"According to the preliminary information we have obtained, the Anglo-French army is led by the Earl of Elgin, and is currently stationed in Hong Kong with about 6,000 troops, including 1,500 French troops, and more than 4,500 British troops.

"It is worth noting that Britain still has a large number of troops in India, Burma, Malaysia and other colonies, and France can also mobilize a certain number of troops from French Indochina, which means that once the war with the British and French forces starts, we will not only face the 6,000 allied troops that have been deployed in Hong Kong, but also very likely to face enemy reinforcements from the above areas, which may be thousands, and may even exceed 10,000!"

"With the size of the British fleet in the Far East, once the enemy fleet is ready to fight, it will be easy to block the mouth of the Yangtze River and the southeastern coastal area, and we will not be able to supply and reinforce the Third Army from the sea! At the same time, the enemy may attack at will on the grounds of naval superiority, and the coasts of Guangdong, Fujian, Zhejiang, and Jiangsu may all be their targets.

However, the General Staff believed that there were two places where the enemy could land at the most likely, one was to dare to land in Guangzhou before we took it, and to control the surrounding area of Guangzhou before the Third Army.

The second is that it is possible to land directly from Shanghai and attack outside the trade zone, and they may go up the river and go straight to Nanjing with the cooperation of the fleet! ”

Chen Yuntao did not first talk about the plan formulated, but first briefly talked about the enemy situation, and it is not a secret that the British and French forces have thousands of troops stationed in Hong Kong and a large number of troops in the colonies in South Asia. In the Shanghai Business Zone, you can ask a few foreigners at will.

And guessing the direction in which the coalition forces may land and attack, this needs to be judged from their strategic intentions!

If the Anglo-French forces were to attack the Chinese Empire. Then their purpose is different from that of the Qing army and the Taiping army, the war between the Chinese army and the Qing army and the Taiping army. The goal is to seize more areas of control, with the ultimate goal of unifying China.

And what about the war between the Anglo-French forces and the Chinese army? They were not simply for the sake of Chinese territory, they were for the purest commercial interests, with the ultimate goal of forcing the Chinese Empire to submit and then sign the treaty they wanted.

And what do they have to do to achieve such a war to achieve their goal?

The simplest thing is to obtain peace on the Chinese side by threatening Nanjing, or even directly capturing Nanjing, as in the First Sino-British War.

And once you find out what these foreigners want, then it is not difficult to guess their follow-up strategic actions!

Based on the above judgment, we have formulated a relevant strategic plan. The first is to send more troops to the Shanghai area, stock up enough ammunition and food and other war materials, and at the same time speed up the construction of the Wusong fortress, and strive to block the enemy troops outside the mouth of the Yangtze River, and inflict heavy damage on them in the early stage of their landing in Shanghai! ”

"It's ideal to keep the enemy out of Shanghai, but considering that these coalition forces are neither Qing nor Taiping, if the enemy forces struggle to attack Shanghai beyond our expected strength, then we need to back up our plans. That is, in the case of the loss of Shanghai, we must stop them in another place as a defensive position.

In the area from Shanghai to Nanjing, we think the best place is Jiangyin, where the Yangtze River is narrow. If a fort is built in Jiangyin, it will play a more effective role than the Wusong fortress!

In addition, considering the tight schedule, even if the construction of the Jiangyin Fort starts now, it may be difficult to complete it before the enemy attacks. In this regard, the Tactical Department of the General Staff suggested that a blockade operation be adopted on the Yangtze River in the Jiangyin section, that is, all large ships that could be used should be assembled. Including a number of 1,000-ton warships of the Navy, they carried sand and gravel to sink into the Yangtze River on their own initiative, completely cutting off the Yangtze River route. Stop the enemy fleet's westward advance!

Without the support of the fleet, even if the enemy's army has 10,000 people, but the main force of our army is to draw the existing forces in southern Jiangsu, and then transfer some troops in northern Jiangxi, southern Anhui and north China to return to southern Jiangsu. ”

When Chen Yuntao said the end, his tone was full of determination!

If they couldn't stop the Anglo-French army in Shanghai and the Anglo-French army in Jiangyin, they had to stop them in Zhenjiang, because at that time they had no way to retreat, and one step back was Nanjing, which was the capital of the Chinese Empire, and the courtiers and the people called the Beijing Division.

Lin Zhe is neither Xianfeng nor Hong Xiuquan, he will never abandon the city and flee as a coward, and the Chinese army is not a Qing army or a Taiping army, they absolutely cannot bear to have their capital occupied by foreign troops.

The Chinese Empire was a nascent dynasty, and now everything in it was booming, from the civil and military generals to the ordinary soldiers, who thought that they would sooner or later replace the Manchus and establish a new China, so they would never be able to suffer the humiliation of the capital being conquered by foreigners!

This is absolutely a fatal knife for the nascent Chinese Empire, if Nanjing is conquered, Lin Zhe and Hong Xiuquan flee in embarrassment, how can the Chinese army fight against domestic forces such as the Qing army and the Taiping army, and how to unify China?

Shanghai lost a lot of money, but if Nanjing lost its shallow imperial foundation, it would be completely shaken!

At that time, the Chinese army will definitely not care about the Northern Expedition or the Western Expedition, and will definitely transfer back the main force of the foreign campaign to defend Nanjing!

When listening to Chen Yuntao's words, Lin Zhe himself was also in deep thought, he was also thinking about many gains and losses, and he was also thinking about how to deal with it in the future once a war broke out with Britain and France.

After half a ring, Lin Zhecai raised his head: "If the above-mentioned strategic plan is to be implemented, what does the General Staff plan to do?" ”

Chen Yuntao said: "From now on, suspend the support of war materials and troops in the direction of northern Jiangxi, Anhui, North China, and Fujian, and hoard a large number of war materials in Shanghai, Jiangyin, Zhenjiang, Jingshi, and Hangzhou, especially Zhenjiang, if the enemy army advances to Zhenjiang, then Zhenjiang is very likely to fall into encirclement and be short of supplies, so it is necessary to hoard a large amount of war materials in advance, especially food!" ”

"From now on, at least one division will be drawn from northern Jiangxi and Anhui to reinforce it, and at least one division and one cavalry regiment will be drawn from northern China to reinforce it."

"In addition, urgently increase the recruitment of new soldiers, reduce the quality of soldiers when necessary, and recruit more than 50,000 reserve troops in the shortest possible time, some of which will be used to form the Eighth Division and the Ninth Division, while the rest of the recruits will be retained as reserve soldiers to replenish the casualties of the combat troops at any time!"

Lin Zhe opened his mouth and asked: "With the expansion of the army by 50,000 people, how can the ordnance be solved in a short period of time?" ”

Chen Yuntao said: "This point is a bit difficult, because the British and French forces are all using Mini rifles, to fight against them, you must use Mini rifles, and those flintlock pistols and arquebuses in the hands of the Auxiliary Defense Force are of little use. In this regard, in addition to allowing Linde Machinery Factory to work overtime in production, it is also necessary to urge Jinling Arsenal to complete the construction of the plant and the commissioning of equipment as soon as possible, and strive to complete production within three months.

However, it is very difficult to completely solve the problem of ordnance, and the suggestion of the Rifle Division of the Ordnance Department is that multiple people use one gun together, that is, two or three people use one rifle during the battle, because we will take defensive operations as the mainstay, so the guns will be left in their own positions after the soldiers are killed and wounded, and the substitute soldiers will continue to use the guns to ensure that the existing firepower will not be reduced due to casualties! ”

Chen Yuntao said that this is very cruel, saying that it is a common use of a rifle is not heard anything, but in fact, this model is to let several unarmed soldiers fight together with those with guns, and they can only pick up guns to fight after the casualties of their comrades.

During World War II in history, the Soviet army, which suffered heavy losses due to the German blitzkrieg, had to adopt this method due to a serious lack of ordnance, so that many soldiers without guns in their hands followed the soldiers with guns to charge, the soldiers with guns in front fell, and the soldiers behind picked up their rifles and continued to charge, fall, pick up the guns and charge again, and so on until they died.

Now what Chen Yuntao said is also a helplessness in helplessness, this Mini rifle is not a smoothbore gun, it is difficult to rely on small handicraft workshops for mass production, and can only rely on the Linde Machinery Factory and the unbuilt Jinling Arsenal This is a large regular arsenal for mass production.

This output is so much, even according to the normal attrition and the speed of army expansion, it cannot supply the Chinese army, and now it is even more insufficient to urgently expand the army.

If you don't have enough guns, you can't do anything, so you can only use a few people to share one gun!

Chen Yuntao and Lin Zhe continued to discuss, and if Lin Zhe occasionally asked a few questions, Chen Yuntao would answer them, but they were all talking about some strategic things, and it was difficult to make a decision on specific tactical details, and when Chen Yuntao came to Pingrentang to report on the strategy, in fact, there was no unanimous opinion within the military, and the argument between them was still very big.

No, after Chen Yuntao came out of Pingrentang, as soon as he returned to the headquarters, those senior generals couldn't wait to pull him to hold another meeting.

And the content of the meeting is naturally Chen Yuntao's strategy report!

The first to attack was Lin Dabiao, the chief of the Admiralty, who saw his face full of anger: "Fighting for the Empire and fighting for Your Majesty is the unshirkable responsibility of our navy, but our naval officers and men have the confidence and courage to fight a decisive battle with any enemy fleet off the coast of Shanghai.

Regarding the occlusion operation, our Navy is maintaining an opposing opinion! (To be continued......)