The Japanese threat to the land side of Guangdong was basically eliminated, and the 1st Division of the 3rd Army and the 3rd Division of the 2nd Army in Huizhou were not yet used as reserves. Lü Liang decided to take advantage of the victory to pursue and send the First Division of the Third Army into Fujian to recover the whole province of Fujian together with the Third Division of the Third Army.

Fujian no longer had the military strength to resist the army, and except for the 10th Town, the remaining troops were vulnerable. When will you not take it now? The 3rd Division went north along the road, although there were no convenient transportation conditions such as the ash road and a lack of trucks, the marching speed was not slow, the infantry guns were easy to carry, the mortars could also be disassembled and transported, and the bicycle became the main mobile force of the 3rd Division.

Three days later, the Third Division recovered Zhangzhou and Xiamen in Fujian, and the news was transmitted back to Fuzhou, the whole province was shaken, and Xu Yingkui led people to flee to Zhejiang. The 3rd Division rested in Xiamen for two days, waiting for the 1st Division to come to converge, as well as supplies such as baggage and other supplies brought with the 3rd Division. This provided time for Fujian officials, squires, and merchants to flee, and when the army conquered Quanzhou and Putian one after another, and the troops came to Fuzhou, it almost became an empty city, with no order, no soldiers, only chaos.

After the bloodless occupation of Fuzhou, the three divisions were temporarily stationed to maintain public order and rectify order, and the first division was divided into three routes, all the way along the coast to capture Ningde, and reached the border between Fujian and Zhejiang; The other way to the southwest to capture Sanming, Longyan and other places, given that the current troops are not very sufficient, the Zhenguo army needs to control the larger towns first.

When the Zhenguo Army attacked Fujian, Japan had already received the news of the total annihilation of the First Army, all the Japanese soldiers who had entered the hinterland had been destroyed, and some of the Japanese routs who had escaped had returned to the coastal landing sites, and quickly boarded the warships that were wandering nearby. Vice Admiral Heihachiro Togo, who was in charge of naval operations, immediately sent the news back to the country via wireless telegraph, and left Guangzhou Bay to stand by in the waters off Guangdong.

Less than four days later, the First Army was completely annihilated, and the news from Togo could not have been fake, and such a result was unacceptable to the Japanese upper echelons. I thought that this war would be a simple intervention battle, and there would be no large-scale resistance, let alone a large number of casualties, but the real situation slapped them hard.

Before Saionji Gongwang convened a cabinet meeting to discuss, he still discussed with old guys such as Aritomo Yamaguchi and Hirobumi Ito, and in fact, the decisions made by several of them would definitely be passed in the cabinet.

"What do the British say?" The first thing Yamayama Youpeng asked was the reaction of the British, who believed that the British had instigated Japan to enter the war, and they would be more concerned about the outcome of the war. Moreover, the British battleship observation group also stayed with Togo and knew the outcome of the war before them, and the British government was already aware of the outcome of the war.

"No definite news has been sent back, but according to the results of the Japanese embassy's inquiry, they do not plan to continue to invest resources in Guangdong, and they should not continue to interfere in the operation. It is not surprising that South Africa consumed too much of their strength, and the Germans and Austria-Hungary were eyeing each other, and to a certain extent containing Russian expansion. ”

"So we were abandoned by the British? Westerners are really unreliable, we still have to rely on our own strength! Ito sighed, and he continued: "What makes me wonder is how the First Army could have been defeated so easily. ”

Katsura Taro, who represents the strength of the army, said: "The detailed battle report has not yet been returned, and the information obtained so far shows that the Zhenguo Army is a modern army with strong combat effectiveness and advanced equipment, with more than 100,000 regular troops, and our artillery suffered heavy losses in a duel with the enemy, which was an important reason for the defeat of the First Army." As for the details of the battle, we have to wait for the army's battle report to be reported, after all, the capacity of wireless telegraphy that can be transmitted is limited. ”

"In this way, there is an army force in the Far East that is no less than ours, if they are allowed to defeat the Manchus, then their strength will not be something we can shake, and the threat to us will rise geometrically, and we must not allow the Zhenguo army to rise, and we must strangle it before they mature." Shan County Youpeng said as he stroked the delicate teacup.

Ito Hirobumi sighed, it's a pity, Japan wants to be in the critical period of preparing for Russia, the loss of the First Army and the death of senior generals such as Oyama Iwa, Nishikanjiro, and Oshima Yoshimasa are too costly for Japan, and they have reached the point of breaking their muscles and bones, you must know that the three divisions of the First Army are all standing first-class divisions, and the army with the strongest combat effectiveness accounts for one-fifth of the total number of land forces, and it is also the main force in the planned war against Russia. There will definitely be an impact on future plans. If the Zhenguo Army is exterminated at this time, at least more than 300,000 troops will be mobilized, which Japan cannot afford.

"The Second Army cannot continue to advance, the war with Guangdong needs to be suspended, our biggest enemy at present is not Guangdong, but Russia, and we cannot easily start the war with Guangdong without adequate preparations!" Everyone knows this, but someone needs to take responsibility for this failure, Xiyuan Temple Gongwang knows that his position as prime minister is over, he doesn't care, at his age, all he cares about is the fate of the country, and the fate of the individual is not enough. He took the initiative to suggest the withdrawal of the army, which was also a strategy of retreating as advance, and I believe that Youpeng and others in Shanxian County would not be too difficult for themselves.

"It can only be like this, but we will definitely avenge this revenge, I suggest that the navy send warships to bomb the coastal areas of Guangdong, they lack sea power, and the risk to warships is very small."

"No, the latest intelligence, the Russian Far East Fleet in Vladivostok is very restless today, the news from St. Petersburg, after Nicholas II got the defeat of the Japanese army, he was ashamed to say that the Japanese army was vulnerable, and asked the Far East to prepare for an attack, I am afraid that the Russian army will move in advance!"

"Probably not, it's just Nicholas II's blood, their preparations for war have not been completed, but they have to be guarded against, and the shelling of Guangdong can be stopped. We can only eat this bitter fruit! ”

On April 17, 1902, the Japanese warships left the coast of Guangdong, and the Second Army Transport Fleet, which had already crossed the Taiwan Strait, also turned around and returned home, and the battle ended in a strange way. The Japanese army did not declare war, and finally retreated on its own initiative, and the two sides did not make contact, did not agree, and did not declare a state of war to each other. And the duration was very short, from the landing of the Japanese army to the departure of the Japanese army from Guangdong, only a short three days. But the casualties caused, mainly by the Japanese, were not small at all, with 39,000 soldiers killed or wounded in the war, and more than 500 artillery pieces were used on both sides, and the intensity of fire was rare in history.

It is strange that the mainstream countries of the world did not pay the necessary attention to this battle, and only Britain and France sent observation warships at sea, but no naval battle took place. In the land battle, both Guangdong and the Japanese side were secretive, and through this battle, Japan experienced the backwardness of the army's equipment and learned a lot of new equipment. After the war, the Japanese army quickly replaced new rifles, developed grenades, small-caliber mortars, purchased and developed more advanced artillery, and equipped with more barrels, and these changes were brilliant in the Russo-Japanese War, and it was only then that the world noticed the role of these new equipment in promoting the change of tactics.

The end of the war did not mean that Japan had given up its attention to Guangdong, but on the contrary, it had increased by several orders of magnitude and sent a large number of intelligence officers to infiltrate Guangdong. The battle on the intelligence front of the two sides had just begun, and after reflection, the Japanese army believed that the lack of intelligence was an important reason for the defeat of the Japanese army, and their assessment of the Zhenguo Army in advance was too low, for which the head of the intelligence department stepped down.

The mainstream countries of the world, such as Britain, France, the United States and Germany, are not unaware of this war, but lack interest in it. As a matter of fact, as soon as the battle ended, Lu Liang instructed the propaganda department to go all out to vigorously publicize the victory of the War of Resistance against Japanese Aggression in Guangdong, and displayed a large number of Japanese Army weapons, uniforms, katanas, senior officers' ranks, and other trophies.

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