Chapter 282: Lanfang's Civil War (3)

Xia Yunfeng, who counted the number of people and found that they had all returned, answered with a smile: "Do you think that our task force can easily infiltrate, and the army has not reacted yet, do you think those are dead people." The captain smiled and scratched his head, but said no more.

After receiving the information collected by the task force, Xia Yuhui determined that the Cheng family army defending Moon Mountain did not have those heavy weapons that made him fearful, and he immediately ordered his troops to speed up their march and attack Moon Mountain.

Since the attack at night, the Cheng family army stationed in Moon Mountain has increased their vigilance, and quickly sent people to the border area of Nanping Mansion in Jinhua County, where the Cheng family's army was assembled, to report to them, telling them the news that the Xia family might launch a military operation, but unfortunately before the response of the Cheng family's high-level leaders, the Xia family's army had arrived at the foot of the Moon Mountain.

Without giving the other side a chance to delay time, the two armies that arrived in advance immediately set up artillery and bombarded Moon Mountain. The advance team had already drawn the terrain of the opponent's position in detail, and these artillerymen had blown up the Chengjia garrison to the ground. After the shelling, two regiments of the Xia family army launched an offensive in advance.

After the artillery bombardment, two infantry regiments of the Xia family army began the attack. The obstacle to the attacking troops was quite large, not to mention that the number of Cheng family's defensive troops was also quite large. The Xia soldiers who slowly climbed up the mountain were quickly killed and wounded by the dense fire from the mountain, although most of the Cheng family's troops still used single-shot rear-loading guns, but the advantage of numbers made the intensity of the firepower increase a lot.

Seeing that the other party began to shoot, Xia Ziqing, who was in charge of commanding the vanguard, immediately ordered the artillery to shell the position held by Cheng Jiajun. The performance of the mountain artillery produced by the Chinese Collar is quite good, even if it is attacked from the back, it has a range of nearly four kilometers, although these warheads with colloidal explosives are not enough to damage the trenches, but the explosion power is still good, at least within three meters of the warhead people will be shocked to death even if they hide in the trenches.

In the shelling, the firepower of the Cheng family was temporarily suppressed, but Xia Ziqing did not bring much artillery, and the suppression effect was not good. After suffering more than 200 casualties, the two infantry regiments of the Xia family, which launched a tentative attack, retreated. Xia Ziqing put down the telescope he had been holding, he nodded with satisfaction, although the firepower of the other party was relatively dense just now, but seeing that the garrison of the Cheng family had already done its best.

After the follow-up troops arrived one after another, several armies of the Xia family troops launched an attack on Moon Mountain from multiple directions, and the overstretched Cheng garrison troops still struggled to resist despite losing the other, and Xia Yuhui was worried that the time would drag on too long, and the reinforcements of the Cheng family arrived, and ordered the heavy artillery troops to bombard before destroying their most rearguard.

Xia Yuhui was also very helpless about the use of valuable heavy artillery shells to capture Moon Mountain, the three-day battle The Xia family lost more than 3,000 soldiers due to the disadvantage of the terrain, and the delay was too long, so it was easy for the Cheng family to be prepared, so he used the eighteen 105 mm howitzers he had purchased from the Chinese Collar before.

The 105-millimeter howitzer belongs to the largest caliber heavy artillery of the army in the whole world of this era, and they cannot be manufactured by any country, and even whether this large-caliber howitzer can be manufactured is also a sign of the army's power.

In addition to the rarity of artillery, the price of this kind of shell is not low, and it is not used in the Xia family's workshop, he is very cautious in using it, and every time it comes to this time, he is very envious of the powerful military industry of the Chinese Collar.

After capturing Moon Mountain, Xia Yuhui took advantage of the fact that the Cheng family's army had not yet reacted, and the army went straight to Longshan Fucheng, the capital of Hudong County. After borrowing the model of the Chinese leader, the Xia family's army was also equipped with a large number of horses in the army to pull more and more artillery, but because the Xia family was not good at raising horses, it was too expensive to import from Wang Xuan, so they were reluctant to equip all troops with horses, and only in the artillery units did these horses exist.

The capture on Moon Mountain caught Cheng Feng off guard, but fortunately, the Xia family's army was still infantry, and the movement speed was not fast enough, and he also reacted in time, so that the troops stationed in Anshun County immediately went north to support the troops of the Cheng family's Fourth Army and Fifth Army deployed in Longshan Fucheng.

Longshan Mansion is relatively close to Anshun County, and the reinforcements have been traveling day and night, and finally arrived at Longshan before the Xia family's army arrives, but in order to speed up the reinforcements, they also gave up all the heavy equipment, including the poor artillery.

The five corps that came in with the reinforcements immediately dug trenches and built artillery positions together with the local defenders, and arranged them layer by layer outside the city to build a strong defensive position, but their artillery was only the artillery of the Fourth Army and the Fifth Army originally stationed in Longshan Province, a total of less than 50 guns.

Seeing that the defenders of Longshan Mansion had reached the scale of seven armies, although the quality and equipment of their own personnel were very superior, Xia Yuhui did not choose to fight hard, he monitored it with a part of the army, and the main force swept the other four prefectures of Hudong County, and within a month, the Cheng family's territory in Hudong County was only Longshan Mansion.

Cheng Feng, who was angry, immediately mobilized a large army and prepared for a decisive battle with the Xia family, but Xia Yuhui began to build fortifications in the new border area, and at the same time guarded it with heavy troops, looking like he couldn't hold on, and the angry Cheng Feng was furious but there was nothing he could do.

Xia Cheng's two families fought, Fang Xiaoyu didn't bother to pay attention to them, and now he was most concerned about how to make the World Realm War come early. Fang Xiaoyu's economic crisis launched by taking advantage of the collapse of the Lanfang currency system is only the first step, and the next step is to guide countries to tide over the economic crisis by expanding their armaments.

For this reason, Fang Xiaoyu decided to hype up his newly launched 'Zhonghua' class battleship, and this time he sent people to submit articles in influential newspapers in various countries, and the content of the manuscript was to introduce the latest launch of the Zhonghua Ling's 'Zhonghua' class battleship, and Fang Xiaoyu also attached a large black and white photo to the newspaper for the first time.

Newspapers around the world were extremely happy to see such explosive news, and all newspapers chose to publish the news as a front-page headline.

Almost on the same day, the major newspapers published this extremely provocative news. The Boston Post, the largest newspaper in the Boston Empire, had a front-page headline that said, 'How do we deal with the supership of the Chinese Empire', while the Pools Morning Post of the Saar Empire said that 'the Chinese giant ship, witnessing the fall of the Saar Empire'.

Unlike these countries that are not very friendly to the Chinese Empire, the Yaman Empire's "Essen Evening News" has the title of "China Ship Our Future", the article lists the close economic cooperation between the Chinese Territory and the Yaman Empire, claiming that the government will definitely buy this kind of giant ship manufacturing method soon, and China will soon have such a huge ship, which can be predicted that this will be the end of the Saar Empire.

This hyped news was only deliberately low-key in the Nantes Empire, because since the Chinese and Japanese torpedo boats showed their might in the naval battle of the Diaoyu Islands, the Nantes Empire seemed to have found its own path of development. Since then, the Nantes Empire has gradually reduced the pace of construction and research of large warships, and the direction of their warship development has begun to tilt in the direction of torpedo boats.

Although torpedo boats have the disadvantages of poor wave resistance and cannot be loaded with large-caliber guns, they are low in cost, fast in speed, and have the means to sink large warships, so the top brass of the Imperial Navy of Nantes began to abandon the development of battleships from the perspective of funds, and turned to vigorously study torpedo boats and torpedo manufacturing technology.

Although the government's decision was resolutely opposed by a large number of supporters of battleship designers, the government still insisted on going its own way, and in desperation, some excellent battleship designers had to go elsewhere.

In the process of solicitation, the Chinese collar and the Japanese state became the biggest winners by virtue of their advantages. Fang Xiaoyu recruited a large number of designers through Xu Shouchang's relationship, especially his teacher, the first designer of the Nantes Empire, Dietman, accepted Fang Xiaoyu's invitation and agreed to join the Chinese Consulate, for which Fang Xiaoyu set up a special warship design bureau and asked Mr. Dietman to serve as the director.

Another beneficiary of the Wa Kingdom was to successfully recruit him through his acquaintance with the second designer of the Nantes Empire, Bai Laoyi, and let him bring many apprentices with him.

The brain drain in the Nantes Empire was just a minor episode that no one paid attention to, and the most interesting thing was that countries began to announce the imitation of this new type of warship of the Chinese Consulate.

The clear picture in the newspaper showed the structure of the 'Zhonghua' class battleship from the side, and anyone with a little common sense of such an epoch-making battleship could see its superiority, so all countries invested in research and design work, but almost all the national design bureaus gave the same conclusion, relying on the current power system, unless the entire warship removed all the armor and became a thin-skinned ship like an unprotected cruiser, the speed could only reach a maximum of twelve knots.

This result has made governments extremely depressed, if the speed is too low, how can they catch up with the opposing warship, and if the armor is removed, it will become a one-shot death, this is a dilemma. Now everyone knows that the Chinese Territory must have developed a new power system, otherwise it would be impossible to build such an excellent battleship, and for a time, all the powerful countries in the world have sent special envoys, hoping to be able to purchase this advanced technology from the Chinese Territory.

Recently, in order to know the outfitting work of the Zhonghua-class battleships in the vicinity, Fang Xiaoyu's residence has been moved to Port Arthur, so special envoys from various countries have arrived at Port Arthur one after another, hoping to negotiate with Fang Xiaoyu about the purchase of a new power system. Surprisingly, Fang Xiaoyu refused to visit anyone, and even the Yaman Empire, which had a close relationship with the Chinese Lord, their envoys were blocked out.