"As expected, the thief army around Suzhou has really come to reinforce Suzhou!" At Yu Shengjun's military meeting, Shi Langyi said this while looking at the letter.

Shi Qingxuan also excused himself: "This thief army should have been divided to attack all parts of Changzhou County before, and according to the letter of the scout, there are about 10,000 people!" ”

And Lin Zhe above also spoke at the right time: "It is our established strategy to attract the surrounding thief army to Suzhou and defeat them on the way, since they are here, then we can't sit still!" ”

Immediately, he looked at Shi Langyi and said, "Xiangzhi, you take the first mixed regiment to fight, and you must do your best to solve them if you hurry north!" ”

Then he looked at Wang Luyun again: "Your second cavalry company will also cooperate with the first mixed regiment to fight!" ”

Shi Langyi and Wang Luyun naturally rose up in response to the call and said yes, and when Shi Langyi and Wang Luyun went out to integrate their own team and prepare for the battle, Shi Qingxuan said to Lin Zhe with a worried face: "Marshal, we don't have many troops, and now we have more than 1,000 troops to fight, and when the enemy army comes out of the city to attack, I'm afraid ......."

However, Lin Zhe interrupted him: "It's okay, our camp is stable now, it's good that they don't come, if they dare to take the initiative to attack, they will definitely not be able to eat and walk!" ”

If Wu Ruxiao has been cowering in Suzhou City, Lin Zhe really has no good way in a short period of time, although Yu Shengjun's siege ability is relatively stronger than other Taiping troops and Qing army, but in fact, it has not surpassed this era, it is still mainly bombarded with artillery, and then used infantry to shoot and forcibly climb the wall, and once it is close, Yu Shengjun's proud long-distance firepower will lose its effect, and he will be forced to fall into hand-to-hand combat at the head of the city or even street battles in the city.

From Yu Shengjun's Shanghai siege and Guangde siege, it can be seen that Yu Shengjun actually did not climb over the wall at all, and when he fought Shanghai, he directly collapsed the city wall, and then still used the line to fight in the way of entering the gap.

Not to mention those who attacked Guangde, Yu Shengjun never went to the city from beginning to end, but just bombarded with artillery, and forced Lin Chengting's troops out of Guangde with a large number of shells, forcing them to take the initiative to retreat and finally catch up with the field.

Therefore, it is unrealistic for Yu Shengjun to capture Suzhou City in a short period of time, not because he can't defeat it, but because he is unwilling to bear the casualties paid for the siege. Therefore, Lin Zhe wished that they would take the initiative to go out of the city, and when the time came, he could completely fight a field or defensive battle with them, so as to defeat them in one fell swoop and lay down the victory.

"Also, our sailor battalion is also about to arrive, and the sailor battalion has brought three hundred soldiers this time, and they can also help defend one or two!" The sailor battalion in Lin Zhe's mouth is the sailor battalion formed in Shanghai.

After half a year of development, the naval division battalion has begun to take shape, with one 800-ton sail steam paddle steamer, one sailboat of more than 400 tons, and more than 10 inland river modified warships of about 10 tons. In addition to these warships, hundreds of small and medium-sized inland river transport sailing vessels requisitioned and hired by the Quartermaster Bureau were also temporarily placed under the management of the Naval Division.

Because the two 800-ton and 400-ton converted warships of the Navy Division Battalion were long-distance ships with extremely deep drafts, and could only sail on the Yangtze River and the Huangpu River, no matter whether they went to Huzhou or Suzhou now, those two warships did not come, only some small and medium-sized ships came.

Although the water network in southern Jiangsu is dense, there are not many large rivers and rivers, and the sailor battalion can only send small and medium-sized warships to fight inland to support the army's operations.

This time, the Navy Division Battalion not only brought more than a dozen small warships over by itself, but also cooperated with the Quartermaster Bureau to escort dozens of ships of ammunition supplies over to relieve the huge military pressure of Yu Shengjun's army.

As for the reinforcements, except for the sailors of the more than 300 sailors of the battalion of the water division, there was no other.

Now Lin Zhe's troops are extremely short, and he didn't feel it in the past, but in the past more than a month of fighting, he felt that his troops were insufficient.

Just finished fighting in Huzhou, before he had time to consolidate the results in southern Anhui and completely expel Lin Chengting from Guangdezhou, Suzhou was taken by the Taiping army, and the lack of troops in Shanghai forced him to rush back to southern Jiangsu.

When Lin Zhe, who felt that there was a shortage of troops, was still in Huzhou, he had already moved his mind to continue to expand the army!

Although the pressure on military spending after the expansion of the army is too huge, it is not possible to expand the army now, so Lin Zhe thought about expanding the army first, and then said, the small treasury of Yu Shengjun can still hold up in a short period of a few months, as for how to raise the army after the small treasury is spent?

Lin Zhe hasn't thought about this problem for the time being, and there are no more than a few ways: ask the court for money; asking for money from the local government; Grab it yourself.

There are soldiers and guns in hand, and you are afraid that there will be no military spending?

Therefore, when he was in Huzhou, he formed the 7th Infantry Battalion, the 6th Artillery Company, the 3rd Cavalry Company, and the 3rd Baggage Battalion, and together with the 4th Infantry Battalion and the 5th Artillery Company, the 2nd Mixed Regiment was formed.

At the same time, he also sent people back to Zhejiang, especially to several prefectures and counties in southern Zhejiang to recruit soldiers, and at the same time ordered people from Shanghai to recruit new soldiers in the Songjiang area.

He also ordered Xu Pengan, the former chief of staff of the 1st Mixed Regiment, to return to Shaoxing to recruit soldiers and form the 8th Infantry Battalion for training.

After arriving in southern Jiangsu, he sent Fei Qunyang, the commander of the former first baggage battalion, to return to Shanghai, and recruited soldiers from the surrounding areas of Shanghai to form the ninth infantry battalion, and served as the commander of the Shanghai garrison, commanding the sixth battalion originally stationed in the Shanghai trade zone and the 500 green battalion stationed in Shanghai County, of course, the newly formed ninth infantry battalion will also temporarily join the sequence of the Shanghai garrison.

However, most of these newly expanded armies are still in the initial stage of expansion, and only the situation of the 7th Infantry Battalion and the 6th Artillery Battalion is better, but the 8th Infantry Battalion and the 9th Infantry Battalion are still in the stage of recruitment, and it will take at least a few months before they become an army.

Therefore, in a short period of time, it is impossible for Yu Shengjun in the direction of Suzhou to get reinforcements, and he can only rely on himself.

In order to solve the shortage of troops, Lin Zhe had to hit the idea of more than 10,000 prisoners.

Although the captured Taiping soldiers were old and young, they were all men. Although there are men, women and children in Wu Ruxiao's army, most of them are still men, after all, even if they are coerced, people are not indiscriminately coerced, and only young and middle-aged people are caught in the strong men. A small number of old and weak women and children in the army, most of them are family members of the soldiers, and they themselves are not soldiers under Wu Ruxiao's command.

These captives were all men, and there were still a considerable number of young men among them, and if they could be used, it was estimated that they could alleviate their shortage of troops to a certain extent.

And Lin Zhe thought that he was a person who could do what he wanted, if he supported them to work, it would be better to rearm them to alleviate his lack of troops.

Of course, due to various problems, these selected young people must not be directly supplemented into Yu Shengjun, Yu Shengjun's requirements for soldiers are very high, when recruiting soldiers, not only the soldiers' physical qualities are required, but also the rural children who are innocent, have families, have the guarantee of the village old Zhuangtou, do not want the small people in the market, do not desert the people.

There is no habit of replenishing the captives!

Lin Zhe planned to unify these selected young and strong prisoners into a separate unit, and let Liu Hetao, the deputy commander of the former Third Infantry Battalion, be responsible for organizing and training the unit.

When the captives heard that Yu Shengjun wanted to select some young and strong people from among them to join the army, they said that as long as they were willing to fight for Yu Shengjun, then their past deeds of serving the Taiping Army would be written off, and in the future, they would not be thieves but official soldiers.

Those who are selected will be given three meals a day, two of which will be dry, and will be able to regain their freedom and return home after serving for one year, as well as a severance pay. If you are willing to continue to serve and pass the guò assessment, you can receive a certain amount of money on a monthly basis during the period of continued service.

Hearing about these conditions, many young people are eager to try, they don't value the difference between the officers and the army, the difference between long hair, and they don't care about whether they can be free in the future, the things they value are very simple: three meals a day, two dry meals.

Speaking of which, these prisoners of war are actually poor people, they were originally just ordinary people, but after the arrival of the Taiping Army, they were forcibly recruited by the soldiers of the Taiping Army and became a cannon fodder.

Wu Ruxiao's Taiping army has been fighting on the move, and the food is basically robbed, and there are many of them, so this military food is naturally given priority to those regular troops, and these strong men who were forcibly pulled in have at most two meals a day, one porridge and one dry meal. Sometimes you can't eat a dry meal every day.

Otherwise, when they were defeated and fled, they would not have run only a few hundred meters before they were tired and unable to run, and finally they were captured.

Yu Shengjun is not a charity, although these captives are also fed, but they only give a little porridge every day, and now I heard that as long as they are selected, they can eat enough, they still care if you Yu Shengjun is a long-haired or a demon, and it doesn't matter if you live or die in the future, you will join in and eat a full meal first.

Just using a full meal as a temptation, Yu Shengjun easily selected more than 1,500 young men from more than 10,000 prisoners of war, and those who were not selected sighed or showed a look of despair, because those who were selected were given a bowl of rice on the side on the spot, and many people squatted and ate directly. But the others who were not selected could only watch them eat big bowls of white rice, and they could only eat gruel, and finally spent their days in a daze, waiting for the day when Yu Shengjun would release them on his own initiative.

After more than 1,500 young men were selected, three infantry battalions were organized into a regiment, and Lin Zhe named this regiment the number of 'Yu Shengjun Auxiliary Defense Regiment'.

Liu Hetao added the rank of major and served as the regimental commander of the Yu Shengjun Auxiliary Defense Regiment, and then transferred a number of officers from Yu Shengjun to serve as the regimental chief of staff, battalion commander, and deputy battalion commander, and more than 40 senior non-commissioned officers of Yu Shengjun were transferred to serve as the company commanders and deputy company commanders of these prisoners, and as for the hundreds of platoon commander positions, they were directly selected from the prisoners.

Since they were captive troops, and they were all untrained civilians, Lin Zhe naturally would not equip them with advanced Mini rifles, but only selected some of the large number of cold weapons and arquebuses captured by Yu Shengjun before for them to equip.

Naturally, there is no need to have much hope for the combat effectiveness of this kind of troops who are temporarily selected from the captives and equipped with rudimentary and primitive weapons, and they cannot compare with the local regimental training elites in the Qing army, such as the Hunan army and the Yu Shengjun, and they cannot defeat the regular army in the Taiping army.

But it's better than those local townspeople, and better than those unorganized homeless armies.

Lin Zhe didn't expect this auxiliary defense group to bring him any surprises, as long as he could slightly share some of the pressure of Yu Shengjun, then this would be enough.

And when Lin Zhe was engaged in this 'auxiliary defense regiment' to prevent the defenders of Suzhou from leaving the city, the first mixed regiment led by Shi Langyi had already bypassed Suzhou City, and then reached the northwest of Suzhou, and in their western direction, it was the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom reinforcements from Changzhou to reinforce Suzhou!