When Lin Zhe was arranging his sister's marriage in Nanjing, tens of thousands of Chinese soldiers in Yunnan continued to march in the direction of Kunming, Yunnan.

From the beginning of entering Guizhou, the marching speed of the Chinese army has become extremely slow, the terrain of the southwest region is too complicated, and the climate of the southwest region is not the same as the rest of the country, especially Yunnan belongs to the plateau terrain, and it is close to the tropics, the climate is humid and hot, which makes it difficult for quite a number of soldiers to adapt to the local climate, and there are large-scale injuries and diseases.

However, these difficulties still did not stop the Chinese army's westward advance, after entering Yunnan, the Chinese army and the Zhenhu army engaged in many peripheral battles, although the scale was not large, all of them were battalion level battles, but it fully showed that they were getting closer and closer to the main force of the Zhenhu army.

On December 24, 1859, on the eve of Christmas in the Western calendar, Shi Langyi's department went through a lot of hardships and finally arrived outside the city of Kunming, Yunnan!

At this time, there were less than 30,000 people left in the Fourth Army under Shi Langyi, some of which were left behind in Guizhou, Yunnan and other rear areas to protect supply lines, and the other part was a non-combat attrition due to injuries and illnesses.

"The Fifth Army has already taken Chongqing, and it won't take long to take Chengdu, and the Sixth Army is afraid that it will also take Lanzhou, compared with them, our progress will be much slower!" Shi Langyi looked at the battle report forwarded from the rear, which said that the Fifth Army launched a general attack on Chongqing half a month ago, and successfully conquered Chongqing after three days of hard fighting, and defeated the Taiping Army at least 150,000 people, and captured more than 100,000 people alone!

"We're a little bit slower. But this is because the road along the way is really difficult, and we have to fight Lin Chengting's Zhenhu army. It is appropriate to be cautious, after all, the Zhenhu army is not the Taiping army. Nor are those Qing troops. ”

Although the Taiping army has hundreds of thousands of troops in Sichuan, everyone knows that these hundreds of thousands of troops are mainly cold weapons, and these cold weapons troops are not regular troops, but some people who have been coerced, even if the fifth army into Sichuan is only about 20,000 people, but it is easy to defeat them.

In the early years, when fighting in southern Jiangsu and Anhui and other places, the Chinese army had already defeated the Taiping army ten times or even dozens of times its own in the overall situation of the displaced people, and when the Chinese army was still Yu Sheng's army, it was able to defeat the Taiping army of 40,000 troops with thousands of troops outside Suzhou.

And then when I was in Anhui. The Chinese army only used about 10,000 troops, and successively defeated more than 300,000 Taiping troops.

It can be seen from this that in front of the Chinese army, even if there are hundreds of thousands of displaced troops of the Taiping Army, they are not useful, and they are far from being able to compare with the new troops of the Qing army, the Hunan army, and the Zhenhu army.

Therefore, the Chinese army's entry into Sichuan almost does not see any possibility of defeat, even if the Taiping Army claims to have millions of troops.

The same is true in the northwest, although there is an accident on the Xinjiang side. An Agu Bai appeared to occupy most of Xinjiang, but the Qing troops in Shaanxi, Gansu and other places were definitely not the opponents of the Chinese army advancing westward, and it didn't even take much time to take them.

After entering the second half of 1859, the Chinese army's battles in the domestic areas were basically based on purging and sweeping operations. Whether it was Sichuan or the Great Northwest region, it was difficult for the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom or the remnants of the Qing army to organize a strong resistance against the Chinese army.

The only trouble is Lin Chengting in Yunnan.

Although this Lin Chengting has been defeated repeatedly under the hands of the Chinese army, this person is not very good at commanding battles. Moreover, it is also limited by objective conditions, which makes his troops far inferior to the Chinese army in terms of weapons and equipment. But this man's ability to train soldiers is first-class.

When retreating from Jiangxi. He only took away the main force of the Zhenhu army, which was less than 10,000 people, but when he went around southern Hunan, Guizhou, Yunnan and other places. Then when he was entrenched in Yunnan, in less than half a year, he had already re-pulled out a force of more than 30,000 people.

And I heard that he didn't know how to get a large number of foreign guns from the French or the British, and the Zhenhu army under his command was still a new type of army using muskets.

And many of them were acquired from the British Enfield 1853 rifle, which is one of the most advanced Mini rifles of our time, and can basically be regarded as the prototype of the 1856 Linde rifle.

In the previous many peripheral battles between the Fourth Army under Shi Langyi and the Zhenhu Army, it was already discovered that the Zhenhu Army had used this weapon and brought some trouble to the Chinese Army.

You must know that the main rifle in the Fourth Army is also a Mini rifle, and there are not many units equipped with breech-loading rifles, only two mixed brigades, namely the 1st Guards Mixed Brigade, and then the 2nd Mixed Brigade that has just been reequipped. As for the 4th and 2nd Divisions, the 1856 Linde rifles are still used, while the 17th Division, the troops adapted from the Hunan Army are still using flintlock rifles.

In this case, if the Zhenhu army used a large number of Mini rifles, it would bring a lot of trouble to the Fourth Army.

Thinking of this, Shi Langyi couldn't help but hate those British and French barbarians, these foreigners like to mess up the empire when they have nothing to do, since their defeat in Shanghai, they are bent on revenge, not only in Xinjiang, Tibet and other places, but also in Thailand, Myanmar and other Southeast Asian regions to shake China's suzerainty, and now directly to Lin Chengting to provide a large number of advanced rifles, trying to support a separatist force that can fight against the empire.

However, although the teeth hated by these foreigners itched, Shi Langyi also knew that these things had nothing to do with him, and the foreign affairs of foreigners naturally had the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to do, and what he had to do now was to completely kill Lin Chengting.

At the same time, inside the city of Kunming, Lin Chengting looked at the dense Chinese military camp tents outside the city, and couldn't help but sigh in his heart, although he had long known that the Chinese army would chase Yunnan, but it came too quickly, much faster than he expected.

When he fled from Jiangxi, he knew very well that neither Zeng Guofan nor Shi Dakai could stop the Chinese army's westward offensive of the Chinese army, but what he didn't expect was that Zeng Guofan surrendered without a fight, allowing the Chinese army to advance its troops to Hunan, Guizhou and other places at once.

If Zeng Guofan did not take the initiative to surrender, although the Hunan army could not defeat the Chinese army, it would be able to support a few months or even longer, and these times were very important to Lin Chengting.

He went all the way into Yunnan, and although he scavenged a lot of gold and silver along the way, and expanded his army to more than 30,000 men, the French and British from Burma and Vietnam took the initiative to come to his door and offered to supply him with a large amount of ordnance at a low price.

Lin Chengting didn't care what these British, French and foreigners thought, since there were ordnance sent to the door, he naturally took it all unceremoniously.

This time, Britain and France were very generous, and sent at least 20,000 guns to Lin Chengting in three installments, most of which are said to have been directly transferred from the active equipment in India and Southeast Asia.

Half of them were old-fashioned smoothbore cap-fired rifles, and about 10,000 were rifled Mini rifles.

At the same time, there were more than twenty twelve-pounder front-loading guns.

Although in order to get this batch of ordnance and ammunition, Lin Chengting spent most of the gold and silver he looted, it was still extremely cost-effective for Lin Chengting.

But not long after these ordnance arrived, his troops had only been trained for about three months, how could this simple recruit beat the tiger and wolf division of the Chinese army?

In order to buy more time for himself, he took the measure of exchanging space for time, took the initiative to abandon Guizhou and the northeastern region of Yunnan, and retreated to Kunming in an all-round way.

Even Kunming is not the end of his retreat, he only has about 10,000 troops here in Kunming, in fact, his main force is deployed in Dali, he just hopes to use the main city of Kunming to drag the Chinese army for a period of time, even if it is half a month, a month, so as to give himself more buffer time.

As long as he has enough time, he can train the troops under his command, so that he can talk about really resisting the Chinese army and gain a firm foothold in Yunnan.

Lin Chengting's plans Shi Langyi naturally didn't know, Shi Langyi didn't care what Lin Chengting thought, he just needed to take Kunming down, and then beat Dali down, basically the entire main area of Yunnan would fall under his control.

Even if this Lin Chengting retreated into the deep mountains and old forests, unless he wanted to be a savage, it would be impossible for him to hold out in the poor mountains and remote areas for too long with a modern army, and he would have to consume ammunition and scatter if he starved to death.

Since the beginning of modern times, wars have been fought with ordnance and weapons!

Without a large number of ordnance and weapons replenishment, even if he Lin Chengting can train savages into qualified soldiers, it is useless!

On October 28, Shi Langyi led the Fourth Army to officially launch a general attack on Kunming, and Lin Chengting personally sat in Kunming to organize the defense in order to buy more time for the troops in Dali.

Although the Chinese army has an advantage in strength, and also has a certain advantage in weapons, the Zhenhu army is also an old army that has fought for several years, although most of the soldiers are new recruits, but those officers are old backbones, and after they get the weapons provided by foreigners, their combat effectiveness is still not to be underestimated.

Shi Langyi led the Fourth Army to fight in Yunnan, and it was extremely troublesome to replenish the strength and ammunition, so he would not force the attack regardless of the losses, but adopted the conservative tactics of gradually encroaching and slowly expanding the gap in the battle line to seize Kunming.

After five days of fierce fighting, although the Chinese army had overcome most of the defense line of the Zhenhu army and forced the Zhenhu army to retreat to the second line of defense under the city wall, the fourth army itself suffered heavy losses.

There have been about a thousand casualties before and after, which is somewhat unacceptable for the Fourth Army!

As a last resort, Shi Langyi suspended the large-scale offensive, began a period of recuperation, and adjusted his tactics to avoid more casualties! (To be continued.) )