The battle between the USS Washington and the USS Wyoming in the Taiwan Strait did not have much significance in the history of the global navy, but for the Imperial Navy, it was of great significance, which meant that the ironclad ships made by the Empire had mature and strong combat effectiveness.

This allowed the Imperial Navy to further accelerate the development of ironclad ships!

On the one hand, the Imperial Navy began to implement the long-term plan to build a 10,000-ton giant ship, and on the other hand, it also placed an order for the construction of the Yandi, which will become the largest ship built by the Imperial shipbuilding industry with a design standard displacement of 4,000 tons.

The construction of the Yandi also made the number of ironclad ships under construction in the imperial navy reach four, namely the Pangu that started construction at the beginning of 1862, the Zhurong that started construction at the end of the same year, and the second ship of the Nu Snail, the Bi Fang, which is also an offshore ironclad ship, plus the current Pangu.

If the above-mentioned ironclad ships are successfully completed, the Imperial Navy will be able to have three ocean-going ironclad ships and two offshore ironclad ships, which will lead to a significant increase in the strength of the Imperial Navy, and there will be no need to worry about what to do if a war breaks out with the navies of Britain, France and other countries!

At the same time as the construction and commissioning of ironclad ships in batches, it also represented the gradual shift of the strategy of the Imperial Navy from the original port defense to offshore defense, and tried to build up a certain ocean-going offensive capability.

For this reason, the navy has also made a certain reorganization of the current fleet structure of the navy, integrating and reorganizing the four gunboat detachments and one cruiser fleet under its jurisdiction.

The establishment of the 'First Fleet of the Imperial Chinese Navy', with the original cruiser fleet as the core, most of the ocean-going combat ships and auxiliary ships incorporated into the Imperial Navy, will undertake the heavy task of fighting a decisive battle at sea with the enemy navy, and the core goal of this fleet is only one, that is, to defeat the main fleet of the imaginary enemy navy.

In addition to this main fleet, which was responsible for a decisive battle at sea. In addition, there are regional fleets responsible for port defense and coastal patrols, namely the South Sea, the East Ocean Fleet, and the North Sea Fleet, of which the South Sea Fleet is responsible for the general coastal defense affairs in the South China coast and the Vietnam coast. The Oriental Fleet is responsible for the north of the Taiwan Strait, on the western coast of Korea. Most of the sea south of the Tsushima Strait.

The North Sea Fleet is responsible for all areas of the Tsushima Strait, the Sea of Japan and the Arctic Ocean.

However, the main tasks of the three regional fleets mentioned above are port defense, shore defense battery installation, coastal patrol, etc., and it is not their task to engage enemy navies in the open sea.

In addition to the First Fleet and the four fleets of the South Sea, the East Ocean, and the North Sea, an inland river operations division has been established within the navy, which is responsible for the jurisdiction of many river gunboats in the navy.

This reform of the administrative structure of the Navy, although it did not actually affect the strength of the Navy. This is not because there will be one more or one less warship, but this reform of the administrative structure represents a change in the strategic development of the navy.

This move represents that the Imperial Navy will gradually transform from an inland and coastal water force with land support as the core to an ocean-going navy with decisive naval battles as the core.

A series of reforms carried out by the Imperial Navy in the second half of 1863 are also the focus of Lin Zhe's recent attention!

As the ruler of this empire, Lin Zhe knew that the empire's army strength had barely entered the normal path of development, and the expansion of the imperial royal army had been progressing relatively smoothly, and the plan to expand the thirty regular infantry divisions had been completed, and the existing troops had also been carrying out the reloading rifle reloading plan.

But relative to the development of the Army. The development of the Navy is undoubtedly much behind, and in previous years it was due to the willingness to fight for domestic unification. The empire does not have much spare power to develop the navy, and now that the development of the empire has initially stepped out of the formalities, then the development of the navy should be put on the relevant agenda.

Especially in recent times, the empire has been engaged in more and more external affairs, and the requirements for the navy have become relatively high.

Even now the Chinese Empire and Britain, France, the United States and other countries are cooperating in Japan's affairs. The Empire, however, continued to engage in numerous conflicts with Britain and France in Vietnam and Burma.

The British have protested many times against the empire's support for Lin Chengting, but although the British said they protested, they did not make any actual protests, after all, the empire still reserved a lot of face for the British in the direction of Burma, and now they are only supplying weapons to Lin Chengting. So far, the empire has not sent any military advisers or anything like that to Lin Chengting, nor has it provided loans.

On the Vietnamese side, the empire stretched its hand very long, not only supplying a large number of ordnance to the Nguyen Dynasty in Vietnam, but even sending a large number of military advisers, and even directly sending troops to Beiqi and other places, and in November, it directly sent more than 200 soldiers to Hue, the political center of the Nguyen Dynasty.

This move has attracted the close attention of the French!

Speaking of which, the empire sent soldiers to Hue is also related to the French.

In October, the French felt that the war on the Vietnamese side had reached a quagmire and tried to find a quicker way to end the war and reap and digest the fruits of the war, so they sent several warships and soldiers with soldiers to cross Nam Chi directly and try to land directly and attack Hue.

This move was also the first time that it caused a strong backlash from the Chinese Empire!

Originally, the Chinese Empire had always strongly opposed the French invasion of Vietnam, and when the French attacked Nanqi in the past, the empire did not directly confront the French due to its own limited strength and the French did not set foot in central Vietnam and the northern Qi, but only increased support for the Vietnamese.

However, the French directly attacked Hue and even attacked Beiqi in the later period, which undoubtedly violated Lin Zhe's bottom line.

After learning that the French warships were approaching Hue, the Suzhou of the Imperial Chinese Navy, anchored in Tokyo (Hanoi), Vietnam, quickly headed south.

After arriving in Hue waters, the Suzhou encountered the Imperial Navy's armed transport ship Zhen Shao, which was intercepted by a French Navy warship and tried to board the ship to inspect or even seize the ship's ordnance.

Zhenshao, this warship was originally an ordinary foreign merchant ship, which was purchased by the Imperial Navy in the era of Yu Shengjun in the early years, and was refitted, with a steam engine and a paddle wheel. It was equipped with a front-loading smoothbore gun, which was the capital ship of the early Yusheng Army's naval division.

Later, with the rapid development of the Imperial Navy, this merchant ship converted warship naturally withdrew from the front line, and because it was an ocean-going merchant ship itself, the Navy simply divided it into an armed transport ship and continued to use it.

This time, it was transporting a shipload of ordnance supplies from Shanghai to Hue, ready to deliver some of the weapons they had ordered to the Vietnamese.

But before they could dock. It was intercepted by the warships of the French.

Naturally, the naval officers and sailors on the Zhenshao would not be willingly intercepted and detained, so they just turned around and ran.

But as soon as I started to run, I met the Suzhou ship heading south from Hanoi.

Seeing that the French warship dared to chase after his own transport ship, and even issued a warning shelling, the captain of the Suzhou saw that the French warship opposite was only a small ship of five or six hundred tons, and this firepower was not as strong as his own, so he simply counterattacked.

As a result, the two warships of the two sides engaged in a small-scale artillery battle off the coast of Hue, and the two sides fought back and forth for more than half an hour. After mutual damage, it ended with the French warships retreating on their own initiative.

This armed conflict inevitably attracted a burst of cannons from the two diplomats, but both the French and the Reich maintained rational restraint and did not directly declare war in anger or anything.

However, although Lin Zhe did not intend to go to war directly with the French, he did respond directly by sending two infantry companies of army soldiers to Hue. Of course, it was used to protect the imperial diplomats and merchants of Hue.

The French naturally understood that they would forcibly land in Hue. It was tantamount to tearing the skin and directly declaring war with the Chinese Empire, so it had to give up the plan to land directly in Hue and force the Hue Nguyen Dynasty to surrender.

For the imperial garrison in Hue, in fact, not only the French were opposed, but in fact, the Nguyen Dynasty itself was also opposed.

Because it is one thing for the empire to garrison troops in Beiqi, but it is another thing to garrison troops in Hue. Although the Nguyen Dynasty ostensibly paid tribute to the empire, and the French cried and shouted for the empire to help when they called, this does not mean that people are willing to station troops in their capital.

Unfortunately, the Nguyen Dynasty's opposition was of little avail, and the imperial diplomats stationed in Hue simply said: if the empire does not garrison troops in Hue. Then the French will attack Hue directly!

The people of the Ruan Dynasty are completely out of cooking!

The Nguyen Dynasty at this time was similar to the Koreans of later generations, and if you say that they like the Americans stationed on their soil or not, then they will definitely not like it, but if the Americans withdraw their troops from Korea, they will cry and shout, 'Don't go!' ’。

At this time, if you look closely at the relationship between France, Britain and the Chinese Empire, you will find that it is quite complicated.

On the one hand, they are full of direct contradictions, and even small-scale armed conflicts have broken out, and the slightest carelessness may lead to the outbreak of large-scale wars.

But on the other hand, they cooperated closely with each other in some international affairs, such as the cooperation between the Empire and Great Britain in the American Civil War, and the cooperation between the Empire and Great Britain and France in Japan's affairs.

And regardless of the diplomatic relations between them, the trade between the countries has not stopped for a moment, but has become bigger and bigger.

Britain and France certainly had great diplomatic contradictions and conflicts with the Empire, but at the same time they were also the Empire's largest trading nations.

Cooperation and disagreement are entangled with each other, and this is the real relationship between nations in the nineteenth century.

In order to protect the interests of the empire in such a complex international situation, it is necessary to have a military force that is intimidating to other countries.

For the empire of a typical continental country, the huge army force is the cornerstone of national security, but the huge army cannot compete for too many overseas interests for the empire, after all, no matter how strong the army is, it cannot go to the sea to fight.

Therefore, while maintaining a strong army, building a strong navy is the basis for competing for overseas interests.

In December 1863, in the Xinhua Hall of the China Palace in Nanjing, Lin Zhe presided over a naval promotion ceremony, in which the second general in the navy, that is, the former commander of the cruiser fleet and the new commander of the First Fleet, Song Qinan, was promoted to admiral.

Because within the empire, the army is too strong in the military forces, and among the many existing generals in the empire, only Lin Dabiao, the chief of the admiralty, is an admiral, and the other generals are army generals.

In addition, the navy has always been relatively low-key, and in the domestic unification war, the navy basically acts as the transport fleet of the army, and its importance is not even as important as that of a main division of the army.

After the unification, the center of the empire was placed on economic development, and at this time, even the army retreated from the front of the stage to the background, and those who were in the limelight at this time were those civilian officials, such as Jiang Daoquan, Guo Longyun, Song Guanqian, Bi Yutong, and Song Guanqian, and the navy at this time was even less known.

At this time, when the people of the empire talked about admirals, at most they knew that one admiral was up to standard, and as for the other admirals, they didn't know anything.

However, although his reputation is not obvious, Song Qinan is the No. 2 role in the real navy, a powerful general. Like Lin Dabiao, who was also from the army in his early years, he was transferred to the Yusheng Army Naval Division Battalion, and at first served as the captain of the ship, and then served as the captain of the First Gunboat Detachment, the director of the Naval Operations Department, the commander of the cruiser fleet, and the current commander of the First Fleet.

And although this person was born in the army in the early years, he was not conservative at all, and he was still an ironclad faction within the navy, supporting the development of ironclad ships.

It is not surprising that such a person served as the commander of the First Fleet!

After promoting Song Qinan to admiral, Lin Zhe also promoted three vice admirals and nine rear admirals, among which it is worth mentioning that one of the newly promoted rear admirals is still a returnee.

His name is Shen Tongdeng, a native of Songjiang Prefecture, Jiangsu, like most of the naval and army officers of the empire, he was also a scholar in his early years, and later abandoned the military and studied at the Royal Navy Military Academy of the Empire, he was the first batch of nautical graduates, and after graduation, he briefly served as the epaulette of the river gunboat but was soon transferred back to the naval officer school as an instructor, when the empire selected the first batch of publicly-funded students, he became the only naval student, and returned to China after studying in the UK for three years. Now he has risen up to become a rear admiral and serves as the deputy director of the Naval Operations Division.

The administrative reform within the navy naturally needs to enrich some young generals with reform thinking, and this is the main reason why Lin Zhe was promoted to admiral on a large scale.

After presiding over the promotion mode, Lin Zhe invited the more than ten generals who were promoted to a dinner party, well, in a more formal way, it is 'giving a banquet'.

But before the dinner was over, suddenly an accompanying secretary of the secretariat trotted in, and then whispered in Lin Zhe's ear.

Lin Zhe flashed a frown when he heard this, and then he stood up and left the dinner directly, and then returned to the harem.

Just now, the secretary told him that Empress Chen Jing seemed to have signs of premature birth, and now the medical department of the palace department has begun to prepare for the delivery work. (To be continued.) )