At dawn, it was the last tide of November, and it was only about three hours long.

At this time, the port of Incheon was in ruins, all the ships used by the military and civilians in the port were sunk and blown up, and all the warehouses and freight yards within two kilometers of the pier were burned in the shelling.

The fire is scorching, and the smoke covers the sky.

The wreckage of the warships of the Combined Fleet floated everywhere on the sea, and more than 7,000 officers and men of the Navy and Army were floating on the docks and water, and the air was filled with the strong smell of gunpowder smoke and the stench of filth and blood.

The ships of the Beiyang Naval Division saw that there were no more valuable targets in Incheon Port, and the remaining scattered broken houses were not worth a single shell, so Ding Ruchang ordered a retreat.

At 6:37, the Beiyang Naval Division left the waters of Incheon Port and retreated from the main channel of Flying Fish Gorge.

When the tide ended, the ships of the Beiyang Naval Division had safely arrived in the open sea.

At about half past 10 o'clock, Wang Chenhao led the mine fleet and the lightning strike fleet to join the main fleet, and his Jiaolong and other mine ships and torpedo boats were hoisted onto the warship for maintenance.

Wang Chenhao met Ding Ruchang on the Dingyuan ship, and both of them were very excited about the success of the operation. At this time, the officers and men of the Beiyang Naval Division also knew that all the battle plans were planned by Wang Chenhao, and they immediately admired this young man, and Wang Chenhao's personal charm soared, and he was recognized by the officers and men of the Beiyang Naval Division.

At about 12 o'clock, the ships of the Beiyang Naval Division counted the personnel losses, and the entire operation lost six torpedo boats and 102 officers and men, which can be described as a great victory.

However, the ammunition of the Beiyang Naval Division was basically exhausted, and only 3 shells remained of the Zhiyuan ship, which was the most capable of fighting, and because it was made domestically, the size of the shells did not meet the specifications of the ship's guns and could not be loaded.

In Wang Chenhao's view, although the Beiyang Naval Division won a great victory in the total annihilation of the Combined Fleet, it also exposed serious flaws.

It is no secret that ammunition reserves are tight, and during the operation, many torpedoes were muted to make Wang Chenhao very nervous for a while. This was something that Wang Chenhao did not anticipate before he set off, and he overestimated the quality of torpedoes in this era. It wasn't until after the war that he understood why Ding Ruchang ordered each torpedo boat to carry an additional torpedo, and it seemed that Ding Ruchang had known this problem for a long time, but he was embarrassed to tell Wang Chenhao.

At about two o'clock in the afternoon, after the ships of the Beiyang Naval Division had replenished coal and some ammunition, Ding Ruchang ordered to return to the sea.

On the morning of 6 November, the Beiyang Naval Division returned to the nearest Weihaiwei naval base, and Wang Chenhao also came to the Weihaiwei base, the largest and most well-equipped Beiyang naval division, for the first time.

During this period, Dai Zongqian, the guard general of the Weihaiwei base, had already learned of the speedboat flight report first, and led the officers at all levels of the Suijun Army and the relevant personnel of the Weihaiwei base to greet him.

At 9 o'clock in the morning, the ships of the Beiyang Naval Division anchored and anchored at the Liugongdao Military MTR Wharf, and some damaged warships sailed into the Mazijing dock for maintenance, and other warships had to return to Lushun for maintenance according to reason, but because most of the warships of the Beiyang Naval Division were purchased from outside, there was a long-term lack of maintenance machine reserves, and the only spare gun barrels, bearings and other machinery and equipment had been exhausted during maintenance after the last Yellow Sea War, so under the embargo of weapons and equipment by the great powers, the ships of the Beiyang Naval Division were already difficult to maintain.

This is the consequence of blindly relying on foreign procurement of warships, and Wang Chenhao couldn't help but sigh when he learned about it.

The Beiyang Naval Division's sneak attack on Incheon Harbor and annihilation of the combined fleet and the complete victory of the combined fleet inevitably made everyone proud, and they inevitably celebrated it vigorously.

After the Weihaiwei base was restored to normal and the telegraph room was activated, Ding Ruchang immediately sent a telegram to Li Hongzhang in Tianjin, informing him of the news of the successful annihilation of the fleet in the operation.

Li Hongzhang has been doing nothing for the past two days, and has been sitting next to the telegram in the signing room of the Zhili Governor's Palace, and he can be described by inappropriate words such as "forgetting to sleep and eating" or "sleeping and eating", because he himself is very contradictory and nervous, on the one hand, he wants to preserve his strength and strike the war, and on the other hand, he wants to win the war and make a name for himself.

When he learned that the sneak attack plan was successful and the Beiyang Navy Division came back completely, Li Hong was so excited that he fainted with excitement.

After waking up, Li Hongzhang remembered that he had not closed his eyes for two nights and had not eaten for three days, and the excitement in this case was obviously at the cost of a coma.

Li Hongzhang immediately called back, praising and encouraging all the officers and men of the Beiyang Naval Division, and of course a separate line was indispensable to praise Wang Chenhao.

Then, Li Hongzhang drafted a telegram inviting merit and sent it to the prime minister's yamen, ordering people to send people to report the victory with a red flag of 800 miles, and send the meritorious service to the military aircraft in the Forbidden City.

Since the beginning of the battle between the two countries in the Qing Dynasty, and the official declaration of war on August 1, although the Qing Empire has won the Yellow Sea War, the Qing Empire has been defeated all the way on land, and after the Battle of Pyongyang and the Yalu River Defense War, the army has invaded the ancestral land of the Qing Empire, and the Qing Dynasty is all terrified.

However, after Li Hongzhang entered Beijing to face the saint and reported that the Beiyang Naval Division had raided Incheon and annihilated the combined fleet, the Qing Empire immediately became excited.

On the same day, the Qing Empire's domestic newspapers, "Huan Bao Bao", "Bao Bao", and "Shu Bao", quoted Li Hongzhang's report, as well as a notice issued by the Premier Yamen's Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

"The Beiyang Navy Division won a great victory in the port of Incheon in North Korea, annihilated the combined fleet of the Japanese invaders, sank more than 100 Japanese ships, and annihilated tens of thousands of Japanese invaders!"

You can blow it no matter how you win, Li Hongzhang is undoubtedly an expert in this area!

The newspapers of the great powers in China, such as the Wanguo Gazette, the Declaration, and the Beijing-Tianjin Times, on the one hand, cited the results of the Qing Imperial newspapers, and on the other hand, obtained relevant data from the embassies of various countries to corroborate them, and published them one after another, and then transferred them back to the domestic newspapers of various countries for publication.

In addition to the first naval battle of the two navies, they also want to see the results of the Qing Empire's 30-year Westernization Movement and the first major battle after the Meiji Restoration, so as to determine the naval aspects and the Far East strategy to be adjusted by the great powers in the future.

When the great powers learned that the Qing Empire's Beiyang Naval Division had successfully attacked the port of Inchon and annihilated the combined fleet in one fell swoop, they were in an uproar.

After the Battle of the Yellow Sea, the great powers still had illusions of victory for the Imperial Navy, believing that the victory of the Beiyang Naval Division was due to the help of Wang Chenhao's submarine and won by luck.

After the powers of various countries observed Wang Chenhao's submarine through relevant personnel, they only regarded the submarine as a toy, because the shape of the Jiaolong was like a boiled crab, and it did not have much military value by relying on a pair of mechanical arms.

Of course, the great powers have also begun to pay attention to the demonstration of the future trend of submarine warfare, and before that, all countries had submarine research, and under the influence of the naval battle in the Yellow Sea, the political axes of various countries began to pay attention to their own submarine development work.

However, it was soon said that the navy added explosion-proof nets to the butt of the warship, which made the Jiaolong's obscene tactics ineffective. Therefore, the great powers only broke the news after the meal, and gradually faded out of sight of the Jiaolong.

The Beiyang Naval Division's raid on Incheon Port made the powers pay close attention to its detailed process, and cited it as a classic example for analysis and study.

Citing a report by the British Times, British [***] expert Joseph David said that the Battle of Inchon had the same impact as the Dutch Navy's surprise attack on London, England, hundreds of years ago, and the result was bound to affect the course of the Sino-Chinese war.

In the past, the great powers of various countries may still have reservations, but after the Battle of Incheon, the loss of the navy and the loss of sea control will inevitably greatly affect the direction of the war. As a result, the major powers of various countries followed the domestic public opinion and shifted the weather vane one after another, and the official began to have confidence in the Qing Empire.