At No. 8 Youfu West Street, Wulao Village Street, Qinhuai District, Tianjing, there is a Western-style building with a four-story Western-style brick wall, built in 1856 and completed in 1857. This is the office building of the Tianjing Telegraph Office, the capital of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom, and in addition to the office space, there is also a telegraph hall dedicated to providing civil telegraph services.

The telegraph office building sits in the north and faces south, with four floors on the ground and one floor underground, with a sloping roof and white wall floor, and the people of Tianjing call it the Qinhuai White Building. The Taiping Heavenly Kingdom's top-secret telegraph mailroom was located on the basement floor, in order to prevent the telegraph office building from being shelled in the event of a war.

It was already late at night, and the telegraph office building was already pitch black, but the confidential telegraph room on the basement floor was brightly lit, and kerosene lamps hung all around, illuminating the entire basement. Several confidential operators in the room were nervously receiving telegram messages from Shanghai and other places, and then translating them into Chinese according to the codebook.

Next to the desk, Zuo Zongtang, Li Kaifang, Ji Wenyuan, Xu Naizhao, Li Shourong and other important ministers of the Heavenly Kingdom who stayed in Tianjing were all gathered here, anxiously waiting for the latest battle situation sent back from the front.

After receiving the news that the anti-smuggling ships had encountered a large number of British and French naval warships off the coast of the Yangtze River estuary at nine o'clock in the morning, Zuo Zongtang and others knew that the war had begun, and as far as the powerful naval forces of the British and French forces were concerned, although they had made careful arrangements and arrangements in advance, the heavens were still sweating, and no one knew what the war would look like.

At the same time, Zuo Zongtang and others are also anxiously waiting for the latest movements of the British and French navies, in the previous deduction. After the British and French navies moved south, there were four most likely targets to attack. Tianjing, Zhenjiang, Shanghai, Dinghai. Fixing the sea is a safe method, which can give the British and French navies a foothold. The attack on Zhenjiang was also to be able to gain a firm foothold and then threaten Shanghai or Tianjing, and the attack on Shanghai was to rescue the concession first, and the attack on Tianjing was a desperate and risky operation of the British and French navies.

Although it is unlikely that the British and French navies will attack Tianjing as soon as they come up, Zuo Zongtang still mobilized the Second Army stationed in Tianjing and the vast number of village soldiers to defend Tianjing for the sake of safety, and at the same time he asked Xi Wang Niang to go to Hangzhou to participate in the opening ceremony, that is, he hoped that Xi Wang Niang, who was pregnant with Liujia, could avoid the war.

At about one o'clock in the afternoon, the latest battle report was sent back from the front, and the British and French forces were led by twenty-four warships. The rest of the warships gathered near the Jigu Reef outside the mouth of the Yangtze River, and there was no sign of the rest of the ships breaking into the inland waterway of the Yangtze River.

After getting the news, Zuo Zongtang breathed a sigh of relief, it seems that the British and French navies plan to open up the connection with the concession first, which is very consistent with the judgment of the General Staff, in this case, on the Huangpu River, the Taiping Army has prepared a big gift for the British and French navies. Just waiting for them to come to the door. Then Zuo Zongtang moved his office to the basement of the telegraph office, waiting for news from the front. The real-time transmission of messages by the telegraph had quietly changed the command mode of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom, between Shanghai and Tianjing. In the past, it took a day or two for the fastest message to be transmitted, but now the basic telegram can be sent as soon as the message is sent here. Tianjing's various commands can be transmitted to the front more quickly.

The subsequent telegrams from Wang Minyun, Pan Qiliang, and Tao Enpei all recounted the course of the war. According to the battle plan of the General Staff, when the British and French navies broke through to Wusongkou. The batteries on both sides of the strait will not return fire for the time being, and they will have to wait for the British and French naval ships to break through the Huangpu River. At night, the water ghost troops subordinate to the coast guard are dispatched to carry out the arrangement of mines, and the mines arranged are mainly anchor mines, in order to close the Wusongkou, and then the upper reaches of the Huangpu River begin to release the drifting mines in the mines, which will drift downstream with the current, and then the drifting mines can give the British and French fleets a blow, if the British and French fleets turn around and retreat, the mines at Wusongkou and the batteries on both sides of the strait can give the British and French fleets an annihilating blow, so that the British and French navies can be wiped out to the greatest extent.

However, this plan also had obvious flaws, that is, the Wusongkou fort did not fire a single shot, which was bound to arouse the vigilance of the British and French navies, and at the same time, if the forts on both sides of Wusongkou were not occupied by the British and French forces, the British and French navies would not dare to go deep inland. As a result, the General Staff formulated a bolder supplementary plan, that is, when the British and French navies sent landing troops, the Taiping troops in the forts on both sides of the strait took the initiative to abandon the forts, and after the British and French navies broke through the Huangpu River, the land troops of the Taiping Army quickly launched a counterattack on the forts after the sun went down and recaptured the forts.

This plan is very bold and will shoot himself in the foot if he is not careful, so at first Zuo Zongtang did not let Pan Qiliang in front of him immediately implement it. When the time reached about 3 o'clock in the afternoon, a telegram was sent back from the front, saying that the British and French navies had stopped patrolling the sea off Wusongkou after an hour's artillery bombardment, and did not dare to penetrate deep into the Huangpu River.

After Zuo Zongtang and Li Kaifang and others discussed it again, they decided to take a risk, so they sent a telegram to Pan Qiliang and asked him to act according to the plan. Under the attack of the allied landing force, the Taiping soldiers of the forts on both sides of the strait put up a little resistance and then retreated, giving way to the fortifications on both sides of the strait.

The landing force was led by Major General Napierre of the French army, who led 2,000 infantry retreating from the Dagu Pass to land the West Bank Battery, and British Brigadier General Reevy led 800 LinkedIn Marines to land on the East Battery. Originally, the two generals were ready for a hard battle, but they did not expect that after a not too fierce battle, the Taiping army retreated, and even the artillery and shells on the batteries were missed during the hasty retreat.

Some of the two generals who were not sure whether the Taiping army was luring the enemy stopped the pursuit and consolidated the defense of the fort, and at the same time transmitted the news back to the surface ships. This move of the Taiping army also confused the British and French admirals, who were somewhat unsure whether they should enter the Huangpu River immediately. In the end, Massimogli decided to let twelve warships enter the Huangpu River first, and the following warships followed one after another, leaving a fleet of four ships at Wusongkou to assist in the defense of the battery.

At about 5 o'clock in the afternoon, the British and French navies finally began to advance towards the inland waterway of the Huangpu River, and the twelve ships entered the Huangpu River near the concession without encountering the blows of the Taiping Army.

When they saw the flags of the British and French navies in the sunset, the British and French soldiers and civilians who had been trapped in the concession for ten days hid their faces and wept, and the mercenaries of the foreign rifle team such as Gordon fired their guns into the sky to celebrate, and their suffering was finally over.

Subsequently, the British and French navies shelled the positions of the Lend-Lease Taiping Army, but because the Taiping Army had already avoided the guns after seeing the British and French battleships, the effect of the shelling was not great. At this time, the British commander Seymour and the French commander Brigadier General Brod who led the detachment felt a little powerless, although the naval guns were mighty, but after the shelling still needed infantry to occupy the position, they had no infantry, and all the ships could make up one or two hundred sailors to land, but they believed that this man would not be able to repel the Taiping army at all.

After Gordon boarded the British warship to meet Seymour, he declared that he had organized a foreign gun team of more than 500 men to stand by, and at the same time could draw 500 men from the marines and police forces protecting the concession, plus the navy's sailors, more than 1,000 people should be able to repel the Taipings.

Seymour agreed to Gordon's plan, and the engineer-turned-British Major Gordon began to organize his assault team, with 200 sailors landing to cooperate with the operation, while the navy continued to shell the Taiping positions, destroying many houses and warehouse buildings, but not harming many Taipings, and their positions were full of trenches and anti-artillery holes.

After Gordon organized the assault team, he found that it was already dark, and the assault team was not good at night fighting, so Gordon decided to attack after dawn. But the thick darkness of the night gave both Seymour and Brod a very bad premonition, but they couldn't say anything.

Mines are usually defined as defensive weapons, but the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom's Shanghai Manufacturing Bureau broke the convention when it was developed, and several young R&D personnel were inspired after communicating with Wei Yuan, why can't mines be active attack weapons? However, they later found that they could not solve the problem of the power of the mines, that is, they could not let the mines move themselves to attack the enemy, and only in a specific water flow environment, the mines could rely on the power of the water flow to move towards the enemy, which was very limited.

Subsequently, it was proposed to install sails on the mines, or to clamp long poles to the bow of the boat, and move towards the enemy ship by the power of the boat. In fact, the researchers of these manufacturing bureaus did not know that the weapon they conceived was another surface weapon - torpedo.

Although the technology from mines to torpedoes is still immature, the mines are still made into drift mines or pole mines carried by small boats, and their imaginary enemies are the British and French navies, which have always been stronger than the Taiping Navy.

On the night of the same day, the ships of the British and French navies entering the Huangpu River were moored in the waters of the Huangpu River outside the concession, and a few miles upstream, the boats of the Taiping Army released hundreds of drifting mines with pole mines, which were equipped with sheepskin airbags to increase buoyancy and drifting force, so the dense mines on the water surface began to drift with the current to the British and French warships downstream, and then dozens of pole mine boats also began to sail downstream under the control of the daredevils.

In the middle of the night, every minute and every second seemed to be difficult to pass, and it was the hottest season in Jiangnan, and the basement of the telegraph office was sweltering. When the wall clock pointed to three o'clock in the night, a noisy Didi Tata sounded non-stop, and a moment later a telegraph operator stood up happily, raised the record paper in his hand and said loudly: "News came from the front, the mine attack was successful, and the British and French naval ships that broke into the Huangpu River were severely damaged......" (to be continued......