"Your Majesty, Huanghua has been defeated!" Like a standard traitor, Yuan walked to the side of the emperor, who was inspecting the construction site of the Baoji Railway, and greeted those railway workers.

"Oh, you lost so quickly?" Emperor Yang said with interest, Huanghuatan's 100,000 rabble like the Boxers against the well-trained main force of the French army, undefeated is called unreasonable, almost all of their early results in attacking Hanoi were piled up with cannonballs, Du Mei was not so much beaten by them as a turtle in the city, but by the cannons!

Now that it has been replaced by a field battle, and without the heavy artillery of the Chinese volunteers, it is a head-to-head confrontation with the French army in the absence of suppressive firepower, and even Emperor Yang can't help but sigh that it is really ignorant and fearless.

"Huang Huatan was too light on the enemy, thinking that he had an army of 100,000 to push the French, so he refused our advisers and Japanese advisers to ask him to deploy defenses along the Ma River and block the construction of the Thanh Hoa Bridge, and instead led his subordinates to take the initiative to attack the French army in the south of Thanh Hoa.

As a result, the French army hit the head and bleed on the preset position, originally his subordinates were fighting a good fight, following the ability to wave the flag and shout, and even shooting with their eyes closed, after more than 30,000 casualties, the French counterattacked and immediately collapsed, Huang Huatan personally led the overseer team to try to block, but was hit by a shell beside him, and was trampled to death by the rout after being injured and falling off the horse.

In addition to the dead and wounded, most of his 100,000 troops were scattered, and less than 30,000 people, under the Japanese volunteers, had now retreated past Thanh Hoa, and held on to the Ma River, but it could not last a few days, and the Vietnamese discarded almost all the artillery when they were defeated, and with their courage, it was impossible to hold their positions under the bombardment of the French army. Yuan Shikai said with a smile.

"What about the French losses?" Emperor Yang asked.

"The losses of the French army are not small, mainly because before the attack, at the insistence of our advisers, we made fire preparations for half an hour, and you also know that the soil of Vietnam, hastily dug trenches are difficult to block the shell bombardment. In addition, a position was broken through by the Japanese volunteers, and then part of the Vietnamese army followed and killed, causing great casualties to the French, and later when Gallieni recaptured this position, he lost another part, adding up to no less than seven thousand according to our estimates. Yuan Shikai said.

"That's it, tell the General Staff, get ready for war!" Emperor Yang said with a smile that this result could be said to make him very satisfied. Huang Hua Tan brought all the main forces of his subordinates, and after this battle, even if the whole army was basically wiped out, as long as he died, there would be no more unrest among the Vietnamese, and after such a brutal bloody battle, the courage of the Vietnamese would be dried up with blood.

The news of the defeat and death of the Huanghua detectives made the call for domestic troops to participate in the war even higher, and even some excited students blocked the doors of the National Assembly building and the Prime Minister's Office, and some went to the palace to submit petitions, and the emperor naturally attached great importance to the students' petitions. As soon as he got the news, he immediately ended his inspection of Baoji and hurriedly returned.

At this time, worse news came, and the French army broke through the Ma River defense line in two days and captured the Thanh Hoa Bridge. Now that they were chasing the defeated Vietnamese army to Hanoi, the Vietnamese troops who remained in Hanoi, with the help of the Chinese volunteers, also began to intensify their attack on Hanoi, preparing to seize the city before the French army arrived. But even if they succeed, they can easily find themselves in a desperate situation without reinforcements.

Calls for a declaration of war on France have now become louder in China, and even some factory workers have joined the protests in front of the Capitol. Amid the clamor of the whole country, Emperor Yang urgently returned to Beijing from Xi'an, met with some of the representatives of the petitioning students, and promised that he would never sit idly by and ignore Vietnam.

Shortly after he made this promise, the Queen Mother of Vietnam, who had been secretly sent out of Hue, also arrived in Beijing with the little king in her arms, and on behalf of the Vietnamese royal family and people, she personally came to ask the Chinese Emperor for help.

After the grand welcoming ceremony, his mother, Nguyen Dinh Thi, who was still charming, used the already very standard Chinese to complain about the atrocities of the French and the tragic experience of orphans and widows, especially the bloody night of that terrible night, which completely detonated the feelings of the Chinese people, and more and more people joined the ranks of the war.

The day after their visit to the palace, the emperor announced that since he regarded the former king of Vietnam as a brother, then his brother's son would be his son, and he would be the guardian of the little king until Nguyen Phuc Vinh Son grew up, which had been agreed by the Queen Mother of Vietnam, and at the same time, in his capacity as the emperor of China, he formally demanded that the French immediately stop their aggression against Vietnam.

Immediately after that, at the unanimous demand of the people of the whole country, the Chinese Government proposed to the French Government an ultimatum to immediately stop the military operations in Vietnam and to withdraw all Vietnamese territory, including Cochin, within one month, and to reply within 24 hours.

Their second batch of reinforcements has landed, this is the time to be full of confidence, how can it be possible to accept such conditions, if it is only Beiqi, maybe you can also consider it, in fact, France also had a negotiation plan before, after all, Yang Feng tossed for so long, there is no benefit to send him, the bottom line of the French is to give China north of the Red River, and keep the Vietnamese royal family in the middle, France continues to have Cochin, but now China does not even let go of Cochin, this point can not be accepted in any case, there is no base in Cam Ranh Bay, France has completely lost the possibility of competing for Asian interests.

After receiving a reply from the French who refused, the Chinese parliament immediately issued a request for a declaration of war, and then Foreign Minister Zhang Quan summoned the French minister to China, Bi Sheng, and formally read to him the declaration of war, signed by His Majesty the Emperor.

At this time, the French army led by Gallieni had already arrived in Hanoi, but before he arrived, the city had fallen, including the fortress on the north bank was also blown up by the Chinese volunteers, Governor Du Mei and his remnants of less than 3,000 French troops surrendered to the Vietnamese army, and then all were pulled to the Red River to shoot targets, including the French expatriates in the city were also bloodily massacred by the Vietnamese army, only a few old and weak women and children were protected by the Chinese volunteers and sent back to China as refugees.

The Vietnamese army that captured Hanoi immediately learned the news of China's declaration of war on France, and this news immediately inspired their courage, and the Vietnamese army, which was originally prepared to retreat to the north bank after ransacking, began to rearrange the defense of Hanoi under the leadership of Zhang Jiwu, commander of the Chinese Volunteers, and defended Hanoi City with the remnants of more than 30,000 Vietnamese troops and the Japanese volunteers who had just fled, and the Chinese volunteers defended the pontoon bridge and waited for the arrival of domestic reinforcements.

It is only more than 100 kilometers from Zhennanguan to here, and some time ago, in order to transport supplies, the road has been repaired again, enough to pass trucks, and it is very simple to reinforce it, almost at the same time as Gallieni arrived in Hanoi, the Ninth Division of the Chinese Army that set off from Zhennanguan arrived in Hanoi by truck, and now there are less than 30,000 people left in Gallieni, and he instantly hit an iron wall, he was very clever to give up continuing to attack the city, and turned around and retreated along the Red River to Haiphong.

He knows very well what will happen next, he doesn't expect to get supplies from the south, Haiphong still has at least a reserve enough for him to support for a while, and there are also 5,000 French troops and a group of expatriates there, retreat there first, the victory or defeat of this war is not on land, but on the sea, all he has to do is to save as many lives of his compatriots as possible before the war is divided.

And just as he was retreating to Haiphong at full speed, in the distant waters north of Tuzhu Island in the Gulf of Siam, the decisive naval battle between China and France had already begun.

Liu Buchan's fleet and Gervais's fleet have been facing each other in this area for more than a month, and the two sides have long been ready for war, just after China officially declared war on France, the two fleets did not hesitate to attack each other at the same time, the calm sea was instantly ignited by the flames of war, the explosion of cannonballs broke all illusions of peace, almost every battleship found its own opponent in the exchange of fire, and the two Kunlun-class battleships faced Charlie Martel and Bouvet respectively, The two 9,000-ton armored cruisers Wangwu and Emei besieged the Jolguibelli, leaving Hai Chip, Hairong and Hairong two copies of their own copycats, Joan of Arc and Poseo, and the other four ships of Haining, Haihe, Hai'an, and Haixing took seven Canglong-class cruisers to the remaining nine cruisers of the French army.

The first entry of the Perfect Battleship into the battle shocked the world.

Because the attack distance of this kind of warship has been extended to 15 kilometers away, and at such a distance, the hit rate is even higher than the current 10 kilometers of the battleships of various countries, and the 10 280 main guns of the Kunlun, which fought against the Charlie Martel on the side of the ship, even began the first round of shelling 17 kilometers away, and in the second round of shelling that followed, a shell hit its opponent.

Looking at the huge ball of fire that exploded in front of the main gun of the Charlie Martel, Waldzer, the fox watching the battle from a distance, said proudly: "Look, I'm right, right? Our emperor friend, surely with a good thing on his own battleship, would have simply hit any targets at such a distance if it were only for the visual aiming of the rangefinder. ”

"Seventeen kilometers penetrate the armor of the deck of a battleship, oh my God, what kind of cannon is this?" The captain of the cruiser beside him, who clearly knew the significance of the shell better than he did, held up the telescope and exclaimed incredulously. (To be continued......)