【223】The decisive battle in advance

On October 1, 1876, the assembly of the revolutionary army on the Yangtze River and the land reform were basically completed, and the whole army waited for the telegram instructions from Beijing.

The Western Route Army took control of the entire Shanxi and Kouwai regions, and began to carry out land reform on the Mongolian steppe, confiscating the pastures and livestock of the Mongolian princes and nobles on the steppe and distributing them to poor herdsmen.

In order to be able to integrate into the local area, this work required a large number of Mongolian warriors, and the socialist transformation of the city of Beijing also provided a group of linguistic talents for this work.

Beijing has always had a saying that the north is rich in the north and the south is cheap and the east is rich, and the north of the Forbidden City lives with the yellow flag, the yellow flag, and the white flag, and the east and west live with the white flag, the red flag, and the red flag. The Zhenglan, inlaid blue, Mengqi, and Han banners living in Nancheng are relatively poor. In addition, there are a large number of coated slaves living in Nancheng, handicraft workshops are relatively developed, there are more than 40 tanning workshops alone, the smell of tanning and smoking and drying is so smelly that the rich people are unwilling to live in Nancheng, they have moved to Dongxicheng, and if the broken households in Dongxicheng are so poor that they sell their houses, they have to move into Nancheng.

In the course of round after round of screening in Beijing, a large number of Manchu and Mongolian proletarians defected to the government of the Chinese Socialist Workers' Party.

In the past forty days, after the Northern Route Army left the customs, it rushed all the way, and after defeating General Ningguta and General Heilongjiang, with exhaustion and excitement, Shun Lì completed the control of the entire Northeast. In this desolate black land, the land reform work went very smoothly, and Yao Fan instructed the Northern Route Army to immediately build winter barracks and training playgrounds, preparing to meet the Russian provocation that might come at any time.

In the People's Revolutionary Military Committee in Beijing, Yao Fan was planning the next step of the plan to liberate the whole country, when he suddenly received a message from the German minister Barand that the allied forces of Britain, France, the United States, Russia, and Japan might take action in October, but Germany did not know the details of the specific military action.

After discussion, Yao Fan's General Staff believed that the coalition forces were likely to adopt four different plans, the first of which was relatively conservative, that is, to assemble directly in Shanghai and attack the front line of Suzhou, Wuxi, and Changzhou from the land, in an attempt to first find out the reality of the revolutionary army's combat effectiveness and provide a reliable basis for analysis for the next move, and this style of play was more in line with the tactics of the French army at the end of the 19th century.

The second plan was to go north by boat, land between northern Jiangsu and Shandong, and disrupt the logistical supply routes of the revolutionary army going south; the problem with this tactic was that the five-nation coalition forces were unfamiliar with the place, and after landing, they went deep into the hinterland, and did not interrupt the logistics lines of the revolutionary army, and their own sea supply routes and even the land supply routes from the landing point to the army had problems.

The third plan is to forcibly land in Weihai or even in Qingdao to encircle, suppress, and sabotage the Shandong base area. Yao Fan believes that the British have always believed that his industrial base is in Shandong, and storming Yao Fan's Shandong lair is undoubtedly a great destruction. But the eyes of the British are long on the top of their heads, and they boast of being the world's number one industrial power, probably disdainful of dividing troops in Shandong only to destroy some factories that do not know where they were built, and besides, Shandong is too far away, and slowly occupying and attacking is completely inconsistent with the strategic purpose of the British. After all, Britain did not have enough people to annex China, not even a single province.

In the end, the fourth plan is undoubtedly to land in Tianjin, follow the route of the original burning of the Old Summer Palace, go through it again, enter the city of Beijing at the shortest geographical distance, strive to rescue the Manchu royal family, establish a puppet regime, and if it is not possible, it can still return to South China and establish a state in the name of the Manchu Dynasty.

On 6 October, less than a week after Yao Fan got the news, the British army finally started, but the British army had the first plan, which was to assemble heavy troops in Shanghai, and the five-nation coalition forces landed in Shanghai one after another under the transport of the British Royal Navy and merchant ships that dominated the sea.

The British sent 5,000 troops, the United States 300, the Japanese horse infantry artillery 10,000, the French sent 2,000 infantry from the Indochina colonies, the Russian troops south to Shanghai were only 2,000, and the rest of the Russian troops stationed in Vladivostok were to be brought in again in the next landing battle, and this time the Shanghai campaign was not to be participated.

The commander-in-chief of the Five-Nation Alliance is the British Commander-in-Chief in India, Baron Robert Napier, and the Commander-in-Chief of the Anglo-French Forces in 1860, the Governor General of Canada, Earl Elgin, compared with the Earl of Elgin, the commander-in-chief of the Anglo-French Coalition Army, Napier's title is all accumulated from war exploits, he started as an engineer, step by step to the throne of the Commander-in-Chief of the British Army in India, Napier, who was born in a British artillery officer family in Sri Lanka, has rich experience in the army, and once commanded a division to break into Beijing in the Second Opium War, At the beginning, he invaded China side by side with Count Ergin, and after the death of Ergin, who was then the governor of India, he also acted as the governor of India for half a year.

Napier took his elite troops from India all the way to Hong Kong by boat, eventually arriving in Shanghai. As soon as the army arrived in China, Napier was robbed and raped, which was called a relaxation activity after a long sea trip, and many of the victims were the gentry from the surrounding areas who had fled into the concession.

With the arrival of the Japanese, Russian, and French armies, 20,000 foreign troops gathered in Shanghai.

In this regard, Yu Shaofu, the Taoist of Shanghai, and Li Yunhe, the governor of Fujian and Zhejiang, turned a blind eye, and at the same time blackmailed the gentry of Jiangsu and Zhejiang to take out military salaries and food to provide them to the five-nation coalition army, hoping that the five-nation alliance would quickly help them hold Zhejiang, and then go north to Tianjin to recapture the rivers and mountains of the Qing Dynasty.

In the eyes of Shaofu and Li Yunhe, as long as they can restore the Qing Dynasty, they will be the important ministers who rebuild the Qing Dynasty, the pillars of the country, the pillars of the court, and there is no doubt that they will be crowned with officials and concubines.

The Xinmin Evening News continued to report on one robbery and murder case after another in the concession, the latest one being particularly bad, when more than 20 French soldiers and officers of the French colonial infantry burst into a private house, gang-raped eight female dependents of the entire family, robbed all the gold and silver jewelry, and strangled two men in the house.

Yao Fan originally arranged fortifications along the line of Zhenjiang, Changzhou, Wuxi, and Suzhou, and waited for the British to leave Shanghai and be annihilated in the field. But when he got the telegram from Qingdao and saw the crimes of foreign troops in Shanghai published in the latest issue of Xinmin Evening News, he couldn't bear it anymore.

On 8 October, the Central Military Commission issued offensive orders to the ninth, tenth, sixteenth, and seventeenth group armies, demanding that the brave soldiers of the Chinese Revolutionary Army completely annihilate the foreign invaders in Shanghai and Jiaxing and their counterrevolutionary armed forces with a fearless spirit of sacrifice and at any cost.

Yao Fan clearly pointed out in the telegram: "...... These foreign invaders have betrayed their class, they are outright scoundrels and robbers, and they must not be forgiven, but they must be completely physically exterminated, not a single prisoner!"

In consideration of the complicated situation on the front-line battlefield and the possibility that the telegram would be delayed, Yao Fan fully delegated power this time and urgently ordered the central authorities to promulgate personnel appointments, and the commanders of the ninth, tenth, sixteenth, and seventeenth group armies, Hu Guangting, Wang Guangxing, Zhang Erpao, and Yang Weiyi, together with the political commissars of each army, formed the General Front Committee of the East China Theater to jointly coordinate, command the campaign with full authority, and report on the trend of the central campaign at any time.

For a time, a wide range of interspersed on the East China Plain, the troops under the dispatch of the General Front Committee, formed a large-width offensive of hundreds of kilometers, later generations of military scientists evaluated this battle, saying that this campaign was the first time in the world's military history to adopt such a wide range of all-out attacks, the four group armies mobilized nine divisions, 27 regiments, 12 artillery battalions, about 50,000 troops, from Changshu and Suzhou, with the horns of the momentum of the continuous dispersion, the north road to the Yangtze River as the boundary, the south road to Jiaxing, Huzhou, The entire Yangtze River Delta region was covered by the marching ranks of the revolutionary army.

All of a sudden, the headquarters of the Five-Nation Alliance, which was in Nanxiang Town, Jiading, received countless urgent fast horse summonses.

"The revolutionary army has arrived in Taicang!"

"The revolutionary army has arrived in Kunshan!"

"The revolutionary army is rushing towards Anting!"

"The revolutionary army attacked Zhaoshi Fort!"

"The revolutionary army attacks Baizhenjiang!"

"The revolutionary army has entered Qingpu!"

"The revolutionary army has attacked Dongjiasha!"

……………………

Napier, the commander-in-chief of the coalition forces, was almost stunned, the big war was coming, why did these troops from the north who called themselves revolutionary armies not know to concentrate their forces in the decisive battle, but frantically attacked in all directions? What kind of tactic is this? Shouldn't the battle be fought in one place?

Napier pretended to be calm and looked at the map in the tent, and the commander-in-chief of the French army, Major General Lafayette, raised his chin high and said: "Your Excellency, I think that when the enemy pounces on us, the only thing we should do is to draw our command knife instead of staring at the map. ”

Napier glanced at the Bourbon remnant, who had been in exile in London for a long time, and before he could figure out how to answer the frivolous character of this self-proclaimed count's family, Viscount Terenenko, the commander-in-chief of the Russian army, stood up and said: "I agree with Count Napier, bayonets are more useful than maps!" ”

Napier sighed slightly in his heart, so he had to turn his head and order to the translator next to him: "Tell Lieutenant General Sù County#, the Japanese cavalry of 1,000 people is divided into four groups and 4,000 infantry, and goes to Malu Town with four infantry columns, blocking the revolutionary army in the direction of Taicang in Malu, leaving 3,000 infantry and three artillery brigades. ”

The mountain county mentioned by Napier is called Yama County Youpeng, as a lieutenant general of the army, and is the commander-in-chief of the Japanese army's dispatch this time.

When you heard that you were going to start by yourself, he was not cowardly, he indifferently stroked his lips and mustache modeled after Western instructors, thought about it, tilted his head and whispered a few words to the translator.

After listening to this, the interpreter conveyed to Napier: "Your Excellency, the commander-in-chief, the county lieutenant # general said that he is very embarrassed that there is no artillery accompanying him. ”

Napier had already looked at the map for a while, and he believed that the revolutionary army's offensive was a loose way of playing, and that this large-scale scattered approach would only be harvested like a sickle in the field by the neatly packed coalition forces.