Master Yuan, start!

"If we can get the British to march in the capital again, our chances of success will be much better," Courbet thought.

But now that he was here, Courbet was in a difficult situation, and he didn't think that the Qing soldiers were that difficult to deal with.

In order to quickly attack the city, he pulled over two artillery regiments and decided to fight a quick battle.

At this moment, in the city of Tianjin, dozens of miles away, the commander of the Jiashen Front Army, Liu Shengxiu, frowned as he watched the Qing army running from Dagu Fort to ask for help.

"You mean the fall of Dagu Fort is a foregone conclusion?!" Liu Shengxiu was a little bit unbelievable.

"Yes, Lord Liu! The garrison commander, Lord Zhao, asked me to rush into the city to ask for help. I'm afraid the French will land if we're any later!" The Qing soldier who asked for help was crying and his face was black with dust splashed by the shells.

“But I just received the news and rushed to Tianjin. I haven’t had time to rest in the city yet, so I have no idea what the enemy situation is like.

Besides, the cannons are still pulling behind us. Do you want my Jiashen front army to fight the French with only a gun?

Do you know how powerful the French were? At Zhennan Pass, 3 imperial troops barely held off 3000 French. They claimed victory by besieging and attacking the enemy's reinforcements and killing a few hundred.

You said the French are coming with a strong force, with dozens of large ships approaching, and their number cannot be less than tens of thousands. I only have a little over 8000 men. How should I respond?" Liu Shengxiu's questioning left the Qing soldiers speechless. Seeing that Liu Shengxiu had no intention of sending troops, he became a little anxious.

The Qing soldiers who were asking for help were somewhat careless in their words, not caring at all about Liu Shengxiu's reputation. Remembering the telegram they had received from the court last night, they opened their mouths and said, "What about Lushun? The court telegraphed yesterday that Lord Yuan's 3000 defenders in Lushun had repelled 2000 landing enemy troops, and they even distributed this news to all the troops as an encouragement. Lord Yuan can do it, so why can't Lord Liu?"

"You!" Liu Shengxiu glared at him. If the man in front of him was not his soldier, he would have beaten him half to death today.

"Who did Yuan Shikai fight? The Japanese! He wasn't really fighting the French, so how can it be the same?"

The Qing soldiers were desperate to ask for help, and they had to ask Liu Shengxiu to come to their rescue: "Even if we weren't fighting the French, Lord Yuan had the courage to take the initiative to attack under the threat of French artillery, but why did you, Lord Liu, just watch our friendly troops die without helping them?"

"Tabulan, don't think that I dare not do anything to you just because you are a bannerman. I can sentence you to death for insulting your superiors without reporting to the Ministry of War!" Although Liu Shengxiu said it, he still didn't dare to kill Tabulan.

Just then, his attendants came forward to tell him that the cannons had been pulled outside Tianjin City. Only then did he decide to go out of the city to investigate.

As midsummer approaches, the weather in the north is unbearably hot. Even though it is late at night, Liu Shengxiu, who is in the wilderness, still feels a little hot.

There were no modern reconnaissance programs in the daily training of the Jiashen Front Army. In the past, they would send a few good horsemen to search and investigate forward, which was still the style of the old Eight Banners.

They relied on their large numbers and abundant firepower to suppress the enemy.

Liu Shengxiu had this style since he fought against the Taiping Army, and it was even more so when he suppressed the Nian Rebellion later.

There are few bandits and many government troops.

First send a small team to create a flaw. If the enemy is fooled and chases after you, surround them and attack them. If they don't chase you, follow them closely and wait until they are exhausted before attacking with the entire army.

There is no question of any combat skills, it was completely defeated by force.

Liu Shengxiu took a few hundred people with him to investigate the specific situation before making a decision.

The French army did not rush to Tianjin after capturing Dagu Fort. Instead, they dispersed to rest in nearby camps and waited until dawn to make plans.

However, the French were not accustomed to the countryside in summer, and shouts and curses could be heard from the silent barracks from time to time.

It seems that mosquitoes and heat have caused a lot of trouble for the French.

Tablan followed Liu Shengxiu, and a group of several hundred people stepped on the weeds one after another and aimed at a dilapidated village far away from the main force. There were lights flashing in several houses at the entrance of the village.

"I didn't expect the French to attack so quickly. They captured Dagu Fort in one night, and even the spies ran here!" Liu Shengxiu was secretly shocked. Dagu Fort, which was home to thousands of people, was lost so quickly, and no one knew how many French soldiers were injured.

However, he did not slow down his hands. When he approached a thatched house, he heard a painful howl from inside the house.

“!%*!,*!”

Liu Shengxiu didn't understand what the French were saying, but he felt that their tone was very strong. He secretly took a look inside the house and found that a French wounded soldier was receiving treatment.

Looking back at the house area opposite, I saw people standing by the wall gesturing that there were injured people in the house.

With the help of the dim light, Liu Shengxiu discovered that there were red crosses on white backgrounds posted on several doors.

Liu Shengxiu had seen this sign when he went to Tianjin School earlier. According to Yuan Xiangcheng, it was the "International Red Cross" and it did the work of a doctor. Many people in Beiyang School also studied this subject.

Liu Shengxiu felt that Yuan Shikai had used too many foreign things, which was why he was fed up with them. He offered political courses, hired special battlefield doctors, and made students do things like hold rallies on the parade grounds every ten days, shouting slogans in front of thousands of people.

He just couldn't stand Yuan Shikai's actions and left after staying there for less than a month. Although he was not a student in the school but a horse riding instructor, he couldn't stand the atmosphere.

But at this moment, he was somewhat grateful to Yuan Xiangcheng, otherwise he might not have recognized that this was the place where the French were treating the wounded.

After more than a hundred people crawled forward and surrounded the wards, Liu Shengxiu fired a gunshot.

The sound of gunfire began to ring out from time to time. The lightly wounded people in the ward tried to resist with guns, but were quickly shot to death on their beds.

It was not until Liu Shengxiu shouted to leave some people alive that his entourage captured a few lightly wounded soldiers and planned to escape.

However, the gunshots obviously alarmed a small group of French troops not far from the village entrance, and soon bursts of voices were heard.

The French's gun skills were obviously much more accurate than those of the Qing army. As soon as they started fighting, Liu Shengxiu felt that every French soldier was as fierce as a sharpshooter.

He just wanted to gather intelligence this time, but he didn't expect to be stuck by a small group of French scouts and unable to escape.

The French were much better than the Qing army in terms of reloading speed and hitting accuracy, while Liu Shengxiu's troops lacked actual combat experience.

In a panic, some Qing soldiers even fired only one shot without reloading, and were shot to pieces by dozens of Frenchmen.

When Tablan saw this scene, he ran to the front of the team without looking back.

Although Liu Shengxiu's group had more people than the French, due to the huge disparity in firepower, he still had to order a quick retreat.

As the Frenchman's voice disappeared behind him, Liu Shengxiu couldn't help but relax and let out a sigh of relief.

"Is this the Frenchman?" Liu Shengxiu smiled bitterly as he looked at the frightened and trembling Tablan.

He looked at the Qing soldiers beside him, who had gone from more than a hundred at the start to less than a hundred now.

"Can we really stop the French?"

Chapter 55 The Secret of Victory

After nearly a day of transportation on a troop transport ship at a speed of more than ten knots, Yuan Shikai finally arrived at the mouth of the Luan River with more than 10,000 Jiashen Right Army soldiers.

In the late Qing Dynasty, the Luanhekou was about 100 kilometers away from the famous Kaiping Coal Mine. Yuan Xiangcheng had no intention of visiting the Kaiping Coal Mine at the moment.

He is here to look for someone.

Xu Shichang had been waiting at the dock with dozens of people, most of whom were young people, and were the teaching staff left by Yuan Shikai at the Beiyang Tianjin School.

Seeing Yuan Xiangcheng's army arrive, they all showed happy expressions on their faces and waved their hands stiffly to greet Yuan Xiangcheng.

This was a new etiquette promoted by Yuan Xiangcheng in the school. If the relationship was between teacher and student, they could just wave or nod when meeting.

If the relationship between superiors and subordinates is in the military, there is no need to kneel. The subordinate only needs to stand and salute the superior, and the superior will nod in response.

"Chief Instructor, you are finally here!" Xu Shichang arrived ahead of time.

Waited here for some time.

"Juren, what's the situation in Tianjin?" Yuan Xiangcheng held Xu Shichang's hands tightly and asked sincerely.

"It's not optimistic. Before I left, I heard that Liu Shengxiu, the former general of the Jiashen Campaign, had led his troops into Tianjin, and that French warships had been spotted at Dagukou.

Before I left the city, I saw Liu Shengxiu leading his men towards Tanggu." Xu Shichang's words made everyone behind Yuan Xiangcheng nervous.

They knew too well the level of the Jiashen Front Army. They learned the German artillery preemptive attack tactics, but only learned half of it.

The artillery first attack strategy is very simple, the artillery fires first and then the infantry follows up.

But the prerequisite is that the firepower coverage must be sufficient to form an effective strike, otherwise it will be a waste of artillery shells.

But the Jiashen front army did not have such a strong force. Yuan Shikai had unexpected wealth in Korea, so he reluctantly equipped the Incheon Town with four battalions of artillery.

However, Liu Shengxiu's Jiashen front army lacked funds and had only been established for half a year. It was not equipped with sufficient heavy firepower, and the firepower coverage between battalions was difficult to take care of each other.

During the exercises between the two armies, it was common to see two under-strength artillery battalions bombarding the target indiscriminately, and then hastily sending out infantry to engage in close combat without confirming that the target had been completely cleared.

If Yuan Shikai had not deliberately concealed his abilities, the Jiashen Front Army would not have been so victorious.

However, this is also an old problem of the militia soldiers. Because there are so many of them, they like to use human lives to block bullets.

Faced with the French who had even stronger firepower, Yuan Xiangcheng felt that they were courting death.

"Chief Instructor, should we go to support him?" Xu Shichang asked.

"Don't be in a hurry for now. Let's wait and see how the situation on the battlefield changes. At least we have to wait until the Jiashen Left Army and the Rear Army arrive before making a decision." Yuan Xiangcheng calmed down Xu Shichang's somewhat restless heart.

"Juren, besides the teachers at the Beiyang Academy, where did you transport the assistants and machines at the Tianjin Machinery Bureau?"

"Headmaster, I was just about to tell you this. Most of the instructors are unwilling to leave. Only a small number of apprentices who have attended classes at the Beiyang Academy are willing to leave Tianjin, but because they are under the supervision of their masters, they cannot go alone.

However, after the news of the French invasion came, they all changed their minds. The city of Tianjin was in chaos, and the Beiyang government had no time to take care of them. Most people were willing to retreat to the villages and towns around Tianjin, and the machines were dismantled on the spot and buried.

If we really can't take it away, we'll have to leave it there. After all, we haven't received official permission from the court. If we tear it down, we still have a chance to restore it. If we blow it up, we won't be able to explain it in the future." Xu Shichang explained the whole thing.

Yuan Xiangcheng felt a little sorry for the machines still at the Jiuyuan site, destined to be destroyed, but he pulled himself together and asked, "What about the stuff I asked you to bring? How's the research going at the Tianjin Machinery Bureau?"

"I brought one sample, and the rest were buried around the warehouse." Xu Shichang led the way and took Yuan Xiangcheng to a bungalow.

What caught Yuan Xiangcheng's eyes were two huge wheels with a gun barrel mounted on top, but it was much thicker than the gun barrels held by today's soldiers. A canvas bag extended from the bullet compartment behind the barrel, which was full of bullets.

"Maxim machine gun!"

Yuan Shikai finally saw this treasure. In 1883, he asked Brad Hoover, the American who had helped him find mines in Korea before, to find an American named Heimer Stevens Maxim, an inventor who was born in Maine and should have moved to the UK recently.

Hoover immediately said that he would take care of it. It would be troublesome to find an unknown person, but it would be much more convenient with the address.

After a few interactions, Yuan Xiangcheng and Maxim got in touch, and Yuan Xiangcheng offered to provide funding to Maxim to help him continue his research.

Maxim, who immigrated to Britain in search of funding, gladly accepted his sponsorship. Yuan Xiangcheng then obtained the drawings of the first generation Maxim machine gun and a sample through Hoover.

After returning to Beijing from Korea at the end of 1884, Yuan Shikai handed the drawings to the Tianjin Machinery Bureau for research and manufacturing. After more than half a year of failures and improvements.

The Tianjin Machinery Bureau successfully produced several imitations of the first generation Maxim machine gun.

Although it was only the first generation, it was far less powerful than the later Maxim. The gun body was bulky, with neither a hydraulic buffer nor a bracket to fix the gun body, and the recoil was surprisingly large.

But there is no doubt that no matter how bad the machine gun is, it is still better than the weapons of today that need to be loaded and fired one by one.

Even though the Maxim machine gun was far less accurate than the Winchester in the hands of the Jiashen Right Army, if used properly, it could easily defeat a hundred enemies in a defensive battle.

"Juren, how is this Maxim machine used?" Yuan Xiangcheng asked with concern.

"I've tried it. If we use a canvas bullet belt, we can fire more than 200 bullets at a time. It's incredibly powerful, no less than the Winchester used by the Jiashen Right Army on a daily basis, but..." Xu Shichang hesitated.

2. “It’s okay to say it”

"The yield rate is too low. After six months of revisions, we've only managed to produce six. And after 6-2 rounds of firing, the barrel gets too hot and turns red. We have to cool it down with cold water and let it sit for a quarter of an hour before we can use it."

"Six will do, that's more than enough. As for the barrel overheating, Kikuto must be concerned about it. A weapon like this is new, so there are bound to be some shortcomings. They can be improved later."

Although the first generation Maxim had many shortcomings, Yuan Xiangcheng was still very happy to see the real thing and clapped his hands on his shoulders: "Great! Being able to make such a powerful weapon will give me a little more hope of defeating the French. Juren, I will remember your great achievement!"

Xu Shichang was both happy and embarrassed when he heard Yuan Xiangcheng's praise: "The chief instructor is not me, but this assistant from the bureau!"