Lin Chengting does have two brushes, and he can get back up after every failure, and the time for each comeback is only a few months at most, for example, when there was internal strife in Tianjing, he was left with less than 10,000 people and fled to Jiangxi in embarrassment, but it didn't take long for a while to come back to the horse pistol, defeated the Taiping army that pursued into Jiangxi, and saved the defeat, and then two years of hard work was to pull out a Zhenhu army of more than 60,000 people, of which nearly 30,000 were still new troops.

In the words of later generations, this is the unbeatable Xiaoqiang!

It is estimated that even if Lin Chengting has lost Jiangxi and lost tens of thousands of troops, it is estimated that it will not take a few months to re-emerge from that corner and then pull out an army of tens of thousands of people.

Lin Chengting's difficult Shi Dakai has experienced it, and Lin Zhe also knows it, but most of the generals in the Chinese army, especially the senior generals, don't take him seriously.

After taking the mouth of the lake, limited by the Zhenhu army's shipwrecks and iron cables, the entrance to Panyang Lake was completely blocked, although the surface power of the Zhenhu army could not stop the Chinese navy from cleaning the channel, but even if the Chinese navy was allowed to clean the channel, this process could not be done in a day or two.

According to the prediction of the Royal Navy of the Chinese Empire, even if the navy sends special engineering ships and technicians to clean the channel, it will take at least a month to clear the channel, and it is simple to remove the iron cable, but it is not easy to salvage the wreck, because these wrecks are all loaded with sand and gravel to sink the river together, which is to clean up the wreck, it is better to dig another channel directly.

The naval side did not have direct access to Panyang Lake. This also means that the army cannot land from the west bank of Panyang Lake by naval transport.

If the Chinese army wants to land and attack Jiujiang in the future, it will land directly from the Yangtze River. Needless to say, the area along the Yangtze River is also a strictly guarded area of the Zhenhu army, and at the same time, it also needs to face the threat of artillery fire from the batteries along the Yangtze River in the direction of Jiujiang.

Especially on the third day when the 4th Division of the Chinese Army took Hukou. The Zhenhu army also conquered Jiujiang through a large-scale attack, and more than 40,000 defenders of the Taiping army who were stubbornly defending in the city were completely annihilated.

After occupying Jiujiang, the Zhenhu army did not rest at the first time, but repaired and strengthened the forts along the Jiujiang River.

The Zhenhu army installed many self-made large-caliber front-loading smoothbore guns on the fort, and carried the original and temporary 3,000-jin, 5,000-jin, and even 8,000-jin heavy guns onto the Jiujiang Fort.

Although the Zhenhu army and other forces in the country are unable to manufacture rifled guns, nor do they have the technical ability to produce rifled rifles, it does not mean that they can't even manufacture smoothbore front-loading guns hundreds of years ago.

Even if it is not possible to mass-produce with machinery and equipment, even if it is produced by hand, it can allow them to squeeze out dozens of large-caliber guns.

In addition, the Taiping army was in order to hold Jiujiang before. And blockade the Yangtze River channel, originally built a strong fort, there were originally a lot of large-caliber artillery on it, now after being strengthened by the Zhenhu army, the total number of artillery pieces of several batteries along the river in Jiujiang has exceeded 50, and basically all of them are more than 3,000 catties of heavy artillery.

In the face of these heavy artillery, even if they are only front-loading smoothbore guns, they cannot be taken lightly, if this kind of shore fire is to be fought against by the fleet of the British and French forces. That's not a big problem, but the navy of the Chinese army is not the fleet of the British and French forces.

The Second Gunboat Detachment dispatched by the Imperial Chinese Navy to fight in the direction of Jiujiang consisted of about a dozen gunboats, carrying about sixty or seventy guns, and about thirty guns of a caliber of more than 12 pounds.

In a way. If the Imperial Navy fights against Jiujiang's batteries in the future, it will really not be able to gain too much tactical advantage.

To this end, the 2nd Gunboat Detachment was already urgently requesting reinforcements from the Admiralty. in order to get more warship support.

If we want to land on Jiujiang and fight, we must make the navy ready and sure before we can act. Therefore, although the Fourth Army on the army side was in a hurry, it could only wait.

But just because we waited didn't mean that the Fourth Army didn't do anything. The Fourth Army had already launched an offensive on the entire western front, and except for the Fourth Division, which had advanced to Hukou, the other troops had already advanced from the north bank of the Yangtze River and the southeastern part of northern Jiangxi to the hinterland of Jiangxi.

At the same time, it is also stockpiling more ammunition supplies to prepare for the follow-up Battle of Jiujiang.

Just when Shi Langyi of the Fourth Army was planning the Battle of Jiujiang, Shi Qingxuan, the commander of the Sixth Army in Zhili, also arrived at Cangzhou City with his army.

Then there was no dialogue or heads-up with any main generals like in the ancient romance novels, and the eighth and ninth divisions of the Sixth Army launched a large-scale attack on Cangzhou.

At the head of Cangzhou City, Shi Rongchun looked at the Chinese soldiers who were almost all over the mountains outside the city, although his face was calm, his eyes were a little dazed.

In the face of the wolf-like Sixth Army outside the city, can he hold Cangzhou?

Shi Rongchun asked himself, but he couldn't answer his question, because he was afraid that once he gave himself an answer, he would completely lose the confidence to resist.

Two months ago, a series of fiascos on the Shandong side are still vivid, when their own army took the initiative to attack the first division of the Chinese army outside Changqing City, but they failed to take it after two days of fighting, and finally had to retreat to Jinan again.

However, I originally thought that I would be able to defend Jinan for three or five months or even more than half a year, but I could think that Jinan City would be conquered before I arrived in a month.

What followed was an unprecedented retreat, Du Xing'a led them all the way to the north, and after staying in Texas for less than five days, Shi Qingxuan caught up again, and that time Du Xing'a was quite simple, only made a symbolic resistance and then led the army back to Zhili again.

Fortunately, Shi Qingxuan's Sixth Army was also forced to enter a period of recuperation after taking Texas because of excessive damage, and later caught up with the heavy snow, and the heavy snow sealed the ground, which gave the Qing army a chance to breathe.

It gave Duxinga time to reorganize and replenish the troops, and at the same time gave the Qing army time to build a new defense line with Cangzhou as the core.

However, this peace did not last long, at the beginning of January, taking advantage of the slight cessation of the wind and snow, although the ground was still bitterly cold, the Sixth Army had officially marched north on a large scale, and successfully entered Cangzhou on the 9th.

So, now there are soldiers on both sides wearing thick cotton jackets, trembling and fighting!

The freezing of the weather caused a serious decline in the combat effectiveness of the soldiers on both sides, and a large number of soldiers were frostbitten by both the Chinese army and the Qing army, and there were relatively serious injuries and illnesses and attrition.

The second town under Shi Rongchun's command has lost at least 1,000 people these days due to the severe cold weather, and the Qing army on the entire Cangzhou defense line has lost at least 3,000 people due to the severe cold.

Of course, attrition due to the severe cold is definitely not the patent of the Qing army, and in fact, the Sixth Army is no better than that.

"Although our army has prepared a large number of winter clothes in advance, but in the case of long-distance marching and fighting, the troops still have a certain amount of casualties and attrition, and at present, the eighth division and the ninth division together, there are more than 1,000 wounded and sick!" Major General Dai Shien, chief of staff of the Sixth Army, said with a difficult look on his face at this time: "Although most of them can return to the team after treatment and recuperation, the combat effectiveness of the troops has been weakened to a certain extent in a short period of time!" ”

Hearing these words, Shi Qingxuan was also a little depressed, if he was fighting in a dignified manner, but now just because of the weather, the troops caused such a big attrition, which was a little difficult for him to accept.

You must know that when he conquered Jinan, his Sixth Army did not suffer a total of 1,000 casualties.

But he was depressed and depressed, and he actually didn't have a good solution.

Not to mention in the modern era, even in the Second World War a hundred years later, those quasi-modern troops could not solve the troubles caused by climatic and geographical factors such as the severe cold in the north and the extreme heat in the tropics.

For example, when attacking Lu'an in northern Anhui, the First Army was plagued by infectious diseases, which led to a serious attrition of the Third Division, the main force at that time.

At the same time, the Third Army and the Second Army, which went south to fight in Guangdong, suffered from diseases because some of their soldiers did not adapt to the local climate, and this situation was not alleviated until the above two units were supplemented by a large number of new recruits from Fujian, Guangdong, and other local southern provinces.

In fact, it is very difficult for the Chinese army, which is fighting everywhere and has a front that stretches for thousands of miles, to completely solve this problem, especially when the main soldiers of the Chinese army are all from Zhejiang and Jiangsu provinces.

The origin of soldiers is too confined to special areas, and the level of medical care in the contemporary era is extremely limited, which is slightly affected by the wind cold, coupled with the lack of adaptation to the climate, will make soldiers sick, and once a contagious disease such as viral influenza breaks out, it is basically a casual attrition of hundreds or thousands of people.

Now the Sixth Army is not facing the problem of infectious diseases, but the problem of climate!

The soldiers of the Sixth Army are all soldiers from the Jiangnan region, and these southern soldiers are fine when they fight in northern Jiangsu and even Shandong and Henan, but after crossing the Yellow River and entering Zhili, they face a long time of about zero degrees, and even a low temperature of more than ten degrees below zero at night, which makes the soldiers of the Sixth Army quite uncomfortable.

Even if the high command had fully considered some of the troubles faced by the northern army during the winter operation, and had prepared a large number of winter clothes and even gloves and other winter equipment for the Sixth Army in advance, it was still not enough.

If it is an ordinary person facing these low temperatures, as long as there are enough clothes to wear, there is actually nothing, it is a big deal to hide at home and not come out, but the army is different.

The impact of the severe cold weather on the troops is very great! (To be continued......)

PS: When I wrote this chapter, I felt more and more cold, and my fingers were like ice cubes.