Dominate the Country

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At night, the stars are twinkling. Wuchang has had good weather these days.

Fan Shishou has gone to bed, and his complexion is obviously much worse than a month ago. Recently, he has not eaten well, slept well, and his highly tense nerves are eroding his health bit by bit.

The battle is a huge pressure for both sides. The difference is that whichever side has the advantage will have less pressure on its commander. Chen Ming has never seen Fan Shishou, nor has he seen Chen Hui now. If he saw him, he would find that both of them were painfully tortured by the huge pressure as heavy as a mountain.

Maybe there is a little difference. The general's mansion still has 40,000 fully armed soldiers and a long-built stronghold defense line. But the three towns of Wuhan are all sparse. After Ding Chang sent a large number of troops from the city guard camp, the Fu Biao, and the Du Biao to Xiangyang and Yunyang, the huge three towns of Wuhan were left with only three Lu Yong battalion guards. Now several months have passed, and the prosperous Hankou town still has no walls as before, and there is no fortification outside Hanyang County as before. The only change is the garrison of the three towns of Wuhan. With the southward movement of Anhui troops and the return of Alyajiang, coupled with the militias recruited by the Hubei government, the garrison of the three towns of Wuhan has reached 15,000. But what's the use of this? More than half of these 15,000 people are defeated soldiers and low-quality militias who have lost their souls.

Not to mention frontal combat, they are difficult to give people confidence even in defensive combat.

That night, the cavalry battalion that rushed to Hankou Town in one fell swoop. Hankou, which faces Hanyang across the Han River, also faces Wuchang across the Yangtze River. In the calm night, suddenly flames shot up into the sky and shouts of killing shook the sky. The Qing soldiers guarding the river, especially the Qing soldiers in the Hankou Navy Camp, knew with their toes that something had happened in Hankou.

This news was urgently reported to the governor's office.

Fan Shishou had a poor sleep quality at night. He was a light sleeper and could be awakened by a slight noise. There were hurried footsteps and one or two loud shouts outside the room. Before the door was pushed open, Fan Shishou had already stood up and put on his clothes.

As a cultured and well-educated official, most importantly, a smart official, the first thing Fan Shishou did when he saw the visitor was certainly not to scold him. His face was tight, his whole face was completely stiff, his eyes were focused, and his lips were raised. This was his nervous expression.

"What happened?" To disturb him in the middle of the night, something must have happened. Fan Shishou was very clear-headed.

"Sir, Hankou, Hankou was attacked by the rebel army..."

Hankou was not only attacked by the cavalry battalion of the Fu Han Army, but also completely controlled by the cavalry battalion of the Fu Han Army. Of the nearly 1,000 large and small ships that stayed at the Hankou Town Wharf, less than 20% of the ships escaped when they saw the bad situation. Most of these ships were small boats, and they were ships that stayed outside the Hankou Wharf.

Fan Shishou was not surprised or shocked by the loss of Hankou Town. That town without even a wall was like Shashi outside Jingzhou City, which was impossible to defend. The Fu Han Army "seized" enough food for them to eat for two years in Shashi, and a large number of grain ships fled early, and winter was the off-season for Shashi rice market.

Didn't Xue Shiyan want to keep Shashi at that time? That was just impossible. All they could do was let the bosses of Shashi flee early and empty Shashi as much as possible. Just like Hankou Town these days, the government offices in Wuchang City also did so.

- Empty Hankou Town.

As a result, the Fu Han Army, which had not moved for half a month before the New Year, did not sit idly by and drank water from the river in one fell swoop. What was worse was that it controlled hundreds of ships of different sizes.

And Fan Shishou knew more clearly that the prelude had been opened. The attack of the Fu Han Army cavalry meant the beginning of their attack.

Two days later, the Fu Han Army, which was dispatched in large numbers, captured Hanyang County. The 3,000 Hubei Green Camp and part of the Anhui Green Camp stationed there were defeated without any chance of fighting back. Chen Ming was completely trapped in the Yangtze River, facing Wuchang City across the river.

The Yueyang Navy had already arrived in Wuchang. Together with the Hankou Navy Camp of the Hanyang Association, they had about 800 sailors in two camps and more than 30 warships. The largest ones were no longer bluffing ships and sentry ships, but the two paddle boats brought by the Yueyang Navy Camp. Chen Ming seriously doubted whether those two things were warships. They were larger than bluffing ships and sentry ships, but there was not even a small cannon on them.

With such a large size, if it was a warship, let alone a small cannon, a 500-600-jin "big cannon" could be carried. But in Chen Ming's eyes, these two paddle boats were seriously behind the times. The huge hulls seemed to be used to carry soldiers.

The two naval camps were the first line of defense for the Qing army to guard Wuchang. The Fu Han Army was not the Taiping Army. The latter went from south to north, while Chen Ming had to go from north to south. To take Wuchang, Chen Ming first needed to cross the Yangtze River.

For a long time, Chen Ming had been thinking about a question: how to fight a naval battle. When the warships of both sides were of the same level, even if the Fu Han Army had enough artillery, they could only transport them on the ship, rather than actually deploy them on the ship to fight.

Civilian ships could not withstand the recoil of real cannons. No matter how big the ship was, under the dual influence of the quality of the wood and the hull structure, the bottom of the ship might be shaken to leak water or the deck might be shaken to crack after just two shots.

Just like the biggest problem of converting civilian ships into warships during World War I and World War II, the defense was seriously insufficient.

Another thing is that Chen Ming didn't want his navy to become an old-fashioned fleet like the Xiang Army Navy or the Taiping Army Navy in history. He didn't plan to build a navy at this time. He might have the manpower, but the quality of the ships was seriously inadequate. What Chen Ming wanted now was a temporary substitute.

So, after thinking about it, the only things that the Fu Han Army could use for the "navy" were grenades and tiger squat cannons weighing dozens of kilograms. There was no need to consider cannons. The Fu Han Army "requisitioned" hundreds of ships at the Hankou dock. Although the largest one was larger than the two paddle boats in the Yangtze River, Chen Ming would not risk using that thing to carry cannons.

The Qing soldiers on the other side had a camp on the river bank, but that was just a point. Wuchang City was not easy to fight. There were many mountains and rivers, undulating hills and ridges, crisscrossing lakes and rivers, and a geographically important place outside and a dangerous terrain inside. It has always been a place that military strategists must fight for.

But the prerequisite for all this is that the defenders can be of a higher level.

After the Fu Han Army took control of Hankou and Hanyang, the cannons were placed on the river bank, and the two naval battalions of the Qing army dared not move in the center of the Yangtze River waterway. [The narrowest part of the Yangtze River in Wuhan is only about one kilometer] The Qing Dynasty still has many capable troops, but they are not in Wuchang.

Chen Ming is very confident in launching the crossing operation. He believes that the team can find a foothold on the other side of the river, and then quickly gather troops and materials needed for the operation there, and launch an attack from east to west. The difficulty of capturing Wuchang is much easier than taking Jiangling City.