The large-scale mobilization of the Chinese army could not be concealed, so Lin Chengting couldn't help but be puzzled, Li Hongzhang couldn't understand it, even if he was nervous in Jinan, he was afraid that the Chinese army would come to Jinan Du Xing'a, Hu Linyi and others were also puzzled!

Since the defeat in Suqian, Seng Lingqin was directly dismissed by the Qing court for questioning, Hu Linyi took the first step to escape back to Shandong with more than 1,000 remnants of the Shandong training army, and Duxing'a retreated to Pizhou first to collect the remnants.

When he was in Pizhou, Du Xing'a also successively collected about 30,000 remnants, of which there were only less than 5,000 training troops, which was very different from the original scale of 50,000 or 60,000.

When Li Hongzhang led the Jianghuai New Army to flee north, Du Xing'a also tried to send troops east to join forces with Li Hongzhang, but before the troops he sent arrived, the news came that the Jianghuai New Army was completely annihilated.

Frightened, Du Xing'a dared to continue to send troops to the east, and hurriedly recalled the eastward troops, but the 10,000 people who went east did not flee back, and were annihilated by the first army of the Chinese army that advanced westward.

After learning that the eastward troops were completely annihilated, and that the Chinese army was still marching westward into Pizhou, he did not hesitate to know that he was invincible, and immediately fled north with 20,000 remnants, and then fled all the way to Jinan.

After arriving in Jinan, he and Hu Linyi were worried that the Chinese army would come over, so on the one hand, they were strengthening the fortifications of Jinan, and on the other hand, they were also recruiting soldiers on the spot, trying to train more soldiers on the spot.

But these newly recruited soldiers are really not very good, and they cannot be trained into qualified recruits at all.

Although the Qing court's training was inferior in combat effectiveness, it was still a new army. The tactics and weaponry were completely different from the old army, and it took the Qing court several years to train tens of thousands of people. The single product Du Xing'a and Hu Linyi were trained on the spot in Shandong, and the difficulty can be imagined.

In order to hold Shandong. Du Xing'a sent a letter to the Qing court asking for reinforcements in three days!

However, the new army available to the Qing court was only more than 10,000 people from the Gyeonggi Training Army and the Zhili Training Army, and the remaining 10,000 or so training troops were regarded by the Qing court as the last force to control and defend Gyeonggi, so they naturally did not dare to send them out easily.

As for the other troops in the north, such as the New Army of the Eight Banners and the old army of the Green Battalion, even those ignorant Qing court officials knew that these old armies were unreliable.

However, in the face of the situation that the Chinese army was moving north, the Qing court could not sit idly by and watch Shandong and Henan lose, so it also transferred some troops to the south.

Most of them are some old green battalion troops, and the Qing court obviously knows that these old green battalion troops are unreliable, and it is estimated that it is useless to go to 10,000 people. Therefore, they simply transferred up to 60,000 or 70,000 green battalions from Zhili, the three eastern provinces, Shanxi, Shaanxi and other northern provinces, as well as the old troops such as Tuanlian and Xiangyong to Henan and Shandong.

And considering the situation of a series of wars in northern Jiangsu, the 60,000 or 70,000 green battalions that are close to this new reinforcement are of little use, and if you want to hold Shandong and Henan, you have to rely on the new army.

Therefore, although the Qing court was unwilling, it still decided to continue to transfer the remaining 4,000 people of the Zhili training army to Shandong, and as for the Gyeonggi training army, it continued to stay in Gyeonggi.

Coupled with this part of the Zhili training army, plus the remaining 5,000 training troops under Du Xing'a and more than 1,000 training troops under Hu Linyi, the Qing court is about to gather about 10,000 training troops in Shandong, and they will have Du Xing'a full commander. Hu Linyi assisted in organizing Shandong military affairs.

In addition, in the past six months, Shanxi, Henan, Shaanxi, Gansu, and other provinces have also more or less partially trained their troops, so the governors of these provinces have been strictly ordered to send the newly formed training troops to Henan. Each province sent about 1,000 people to train the army, but it also allowed the Qing court to gather about 4,000 people to train the army in Henan, and the Qing court was the second person to host the new army. That is, the former commander of the Zhili Training Army, Commander Nader.

And it's worth noting that the more battles are lost, the more they lose. The more these people in the Qing court liked to take the enemy as their teacher, after the defeat of the Northern Soviet Union. Once again, the Qing court copied the Chinese army in a big way.

This time, they not only imitated the predecessor of the Chinese Army, that is, the establishment and tactics of the Yu Shengjun era, but directly aimed at the current Chinese Army and began a larger-scale copycat!

For this reason, in December last year, the Qing court formally established the 'Prime Minister's New Army Division,' which was fully responsible for the formation and training of the new army, and formulated a larger-scale plan for the formation and training of the new army.

At the same time, they also reorganized the existing new army and training army, which were relatively chaotic and complicated, and put forward the so-called rules for reorganization and unification, and also directly applied the establishment model of the Chinese army, abolishing the previous establishment model with 'battalions' as the main units, and adopting a new style of establishment of battalions, standards, associations, towns, and armies.

Its more than 8,000 Eight Banners New Army was reorganized as the first town of the army, but although the name was changed, but this Praetorian Guard is still a non-use of goods, although there are so many people, but the original foreign guns have long been withdrawn, only a few flintlock pistols and a large number of old-style arquebuses remained, the department was left by the Qing army only a few Manchu generals who could fight Le Shan served as the commander of the supervision, as the commander.

The remaining part of the Gyeonggi training army of about 6,000 people who stayed in Gyeonggi was renamed the 'Second Army Town', which was already the last force of the Qing court to defend Gyeonggi, and its combat effectiveness far exceeded that of the old green battalion and the new army of the Eight Banners.

As for the part of the Zhili training army that was reinforced to Shandong, the part of the original commander of Du Xing'a came from the Gyeonggi training army, the Zhili training army, the Shandong training army, and other fragmentary training armies, but they were unified and reorganized into the 'third town of the army', and Du Xing'a himself served as the commander.

As for the 4,000 training troops from Shaanxi, Shanxi, Gansu and other provinces, as well as the remnants of the training army in Henan, they were organized as the 'fourth town of the army', and Nade, the former commander of the Zhili training army, served as the commander-in-chief.

The above four towns are the only four new army units of the Qing court in the north, if you only say that you can fight, you have to remove the first town of the army, that is, the domineering new army, so that there are only three towns left.

Of course, the plan of the Qing court is obviously more than that, Xianfeng has ordered all provinces to train provincial armies, requiring each province to train at least one town, and important provinces to train at least two towns of new army, as for whether it can be done is a matter of the future, it is not known now.

But what is very interesting is that the Hunan army commanded by Zeng Guofan, who was entrenched in Hunan, was not in the ranks of the reorganization, and the Hunan army was still the Hunan army, and the multi-purpose establishment was still their own.

It can be seen from the reorganization of the new army by the Qing court that they have reached the point of exhaustion, even if the first town of the army reorganized by the Eight Banners New Army is counted, the new army that can be handled is only four towns, and the total strength does not exceed 30,000.

However, the enemy they faced, that is, the Chinese army, had seven or eight infantry divisions of the Royal Army, not only the main force of the Chinese army had surpassed the Qing army, but in fact, even those ordinary troops, that is, the old armies such as the auxiliary defense army and the green battalion regiment training in the Qing army, the Chinese army had already surpassed the Qing army excluding the Hunan army.

After more than a year of double war, the balance of power between the two sides has completely changed!

This is also the main reason why the Qing generals such as Du Xing'a and Hu Linyi were nervous, if there was no trouble for the British and French training troops to find Lin Zhe, it is estimated that in less than half a year, the Chinese army would have to come to the city of Beijing.

It's just that the threat of the Anglo-French alliance forced the Chinese army to completely change its strategic plan, and the northern expedition to the Qing court or the westward march into Hubei was no longer the number one task of the Chinese army, and now their most important thing was to prepare for the Anglo-French alliance and defend the foundation of the empire.

In this case, the Qing court was also given more time to breathe, although now the Qing court still can't understand why the Chinese army slowed down the stone of the north, and I don't know why they withdrew.

But in any case, it is a good thing that the Chinese army did not come, and they can have more time to prepare before the Chinese army marches north again.

It can be said that Bao Ling's trip to Nanjing not only brought a threat to the Chinese Empire, brought trouble to Lin Zhe, and even brought an extremely profound impact on the situation in the entire China.

No matter what the reaction from the outside is, no matter what Lin Chengting and Du Xinga have taken measures, but now for the Chinese Empire, the trouble is no longer them, but the Anglo-French alliance.

Therefore, after entering 1858, the Chinese army had completely stopped its large-scale offensive on the northern and western fronts, and the plan to conquer Jinan and enter Zhengzhou, Henan had been postponed indefinitely.

In addition to the dispatch of a small number of troops to continue to clear the Twist Army in northern Anhui, the war has stopped on the entire northern and western fronts!

But at the same time, a large number of troops began to gather in southern Jiangsu, and countless artillery shells and food were sent into Jiangyin, Zhenjiang, Shanghai and other anticipation zones, and tens of thousands of people in these areas were sweating to build various fortifications.

Among them, the Wusong Fort, which had high hopes, was even more the same day by day, one by one the forts were repaired, one after another the fortresses were repaired, and the new artillery that had just left the Linde Machinery Factory was transported to the Wusong Fort for installation.

Since the role that the navy could play in the subsequent war was useless except for the blockage of the shipping channel in the sinking of Jiangyin, the navy reluctantly dismantled a large number of artillery from the existing warships and installed them on the Wusong battery.

While the southern Jiangsu side was preparing for war, the Third Army of the Chinese Army that went south to Guangdong was already fighting with the local Qing army one after another.

In order to carry out the task of the high command to capture Guangzhou City before the foreigners, the Third Army left Fujian and rushed all the way westward, and did not enter the northeast of Guangdong, but fought in a straight line, conquering Chaoshan Mansion in a short time, and then went straight to Huizhou Mansion.

By the time January was low, the Third Army had already arrived under the city of Guangzhou!

The arrival of the Third Army of the Chinese Army under the city of Guangzhou not only alarmed the Qing court officials and generals in the city, but also attracted the attention of the British and French forces in Hong Kong. (To be continued......)