Liu Changyou and Li Hongzhang have actually known each other for a long time, but there were not many communication opportunities in the past, and everyone only met a few times, but Liu Changyou left a pretty good impression on Li Hongzhang.

In the past, when Li Hongzhang served under Zeng Guofan, he was modest and cautious on the surface, but he was actually quite proud in his bones, which means that few people could put it in his eyes, and Liu Changyou happened to be one of the few people he looked at in his eyes.

In Li Hongzhang's view, Liu Changyou is a cautious person who uses troops and strives to be safe, thinking that his code is stable and stable, and there is no gap in the attack, and he never fights uncertain battles.

Moreover, he is also very good at training, such as the famous Chu Yong, although Jiang Zhongyuan was the first to found, but he was really able to become an army, but he was all tested by Liu Changyou. In other words, Chu Yong was almost trained by Liu Changyou back then.

Although Chu Yong is not as famous as Xiang Yong, it is mainly because Chu Yong is too small in number and his weapons and equipment are too poor.

In the history books of another time and space, the Hunan army is not the same as Xiang Yong, because the Xiang army is actually the collective name after merging Xiang Yong and Chu Yong, in other words, the real elite in the Hunan army, the old foundation is from Chu Yong, and half of the prestige of the Hunan army is based on Chu Yong.

In this time and space, because of Li Yongji's strong rise, Chu Yong has not had time to merge into the Hunan army, and Xiang Yong has not had much of a bright spot, and has been defeated again and again. On the contrary, Chu Yong had fought with the Taiping army in the early days, and his combat effectiveness was obvious to all, so Chu Yong's prestige was stronger than that of Xiang Yong, just because he was too poor and his weapons and equipment were too poor. The number of people is small, which seems to be not as big as Xiang Yong.

However, Li Hongzhang's view of Liu Changyou is still relatively one-sided, at most he thinks that he is humble and easy to get along with, and he also has a set of military training, but the combat is too steady and rigid, so he doesn't think it's too unusual, and gives him a comment on a good general, not a famous general. It shows that Li Hongzhang has reservations about him.

When Li Hongzhang commented on the characters with his younger brother, he thought that Liu Changyou was a talent who was an assistant and an assistant, rather than a talent who could take charge of himself, and in terms of leading troops to fight, he felt that he was worse than Zeng Guoquan, Peng Yulin and others.

However, Li Yongji is different, Li Yongji looks at people according to the history books of later generations, and the history books of later generations are usually based on the actions of the characters in their lives, which is a bit of a coffin. Then Tong Guò's later actions are still relatively accurate in comparison, at least more accurate than Li Hongzhang's.

That is, Li Yongji looked at Liu Changyou's historical career, especially what he did later. He made an exception to promote him to the State Council as the director of the Operations Division, and agreed to let him command the first corps of the Wehrmacht, if not for anything else, but because he valued his ability to control the overall situation. and handsome people who coordinate the interpersonal relationships of all parties.

You must know that Li Yongji is a person in modern society after all, although he has never been a soldier in modern society. But so much relevant information is enough for him to be a pseudo-army fan.

In Li Yongji's view, fighting in a large corps and fighting in a small corps are two different concepts. In small corps operations, such as at the battalion company and platoon level, the personal bravery of the generals is indeed very important, because it can greatly stimulate morale, but at the division level, there are more people under the control, and then playing with the situation is irresponsible to the soldiers.

That is to say, once the strength rises to a certain point, once it exceeds 30,000, the test of the commander is not personal bravery, but coordination ability and overall situation, in other words, stability.

Obviously, Liu Changyou's experience shows that although he uses troops steadily and has no characteristics, he is very good at dealing with interpersonal relationships between people with different personalities, and can integrate the strength of different people very well, and the overall situation is also good, not only good at using soldiers, but also good at internal affairs and anti-affairs, and will use various methods to assist him in using troops, which is similar to General Eisenhower of the US Army in World War II.

The Chinese Empire seems to be powerful, but only Li Yongji himself knows that the foundation of the empire is quite unstable, and it only relies on his own golden fingers.

The biggest problem is that the time for the army to become an army is too short, there are no very good handsome people in the army, most of them are still those guys who can only rush and kill, if it weren't for the new weapons that Li Yongji got and the abundant funds obtained by using the golden finger, he would definitely not have been able to get to the point where he is in such a short time.

Therefore, the most lacking thing in the Chinese Empire now is talent, Li Yongji used to think about relying on his own training, but now it seems that because the country was founded too early, the talent reserve of the director is too small, so he began to pay attention to promoting those former Qing officers and officials who have left their names in history, Li Hongzhang is like this, Liu Changyou is also like this.

Now it seems that at least in the military circles, Liu Changyou and Shi Dakai are the two senior officers that Li Yongji values the most, and they are planned to be trained by being handsome, and others like Feng Zicai, Zuo Zongtang, Chen Yucheng and others, although they are not small in reputation and have good abilities, they are slightly inferior to Liu Changyou and Shi Dakai.

Of course, at least for now, the people promoted by Li Yongji are not bad, needless to say, Shi Dakai fought against the Manchu Qing Dynasty, pacified Korea, swept Japan, no matter what position he put in, he could solve the battle smoothly at the lowest cost.

Liu Changyou is also very good, although his reputation is not as good as Shi Dakai, but during his time in the Ministry of National Defense's training department, he has done a good job of pacifying the generals at all levels, and the correspondence assessment of senior officers presided over by him has also been carried out quite well, and the final result is that the national defense force, which is huge in number and from complex sources, has slightly risen to a higher level in overall strength, and these are all related to Liu Changyou's overall planning and coordination ability.

In other words, after the Ministry of National Defense was created, it was precisely because of Liu Changyou's joining that it could run so quickly and freely, otherwise, I don't know when it will be normal.

In fact, the reason why Li Yongji made Liu Changyou the commander of the Japanese dispatch army this time was also to give him the opportunity to make meritorious contributions, because Li Yongji had long wanted to promote Liu Changyou to the position of vice minister of national defense, but unfortunately his merits were too small after all, and his qualifications were not high, so it was difficult for him to convince the public, so he was given this opportunity.

In other words, as long as Liu Changyou has made enough contributions in Japan to be able to gag others' mouths, Li Yongji will soon make him vice minister of national defense. When he becomes familiar with the rules of the new government, there is a good chance that the future defense minister will also be his.

Li Hongzhang didn't know that Liu Changyou was actually Jian Zaidi's heart, but he knew that as the first commander of the National Defense Army, Liu Changyou, who also defected over, must also have a backstage, otherwise it would be impossible to get this good errand. Moreover, Li Hongzhang guessed without authorization that Liu Changyou's backstage must also be Shen Shiming, so according to the saying of this era, they should be one faction.

Perhaps because of this, Li Hongzhang was very polite to Liu Changyou and spoke more tactfully. The clouds and mountains and fog covered it in a big circle before he made his intentions clear.

Fortunately, Liu Changyou also reads poetry and books, and although he himself doesn't like to go around in circles, he has a good ability to understand going around in circles, so he quickly understood what Li Hongzhang meant.

"I see, the envoy is trying to deal with the rebellion of the Choshu Domain, but there are no reinforcements in the country, so you are a little worried about relying on the strength of our Japanese dispatch alone. Can't do your best, or the loss is too big to explain, isn't it? ”

"Pretty much." Li Hongzhang nodded and sighed. "This country of Japan is not small, but the people are strong, if they can't be stopped while they are not rising, it will take time. It will inevitably become a big problem for my country, so I have to go to great lengths to raise a new general, just to be able to control Japan more peacefully. Faster and better use of the resources here for my use.

However, now that the people of the Choshu Domain have made trouble, the prestige of the shogunate has been greatly lost, and it is a question whether it can even survive, so I hope that the shogun can send troops to sweep the Choshu Domain and put out the momentum of this rebellion in time. ”

"Well, what Master Li said is right." Liu Changyou also nodded, and agreed, "The so-called spark can set the prairie on fire, and this Changzhou Domain is the source of that spark, as long as we can do our best to extinguish this source, although I dare not say that it can immediately stabilize the position of the shogunate, but at least it will give us more time to react." ”

"Heroes see the same thing." Li Hongzhang smiled, "Then I don't know if General Liu can be sure to sweep away the Changzhou Domain in time?" ”

"It depends on what you mean, my lord." Liu Changyou paused slightly, and then said, "If you want to completely occupy the Changzhou Domain, in its current form, it is impossible without 100,000 people. But if it was just to wipe out the resistance of the Choshu Domain, or to end the rule of the Mori family in the Choshu Domain, it would be simple, and a small fleet of the Marine Division and the East China Sea Fleet would be sufficient. ”

"Oh?" Hearing Liu Changyou say these words so calmly, Li Hongzhang was also slightly surprised.

Li Hongzhang could not be surprised, not to mention a single marine division, with the establishment of the Japanese dispatch army, even if it was full of non-staff personnel, it would not exceed 16,000 at most.

As for the detachment, it was a new establishment of the Imperial Chinese Navy, and generally speaking, three battleships plus five to eight auxiliary ships was a small fleet, and the three small fleets together were a small fleet, and the three small fleets together were a large fleet.

According to the establishment, the East China Sea Fleet is temporarily the size of a sub-fleet, and it is said that there should be three small fleets and nine battleships, but in fact, due to the problem of production capacity, the East China Sea Fleet only has seven battleships, that is, the size of two small fleets.

Of course, this is also related to the fact that the Empire's main energy is currently invested in the Americas, because most of the newly converted battleships are invested in escort operations, that is, escorting transport ships with a large number of soldiers to Hollywood, providing the greatest help for the upcoming intervention in the American Civil War, and it is estimated that it will take some time to complete the East China Sea Fleet stationed in Japan.

This kind of establishment is also based on the current situation of the Imperial Chinese Navy, because the Imperial Chinese Navy currently lacks capital ships, and in terms of numbers, it cannot be compared with the Western powers, but the Chinese Imperial Navy also has an advantage, that is, they have more technical advantages in a single warship, especially in artillery, which is far behind other countries.

It is precisely because the imperial naval artillery technology is stronger than that of other powers, and the warships of the Imperial Chinese Navy can fight farther, more accurately, and more ruthlessly than the warships of other countries, so in order to pursue cost performance, the warships of the imperial navy adopted a policy of partial modification when refitting those large clippers that they bought.

The so-called partial modification is to only modify the naval gun and install the steam engine propulsion system, and then add some modern electronic sighting equipment that can only be used by the captain, such as night vision devices, electronic compasses, radiolocators, etc., and others such as the addition of steel armor on the outside. It's all canceled.

That is to say, this kind of partial modification is only the pursuit of speed and firepower, no longer focusing on durability, and the tactics of naval warfare also pay attention to a long-distance artillery battle, which is commonly known as kite flying tactics, if it is not necessary, absolutely do not fight with the opponent in close quarters.

The reason for this, in addition to economic issues, is mainly after Li Yongji and Zhang Xinda discussed. Finding that since you have more powerful firepower and mobility, then in this era, there is no need to install iron armor, which is purely thankless.

You know, those bought clippers were originally made on the basis of wooden sailboats, not for ironclad ships. If the outside of these clippers is equipped with iron armor, it will inevitably lose seaworthiness, whether it is speed, load capacity or stability, etc., it will be greatly reduced, and compared with the benefits of installing iron armor. Almost negligible.

It is precisely because of this understanding that the follow-up Yuanzi-class battleships will only be equipped with artillery and steam engine power, and iron armor will no longer be installed outside. In other words, those Yuanzi-class battleships equipped with ironclad are probably only those ships of the task force.

That said, the workload of installing steam engines and artillery was not small. In addition, the formation of the East China Sea Fleet was too hasty, so the seven battleships of the East China Sea Fleet were only equipped with new guns with rotating turrets, but the steam engine power system was not added.

Other words. The seven main warships of the East China Sea Fleet are all pure sail warships made of wood, but they have stronger firepower, which can be regarded as a strengthened version of the sail warships with enhanced firepower.

However, the modification of artillery, of course, must be kept strictly secret, at least Li Hongzhang can't tell the truth inside, he only knows that the warships of the East China Sea Fleet are all sail warships bought by Westerners, not to mention ironclad, not even steam engines, and there are only ten artillery on one ship, which cannot be compared with the five ships of the original task force, how can he not be worried?

Of course, this is a misunderstanding, because Li Hongzhang does not understand naval warfare and does not understand ships, so he only thinks that a ship with a steam engine is good, and more artillery is stronger, but he does not know that the speed and firepower of a battleship depend on many factors.

In terms of speed, although the seven battleships of the East China Sea Fleet did not have steam engines, because they were not equipped with iron armor, the number of guns was also small, and the weight of the guides was greatly reduced, so the speed was actually not as fast as the five battleships of the task force, and only slightly inferior when it was against the wind, but that could actually be avoided by other methods.

In terms of artillery power, although the seven ships of the East China Sea Fleet were far inferior to the five ships of the task force in terms of the number of guns, the addition of rotating turrets and the absence of iron armor increased the stability of the guns, and in terms of accuracy, they were greatly improved.

You must understand that naval warfare is different from land warfare, even if the wind and waves are calm, even if the tonnage is large, there is a slight shaking, as long as the shaking is strong, the accuracy will be greatly reduced, even if you have good observation equipment, it will be in vain.

Actual combat shows that the five ships of the task force are fine when attacking large targets, such as directly attacking ground targets, but if they attack small targets at sea, their accuracy will be greatly reduced, because the stability is too poor.

The seven ships of the East China Sea Fleet, each with only ten guns, and a rotating turret, are much better stable than ironclad warships like the Pingyuan, and the improvement in accuracy is also quite obvious, so the effect of ten guns on one ship is not worse than that of thirty guns on one ship, or even slightly better.

In short, the seven ships of the East China Sea Fleet are inferior to the task force on the surface, but in terms of overall combat capability, they are actually on par with the task force, and they are all very good warships.

To say, Liu Changyou didn't understand it before, after all, he had only commanded the army before, and he didn't understand naval warfare, let alone ships. However, he was very studious, and he was very willing to make efforts to study the military materials provided by Li Yongji, especially in naval warfare, which he did not understand.

Moreover, since he became the commander of the Japanese Dispatch Army, he has looked for materials to study the situation in Japan, and he has understood the importance of naval warfare, so he has spent a lot of time studying and studying naval knowledge, and he has also paid attention to the opinions of the technical department, and he has also seen the effect of the East China Sea Fleet's warships firing during the exercises, so he is convinced of the power of his own warships.

In other words, Liu Changyou said that as long as there is a small fleet, three battleships will do, because he has strong confidence in the warships of the East China Sea Fleet, which is completely different from Li Hongzhang, a layman who does not know how to do it.

Sure enough, Li Hongzhang frowned slightly when he heard the other party holding him up, and he was slightly dissatisfied in his heart. If it weren't for the fact that the other party's status was very high, with the temper he had recently developed, he would probably be angry.

Of course he was angry, because he felt that this Liu Changyou somehow became a little arrogant, and actually said such a thing, after all, when the Four Nations Alliance interfered in the Changzhou Domain, there were dozens of warships dispatched, and there were a large number of steam ships, not stronger than your small East China Sea Fleet? What's more, you're talking about sending a detachment. That is, up to three main warships, such a force, plus a division, can deal with the Choshu Domain?

"General Liu." Thinking that everyone was colleagues after all, and it was estimated that they all belonged to the same camp, and they were all under Prime Minister Shen, so he still slowed down his tone, "Marching and fighting is not child's play!" Especially now! You know, the Choshu domain is in the limelight right now. If we don't do it, we have to win, otherwise it will only make things worse. Do you know that? ”

"Of course I do." Speaking of this, Liu Changyou immediately realized something, so he explained with a smile. "Master Li, don't you think I'm beyond my means? No, no, in fact, I say this for a reason. ”

"Oh? Then I'll listen to it. Li Hongzhang said.

"Huh." Liu Changyou smiled. "In fact, the battle of Xiaguan fought between the Choshu Domain and the Four-Nation Alliance, I have also been researching, and after the analysis of the intelligence I have gathered, this battle of Xiaguan is not so much that the Changshu Domain is strong and strong, or that there are some wise generals and brave generals who are geniuses, but that they are lucky."

"Luck?"

"Yes." Liu Changyou nodded, "No matter how you look at it, the overall size of the Four-Nation Alliance is far greater than that of the Changzhou Domain, but the Four-Nation Alliance is composed of the armies of the four countries, which are not subordinate to each other, and the government orders are different, so they are not satisfactory in terms of command.

To put it bluntly, the four-nation alliance is like a rabble in my opinion, and it is no problem to bully people in a good fight, but once they encounter a setback, they will immediately disperse, and the result is exactly like this. ”

"I've led soldiers too." Li Hongzhang frowned, "As General Liu said, the command of the four-nation alliance is indeed unknown, but in my opinion, the Changzhou Domain can win, it is not just luck, they are also supernatural in terms of using troops, at least the right time, place and people account for all three, so the failure of the four-nation alliance is not accidental." Although we are better than the Four-Nation Coalition in terms of command, if we encounter such an opponent, the outcome is unknown. ”

"Hehe, it seems so, but it's not." Liu Changyou shook his head, "Actually, although the Four-Nation Alliance made a lot of mistakes later, the biggest mistake was being too greedy. If they were not divided into troops, if they were not busy plundering, then it would be easy to rely on their powerful fleet and army with decent combat effectiveness to defeat the coastal areas of the Choshu Domain. Once all the ports in the coastal areas of the Choshu Domain were captured and destroyed, and the sea routes of the Choshu Domain were blocked, the economy of the Choshu Domain would be bankrupt, and the time would lead to defeat without a fight. ”

"Oh, that's just as well." Li Hongzhang nodded, "So, you also plan to use this strategy to deal with the Changzhou Domain?" Attack only their coastal areas, block their sea routes, and overwhelm their finances? ”

"Me?" Liu Changyou shook his head, "I don't have to be so troublesome, just take the troops to Yamaguchi City directly, and then defeat their main city." ”

"Why?" Li Hongzhang frowned again, "Yamaguchi Castle is a newly built city by Maori Jingqin as far as I know, and I heard that it borrowed from the Westerners' city-building methods, and its defense is very strong. In addition, it was mountainous and densely forested, so the main force of the Choshu domain was concentrated, and the guns of the battleships could not be hit, so they could not provide artillery support. In short, isn't it a bit too big for you to attack their main city directly? ”

"It's not a big deal at all." Liu Changyou said, "As I said earlier, if it is a complete occupation, then I want 100,000 people, because I have to fight one by one, and I also have to pacify the localities, which naturally requires more troops to suppress the Quartet." But if it's just a sweep, it's a different story.

My Japanese troops are all elite, and their weapons and equipment are very advanced, second only to the Praetorian Guard, and much stronger than those Westerners' armies.

Therefore, our army is not afraid of frontal combat, or rather, it prefers frontal combat the most, because frontal combat can give full play to the strengths of our ferocious firepower.

I studied the map, and although the vicinity of Yamaguchi Castle was a mountainous and forested place, it was impossible for a large army to deploy, but it was completely useless for our army. Because our army is equipped with wolfdogs and hot air balloons, as long as you are careful, it is completely impossible for the enemy to sneak attack.

In addition, the weapons of our army are not the same, the bullets are all fixed ammunition with special technology, not afraid of rain, even if it is a rainstorm, our muskets can still fire along the lì, plus we also have machine guns This rapid-fire weapon, so they hope to rely on rainy days to fight hand-to-hand, which is wishful thinking.

We are not afraid of night battles, in which we have flares, and once they are shot, they are as long as day within a radius of several miles, and although the time is not long, with the help of machine guns, it is enough to kill the invading enemy.

In the end, we attacked their main city directly, which was the residence of the Maori Venerate and the symbol of the Choshu Domain, and a place they could never abandon. We only need to go straight to Yamaguchi Castle, completely destroy the city, and eliminate the main force of the Maori family, then the other qiē will fall apart, and naturally the purpose of sweeping and deterring will be achieved. (To be continued......)