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112 The Far East Fox: Whoever counts wins

In September 1855, amid the sound of gongs, a Qing army camp in the area near Jiujiang City became lively. When it was time for lunch, the soldiers sat around the ground and ate a simple lunch. The soldiers on the building looked up three-story high with red tassel guns and looked at the river flowing through the camp. This was a strategic location.

This camp, which had 3,000 Qing soldiers stationed specifically to defend this river channel, was lined up along the river bank with tall wooden walls of Qi people.

There are also two parallel riverbank fortifications on both sides of the river, with gun holes for shooting on it, and six turrets lined up behind it. The cannons on the earthen platform pointed straight at the river surface. Dozens of wood floated on the river surface in front of the fortification, holding up three large iron chains across the river surface. There are dozens of wooden stakes inserted in the water in front of the iron chain to block the passage of ships. Any long-haired water attack, whether long-haired or short-haired, must go upstream and be bombarded by defending cannons in front of the iron chain and the reef.

In the eyes of the defenders, this was a solid river defense fortification, but just as the sentry above looked at the brothers below to enjoy lunch and swallowed their saliva, he suddenly heard the rumbling sound from the distance from the river. He turned his head and looked into the distance, a little stupid. In the river behind the lush forest, a black smoke was rushing towards the here against the wind.

"What's that?" The sentry set up a canopy in his hand, staring at the weird black smoke without blinking.

After 10 minutes, when the black smoke passed by the woods and appeared in his sight, he was stunned for a moment, then with cold sweat on his head, he grabbed the bell hammer on his head and started knocking wildly.

"Enemy attack!" Looking at the crazy bells and sentries shouting loudly on the tower, immediately causing the fortification to explode. The Qing soldiers seemed to have headless flies running around in the camp.

When the black smoke monster appeared in the eyes of the guards who were waiting for battle, everyone gasped. The leading giant not only smoked, but was actually an iron ship with a huge pulley made of iron plates on the back. It seemed that the river was stirred up to boil.

There were no sails or oarsmen, and it was just like that, and it was so weird that it was emitting smoke all the way upstream. There was a group of small boats behind it, but the shock could not suppress its fear. What made people frightened was the flag hanging on this monster. The Qing soldiers here, whether it was the Hunan Army or the Eight Banners of the Green Camp, were extremely afraid of the flag-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The Qing army gunner on the fort was holding a torch, standing on the fort, looking at the ship that was still far away from the range, looking at his companion tremblingly, but he asked: "Is this the ship?"

The ship was called "that boat" in the mouth of the Qing soldiers, but it had a majestic name in the Sun and Moon Army: "Hongwu", which was 90 feet long and 24 feet wide. It had a full draft of 4 feet. Lin Yaoke, a new recruit from Jiangxi, was on the bow of the iron ship. He was tightly pressed against the bulwark behind him with a row of brothers. This was made of solid elm boards. The outside was covered with bullet marks. On the right was filled with six field guns. On the left, the gunners were quick to fill the terrifying 32-pound gun with their hands and feet. He looked at the stern, and the soldiers there were also feeding the 1-pound howitzer there, and it was just as eager to roar immediately.

Thirty small boats were towed on the ground, and thick elm bulletproof boards were loaded on them. Inside were elite soldiers and 300 earth gun teams. They were holding different standard rifles. Except for the high hats on their heads, the emperor specially brought them to the ground. They were covered with tight clothes made of coarse cloth. After all, the cuffs of Qing style lichens were too large, which always affected the loading. But these strange clothes were envied by the whole army. They were elites.

Lin Yaoke looked at the tall hats and swallowed with envy. He had no weapons in his hand. He even wore shorts. He stood behind the guard board with a few brothers, who were also naked. He just stared blankly at the Western dressed officer, the British captain and the translator yelling in the roar of the steam engine.

"Water Team! Get out of the water and clear the obstacles!" Li Wenmao, the battalion commander, shouted at them.

"yessir!" Lin Yaoke's body suddenly shook and answered this short and powerful command in English. Then he rushed to the bow of the boat with his three brothers, ran over the bloodthirsty cannon, jumped down the bow of the boat and inserted it into the clear river.

The four of them were like fish. They were pulling the ropes on the boat in the water and swam toward the huge wooden stakes that were firmly inserted into the water not far away. The bubbles in their mouths flew across their faces like strings of pearls. Lin Yao didn't feel suffocated. He was just excited. The excited chest was about to explode.

He swam the farthest, like a fish grass, around a wooden stake, like dancing, putting a thick earth rope on the wooden stake, and then as if floating, holding the wooden stake, and then moving upwards alternately. At the end of the wooden stake, he let go of his hand and slowly floated to the top of the wooden stake. Then he stepped on the wooden stake together, squatting down like a frog, and then kicked violently. He rushed towards the surface of the bright and flowing ground like an arrow.

"Wow!" Lin Yaoke's head suddenly came out of the water. While coughing violently, he waved his hands to the Hongwu number to make an ok signal.

The Hongwu roared and immediately retreated. The huge force suddenly pulled the shortest rope straight. The wooden stakes as thick as a man's waist combined with a ball of black mud sewage were pulled out like a destruction, and they were weakly crossed in front of the Hongwu , indicating helpless surrender, followed by the second, third, and fourth.

Lin Yaoke turned his head and looked at the Qing army fortifications flying with the Yellow Dragon Flag. It was silence like death, as if it was crushed by fear. He cheered loudly, swam towards the wooden stake, untied the rope cover, and the Hongwu roster was already coming again. Lin Yaoke shook his fists at the Yellow Dragon Flag, and pulled the rope cover to drill into the water again.

When he was gasping on the water with the eighth wooden stake in his arms, the 3-pound cannon on the bow of the Hongwu ship let out a terrifying roar, and the first cannon smashed a wooden wall into powder.

The soldiers on the fort behind the wooden wall were shattered and unconsciously bent down and hugged their heads, but the gunner holding a fuse in his hand felt that someone was stomping on his stomach, flew off the ground and slid down the fortress one foot before stopping. Then he slowly lowered his head, but a piece of dagger-like wood chips were inserted into his stomach. He opened his confused and powerless eyes in disbelief, knelt there and raised his head, his ears were covered with screams and cries of horror. A group of bloody comrades crawled around the hit wooden wall.

The Hongwu roared again, and pierced through the solid defense line again like a giant spear, and people from all over the place could not stand up again.

The solid wooden wall could not block such a huge and powerful cannon, but after they were destroyed, they still gained the terrifying power of the cannon. The fragments of the wooden wall blasted towards the Qing soldiers behind like muskets and iron sand.

The ship was killing its own soldiers, but the Qing army cannons could not hit the monster. Seeing the boats behind the boat docked one after another, the long hair was lined up, and the cannons were moved to the land one by one, the Qing army commander knew that he had reached the point of life and death.

Lin Yaoke, who was struggling toward the Hongwu, swam very slowly. The continuous diving operations just now had consumed a lot of his energy, but suddenly he heard the thunder behind him. He stopped, hugged a large wooden stake with half of black mud on the water surface, and looked back with breath. The four gates of the camp were wide open, and countless Qing soldiers were holding swords, spears and tides towards the shore where the Hongwu was docking.

"Sir! Qing Yao is coming out!" Lin Yaoke knew that the iron ship on his head might not have heard it. He was just a waste of time, but he yelled repeatedly. At this moment, although he was just a water team leader without weapons, the army was like his relatives, and he was just going to scream for his relatives.

"This is an open area! Change grape bullets!" Li Wenmao roared, gritting his teeth, but a grim smile appeared on his face.

A few minutes later, there was a loud noise on his head, followed by a sharp roar, like an invisible dragon breaking through the air. Lin Yaoke immediately turned his head and looked at it. A black cloud exploded with a bang on the head of the Qing army, which was rushing like a tide. The cloud didn't look big. But countless black smoke burst out like snakes, terrifyingly like a snake nest floating in the air.

The Qing army below could not see it. It was countless projectiles scattered out, destroying them like a dense formation. They slashed into the group of Qing soldiers like death's sickle. Under the rain of iron bullets like raindrops, the bones were broken like bamboo, the flesh broke holes after holes like paper, and blood was like rain. One after another of the enemies were cut down.

"Retreat!" Guantai stood among the team. Looking at the monster covered in smoke and roaring like a ground dragon, surrounded by dead bodies and struggling soldiers crying. He pale his face and waved his sword in the direction of the camp. However, before he could make a second sound, a bullet hit his left face and penetrated his right face. The bravest officer who rushed forward was immediately overturned to the ground like a piece of paper, and never moved again. It was shot by the rifleman from the earth gun team on the land.

The "Hongwu" bombarded unscrupulously for 45 minutes, and 200 people were killed and the defenders fled.

"How is that boat?" In the headquarters of the Song Army in Nanchang, the Yangtze River Commander Zhu Qingzheng asked Li Wenmao with a smile.

"That ship, alas, there will be no rivals. We should really destroy the Hunan Army immediately." Li Wenmao sat down and sighed, then stretched out his hand and said, "Can you get another one? This one is Guan Judi, and the next one is for me to use as a flagship."

Guan Ju next to him smiled: "Do you know how much manpower the Hongwu unit used to transport it from the Pearl River water system into the Yangtze River water system? It was almost dismantled and transported it on land and then assembled. The emperor had great expectations for us."

"When it comes to this, why should the emperor fight Annan? Annan has nothing to do with us." Li Wenmao yelled. He stood up and pointed to the Qing Dynasty map on the wall and said in a tone that was difficult to understand: "Damn, fighting Beijing is the main business! This year, the Tianjin Northern Expedition Army was completely wiped out. If they don't do it, we can do it! How can this happen? You must concentrate on rebellion."

As upper-level officers, several of them already knew the emperor's strategy.

"It's because of foreigners." Guan Ju said with certainty: "We can't live without foreigners, we can't."

"Isn't it a foreigner? Isn't Your Majesty being sacred by God? The believers in Annan must be protected. After all, we believe in God's land." Zhu Qingzheng said.

"What a holy edict!" Li Wenmao said angrily: "Doesn't the peace agreement mean that foreigners are protecting us and separating land with the Qing Dynasty? What's wrong with them? We can destroy them! There is only one Chinese emperor! Your Majesty is afraid of foreigners! I can see that! Anti-Qing, restoring Ming and saving compatriots are all verbal words. And they have to cooperate with the liars in Tianjin? Why? They can't defeat the Hunan Army at all. We can beat them. Maybe we will destroy them!"

"Shut up." Zhu Qingzheng snorted coldly: "How can you understand Your Majesty's strategy?"

"Brother Baitou, do you understand? Then tell me? After all, our Sun and Moon Army is not the Crusader of the Sharp Spears. Only half of us believe in God, and the others are heroes! Give me an explanation, and I can explain to my brothers that we are rebels. We want to kill Xianfeng Head. If we don't kill it, it is called surrender, and it is called Pian'an. In which era, I have heard of snakes and rats in a nest?"

"What are you explaining? Your Majesty has given us such a strong steamer! I support Your Majesty." Guan Ju sneered.

"Forget it, stop talking about this. Just do what we should do." Zhu Qingzheng said, and then he looked at Li Wenmao and said, "Wenmao, I'm very surprised. You are very brave in wars, why don't you believe in God? You'd better believe it."

Wen Mao was stunned for a moment. He looked at Zhu Qingzheng who looked curious, sighed and said, "I'm afraid of going to hell."

"How could you go to hell?" Zhu Qingzheng and Guan Ju asked together.

"Forget it, let's not mention it. I'll go back to the camp now. There's still something to do." Li Wenmao stood up and saluted Zhu Qingzheng and Guan Ju, and hurriedly left the camp.

In the second half of 1855, under the pressure of the great powers, Zhao Kuo kicked nationalism aside and gave up overthrowing the original national policy of the Qing Dynasty. However, under the Qing civilization, neither the people nor the elite would recognize a separatist force. In order to stabilize the foundation of ruling, he slipped into the fork in the road of establishing a country in religion in order to exchange for the great powers, the army and the people.

Zhao Kuo, who sold himself to the British and French land, showed an extremely fanatical attitude towards the Annan War, which was completely opposite to the previous one. This guy who once called himself a "pacifist" acted as a dual role of Far East strategist and thug in the spoils group. He convinced the British and French ministers that the Annan Ruan Dynasty was an unreasonable guy. They had no idea what they were doing, nor did they know what changes had happened in the world. It would take time to defeat his army and other cities to make him surrender. They would come up with all kinds of ridiculous ways to delay time. The coalition forces should directly attack Annan's heart Hue, as long as they took Hue, or even hit the city. The Nguyen Dynasty would agree to any conditions.

This opinion was unanimously agreed by the various imperialists who suffered from the strange thinking of the dynasties in the Far East - naturally, this view also arises: Zhao Kuo was a native of the Far East after all, and he understood the thoughts of their local rulers.

To this goal, Zhao Kuo will send 10 warships and gunboats that his navy can fight from the ocean, as well as 2,000 Little Knife Legion, and will also send 5,000 elite firepowered Sharp Spear Legion, plus 14 Faspie warships and 3,000 army. This will have an overwhelming war advantage against the Annan capital, France, Song and Spanish coalition, which has only a small number of warships and 30,000 army, which has an overwhelming war advantage in Hue.

At the same time, Zhao Kuo will also send 5,000 firepower foreign gun teams to the Black Flag Legion led by Dou Wenjian and Liu Yongfu to gather in the border of Song and Annan in Guangxi. If the attack on Hue still cannot allow the Ruan Sendi Emperor to submit, the army will penetrate into North Vietnam and take straight to Hanoi.

Under such an offensive, Annan could not refuse to surrender-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Of course, there is another serious problem, which is how to explain to the army this time of war in accordance with Western rules - as long as you fight, it is not occupied or annexed - the Qing civilization was difficult to understand this, because it was always a life-and-death battle.

Moreover, Zhao Kuo liked the Ruan Dynasty very much. He told his subordinates that they must strictly enforce military discipline and not humiliate the rulers of Annan. He thought so: "A such a corrupt dynasty is of course my good friend. You must not overthrow it. If you change to a more ruthless guy, why is Annan so self-reliant? If you are strong, won’t you hit me? It’s a bad thing to be internally, and to externally, whoever is my good friend."

But in the face of wars in the mainland during this period, Zhao Kuojue, who was unable to look north, had to rely on diplomatic skills to solve the danger.

Britain and France decided to force him, so he was with the foreigners. I wonder how the Qing court would face this situation. Is the fear of foreigners over the hatred of the rebels, or does hatred over the fear?

The former must have been whining. He would have to deal with this stupid dynasty after he had finished cleaning up Annan and divided the dirty dirt. The latter would have been rushing over to beat him directly, and fighting with foreigners would definitely inspire an international war. As long as he lasted for half a year, the British and French military forces would come out of Crimea, Zhao Kuo would still stand on the victorious ship.

But how to survive for the past six months or a year depends on the old friend Taiping Heavenly Kingdom to help fight the Qing Dynasty. Zhao Kuo wanted to launch a diplomatic offensive against Tianjing, which was to curry favor with the number one Yang Xiuqing. He even wrote a secret letter to agree to be the emperor of the Heavenly Kingdom. Lao Hong was enough to sleep with the king of heaven, and hoped to join forces with the Yangtze River to fight against the Hunan Army and the Qing army. Of course, this is because Zhao Kuo was short of troops and relied on the Sun and Moon Army to fight on the Yangtze River.

However, when a Hunan memorial was placed on his desk, he was shocked: Luo Bingzhang's memorial profoundly pointed out his essence. He is the current Shi Jingtang, and he is completely the son emperor of foreigners. Such rebels are the most hateful and terrifying (you can tell if you think about how the Qing Dynasty won the world). Now the south has been corrupted by him, so he must not indulge him in development, because the consequence is that foreigners will get the world.

He also pointed out that his power is due to foreign gun teams, commercial trade, and foreigners' secrets.

This memorial suggests that Yun, Guizhou, Sichuan and Hunan form a Jingyue camp by land, break into his territory, restricting business and taxation; Fujian and Zhejiang harassed his maritime trade at sea; and demanded that foreigners form foreign gun training teams be hired. This is not the most ruthless. The most ruthless move is to ask Xianfeng to establish a special zone around Shanghai, bring foreign trade to Shanghai, Fujian and Zhejiang, and cut off his wealth!

"This...this...this is too fucking ruthless?" Zhao Kuo gasped: "Who did this? How could those people from the Hunan Army understand my details?"

"Please come to Putuo Peak. We must talk about how to deal with Hunan guys!" Zhao Kuo called Zhao Ying and said gritting his teeth: "I don't want any bird Jingyue camp to pounce in during the battle in Annan!"
Chapter completed!
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