The attack of the Beiyang Army was very sudden, and the imperial forbidden army, which was caught off guard, lost two lines of defense within two days, losing nearly 10,000 people. Pen? Interesting? Pavilion wWw. ｂiquge。 ｉｎfo

However, as the imperial court reacted and coordinated a heavy artillery into the battlefield to join the battle. The offensive of the Beiyang Army was immediately contained, and it lost several thousand people under the bombardment of the heavy artillery of the forbidden army.

Yuan Shikai, who was on the front line, fought at night, and although the number of heavy artillery in his hand was limited, he still dispatched more than half of the heavy artillery to fight against the forbidden army of the imperial court.

For a time, the two troops were inseparably killed on the third line of defense of the forbidden army.

Of course, this is all a battle on the surface.

Since it had been decided to overthrow the imperial court in twenty days, it was certainly impossible for the cunning Yuan Shikai to pin all his hopes on attacking troops all the way.

When most of the forces of the imperial court began to be drawn in this direction, the raid force composed of the main forces of the two towns was directly attacking the capital from another direction.

After Yuan Shikai arrived in Shandong, Shandong also became the base camp of the Beiyang Army. In addition, Yuan Shikai's marshal's mansion is also in Shandong, in order to ensure the safety of Shandong, the main force of the two towns has been stationed in the territory from beginning to end.

This is not counting, no matter what military operations the Beiyang Army conducted, the main forces of the two towns were not used.

In this attack on the Gyeonggi area, the main force of the six towns sent out by Yuan Shikai also did not include the two towns stationed in Shandong Province.

And this gave the imperial court an illusion to a certain extent, the Beiyang Army in the two towns of Shandong was to ensure the stability of the rear of the Beiyang Army and protect Yuan Shikai's safety, and Yuan Shikai would definitely not use it unless it was absolutely necessary.

Besides, if the army of the two towns in Shandong is also drawn to the front line, then there will be no army in Shandong, and once an accident occurs, Shandong, as the base camp of the Beiyang Army, will fall into chaos, or even lose it directly.

It was with this idea in mind that when the Beiyang Army gathered the main forces of the six towns to launch an attack from Henan to the Gyeonggi area, the imperial court immediately sent most of its troops to the battlefield.

As for the Shandong direction, because it was determined that it was impossible for the Beiyang Army to dispatch the only two towns of the army, the imperial court only arranged one town of forbidden troops.

When more than 100,000 imperial forbidden troops and the Beiyang Army were inseparable in the direction of Henan, the Beiyang Army of the two towns that everyone thought that Yuan Shikai could not use actually moved.

When more than 20,000 Beiyang troops reached the imperial defense line with lightning speed, the forbidden army did not expect that they would encounter the enemy, so they did not make much preparations.

How could the forbidden army, which was in a hurry to fight, be the opponent of the more than 20,000 Beiyang Army.

The offensive lasted less than two days, and the Beiyang Army successfully broke through the forbidden defense line at the cost of more than 3,000 people and eliminated 7,000 or 8,000 people.

The remnants of more than 3,000 forbidden troops, after the collapse of the defense line, fled to Tianjin like lost dogs.

The Beiyang Army, which still had more than 18,000 people left, did not stop to rest, took advantage of the victory to pursue, followed behind the rout of the forbidden army, and fought all the way to Tianjin.

In the eyes of everyone in the imperial court, the Gyeonggi area is the safest except for the capital, followed by Tianjin.

Therefore, when the Beiyang Army fought all the way to the outside of Tianjin, the defenders of Tianjin did not think of it at all, so they could only rush to the battle.

In this case, the defenders of Tianjin did not hold out for even a day before they were taken by the Beiyang Army.

After all, Tianjin was once the garrison of the Beiyang Army. Many people of the Beiyang Army who came to attack were very familiar with Tianjin.

With superior troops, strong firepower, and familiarity with the city of Tianjin, if the Beiyang Army can't take Tianjin, then the Beiyang Army will train in vain in peacetime.

At this time, Yuan Shikai's purpose in sending this raid force was self-evident.

After taking the city of Tianjin, the capital, which was close to Tianjin, was exposed to the Beiyang Army. As long as the Beiyang Army can take the capital and capture all the important ministers and royal families of the imperial court, the 70,000 or 80,000 main forces gathered on the front line of the imperial court will be leaderless and lose their allegiance goals, thus directly collapsing the battlefield.

When the time comes, what awaits the main force of the Beiyang Army will be an ending, capturing prisoners.

Therefore, the Beiyang Army, which took the city of Tianjin, still did not have any stop. Except for leaving a battalion of troops to stay, all the other active troops went to the capital to kill, and blocked all the gates of the capital at the first time, completely surrounding the imperial court in the city.

At this time, the huge city of Beijing has become panicked. The soldiers of the forbidden army patrolling back and forth in the streets and alleys not only failed to stabilize everyone, but made everyone more panicked.

Although there were nearly 20,000 people in the garrison of the capital plus the forbidden army in the palace, the Beiyang army outside the city was only about 15,000 people. However, most of the people in the city did not have hope that the imperial court would hold the capital.

Because, the combat effectiveness of the more than 10,000 Beiyang troops outside the city who attacked all the way was too strong.

In addition, they already have a precedent for taking Tianjin City, so it is not impossible to take Beijing City by victory.

The court is not much better, whether it is the royal family or important ministers who are loyal to the court, they are also panicked.

Zaitao, the commander of the forbidden army, repeatedly assured the imperial court that the forbidden army would be able to hold the capital. However, it still cannot stop the spread of panic. There were even some ministers and relatives of the emperor who directly proposed to send troops from the front line back to the capital to help them, and they didn't care about anything else, and they would talk about keeping the capital first.

But as soon as this proposal appeared, it was rejected by Zaitao. Then he swore that he began to arrange the city defenses, preparing to fight a good battle with the Beiyang Army in the capital.

Zaitao personally sat on the city wall, and the imperial court was still in the city, the originally low morale of the defenders actually became high, and they repelled the attacks of the Beiyang army again and again, and held the city wall fortifications.

In this case, the morale of the defenders increased with the victories of the defense, while the morale of the Beiyang Army became more and more depressed.

After two days of fighting, he did not even approach the city wall, and after losing two or three thousand people. Feng Guozhang, who had a gloomy face, decisively ordered the troops to stop the siege. Then gather all the officers above the level of co-commander together to discuss the solution.

"General, I think the fundamental reason why we can't attack is that there is no powerful artillery, the fortifications of the capital are too strong, and the forbidden army has placed a large number of light and heavy machine guns on the city wall, as well as a large number of artillery. If we can't destroy their artillery, and then suppress the machine-gun fire at the head of the city, our attack will be in vain. "One of the co-commanders who suffered the most losses in the two-day offensive did not hesitate to express his complaints in his heart.

"I also think it's artillery. As long as we have a strong artillery force, we will definitely be able to enter the capital! The other co-leader followed.

As one of Yuan Shikai's most trusted town commanders, Feng Guozhang's command ability was unquestionable.

The drawback of the lack of artillery in the army was obvious to Feng Guozhang from the beginning.

But in order to facilitate the raid, except for mortars and dismantled mountain artillery, the 20,000-strong army did not bring a single heavy artillery.

Excluding those destroyed by the forbidden artillery in the battle, there are now about 20 mortars left in the two towns, and as soon as the cannon is fired, it will be counterattacked by several times the number of artillery of the forbidden army.

In order to prevent the limited artillery from being wiped out, Feng Guozhang could only reduce the frequency of artillery fire and rely on the infantry to rush forward. And this led to particularly heavy losses of the infantry in the two-day offensive. (To be continued.) )