It is no secret that Lin Zhebahu was in the upper echelons of the Qing court, when he refused to let Xiang Rong let him send troops to Changzhou and Zhenjiang, and even in order to prevent Gilhang'a from interfering in the trade zone and Jianghaiguan, he directly fought with Gilhang'a, and then repeatedly refused Xiang Rong, Huang Zonghan and others to send troops to Changzhou.

These things made Lin Zhe's reputation for dominance even greater than his reputation for good warfare, and even the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom knew that Lin Zhe had a lot of gaps with the Qing court.

He Chun had also heard of Lin Zhe's domineering, but when he heard the returning messenger say that Lin Zhe actually threw his letter on the ground directly in front of him, and said that He Chun was still nursing when he attacked Suzhou, and his face was still green from anger, and he couldn't speak for a long time.

"Okay, it's worthy of Lin Zhe, today is an insight!" And Haru's face is full of hatred!

Huang Zonghan on the side looked at Hechun's face, and sighed in his heart, before Hechun gave Lin Zhe an order, he reminded Hechun that he couldn't treat Lin Zhe as a subordinate, otherwise he would be embarrassed.

He Huang Zonghan relied on the friendship he had made with Lin Zhe in Zhejiang a few years ago, and he was still able to barely maintain a good situation with Lin Zhe, although he still failed to recover the Jianghai Customs from Lin Zhe for more than a year, but Lin Zhe did not make trouble for Huang Zonghan in other Jiangsu government affairs, nor did he withhold the traditional taxes and cents of gold in the Susongtai region.

Otherwise, Huang Zonghan would not have been able to support it for so long, and successively expanded his army by more than 10,000 and fought for Changzhou with Wu Ruxiao.

In Huang Zonghan's cognition, Lin Zhe is a typical person who eats soft and not hard, if you coax him well and give him face, Lin Zhe will also give you face.

But when you and Chunchu arrived, you thought that you were more awesome than Xiang Rong at the beginning, and you dared to give an order directly to Lin Zhe, isn't this looking for your own smoke!

"Your Excellency, the situation is critical now, please take the overall situation of Jiangnan as the priority!" Huang Zonghan didn't want to do something with Chun's head hot.

The situation is very obvious now, and only Yu Shengjun can resist the eastward advance of the Taiping army in the south of the Yangtze River. If Lin Zhe is completely offended, when the time comes, people will directly retreat to Suzhou and not come out, and the nearly 30,000 Qing troops in Jiangyin alone will not be able to hold the counties of Changzhou.

Fortunately, Hechun is not a brainless person, and he is angry. But he also knew that now was not the time to turn his face with Lin Zhe, so he forcibly held back his anger at Lin Zhe at the moment, and then said: "Then where is he now, but he went to Changzhou?" ”

"Yes, before you return. Yu Shengjun is on his way to Changzhou! The Messenger immediately replied.

Huang Zonghan on the side said again: "Although Lin Zhe is domineering, he still knows the priority of the matter!" ”

He Chun also snorted coldly, what does Lin Zhe mean by this? It is clear that he went to Changzhou not because of his and Chun's orders, but because of the overall situation.

This makes Hechun quite unhappy, he is the minister who supervises the military affairs of Jiangnan, not to mention that you Lin Zhe is a political envoy of Jiangsu, even the governor of Jiangsu and the governor of Liangjiang have to stand aside, but looking at the current situation, it seems that he Lin Zhe is the minister who supervises the military affairs of Jiangnan.

Although he hated Lin Zhe with itchy teeth, He Chun also knew that since Lin Zhe had led the army into Changzhou. Then he couldn't sit still, so he immediately took Huang Zonghan and Zhang Guoliang together and led nearly 30,000 troops in the direction of Jiangyin to Changzhou.

Lin Zhe on the side of the Qing army, and Lin Chengting on the side of the Taiping army is also a proud person, and now among the three commanders of the Taiping army in Changzhou, Qin Rigang, the king of Yan, has the highest status, and it stands to reason that he should be in charge of military affairs.

But Lin Chengting ignored him, and directly united with Wu Ruxiao to control the military affairs in Changzhou and give orders, which made Qin Rigang quite dissatisfied, and even germinated the idea of leading his troops to leave.

However, even if the heart is dissatisfied. This Qin Rigang is also the same as Hechun, he is a person who knows the priorities of things, after all, Qin Rigang who can go to such a high position will not be a fool, and he knows that resisting Yu Shengjun now is the top priority. And the personal grudge with Lin Chengting should be put aside first, and then talked about later.

However, although Qin Rigang endured it for the time being, he still sent a secret letter to Hong Xiuquan, the king of Tianjing, saying that Lin Chengting was arrogant, had tens of thousands of people and did not obey his orders, and made disrespectful remarks many times. It is said that he only knows the king of the east, but does not know the king of heaven!

Lin Chengting naturally didn't know that Qin Rigang already hated him, and secretly complained to Hong Xiuquan, and now he was busy deploying Changzhou city defense.

Having learned the lessons of the Battle of Guangde, he paid more attention to the construction of fortifications this time, digging several chest wall trenches outside the city.

At the same time, because the city walls of Changzhou are not tall and thick, Lin Chengting estimated that he would face the intensive fire and artillery bombardment of Yu Shengjun's army at that time, and it was estimated that these city walls would not play much role, and even lead his own soldiers deployed at the head of the city to suffer heavy casualties.

So this time he didn't expect to defend against the walls, but only thickened and strengthened several sections of the walls, which served as batteries to place artillery, and the musketeers under his command were all deployed by him to the trenches under the walls.

Even if the city wall is destroyed at that time, it won't affect his defense too much!

As long as his soldiers hid in the trenches when Yu Shengjun was attacking the city, then Yu Shengjun's artillery would not be able to play much role, and if Yu Shengjun's infantry launched a siege, then his own soldiers could wait until Yu Shengjun was close to a distance of 100 meters, and then come out of the trench and shoot.

At that time, after Yu Shengjun's infantry firepower lost the advantage of long-distance shooting, when both sides were smoothbore guns and the rate of fire was comparable, it was time to compete in training and courage on both sides.

And Lin Chengting is confident that the training and morale of his own troops will definitely not be inferior to Yu Shengjun!

Two days later, the facts proved that Lin Chengting's approach was right, and when Yu Shengjun arrived outside Changzhou, he began to set up camp as usual, and then deployed artillery and began shelling.

This time, Yu Shengjun gathered under the city of Changzhou, and there were four mixed regiments, each of which had an artillery battalion under its jurisdiction, and each artillery battalion had two artillery companies.

Each artillery company was equipped with 12-pounder guns, a small number of 6-pounder guns and 800-pound guns of the old style.

In addition, Yu Shengjun also had a siege heavy artillery battalion directly under the military headquarters, which had a 24-pounder short-barreled mortar battery and a 32-pound short-barreled mortar artillery company.

The sum of each artillery company is that there are more than 50 artillery pieces, and most of them are more than 12-pound heavy guns, which can be said to be very terrifying for the contemporary domestic battlefield.

The roaring artillery almost obscured the sky, and solid bullets, grenades, and grenades continued to fall on the Taiping Army positions in Changzhou City!

Among them, the grenades and grenades have also changed from the extremely low hits and inaccurate fuses of two years ago, and the accuracy of the guide zhì early explosion and duds has been greatly improved, and the cases of duds and early explosions have also become fewer.

In 1854, in the Northern Zhejiang and Suzhou Campaigns. When Yu Shengjun faced the Taiping army, although he occupied an absolute artillery advantage, he was still powerless in the face of the enemy's strict defense of the city and the trench defense system made by Lin Chengting.

After the war, Lin Zhe personally instructed the Ordnance Bureau to guide the Linde Machinery Factory to improve artillery and shells.

For this. Yu Shengjun's Ordnance Bureau signed a contract with the Linde Machinery Factory for R&D and scheduled procurement, allowing the Linde Machinery Factory to carry out technical improvements to the existing front-loading guns, and at the same time requiring them to develop the rear-loading rifled guns.

With the current technical capabilities of the Linde Machinery Factory, it is questionable whether it can be imitated, let alone let them independently develop the breech-loading rifled gun. Therefore, the Linde Machinery Factory also simply sent people abroad to inquire and ask for the technology of rear-loading rifled guns.

Later, I learned that there was a Armstrong gun that had just been designed but had not yet been designed, and on the premise that there was no other rear-loading rifled gun design that could be used, the people at the Linde Machinery Factory felt that even if it was only a semi-finished product, it was better than their own research and development, so they purchased the design materials of the gun, and then planned to continue to develop and improve it themselves.

Relying on the technical ability of the Linde Machinery Factory, it is naturally impossible to improve the design and manufacture of the artillery at once, so there is not even a sample gun now.

In the past two years, the artillery department of the Linde Machinery Factory has mainly focused on the design and improvement of front-loading smoothbore guns and the manufacture of larger caliber guns.

Today, the bronze twelve-pounder guns they cast have been much lighter than the old twelve-pounder guns purchased by Lin Zhe a few years ago, and their range and accuracy have increased.

In addition, a number of thirty-two- and twenty-four-pounder shipborne cannons were cast for the naval battalion. It was used to replace the equipment of new ships and to replace the twelve-pounder guns on old ships.

In addition, a number of 24-pound, 32-pound and other caliber short-barreled mortars were cast for the naval division battalion and the army.

Under the premise of causing a large amount of technical equipment and employing a large number of foreign technicians, the Linde Machinery Factory has barely kept up with the pace of the times in terms of front-loading smoothbore guns.

Compared with the improvement of artillery, in fact, the improvement of artillery shells by the Linde Machinery Factory is more obvious, after the successive use of wooden butts and metal fuses, the accuracy of artillery shells is higher, and the frequent failure of grenades and grenade fuses is also greatly improved.

This can be seen from the dense shells falling outside Changzhou City, especially those grenades and grenades, which were not very accurate and can be hit frequently.

Some grenades even exploded directly above the enemy's breastwork, killing and injuring a large number of enemy personnel in the trenches.

However, although the accuracy of the artillery is better. However, in addition to the acceptable effect of grenade shots, more grenades and solid bullet effects frequently made Lin Zhe frown.

These solid shells and grenades have a very low lethal effect on enemy troops in the trench, and even if the solid shells destroy the enemy's breastwall, they will not be able to harm the enemy personnel in the trench.

And the grenade unless it falls into the trench accurately. Otherwise, even if it falls one meter away from the trench, the killing effect will be equal to zero, at most, it will be just for the Taiping army to listen to a sound!

After seeing that although the hit rate and range of his artillery were greatly improved compared to the past, it was still difficult to kill and injure a large number of enemy troops, Lin Zhe also put down his binoculars and frowned.

This Lin Chengting is becoming more and more handy at playing trenches, and several trenches have been dug out of Changzhou City. There are also a large number of wooden stakes and railings and other obstacles outside, and if you add barbed wire, this is a trench from the First World War!

"Leave the trenches alone and destroy the artillery on their walls!" Lin Zhe asked the artillerymen to give up wasting ammunition, and now firing grenades and grenades is still somewhat effective, but solid bullets are basically useless for those trenches, it is better to destroy the enemy artillery on the city wall first.

Soon, Yu Shengjun's artillery fire shifted the target and began to bombard the Taiping artillery on the city, these artillery on the city head could not hide in the trenches, even if they hid behind the city wall, the actual protection ability was quite limited.

When a solid bullet fired from a twelve-pounder gun hits the head of a city, it causes stone fragments to fly sideways on the city walls, which is no less effective than the explosion of a grenade, and often causes a large number of casualties among the artillerymen.

As for grenades and grenades, not to mention, they are designed to kill people by nature!

Seeing the heavy casualties of the personnel in his artillery position, Lin Chengting's face sank, and he immediately ordered: "Let the artillery team avoid the battle!" ”

He managed to rebuild an artillery team of more than 40 guns, but he couldn't lose it in the artillery battle between them, and he had to rely on these guns to provide fire support to his infantry.

As for saying that the artillery team can't suppress Yu Shengjun's artillery if it avoids the battle now, Lin Chengting doesn't care about it, anyway, the range, accuracy, and power of his own artillery team are inferior to those of Yu Shengjun's artillery team on the opposite side, and he has self-knowledge that he didn't expect his own artillery team to be able to suppress Yu Shengjun's artillery team.

As for the fact that the city wall is destroyed by Yu Shengjun's artillery, it will be destroyed!

Most of his 20,000 new troops are hiding in the trenches, these not high and thick city walls have no effect on his new army, as for how Wu Ruxiao and Qin Rigang's troops fought without the protection of the city walls, it was none of Lin Chengting's business!

When he heard that Lin Chengting asked the artillery team to avoid the battle and let Yu Shengjun's artillery team bombard the city wall, Qin Rigang found Lin Chengting with a look of anger! (To be continued.) )