My Italy

Chapter 88 Maxim’s First Experience (End)

Now that the garrison commander had shown his trump card, Nigri no longer hesitated. The French artillery would let him know what infantry and artillery warfare was. "Let the frontline troops pay attention to the distance from the position, and let the artillery suppress the opponent immediately."

Following Nigri's order, the artillery fired again. It has to be said that France's artillery is excellent enough, and it deserves to be a country that has always attached great importance to artillery construction.

Their artillery basically controlled the impact point of the artillery shells within fifty meters of the long wall. Such precise artillery fire caused a lot of losses to the 1st Battalion of the Left Army behind the wall. Even Feng Xiangrong, who commanded them, had a tattoo on his forehead.

"Hold on and fight to the death."

The eldest son of General Feng had a ferocious look on his face, as if he was trying to choose someone to devour, as blood was pouring out of his forehead. Since his own commander was unwilling to retreat, what could the other soldiers say? They could only grit their teeth and persist.

However, it is unclear how long this attitude can last.

Feng Xianghua, who was worried about his brother, couldn't help but said. "Father, please send more reinforcements."

"No, it's not time yet."

The second son's request was flatly rejected by Feng Zicai, who believed that it was not the right time yet. So when will the time be right?

In Feng Zicai's view, the best time was when the left battalion was defeated. When the French thought that the defenders at the checkpoint were defeated, it was the time to relax, and a violent blow would be the most fatal. In order to get such a good opportunity, he not only used his life to paralyze the enemy, but even his own son had to bear the risks on the battlefield.

Since there were no reinforcements, the 1st Battalion of the Left Army, which relied entirely on words, continued to resist for half an hour, but suffered too many casualties and was finally defeated.

Seeing the enemy's retreat, the French officers and soldiers cheered sincerely. This battle was too difficult, but in the end they won.

As a qualified commander, after seeing the enemy's retreat, Nigri certainly knew what needed to be done and immediately issued the order. "The whole army goes out and pursues the enemy."

Following Nigri's order, other French soldiers who had been waiting for a long time immediately joined the attack sequence. Even the Vietnamese servants with low morale roared and happily began to chase the fleeing enemies.

It's just that they don't have clairvoyance and can't see clearly what's going on behind the wall. The retreating soldiers were stopped, and commander Feng Zicai led all the other Qing troops to press forward. What's even more terrible is that on the east and west sides, the Maxim heavy machine guns were pushed up by Cosenz and others.

Cosenz witnessed the entire battle before, and he had to give a thumbs up to General Feng's strategy. Although many of the troops under his command were still using cold weapons that should have been eliminated long ago, his excellent command , causing the French army to step into a trap unknowingly.

When the large group of French officers and soldiers had already arrived less than 200 meters in front of the checkpoint, some French soldiers even had their hands on the long wall.

At this time, the sound of artillery suddenly sounded, which seemed to be a signal. Countless figures poured out from behind the long wall. Among them, General Feng drew his saber and was the first to rush towards the French army.

Seeing Feng Zicai, the commander-in-chief, taking the lead, other Qing officers and soldiers were not willing to lag behind.

But they soon discovered that compared to their own bravery, the Maxim electric cannons from both wings were more ruthless.

"Thud, tug, tug..."

The Maxim machine guns placed on both wings demonstrated for the first time their ability to harvest lives. Thousands of French soldiers' lives were ruthlessly harvested by it. Six Maxim machine guns sprayed ammunition at the French soldiers and soldiers at a speed of 500 rounds per minute.

At the same time, the artillery that had been hidden for a long time fired at a rate of three rounds per minute. Shells were fired at the French artillery positions. Although only eight newly arrived Italian fast guns were able to hit the French artillery positions, they still caused huge irreparable losses.

"Boom" An artillery piece on the position was directly hit, and it blew up into the sky with the French artillery on the side.

"Boom, boom, boom" a shell hit the ammunition box, and the continuous explosions made the surrounding area a restricted area for life.

The carelessness and lack of intelligence caused the French artillery position to be only 3,500 meters away from the checkpoint, which was exactly within the range of the Italian 85mm artillery. The bombardment made it impossible for the French artillery position to respond. This is also Let the Maxim machine gun exert its maximum power unscrupulously.

"Retreat quickly."

Nigri, standing in front of the position, reacted immediately after seeing his soldiers being ruthlessly harvested, but since he was here, there was no need to retreat.

Not to mention the French troops who had already rushed to the long wall, these people were destined to be overwhelmed by the Qing army, and either died in battle or were captured. The large French army that rushed to the pass was already two to three hundred meters away from the long wall. They wanted to retreat to a safe distance. How could they escape without risking lives and walking a bloody road.

And at this time, you must move quickly, faster than your teammates, so now the French officers and soldiers no longer care about military discipline, and it is polite to bump into their comrades. Some even directly kicked their comrades down in an attempt to use them to attract the Qing troops behind them. Focus and buy yourself time to escape.

All the ugly behaviors of the French army were exposed in front of the Qing army, which boosted their morale even more. Everyone knew that they had won, and it was a big victory, so they pursued harder.

However, as the commander-in-chief, Feng Zicai was not dazzled by the victory. He still led his army to follow the French army. Because the commander of Maxim's electric cannon kept telling him that at a distance of 600 meters, his army had better keep a distance from the French army. As long as he heard the electric cannon ceasefire, he could rush forward.

In fact, they didn't need to be so serious at all, because at this time, the morale of the French army was on the verge of collapse, and less than 600 French soldiers escaped from Maxim's range. The whole road was full of fallen corpses of French soldiers, which was simply too horrible to look at.

These French troops, who were like frightened birds, did not stop for a moment when they saw the Qing troops pursuing them behind them. Many of them were already running empty-handed towards the way they came.

Faced with this situation, Feng Zicai left some officers and soldiers to clean the battlefield and pick up some debris. In particular, all the cannons that were still intact on the French position had to be taken away.

As for the other officers and soldiers, they followed him and followed the defeated French army towards Lang Son.

In this battle before Zhennanguan, the Qing army invested more than 5,000 men from Feng Zicai's troops, while the French army invested 3,000 men. In the end, the French army was defeated miserably, with more than 2,300 casualties and more than 300 prisoners (those who were injured and captured were mainly French officers and soldiers, while the Vietnamese servants were all captured without injuries), and only more than 500 people were captured. He followed Nigri and fled back to Lang Son.

Most of these people were empty-handed, but Nigri did not dare to stay in Lang Son. After spending a night gathering the soldiers, he immediately withdrew from Lang Son with more than a thousand defeated soldiers and continued to flee to Bac Ninh. He didn't have time to collect many supplies in the city, so he ran away in despair.

Facts proved that Nigri was good at running away. The next day, Feng Zicai led his troops to Lang Son and regained the city.

Then Feng Zicai attacked from all sides and successively recaptured Changqing, Haiyang, Taiyuan and other places. With Feng Zicai's victory at Zhennanguan, other Qing troops were ready to move. Moreover, the Vietnamese people also rioted one after another. For a time, the Beiqi area fell into a situation of smoke and smoke.

This gave French commander Miller an unusual headache. For this reason, he could only carry out strategic contraction. A large number of newly occupied cities were abandoned in this way, which made the resistance of the Vietnamese people even more vigorous.

For this reason, he specially sent a message to Paris, requesting domestic reinforcements to be sent for support. In addition, after investigating the fiasco at Zhennanguan, he even suggested to Paris that the Italians had intervened too much in this war with the Qing Dynasty. If the Italian black hands behind them could not be blocked, France would soon be in trouble in this war. It's hard to get a good result.

Let's end it like this. If we continue writing, we will touch on all aspects of the country. It is completely thankless.

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