As a city along the Yangtze River, Jinling is divided into the north bank and the south bank of the Yangtze River, but the urban area on the south bank is the main part of Jinling, and the importance of the north bank is much weaker.

In the past, Duan Qirui continued to stick to the north bank city, mainly to drive a nail in the north bank area, as a bridgehead, on the one hand, to attract and contain the main force of the Feng army, and on the other hand, to have a good starting position when the counteroffensive Northern Expedition was carried out in the future.

But now that the Fourth Army of the Renfeng Army has reached the periphery of Jinling, if a large number of troops are invested in the north bank area, it will be more than worth the loss.

As a result, Duan Qirui decisively withdrew the 4th Division and the 41st Division of Liangjiang on the north bank.

Unlike the Feng army, which was very difficult to cross the Yangtze River, Duan Qirui looted a large number of ships on both sides of the Yangtze River before the war, and their artillery units were deployed on the south bank, so they didn't need to carry heavy artillery across the river, and only needed to transport the combat soldiers across the river to complete the retreat, so even if there was no pontoon bridge, the combat soldiers on the north bank could be easily withdrawn along the river.

Of course, in this process, it is inevitable to sacrifice a part of the broken troops, and the broken troops that have been sacrificed and transferred cannot be the main force of the Sixth Brigade of the Fourth Division, but the provincial army of the First Division of Liangjiang.

Speaking of the first division of Liangjiang is also quite unlucky, since the war with the Feng army, has always served as a broken rear troops, in Jiangbei was stunned because of the broken troops and was disabled, after the reconstruction, it was sacrificed again, its second brigade was completely annihilated by the third division of the Feng army because of the broken back.

The first division of Liangjiang was first formed when Duan Qirui went south to Jiangsu, and a large number of troops of the Southern Federation were recruited, and after the first battle in Jiangbei, its two brigades were completely disabled, and the remnants retreated to Jinling after the Jiangbei Campaign. In order to restore the establishment of the 1st Liangjiang Division, Duan Qirui transferred the Jiangbei Mixed Brigade, which had also suffered a lot of damage, into the 1st Liangjiang Division, which should be the 1st Brigade of the 1st Liangjiang Division, in addition to the recruitment of new recruits and the 2nd Brigade based on the 1st Mixed Brigade of the Jiangxi Army.

After the defeat of the Jiangbei Campaign last year, Duan Qirui vigorously rectified the military system, and almost revoked the numbers of all miscellaneous units, and all the Jiangxi Army and Zhejiang Army were revoked and unified into the Liangjiang Army. Therefore, it was not only the first division that was rebuilt at the same time, but also the second division of Liangjiang was rebuilt at the same time, and the second division of Liangjiang successively accepted the remnants of the first mixed brigade of Zhejiang and the second mixed brigade of Zhejiang, plus the recruited recruits to rebuild on the basis, and was previously stationed in Lishui, and the Anhui army went north to reinforce Jinling after crossing the river, and is currently fighting with the supplementary brigade of the fourth division.

Although he lost a whole brigade of troops in the process of retreating from the north bank, Duan Qirui didn't care about this, in his heart, these Liangjiang Provincial Army were originally consumable cannon fodder troops, which were used to sacrifice at critical moments, as long as the main force of the Fourth Division was not lost, then he still had the confidence to continue to fight with the Feng army.

Duan Qirui took the initiative to withdraw from the north bank of Jinling, which is equivalent to taking the initiative to give up the north bank of Jinling to the Feng army, which also allowed the Feng army to pull out the last nail of the Anhui army in northern Jiangsu, and the next step for the Feng army to be able to focus all its energy on how to conquer Jinling.

"Now the 14th Division has advanced to the outlying areas of Jinling, and it already has the ability to cross the river with the 3rd Division in the area west of Jinling!" Jingshi Jurentang, Shi Yanglin soon proposed the latest round of battle plan to Zhao Dongyun.

That is, he and the 3rd Division also took over Jianglai, and then launched an all-out offensive against Jinling.

"Will it be too difficult to cross the river directly to the west of Jinling?" Zhao Dongyun still has concerns about this: "I remember that there are several gunboats of the Anhui army on the Jinling side, if they are shelled by enemy gunboats when crossing the river, how to ensure the safety of the troops crossing the river?" ”

Shi Yanglin said: "According to the information of our intelligence department, in the past two days, a number of Anhui gunboats anchored in Jinling have gone south along the Yangtze River to reinforce Shanghai, and there are only two or three gunboats in the place at present, and only need our army's field artillery to cover it at that time, even if the enemy's gunboats have the courage to intercept them, our artillery is also confident to intercept them!" ”

Zhao Dongyun didn't speak after thinking about it, and acquiesced.

In the Jinling direction, the artillery strength of the Feng army is not weak, the first heavy artillery battalion is deployed in the Jinling direction, in addition to the 75-mm field guns of the 3rd Division, the 14th Division, and the 4th Mixed Brigade, these artillery may not be much for a thick-skinned and thick-tonnage battleship, but for those shallow water gunboats with only a few hundred tons, the power is still okay.

Those gunboats were generally equipped with 100 mm or 120 mm naval guns, as well as some three-inch naval guns, although the naval guns were good in range and rate of fire due to the army field guns of the same era, but the number of field guns in the Feng army was enough.

On the front line of Jinling, the Feng army was able to gather more than 100 75-mm caliber guns, including 16 100-mm field cannons, and if the gunboats of the Anhui army on the opposite side came to block it, it would only be more than ten or twenty artillery pieces if they died.

As for the other field artillery of the Anhui army, it is basically deployed in the east of Jinling, and it is impossible to risk deploying it to the area west of Jinling, which is close to the front line; if it is deployed in the front, the Feng army will not cross the river first, and the 14th Division and the 1st Mixed Brigade will directly attack forward and destroy these artillery positions first.

After thinking about it for a while, Zhao Dongyun still signed his name on this battle plan, and Shi Yanglin was also relieved to see Zhao Dongyun sign his name.

Although Zhao Dongyun rarely refutes the various operational plans put forward by the Operations Department, he sometimes refutes them, and once they are refuted, it represents a mistake in the work of the Operations Department, which is very unfavorable to Shi Yanglin.

The status of the combat department is special, and Shi Yanglin is also under great pressure correspondingly, but the lowly and powerful ones are stared at by many generals of the Fengjun army, especially those young generals who peep into the position of the director of the combat department, I hope that Shi Yanglin will make a mistake, and then I will take over this promising position by myself.

After Zhao Dongyun approved the plan of crossing the river of the Third Division, the Operations Department issued the relevant combat orders!

After Xu Bangjie on the north bank of Jinling received the battle order, although he was a little worried about it, he did not dare to say that he directly disobeyed the order of the combat department.

The order of the Operations Department of the General Headquarters is the highest order of the army, and every order issued can be said to represent Zhao Dongyun's direct order.

However, since he was going to cross the river, he had to communicate with Meng Enyuan, who was on the south bank, after all, the crossing of the river by the Third Division still needed the vigorous response of the 14th Division.

On 16 October, eight days after the Fourth Army officially crossed the river, the 14th Division began to meet the Third Division in the Yangtze River section west of Jinling.

Unlike the difficulties in crossing the river on the first line of Hezhou and Dangtu, because the Third Division's crossing of the river did not carry artillery and other heavy weapons and equipment that had to be carried by pontoons, and anyway, those artillery pieces deployed on the north bank could also shell Jinling, so the Third Division's lightly armed crossing of the river mainly relied on boat transportation, and the ammunition supply needed after crossing the river was also temporarily supplied by the Fourth Army.

As for the construction of the pontoon bridge, I am afraid that it will have to wait until after Jinling is taken.

When he sensed that the 3rd Division of the Feng Army on the opposite side was about to cross the river, Duan Qirui immediately ordered his troops to launch a counterattack on the Feng Army troops west of Jinling, and at the same time asked the three shallow gunboats stationed in Jinling to shell and intercept them.

The 14th Division had already set up a solid defensive line to resist the counteroffensive of the Anhui army, and in addition, more than 10 100-mm cannons and a large number of 75-mm shells of the Feng army also began intensive shelling of the three gunboats to block the three gunboats from going up the river.

The Yangtze River is so big, although the tonnage of the three gunboats is small, but it is also a big guy with a length and width of tens of meters, in the narrow Yangtze River can not maneuver at all, with the dense shells falling, they simply cannot carry out their effective evasion, although the shells fired by the Feng army are not very powerful for the battleship, but the key is that these three gunboats are not big guys, and the protection capacity is also limited.

As soon as he ventured upwards for a few kilometers, a gunboat led by it had already been hit by more than ten shells, although it was not sunk or anything like that, but the superstructure was also scarred, and more importantly, the sailors suffered heavy casualties.

Seeing that the opportunity was not good, the Anhui naval officer who led the team immediately led the small fleet to retreat.

After repelling the attack of the Anhui gunboats, the 3rd Division could cross the river without any danger.

With all kinds of ships transporting back and forth, more than 10,000 fighters of the 3rd Division finally arrived on the south bank of the Yangtze River and successfully joined up with the 14th Division.

The reason why the crossing of the river was so smooth was related to the fact that the Third Division did not carry artillery, cavalry, and a large amount of baggage to cross the river, and they only transported infantry and other combatants across the river easily, which naturally reduced the difficulty of crossing the river.

Of the 16,000 men of the Third Division, only about 10,000 actually crossed the river, and most of the artillery, cavalry, engineering, and baggage troops were actually still on the north bank.

However, the vast majority of the 10,000 people who crossed the river were infantry and other front-line combatants, so after receiving reinforcements from the Third Division, the number of front-line combatants on the south bank of the Yangtze River was still quite considerable.

As soon as the 3rd Division crossed the river, the Feng army began to officially launch a large-scale attack on Jinling.

They intended to move south to Jinling, a politically important and important military town, in one fell swoop, thus laying the foundation for the success of the entire Jiangnan strategy.

However, the Feng army is bent on attacking, and the Anhui army will not be stupid to wait for the Feng army to come to the door and then surrender, Duan Qirui took the fourth division as the main force, and then pulled the first division of the Liangjiang army and other Anhui army provincial army troops, and the third division, the fourteenth division, the first mixed brigade and other troops of the Feng army fought together.

And such a large-scale battle with a total number of more than 100,000 troops participating in the battle, if there is no miracle, it will naturally not be over in a day or two, they will fight around a series of peripheral tactical points in Jinling, for the Feng army, as long as these peripheral tactical points are won first, and finally can officially attack the Jinling urban area.

Although the battles on these periphery were also very fierce, they lasted for a long time, and most of them were small-scale battles, and on the surface it seemed as if the engagement between the two armies of Jinling and Fengwan had fallen into a stalemate.

Coincidentally, this is the case in the direction of Jinling, and the same is true in the direction of Anqing, Wuhu and Dangtu, although the battle between the two armies of Fengwan is still continuing, but it has generally calmed down, and the battles that broke out are small-scale but very fierce battles, and there is no large-scale roundabout attack like before, and even the situation of completely annihilating a division of the enemy army has appeared.

This situation has tended to be a kind of war of attrition, in which the morale and organization of the two sides are better, the logistics supply of both sides is better, and the military expenditure of both sides is more.

Therefore, the front line has fallen into this kind of war of attrition, and the overall war situation is showing a relatively calm time, but the logistics department of the Fengwan and Anhui armies is very busy, especially the Fengjun army, whose supply line is thousands of kilometers long, in order to maintain the combat needs of the front-line troops, from Tangshan to Jinling front, there are almost hundreds of thousands of people who are busy green, shoulder-to-shoulder, pushing and pushing, little by little to transport ammunition from the north to the southern front, and this is undoubtedly a great pressure on Hong Putao, the chief of the Quartermaster Department.