The strategic position of Jiujiang in Jiangxi is far more important than that of Nanchang, Ji'an, and Ganzhou in southern Jiangxi.

Because it is not only the north gate of Jiangxi, but also an important checkpoint to guard the middle reaches of the Yangtze River.

Let's not talk about the war that is too long, but in recent years, the Taiping Army, the Hunan Army, and the Zhenhu Army have repeatedly fought for Jiujiang, which is enough to reflect its strategic value.

Since 1853, the Taiping army and the Hunan army have repeatedly fought around Jiujiang, Jiujiang has changed hands many times in the hands of both sides, since 1856, the Taiping army has firmly occupied Jiujiang, and Jiujiang as a bridgehead fortress general existence, in order to block the northward movement of the Zhenhu army and the westward advance of the Chinese army.

Speaking of Jiujiang, then we can't just say that Dehua County, where Jiujiang Fucheng is located, is a city, and it has to revolve around the entire Jiujiang region.

The weight of Jiujiang lies not only in Jiujiang Fucheng, but also in the east bank of Panyang Lake into the mouth of the Yangtze River, and the small pond mouth on the north bank of the Yangtze River.

Together with the capital county of Jiujiang Prefecture, that is, Dehua County, these two tactical points together form three important tactical points in the strategic area of Jiujiang.

These three tactical points had been controlled by the Taiping army until now, but later the Chinese army advanced westward, taking advantage of naval superiority and military superiority on the north bank of the Yangtze River to capture the Xiaochikou area.

In December 1858, the Zhenhu army mobilized a water army to land in the Hukou area from Fanyang Lake, and captured the place through fierce battles, and finally besieged Jiujiang Fucheng.

If the Chinese army wants to implement the Jiangxi strategy, then it must first conquer Jiujiang. If you want to conquer Jiujiang, you must first take Hukou.

As early as last year, the Chinese army completely captured the southern Anhui region. After the Fourth Army entered the northern Jiangxi region one after another, although it was already capable of capturing Hukou County at that time. However, at that time, the Chinese Empire considered that even if Hukou was conquered, it would be difficult to capture Dehua by relying on the Fourth Army alone without the strong support of the General Headquarters.

In addition, Anqing was not taken at that time, and at the same time, the north bank of the Yangtze River was also facing the threat of the Taiping Army from Hubei, and the defensive pressure of the Fourth Army was quite large, so after taking Anqing and Peng Ze, it did not continue to advance westward, but stationed troops in Peng Ze, and sat back and watched the Hu Army and the Taiping Army fight for Jiujiang.

However, since the situation in Jiangxi changed in December, Shi Langyi returned to Nanjing to seek support to launch the Jiangxi Campaign. After obtaining Lin Zhe's approval, Shi Langyi, in order to avoid long nights and dreams, did not wait for the material support from the headquarters to arrive, but ordered the Fourth Division to enter the battle in advance and conquer Hukou as soon as possible, so as to obtain an advance base for the army to cross the river and land in the Jiujiang Fucheng area, that is, Dehua County, and clear the obstacles for the imperial navy to enter Panyang Lake.

With Shi Langyi's order, Xu Peng'an, the commander of the Fourth Division, had already led his army out of Pengze and westward three days ago. After that, they successfully arrived in the Hukou area, and with the support of the naval guns of some ships of the Second Gunboat Detachment of the Navy, they officially launched an attack on the Hukou.

"Why did these Chinese troops suddenly come to Hukou?" Outside Jiujiang City, Lin Chengting looked at the battle report in his hand. The face is cloudy and sunny, what the hell is going on, can it be said that the Northern Expedition of the Chinese Army has ended. The Manchu Qing Dynasty is finished, so the Chinese army can pull out its hand and advance westward?

Damn it. This is two or three months faster than I expected!

The rise of the Chinese army was not only a huge threat to the Manchus. It is also a huge threat to Lin Chengting, Zeng Guofan, and Shi Dakai, if it were not for the Taiping Army, the Hunan Army and the Zhenhu Army, there was really no possibility of reconciliation and cooperation, it is estimated that Shi Dakai, Zeng Guofan and Lin Chengting would have to form an alliance, and then start a war with the Chinese army.

However, the inability to form an alliance with the Taiping Army does not mean that the Hunan Army and the Zhenhu Army cannot be united.

Since Lin Chengting broke away from the Taiping Army and became independent, he no longer recognized himself as a faction of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom, and also abandoned some traditions of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom in the past.

Even the worship of God and the like was completely abandoned, and the strategies of many advisers under his command were adopted, such as respecting Confucianism, reusing literati, etc., and implementing the persuasion of farmers to accumulate grain. If it weren't for the fact that he, the Marshal's Mansion, followed Lin Zhe's example and set up many new-style institutions, in fact, the Marshal's Mansion created by Lin Chengting was the traditional independent political system in the past.

Basically, it is completely different from the previous Taiping Heavenly Kingdom, and it is this change of Zhenhu Army that has the basis for the cooperation between Lin Chengting and Zeng Guofan.

If Lin Chengting continued to follow Shi Dakai's policy of destroying Confucian temples and killing literati and gentry in the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom, it would be impossible for Zeng Guofan, a Confucian official, and the army formed by the Hunan army to support traditional Confucian beliefs, have any cooperation with Lin Chengting's Zhenhu army.

When there was no conflict of faith between the two sides, and at the same time they were facing the enemy of the Taiping Army, and there was a tiger of the Chinese Army next to them that would pounce at any time, they began to unite gradually.

Beginning in 1856, they only reached a verbal tacit agreement not to attack each other, but after the two sides cooperated happily, in the second half of 1857, they began to launch a joint offensive against the Taiping Army, with the Zhenhu Army attacking the Taiping Army in Jiujiang, northern Jiangxi, and the Hunan Army attacking the Taiping Army in Wuchang, Hubei and other places as the keynote, the two sides carried out the first large-scale strategic cooperation.

Even the Hunan army specially sent troops to intercept a Taiping army that was originally going to Jiujiang for reinforcements, so as to avoid the situation that the Zhenhu army fell into the belly and back of the enemy outside Jiujiang City.

Of course, this kind of cooperation is limited to a verbal agreement between the high-level leaders, and the middle and lower level soldiers and even ordinary soldiers on both sides will definitely not know about it, and this kind of agreement has no clear binding force, whether for Lin Chengting or Zeng Guofan, this kind of strategic cooperation between the two sides is only an expedient measure.

However, even if this verbal agreement was reached with Zeng Guofan, the huge pressure caused by the Chinese army next to Lin Chengting was still impossible to get rid of, in order to be able to fight for a defensive bridgehead when the Chinese army continued to advance westward, which was the main purpose of Lin Chengting's attack on Jiujiang.

He also thought about what to do if the Chinese army advanced westward, but through the information he got from various aspects, he was generally certain that the Chinese army should not have the spare strength to advance westward on a large scale in a short period of time.

Lin Chengting is not a person who does not listen to things outside the window, the Chinese army can send spies to Jiangxi, Huguang and other places, and he can also send spies to Nanjing, and many military situations do not need spies to investigate in depth, as long as they collect some public information, they can be completely inferred.

For example, Lin Chengting's spies learned in Shanghai that a fleet of forty or fifty large ships had left Shanghai for the north, loaded with all kinds of supplies.

For another example, the spies in Yangzhou reported that the supply fleet of the Chinese army that was transported north through the Beijing-Hangzhou Grand Canal every day did not decrease but increased.

Through all this, it can be easily determined that the strategic core of the Chinese army is still the Northern Expedition, and the scale is still increasing.

For example, the number of supply ships transported to Anqing, Pengze and other places every day has not increased, and it has remained at a low level.

Just through the observation of these supply convoys, Lin Chengting was able to easily judge where the main strategic direction of the Chinese army was at present, and whether it would attack Jiujiang in a short period of time.

However, now, his spies have not reported that there is a supply fleet going to the direction of northern Jiangxi, but the Chinese army has been able to launch an attack on Hukou, and it is not the auxiliary defense division, but the fourth division.

After fighting against the Chinese army for so many years, Lin Chengting does not know all about the situation of various units in the Chinese army, but he still knows a lot about specific troops, such as the Fourth Division, which has been stationed in Pengze and other northern Jiangxi regions, from Xu Pengan, the division commander, to several regiment commanders, and even some battalion commanders, Lin Chengting knows a little about it.

He knew very well that the Fourth Division was the main force of the Chinese Army in northern Jiangxi and southern Anhui, and it was absolutely impossible for the division to come out for an outing, and it must have been a change on the side of the Chinese Army.

Could it be that the Northern Expedition of the Chinese Army has ended?

Or did the Northern Expedition not end, and the Chinese army boldly transferred troops to the west? So many troops from where they came, so many supplies from there?

Lin Chengting thought about this, and sighed deeply, they are also training new troops, why is the gap between himself and Lin Zhe so big.

He has been training the new army for several years, but the training is easy to talk about, but the cost of the new army is too great, not to mention the salary, and it is not easy to solve the problem with ordnance and ammunition alone.

In the past two years, Lin Chengting has also spent a lot of effort to set up several weapons workshops for the production of muskets and artillery, and the artillery is easy to say, and the smoothbore gun has no technical difficulty, at most it is heavier and the barrel life is less, but it can still shoot shells.

However, the guns are a little troublesome this time, he is not short of manpower, but he lacks a lot of mechanical equipment, he also tried to produce rifled rifles, but after manually pulling the rifling of a few rifles, he completely gave up, without the assistance of mechanical equipment, relying on manual labor alone, can not make a few in a month.

In addition, the fire hat can't be made by the weapon workshop under his hand, let alone the handicraft workshop under his hand, even the Tianjin Machinery Bureau of the Qing Dynasty has not been able to imitate the production of fire hats, and the Tianjin Machinery Bureau still has some imported machinery and equipment, and there are also some foreign technicians, they can't do it now, let alone other domestic handicraft workshops.

Therefore, the handicraft workshops under Lin Chengting, like the Tianjin Machinery Bureau and the Hunan Machinery Bureau of the Qing court, mainly produced flintlock pistols.

It is difficult for them to produce rifles in large quantities, but it is not a problem to produce flintlock pistols, which are old from hundreds of years ago.

Therefore, many new armies in China, including the Qing Army, the Hunan Army, the Zhenhu Army, the Taiping Army, and the training army in various parts of the Qing court, are mainly flintlock pistols, and the other is the inventory of arquebuses.

However, even the cost of flintlock pistols is not cheap, especially when it is produced by hand! (To be continued......)