After the expansion, Qin Zhiyuan had a total of six divisions.

Their numbers are the four infantry divisions of the Foreign Legion "1 to 4", the 1st Armored Division, and the 1st Artillery Division.

There is no longer a brigade-level establishment in an infantry division, and regiments are directly below the division, and the standard "three-three system" means that a standard regiment is about 3,500 people, and each division has 12,000 men plus the division's subordinate troops.

The number of armored units is a little smaller, with 102 tanks per regiment, plus about 1,500 people in the logistics support unit, for a total of three regiments of troops, with a total of nearly 400 tanks. The divisional artillery of the armored forces used 12 155-mm self-propelled guns, and the whole army had more than 700 vehicles, because they were no longer equipped with accompanying infantry, with a total of more than 7,000 people.

The artillery division is the largest unit, with 40 194-mm self-propelled guns, 40 155-mm self-propelled guns, plus nearly 100 towed guns, the number of which is close to 20,000, which can almost be divided into two divisions.

After the expansion, the six divisions had a total of nearly 80,000 soldiers, in addition to the Chinese and Annamite, and some French were also added.

These French people did not have any resistance to accepting Qin Zhiyuan's command, but were a little expectant, probably because it was easier to stay under Qin Zhiyuan and obtain military achievements.

In the four infantry divisions, Qin Zhiyuan disrupted the troop formation and mixed the Chinese and the Annamite people.

Wu Ruan and the others did not have any opinion on this, and Ge Lifu and Liu Zizheng also agreed to accept some of the Annan people, and everything went very smoothly.

By mid-June, Qin Zhiyuan's troops had completed their expansion and returned to Feron Tadenoy, taking over from the French Fourth Army, which had previously defended in this area, and was responsible for the war against Germany in this area.

At this time, the battlefield on the Eastern Front was a mournful defence.

It doesn't matter if it's French, English, or German.

The civil strife in the French army had actually been put down, and Foch pacified most of his soldiers, using artillery against only one Russian unit. That Russian force, which numbered about 15,000 soldiers, had lost 6,000 in previous battles, and the survivors openly defected, in their mouths: "We were informed that we were sent to France to pay for the arms sold to Russia." ”

Foch dealt with them decisively and ferociously, using artillery to attack the Russian barracks, and the Russians gave in and were dismissed.

Although the civil strife of the French army has been quelled, the French army has also lost its offensive ability, and the entire southern front is in a state of stalemate.

The Germans on the opposite side were also uncomfortable, and Crown Prince Wilhelm's rash advance was criticized, and the loss of nearly 100,000 men offset the advantage gained by the Germans by defeating Niveler's spring offensive. The Germans were adjusting their defenses, and about four divisions were transferred from the Germans' eastern front to the western front, filling the defensive vacuum created by the collapse of Crown Prince Wilhelm's corps.

General Oskar von Hurtier was transferred to Reims as commander of the German Southern Front and commanded the new 18th Army, and he would be Qin Zhiyuan's opponent for the rest of the year.

If Qin Zhiyuan is proficient in the history of warfare, then Qin Zhiyuan must know that although General Oskar von Huthier is not very famous, he invented the "Huthier tactic" during World War I, which is also known as "infiltration tactics" or "storm troop tactics", which is the predecessor of the German army's later mechanized all-arms doctrine.

Just when Qin Zhiyuan ushered in a new opponent, the commander-in-chief of the British army, Haig, also chose a new direction of attack.

The British were well on their way at the beginning of the spring offensive, and near Arras, the Canadians performed exceptionally well, successfully capturing Vimy Ridge and building on that to continue their offensive against the Germans.

But after Ludendorff dismissed General Dewig von Falkenhausen from his post, the British offensive ran into trouble, killing an average of 6,000 men a day, but never achieving a similar victory at Vimy Ridge.

The British offensive in Arras stopped after Easter, and the British commander-in-chief, Haig, turned his attention to the Belgian coast.

How to put it, the British as a naval power, their insistence on the port is indeed surprising.

Prior to this, in 1914 and 1915, the British had launched two major attacks on the Ypres region of western Belgium, both of which had ended in failure.

Now the commander-in-chief of the British army, Hague, felt that it was time for a third time.

Prior to this attack, Haig had consulted all the weather data since 1830 and had found that the rainy season would fall into Flanders, where the British were scheduled to attack, in August, so Haig decided to attack before August.

But as with Niveller's proposed spring offensive, no one was optimistic about Haig's battle plan. Not only Foch and Pétain are not optimistic, but even Britain is not optimistic from top to bottom.

In order to get Haig to abandon his battle plans, Lloyd George ordered the 450,000 newly trained recruits on the mainland to postpone reinforcements to mainland France. A former lieutenant colonel in the army for The Times, a correspondent for the Times, even bluntly suggested to Haig: "Water will be your enemy." ”

Water, not just the rainy season, is also the fragile drainage system in Flanders.

The Flanders region is low-lying and has a reservoir lake upstream, as well as a river Issel that often floods. As early as the beginning of the World War, the Belgians opened dams to flood the area on the east bank of the Issel River in order to prevent the Germans from breaking through. If an attack were to be launched in the Flanders area, even if the Germans did not take the initiative to open the floodgates, the heavy artillery bombardment would cause the area to flood.

Haig was not unaware of the dangers in this area, but he did not make any adjustments, and immediately after the Battle of Arras, Haig began to prepare for an attack in Flanders, even if Lloyd George had not yet approved Haig's battle plan.

See, disobedience is not a unique act of the French.

The Flanders offensive, like the spring offensive, went smoothly in the early stages.

The British had a big plan, and after the failure of the Second Ypres Offensive in 1915, they were digging tunnels under Flanders, which was led by the commander of the British Second Army, General Hepott Plummer.

The longest of these tunnels is a mile long and 100 feet deep, and there are 22 tunnels in total. The reason why it was dug so deep was to avoid the detection of the German army, and in order to cope with the low-lying terrain of Flanders, there were even electric pumping machines in the tunnels to pump out the stagnant water and reach directly under the German positions.

The 22 tunnels were eventually dug into 21, and the frenzied British piled up a total of 445 tons of explosives in them, the largest of which contained 41 tons of explosives, which is the largest mine in the world.

Haig's shelling, which began at 3:10 a.m. on July 7, was larger than Niveler's spring offensive, averaging one cannon every seven yards.

When the shelling began, the mines in the tunnel were detonated, and 19 of the 21 super mines were successfully detonated.

The earth-shattering explosions of these mines were felt in London, and the destructive power was incomparable, the entire mountain range was blown away, and about 10,000 German soldiers were killed on the spot, and countless others were wounded.

The British easily captured the small town of Messina at almost no cost.

When the report of the war reached Paris, there was a deep reflection behind the jubilation, why was it always the British who made progress and the French who made no progress?

On the 10th of July, a telegram from the War Office was sent directly to Feron Tadenoy.

Leotey asked Qin Zhiyuan to attack the Germans in the direction of Reims, and the French needed news of recovering the lost territory, even if it was a village.

(To be continued.) )