In the sea off the Shimonoseki Battery, eight warships from China, Britain, France, and the United States divided into two columns and began to bombard the Shimonoseki Fort with naval guns.

The Tianjin was located in the second column and took on the role of the flagship of the second column, and several guns on its deck had already begun shelling half an hour earlier.

Although the eight warships were of different sizes, and the tonnage of the smaller ones was only a few hundred tons, the number of guns equipped with them was not quite a small number, adding up to nearly 100 guns.

So many artillery shells were carried out that the sea was filled with rumbling artillery and gunsmoke.

At first, the Shimonoseki battery on the Japanese side also fought back, but the Japanese themselves had small guns and were not large in number, so they could not effectively counterattack the combined fleet.

And after the battery was hit hard by the fire of the fleet, it soon suffered certain casualties.

As one large-caliber grenade after another fell on the battery, the explosion caused many casualties among the Japanese coastal defense artillery.

However, while this improvised combined fleet was shelling the Shimonoseki Battery, the commander-in-chief of the temporary fleet, British Navy Captain Henry, did not set his eyes on the Japanese battery, but used a single-pass telescope to observe the Tianjin in the rear.

As a British naval officer who participated in the Sino-British and French War in 1858, he also participated in the attack on Wusong Fort as the captain of a warship in 1858, and at that time he had a very profound influence on the Chinese rear-loading artillery.

At that time, the strength of the Anglo-French combined fleet was undoubtedly very strong, and the total number of artillery also exceeded the shore defense artillery on land, but it did not gain much advantage in the artillery battle. One of the key points is that the Chinese army at that time moved a large number of rear-loading artillery to the battery.

At that time, the rear-loading artillery of the Chinese army brought a great shock to the British, and even directly prompted them to make up their minds to serve the rear-loading artillery on a large scale.

The Battle of Shanghai between China, Britain and France in 1858. The impact on the existing world military doctrine was enormous, and its impact was no less than that of the Russo-Japanese War before the First World War.

The war resulted in the British and French armies converting and putting breech-loading rifles into service. It was also for the navies of the two countries, especially the British Navy, to enter service with rear-loading ship-mounted guns.

For example, the ironclad ship Warrior is equipped with a number of large-caliber rear-loading guns.

Now that Henry once again saw the Chinese Tianjin bombardment, he couldn't help but secretly estimate the actual combat effectiveness of the Chinese Navy!

Their breech-loading guns surpassed their front-loading smoothbore guns in terms of rate of fire and range, but this was nothing to Henry, because as far as he knew, the British Royal Navy was not inferior to the breech-loading guns.

But what made him a little puzzled was that the effective hit of these grenades fired by the Chinese was very high. Far beyond the effective hit of grenades from other countries.

This effective hit does not mean the hit rate, but the grenade can explode accurately after flying to the enemy's head.

The grenades of this era are still very rudimentary, the reliability is very poor, sometimes the grenade is fired, and it explodes before it flies to the enemy's head, and sometimes it does not explode after landing, and some directly become sub-bombs.

In order to make the grenade explode at the exact time, its technical difficulty is still relatively high.

And the Chinese grenade fuse has been improved over the years. Although on the whole, it is still impossible to get rid of some of the shortcomings of the early grenades, but it has also improved the reliability a lot, ten grenades are fired, not to mention seven or eight grenades can be effectively hit. And this proportion is already very large.

However, the level of the Tianjin and the level of the commander was really not very good, and a slight course adjustment just now was in a hurry, and the two French warships behind were almost thrown down because the speed was too fast.

Henry looked at the Tianjin again. I thought in my heart that the training level of the Chinese commanders and sailors was really not good. But their artillery and grenades are not to be underestimated.

If it is one-on-one against such a Tianjin battleship, if the enemy has the courage to face it. I'm afraid that the hope of winning is relatively small, after all, the gap in the technical performance of the battleship is not something that can be made up by training and courage, and the big deal is that everyone is close to a head-to-head duel, and when the time comes, the winner will be the firepower who is stronger.

But if it is a decisive battle of the fleet with the participation of a large number of warships, then Henry has absolute certainty of defeating the Chinese navy.

Because in the decisive battle of the fleet, the more important thing is the formation, and if you want to put on an advantageous formation, this is not only a great test of the level of the fleet commander, but also a test of the training level of many captains below and even those ordinary on the water.

In this era, if we put aside technical issues and simply discuss the level of personnel and training, the British navy is 100 points, then the second-rate navy of France is only 70 points, and then the remaining European navies such as Italy, the Netherlands, Spain, etc., are only 50 points at most.

As for China and the United States, which are typical backward countries, twenty or thirty points is enough!

The same fleet, if you let the British control it, you can perfectly change various formations, but if you change the commanders and sailors of other countries to control it, it is difficult to reach the level of the British.

As a member of the British Royal Navy, Henry was well aware of his advantages!

In contrast, the Royal Navy of the Chinese Empire is also very aware of its own weakness, and it is not feasible to meet the British face-to-face with naval traditions, comprehensive quality and even the number of warships, and the Imperial Navy has only one way to fight its way out, that is, to develop and equip more advanced warships, and even epoch-making warships that change the existing rules of maritime engagement.

Then compete with the navies of Britain and France in a new field, so that everyone is starting from scratch and is on the same starting line.

The Imperial Navy is so keen on the development of ironclad ships also out of this consideration!

The officers and men of the Imperial Navy on the Tianjin naturally did not know that Colonel Henry was watching them, and at this time they were honestly shelling the Xiaguan Fort according to the plan.

At the same time, Lieutenant Commander Ouyang Xuan, the captain of the Tianjin, was losing his temper at a group of men!

"Look at you, have you forgotten all the usual training into the dog's belly, look at this hit rate, it's simply a loss of face for my Great Chinese Empire!" Ouyang Xuan was very depressed!

Very depressed!

Of the eight battleships in this combined fleet, his Tianjin is not the one with the largest number of guns, nor is the largest ship, but it definitely belongs to the one with the worst hit rate!

Unlike British Navy Captain Henry, who focused on the effective hit of the grenade on the Tianjin, and focused on the performance of the gun and the reliability of the grenade, Ouyang Xuan paid more attention to the hit rate of the shell.

And now the low hit rate of the Tianjin makes it difficult for him to accept!

Look at other people's battleships, not to mention others, let's just say that the French battleship in the back, the people still use front-loading smoothbore guns, the accuracy is much worse than their own rifled rear-loading guns, but the hit rate of other people's guns is higher than their own naval guns.

What's more, the artillery distance on both sides is about the same, the Tianjin did not open the shelling distance because of its own rear-loading guns, the firing range is long, in order to maintain the formation of the fleet, the Tianjin is the same column as other warships, and the distance from the Xiaguan battery is the same.

However, Ouyang Xuan was depressed and had no choice, the hit rate of this ship's cannon depended on the level of gunnery, and the level of gunnery directly depended on the personal level of the gunners.

Unless there is a unified fire control system for the whole ship, whether or not you can hit the enemy in naval battles basically depends on the technical level of the gunners, or simply intuition or something, sometimes the gunners suddenly have an inspiration, and if they fire a few tenths of a second in advance, it is possible to hit the enemy ship with one shot, and sometimes if the head is not very bright, it is normal to fight all day without a single hit.

Artillery warfare and naval warfare are a very gambling character, and luck is directly related to victory or defeat.

This time, the character of the Tianjin was undoubtedly not good, the hit rate was so bad that Ouyang Xuan wanted to vomit blood, and Ouyang Xuan was a little uncomfortable at the thought that the naval commanders of several other countries might show mocking expressions.

Fortunately, Colonel Henry, as the commander of the fleet, did not mean to call the captains for a post-war meeting, but led the fleet to shell the Shimonoseki Fort for more than three hours, and then destroyed most of the Shimonoseki Fort before leading the fleet to leave, but did not leave the Japanese sea, but returned to Edo.

However, as soon as he returned to Edo, the improvised combined fleet was disbanded.

One of the interesting things is that the American battleship Wyoming turned around and went to Shanghai.

Because this warship is loyal to the northern government of the United States, it has been pursuing an attack ship of the American Confederate Navy to Asia, and there is a confederate ironclad ship in Shanghai that is about to be accepted, and then it is ready to sail back to the United States.

After the northern government of the United States tried to prevent the empire from delivering the ironclad ship to the Southern Federal Navy through diplomatic channels, it was also prepared to use other means to prevent the ironclad from returning to the United States, so the Wyoming assumed the task of monitoring the ironclad.

Whether the attack was carried out in the coastal areas of China off the coast of Shanghai, or in other places, is not known to outsiders.

However, after the American warship arrived in Shanghai, it has been monitoring every move of this ironclad ship, from outfitting to sea trials.

After the American warship ran to Shanghai, several warships from the other British, French, and Chinese countries remained in Japan to support any possible unrest.

At the same time, due to the continued turmoil in Japan, and very importantly, because the shogunate received support from foreign countries, especially China and Britain, it did not accept the demands of the Emperor's faction, and did not expel foreign merchants and close its embassies, as it has done historically.

This move by the shogunate also further stimulated the psychology of the Japanese 'hon-de-king faction', and many of the king-revered faction themselves began to run around and gather armed forces to resist the shogunate's rule.

The Cheung Chau Domain and the Satsuma Domain were the core bases of the Zunwang Clan, and they already controlled a large number of armies, and even had a new army called the 'Odd Soldiers'.

Seeing that a war between the shogunate and the reformers was about to break out in Japan, the countries naturally did not remain indifferent. (To be continued.) )