Although the Sixth Army has been organized and trained since the end of last year, in the final analysis, it is still a completely new unit, and the soldiers have never really been on the battlefield, and even if they are trained on the battlefield, it is difficult to predict their true combat effectiveness.

In terms of weapons, too, the Sixth Army was armed not with the full-fledged 1856 Lindemini rifle, but with the 1858 Linde breech rifle, which were completely different in appearance and in actual use.

Even the artillery is a brand-new front-loading rifled gun, not a full-fledged smoothbore gun that has been in use for hundreds of years!

New weapons bring new tactical changes, and with new tactics, can new weapons play the actual effect they expect?

In this regard, Shi Qingxuan's heart was full of apprehension.

Compared with the soldiers, weapons and tactics, Shi Qingxuan is more at ease with the officer class, although the Sixth Army is a new unit, but the officers cannot be said to be the same as the soldiers, on the contrary, most of the middle and high-level officers of the Sixth Army are officers with rich experience in war.

These officers were all drawn from various units, but this was not a special case of the Sixth Army, because the officers of each new unit were basically drawn from the old units, and the Chinese Army could not say that it was not possible to directly use the newly graduated students of the military academy to fill all officer positions.

As the coalition forces gradually approached, without Shi Qingxuan's special orders, the officers under his command had already begun to prepare, the middle and senior officers were busy arranging tactics, and the company commander and deputy company commander were the grassroots officers who were mobilizing the soldiers under their command before the war to boost morale.

The officers of the Chinese Army can be seen busy walking around on the entire front!

The Sixth Army's defensive system on the periphery of Luodian was a very standard field system, consisting of the first and second trenches. However, this type of trench does not have the same width as those used by front-loading troops, which are easy for soldiers to reload in the trench.

Thanks to the rear-loading mode of the 1858 Linde rifle, soldiers could safely lie on their stomachs in the trench and then reload and shoot instead of retracting the rifle and reloading it from the muzzle.

This kind of trench is basically similar to the period of the Russo-Japanese War and the First World War, but the degree of solidity is naturally not comparable.

On several slightly raised hillsides behind the trenches of the infantry. Dozens of artillery pieces of the Sixth Army were deployed, and the muzzles were accurately aimed at the direction of the coalition forces.

Just as the Sixth Army was making final preparations for battle, in the coalition army, Count Ergin and Gro, as well as a large number of senior generals of the coalition army, were also riding their horses and talking in low voices.

After a long time of discussion, several high-ranking generals rode away one after another, and then returned to their respective commanded troops.

Count Ergin looked at the position of the Sixth Army in front of him, and couldn't help frowning slightly, these Chinese troops were even more difficult to deal with than he expected, from the Battle of Guangzhou to the Battle of Wusong in June, the Chinese Army had fully proved that they were not feudal and backward troops. Rather, it is a typical modern army.

In fact, from the beginning of the Battle of Guangzhou, Count Ergin did not despise the Chinese army, whether it was the Battle of Guangzhou or the Battle of Wusong, he used all his strength to fight, which was seen from the second Battle of Guangzhou, when he faced the Chinese army with only a few thousand people in the city of Guangzhou, but still brought a coalition army of more than 20,000 people, and attacked Guangzhou with the posture of a lion and a rabbit. He never despised the Chinese army from beginning to end.

In the previous Battle of Wusong, he treated the Chinese army as a modern army of European countries!

Just even if he used all his might. However, it still failed to take the Wusong Fort, which caused the strategic passivity of the coalition forces.

If they can't take Wusong Fort, they can't take Shanghai, and if they don't take Shanghai, they won't dare to go down the Jiangxi to Nanjing with confidence, and then force the Chinese Empire to submit and sign the treaty they want.

The failure of the attack on Wusong Fort also put him under great pressure.

A group of diplomats led by Bao Ling. There were also those of the East India Company who had considerable opinions about his unfavorable command, and even rumoured that it had been reported to the country, and that it was possible that a commander-in-chief might be re-appointed to replace Count Elgin.

And these situations are obviously not acceptable to Ergin, he is not incompetent, he is absolutely unwilling to accept defeat. And then he was driven back to England in disgrace.

He's going to win!

He also had the same pressure as the French commander Gro, the loss of the Battle of Wusong, the Count of Ergin certainly beared great pressure, but as the commander of the French army in the coalition, the pressure on Gro was naturally not small.

These two commanders, who were unwilling to return to Europe in disgrace after the defeat at the Battle of Wusong, struggled to turn the tables and dare to win before the arrival of those sent from home to replace them.

And this is one of the reasons why the Anglo-French forces rushed to launch a second round of large-scale operations as soon as reinforcements arrived.

The reason why the coalition forces are in a hurry to launch an offensive is on the one hand the personal willingness of Count Ergin and Gro, and there are several other aspects, first of all, the pressure of military spending, which costs a lot to maintain a war, tens of thousands of soldiers, hundreds of ships every day is a large amount, Britain and France will not let the troops on the front line drag on indefinitely.

Secondly, as the main sponsor and participant of this war, the East India Company, their pressure was also very large, the East India Company provided more than a third of the soldiers and ships for the war, in other words, they bore more than a third of the war costs, which was a very heavy burden for the East India Company, which was deeply involved in the Indian uprising.

If this could end the war against China as soon as possible, the East India Company would be able to redeploy its forces more quickly to suppress the Indian uprising, thus maintaining the already precarious colonial regime in India.

The combination of many factors caused the coalition forces to be reluctant to delay for too long, so they launched a second round of general offensive shortly after the reinforcements arrived.

In the battle of launching an offensive, they also wanted to attack the Wusong Fort or directly westward to Nanjing, some people said that the Wusong Fort must be conquered, and after occupying Shanghai, they would send troops to Nanjing, and some people thought that the Wusong Fort was too capable of attacking. Even if it can be attacked, it is estimated that there will be heavy casualties, and besides, the coalition forces have now captured Guangzhou, but the Chinese Empire still has not yielded, and now even if Shanghai is taken, it is estimated that the Chinese army will continue the war.

In this way, is it worth it to lose a large number of troops to conquer the Wusong Fort?

Even if the Wusong Fort is captured, if the coalition forces suffer heavy casualties. I am afraid that there is not enough strength to continue the advance towards Nanjing, and the coalition forces have been in Shanghai for several months, and they are generally aware of the situation of the Chinese army, but they know that the Chinese army not only has heavy troops deployed in Wusong Fort, but also has a large number of troops in Jiangyin, Zhenjiang and Nanjing.

Referring to the Wusong Fort and the combat effectiveness of the Chinese army in Guangzhou, most of the allied generals believed that without more than 20,000 troops, it would be difficult to fight all the way to Nanjing and win the war.

That is to say, if there is too much damage at the Wusong Fort, it is bound to replenish the troops. In this way, there will be more time delayed back and forth, and once the loss is too great, how to explain it to the country at that time?

In the end of the debate, it was the Count of Ergin and Gro who united and agreed that they would ignore the turtle shell of Wusong Fort and bypass it and attack the Shanghai Trade Zone directly, and it would even be possible to lure out the defenders in Wusong Fort at that time, and finally conduct a dignified field battle to defeat the Chinese army.

But that's it. That is, it will break away from the fire support of the fleet, but Count Ergin and others don't care. Because they have decided to send a large number of sailors directly ashore to participate in the battle, and at the same time remove some of the guns on the ship that are easy to disassemble, so that even if there is no artillery support from the fleet, they can still get sufficient artillery support when fighting on land.

However, whether they planned to attack the Wusong Fort or bypass the Wusong Fort, the coalition forces agreed that they must first move about six kilometers away from the coalition camp. The Sixth Army of the Chinese Army, which was deployed in the direction of Luodian, was defeated first, and even if it could not completely annihilate the department, it needed to be completely defeated.

In this way, they will be able to get a stable way out of the front, whether it is south, west or north.

Because now the Chinese army in the direction of Luodian and Wusong Fort together presents an encirclement posture against the coalition forces, no matter how the coalition forces move. It all breaks the encirclement first.

And in this encirclement, the Wusong Fort is a turtle shell that can't be fought, and it seems that only the Sixth Army in the direction of Luodian is weaker.

It's just that the current Earl of Ergin, Gro and others don't know that they regard the position of the Sixth Army as a breakthrough, and they are destined to encounter something they have never encountered before.

That's a breech-loading rifle!

Contemporary rear-loading rifles are not new, the Prussian Army is fully equipped with rear-loading rifles, in addition, European countries, the United States actually have rear-loading rifles have appeared one after another, and even small-scale service, for example, in 1855, Britain purchased thousands of Sharps1855 rifles, but because of serious air leakage, they were thrown away in warehouses and abandoned.

The reason why the rear-loading gun has appeared for so many years has not formed a world trend, mainly because the current technology is difficult to completely solve the problem of air leakage, among the rear-loading rifles in service at present, the German Dresser rifle has a serious air leakage, and the firing pin is too long and easy to break, even if it is the 1858 Linde rifle with Lin Zhe's intervention, the air leakage problem is not completely solved, but the rubber pad is used to slow down the air leakage phenomenon, and the rubber pad must be replaced after a certain number of shots, otherwise there will be a serious air leakage accident.

In addition to technical reasons, it is also related to the stubborn goodwill of generals in various countries for front-loading rifles, quite a number of generals are very repulsive to rear-loading rifles, when the German Dresser rifle was widely known after the Prussian-Danish War in 1864, many generals still scoff at rear-loading rifles, and even strongly oppose the loading of rear-loading rifles.

And now, the coalition forces are about to meet the Sixth Army of the Chinese Army, which has fully adopted rear-loading rifles, and they have tasted the horror of rear-loading rifles six years earlier than the Danes in history! (To be continued......)