After Zhenjiang was captured by the Chinese army, there was no danger to stop the Chinese army in the east of Nanjing, and Lishui had been controlled by the Chinese army before, and Jurong was also recovered by the Chinese army.

Therefore, by the end of March 1857, the east and south of Nanjing were already directly facing the Chinese army!

In this case, will the Taiping army still be able to hold Nanjing?

In this regard, even Li Hongzhang, a bystander in the north of the Yangtze River, did not think that the Taiping Army could hold Nanjing, and Shi Dakai, who was the party concerned, was even more sad for several days, and now the Taiping Army in Nanjing City has less than 50,000 troops, even if it is to coerce the people in the city to defend the city, but if you want to block the attack of nearly 100,000 Chinese troops, it is not very likely!

Faced with such a predicament, Shi Dakai hesitated!

Although Tianjing is said to be the capital of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom, to be honest, the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom has always been a rogue-style battle, as long as the main force is still there, then it is not unacceptable to give up Tianjing, to be honest, before Lin Zhe conquered Zhenjiang, Shi Dakai had already begun to consider whether to give up Tianjing, and then retreat to southern Anhui, and lead the main force of the Taiping Army to advance west along the west.

Although there is also a Hunan army in the west, but compared with the Chinese army, the threat of the Hunan army is not worth mentioning, and he was able to fight all the way to Hubei, and now if he leads the main force to the west, he is also confident that he will defeat the Hunan army and fight to Hubei.

However, although Shi Dakai had the intention to give up Tianjing, Tianjing, as the capital of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom, did not mean that he could give up if he could give up, which would greatly damage the morale of the army, and giving up Tianjing would be equivalent to the results of the past four or five years of conquest coming to naught, and the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom would return to the situation before 1853 overnight and become a rogue army.

When Shi Dakai was hesitating, Lin Zhe was also making final preparations on the Zhenjiang side to integrate the army and continue to advance westward!

After taking Zhenjiang, the first thing the Chinese army started was to reorganize and deal with the auxiliary defense army and a large number of prisoners, and incorporated a large number of prisoners into the auxiliary defense army, so that the troops of the original auxiliary defense division, such as the first and third auxiliary defense divisions, were restored to full strength, and in addition, they were newly organized into the 12th auxiliary defense division, the 13th auxiliary defense division, and the 14th auxiliary defense division.

At the same time, the Military Training Department under the Chinese Imperial High Command also sent many batches of recruits from the recruit training camps in various places to supplement the troop consumption of various units of the Chinese Army.

In the battles of Danyang and Zhenjiang, although it is said that the main casualties of the Chinese army were concentrated in the auxiliary defense army, there were also some casualties of the regular army, which accumulated more than 300 killed and more than 500 wounded, and the overall casualties were about 800.

The casualties of these people need to be replenished by new recruits!

In addition, there is a very critical point that in addition to the 1st Infantry Division, the auxiliary units of the 3rd Division and the 5th Division are all different and lacking, and the cavalry is limited by the scarcity of horses and cannot be replenished, and the artillery is also limited by the fact that the artillery output of the Linde Machinery Factory cannot be expanded rapidly, but the baggage troops are not too restricted, as long as the new recruits are replenished in place, they can be expanded.

Although the baggage units of each division were nominally logistics auxiliary units, from the time of Yu Shengjun, in addition to undertaking the task of transporting supplies, these baggage units also had to undertake combat missions, and most of the time they took up guns and fought in line like the infantry.

The logistics department was mainly responsible for the huge logistical tasks of the Chinese army, and they used the methods of hiring or forcibly transporting people to transport ammunition and grain and grass from Shanghai and other places to Changzhou and other cities close to the front line.

After that, some of the auxiliary defense divisions with low combat effectiveness and the logistics units of the divisions took on the task of transporting the armed forces in the later stage.

However, only the first division of the baggage regiments of each division was fully staffed, and the others were not enough, and the total strength of the regular army was too small, so that the generals of the Chinese army had to use these baggage troops as ordinary infantry, so in fact, any front-line armed transportation during this period was borne by the auxiliary defense division.

Therefore, expanding the existing baggage units that are not satisfied with the establishment to a full strength state is the main task of the military training department of the Chinese army at the present stage.

More than 2,000 recruits sent by the Military Training Department were added to the 1st, 3rd, and 5th divisions.

The Ordnance Department has also increased orders for various weapons, and the new orders are not only the 1856 Linde rifles, but also artillery of various calibers, etc., most of the newly ordered 1856 Linde rifles are not used to equip new troops, but to replace the 1851 Linde rifles in the existing troops.

After the 1856 Linde rifle of the Linde machine factory began small-scale trial production at the beginning of last year, it took a year of technical adjustment and expansion, and the current output has increased greatly compared with last year's trial production, and in February alone, they have produced more than 1,100 Linde rifles, with a daily output of up to 35 rifles, and this output continues to increase steadily.

In a report to Lin Zhe from the Ministry of Ordnance, the Ministry of Ordnance said that after the extension of the working hours of the workers and the arrival of the production equipment ordered at the end of last year and the completion of assembly and commissioning in early March, the subsequent production of rifles is expected to reach 1,400 units.

And next month, in April, the production of rifles is expected to exceed 1,500 units, or even reach 1,600 units.

In the future, I won't talk about it in advance, but from last year to now, the Linde Machinery Factory has delivered more than 8,000 1856 rifles to the Chinese army.

Most of them were attached to the newly trained Fifth Infantry Division, while the rest were successively equipped with the First Division, and it was expected that within two months, the First Infantry Division would be fully equipped with 1856 Linde rifles.

Then there are the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th Divisions, as well as the 7th and 10th Mixed Brigades, and all the rearmament of these units is expected to continue by the end of this year.

And the 1851 Linde rifle replaced by these main forces is not said to be thrown away, although the performance of these old guns cannot be compared with the 1856 Linde rifle, but it is also a Miney rifle, in fact, there is not much generation difference with the 1856 Linde rifle.

After these old rifles are replaced, most of them will be used to equip the troops formed in the future, and some will be used to equip several auxiliary defense units with excellent combat effectiveness, such as the top few auxiliary defense divisions: the first auxiliary defense division and the third auxiliary defense division The combat effectiveness is quite good, and the musket regiments to which they belong can also be gradually replaced with new mini rifles.

The auxiliary defense force in the Chinese army is not said to be hand-to-hand combat troops with pure cold weapons, and most of the weapons in the auxiliary defense force are captured or brought over by prisoners of surrender.

Among them, there are cold weapons such as knives, guns, and spears, as well as arquebuses and smoothbore guns, so among the three infantry regiments in each auxiliary defense division, two are usually equipped with cold weapons such as swords and spears, and there is also a musket regiment equipped with smoothbore guns or arquebuses.

Of course, this is only talking about a few old auxiliary defense divisions, and some new auxiliary defense divisions are not so strict, for example, the Ninth Auxiliary Defense Division, in addition to its two infantry regiments equipped with cold weapons, its musket regiment also has only two musket battalions, and one is pikemen; Another example is the newly turned 14th Auxiliary Defense Division, which is all cold weapons, without a single musket.

Therefore, the gap between the assistant defense divisions in the Chinese military system for muskets is very large!

Although most of the large number of 1851 Linde rifles replaced by the regular troops still have to be assigned to the newly built troops in the future, a batch can also be divided into several auxiliary divisions with better combat effectiveness, so as to better play the combat effectiveness of the auxiliary divisions.

Nowadays, in the Chinese military system, the strength of the auxiliary defense division has exceeded the strength of the regular division, and in the foreseeable future, the growth rate of the auxiliary defense division will still greatly exceed that of the regular army, so that the combat effectiveness of the auxiliary defense division can be better released, which has become a problem that Lin Zhe needs to consider.

There is no way to increase the strength of the auxiliary defense division faster than the regular division, and an ordinary line infantry of the regular army needs to train the division for at least three months, and at the same time, he needs to be issued a mini rifle, which costs a lot of time and money.

Moreover, it is also affected by the weapons output of the Linde Machinery Factory, which now produces only more than 1,000 rifles per month, and only more than 10,000 rifles a year, and this output not only has to arm the newly expanded troops, but also has to supplement the combat wear and tear of the existing troops.

Many factors have constrained the Chinese army, not saying that it can expand as many regular troops as it wants.

Comparatively speaking, the expansion of the auxiliary defense division is much simpler, there is no need to pay military salaries, there is no need to distribute many advanced weapons, and the main thing that needs to be consumed is a large amount of military rations.

These salaries may have been difficult for the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom or the Qing court to bear, but for the Chinese Empire, which occupied the granaries of southern Jiangsu and northern Zhejiang, food was not a problem.

Even if you can't catch a prisoner for a while and don't have a source of soldiers, you can recruit soldiers directly in the war zone, and you don't need to have high requirements, as long as you are young and strong, there are a large number of young people who can't survive and will join the auxiliary defense force just for stuttering.

After reorganizing the auxiliary defense army in Zhenjiang and replenishing the regular army, Lin Zhe left the 3rd Division, the 3rd 2nd Auxiliary Defense Division, and the 10th Assistant Defense Division to garrison Zhenjiang, Danyang, and Changzhou to guard against the Qing army on the north bank of the Yangtze River under the command of Li Hongzhang.

He himself left Zhenjiang on 28 March with the 1st, 5th, and 2nd Cavalry Regiments, as well as a number of auxiliary defense divisions, and under the cover of the naval fleet on the Yangtze River, he went straight down the river to Nanjing.

At the same time, the Second Infantry Division commanded by Lin Anfei also recaptured Jurong and once again marched north to Tianjing.

The troops of the Chinese army marching to Tianjing were about 28,000 men from the 1st Division, the 2nd Division, the 3rd Division, and the 2nd Cavalry Regiment, and about 35,000 men from the eight auxiliary defense divisions, including the 1st and 2nd Auxiliary Defense Divisions, as well as nearly 15 large and small warships of the navy with more than 2,000 officers and men, and the total strength of the three was about 65,000.

Compared to the previous attack on Zhenjiang, the total number of troops is a little more!

At this time, there were no more than 40,000 defenders of the Taiping Army in Tianjing City, not even 50,000, and in the face of the menacing Chinese army, Shi Dakai was faced with a difficult choice!

Is it to stay and resist?

Or take the initiative to abandon Tianjing, and then take the remaining tens of thousands of elite troops of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom to the west? (To be continued.) )