After Li Weiye's troops were besieged, the French army in the Beiban area panicked and for a time wanted to abandon the city and flee.
However, Qin Chong, who succeeded Lu Mei as the governor of Cochin China, quickly calmed down and began to take remedial measures. He appointed General Bo Hua, commander of the Cochin China garrison, as the supreme commander of the Beiban area. The command could mobilize the French army and most of the troops from Cochin China.
The newly recruited Annan indigenous soldiers, equipped with sufficient guns and ammunition, set off quickly for Hanoi.
At the same time, the French government was requested to send a reinforcement team of 2,500 soldiers and three batteries of artillery, of which 1,500 formed an expeditionary force to the Beishan area.
On the sixth day after receiving the bad news that Li Weiye was under siege, the Governor-General of Cochin China mobilized a total of 500 marines and indigenous colonial troops to prepare to go to the Beiban area to assist Li Weiye.
By March 10, due to the continuous arrival of reinforcements, the number of French troops and indigenous colonial troops in the Beiban area had reached approximately 2,600. On March 5, the French government had just approved an allocation of 5.5 million francs to send 2,500 additional reinforcements to the Annan region.
of the bill.
Now, the French government, thousands of miles away, hastily sent an expeditionary force to the Beishan area. This expeditionary force includes three French infantry battalions of 600 men each, and four indigenous infantry companies of 125 men each, totaling more than 2,000 people;
Guba was appointed as the naval commander of Tokyo Bay to strengthen the command strength of the navy. At the same time, He Luocheng was appointed as the special commissioner in Tokyo to manage the administrative affairs of the Beishan area, so that the French army could concentrate its efforts on dealing with the Nanyang Army.
As a result, the Nanyang Army will soon face the severe situation of an imbalanced naval power balance operating in isolation.
In order to deal with the French counterattack, Li Mingyuan continued to order the minister stationed in France to strengthen negotiations with the French government. At the same time, he also issued combat instructions to the Nanyang Army, ordering Mei Dongxing and others to take advantage of the gap between French reinforcements that had not yet arrived in Annan.
Eliminate Li Weiye and other French troops and strengthen the defense capabilities of the Nanyang Army to prevent the French army from launching a fatal blow to the Nanyang Army with the assistance of superior naval power.
After receiving Li Mingyuan's clear combat mission, Mei Dongxing immediately made a response plan.
First of all, with the permission of the local government, the proceeds from commercial transactions and smuggling of Hongji Coal Mine were used to vigorously recruit young men to join the army in areas such as Annan, Songkhla, Thailand, and so on, at the standard of four taels of silver dollars per month.
Secondly, based on the consideration of knowing the enemy and being broad, the more the better, Mei Dongxing, while stockpiling weapons and equipment, instructed the intelligence stations established in Hong Kong, Macau and other regions to purchase more important materials such as muskets, artillery, ammunition, and Chinese and Western medicine materials.
Finally, no longer waiting for the assistance and cooperation of the Annan government forces, they mobilized the available regular troops and Chinese armed forces from various places on their own, and launched a general attack on Hanoi City within a time period to eliminate the French nails in northern Annam.
In the mainland area bordering Annan, there were still some Han officials in the Manchu and Qing court who still harbored national interests. These people
They were very dissatisfied with the cowardice of the Qing government, and wrote to analyze the pros and cons, pointing out that France was not afraid, and that the Manchu Qing government should still adhere to the correct decision of sending troops to Vietnam to resist the French.
As Zhang Peilun, the left deputy censor of the Metropolitan Procuratorate put forward: "
China is indeed very poor, and France is not very rich either. Now that the host-object situation between the two parties has changed, China has a geographical advantage. At this time, the imperial court is still timid and uneasy, hesitant and afraid to make decisive decisions. When the vassal state of Annan was attacked by the French
If it is destroyed, the surviving countries such as North Korea will inevitably be afraid of the great powers and alienate the imperial court. This is really a big mistake and it is too late to regret it."
He also pointed out that although Mei Dongxing and others rebelled in the early years, after arriving in Annan, they no longer became enemies of the Manchu Qing court, nor did they return to the mainland to engage in rebel activities. Now that the Manchu Qing Dynasty was in dire straits, the country should not make more powerful enemies.
, should take the initiative to mend relations with Han and abandon the policy of hostility to overseas Chinese.
Tang Jingsong, the alternate chief of the Ministry of Personnel, reported: If China does not dare to resist the law, it will be inferior to Mei Dongxing's army.
"In the early years, Mei Dongxing's command was no more than a remnant of the Taiping Army. He led thousands of young refugees to campaign and defeat enemy generals. The French were in dire straits. They were divided and surrounded by Mei Dongxing's command in several isolated strongholds. They were in a dilemma.
In the previous country, many civil and military ministers used their maturity and prudence as an excuse to not send troops to fight the French. Although they had superficial rhetoric to deal with the Annan government, they were so cowardly and fearful that they were not afraid of being laughed at by billions of people and the rest of the Taiping Army."
The suggestions of the warring officials were unsurprisingly rejected by the Qing government. Officials like Tang Jingsong who spoke and acted excessively in the memorial were reprimanded for not appreciating the court's painstaking efforts and improper thinking.
In the name of investigating the situation in Annan, he was sent to the Beishan area where the situation was in crisis and left to fend for himself.
In the decades after the suppression of the Taiping uprising, the Manchu Qing government's nature of bowing down to the outside world and brutally oppressing the Qing Dynasty became more and more obvious. It first gave in step by step in the Far East, resulting in the loss of millions of square kilometers of land to the Tsarist Russia.
annexation, and then little Japan came to slap her in the face,
In 1874, Japan invaded Taiwan. Subsequently, the Manchu and Qing government signed the "Beijing Peace Treaty" with Japan, which was humiliating and humiliating to the country. The peace treaty stipulated that the Qing government should compensate the Japanese invaders 500,000 taels of silver in the name of "pension" and payment of "road construction and housing" expenses. At the same time,
,
The peace treaty included the self-deceptive statement "It is hereby stated that the birth of Taiwan has caused harm to Japanese subjects and others", and that Japan's sending troops was a "righteous act to protect the people, and the Qing Dynasty did not blame it".
A few years later, in 1879, Japan officially annexed the Ryukyu Islands, but the Manchu and Qing government said nothing. As far as the Manchu and Qing government at that time was concerned, the local officers and soldiers had just experienced a civil war and had a certain fighting capacity, while Japan implemented reforms.
Within a few years, if the two sides went to war, Japan would undoubtedly be defeated. As a result, the Manchu and Qing government did not dare to send troops to fight, which shows its cowardice and incompetence.
From the tsarist Russia that dominated Central Asia, to the small Japanese island country with a small army, and then to the French invasion of Annan, the Manchu Qing government has always adhered to the policy of surrender to foreign countries. After winning battles with South American Han Dynasty against European whites
The face of victory stung the hearts of some conscientious mainland Chinese. Since the Manchu and Qing Dynasties explicitly rejected the memorial proposal to aid Vietnam in resisting the French, young men from coastal areas continued to rush to the Beiban area to join the Nanyang Army.
On March 15, Pang Zhenyun from Guangdong and Guangxi led 200 militiamen to Ha Long Port. On March 17, Hu Kunshan, the leader of the Guangdong militia, carried 17 fast guns, and 140 brave militiamen defected to the Nanyang Army. On March 20, Guangxi gangs
Armed leader Zhu Bingqing and Sizhou Gongsheng Li Tang successively led 200 to 300 young men across the Annan border and entered the area controlled by the Nanyang Army.
By late March, the number of Chinese armed forces who had defected from the mainland alone reached more than 2,000. Coupled with the funds collected by Mei Dongxing to recruit soldiers in Annan and Nanyang and other places, the number of regular troops in the Nanyang Army returned to 5,500.
The number of people in the Nanyang Guard Army has reached 3,000, and the number of reserve militia armed forces has reached 5,000.
The French's ambition to occupy the entire Annam region was clearly revealed. In order to prevent the worst case scenario of the French breaking out and marching into the Bei Ban region, Li Mingyuan had already instructed the Nanyang Army to successively establish the immigration transit base for the two provinces of Quang Ninh and Lang Son.
The top military and political commanders are ready.
There are sufficient food and medical supplies, and sufficient ammunition for Gatling hand-cranked machine guns imitated from various types of muskets and artillery, enough to cope with the consumption of a medium-sized battle for one year.
Prior to this, the reason why the Nanyang Army did not launch a final attack on the French army that was huddled in Hanoi City and other places was entirely to use the besieged French army as a bargaining chip to coordinate the negotiations between the central government and the French government. However, the French government believed that
Both Han and France were far away from Annan and could not deploy large-scale troops to cross the sea for support. At the same time, the French government also overestimated the combat effectiveness of the French troops trapped in Beiban, believing that it was difficult for the Nanyang Army to obtain military supplies and lacked heavy weapons support.
There was no ability to capture various strongholds that were tightly defended by French local soldiers in a short period of time.
The French tried to use the trapped French army as bait to contain the Han armed forces in Annan and disperse them to various isolated strongholds. Then, when the French expeditionary force arrived in Annan, they would cooperate with the besieged French army to fight for a long time without chaos.
The exhausted Nanyang Army troops were all wiped out, eliminating the last French armed force occupying Annan.
Naturally, the Nanyang Army would not follow the French's ideas unchanged. Just when the French fleet had just passed through the Suez Canal, Mei Dongxing had already completed preparations for the final battle against the besieged French army.
Before formally issuing the battle order, in order to boost morale, Mei Dongxing personally summoned more than ten armed leaders who came from the mainland. Among them, Tang Jingsong was the most important to Mei Dongxing because he was the first person since the founding of the Han Dynasty.
Manchu central officials who took the initiative to defect to the Qing Dynasty.
