Although spring in Hubei is much earlier than in Hebei, the weather in mid-February is still a little cold.

Yan Yingyuan got up early as usual, and habitually walked around the entire camp before the wake-up call sounded.

Taking out the binoculars from the tent, Yan Yingyuan looked at the head of Wuchang City, there were still countless Qing soldiers guarding the city wall, and the national defense army was outside the city, they must be afraid of the national defense raid at night, and it was estimated that they didn't sleep all night.

The Marines began to organize their troops to conduct morning exercises, and the Qing soldiers in Wuchang City watched from afar, and this way of conducting exercises was also quite new to them.

Tong Dai was startled by the slogans of the Marine Corps, he did not go back to his house to sleep last night, he was really worried that the Wehrmacht would raid Wuchang City at night.

Of course, he didn't have to stay on the city wall overnight, but he didn't dare to go back to his house to rest, so he only found a courtyard on the side of the city wall and slept down.

He slept very late at night, and Tong Dai couldn't get up in the morning, until his own soldiers came to call him, saying that the Wehrmacht was going to withdraw, Tong Dai was overjoyed, quickly put on his clothes, and ran to the city wall without washing his face and rinsing his mouth.

Without binoculars, he could clearly see that groups of Wehrmacht soldiers were marching in line towards the river, obviously about to board the boat and leave, Tong Dai's eyes widened, lest he miss a little.

However, to Tong Dai's disappointment, only more than 1,000 Wehrmacht soldiers left the camp and boarded a transport ship on the shore, and after a while, thick black smoke rose from the transport ship and began to sail downstream.

What Tong Dai hoped for did not happen, but something did happen on the side of the Wehrmacht.

Early this morning, Huang Degong received a report from Li Benshen's Second Division, saying that the Second Division had encountered a strong resistance from the Qing troops in Huangmei County, and that the Second Division had fought fiercely with the Qing soldiers for three days, and that it was still unable to break through the Qing army's defensive line.

Li Benshen did not want to fight the first battle of the Second Division. Although the 2nd Division had fought with the Qing soldiers before, those were skirmishes, like this was the first large-scale battle with the Qing soldiers in the field.

Although Li Benshen was full of confidence before the war, believing that the 20,000 Qing soldiers on the opposite side could not be the opponent of the Second Division without the defense of Jiancheng, he was also in a hurry to march in the direction of Wuchang through Huangmei County. But things are far beyond Li Benshen's imagination.

The 20,000 Qing soldiers in Huangmei County were by no means easy to match, and although not all of them used new muskets, at least half of them were already equipped with this long-range, fast-loading Mini gun.

This new type of musket was combined with the cannon of the great general in the Qing army, and the Qing soldiers dug a large number of trenches to build a relatively complete defense line, which made Li Benshen's head start to grow.

At the beginning of the battle, Li Benshen did not realize this, and after a burst of artillery bombardment, he ordered his troops to directly form a phalanx and rush towards the Qing army's defensive line. As a result, he was killed and wounded by a volley of guns of the Qing soldiers, and had to retreat.

Li Benshen ordered the division's artillery to fire five or six more volleys at the Qing army's defense line, and then ordered the troops to attack again, but the result was no different from the last attack, the damage to the fortifications caused by the shells using black medicine was extremely limited, and after several attacks, the second division suffered nearly 600 casualties, but there was no way to attack the Qing army's defense line.

For the next two days. Li Benshen tried all kinds of methods, and also made a detour from the flank of the Qing soldiers. also wanted to send troops to attack from the other side of the Qing army's defense line, but they were all blocked by the Qing soldiers, but the troops were tossed enough.

Li Benshen, who really had nothing to do, sent someone to Huang Degong to complain urgently, hoping that Huang Degong would send reinforcements to him.

"Li Benshen, this kid is far worse than Li Chengdong, a main division can't deal with 20,000 Qing soldiers?" Huang Degong was very dissatisfied with the second division and said angrily.

"Minister Huang. I listened to what the informant said, and I'm afraid I really can't blame Division Commander Li, the Qing soldiers have more people than them, and the equipment is about the same, one attacking and one defending. It's normal that you can't beat it for a short time, Minister Huang, do you think this is okay? I personally took 1,000 men to support the Second Division, and tried to solve the Qing troops in Huangmei in the shortest possible time. Yan Yingyuan considered the problem much more calmly than Huang Degong.

"It's okay, as long as Huangmei's Qing soldiers are solved, the main force of the Qing soldiers east of Wuchang will be all killed, and we can also concentrate on dealing with Wuchang City. But Li Heng, you have to fight quickly, you can't delay it for too long, in case Tong Dai makes a little move here, it's really hard to deal with our few people. Huang Degong thought about it and agreed to Yan Yingyuan's suggestion.

"You don't need to bring a lot of people, it's enough for me to bring a thousand people, Minister Huang can rest assured, our fortifications will be improved soon, Tong Dai wants to capture the defense line of our marines, I don't think he has this tooth yet." Yan Yingyuan said confidently.

The next thing was that Tong Dai saw Yan Yingyuan personally leading a thousand people to support the Second Division on the city wall, but Tong Dai didn't know what these national defense forces were going to do.

Li Benshen's life in the past two days was indeed very difficult, and the first battle of the second division out of the mountain was so bad, Li Benshen felt a little faceless.

But soon the Marines sent people, and Yan Yingyuan sent a company commander, and after the company commander arrived, he immediately asked the Second Division to prepare to cross the Qing defense line and assist the Marines in annihilating the Qing troops.

When Li Benshen heard that Yan Yingyuan had only brought a thousand people, he was in a daze, and he didn't hear what the company commander said. When the company commander told Yan Yingyuan again, Li Benshen was a little angry.

"What exactly does Minister Huang mean? Didn't he know that the Qing soldiers on the other side were strong? There were more than 20,000 of them, and what did he send 1,000 men for? Li Benshen said angrily to the company commander.

"Report to Division Commander Li, originally 500 marines were enough to break through the Qing defense line, but our captain personally brought 1,000 people for the sake of insurance, and asked Division Commander Li to arrange it as soon as possible, and our attack will be launched in half an hour." The company commander didn't care about Li Benshen's gloomy face at all, and continued.

"Well, I, Li Benshen, want to see where your marines are today! Order the troops to be ready for battle! Li Benshen gave the troops an order to prepare for battle.

The company commander saluted Li Benshen and turned around and ran out, he was going to inform Yan Yingyuan that the second division was ready.

As soon as the Second Division was ready, a violent explosion was heard on the defense line of the Qing troops, followed by a crisp gunshot.

Li Benshen hurriedly walked to a high slope and raised the telescope in his hand to look out.

A few hundred meters in front of the Qing defense line on the left, hundreds of marines were lying on the ground. The clothes on their bodies were a little different from those of other troops, they were all colorful, and if they lay on the ground, they couldn't see clearly where there were people if they didn't look carefully.

Dozens of small cannons were erected on the ground behind the soldiers, and they were still firing shells at the Qing fortifications, which looked small, but the explosion of the shells was not small at all. Li Benshen clearly saw that Qing soldiers continued to fall, and more Qing soldiers began to scurry around in the trenches, looking for places to hide.

As soon as the cannon stopped, the soldier lying on the ground quickly jumped up from the ground, held a rifle in his right hand, bent down and quickly pushed forward, encountered a small dirt slope in front of him, and immediately lay down in front of the dirt slope, and at the same time the rifle in his hand quickly pointed forward.

The soldiers behind followed in the same motion. As soon as a few Qing soldiers showed their heads, they were shot over by the soldiers lying on the dirt slope in front of them.

In this way, the soldiers of the Marine Corps alternately covered the advance, and the distance of several hundred meters was soon reached, and the Qing soldiers in the trenches did not even have time to react, the soldiers of the Marine Corps had reached a distance of thirty or forty meters, and some soldiers quickly took out the grenade from the bag on the side of their body, pulled the pull ring and threw it forward.

A few grenades had just exploded inside and outside the trench. The soldiers in the back had rushed to the front of the trench like a gust of wind.

Li Benshen was dumbfounded, as if he was fascinated by watching a big play. Li Benshen threw what he should have done outside the nine clouds, until a regiment commander beside him reminded: "Division commander, it's time for us to go up!" Only then did Li Benshen react.

"Order the regiments to follow quickly!" Li Benshen was so anxious that he yelled loudly.

The Qing soldiers who were broken through the defense line soon collapsed, and the Qing soldiers of the brigade began to run towards the back, and Li Benshen personally led the 2nd Division to follow the soldiers of the Marine Corps in desperate pursuit.

The Qing soldiers had just run backwards for less than a mile when a crisp gunfire rang out on the opposite hillside. Then the explosion of the grenade sounded again, and many Qing soldiers began to turn around and run to the back, but more Qing soldiers threw their knives and guns in their hands and knelt on the side of the road.

The Qing soldiers still ran a lot, after all, the battlefield was too open, and the Second Division did not adopt an encirclement posture against the Qing troops. When the results of the battle were counted after the battle, it was found that there were more than 5,000 Qing soldiers who had escaped from both sides.

"Division Commander Li, please clean up the battlefield as soon as possible, the troops must immediately move to the vicinity of Wuchang, Minister Huang has already arranged the boat, we will not wait for you." Yan Yingyuan walked out of the team, saluted Li Benshen and said.

"Captain Yan, I still ask you to come in person, brother, I feel ashamed!" Li Benshen returned the salute and stepped forward to grab Yan Yingyuan, "Your marines are really amazing, not only are they well equipped, but what makes my brother admire even more is your tactical movements!" ”

"Master Li doesn't have to be like this, we just changed the equipment first, and you will use these guys in the future." Yan Yingyuan said modestly.

Yan Yingyuan then gave Li Benshen a brief introduction to the situation, and Li Benshen was even more shocked when he heard that the Marines had annihilated more than 20,000 Qing troops in Ezhou.

"Brother Yan, do you mean that the Qing soldiers in Hubei are basically trapped in Wuchang City now?" Li Benshen asked.

"That's probably the case, there are no more Qing soldiers in the brigade outside Wuchang City." Yan Yingyuan thought for a moment before he said.

"Then our second division can only fight small county towns in the past, alas, but if we really encounter Qing soldiers like today, the second division really can't cope with it. Brother Yan, please take a step first, and our second division will go to the river and set off by boat as soon as the battlefield is cleaned. Li Benshen really felt the gap between the two divisions and respected Yan Yingyuan very much.

When Yan Yingyuan led a thousand soldiers of the Marine Corps back outside Wuchang City, it was already the next morning. No soldiers were killed in this battle, only three soldiers were wounded by muskets, but fortunately they did not hit the vital point, and after simple treatment, there was no big problem.

According to Huang Degong, the Qing soldiers in Wuchang City also tried to go out of the city to attack the position of the marines, but not long after leaving the city gate, they were beaten back by the artillery fire on the "Yue Fei".

Yan Yingyuan was a little regretful, if the Qing soldiers were released, not to mention leaving them all, at least they could be killed and injured in large quantities, but the matter had passed, Yan Yingyuan did not complain, but reported the battle in Huangmei County to Huang Degong, and then stationed outside Wuchang with peace of mind, waiting for the Second Division and the Fifth Division to launch a clean-up operation around Wuchang. (To be continued.) )