Unfortunately, the overall international strategy of the empire is not yet decided by the army, so the army's hope of going to war is naturally in vain.

In this absence of large-scale wars, some small-scale wars have become opportunities that military officers desperately desire!

When the first mixed brigade was originally expected, the army sent the infantry regiment and the artillery battalion to participate in the battle, but it alarmed several army bigwigs.

Don't talk about those regiment commanders and other officers, and the candidates for the first mixed brigade are also very opinionated, the army is the same as the cabinet, there are many factions, Shi Qingxuan, Xu Yanqing, Lin Chengfei, which of these people does not have many old department students, this is the position of brigade commander of the mixed brigade, but it is watched by a large number of army major generals.

Chen Yuechuan, a cadet of the first batch of military cadets, who had served in the Ninth Division for many years and served in Heilongjiang for several years, had a lot of experience in dealing with the Russians because of his profound qualifications, and at the same time, because he had just finished his post as deputy director of the Strategy Department, the Quanxu Division was preparing to arrange a new position for him.

This series of circumstances made him the most suitable candidate, and in turn, he defeated a group of competitors to obtain the position of commander of the mixed brigade.

Before coming to Kamchatka, he was managed to go to Nanking to meet the emperor.

When Lin Zhe received him, he was not in the office, but took him for a walk outside the palace, listening to some of his views on the situation in the North Pacific and what tactics he was going to use to capture Port Bide.

He still remembers it vividly. At that time, he said to His Majesty: "To control Alaska, you must first control the waters of the Aleutian Islands. And to get to the Aleutian Sea, it is necessary to first capture the port of Bed. Use Port Baid as a supply port and act as the rear of the follow-up Alaska strategy! ”

At the same time, he also mentioned: "Now the empire's control in the direction of East Siberia is still very weak, the Russians on the Pacific coast of the four strongholds, we have now captured only one of them, that is, the Heilongjiang estuary Temple Street, but the other three are still controlled by the Russians, in order to completely control East Siberia, it is necessary to capture the remaining three strongholds controlled by the Russians, only to take these three strongholds." Only then can it be claimed that Russia will be completely expelled from the Pacific coast and expelled Russia to the interior of Siberia! ”

Chen Yuechuan's remarks are not only about the capture of the port of Bide and the capture of Avacha Bay, but more importantly, about an overall overview of the follow-up military operations in the whole of Eastern Siberia.

Eastern Siberia is a vast area, and it is almost impossible to gradually advance control by conventional military means, because many of them are uninhabited for thousands of miles, and the extreme weather is difficult to overcome.

This came from the empire in order to fight for the Heilongjiang River Valley. After spending a lot of military money and fighting with the Russians for several years to take control of the Heilongjiang River valley, it can be seen that conventional military operations are quite difficult and not very effective.

So the best thing to do is to skip over some of the middle of nowhere. Taking advantage of the sea advantage, it landed directly on some important strongholds of the Russian army.

For example, Torom, Chumikan, Ayan, Okhotsk, Bid (Petropavlovsk), Novomarinsk (Anadyr), especially the three strongholds of Ayan, Bid, and Novomarinsk.

These three strongholds plus Temple Street, which has been captured by the Chinese army. It was the four major strongholds of the Russians on the Pacific coast.

During the Crimean War, the strategy of the Russian army in the Far East was to hold on to these four strongholds. and thwarted the Anglo-French attack on Beder.

If the remaining three strongholds were to be uprooted, the Russians would be completely driven out of the Pacific coast. Let them run back to the freezing interior of Eastern Siberia.

As for when he will be able to pocket the vast Siberia, this is not a problem that Chen Yuechuan is considering, and it is not even a problem that Lin Zhe is considering now.

Those are too far away!

Now for the Empire, the most important thing is to first put the Russian army in some ports in the Pacific region.

The first step in this series of operations was the capture of Port Bide in Avacha Bay.

Also on the Longxiang, many soldiers had already begun to leave the cabin, carrying equipment and climbing onto the deck one after another, at this time the speed of the transport formation had been reduced, and the distance from the battleship formation in front of it had been widened.

The soldiers who were lining up on the deck of the Longxiang could clearly see the Fuxi, Taiyuan and other warships in front of them forming a standard column.

In front of the main fleet, there are several steam speedboats that have just been lowered, these small boats are channel survey ships, and they will brave the enemy's artillery fire to walk in the front, measuring the depth of the water at any time, so as not to run aground in the channel of the capital ship in the channel or something.

After all, the Imperial Navy had only been here once before, and now it has entered on a large scale, and it is not very familiar with the hydrological situation here, although it has some hydrological qualifications provided by the British, but it is definitely not safe not to measure it personally.

Behind these survey ships was the Fuxi as the lead, followed by two small ironclads of the Zhenguang class, and then three wooden cruisers.

A total of six warships, emitting a faint white smoke, approached the mouth of Avacha Bay.

At this time, the Russians in the small batteries on the shore also moved, and several front-loading smoothbore guns were pushed out in an attempt to block the fire.

However, their artillery was all small-caliber guns, and their range and power were quite limited, so it was the Fuxi on the sea that fired first.

Its 150-millimeter gun was the first to fire, and several grenades were fired out before landing near the Russian battery and exploding.

It didn't take long for more 120-mm naval guns in the fleet to fire one after another!

For a while, the shells continued to explode near the small Russian battery, and occasionally when a shell landed in the battery, it would cause the effect of flesh and blood flying.

The Russian gunners, despite the intense artillery fire, did not retreat. Instead, they braved the fire to reload the guns and then take aim. Then the cannon was fired, and one of the gunners fell. There will be reserve gunners to replenish it.

From the binoculars, Li Binglong clearly saw that the Russians were one after the other, and under the intensive shelling of their own side, even though they suffered heavy casualties, they still did not give up the fort, and they were still stubbornly firing back.

This situation made Li Binglong seem to sigh that these Russians are not afraid of death.

If such a fierce shelling was in the armies of other countries, it is estimated that it would have collapsed long ago, but these Russians did not give up alive or dead. It's as if a soldier's life is worthless, and it can be wasted at all sacrifices.

Earlier, he had heard that the Russians treated soldiers like animals, and most of those colleagues in the army spoke of the Russian army with contempt and helplessness.

In the early years, the Imperial Army changed its breech-loading rifles several years earlier than the Russians, but the superiority in weapons did not give the Army much strategic advantage, otherwise the Army would have driven the Russian army back to Europe.

One of the key points is the indifference of Russian soldiers to death!

Of course, this is also related to the large number of Russian troops.

The name of the European steamroller is not called in vain, although the total population of the Russians is inferior to that of the Empire. However, the number of troops is not large, and the number of troops deployed in Central Asia and Siberia is in the tens of thousands.

Moreover, Russia has a very good tradition in Siberia, that is, there are quite a lot of militias, and many of the male residents of the settlements can go to the front with guns.

Especially in the sports area. The proportion of militia in the Russian army fighting against the Chinese army is quite large, and the proportion of cavalry in the army is quite large.

This caused a series of difficulties for the Imperial Army.

Earlier I heard my colleagues in the army describe Russian soldiers. Li Binglong still thinks it's an exaggeration, but it seems today. These Russians are really not afraid of death!

However, Li Binglong only sighed if the Russians continued to follow one after another. On the contrary, he was even happier, anyway, after he brought enough shells before the battle this time, several of the many transports behind him were specialized ammunition carriers to ensure that the ammunition of the task force was sufficient.

With enough shells, if the Russians are willing to continue to resist so stubbornly, it is estimated that their artillery bombardment will be able to kill and injure a large number of enemy troops, and the landing operation of the army will be much easier at that time.

But it is clear that although the Russian army did not want to die, it was not so stupid as to be incorrigible, they braved the heavy shelling for nearly half an hour to return fire, although most of the shells missed, but a few shells also hit the Chinese warships.

The shells that hit the Fuxi had no effect, and they were bounced off directly in the armor belt, which was acceptable to the Russians, after all, they also knew about the ironclad ships, and the Russian Navy had already commissioned large-tonnage ironclad ships in 1864, so they naturally knew the power of these large-tonnage ironclad ships.

But when a few shells landed on a small ironclad ship, and they didn't do any damage, the Russians were quite desperate.

With these twelve-pound and twenty-four-pound front-loading smoothbore guns in their hands, they can't effectively cause effective damage to the ironclad ship at all, not to mention these small-caliber front-loading smoothbore guns, even if they are currently six-inch or even seven-inch rear-loading ship guns, it is difficult to cause any practical damage to the armor belt of the ironclad ship.

So far, several large-tonnage ironclad ships of the navies of various countries have been sunk by collision, some have been unlucky enough to hit mines and sunk, and some have even sunk themselves in the face of wind and waves, but there has been no case of being directly sunk by naval guns.

After seeing that their shore guns could not cause actual damage to the enemy's warships, the Russian troops on the batteries also simply withdrew the batteries to avoid unnecessary sacrifices.

Afterwards, when Li Binglong sent people to land to take control of this fort, the soldiers who landed saw that the small fort was surrounded by corpses, and there were at least seventy or eighty people at the beginning.

Sighing at the madness of the Russians, Li Binglong officially led the fleet into Avacha Bay, and the backward transport formation also cautiously passed through the sea outlet channel and entered the wide Avacha Bay.

Naturally, Li Binglong continued to carry out large-scale artillery bombardment of Bide Harbor and shore buildings, while Chen Yuechuan began to direct the troops to prepare for the landing.

At three o'clock in the afternoon, the soldiers of the transport formation began to climb out of the boat, then boarded the dinghy that had already been lowered, and then rowed their oars vigorously, and rushed directly to the northern land of the port of Bide.

The landing operation in Port Side has officially begun! (To be continued.) )