Chapter 639: Arrogant when you come, depressed when you leave
In fact, in Xinghai Kingdom, due to the development of industry and agricultural technology, prices have dropped to a very low position.
As long as you are a naturalized citizen, even if you receive the minimum wage, you can comfortably support a family of three.
Not to mention those naturalized citizens with technical skills, in two months, they can collect three major items: bicycles, sewing machines, and radios.
Hence, for now, the naturalized people of Xinghai Kingdom have a strong sense of happiness.
Of course, there are also some problems here.
For example, due to commodity prices, some scalpers privately purchase large quantities of various daily necessities and transport them to Nanming, Jiaozhi and other areas for sale.
Of course, this behavior is vigorously combated by Xinghai Kingdom.
After all, low prices are originally one of the benefits of Xinghai Kingdom, so just let the scalpers take advantage of it?
The words went too far. The Qing envoy was beaten severely by Fang Puyu and then was thrown back to the other side.
After the envoy was beaten and returned to the military camp in a state of embarrassment, he immediately cried out to Luck Dehun about his experience and denounced the Xinghai Kun bandits for their powerlessness against the Qing army.
This Luck Dehun had no intention of recruiting the enemy to surrender. In his mind, failure would be washed away by the blood of the enemy.
The reason why we sent the envoys there was just to strike a blow. What if the other party surrendered? What if the other party was angered?
The benefits here can be easily taken advantage of by Luck Dehun, who has rich war experience.
What he didn't expect was that before the messenger left, there was a violent explosion outside.
When he rushed out of the tent and took a look, he realized that the military camp was already covered by artillery fire!
What's going on?
You must know that according to his previous experience, the artillery range of those Star Sea Bandits is only more than two miles at most, but his military camp is located five kilometers away from the sea!
Those shells were fired from the sea!
Luckdehun didn't know that with the rapid improvement of technology, the naval guns on the Star Sea Kingdom warships were no longer the Napoleonic cannons they used to be.
The 88 secondary gun alone has a range of about five thousand meters after many improvements, and the range of the 180mm main gun on strategic battleships is as high as 11,000 meters!
In this era, the range of such artillery is simply the limit of people's imagination!
At this distance, no one with slightly poor eyesight would be able to see the battleship.
Each of the artillery shells flying from the strategic battleship can blast a large crater of more than ten square meters in the military camp, and the sputtering shell fragments are like a storm, killing the lives around them.
In just ten minutes of shelling, the vanguard army led by Luck Dehun was directly disabled. When the artillery fire stopped, Luck Dehun, whose face was darkened by gunpowder smoke, gathered up the remaining soldiers and took a quick inventory.
The whole person almost passed out.
Of the 30,000 troops, only less than 10,000 were left, and groaning wounded soldiers lay everywhere.
In fact, Luck Dehun didn’t know that Xinghai Kingdom’s attack was not limited to him.
Twelve hours later, at around 10 p.m., a strategic battleship, along with three first-class battleships and two second-class battleships, sailed up the river from Hangzhouwan and headed straight for the outside of Hangzhou City.
Just when Duduo received the news and climbed up the city wall, looking at the sudden appearance of several warships in the river, feeling a little uneasy, he saw those warships opening fire on the military camp outside Hangzhou City.
Although Duduo sent out several troops, there are still 180,000 troops in Hangzhou.
Such a large number of soldiers and horses would definitely not be placed in the city, so a large camp was set up outside Hangzhou City.
As a result, the camp successfully attracted the attention of the Starship Battleship and was bombarded with shells for a full forty minutes.
Duduo didn't know whether it was good luck or bad luck. He accepted the banquet hosted by many officials in Hangzhou City and thus escaped this disaster.
But out of the 180,000 soldiers and horses under his command, when the remaining troops were collected and counted, there were only less than 120,000 left.
Hmm, this doesn’t mean that the Starship Battleship is showing mercy.
Helpless, at this time, it was night, and the candlelight had to be ignited in the barracks, so that many artillery shells on the Xinghai battleship had fallen off the position. Otherwise, the 180,000 soldiers could remain 50,000 to 60,000, even if they were lucky.
But no matter what, I came all the way here and didn't even fight a single battle. I lost my troops and ended up in this situation.
From the time he came out of seclusion until now, this is the first time Dodo has encountered such a situation.
He used to be invincible.
The post-war inventory revealed heavy losses!
I don’t know whether it was luck or other reasons, but the total of 50,000 regular soldiers and auxiliary soldiers of the Eight Banners who stayed in the camp were lost as much as 20,000!
No way, the artillery fire of the Star Sea Fleet was originally intended to bombard from the south of the camp all the way to the north.
As a result, due to the darkness, there were some deviations, and the first round of artillery fire fell on the Chinese army camp.
And the 58,000 regular soldiers and auxiliary troops of the Banner were stationed in the central camp.
Because there was no warning before the artillery fire fell, these Eight Banners soldiers suffered the most heavy losses.
Not to mention how uncomfortable Dodo felt, it was just that after the bombardment, the Star Sea Fleet immediately headed north along the coastline, running for more than 1,300 kilometers before appearing outside Tianjing.
After a burst of artillery bombardment, the Qing troops stationed at Dagukou dropped the corpses and dispersed like birds.
Then a brigade of 3,000 infantrymen began to land, and quickly used the fortresses left by the Qing army to build diamond forts and erect forts on the spot.
Dajukou has always been the focus of the capital's defense. In the Ming Dynasty, many forts were built at Dajukou in order to prevent Japanese pirates from invading.
Well, as for the fort, there was none at this time. It would take more than a hundred years before the Qing government would build a fort at Dajukou.
The news that Dagukou was attacked by the enemy was quickly transmitted to the capital, shocking the top officials of the Qing court and becoming unable to sit still.
In the past, they could attack whoever they wanted. Why would anyone dare to attack them now?
Of course, the news that Luck Dehun failed without a fight at Zhejiang has not yet come, otherwise, they would be even more surprised.
But this does not matter, the Qing court is not afraid of any enemies.
Soon, the Qing troops stationed in and around the capital were dispatched one after another and rushed towards the large opening of the patio.
After two full days of busy work, the Lingbao group with Dagukou as the center and its back backed by the sea was finally established.
Since the Qing army did not have many artillery, the Lingbao group did not need to consider the possibility of artillery defense too much, so the construction speed was faster.
All three thousand infantrymen have been stationed in the diamond fort group. Twenty rotary machine guns have been mounted on the heights of each diamond fort, with every two forming a cross fire line. Six newly equipped 150mm cannons have been deployed on the sides of the diamond fort.
On a high cliff protruding into the sea.
With a fleet of warships from the Northern Fleet docked nearby, there was absolutely no possibility of the Qing army sneaking into the artillery positions.