Although the Franco-Prussian War was a draw, the French Empire still felt a great humiliation. The once majestic French Army suffered more than 300,000 casualties, but after all, because the French Navy led by Gu Ba counterattacked effectively and successfully landed on the German mainland, so that the French Army did not suffer further serious losses. After the signing of the "Treaty of Metz," which mutually recognized borders and guaranteed mutual non-aggression, France's national strength without land reparations was not damaged, and the French army was restored to its original strength and combat effectiveness in a very short period of time. By 9080, the French Army had a standing army of 700,000 men.

Since the French army adopted a conscription system, conscripted soldiers, that is, male nationals who have reached the legal age and are in good health and have no disabilities, are required to join the army for a certain period of compulsory service. However, persons who voluntarily choose to pursue a permanent career in the military are allowed to continue to serve in the military after the completion of their compulsory service. Due to the continuous wars with European countries for many years, there are many military families, and many of the recruits are naturally from military families, so the cultural and military qualities of officers and soldiers have been fully and effectively guaranteed. In addition to the good soldiers, most of the officers had a clear political mind and knew that war was nothing but a continuation of politics, so there were no reckless men who could only punch and rush.

Li Weiye dared to attack the Black Flag Army of thousands of men with 400 French troops and 600 Vietnamese mercenaries at this time, relying not only on the high quality of the French army, but also on sophisticated equipment.

After all, war is not a hand-to-hand fight between two bare-handed people, and the two sides have to fight each other with real knives and guns. Since the beginning of the war in the era of cold weapons, the advanced equipment of war has been a weighty weight on the balance of winning or losing wars, and with the passage of time, the weight of this weight has undoubtedly become heavier and heavier. Once the two armies come into contact on the battlefield. In addition to fighting courage and will, it depends on which side has the guy in his hand who is good enough. The French Army is an army that came out of the bloody storm of continuous conquest in Europe, and experienced the baptism of the Revolution, for the choice of weapons, it does not require outstanding performance, but just use it, the mainstream light weapon of the French Army at that time was the "Grasse" breech single-shot rifle. This type of gun is the standard rifle of the French Army, replacing the "Chasepo" rifle that performed quite well in the Franco-Prussian War, and its power and reliability have been improved compared with the former. The rifle is 1305 mm long, with a barrel length of 820 mm, a weight of 4.15 kg, a caliber of 11 mm, an effective range of 900 meters, a rotary pull-back bolt, a single-shot load, and a rate of fire of up to 14 rounds per minute with 11×59 mm metal shells. Glass rifles have a long range, excellent accuracy, reliable action, durability and simple maintenance. After equipping the troops, it was well received by the soldiers. If anything, it has a drawback, but its cumbersome single-shot reloading method is relatively slow, which limits the rate of fire. After the first bullet is fired, the bolt and hammer must be pulled, and the next launch can only be carried out after a series of actions such as shelling, loading, returning, and locking, which is a bit difficult to keep up with in modern warfare, which emphasizes more and more firepower and rate of fire. This was obviously the result of the French military still sticking to the old concept when reliable repeating rifles were already available, but because the French infantry could be supported by rapid-fire weapons such as the Haggaeus rapid-fire gun and the Grimm cannon in time, the shortcomings of the slow rate of fire of the Grasse rifle were not so prominent.

Since Napoleon, the emperor of the First French Empire, was born as an artilleryman. Therefore, the French Army attaches great importance to the role of artillery in the war. Therefore, artillery construction has always been a top priority for the French Army. The French infantry's ability to obtain artillery support anytime and anywhere on the battlefield became the key to its success. The French artillerymen in 9083 did have a lot of possessions, but they were limited in Vietnam. The lightest is the 1.65-inch mountain gun, which was finalized in 9080 and weighs 362 pounds (about 167 kilograms) for easy portability. Its caliber is 41.91 mm. Fires 2-pound shells, so it is also called a two-pounder rapid-fire gun; There are 10 rifling wires in the barrel of the gun, the maximum muzzle velocity of the shell is 396 m / s, and the maximum firing range is 3200 m. Due to the extremely light weight of this type of gun, the power and range are moderate. Deeply loved by the French artillerymen. In addition to a large number of equipment in the army, the navy is also equipped with this type of gun as a sampan gun for sailors landing operations. During Li Weiye's attack on Hanoi, three guns of this type were involved, and the shelling hit a Vietnamese army arsenal in Hanoi shortly after the bombardment began, causing the Vietnamese army to collapse quickly.

The medium artillery of the French Army at the same time mainly consisted of 95 mm cannons, 80 mm cannons and 90 mm cannons. The three guns are of the same line, and the structure is similar, the lightest 80-mm gun with a total weight is 1200 kg, and the heaviest 95-mm gun is 1850 kg; The maximum muzzle velocity of the shells is about 500 m/s, and the firing range is 8000 m (80 mm), 9700 m (90 mm) and 10000 m (95 mm), respectively.

Due to their large weight and inconvenient transportation, the number of these types of artillery deployed in the colony of Cochinchina in Vietnam was not very large. But as time went on and reinforcements arrived, the number of these medium guns began to increase, and it was enough for a war.

The largest artillery deployed by the French in Cochinchina was the 120 mm long-barreled heavy cannon, which had a maximum muzzle velocity of 525 m/s and a range of 12,400 meters because of its long barrel. However, the price of such impressive performance is obvious: weight. The total weight of the artillery including the front car and the ammunition car together exceeded 2700 kg, and no 8 horses wanted to drag it. Therefore, it is not suitable for accompanying infantry troops, and is generally used as heavy support firepower.

In addition, the French infantry was supported by another weapon, which was machine guns. Long before the Franco-Prussian War, the French army was widely equipped with Refje machine guns, using the 11×59 mm metal shell bullets of the Chasebo rifle, but because they were not protected by the camp guns in the Franco-Prussian War, they suffered heavy losses under the blow of the Prussian Krupp artillery, and when they turned to defensive operations, they were very effective. At this time, the French designer Habegkaith (one of Lin Yizhe's far-sighted measures), who worked in the guns of the Fuzhou Shipbuilding Bureau in Qianguo, designed a more powerful and reliable machine gun, and a generation of famous guns appeared on the stage of history - the Haggae Kaisi 40 mm 5-tube machine gun. It abandons the complicated and laborious "platoon-shot" firing method of the Refye machine gun, but shakes the handle, drives the five barrels to rotate in a clockwise direction, the projectile slides into the inlet in turn through the inclined cartridge delivery groove by its own gravity, the ejector pushes it into the barrel and then rotates with the barrel to the firing position directly below the "six o'clock" and is fired by the hammer, and the shell will rotate with the barrel to the position of the shell throwing window and be pulled out by the shell. Completing this series of maneuvers is simply a shake of the handle by the shooter (some models have a special trigger to control the firing). Theoretically, as long as the handle is constantly shaken and the shells are constantly placed in the delivery slot, the cannon can achieve uninterrupted continuous fire. Such excellent performance not only conquered the navy and army of Qianguo and France at the same time, but also conquered Britain, Italy, Austria, Russia and even Germany. A large number of orders came in one after another, and the Fuzhou Shipping Bureau benefited a lot, and then France and Britain successively purchased production licenses. It was produced by Schneider and Armstrong. For a time, this type of machine gun almost became the "standard machine gun" of the naval forces of the European powers. In Vietnam, the gunboats of the Nanqi Detachment of the French Navy and the warships of the Qianguo-Japan Sea Detachment and the Tokyo Detachment were equipped with a large number of Haggaes 40 mm 5-barreled machine guns, and a large number of such guns were mounted on army gun trucks to follow the infantry and provide close fire support to the French army at any time.

The total weight of this type of machine gun is 230 kg (including the land gun car), the length of the gun body is 760 mm, the shells are divided into flowering shells and solid shells, the weight of the shells is 1.5 kg, the muzzle velocity is 470 m / s, the maximum firing range is 4800 meters, and the 30 mm thick steel plate can be penetrated at a distance of 320 meters, the firepower is very fierce.

Although a generation of famous artillery was born in Qianguo. However, it shined in a foreign land, but the Qianguo army itself was not equipped with many of these machine guns, although in the Battle of Moss Bay, the Japanese army used this kind of machine gun to inflict heavy losses, but after the war, limited by financial resources, the number of this type of artillery equipped by the Qianguo army was far inferior to that of other countries, until now. In addition to the fact that almost all the combat ships of the Qianguo Navy are equipped with this gun, and the naval forces of the ship administration, the Beiyang naval troops, and the Huai army of Li Shaoquan's department are equipped with more equipment. The garrison troops stationed in the provinces of the Qianjun army are seldom equipped, and even if they are equipped, they are kept in warehouses on weekdays in order to save money. It was far from the equipment and use of the French army.

And now Li Weiye only has a white French army of 400 people, and he has 4 40-mm machine guns of Habecasses.

And what kind of situation is the Black Flag Army that is about to fight with this French army?

This time the offense. Although it was the newly arrived Dian army that took the lead, Iwao Konno set off with this force.

He didn't plan to participate in this attack, although he was a scout, he was directly under Liu Renyi's orders, and Liu Renyi and the generals of the Black Flag Army trusted him very much. This gave him a transcendent status in the Black Flag Army, but now that status no longer existed.

Before the departure of the Yunnan army, the battalion officer named Zhang Yongqing proposed to Liu Renyi to be his guide, although Liu Renyi understood what Zhang Yongqing meant, full of reluctance, but finally agreed.

So he was now in a team that was completely unfamiliar to him.

Although Zhang Yongqing was very unkind to him, the pipe band named Xu Shihe was more kind, and after seeing the snuffbox rifle and the old revolver used by Iwao Konno, Xu Shihe replaced him with a French Grasse-style rifle and a newly made revolver made by Shipmaster, as well as the corresponding ammunition, which surprised him - the snuffbox rifle and the old revolver, although he used them very skillfully, they were indeed too old and affected his marksmanship.

For the Glass rifle, Konno Iwao is no stranger, in the Japanese Southwest War, the Satsuma Army has used a lot, because its effectiveness is much higher than the Japanese government army's Schneider rifle, the Japanese government army once suffered greatly, many Japanese officers and soldiers on the battlefield lost their Schneider rifles, pick up the Satsuma soldiers killed in the battle Glass rifles to use. Later, the Japanese government army also purchased and equipped a considerable number of Glass rifles through smuggling channels, and it was at that time that Iwao Konno learned to use this rifle proficiently. Therefore, when he saw this rifle again, he inexplicably felt a sense of intimacy in his heart.

But what surprised him was that there were not many such rifles in the cadre army he was in. There are only about 100 of them.

The inquisitive Iwao Konno asked Xu Shihe about this question, and Xu Shihe gave him the answer that these guns were purchased from the Shipmaster Gun two years ago by Cen Yuying, the governor of Yunnan and Guizhou, and at that time the Shipmaster Gun Gun Yard had been converted to produce an upgraded version of the Glass rifle Naval Rifles, which were old stocks that had been produced before, because they were neatly new. The quality is good, so it was bought by the Governor for backup, which was originally equipped for the Governor's Guard, but this time it was all given to the third battalion of the Dian Army that entered Vietnam.

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