"Looks like I'm going to have to go back!" Li Yongji, who thought about it carefully, suddenly said, "If it goes on like this, the country will really be chaotic!" ”

Indeed, according to Li Yongji's thoughts just now, this situation is indeed very dangerous, even if it cannot shake the foundation of Li Yongji's rule for the time being, after all, the army is still under Li Yongji's control, but if this continues, it will definitely hinder the country's economic development.

"Master, don't worry." Soho immediately persuaded, "The details of the domestic situation have not yet been transmitted, and things may not be as you imagined just now, and besides, we can't do without you for the time being, after all, we are now facing off with the two legions of the Northern Army." ”

The two legions mentioned by Soho are the Virginia Legion and the James River Legion of the Northern Army.

Originally, there was only one unit of the Virginia Regiment of the Northern Army near Smithland, but later, after the fall of Nashville, in order to prevent the Virginia Legion from being eaten, Lincoln-You-You-Small-Said-More-New-Fastest-WWW.UUXS.CC-Urgently ordered the James River Corps to move westward and merge with the Virginia Legion, thus forming a huge corps, and then slowly retreating in the form of mutual cover.

The purpose of this is very simple, that is, to withdraw the Virginia Legion as completely as possible, because originally this legion attacked Smithland in order to open up the communication line with Nashville and rescue Nashville, but now that Nashville has fallen, there is no point in continuing to attack Smithland.

You must know that this place in Smithland is nothing except for the intersection of the Ohio River and the Cumberland River, which has a certain strategic position, and the federal army does not have water superiority, and its own naval fleet cannot defeat the Chinese task force at all, so it is very unwise to fight along the river.

Of course, the biggest reason is that Smithland's Chinese are too capable of fighting, although the number of these Chinese is not large. But the firepower is too powerful, if everyone was not clear before, but an unexpected incident that happened not long ago made the Americans silent about the combat power of the Chinese.

The incident was five days ago, when a 24-member Chinese mobile patrol team accidentally got lost while carrying out its daily patrol, and then encountered a cavalry battalion of the US army on the way.

After that, the team of twenty-four people did not take advantage of the speed of the car to leave immediately, but outnumbered them far more than themselves. A cavalry battalion totaling more than three hundred men charged.

Twenty-four against three hundred, according to normal terms, the side with more people has an advantage, but the final result surprised the Americans, because the Chinese won the encounter, and not only won, but also won quite beautifully.

In that encounter, only four of the 24 Chinese were slightly wounded, and none of them died. But the cavalry battalion of 300 men suffered heavy casualties!

In hindsight, the cavalry battalion had fifty-one casualties in that clash that lasted less than an hour. Thirty-two were seriously injured and one hundred and six were lightly wounded!

With such heavy casualties, it can be said that this cavalry battalion was almost disabled, and it is especially shocking. The battle between the two sides, which actually hedged each other, ended in just twenty minutes. In other words, the actual battle between the two sides lasted only twenty minutes. Then the Americans collapsed, and for the time since, the Chinese have been chasing the Americans, and more than two-thirds of the casualties have almost all occurred in the pursuit battle.

Those who escaped their lives afterwards once recounted what happened, and the information they provided was quite consistent, that is, the Chinese firepower was too fierce, although there were only twenty-four people, there were six cars (the English word for car had appeared at this time), and each car had machine guns, plus those soldiers were also armed with automatic weapons, when fighting, the bullets were as impenetrable as splashing water, and their first wave of charging people were knocked down by these machine guns.

In addition to the machine gun, they also had a small rapid-fire mortar gun (a 60-mm mortar on board, one equipped for a reconnaissance team), and they determined that the Chinese had only one gun, but the density of fire from this gun exceeded that of an artillery regiment.

During the battle, the Chinese used cars as cover, and then the front machine gun fire, the rear mortar bombardment, in which the artillery fire was in the middle of the Americans, the purpose was to block the follow-up charge of the American cavalry battalion, and because of the blocking of artillery fire, the number of troops leading the front charge was insufficient to break through the opponent's machine gun fire, and finally everyone fell under this combined strangulation of machine gun and artillery fire.

This cavalry battalion, a reconnaissance battalion belonging to the Virginia Legion, was originally not known for firepower, but for speed, so the weapons were all carbines and revolvers, which greatly shortened the firing distance of this unit, and the actual effective firing distance was sixty meters, which could not confront the Chinese with a firing distance of more than six hundred meters.

In fact, according to the accounts of the survivors, when the Chinese were discovered, the troops of the cavalry battalion had not yet moved, remembering the commander's orders and trying not to clash with the Chinese. It was the Chinese who took the lead in the attack.

After being attacked, the battalion commander gave the order to charge and teach the Chinese a lesson, after all, everyone could see each other at that time, and a little calculation knew that the Chinese were far fewer than themselves.

Who knows that because of this rash charge, the Americans paid the price of blood, but in the end it was found that it was wrong, and when they began to retreat spontaneously, the Chinese drove after them decisively, and finally the organized retreat turned into a real rout, and finally there was such a contrasting result.

Fortunately, the commander of the Virginia Regiment is now Burnside, this guy is an inventor himself, and he has studied firearms very thoroughly, so after carefully inquiring about the incident, he quickly understood that the failure was not to blame those American boys, but that the difference in weapons between the two sides was too great.

As early as before, because the Americans and the Chinese would lose every battle, the Americans also collected a lot of battlefield numbers.

For various reasons, Americans are still unwilling to admit that their soldiers are inferior to Chinese soldiers, so most of them agree that the reason why the US army cannot defeat the Chinese is not that the soldiers are inferior to the other side, but that the weapons are inferior to the other side, and the Chinese are fighting with better weapons, especially the advantages of machine guns and ironclad vehicles.

The so-called battlefield is the best test. It is precisely because of the great achievements of the Chinese that the United States of America began to pay attention to the new weapon of machine guns, for which various machine gun shots emerged in an endless stream, but in general, the modified version of the Gatling machine gun was the most popular.

The so-called modified Gatling gun, the main structure is no different from the Gatling gun, the so-called revision, mainly refers to the ammunition, no cloth fixed ammunition is used. Instead, a metal cartridge case with a metal cartridge plate was used.

The so-called metal cartridge shell refers to the copper shell used for the cartridge case, and this invention is the idea and technology provided by General Bernside, as for the metal cartridge plate, it refers to the fixing sheet of these metal cartridge shells fixed on a metal plate, forming a plate magazine, and then the cartridge is directly inserted into the Gatling machine gun, and the handle is shaken through guò to achieve continuous fire.

Although limited by technical reasons. A veneer can only hold 15 copper-shelled bullets, and the magazine must be reloaded after the shot, but this is already a lot more advanced than the original Gatling gun, both in terms of rate of fire and power. Both are much more powerful than the original Gatling gun.

This Gatling gun proved to be much better than other machine guns, but the structure was more complex, especially the bullets. It has to be made by hand little by little, so the output is not high, and it will be before this official appearance. Only twenty-four were produced in total, and in terms of use, the Americans continued to make the inertial mistake of using machine guns as artillery, forming a special machine gun regiment and using them in a centralized manner, rather than mixing them with the infantry.

However, because when this machine gun was officially installed, the Anglo-French forces in Boston had just started their western offensive to cooperate with the Northern Virginia Army of the Union Army, and the ultimate goal of these two forces was Washington!

Therefore, in order to resist the imminent threat, these machine guns were not immediately sent to the most eager western battlefield, not to the Virginia Regiment in Burnside, but to the Shenandoya River Legion first, and shined in the battle against the British and French forces.

In a place called Starlight Town, a corps of the Shenandoah River Corps encountered three corps of the Anglo-French coalition, and everyone fought in this inconspicuous town.

In this encounter, the U.S. army was the defending side, and the Anglo-French forces were the attacking side.

In order to deal with the threat of the British and French forces, the US commander organized troops to resist head-on, and on the other hand, he concentrated the Mala-Gatling machine gun regiment, cooperated with a cavalry division, and went around the British and French forces from the rear to the flank, and then used the cooperation of cavalry and machine guns to tilt fire on the British and French forces without any cover.

Because of this Gatling gun regiment, the American cavalry division that originally lacked offensive power became extremely strong, and almost no unit could block the attack of this army head-on, and as a result, this unit was interspersed back and forth, crushing the right flank of the British and French forces at once, and by the way, an artillery regiment was eliminated, shaking the entire offensive front of the British and French forces.

At this moment, the commander of the US army decisively launched a counterattack, led the troops from a defensive posture to an offensive posture, and with the help of strong morale, with a single blow, relying on the strength of only one army, the British and French forces in the front three armies were completely defeated, creating a so-called great victory in Starlight Town.

Of course, in all fairness, this great victory did not rely only on the machine gun factor, but also on other factors, such as the Anglo-French forces had a heavy problem of command and coordination, although there were two armies, but they did not belong to each other.

Among them, among the three armies, the French had two armies, the British had one corps, and the British army was more elite, and although the two armies of the French were more numerous, their combat effectiveness was actually inferior to that of the British.

Coupled with the feud between the British and the French, when the Americans defeated an army of the French for the first time, the British were obviously close at hand, but they did not go to the rescue.

In the end, the French were violently beaten by the American army that fell into a state of full-scale rage because they were equipped with new weapons and because of their patriotism to defend their homeland, and finally collapsed, and then a chain reaction was formed, and the other French army did not support the retreat, and finally the general trend was achieved, and the British saw that the situation was not good, and they also ran away in advance, which led to the situation of one American army and one army, and the three armies of the Anglo-French coalition army.

In this battle, although the Gatling gun was very powerful, because the number was too small and the method of use was wrong, the intimidation effect was greater than the actual significance, and this intimidation was only a short-term intimidation, and the British and French forces only had to settle down. A little higher morale, a little more resolute in combat, and a little better cooperation, in fact, it is very difficult to fail, so the biggest reason for the defeat is that the British and French armies do not deal with each other, and they tear each other down at a critical time.

But in any case, victory is victory, and because the soldiers in front are full of praise for the Gatling gun, everyone has confidence in the Gatling gun. And this kind of information naturally reached the ears of Burnside, who had personally participated in the design and was most eager for this gun.

As a designer who has participated in it, and has heard a lot of rapid-fire machine gun results, so that Burnside is very superstitious about machine gun weapons, thinking that this kind of thing is an epoch-making weapon that changes the war, and the side without machine guns will be difficult to deal with the side with machine guns, so Burnside heard that the Chinese are equipped with a large number of machine guns. I didn't blame the commander of the cavalry battalion too much.

Strictly speaking, General Bernside was not wrong in defining the machine gun, which was indeed an epoch-making weapon, because it made the traditional line infantry charge and cavalry charge tactics a thing of the past.

As Burnside himself said. No army can attack an enemy with a large number of machine guns head-on, and that would not be a war. It's sending people to death, it's a complete slaughter.

It is precisely because he has this sober understanding that he has not taken the initiative to find trouble with the Chinese before. did not take the initiative to attack Smithland, and vigorously urged the rear to revise the Gatling gun. And after hearing about this exchange of disparity in the encounter, he did not become angry and angry, but decisively ordered the defensive line to be contracted, and let the whole army dig six more trenches, digging the entire front into a spider web, hoping to rely on this to block the advance of the Chinese, and himself, after the arrival of the James River Army, began to retreat slowly.

The so-called slow retreat is to rely on the advantage of their own strong troops, to present the troops in a stepped division, and to dig trench positions in advance in the rear, and when the positions are dug well, the troops in the front will withdraw to the trench positions in the rear, and the part of the troops that dig positions in the rear will continue to retreat to the rear, and continue to dig trenches after a certain distance, and then repeat the cycle, so that the troops can always have trench protection in the process of retreating.

In this way, the retreat of the troops was greatly slowed down, but the safety was greatly improved, because Burnside engaged in this way, so that Li Yongji's motor vehicles could not pass smoothly, or in other words, in the face of the ground with trenches and traps everywhere, except for tracked armored vehicles and ordinary wheeled vehicles, it was difficult to quickly pass through in a short time, which basically achieved the purpose of Burnside's blocking the Chinese.

Of course, Burnside was too cautious, in fact, Li Yongji in Smithland was not interested in continuing to attack at all, not because he couldn't, but because he didn't want to, after all, the bullets and shells still had fuel or something, but it was all money, no benefit, so he didn't want to continue fighting.

It was precisely because the Americans were retreating that Li Yongji had the heart to inquire about domestic affairs, and the result was good, and he gave Li Yongji a heavy blow at once.

"Hmph, what two legions, in my opinion, they are all chickens and dogs." Li Yongji said disdainfully, "I'm too lazy to deal with them, otherwise, do you think they can escape in front of my motorized troops with their wave of old-fashioned front-loading guns?" ”

"But no matter what, they still have a lot of them." Soho said, "Moreover, we are alone here, everything depends on you, the master, once you leave, what can the troops do?" To whom will rule it? ”

"Well, that's a real problem." Li Yongji nodded.

Indeed, Li Yongji was not worried about who would lead the troops instead of him, he was worried about the supply problem.

As Soho said, they are indeed alone now, most of the surrounding places are enemy territory, and the troops of the Dream Division have a great need for logistics, and they all rely on Li Yongji's golden finger to advance wildly.

Then, once Li Yongji hastily leaves, even if there will be no problems with the troops for the time being, once there are several fierce battles, the ammunition will soon be unable to be replenished, not to mention that without him, there will be no continuous supply of fuel, and the mobility of the entire motorized unit will be greatly affected, and it will be impossible to maintain mobility.

"Okay, then listen to you." Li Yongji nodded, "Let's wait and see for the time being, and wait for the detailed news from the country to come over." ”

Speaking of this, Li Yongji spoke again: "Also, you're right, we're a little too deep, it's completely unnecessary, especially when Nashville has already been breached." So, starting tomorrow, we're going to retreat too. ”

"Where to retreat?" Soho asked knowingly, "Are you going back to Memphis?" ”

"No, let's go to Cairo first." Li Yongji said, "That place is close to the Mississippi River, and it's much bigger than here...... Well, let's go there to rest first, and wait for the news from the country by the way, and when the news is confirmed, if I really have to go back, I will bring the troops back to Memphis. (To be continued......) R1292