readx; Chapter 536: The Qing and French War (II)

"Report to the brigade commander, the fog outside has lifted!"

At half past nine in the morning, the soldiers who were observing the weather outside ran in and said respectfully. Pen "Fun" Pavilion www.biquge.info

"Good!" said Nigri, smiling, before walking over to the military topographical map in front of him and giving orders to his troops.

"Major Hines, this time the mission of the 1st Battalion of your 143rd Regiment is to carry out the main attack along the East Ridge with the 2nd Battalion of Major Hayman of the Foreign Legion in the direction of the Great and Small Castle Mountains. Then, after the main attacking force succeeded, they attacked from two sides and captured the main defensive position of the Qing army in the pass in front of the pass, do you understand?"

"Understood, Colonel!"

"Hmm!" Nigri nodded in satisfaction.

"Ladies and gentlemen, the previous wars have proved that we are still an invincible French army, and the humble and ridiculous Qing people intend to rely on a section of the wall as if they were holding back our heroic soldiers. Now let's go and tell these ridiculous fellows that no matter how much they struggle, victory will always belong to France!"

"Boom......!"

This time, Negri's army carried more than 20 artillery pieces, but because the road conditions were too poor, they carried the kind of light guns with a caliber of less than 75mm, which was not very powerful. However, for the Qing army, which lacked guns and artillery, the French artillery shells were too powerful.

The two sides fought for only half an hour, and the Qing army paid hundreds of casualties, and the main force of the French army captured the three fortresses of Dongling under the cover of artillery fire. and stormed the long wall.

"Your Excellency, the three fortresses in Dongling are occupied by the French army, and we will inevitably be surrounded, so please retreat now!" said a middle-aged soldier.

"Retreat. As the commander of the resistance against France, if the French army re-enters the customs, what face will I have to meet the elders of western Guangdong, and what face will I have to live?" Feng Zicai said loudly with his sword in his hand.

"Even if I die today, I will never take a step back!"

"We are willing to live and die with adults!" The surrounding soldiers heard Feng Zicai's words, and their spirits were greatly encouraged. Together, they responded loudly.

......

Subsequently, under the cover of artillery fire, the legal person attacked fiercely for a long time, but it was never able to break through the position of the Qing army.

And at the time of the fierce battle between the Qing and French sides. Located about a kilometer into the jungle to the west of them, there was a hidden force that had long been hidden and troublesome.

"Are you all ready?"

"Report to the regimental commander, the artillery company has a total of 6 75mm field guns, all ready!" Wen Dayou, commander of the artillery company of the third regiment of the Fourth Division, reported loudly.

"Now that you're ready, let's fire, although we don't deal with the Qing Dynasty. But it's also a sibling. We can't let them sacrifice too much!" said Weng Wendong, the head of the Third Regiment.

"Yes, Captain!"

After receiving the order, Wen Dayou immediately turned around and shouted: "Open the cannon!"

"......Boom!" the soldiers of the artillery company, who had been preparing for a long time, suddenly sounded the fuse in their hands. Immediately, the same soldier who ran the shift immediately opened the bolt, and the soldier holding the shell in the back immediately pushed the new shell into the chamber after the shell fell out, and then the soldier next to him immediately closed the bolt. The entire process takes less than three seconds.

The new hydraulic retractor also saves the gunner the time to re-aim. As a result, the rate of shelling was greatly increased.

"Boom, ......!" accompanied by the fire of six 75 guns of the three regiments of the fourth division, followed by nine 82mm medium-caliber mortars and 36 60 mortars also firing at full strength.

Of course, their goals vary. The 75 field guns, which had a longer range, were aimed at the French artillery, while the mortars were aimed at the soldiers of the 2nd Brigade of the French Army, who were attacking the Qing army.

The shelling efficiency of Huo Jiajun's new 75 field artillery is about 25 rounds per minute, which is more than double that of the current artillery of the same caliber. And mortars shell faster.

So it was like hundreds of artillery guns firing at the same time, but after one round of shells, the French were blown up.

"Impossible, how could the Qing people have so many artillery, this is impossible to ......!" After hearing the sound of shelling, he rushed out of the camp and looked at his own soldiers who were running wolf under the heavy artillery fire in the distance, and Nigri said with disbelief on his face.

Similarly, Feng Zicai and his soldiers, who were leading his troops to resist the attack of the French at this moment, were also a little foggy.

"Father, could it be that Lord Su Yuanchun caught up from the rear!" looked at the French soldiers who were torn apart by the intense artillery fire. Feng Zicai's eldest son, Feng Shan, guessed.

"It's definitely not Lord Su, he doesn't have so many artillery!" Feng Zicai said with a frown.

"Okay, order the troops, take advantage of the situation to attack! Now that the French are in a big mess with artillery, it is our opportunity to counterattack!" Feng Zicai ordered loudly.

"But father, ...... these cannons?" Feng Shan hesitated.

"Don't worry, no matter who the owner of these cannons is, it seems that they should be against the French, and I believe that their forehead shells will not fall on our heads. ”

Subsequently, Feng Zicai's guess came true.

Wherever they attacked, the cannon fell, and it always fell on the heads of the French troops in front of them. As if to escort them, although the appearance of this situation made the Qing army officers unclear, but everyone was brave, one by one, rushing to kill the French who had lost their courage and had been bombed by fierce artillery at the moment.

Subsequently, more than 2,000 soldiers of the Second Brigade of the French Expeditionary Force were defeated by Feng Zicai's troops, and finally they were able to escape.

"It seems that this French unit is not very good, and it is actually defeated like this?" Ren Zhijian, chief of staff of the Third Regiment, put down the binoculars and said with a dissatisfied expression.

"Alas! Originally, when we came out this time, we thought we would be able to fight a battle, but we only fired a few shots, and the French were defeated, which is really unlucky!" Weng Wendong, the commander of the third regiment, was also unhappy.

This time, he spent a lot of money to snatch the task from the division commander, but the war ended before the troops were dispatched.

"Okay, don't talk about that. Now that the Qing army has won, let's retreat quickly, or wait for them to come to the door. It's hard for us to explain!" said Zhu Wen, political commissar of the Third Regiment, with a smile.

"Well, that's right! Order the troops to retreat!"

With Weng Wendong leading, the 75 field guns that were still firing immediately stopped, and then the soldiers of the artillery squad skillfully disassembled the six guns into parts one by one, and then loaded them on the pack horses next to them. Shipped away quickly.

After waiting for an hour, when the Qing troops came to find it, there was nothing but a pile of messy footprints. Nothing else.

Although he didn't find the troops who secretly helped, Feng Zicai put it down for the time being, and now he is pursuing it with victory and recovering Liangshan in one fell swoop. Kefu Hanoi. Defeating the French ** team is the most important thing.

Because, this time Huo Jiajun helped, the losses of the French troops were far greater than the historical ones, and the losses of the Qing army were even less, and after capturing a large amount of equipment from the French army, the strength of the Qing army under Feng Zicai increased greatly. On the 26th, he conquered Wenyuan, and on the 29th, he conquered Langshan, and seriously wounded the French commander Negri, who had escaped on the front line of Zhennan Pass. Later, he drove the remnants of the French army to the south of Langjia and won a major victory.

March 30, 1887. When the news of Heppenzhe's abandonment of Lang Son reached the French mainland, the cabinet of French Prime Minister Jouferi rejected Ru's proposal of "having the right to preemptively discuss the bill on increasing military spending" by a vote of 306 to 149. Jofferi took the blame and resigned.

In April 1887, with the consent of the Qing government, Hurd, the General Department of Customs, sent his subordinate to the British Chinese Customs Office in London, the Department of Taxation, to Paris to promote the Sino-French peace talks. On April 24, Kim Tenggan and the French Foreign Ministry's Chief Secretary for Administration, Charles Biller, hastily signed an armistice agreement (the Paris Agreement) in Paris.

Later, the Qing government approved Li Fu's "Concise Treaty" of Tianjin, and ordered the North Vietnamese garrison to withdraw back to China in stages.

After receiving the edict to withdraw the troops, Feng Zicai, who was already less than 50 kilometers away from Hanoi, had to withdraw his troops and return to Guangxi, and as soon as he returned to Guangxi, Feng Zicai was dismissed from all military affairs.

However, this series of orders also brought the dissatisfaction gathered in the hearts of most of the anti-French officers and soldiers gathered in Guangxi to a climax, especially when Feng Zicai was dismissed, the 40 battalions he commanded, and nearly 20,000 elite Qing troops almost mutinied.

But that's just the beginning.

On May 13, 1887, the Qing government appointed Li Hongzhang as a negotiator to begin negotiations on a formal Sino-French treaty with the French government representative and minister to China, Badeno, in Tianjin.

On June 9, 1887, the Sino-French Treaty of Vietnam, also known as the Sino-French New Treaty, also known as the Treaty of Liba, was signed in Tin and Tianjin, with a total of 10 paragraphs, the main contents of which were: the Qing government recognized France's right to protect Vietnam and recognized the treaty concluded between France and Vietnam; the land border between China and Vietnam was opened to trade, and two treaty ports were opened on the Chinese border, and "all taxes on the goods transported into and out of the Yunnan-South and Guangzhou-West borders should be reduced, and the trade tariffs would be reduced according to the present conditions"; It should be done in consultation with the French businessmen"; within six months of the signing of this treaty, China and France will send personnel to the Sino-Vietnamese border to "jointly survey the boundary."

On November 28, 1887, the treaty was ratified in Beijing. Since then, China has recognized France's annexation of Annam, and the gateway to southwest China has been opened.

After the content of the treaty was signed, the entire Qing Dynasty was in an uproar, and the Battle of Annam cost a lot of money, and finally defeated the French, which was the only commendable great victory of the Qing Dynasty in foreign wars from the First Sino-Japanese War to the present nearly half a century, and it was also a world power like France, when the news of the victory over the French spread, everyone was elated, and the Westernization Movement finally achieved remarkable results.

Next, when the entire Shilin people of the Great Qing Dynasty longed for the country to become rich and strong from now on, they never expected that the Qing government would be so weak in diplomacy, and even though the war was won, it still signed such a humiliating treaty in the end.

From the expectations of the powerful countries to the disappointment after the signing of the treaty, the entire Qing Dynasty was like being poured with a scoop of hot oil and became hot. More and more people completely lost confidence in the Qing Dynasty and began to look for a way to save the country.

And the time that Huo Shan had been waiting for had finally arrived. (To be continued.) )