The soldiers of the Taiping Army, who were like a tide and began to fight hard with a copper backing, did not expect that the shields in their hands could not resist the bullets fired by the other party that made them frightened, and some powerful bullets could even penetrate the bodies of two people, and these weapons were beyond their understanding of sample guns and leads.

In the bursts of blood mist, the Taiping soldiers fell to the ground one after another, and some of those who advanced relatively quickly and escaped the bullets stepped on a mine, were blown apart, and their internal organs flew everywhere.

The tentative attack commanded by Chen Yucheng was completely defeated before even a cup of tea arrived, and about half of the 8,000 people who participated in the attack retreated, and the battlefield was full of abandoned wounded wailing and screaming, the mournful voice was terrifying, Lin Haijiang looked at the smoke that gradually dissipated, it can be said that the wounded of the Taiping Army had seriously dampened their originally high morale.

You must know that ordinary soldiers are most concerned about whether they can be rescued from their injuries and whether they can have medicine after being rescued, while these wounded soldiers of the Taiping Army who were abandoned on the battlefield can only wail and let the wounds drain until the blood drains.

Chen Yucheng looked at several wounded people who were withdrawn from above, and a soldier who was shot in the leg had his entire calf broken by the bullet, and only a little flesh was still connected.

Chen Yucheng was stunned by the power of the so-called copper-headed cross bullets used by the Chinese Empire, and had only heard that sixty of the 120 rounds of ammunition carried by each soldier of the Chinese Emperor's [***] team were this kind of copper-headed cross bullets, commonly known as explosives, known as one shot, one life.

The tentative attack in the afternoon caused the originally high morale of the Taiping Army to suffer a head-on blow, Lin Haijiang looked at his poor reserve of only three battalions in the command headquarters and inevitably felt a little worried, this may be the so-called impulsive punishment! Now it's hard to quit even if you want to.

Chen Yucheng's siege of the Taiping army is different from Lin Haijiang's usual tactics of encircling it on three sides and opening one side, Chen Yucheng's siege of Ningxiang can be said to be impassable, and he has the posture of annihilating the defenders of Ningxiang in one fell swoop, Lin Haijiang knows that Chen Yucheng must have deployed at least two lines of defense on the periphery of Ningxiang, because the area of Ningxiang City is not very large, even if it is a siege attack, 20,000 or 30,000 people are enough to fill the entire battlefield, and Lin Haijiang believes that Chen Yucheng must have realized from the attack this afternoon and the artillery bombardment at noon, Too much battlefield density will only lead to more fearless casualties.

Lin Haijiang was calculating the number of troops that Chen Yucheng could invest and the possibility of holding Ningxiang by himself, Lin Haijiang clearly realized that once Ningxiang could not be defended, then the Eastern Route Army under his command would fall into a completely passive situation, whether these materials, weapons and ammunition were captured or destroyed by the Taiping Army, the result would be the same.

The Red Army, armed with broadswords, spears, and earthen guns, took advantage of its strategic superiority and gave full play to the convenient conditions of terrain and human factors in its tactics, concentrated its main force to break through the Kuomintang troops that came to attack each one, and armed themselves with the weapons captured by the Kuomintang army.

It's just that his current situation has become the national political axe army that was besieged by a lone army back then, and the Taiping army, which was backward in weapons and equipment, used its idea of underestimating the enemy to dig a big hole for itself strategically, and tactically, the Taiping army quietly gathered an army of such a size under its nose? What made Lin Haijiang wonder was that with such a large army, where would their supplies come from?

The more advanced the weapon, the stronger the dependence on the road and logistics, and the more advanced the weapon, can only guarantee the superiority of firepower projection at the tactical level, but cannot guarantee victory at the strategic level.

Lin Haijiang also knew that the best strategy was to instigate a war between the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom and the Qing court, the two mortal enemies, and the Chinese Empire would sit back and wait for the time to grow, and wait for the time to mature, Lin Haijiang raised a large army to destroy the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom first, and then destroy the Manchu Qing Dynasty, and then send troops to Xinjiang Province into Tibet Province, attack Sichuan, Yunnan, and Guizhou, and complete the basic unification in form.

The main reason why Lin Haijiang did not continue to wait was because there were too many uncertain surnames in it, and the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom was sandwiched between himself and the Manchu Qing Dynasty, so it can be said that it was difficult to provoke it to launch an attack on either side, because among the three parties, only the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom had the weakest overall strength, and there was no foreign aid.

If a war breaks out between the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom and the Manchu Qing Dynasty, strategically the Chinese Empire is in an absolutely advantageous position, but the people at home are afraid that their lives will be ruined, and what is the use of recovering a devastated China with a population of two out of ten? keeps saying that he is for this nation, but in the end, because of his own strategic decisive battle strategy, millions of people's families are ruined? Is it saving people or slaughtering people in disguise?

From another angle, Lin Haijiang was more aware of the essence of the Manchu Qing Dynasty, and at a critical moment, the Manchu rulers could unscrupulously and frantically sell their national interests as a condition in exchange for the support of the European powers, and they had already offended more than half of the whole of Europe in dealing with the Indochina Peninsula and Southeast Asia, and once the European countries joined forces to intervene, then Lin Haijiang would be completely in a passive position both strategically and tactically.

Therefore, Lin Haijiang could not wait for the European powers to spare their time, in that case, just by virtue of their relations with European countries, the European powers would definitely meddle in their own great cause of reunification, because a unified China was in the fundamental interests of the European powers, and for the sake of this fundamental interest, Britain, France, Russia, and other countries would even gather the Netherlands, Italy, Spain, and other countries to join forces to intervene, and intervention would mean a large-scale war.

The outcome of this war can be said to be very unpredictable, if the Chinese Empire wins, then the price may also be extremely heavy, but the Chinese Empire will win the opportunity for the Chinese nation to stand again among the nations of the world, but if it fails, then China will fall into the shadow of a semi-feudal and semi-colonial society that is darker than history.

Therefore, Lin Haijiang reluctantly launched the Battle of the Two Rivers and the Two Lakes under the condition of extremely insufficient preparation, hoping to compress the strategic depth of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom through this battle and deal a heavy blow to its vital forces.

Now even he has fallen into the encirclement of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom army, Lin Haijiang through the military pigeon in the rear to get in touch with Wang Faren in the rear at the same time in the adjustment of troops, Lin Haijiang gave Wang Faren an extremely secret mission, Lin Haijiang ordered Wang Faren to fully launch the back plan, using the time he was surrounded by enemy troops, to fully control the political axe consuls, garrison commanders, imperial army brigade commanders, naval captains, all officers above the major including the major, check personal words and deeds, and keep them as secret files.

As the so-called loyalty in times of crisis, Lin Haijiang has always wanted to find an opportunity to check his true support within the empire, those people are unconditionally loyal to themselves, those people are vacillating, those people are extremely restless and ambitious, and easy internal investigation can be said to be not a good thing, it is easy to cause distrust and panic, so Lin Haijiang has to take this opportunity to carry out this investigation in a grand manner.

Lin Haijiang is ready to give Chen Yucheng's department a huge surprise, as long as the elite of Chen Yucheng's Taiping army is eliminated, the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom can only stick to the important strategic points, and lose the qualification to fight with himself, from another angle, Lin Haijiang thinks that at the same time that he sends Chen Yucheng to the door, Chen Yucheng is also equivalent to sending himself to the door, whether it is the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom or his own Chinese Empire, the opportunities are equal.

After nightfall, Chen Yucheng looked at his pocket watch, to be honest, he is not used to looking at this kind of foreign watch, but he can't deny that this kind of foreign watch is indeed very convenient, the concept of time is too important for the army, foreigners are accurate to minutes and seconds, and many generals in the Taiping army are still used to using a stick of incense, a cup of tea as the time for action.

Lin Haijiang walked out of the underground fortifications, and also subconsciously looked at the pocket watch, it was already 21 o'clock in the evening, believing that the Taiping army's offensive was about to begin, and perhaps this night would be the longest night.

With the first gunshots in the east of the city, and then the four aspects of Ningxiang, southeast, northwest and northwest sounded a stormy shooting, in the dense shooting, Lin Haijiang could hear the sound of shouting and killing like a tide!

On the front-line position in the east of the city, the infantry of the Taiping army rushed and killed several times and were blocked by machine guns and minefields, so soon the Taiping army transferred a horse team, and began to impact the minefield with two horses pulling a stone stone, although the defenders on the defensive position shot desperately, but after all, it was the night when they couldn't see their fingers, and the accuracy of the shooting was greatly affected, and they could only hear the sound of mines and the screams and howls of men and horses.

After clearing the minefield, there is a dense crowd of screaming foot soldiers swarming up, or holding shields, or running wildly with spears and broadswords, and sporadic mine explosions can no longer stop these crazy twisting soldiers!

The general-purpose machine guns on the front-line positions were carrying out fixed-scale strafing, and the light machine guns and rifles were constantly filling the gaps in the general-purpose machine gun firepower, and Qi Mingxin, who was responsible for the defense of the north and east of the city, quickly used mortar artillery groups to block the enemy's offensive line.

In the shrapnel that exploded one after another, the follow-up echelon soldiers of the Taiping army's attack fell to the ground in large numbers, and the entire ferocious offensive was suddenly hit head-on, and the vanguard that had already reached the front-line position 50 meters and began to cause casualties to the defenders in the trenches quickly collapsed without continuous reinforcements.

But before the defenders could breathe, the Taiping army's horse team began to attack frantically again, and the soldiers on the horse team all brandished explosive bags with lit fuses one by one, and rushed to the first line of defense in the east of the city like crazy.

With a deafening explosion, several excavated machine gun bunkers were blown apart, and several soldiers braved bullets to rush into the bombed fortifications to rescue the wounded, trying to restore the machine gun position, but the entire general-purpose machine gun was deformed by the explosion, and two Dai's 1 light machine guns were helplessly propped up, and they exchanged ammunition to cover the shooting.

In the north of the city, the Taiping Army's attack by Li Shixian's department was even more frenzied, Li Shixian did not use Gong Deshu's method of dragging stones with horses at all, but rushed hard, rushing to the defenders' positions one after another, under the intensive shooting and the continuous batch of thrown grenades, the Taiping soldiers continued to fall to the ground, and the soldiers behind continued to attack hopelessly by stepping on the corpses of their companions as if they were enchanted.

The Taiping soldiers seem to be using corpses to test the surname of the machine gun on the Chinese Imperial side?

Liu Guanfang and Huang Wenjin in the south of the city and west of the city also had their own strange moves, Liu Guanfang dispatched 5,000 people to start digging trenches after several failed attacks, and began to dig trenches in a roundabout way, which seemed to shorten the distance of the attack, and Huang Wenjin in the west of the city also learned Liu Guanfang's trick, and the two of them competed in the south of the city and the west of the city to compete with each other who is more like Tuxingsun.

The operational staff officers continued to summarize and report the battle situation to Lin Haijiang, Lin Haijiang thought that the minefield that could be supported until dawn was completely broken through by the Taiping army in less than an hour, and through the captured prisoner Lin Haijiang learned that it was Gong Deshu of the Twist Army who attacked the east of the city, Liu Guanfang of the Taiping Army attacked the south of the city, Huang Wenjin of the Taiping Army attacked the west of the city, and Li Shixian of the Taiping Army attacked the north of the city! King Chen Yucheng was in command.

For this famous British king Chen Yucheng in history, Lin Haijiang has only now put away his contempt, and for Liu Guanfang and Huang Wenjin, who are digging and advancing in the south and west of the city, Lin Haijiang feels very incredible.

Lin Haijiang was a little helpless, why wasn't his enemy mentally retarded or a pig's head? In addition to knowing some historical trends and trends before, as well as some forward-looking strategic vision, the ability of military and tactical command is indeed very average.

While digging Z-shaped parallel roundabout trenches, the Taiping army organized gunners to shoot, and the original unilateral shooting suppression of the emperor [***] team turned into a close-range mutual shooting!

The early morning of September 5, 1861 was not a good time for Lin Haijiang, who had not slept all night, and Lin Haijiang, who originally thought that he could rest peacefully a few nights before the battle, found that it was simply wishful thinking to rest, and the fierce offensive of the Taiping army made Lin Haijiang a little worried, after all, the gap between the enemy and our forces was very large.

In particular, it was Li Shixian's headquarters of the Taiping Army that attacked the north of the city, and it was even around dawn that the first line of defense positions in the north of the city was suddenly attacked, thanks to the brigade commander Qi Mingxin, who took the lead, and organized a light machine gun assault team to drive out the Taiping army that stormed the trenches, it can be said that the Mauser pistols that Lin Haijiang issued to each soldier of the defending troops played a huge role in close combat, and often in the dark of night, three or five soldiers armed with Mauser pistols could deal with more than a dozen or even twenty enemy troops.

The battle for the position in the north of the city was extremely fierce, the machine gun shooter with the red machine gun barrel grabbed his rifle or Mauser pistol and desperately shot at the Taiping army swarming out of the darkness, before dawn, Chen Yucheng personally arrived in the south of the city to supervise the battle, Liu Guanfang and Huang Wenjin had to temporarily stop their excavation operations, and put all their forces into the attack, Gong Deshu, Liu Guanfang, Huang Wenjin, Li Shixian's troops began the most crazy attack.

Rows of Taiping officers and soldiers shouted and rushed towards Ningxiang, and for a while the heavens and the earth seemed to collapse, and the machine gunners of the Chinese Empire continued to strafe at the attack formation like a human wall, and the huge psychological pressure made them also crazy and bloodthirsty.

Lin Haijiang decisively mobilized the 75-millimeter Krupp field artillery group on the material transfer ground in Ningxiang to suppress the fierce fire in the north and west of the city.

It's just that this flower is the flower of death, under the mixed attack of the Taiping army, the first line of defense began to shake in an all-round way, and there was not even time to replace the bullets, the Taiping army seemed to be incomplete, and the defenders of a battalion in the north of the city started a melee hand-to-hand combat with the swarming Taiping army, and the soldiers on both sides roared and shouted hoarsely, wielding everything that could be used as a weapon.

Lin Haijiang quietly looked at the direction of the north of the city silently, the cruelty of the battle completely exceeded his expectations, and the six layers of the troops with less than two brigades of defenders were recruits who had not gone through actual combat, that is to say, these recruits were even more dangerous than the enemy, although Lin Haijiang sent out all the two battalions of gendarmes, but he was still worried about the safety of the first line of defense on the front line, if he held on to seven days to relieve the siege according to the worst plan, the first line of defense in Lin Haijiang's prediction would hold on for at least two days, but now it is only one night, The first line of defense has largely lost its role.

Do you put troops in a counterattack to restore the defensive line? Or to withdraw the remnants of the troops to the second line of defense? Lin Haijiang hesitated, this is related to the implementation process of a specific campaign, and different choices will produce different results, so Lin Haijiang is very cautious on this issue.

When the madness was completely defeated by death, the offensive of the Taiping army completely collapsed in an instant, and again and again, again and again, and again Chen Yucheng knew very well that Chen Yucheng looked at the fish white that appeared in the sky, and decisively retreated from the Chinese Emperor's [***] team.

Chen Yucheng now knows that wanting to capture Ningxiang in one go turned out to be just a good wish! After paying a huge number of casualties, all he got was the opponent's first line of defense, Chen Yucheng looked at the sun that jumped out of the horizon and smiled slightly, he still had time! But as his opponent, Lin Haijiang's time doesn't seem to be running out! Chen Yucheng didn't believe that Lin Haijiang could quickly transfer back the troops far away from the outer line to relieve the siege of Ningxiang!

(To be continued)