Before sending troops, Lin Zhe expected that Zhenjiang was fast and hard, and it could not be taken lightly, so he brought almost all the large-caliber artillery that he could bring, and there were nearly forty twelve-pounder guns outside Zhenjiang City, in addition to more than ten twenty-four-pounder and thirty-two-pounder mortars, and even two sixty-four-pounder super-large caliber mortars.

In addition to the army's artillery, the navy also dispatched a large number of warships to participate in the shelling of Zhenjiang, and the navy was basically all heavy artillery, and most of the cannons of caliber were 24-pound or even 32-pound, in addition to 48-pounder and 64-pounder mortars.

In terms of firepower, the firepower exerted by the navy far exceeds the firepower of the army!

Due to the frequent use of trench tactics by the Taiping Army, the Chinese army became more and more dependent on grenades and grenades when attacking the city, in order to better exert the power of grenades and grenades, Lin Zheke invested heavily in the Linde Machinery Factory to improve the quality of the shells.

In particular, the improvement of the fuze is the top priority, although the wooden fuze used in large quantities in 1854 is considered to be simple in technology, reliable and practical, but the actual combat table is still not satisfactory to the military generals, so in the past two years, the Linde Machinery Factory has been vigorously researching and developing, and has also tried to consider the collision fuze, but found that it is almost impossible to use it on the smoothbore gun to ensure that the fuse of the shell hits the ground head-on.

Later, Linde Machinery returned to the way of time-delay fuzes, but abandoned wooden fuses and used metal fuzes, and the new metal time-delay fuzes greatly exceeded the previous wooden fuzes in reliability and convenience.

As an important component of blasting shells, the performance of the fuse greatly improves the reliability of the smoothbore gun to launch grenades and grenades.

The number of duds and early explosions, late explosions was greatly reduced.

This can be seen from the white smoke rising from the walls of Zhenjiang and the trenches, which are all grenades that have exploded accurately above the enemy.

In addition, it can also be seen that the smoke and dust frequently kicked up on the enemy positions, which are grenades that detonate on time after landing.

In recent years, the Linde Machinery Factory, which has invested a lot of money, has undoubtedly innovated in any field, it is undoubtedly in the field of artillery shells.

Although the military has supported and invested a lot of money in it, the development of the factory is still difficult, and at the beginning, almost all the equipment and even parts need to be imported, and all the technical personnel are all foreigners.

This situation has only changed slightly until now, the machinery factory inside the Linde Machinery Factory has been able to preliminarily repair the imported equipment, and can also manufacture some parts and components with low technical content, and the technical personnel have also been vigorously trained in recent years, and some primary technical personnel have been trained.

However, senior technical personnel, especially senior engineers in charge of a project, are still all foreigners, which is also a matter of no way, this is only a few years of hard work, so that those who have not been in contact with the machine before understand the operation of the machine, some basic physics, chemical knowledge is not easy, don't expect to train any high-tech talents in just a few years.

And those foreign engineers hired by Linde Machinery Factory, to be honest, most of them are also half-level, do you think that the real senior engineers stay well in Europe, how can they travel across the ocean to the Far East, and are also recruited by Linde Machinery Factory?

In this way, although the Linde Machinery Factory spends a lot of money to import equipment and hire foreign technicians, the overall technical level of the Linde Machinery Factory is still very primitive, and the current Linde Machinery Factory currently lacks the ability to innovate and research and develop.

The various weapons produced by it are basically imitated and produced according to the gourd painting scoop, and at most they are only minor modifications on the basis of imitations.

For example, the 1856 Linde rifle is a very typical imitation, very similar to the British Enfield 1853 rifle.

For example, the 12-pounder guns, 6-pounder cavalry guns, 4-pounder infantry guns, 24-pounder, and 32-pounder naval guns produced were all imitated with reference to foreign guns.

The only innovation is on this shell, the previous wooden fuse is still an imitation of the introduction, but this metal time-delay fuse is the Linde Machinery Qì factory here to think out, and there is no imitation of foreign products.

With the current technical level of Linde Machinery Factory, it is still at the level of imitation production, and it will take a long time to do a good job in independent research and development.

But then again, even if it can be copied on a large scale, this is quite rare for China, which has almost no heavy industry base.

You must know that there is more than one arsenal in China today, the Qing court also set up a Tianjin Ordnance Bureau in Tianjin, Zeng Guofan also set up a Hunan Ordnance Bureau in Hunan, and even the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom has engaged in several gun workshops, but it is difficult for them to even imitate foreign guns and foreign cannons on a large scale.

However, the Linde Machinery Factory has invested a lot of money and already has the ability to produce large-scale imitations, and its 1856 rifles and artillery of various calibers have begun to equip the Chinese army with the navy and army on a large scale, so that the Chinese army can get rid of the history of relying on imported ordnance.

With the establishment of the Chinese Empire, the continuous conquest and expansion of the Chinese Navy and Army, and numerous orders have given Linde Machinery Factory sufficient impetus for development.

As a purely commercial arsenal, more orders means more profits, and with sufficient profits, we can have the funds to purchase more equipment, train more technicians, and develop and produce better weapons and equipment.

In times of war, there is no one who makes more money than an arms manufacturer.

The Chinese army, which has sufficient guns, artillery and ammunition supplies, will not take long to take Zhenjiang if it is willing to ignore the casualties, but the problem is that the Chinese military is not willing to bear too many casualties, and would rather slowly besiege than fill it with the lives of its soldiers.

Because in their opinion, this Zhenjiang is already a boiled duck, and it can't fly, and it is a matter of time before they take Zhenjiang, so why bother to let themselves suffer huge casualties for a month or two in the morning.

However, what they didn't know was that at this time, Li Xiucheng had already led the two of them to conquer Jurong and went straight to Jintan.

After learning that Jurong was captured, Shi Qingxuan led the army south non-stop, trying to go to Danyang to intercept the army.

At the same time, the 2nd Division, which was originally scheduled to go to Tianjing to carry out interception operations, also got the news and stopped their pace of going to Tianjing, but turned around and headed east.

In order to grasp the movements of the two sides, both the Taiping Army and the Chinese Army sent a large number of scouts and cavalry to roam in all directions, so that in this small area from Zhenjiang to Nanjing, a large number of scouts and cavalry were concentrated.

In Yan'er Township, 30 kilometers south of Zhenjiang, this small place with no name has suddenly appeared in a large number of people wearing dark blue military uniforms and cylindrical front-brimmed hats, and they do not have braids on the back of their heads with the Qing army, nor do they wear their hair like the Taiping army, but the back of their heads are smooth.

Just by looking at this outfit, you can know that these are the cavalry of the Chinese Empire, although many domestic armies have imitated Yu Shengjun's military uniforms, such as Lin Chengting's Zhenhu Army, Li Hongzhang's Jianghuai New Army, Eight Banners New Army, Gyeonggi Training Army, Zhili Training Army, etc., so that the breasted jacket and straight pants are no longer the unique military uniform style of the Chinese Army.

However, the unique military hat of the Chinese army is still the only one, there is no semicolon, the Chinese army in the early Yu Shengjun soldiers, the soldiers are not issued with military caps, but with turbans, and the officers use large-brimmed hats. The Qing army that imitated them also used turbans to wrap their heads, but their officers, especially middle and senior generals, generally did not wear new military uniforms, but continued to wear official uniforms and warm hats.

Last year, Lin Zhe had an incident, and the whole army shaved their heads, from Lin Zhe to the soldiers, all of them were bald, and those officers and generals continued to use large-brimmed hats, while ordinary soldiers' military hats were cylindrical front-brimmed hats. In the early days, because the soldiers' military hats had just been designed and finalized, and it was too late to produce them, the soldiers of the Fourth Division, who had joined Zhejiang to fight, were still fighting bareheaded.

Therefore, in the two or three months from December 1856 to January and February 1857, basically the military hats of the soldiers of the Chinese army everywhere were disorderly, and there were all kinds of them.

It was not until now, a few months later, that the military caps that were made out were distributed to the soldiers of various units one after another, which put an end to this chaotic situation and uniformly wore cylindrical front-brimmed hats.

However, the impression of the Chinese army being bareheaded in the early days was already deeply rooted in the hearts of the people, and ordinary people often did not directly call the official name of the Chinese army, either by the original name Yu Shengjun, or simply by calling it the bald army.

Bald and wearing a distinctive military hat, this has become the most obvious difference between the Chinese army and several other new armies in the country, and now this bald cavalry has arrived in Yan'er Township, making the only remaining people here tremble, fearing that these cavalry will rob them.

However, although this cavalry of nearly 700 cavalry could not be said to be guilty of any crimes, they did not plunder and slaughter a village like the Taiping army or the Qing army passing by, they just forcibly requisitioned many houses in the Zhuangzi, and even the fierce general at the head of the group returned a few dozen taels of silver to the local village chief, saying that it was a supplementary fee for requisitioning these houses.

After driving out the village chief, Wang Luyun ordered his soldiers to fetch water, which ran all the way from Zhenjiang, and he was exhausted and wanted to take a hot bath.

But before he could wash, there was a sound of horses' hooves outside, and then a scout hurriedly ran in!

"Regiment leader, there are traces of the thief army ten miles ahead!"

"Oh, how many people? Is that part? ”

"There are at least 20,000 thieves in the army, and the banner of the thief leader is Li!"

When he heard that there were 20,000 thieves, Wang Luyun was also frightened: "20,000? How is this possible? Where did they come from? (To be continued.) )