In 1857 in the Western calendar, the seventh year of Xianfeng in the Qing Dynasty, and the first year of Xuanwu in China.

At the end of February, Lin Zhe personally commanded tens of thousands of troops from Changzhou to Zhenjiang, and after recovering Danyang without bloodshed, he besieged Zhenjiang in early March.

The news that Lin Zhe led his army to send troops and besieged Zhenjiang soon reached Tianjing.

Although Shi Dakai, who had expected this, couldn't help frowning after learning the news, Shi Dakai was also deeply embarrassed in the face of the menacing Chinese army.

With Wu Ruxiao's 20,000 or 30,000 people, it is too difficult to hold Zhenjiang!

And once Zhenjiang is lost, then Tianjing will directly face the front of the Chinese army, and then it will not even be the situation of Tianjing being besieged as in previous years, but a complete failure if it is not done well.

But if reinforcements are sent, Shi Dakai is also quite worried about whether the Chinese army in the direction of Lishui will take the opportunity to go north, in case he sends too many reinforcements, it is estimated that Lin Anfei will directly lead the troops north to Tianjing City.

And if there is less pie, it is easy to be eaten!

In a dilemma, Shi Dakai hesitated for two days, but the general queen still chose to send reinforcements to rescue Zhenjiang, he couldn't sit back and watch Zhenjiang fall, in that case, Tianjing would have nothing to defend.

On March 7, Li Xiucheng, who led the army back to Tianjing from southern Anhui, was personally ordered by Shi Dakai, leading 10,000 people from his headquarters and 10,000 people from Shi Dakai to rescue Zhenjiang.

Before sending troops, in order to encourage the morale of the rescue generals, Hong Xiuquan wantonly made a general, named Li Xiu a loyal king, and appointed him as the general of the five armies.

When Li Xiucheng led his army out of Tianjing with Shi Dakai's high hopes and entered Zhenjiang in the east.

Many of the Yu Shengjun scouts on the periphery of Tianjing also began to run wildly, conveying the news of Tianjing's reinforcements to the Chinese army generals in Lishui, Zhenjiang and other places.

In the direction of Lishui, Lin Anfei sighed after listening to the report of the detective cavalry: "This Shi Langyi is really like a god!" ”

As early as the day before yesterday, he had already received an edict from Lin Zhe from Zhenjiang, ordering him to prepare to send troops to Tianjing, asking him to intercept the second reinforcements that Tianjing might send, and create favorable conditions for the troops sent from Zhenjiang to annihilate the Tianjing reinforcements.

In this way, he knew very well that before the reinforcements were sent from Tianjing, more than 10,000 troops had already been divided into the Zhenjiang direction to march westward, preparing to annihilate the reinforcements sent from the Tianjing direction.

Although this series of battle plans was personally ordered by Lin Zhe and formulated and planned by the nominal Joint Staff, the high-ranking generals of the Chinese Army knew that these plans were all made by Shi Langyi alone.

Now that I saw that the thief army in the direction of Tianjing had indeed sent reinforcements, and the number of reinforcements sent was almost the same as Shi Langyi expected, that is, 20,000 people.

Even Lin Anfei, who is arrogant, has to admit that among the generals of the Chinese army, Shi Langyi's strategic talent is still the most outstanding.

If he hadn't had a trace of illusion about the Manchu Qing two years ago and hadn't rebelled with Lin Zhe in despair, I'm afraid that Shi Langyi's status in the Chinese Empire would far surpass that of Lin Anfei, Xu Yanqing and others, and it would not be impossible for him to become the de facto commander of the whole army.

It is no wonder that when there was such a talented person last year, His Majesty did not hesitate to kill other people who opposed or even hesitated slightly, but he was open to this Shi Langyi and even re-accepted him.

Although the current Lin Anfei is unwilling, he obediently follows Shi Langyi's plan to prepare to send troops to Tianjing!

On the same day, Lin Anfei was the commander of the second division to leave Lishui and go north to Tianjing, although his second division only had a scale of 10,000 people, but its combat effectiveness was also ranked among the top in the Yu Sheng army, and the actual combat strength may not be as good as the first division, but it is definitely much stronger than the third division, the fourth division, the fifth division, etc.

Its core was naturally the former Second Mixed Regiment, and later when it was reorganized into the Second Division, two auxiliary defense regiments were added, and some backbone officers and non-commissioned officers were transferred from other regular armies of the Yusheng Army to form the Second Division.

It has three regular infantry regiments, a full-fledged baggage regiment, an artillery battalion with three artillery companies, and a cavalry company. The total strength of the division was about 8,500 men.

Although the total strength is not large, the actual combat effectiveness is not bad, and it is much stronger than the hastily formed new unit of the Fifth Division.

When Lin Anfei led the Second Division north to Tianjing, in Xiaqiao Township, 30 kilometers west of Zhenjiang, Shi Qingxuan led the 3rd Division of the headquarters of 10,000 people, and the 3rd Defense Division of 4,000 people, a total of 14,000 troops stationed here.

After learning that the 20,000 reinforcements sent by Tianjing were indeed sent by the scouts, Shi Qingxuan's brows showed joy, they really came!

When he led the army west from Zhenxi, he was still worried that Shi Langyi's prediction would be wrong, and he ran for nothing, but now that the Taiping thief army has really appeared, then it will be worth his two days of sleeping in the open.

"Order, let the scouts pay close attention to the movements of the thief army, the whole army will continue to rest, and the baggage regiment will assist the artillery regiment in building artillery positions."

Shi Qingxuan didn't plan to fight an ambush operation, in fact, the distance from Zhenjiang to Nanjing is the terrain of the plain along the river, and the open terrain is almost unobstructed, so there is no ambush at all, after all, the Taiping army is not stupid, and it will also send a large number of scouts to search, you may be able to hide a few hundred and one thousand, but more than 14,000 people can't hide at all.

Since he couldn't fight the ambush, he simply put on a posture, chose the battlefield in advance, built an artillery position, and had a face-to-face field battle with the Taiping army!

The reason why he chose Xiaqiao Township as the preset battlefield was because Xiaqiao Township was just in the middle of the Yangtze River and the Ningzhen Mountain Range, and the straight-line distance from the Yangtze River to the foot of the Ningzhen Mountain Range was only eight kilometers.

And when the time comes, as long as he swings the army to the middle of the eight-kilometer straight-line distance, that is, Xiaqiao Township, those Taiping reinforcements must defeat themselves if they want to pass through Guò safely, otherwise they don't want to pass safely.

If the Taiping army is afraid and enters the Ningzhen Mountains early, then they will retreat ten kilometers to the area of Mahu Township and then intercept and fortify, then they will march from the mountains and hills, and they will march on the plains, unless there is a miracle, otherwise it is impossible for the Taiping reinforcements to bypass themselves and go straight to Zhenjiang.

Although he thought that he had made all kinds of preparations, and also expected that the Taiping reinforcements might enter the Ningzhen Mountain Range to march, he still underestimated Li Xiucheng's boldness.

A day later, he received news from the reconnaissance cavalry that the 20,000 Taiping reinforcements suddenly turned south fifty miles away from Tianjing!

Another day later, he received an urgent battle report, Jurong was attacked by tens of thousands of enemy troops, and nearly 1,000 soldiers of the Chinese Army Auxiliary Defense Regiment stationed in Jurong were defeated by the wolf Bèi and retreated south.

After looking at this battle report, Shi Qingxuan frowned: The thief army actually attacked Jurong, what do they want to do?

While talking to himself, he looked at the map, and after a while, he set his eyes on Danyang: "It's not good, these thieves are not going to Zhenjiang, they are going to Danyang!" ”

"Immediately give the order to the whole army to march, and we will immediately go south!"

Just when Shi Qingxuan hurriedly led the army out of Xiaqiao Township, and then went south!

In Jurong City, Li Xiucheng turned over and got on his horse in high spirits: "Let's go, let's go to Jintan!" ”

A military commander next to him asked suspiciously, "Aren't we going to Danyang and then attack the back of Lin Zhe's demon army?" ”

Li Xiucheng shook his head: "There are 40,000 or 50,000 Lin Zhe's demon army under Zhenjiang City, can I relieve the siege of Zhenjiang by waiting for 20,000 people?" ”

"Difficult!" The general replied.

"It's not difficult, it's impossible!" Li Xiucheng said: "In this case, then why do we still have to do this useless work and take the initiative to send it to death!" ”

"Then why did we go to Jintan?" The bystander asked again.

Li Xiucheng said: "Siege Wei to save Zhao!" ”

"In this battle, Lin Zhe led tens of thousands of demon troops to besiege Zhenjiang, almost pouring out of the nest, its nest must be empty, as long as we lead the army directly into Changzhou, Suzhou, and then east into Shanghai, do you say Lin Zhe will be indifferent?"

"How is it possible, southern Jiangsu, especially the Susongtai region, is the foundation of his Lin Zhe, if we know that we are going to Shanghai, I am afraid that we will be angry! However, I am afraid that we will not be able to hide it from them as we advance eastward, so what if they send multiple armies to intercept them? ”

Li Xiucheng smiled: "If they divide their troops to intercept us and others, won't the siege of Zhenjiang be solved?" ”

As Shi Langyi, who formulated a series of encirclement and reinforcement battle plans within the Chinese army, although he expected that the Taiping Heavenly Congress would send reinforcements from Tianjing, he did not expect that Li Xiucheng did not plan to directly rescue Zhenjiang, but instead played the siege of Wei to save Zhao, and directly waved his troops eastward from Jurong and Jintan.

At this time, Lin Zhe, who was outside Zhenjiang City, didn't know that Li Xiucheng had directly aimed at Jintan, and now he had a headache in Zhenjiang City, a city like a turtle shell run by the Taiping Army.

In addition to following the example of the Chinese army to establish a new army, they also thought of many ways to offset the firepower advantage of the Yu Sheng army, one of the most important points is to dig all kinds of trench fortresses, and the soldiers usually hide in the trench fortresses, allowing the Chinese army to bombard a large number of artillery, even if they suffer heavy casualties, they can't take the initiative and meet the battle.

However, when the commander of the Chinese army thought that there was no enemy left on the bombed city walls, and sent soldiers to attack, often after the Chinese soldiers entered, a large number of Taiping soldiers would emerge, and then hand-to-hand combat would inevitably break out between the two sides.

After a few days of fighting, the Chinese army has lost more than 500 soldiers of the Auxiliary Defense Army, although these soldiers of the Auxiliary Defense Army were originally used as cannon fodder, but Lin Zhe is not willing to let them lose in vain without reaping any results.

Regarding the turtle defense strategy of the Taiping Army, Lin Zhe had no choice but to use a few old methods, one was to let the soldiers start digging tunnels, preparing to dig tunnels and blow up their city walls directly into the sky.

The second is to build many high platforms, so that the soldiers with good marksmanship are condescending, and then hunt and kill the Taiping soldiers in the trenches, those Taiping soldiers hiding in the trenches can not hide well forever, they will always accidentally show their bodies, at this time the Chinese soldiers with the 1856 Linde rifle can shoot them one by one.

The above two are only auxiliary means, and the most important thing is the shelling! (To be continued.) )