On the Wusong Fort, Bing Qusong and many senior generals of the Navy and Army boarded the observation platform of the fort, and then one by one they took binoculars to observe the allied army garrison six kilometers away.

Although the distance is a little far, with the help of the high-powered telescope provided by the navy, the basic situation of the entire coalition garrison can still be clearly seen.

The whole garrison is semi-circular, stretching from the shore to about two kilometers inland, and there are a large number of temporary barracks, warehouses and other buildings made of wood in the camp, and the perimeter of these buildings is a defensive system composed of breastworks and moats.

Building a breastwork and digging a trench is not the patent of the Chinese army, basically the firearms units that are a little bit interesting in these years will skillfully use the chest wall, trench and other field defense systems, such as the American Civil War, which will occur in a few years in history, and the offensive and defensive battles of both sides are a large number of breastworks and trenches and other fortifications.

In the camp near the river, several trestle bridges were built that stretched all the way into the Yangtze River, with wooden piles driven directly, and two pontoon bridges used directly.

On both sides of these trestles, a large number of ships are moored, and the soldiers of the coalition forces are constantly carrying all kinds of supplies from the ships, and at the same time, many ships are constantly walking down many soldiers.

These ships are the various transports in the coalition's reinforcement fleet!

Outside the trestle, there are many warships moored, their guns aimed at the south bank of the Yangtze River, ready to provide sufficient artillery support for the allied forces in the camp.

"Now it seems that they have at least 8,000 reinforcements, and the amount of various supplies is not much. It is estimated that it will be enough for them to use it for about two months! Zhu Jianjia, who was on the side, wrote it down in his small notebook and said: "Their supply fleet will take a month to make a round trip, to say the least." That's not enough for two months! ”

At this time, Xu Yanqing spoke: "Obviously. They don't plan to drag on with us anymore, they have to spend a lot of materials and military expenses if it doesn't drag on for a day, this time they have so many reinforcements, it is estimated that they will be quickly resolved! ”

If the war continues in these years, even if it is exhaustive and does not carry out large-scale battles, the cost is very huge, not to mention that these British and French troops have to gather materials from Southeast Asia, India and other regions thousands of miles away and then transport them, in terms of maintenance costs, the cost is much higher than that of the Chinese army.

The Chinese army has spent tens of millions of dollars on military spending this year. Although most of them were used for expansion and personnel salaries, and the specific war expenses were not much, the military expenses spent during the war between Guangguang and the British and French forces should have exceeded 10 million.

The cost of the Anglo-French army is estimated to be much less, and it is simply not enough to support this war without three or four million pounds.

Although three or four million pounds sterling is nothing for Britain and France, the problem is that if the war continues, these war funds will continue to be spent, and more importantly, the coalition forces have now failed to conquer the Wusong Fort, and can only confront the Chinese army in the landing camp, such a result is obviously not acceptable to Britain and France.

The two plenipotentiaries of the Anglo-French army, the Earl of Ergin and Gro, knew very well. There must be a victory in this war, and it must be won in the near future, and they can't keep hiding in the landing camp with 20,000 or 30,000 British and French troops and staring at the Chinese army.

Of course, these dynamics within the coalition are naturally unknown to Xu Yanqing and other generals of the Chinese army. They can only roughly judge the enemy's next strategic intention from the strength of the enemy army and the scale of the supply.

At present, if the coalition forces have reinforced more troops, but the material supply is slightly insufficient, then the Chinese army has every reason to believe. The coalition forces are going to attack in the near future.

After learning of the large-scale reinforcement of the coalition forces, the Chinese army was once again nervous. The Second and Seventh Armies had re-entered the posture of facing all of them, and a large amount of war materials had been transported from Shanghai to the Wusong Fort. The Recon Cavalry, on the other hand, roamed the perimeter of the coalition camp to ensure that not a single Coalition soldier crossed the cordon.

The Sixth Army, reinforced from Jiangyin, was deployed in the Luodian area, about 10 kilometers east of Jiading County.

There has been a lot of fast horses between Shanghai and Nanjing, and even some steam liners departing from the Shanghai business district to Nanjing carry a lot of official letters.

Interestingly, although the coalition fleet can be said to have blocked the entire Yangtze River estuary, in fact the coalition forces blockaded very limited objects, blocking only the warships of the Chinese army or suspected warships, and not blocking ordinary merchant ships, cargo ships, passenger ships, fishing boats, etc.

Because once the mouth of the Yangtze River is completely blocked, it is basically equivalent to the abolition of the Shanghai Trade Zone, and the abolition of the trade zone of the Chinese Empire will certainly suffer heavy losses, but the losses of foreign merchants are also not small, and the losses are not tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands, but millions of huge losses.

Give Ergin a hundred dares not to completely blockade Shanghai, because the reason why he brought his army to Shanghai to fight is to open up more trade ports, in order to give merchants more commercial benefits, if he completely blockades the trade area for the sake of war, it is to put the cart before the horse, if he dares to do this, without the clamor of the shareholders of those foreign companies, the East India Company must first take him down.

What are the fundamental interests of Britain and France in these years?

Commercial interests are fundamental interests, and war or diplomacy are only means to promote commercial interests.

This is the reason why the treaty ports of Shanghai, Ningbo, Fuzhou, and Guangzhou were affected by the war, but commercial exchanges were able to continue.

Tens of thousands of Chinese and allied soldiers in Baoshan County were holding on to each other, ready to launch a new large-scale campaign at any time, but it was still busy in the nearby Shanghai Trade Zone, where many riverside wharves on the Huangpu River were always docked with a large number of ships, and merchants from all over China were coming and going.

Merchants and Chinese businessmen from all over the world in the Bund Avenue are talking about war and doing business with a smile!

The coalition forces could not completely block the Yangtze River waterway, which meant that they could not cut off the waterway links between Shanghai and Nanjing, Zhenjiang, Jiangyin and other directions. The Chinese military even secretly used civilian ships to load many weapons and supplies under the nose of the coalition fleet.

Of course. None of these actions can be openly superficialized, and the navy's own armed ships will definitely not be used. Civilian vessels are chartered, or the Navy's own transport ships are remodeled, with symbols such as numbers removed, and then disguised as civilian vessels.

In this case, the communication between Nanjing and Shanghai is still relatively smooth, in addition to the traditional use of fast horses for transmission, shipping transmission is also continuing.

Therefore, when the coalition reinforcement fleet had just arrived, Lin Zhe, who was in Nanjing the next night, had already learned the relevant news.

It's just that although he knew the relevant news, Lin Zhe didn't react. Except for instructing the headquarters to pass on the relevant news in a timely manner, there were no other special instructions.

After all, Nanjing is hundreds of kilometers away from Shanghai, even if Lin Zhe wants to command remotely, it is impossible, and besides, many strategic plans for the coalition forces have actually been formulated a long time ago, and the specific battles that follow are handed over to the front-line generals themselves.

After establishing the capital in Nanjing, Lin Zhe has rarely directly intervened in military command affairs, and he is only responsible for an overall plan, such as formulating an overall strategy. The overall plan for the development of the empire is these.

What Lin Zhe has to do is to tell the military generals when to fight and who to fight! As for how to fight, that's the generals' business. Otherwise, what's the use of having these high-ranking generals?

So after learning that the reinforcement fleet of the coalition forces had arrived, Lin Zhe behaved quite calmly. It didn't say what instructions were given on the spot, and how the military wanted to fight!

Recently, he has been quite busy, especially the cabinet has a lot of government affairs!

Although at present the Chinese Empire is also a priority for military operations. However, the Chinese army has been established for many years since the Yongying era in Yuyao County, and over the years, it has developed its own complete and mature operation system. There is a set of rules for when to do what to do and how to do it.

Therefore, Lin Zhe does not need to meddle in some detailed military affairs on weekdays.

In contrast, in terms of government affairs, due to the fact that the empire has only been established for a short time and is still in the process of being well structured, many problems emerge every day and wait to be solved.

For example, laws and regulations, at the beginning of the establishment of the Chinese Empire, the Qing Dynasty basically followed the laws of the Qing Dynasty, and then replaced them with newly formulated relevant laws, and it is actually quite difficult to formulate a new system of laws, and the people of the Ministry of Justice are busy formulating laws every day, and Lin Zhe also has to approve a large number of laws and regulations-related documents in three days.

Because the importance of laws and regulations is too great, it is basically the foundation for the stable operation of the entire empire in the future, so Lin Zhe is also very attentive, and basically will personally read them one by one and make instructions, as for those documents that are too thick and often hundreds of pages, Lin Zhe basically browses a rough idea, and after the secretariat reviews it, he will simply go through it again.

Due to the outdated and backward laws of the Qing Dynasty, they are completely unable to meet the needs of modern countries in this era, but the various new laws formulated in imitation of Western countries have only been partially promulgated, so that there are still quite a lot of legal loopholes and vacancies.

In this case, the Chinese Empire has now adopted a compromise approach, which is to adopt a variety of administrative regulations instead.

For example, since the industrial and commercial law, which is very important for the development of industrial and commercial affairs in the empire, has not yet been officially promulgated, there are only sporadic company laws, tax laws, and the like, so when dealing with industrial and commercial affairs, most of them are currently managed by some administrative regulations promulgated by the Ministry of Industry and Commerce itself.

Interestingly, when the Ministry of Justice formulates relevant laws, it will also make great reference to some of the regulations promulgated by the previous administrative departments, and add some of the important and necessary regulations to the newly drafted laws, and then become formal laws and regulations.

According to the estimates of the Ministry of Justice, it will take at least five years to complete the preparation of all relevant legal documents.

It is also worth mentioning that there is no 'constitution' in many laws and regulations. (To be continued......)