The Qing Dynasty

Chapter 202: Divide the Forces and Attack
Fukushima Yasumasa's words eased the expressions on everyone's faces, and the commanders of the various powers, including Alexeyev, all turned their eyes to him.

After all, no one wants to see serious divisions within the coalition at this time.

Chaffee also stopped playing with the pen in his hand and urged Fukushima Yasumasa, "Mr. Fukushima, please continue."

Fukushima Yasumasa nodded somewhat proudly and said, "Dear gentlemen, what I mean is that we now have enough troops. We can split our forces into two groups. We must not only eliminate the remnants of the vanguard army in Tianjin City, but also speed up our march to the capital of the Qing Dynasty and rescue our diplomats who are besieged in the embassy district as soon as possible."

Amid everyone's inquiring gazes, Fukushima Yasumasa continued.

"One group will stay in Tianjin and continue to attack the remnants of the Qing Dynasty in Tianjin. The other group will bypass Tianjin early tomorrow morning and first attack the Zhili main force led by Yu Lu, the governor of Zhili, who has fled to Beicang and Yangliuqing and is preparing to continue to resist there."

Dividing the troops into two routes is not impossible under the current situation. The key is how to allocate the troops.

Gasley hesitated for a moment and asked, "Mr. Fukushima, how should we allocate our forces?"

Fukushima Yasushi bowed slightly to Gasley in his seat, "Your Excellency Lieutenant General, according to the intelligence I have received, there are many Qing troops around Yu Lu, including the Wuwei Left Army under Song Qing and Ma Yukun, the remnants of the Wuwei Front Army, several battalions of the training army under General He Yongsheng, and the three battalions of the Yi Army under Lü Benyuan. In addition, there are thousands of soldiers trained by the Maritime Transport Envoy Yang Zonglian in Yangliuqing. The total force is about 25,000."

"However, although they seem to have a large number of people, they are actually just a mob. The Wuwei Central Army led by Song Qing and Ma Yukun is not very strong. The remnants of Nie Shicheng who are with them are still okay, but their morale has been greatly hit by the death of Nie Shicheng, and their fighting power has been greatly reduced. As for Lu Benyuan's Yi Army, the warriors of our Great Japanese Empire fought against them in Liaodong during the Sino-Japanese War of 1894-1895. They lack the necessary training for modern warfare, and their fighting power is extremely poor. They are almost prone to collapse at the first blow."

"As for the training troops, which are almost entirely made up of new soldiers, they are nothing more than a bunch of peasants. We can completely ignore them."

"So, to defeat them, we don't need to deploy a large number of troops."

Gasley nodded first, then looked at everyone and said, "Gentlemen, this is a very constructive suggestion. I support it."

"I agree."

Frey, who had been smoking a cigar, rushed to say, "I would like to lead my troops north to attack the main force of the Qing Dynasty in Beicang."

Lehman, Chaffee and von ter Happ also hurriedly expressed their willingness to lead their troops north.

Such a result made Fukushima Yasumasa a little overwhelmed. If he now expressed his intention to send the main force north, he was a little worried that Alexeyev would become angry and vent his anger on him as the instigator.

Looking at the generals of the powerful countries who were rushing to go north, Alexeev said with disdain.

"Yes, I think that in order to eliminate the remnants of the Qing army in Tianjin, we Russians do not need to leave all our troops behind. I can also send a regiment of troops to accompany you."

When he heard that Alexeyev was going to send troops to follow these powers northward, Fukushima Yasumasa immediately said, "We can also send a regiment to follow northward."

Although, Gasley knew very well that Alexeyev and Fukushima Yasumasa sent troops to follow them northward not to strengthen the strength of their troops heading north, but because they were worried that they would lose benefits once the Qing capital was captured.

But he still welcomed the troops they sent!

A Russian regiment has four battalions, each with more than 900 men, so a regiment has nearly 4,000 men; as for the Japanese regiment, each has more than 3,000 men. With more than 7,000 troops, plus the coalition forces of Britain, Germany, France, and Austria, the troops heading north will have more than 20,000 men, making it easier to defeat the Qing troops around Yu Lu.

Gasley looked at Alexeev and said, "Sir, I wonder how you are going to eliminate the remnants of the Qing army in the city. You must know that this is an extremely tenacious force, and they also have super cannons."

The super cannon that Gasley mentioned is the unscrupulous cannon that Teng Yuzao took out.

The bombardment of the remnants of the Allied forces in the ruins caused a huge cloud of dust, which frightened the Allied forces so much that they did not dare to launch an attack on Tianjin City for two days, but instead concentrated all their artillery fire on bombarding the city walls.

At the same time, after urgent discussions and after consulting the country via telegram, the Western powers, led by Britain, made the decision to agree to the Russian and Japanese troops to send more troops to the Tianjin area as soon as possible.

The Russian army had long planned to send troops inland. The tiny country of Japan was able to defeat the mighty Qing Dynasty and force it to cede territory and pay indemnities. This rekindled the Tsar, who had a great interest in land,'s strong desire to expand territory in the Far East. The Tsar even formulated a so-called "Yellow Russia Plan."

The so-called "Yellow Russia Plan" was a delusion that you could draw a straight line from Mount Qomolangma on the Sino-Russian border to Vladivostok and assign all the land to the north to Russia. However, the Tsar's "Yellow Russia Plan" was completely shattered after the February Revolution in Russia during the First World War.

Regarding Tsarist Russia's ambitions, not only the Japanese, whose ambitions were in great conflict with those of Tsarist Russia, but also the European and American powers were strongly wary of Tsarist Russia. Therefore, they firmly opposed Tsarist Russia. Even the Japanese sent a large number of troops to Zhili, and the troops sent by various countries to Zhili needed their joint consent.

However, this time, the European powers led by Britain had no choice but to make such a desperate decision in order to solve the urgent problem. At the same time, Britain, France, Germany and Austria also requested urgent reinforcement of troops from their respective countries in order to avoid being unable to curb the spread of Russian tyranny in the Qing Dynasty.

In order to prevent the Russian army from dominating Zhili, they had to agree to the Japanese allowing the entire Fifth Division to enter the Qing Dynasty and enter Zhili.

Only after the coalition forces' strength was greatly increased and many parts of the city walls were blown down did Gasley order the coalition forces to begin attacking the city.

However, a few days ago, when the coalition forces entered the city and carefully studied the ruins, they all agreed that the Qing army in the city seemed to have a powerful super cannon, which made them much more cautious in their attack.

Only after the great powers had held emergency consultations and confirmed that none of them had sold some unknown new weapons to the Qing Dynasty did they dare to launch an attack on the city.

However, although the troops, mainly composed of Japanese and Russian troops, launched fierce attacks on the remnants of the Qing army who were entrenched in the streets and alleys for several days in a row, and the Qing army was not seen using any of their secret weapons, not only was the progress still slow, but the losses were also huge.

Often, the city areas that were captured after heavy casualties during the day were recaptured by the tenacious Qing army at night using swords and small bombs. Fierce fighting would have to be waged again the next day to recapture the area.

Only when almost all the buildings in a certain urban area have turned into ruins or even rubble, will it truly be occupied by the Allied Forces.

Gasley's question made the coalition commanders at the conference table frown. This was indeed a very tricky problem.

After the reinforcement of military forces, the Allied Forces had completely surrounded Tianjin City from all sides, cutting off the external communication channels of the Qing army that was resisting in Tianjin City. However, this surprisingly tenacious Qing army still fought to the death in the urban area, firmly dragging the Allied Forces in Tianjin City, which made the Allied Forces generals extremely annoyed.

As for how to get rid of this Qing army, the most rational way should be to besiege it.

Unexpectedly, Alexeyev seemed to have already known Gasley's question. He picked up the cold coffee on the table, took a sip slowly, and then spoke.

(End of this chapter)