After a day's shelling of the Wusong Fort, the next day the British and French forces did not continue to bombard the Wusong Fort head-on as they did yesterday, but went around to the north bank of the Yangtze River and sailed upstream.

Watching the enemy's fleet bypass the fort and advance westward in the early morning river fog, this made Bing Qusong and others, who were observing the British and French fleet on the Wusong Fort, begin to be cautious.

Su Xuanbin, who was on the side, turned around and said to Bing Qusong: "This time the enemy army is advancing westward, there is a great possibility that it will be a detour upstream to land, and the next battle will have to work hard for your army!" ”

Bing Qusong nodded slightly: "We can't do anything about him when they are on the ship, but after they go ashore, as long as they are separated from their naval artillery support, our army is confident that they can block their attack!" ”

Although Bing Qusong was full of confidence in what Su Xuanbin said, but after leaving the observation platform, he quickly led a large number of army generals to leave, and he was still on the way to the herald: "Immediately report General Xu of the relevant situation of the enemy army, and we need their strong cooperation in the next battle!" ”

To tell the truth, he was not confident that he would be able to block the attack of the Anglo-French army of more than 20,000 men with his own Seventh Army, and that it would be possible to block the landing attack of the Anglo-French army with the Second Army.

Only when the two armies are combined and the strength of the four infantry divisions is gathered can there be a greater hope of victory in this battle!

When the British and French forces slowly advanced west along the river, the Chinese army on the shore also paid close attention to this fleet, and even once took the risk of sending two Xingwu-class gunboats to observe closely. But the advantage is the speed, slender ship type and the dark wheel steam engine. Enough for it to run at a high speed of twelve knots on inland rivers.

At such high speeds, as long as they are not too close to their main force of the fleet. Then there will be too much danger.

On the riverside, many heralds on war horses were running back and forth, and in the camp of the Second Army, which was about ten kilometers away from Wusong Fort, Xu Yanqing looked at the battle report sent by the heralds, and immediately issued an order: "The whole army is ready for battle, and once the accurate landing location of the enemy army is confirmed, it will immediately quickly maneuver and join the Seventh Army!" ”

In a series of combat readiness plans drawn up by the Chinese army, it is not said that it will directly resist the landing of the enemy army, because the landing stage of the enemy army is of course the most vulnerable time. But at the same time, this is also the time when the enemy can receive the most intensive naval artillery fire support.

Therefore, in a series of operational plans, the so-called anti-landing operations were actually battles far from the riverside after the enemy landed.

This can be seen from the fortifications of the Wusong Fort, whose main fortifications actually extend from the Wusong Fort to the west, with a main position of five kilometers long, because this is to set the predetermined engagement area away from the enemy's naval guns.

Time passed little by little, and two hours later, the reconnaissance cavalry accompanying the shore sent back the news that the enemy fleet had begun to cross the center of the river in a direction about six kilometers upstream of the Wusong Battery. Then approach the south bank of the Yangtze River.

Ten minutes later, the scouts sent new news to Bing Qusong that several gunboats of the enemy fleet had anchored close to the shore and sent a number of small ships close to the shore. There are already hundreds of foreign soldiers waiting for the shore directly in small boats.

Half an hour later, the scouts returned, and the enemy's main fleet approached the south bank. A large number of transport ships lowered their dinghys and landed with soldiers.

"It's finally begun, they've landed!" At this time, Zhu Jianjia was writing and drawing on the improvised military map on the desktop. On the one hand, he said to himself: "If our army has a powerful artillery unit close to deployment at this time, just when they land, it will be enough to inflict heavy casualties on them!" ”

However, Bing Qusong on the side said: "If you really do this." I'm afraid that our field artillery will be wiped out by the enemy's naval guns before they have entered the predetermined territory! ”

There is a huge gap between the army's field artillery and the navy's naval guns and coastal defense artillery in terms of power and range.

Caliber is the most obvious sign, the largest caliber of field cannons on the army side is only 12 pounds, but on the navy side, 12 pounds can only be regarded as a small-caliber subordinate, only 100-ton gunboats are used, those hundreds of tons of naval guns, their main naval guns are mostly more than 24 pounds, and even equipped with 32-pound naval guns, as for more than 1,000 tons or even thousands of tons, they are basically 32-pound or even 64-pound naval guns.

As for the era of breech-loading rifled guns, they soared to 100 pounds at once, and more than 150 pounds, and the army's artillery was incomparable with the navy's naval guns in terms of caliber.

Not only the caliber, but even the length of the barrel is incomparable, it is also a twelve-pound cannon, but the twelve-pounder naval gun on the Xingwu class of the Navy is a lot longer than the army's twelve-pounder field gun in the barrel, which means that the shells fired by the navy's long-barreled cannon have a longer range.

In fact, whether in modern times or in later generations, the gap between the naval artillery of the navy and the field artillery of the army is very large, and of course, the gap in cost is also large.

Therefore, if the army wants to compete with the navy in artillery, it is very irrational behavior, and a slightly rational army general will not use his own field artillery to fight against the enemy's naval artillery.

Bing Qusong, Xu Yanqing and others naturally did not lose their minds, so they would rather let the British and French troops land smoothly than take the risk of taking the initiative to go out to attack the enemy troops who were landing.

The landing operation of more than 10,000 British and French troops, to be precise, more than 15,000 people, naturally could be completed in two hours, in fact, the landing of British and French troops lasted for three whole days.

Due to the flat terrain of the landing site chosen, they had to use small boats to transport them back and forth when there was no dock available.

However, it is fortunate that there are not too many heavy equipment of the army in this year, and compared with the army of later generations, it is light infantry, and the landing is relatively not very demanding on hardware such as docks.

After they erected a temporary trestle pier with small boats in succession, their guns, ammunition trucks and other heavy equipment were also transported off the ships one after another.

During the landing of the British and French forces, although the land side of the Chinese Army did not make much action, the Second Army only advanced the army. Then it reached the direction of about six kilometers west of the Wusong Fort, and formed a complete defensive line with the Seventh Army. However, there is no intention of taking the initiative to attack, but the navy is making frequent moves.

In addition to sending several Xingwu-class gunboats to the vicinity for reconnaissance many times. I also tried to use a very ancient method of water warfare, that is, fire attack.

The navy loaded many of the collected wooden ships with explosives and oil, and then ignited them to lower them upstream and let them go down the river to attack the British and French fleets.

However, the release of more than 50 fireships did not achieve much effect, some of them drifted to the surface of the river near the north bank and were useless, and the remaining part was discovered and sunk by the steam gunboats of the British and French forces that came out to patrol and guard in the process of going down the river.

Occasionally, a few fireships broke into the large fleet of the Anglo-French forces, but they did not achieve the desired effect.

This ancient fire attack is for modern fleets that have made extensive use of steam power and are very dense with artillery. The effect is already very small.

In addition to fire attacks, the navy also tried unconventional warfare, trying to send soldiers who are proficient in water to infiltrate the enemy fleet at night, and then directly use the axes they carry to dig the bottom of the ship, but the effect is not great, and later they also tried to let soldiers carry explosives bags directly, but the problem of waterproofing is difficult to solve, because soldiers cannot swim on the surface of the river, but need to dive to avoid intensive patrols.

Whether it's a fire attack or an unconventional battle of frogmen. For the huge Anglo-French combined fleet, it was like scratching an itch across the mountain, and it did not pose the slightest threat.

After three days of naval efforts, it was found that there was no great effect, and by that time the landing of the Anglo-French forces was almost complete. That's why I reluctantly stopped all kinds of actions.

However, the navy is also a little unwilling to accept the failure of these unconventional operations, and before the war is over, there are already many people within the Admiralty who have put forward many ideas for unconventional operations. One of the most constructive is the laying of mines, of course. The mines mentioned are not those ancient traditions of those underwater dragon king cannons, earth-shaking thunder. Dragon King Thunder messed up stuff.

The mine tactics proposed by the Technical Warfare Department of the Admiralty are to use electrolyte-triggered anchor mines, and just by looking at the name, you can know that it is a tall commodity.

It's a pity that the people in the Technical Warfare Department of the Admiralty only know a name, and they don't know what this electrolyte-triggered anchor mine is.

On 14 June, some of the ships of the British and French forces that had completed their initial landing began to lift anchor, and some of the transport ships were on standby in the open sea, but some of them were also returning to Hong Kong, from which they had to transport a large amount of war materials back to the north.

However, many warships remained in the temporary anchorage, both in need of rest after months of sailing, and in addition to providing artillery support to the army on shore.

After the landing, after some discussion, Earl Ergin and Ge Luo and others thought that it was better to take down the Wusong Fort first, otherwise there would be no way for their fleet to enter the Huangpu River, and without the support of the fleet, their army would have a great threat if it penetrated into Shanghai alone.

You must know that these foreigners also know that there are tens of thousands of Chinese troops on land, especially on the Wusong Fort, and if they don't take advantage of the support of naval artillery to solve them first, then when they attack Shanghai, they will be stabbed in the back, and the outcome will be unpredictable.

Based on these considerations, the Anglo-French forces began to leave their garrisons on June 15 and then moved south along the banks of the Yangtze River.

In order to be able to get the support of the fleet at any time, they did not risk too far from the river, but marched about a kilometer from the shore.

In order to provide naval artillery cover for the army, the British and French warships once again marched towards the Wusong Battery, but it was different from the last time, last time they came to shell the Wusong Battery, and this time their artillery target was still the Wusong Battery, but the strategic purpose was not to directly destroy the battery with artillery, but to provide fire support to the attacking infantry.

The naval and land armies of the British and French coalition marched hand in hand, which made the high-level naval and land leaders of the Chinese army on the Wusong Fort look cautious!

After waiting for so many days, they are finally here! (To be continued......)