"In the past six months, our army has adopted a strategic defensive posture on both the Western Front and the Northern Front, launched several small and medium-sized offences locally, effectively controlled some areas, and suppressed the enemy's large-scale counteroffensive!" At the Imperial Strategic Conference, Chen Yuntao once again stood in front of a large domestic map to explain the current strategic situation of the empire.

"Beginning in the second half of last year, the First Army mobilized part of its forces to attack Tai'an, Qingzhou, Laizhou, Dengzhou and other areas in southeastern Shandong, and after three months of fierce fighting, it has captured nearly half of Shandong, forcing the main forces of the Qing army to retreat to the area around Jinanfu.

Later, due to the frequent activities of the twisted army in the Huaihe River area of Anhui, the First Army suspended the war in Shandong, transferred some troops of the Auxiliary Defense Army, and another reinforced infantry regiment of the Third Division of the Royal Army returned to defend northern Anhui, bringing together five auxiliary defense divisions and a reinforced regiment of the Royal Army to carry out large-scale sweeps in Fengyang Prefecture, Yingzhou Prefecture and other areas, and defeated more than 13,000 local irregular armed forces.

At present, the large-scale irregular armed forces in northern Anhui, including the Twist Army of various names, have been basically cleared, but at present, there are still some small-scale Twist troops in the region who have escaped the liquidation of our army and continue to be active in the region, because it is very necessary to continue to maintain a high-pressure situation in the northern Anhui region in the future.

At the same time, since last month, the First Army has launched the Henan offensive, and the current front-line troops, namely the Third Infantry Division, have advanced to the front line of Guide and Chenzhou, and have defeated more than 5,000 enemy troops. ”

As Chen Yuntao spoke, he used the command list in his hand to indicate the places in Shandong, northern Anhui, and Henan on the map. At the same time, the colonel of a staff department next to him also planted small flags representing various units in time, so that many senior generals in the conference room. In particular, it allows Lin Zhe to have a more intuitive understanding of the movements of the existing troops on the northern front!

"On the Western Front, the Fourth Army of our army for the past six months. In Jiujiang and Raozhou in northern Jiangxi and Huangzhou in southeastern Hubei, there were many battles with the Taiping Army and the Zhenhu Army, but due to the enemy's accumulation of a large number of troops in the above two places, and the extreme shortage of combat weapons of the Fourth Army, the results of the battle were relatively limited, and the two regions are still in a strategic confrontation situation.

In the border area between Fujian and Jiangxi, the overall situation has been stable for the past six months, and the Zhenhu army has not continued to advance eastward since it voluntarily withdrew from Shaowu in March, and in order to prevent the expansion of the war in the region. As a result, unnecessary troubles appeared, so the defenders in the Fujian direction did not take the initiative to attack Jiangxi. ”

After talking about the above directions, Chen Yuntao moved the command list and pointed to the direction of Guangdong!

"After the fall of Canton in June, we lost contact with the Third Army for a time, but then we regained information by land, and now we know that the Third Army, under the leadership of General Qu, was stationed in Huaxian and Conghua, and launched a counteroffensive against Zengcheng in July. Successfully recaptured the county. Now they are ready to try to launch a counterattack on the city of Guangzhou, but the details are still unknown! ”

It is different from the strength of the Chinese army in southern Jiangsu, which has as many as six main divisions alone, and is another battlefield between the British and French forces and the Chinese army. That is, the strength of the Chinese Army in Guangdong is much weaker, although it has the name of an army on the surface, but in fact the main force is only one tenth division that is not yet formed. This 10th Division suffered a lot of damage in the two battles of Canton, and its weapons and heavy weapons and equipment were lacking. At present, the division has less than 6,000 troops left.

Therefore, the Third Army's operations in Guangdong still relied more on the Auxiliary Defense Army. At present, the army has as many as five or more auxiliary defense divisions under its jurisdiction in Guangdong, Fujian, and other places, and the combat effectiveness of these auxiliary defense divisions is naturally worrisome, and basically there is no need to expect them to fight against the British and French forces, and most of their roles are used to control the localities and at the same time to fight against the Qing army and local armed forces on other fronts.

In fact, this is also the main role of the Chinese army's current many auxiliary defense forces, whether it is fighting with the British and French coalition forces, or with the Qing army's training army, or even the new army in the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom and Lin Chengting's Zhenhu army, the role of the current auxiliary defense force is getting lower and lower, because today's domestic battlefield can be said to have fully entered the era of line muskets.

For example, in a series of battles between the Chinese army and the Qing army in Shandong and Henan in the first half of the year, the main forces of the two sides were new-style armies equipped with muskets, and the Chinese army relied on two royal infantry divisions, while the Qing army relied on the newly built army in several towns.

As for the British and French forces, a large number of auxiliary defense forces in the Chinese army are even less useful, which can be seen from the fact that the Chinese army in Shanghai has never sent the auxiliary defense army to the front line, and the auxiliary defense force of the Chinese army is already seriously lagging behind the times, and it is of no great use at all.

Therefore, the Third Army fighting in the direction of Guangdong, only the 10th Infantry Division, which was able to fight against the coalition forces, was only 6,000 men left, and it was quite difficult to counterattack Guangzhou with this amount of troops, not to mention that the Third Army was far away from southern Jiangsu, although there was no need to worry about food and clothing, but it was more difficult to obtain the supply of artillery, guns, and ammunition.

The Third Army, which was struggling to supply weapons, even sent people to Foshan to let those traditional hand-iron-striking workshops make cannons and guns, and it was naturally impossible to see how advanced the performance was, but it was better than nothing.

"In our next strategic plan, the direction of Guangdong is to recover Guangzhou and conquer Hong Kong as the main core, and for this reason, Guangdong should be appropriately reinforced, including the reinforcement of troops and the supply of war materials."

However, although the war in the direction of Guangdong is also important, it is not the main thing for the entire imperial strategy, because now the main forces of the British and French forces have been defeated in Shanghai, and no matter how the Guangdong side fights, the end of the war will always be resolved through negotiations.

Therefore, although the Guangdong side may continue to fight with the Anglo-French coalition army, no matter whether it wins or loses, it will no longer affect the overall situation, and the current strategic focus of the empire should be shifted from the Anglo-French alliance to the Qing court in the north and the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom in the west.

"At present, the war in southern Jiangsu has been preliminarily concluded, and even if it is impossible to end the war with the British and French coalition forces through negotiations, but for at least a year, the coalition forces are not able to regroup their sufficient forces to launch a landing operation on Shanghai again, so in this case, we can transfer our precious forces to other directions, and take advantage of this time gap to conquer Henan, Shandong, Zhili and other regions in the north as soon as possible, and completely lay the foundation of the empire Kyushu!"

Chen Yuntao explained the current strategic situation in detail from all sides, and many subsequent generals had a long discussion on the follow-up strategic plan.

And Lin Zhe, who was sitting on the top, listened to their arguments, but his thoughts were already starting to fly.

Now that he has defeated the attack of the coalition forces and captured tens of thousands of their prisoners, there is no doubt that in this war with the British and French forces, he has won an undisputed victory, and then Lin Zhe does not think that the British and French forces will continue to mobilize troops to attack the Chinese Empire.

On the one hand, they are powerless, and the number of troops that Britain and France can draw in Asia is not unlimited, and the 30,000 troops before this are basically the upper limit of the troops they can draw, and if they want to draw more troops, unless they don't want India and these colonies in South Asia, so as to transfer all their troops to China, and this kind of thing is impossible to think about with your toes.

This is not to say that the British and French, especially the British, did not have so many troops, or that they could not solve the long transport distance to launch an expedition, but that the British were now facing other more important troubles.

Now the most important thing for the British is the Indian uprising, now the Indian uprising has spread to the entire Indian region, a large number of Indian princes and nobles, the former East India Company Indian troops joined the rebellion, this uprising not only directly led to the financial bankruptcy of the East India Company, forced the company to give up the administrative rights of India, in exchange for the British mainland reinforcements.

The Indian uprising also dragged at least 50,000 or 60,000 British troops and more than 200,000 East India Company troops in recent years.

Under such a grim situation in India, it was already very reluctant for the British to send 20,000 or 30,000 people to China for an expedition to labor, and it was basically impossible to think of more, unless they did not want to keep India, the jewel in the crown of the British Queen.

The French, who were far inferior to the British, were simply unable to independently assemble twenty or thirty thousand troops in the Far East to attack China.

In addition to their difficult situation, Lin Zhe also believed that through a battle of Shanghai, it was enough for them to clearly understand that China was no longer the China of more than ten years ago, and the Chinese Empire was not comparable to the Manchu Qing Dynasty.

If they still want to send troops to attack, how many troops do they need to send to have a chance of winning? Thirty thousand? Definitely not enough, fifty thousand? It's very reluctant, and it is estimated that it will be at least 780,000 or even more than 100,000 to be more sure.

But if it takes more than 70,000 or 80,000 troops to defeat the Chinese Empire, let's not mention whether they have this ability, even if they can gather such a huge force, but what can they get? How many treaty ports are there? An indemnity of several million taels of silver?

Isn't this a big loss, with this spare money to use 70,000 or 80,000 troops to fight a war, how good it is for them to use it in other directions, such as fighting Russia, fighting the Ottomans, and even picking a random European country to fight the war can get more benefits than fighting China, can you run tens of thousands of kilometers to China and fight Lin Zhe? (To be continued......)