they built two strong defensive lines along the perimeter of Rio de Janeiro to prevent the men inside from breaking through.

In addition, there are more than 100,000 mercenaries led by Lieutenant General Niu Jiwei and 500,000 US troops stationed in Minas Gerais as reserves.

Outside the bay are the warships of the South Atlantic Fleet, which are constantly patrolling, and airships and anti-submarine patrol planes fly over the sky from time to time.

The whole of Rio de Janeiro was tightly surrounded by the Tang Kingdom.

The first line of defense was all mercenaries, and the 2nd and 3rd armies defended the second line.

There are 2 airships on standby at all times in the sky to assist the army in the attack, and if they spot a large gathering of Brazilian military camps or their troops, the airships will also come forward to bomb them.

Lieutenant General Ren Xueyuan obeyed the order and besieged it without attacking it, and he was ready to use this battle as a training to improve the combat effectiveness of these mercenaries. Every day, he would arrange 3 brigades of mercenaries to attack from 3 directions, the intensity of the attack was not large, the purpose was not to occupy the fortress of the Brazilians, but to train the mercenaries in individual tactics, group cooperation, infantry and artillery coordination, etc.; Let those white mercenaries be baptized by artillery fire and quickly grow into veterans, and there will be high-intensity wars waiting for them in the future.

The intensity and timing of each attack by these mercenaries varied, sometimes during the day, sometimes at night, sometimes with a small squad or squadron, and sometimes with a wing to attack, which made the Brazilian soldiers on the defensive, fearing that the enemy would come in at any time.

The professional snipers of each regiment will also organize the blockers of each squad to take turns to go to the first line of defense for training and teaching, precision shooting, survival in the field, camouflage, lurking, reconnaissance, selection of hidden places, arrangement of entry and retreat routes, formulation of combat plans, counter-sniping and other skills are subjects they must learn.

The artillery also carried out targeted killings of exposed forts on Brazilian forward positions, and for the artillerymen, this non-confrontational shelling was a good opportunity for them to improve their skills. The airships would occasionally drop a few incendiary bombs on their lines, inflicting a certain level of casualties on the hapless defenders, each casualty was small, but the horror was a deep shock to the survivors.

What frightened the Brazilian soldiers was not the attack of the frontal troops of the Tang Kingdom, but the fear of those stray bullets that flew from somewhere; On the 100-kilometer-long defensive line, if an officer or soldier is not careful, his head or body is exposed to cover, he is likely to be hit by stray bullets; More than 1,000 officers and soldiers died every day, much more than the number of casualties who stopped the mercenaries from attacking head-on; What scared them even more was that most of the people who were hit by stray bullets were middle and low-level officers.

What's more, many people's heads are blown to pieces after being hit, and those who are hit in the chest will have a bloody hole the size of a bowl, that is, hiding behind the tree, and some people are hit, this tragic ending is something that no one wants to touch.

The tremendous power of the Bartley sniper rifle not only shocked the officers and soldiers of the Brazilian forward position, but also those squad snipers were also deeply shocked.

After receiving a certain amount of training, these squads of snipers will disperse and act alone or after the attacking mercenaries to practice marksmanship and combat skills, and by the way, increase the lethality of Brazilian soldiers.

The battlefield is the best place for training officers and men, and after receiving a certain amount of training, these snipers adopt different methods and carry out their own sniping methods according to their personalities and hobbies. The bullets of the sniper rifles they used were the same as those of ordinary rifles, and the power was about the same, making it impossible for the Brazilian soldiers to distinguish between the officers and soldiers killed by the guns, but they felt strange and increased their fear.

The Brazilian officers and soldiers would not have imagined that the enemy was shooting at them from 3 miles away, and the power was greater than they could have imagined. Even those German officers felt strange about this and quickly reported it to the German General Staff.

After analyzing all the incoming information, the German General Staff came to a conclusion that the Xia Empire had adopted a new method of warfare, a war of attrition, and in the face of this new tactic of the Tang Kingdom, the Brazilian army could not hold out for too long. So they immediately sent submarines lurking off the coast of Rio de Janeiro to pick up the officers; These officers who had experienced the baptism of fire were the treasures of Germany, and they could not be missed, and even the Kaiser attached great importance to them.

By mid-February, the Brazilians could not hold on, losing so many officers and men every day, and all of them were middle and low-level officers, resulting in low morale among the officers and soldiers, and the troops had no combat effectiveness to speak of.

Originally, the Brazilian president was still full of confidence, and in Rio de Janeiro, they had stored a large number of weapons, ammunition, food and other materials, even if they held on for more than one year, there was no problem; If the Tang Kingdom storms their defense line and suffers heavy casualties, or as long as the people who hold out until the Tang Kingdom lose patience, then is the best time for the two sides to negotiate, Brazil is to surrender, but also to fight for certain benefits.

The chief of the general staff and the minister of war of Brazil also felt that they would hold out for a long time, even if they did not have an advantage in the artillery battle, they could inflict great casualties on the enemy by simply relying on the surrounding mountains around the capital and taking advantage of the favorable terrain, and according to the precedent of the Xia Empire's soldiers who were unwilling to pay too much for battle losses, they should soon enter into peace negotiations with Brazil.

Now that the war has only been fought for more than a month, the enemy has not attacked strongly, and they have already suffered heavy casualties, and if they hold out for a year, without the enemy attacking, the officers and men of their army will revolt and rebel.

At this time, the senior military and political officials of Brazil also lost the confidence to continue to hold on, let alone those ordinary officers and soldiers.