Although Wang Qinian does not agree with Commander Li's conservative strategy, this does not mean that he will agree with Yi Meng's reckless strategy, he believes that with the current level of technical warfare of the Seventh Army, it is probably impossible to win a hard fight with Xu Ping, even if the officers and soldiers of the firefighting battalion come these days to teach their knowledge - the firefighting battalion was not Xu Ping's opponent at the beginning, and the master is not good, let alone the disciples.

At present, there are still four armies of the Ming army in Jiangxi, in addition to the fourth army, although Xu Ping was beaten all over the body, but he also took advantage of the Shun army and the constitutional division to catch his breath for a while when the Shun army and the constitutional division were consumed in Chunhua, and now there are about 90,000 troops. Wang Qinian could understand the reason why Jin Qiude asked the Ming army to avoid fighting with the Shun army led by Xu Ping personally, because as long as Xu Ping was not commanding the Shun army, the combat effectiveness would be greatly reduced. Moreover, Wang Qinian estimated that although the War Department wanted the Seventh Army to relieve the siege of Chun as soon as possible, or to kill near Nanjing to contain a large number of Shun Army troops to help share the pressure on the Constitution Division, the Northern Expeditionary Army Command may not care about the life or death of the Twelfth Town, for them, as long as the Constitutional Division can drag them back to recovery, it will be worth being wiped out.

Although the Seventh Army was moving in the direction of Nanjing this time, Wang Qinian and Ji Xinghui privately guessed that the intention of the Command was to let the Seventh Army set up camp close to the main force of the Shun Army and establish a consolidated base, and when the four armies in Jiangxi recovered their strength, they would come again to fight with the Shun Army. Because of this, whether Chunhua can break the siege is not a special concern of the high command, but they are very concerned about the safety of the Seventh Army, if this army cannot establish a good forward base, the danger of the main force of the Northern Expeditionary Army coming to the decisive battle will be much greater.

But this thought, Wang Qinian and Ji Xinghui did not say it to Yi Meng, and the two who made up their minds to bet on both sides did not want to offend either side, as long as they did not provoke Commander Li's thoughts, the military headquarters and the two divisions would not be contradictory, and Wang and Ji would not be forced to stand in line. And if Commander Li had one day, as they expected, would openly put the orders of the High Command above the War Department, then Wang Qinian would have found an opportunity to break away from the front line—and then they would have nothing to do with him.

Ji Xinghui's abacus is no different from Wang Qinian, he has already carried out some pacification work, and plans to find an opportunity to safely take his cronies and children away from the battlefield and return to the rear to study at the military academy - he himself plans to go to the military academy to find a job and become an instructor. Similarly, Ji Xinghui knew very well that the contradiction between the military headquarters of the Seventh Army and the two divisions under its jurisdiction was irreconcilable, and the later this contradiction was exposed, the more sinister it would be for the Ming army, and if the headquarters of the Seventh Army and the 13th and 14th divisions suddenly quarreled for strategic purposes when they were close to the Shun Army, it might cause disastrous consequences for the Seventh Army. But...... But what does this have to do with his auspicious Xinghui? If you want to blame, you can only blame Commander Li for being smart, thinking that the two division commanders were two soft persimmons that obeyed the order and let him knead them - Wang Qinian and Ji Xinghui have always reported to Commander Li in this way, which greatly aggravated Commander Li's misjudgment; At most, the division commanders and staff officers of the 13th and 14th Divisions are inexperienced young people, and they can't understand or understand the subtext of Commander Li-Wang Qinian and Ji Xinghui can understand and understand, but the two of them don't say a word in front of Yi Meng and Chen Ning, if these two division commanders are really suspicious, the two of them will definitely do their best to dispel them, they don't want the contradiction to erupt before they are safe.

……

When the Seventh Army embarked on the journey towards Nanjing, a powerful fleet was also assembled in Hangzhou Bay, this Nanming fleet had a total of 97 warships, more than 18,000 officers and men, such a magnificent fleet could frighten the entire Dashun Naval Division to hide at the bottom of the port fortress.

The target of this fleet was not Nanjing, and although the Constituent Assembly began to consider rescinding the agreement with the Shun Army and sending an army to secure Nanking as its military strength continued to recover, there were two difficulties at the moment:

The agreement between the First and Shunjun was formally approved by the Constituent Assembly, and there was nothing wrong with the long debate at first, but now if the agreement is abolished in public, it will be tantamount to reporting to Xu Pingfeng. In fact, after perceiving this problem, the Constituent Assembly immediately passed a new motion, delegating the power of wartime agreements to the Army, Navy and Air Force - that is, if there is a similar agreement in the future, it is not necessary for the Constituent Assembly to approve everything, so that in the future, if Nanming wants to tear up the agreement, there is no need for the Constituent Assembly to openly debate and vote, and the Army can act as soon as the War Department gives an order;

Second, the Admiralty did not agree to the use of its forces, first of all, it thought it would be a waste to defend an inland city with Marines, especially since the city did not need to be defended by force at all. Secondly, Zheng Chenggong brought a large number of ships suitable for use in the Yangtze River to Jiangxi, and now the ships owned by the Admiralty are even more unsuitable for sailing in the river, and they do not want to send their ships to the Shun army's batteries to beat. Finally, the Admiralty felt that it would be more deterrent to send thousands of sailors to Shandong than to throw thousands of sailors to Yingtianfu, where the elite of the Shun army gathered.

The Constituent Assembly only hoped that the Admiralty would dispatch as soon as possible to relieve the pressure on Chunhua's Constitutional Division, and since the Admiralty officials thought that Shandong was better, they did not object. In order to cause the greatest shock to Shunting, the Admiralty planned to land directly in Dengzhou - this is the important coastal defense area of Shandong, one of the most important ports in the Bohai Bay, and it also shoulders the role of receiving grain, gunpowder and tribute from Liaodong in peacetime - after all, the cost of land transportation is too high, and the previous Ming army's maritime blockade was not very active and strict, and the tasks of cooperating with the army along the Yangtze River and the coastal land of Zhejiang are many and heavy, and the main energy of the Admiralty is contained here.

Dengzhou was an important city and fortress in the Ming Dynasty, and Zhong Guinian, the defense envoy of Dashun Shandong, also attached great importance to this place: a lot of supplies from Liaodong would be sent directly to the south from here, and since the blockade of the Ming army and navy was not seamless, some bold merchants also drove ships to smuggle materials to Dengzhou for sale. Zhong Guinian equipped the coastal fort with a large number of artillery, built a number of barracks to station thousands of soldiers, and organized a small naval division to operate in the coastal waters - mainly to detect and cover smuggling ships. After research, the Admiralty of the Southern Ming Dynasty believed that in addition to the three major advantages of capturing Dengzhou, firstly, it could cause a huge psychological shock to the Dashun monarchs and ministers, forcing them to leave more field troops in the rear; secondly, you can get a good port in the north, and maybe you can use it as a base to attack Liaodong or Tianjin; Finally, breaching this place can also deal a heavy blow to smuggling activities. As for the naval division that destroyed the Shandong Shun army, it would be a passing result - for the Ming army, the small boats of the Shun army were never regarded as a threat.

Since there are so many benefits to capturing Dengzhou, the difficulty of conquering it can be imagined, first of all, the batch of cannons of more than fifty pounds placed in the coastal defense fortress of Shandong is not a joke; Secondly, the Marines need to take the port fortress as soon as possible to ensure that the Ming Army's ships can enter the port and unload, if they can't take the port, then how did the Marines come and how to go back; The last is to take Dengzhou City, although this is not as urgent as the requirement to take the port, but if it drags on for a month, it will also be unbearable, which will give Shandong Shun the army a chance to assemble a counterattack.

The Navy's transfer of nearly 100 warships this time is to provide maximum fire cover for the Marine Corps - this is not a brother unit of the Army, but the Navy's own people.

Before the battleship approached the coast, the coastal defense guns deployed by the Shandong defense envoy had to be destroyed first, for which the Admiralty decided to throw out their trump card - the ironclad ship.

This ironclad ship was actually just an experimental object, but after the super luxury version of the ironclad plan ran aground due to the obstruction of the army bastards, the Admiralty had no choice but to transform this experimental object into a full-fledged ironclad ship. Even if it is a test renovation, it is far from being finalized, but the Constituent Assembly urged the Navy to dispatch as soon as possible and did not wait for the opportunity to complete the ironclad ship.

Shi Tianyu, commander of the 2nd Regiment of the 1st Marine Division (the 1st Regiment was taken to Jiangxi by Zheng Chenggong), was adamantly opposed to allowing the Marines to attack the port of the Shun Army without artillery support; And the captains of the fleet refused to drop anchor a few dozen meters in front of the fortress and fire at the coastal defense guns - they believed that as long as the Shun defenders were not a complete rabble, this was to send the navy to death. Under these circumstances, the Admiralty convened a meeting of all the experts on naval warfare, artillery warfare, and ships, and after three days and three nights of repeated arguments, most of the experts believed that it was possible to send the unfinished ironclad ships to complete all the modifications in the dockyard before leaving the port, and then complete the rest of the work as they walked on the road.

The outer layer of the ironclad ship was not equipped with monolithic steel plates up to ten centimeters thick, as the Admiralty had hoped, but the hull was wrapped with small steel plates one centimeter thick, and the important positions were covered with up to eight layers; On the inside of the pine hull, another layer of inner steel plates, also of one centimeter, was laid. Admiralty experts believed that this would be enough to resist the fifty-pounder coastal defense guns of Dengzhou, and even if the intelligence was wrong, the ship would be fearless if the Shun army had more than 100 or even 200-pound cannons.

In order to increase its firepower, the Admiralty equipped the ship with two short-barreled cannons specially designed for it that could fire projectiles weighing up to 280 pounds—the reliability of which could only be tested on the road.

After seeing this battleship, Shi Tianyu did not feel itchy, and resolutely demanded that he be the captain of the ship, and the Second Marine Regiment resolutely stood on the side of their colonel, claiming that since the Marine Corps landed and operated, they should have the most important offensive weapons in their hands. In the end, the Admiralty agreed to Shi Tianyu's request, agreeing that he would personally command the ship to first shell the batteries, and then return to command his regiment of Marines after he had eliminated the gun emplacements that posed the greatest threat to the Navy and the Marine Corps.

The tactics experts of the Admiralty suggested that Shi Tianyu drive the ironclad ship to within thirty meters of the Shunjun Battery, and use the two super cannons it has to blast open the wall of the Dengzhou Port Fortress.

After the fortified walls and the largest coastal defense guns were destroyed, the mighty Ming fleet would sail close to the coast to cover the Marines to seize the port, and the fleet commander assured the Admiralty that as long as the ironclad ships could destroy the ramparts of the Shunjun battery, the thousands of cannons on his fleet would turn the port of Dengzhou into complete ruins—a statement that frightened the Admiralty that the Admiralty had to remind the opposing side that the Ming army still needed this port to unload ammunition and supplies.

The ironclad ship was extremely bulky, with a speed of about one knot at full power, and for safety reasons, the Admiralty also used a propeller design whose reliability had never been tested - because if it was designed with a paddle wheel, the Navy was very skeptical that its power system would be able to survive until the ship was sent to within a few dozen meters of the Shunjun Battery. The new power system test can work, but it remains to be tested whether it will work after loading, and when the ironclad ship is towed to Hangzhou Bay, the propeller will also be carried to Hangzhou by another ship, where they will be assembled.

As the Admiralty had estimated in advance, it was unrealistic to expect the ship to sail to Shandong on its own, and in addition to the issue of time, there were safety concerns, and even the most optimistic experts in the ministry did not believe that the power system would last more than five days. The Ming fleet would tow it outside the port of Dengzhou in sailboats, and then let it destroy the coastal fortress under its own power. The requirements for the Ming fleet were not very high, and they estimated that the Shun army would not be able to organize effective reinforcements within half a month, so they generously set the plan as: the ironclad ships could spend ten days to destroy the Dengzhou Port Fort, release it every morning, and drive back to the fleet mooring place in the evening to replenish ammunition and overhaul.

……

Xu Ping was not ignorant of the news of the Ming fleet, but he did not expect that the target of the Ming army was Shandong, and Xu Ping was more worried about the safety of Jiangbei. In order to guard against a possible surprise attack by the Ming army, Xu Ping dropped the avant-garde battalion back to Yangzhou, and transferred Liu Liangzuo, the former commander of the Shun army stationed in Yangzhou, to Jiangnan for use.

In addition to the threat of the Ming navy, the Seventh Army of the Southern Ming Dynasty attracted more attention from Xu Ping, and in his opinion, the greatest possibility of this army was to build a large camp on the border of Taiping Province to prepare for the future counterattack of the Ming army in Jiangxi.

Chen Zhe and Li Laiheng both repeatedly reminded Xu Ping that if the Ming Seventh Army was allowed to establish a solid forward base close enough, then in the future, the main force of the Ming army could be driven all the way to the nose of the main force of the Shun army: the Ming army would have a safe intelligence network, which would greatly reduce the chances of the Shun army ambushing them; The Ming army will have a fortress area that can be defended, and even if the Shun army wins a field battle, it may not be able to develop into a major rout or annihilation battle; Moreover, the Ming army could also use this camp to store grain, grass and materials in advance, and build it into an important supply base.

Xu Ping could not sit idly by and ignore such a threat, he asked Chen Zhe to command the Shun army troops to continue to besiege Chunhua and monitor Longtan, while he himself would take three battalions to deal with the Seventh Army - due to the Ming army's extensive use of observation balloons, the generals of the Shun army could not think of any tricks to attack Chunhua, and Xu Ping felt that he had no good way to stay here for a while.

Since Xu Ping took most of the troops away, he left behind the most elite guards battalion and armored battalion, as well as the Kaishan battalion from Anqing and Luzhou. In this way, the Shun army against the 35,000 Ming Army of the Seventh Army was supported by the 28,000 cavalry of the rear guard battalion, the sniper battalion, the sharpshooter battalion and the two cavalry battalions (after this period of repair, although no new battalions arrived in the Shun army, these old battalions at least basically filled up the soldiers. ), Liu Liangzuo's 8,000 people as a backup (Originally, Xu Ping also wanted to reorganize Liu Liangzuo's troops into a field battalion, but the national strength of Beishun was not enough to support Xu Ping's large-scale reorganization plan, and after replenishing the troops and weapons in Nanjing, the remaining materials had to take care of the Xiying and Yushenhe departments in Huguang, and the reorganization of these Ming generals' troops had to be delayed again and again).

Before leaving, Xu Ping instructed Chen Zhedao: "You only have three battalions of soldiers and horses in your hands, and you don't have any advantage over the more than 20,000 Ming troops on the opposite side." ”

If it weren't for the fact that the military headquarters of the Sixth Army and a regiment of the council division were in the rear to guard against friendly forces, Xu Ping felt that the Ming army already had the strength to launch a local counteroffensive, and Chen Zhe naturally understood the heavy responsibility, and he assured Xu Ping: "The general can rest assured, the last general will definitely not be greedy for merit, and will definitely hold the position well." ”

"Yes, it's good to hold on to the twelfth Nanming really break through." According to Xu Ping's intelligence, the thirteenth and fourteenth towns of Nanming did not advance quickly, although they did not have the main force of the Shun army in front of them, they did not leap forward quickly. The more he looked at this posture, the more Xu Ping felt that they did not seem to be actively depriving Chun, but came with the intention of establishing an advance base for the main force in Jiangxi, and he was worried that the closer he got to Yingtianfu, the more cautious the Ming army would become, so he planned to lead his troops out to the south of Taiping Mansion to face the battle.

If the Ming army was forced to camp in the distance, then Xu Ping would be able to win a larger room for maneuver, and when the other party continued to advance step by step, Xu Ping felt that he might be able to find an opportunity for a decisive battle; If the other party does not advance, then Xu Ping is still stuck between the main force of this Ming army and the Northern Expeditionary Army, and there are more chances to break through.

In order to conceal the whereabouts of the Shun army as much as possible, Xu Ping sent out the battalions in batches, first the rear guard battalion, they did not go south to meet the Ming army and then marched westward, and waited until Liu Liangzuo and other Jiangbei troops crossed the river in Taiping Mansion and sent out the sniper battalion - the Jiangbei Army and the guard battalion would go south from different roads, and then turn with Xu Ping in the south of Taiping Mansion, and wait for the sniper battalion to leave a day before Xu Ping let the sharpshooter battalion set off, and he himself and Liu Zongmin's cavalry camp finally left Chunhua.

Although the Ming army with the balloon would soon find that the Shun army had disappeared from their positions, Xu Ping estimated that it would be a few days before they could confirm that these troops were indeed far away from Chunhua - the longer this time, the more beneficial it would be for Chen Zhe's defense, and it would also prolong the time for the Ming Seventh Army to be alerted; On the other hand, although the Ming army's siege relief troops would not encounter a large number of Shun troops coming from one direction at once, the Shun army would move in batches to make the road less crowded, and each Shun army would go relatively fast.

In Xu Ping's plan, the main force of the Shun army will not complete the convergence and assembly in more than a day and a half - this is also the most dangerous period of time, the Ming army has the opportunity to break the Shun army that has not yet completed the assembly, but Xu Ping feels that the Ming army may not have the courage and determination to launch a fierce attack immediately; It is also very likely that when they make this decision, they will face the 36,000 Shun troops who have completed the assembly.

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