The Qing Dynasty

Chapter 524 Another Big Victory

The call was from Li Jinyu himself. Something must have happened!
Teng Yuzhao and Wei Jinghai's faces darkened. Wei Jinghai walked over quickly and grabbed the telephone receiver and microphone from the staff officer's hand.

The sound of telephones ringing in the shelter and the voices of staff officers making phone calls and conveying orders came one after another, and the sound of Wei Jinghai answering the phone was completely drowned out by the noise.

Teng Yuzhao secretly reminded himself to stay calm. No matter what happened, it would not change the overall situation. Even if the foreign devils in Langfang successfully broke through, it would not change their fate of failure.

Soon, Wei Jinghai came back quickly. Teng Yuzhao noticed that although Wei Jinghai's face was still a little gloomy, it was much better than before he answered the phone, which made Teng Yuzhao feel a little relieved.

"Marshal, Li Mingguang said that half an hour ago, the foreign devils in Langfang suddenly launched a large-scale attack from all sides. The junction of the Sixth and Eighth Towns was breached by the foreign devils. The reserve troops of the Eighth and Sixth Towns were deployed. The breakthrough has been re-sealed. After suffering huge losses, the foreign devils who attacked from all sides have retreated back to the town."

Wei Jinghai and Li Jinyu were both left-behind students rescued from the Beiyang Military Academy by Teng Yuzhao, and they were still very good friends, so Wei Jinghai did not call Li Jinyu Li Zhentong, but called Li Jinyu by his name.

"However, more than 10,000 foreign devils escaped from the breach. At present, Li Mingguang has urgently adjusted the deployment and sent a team to chase the escaped foreign devils. At the same time, he has sent someone to inform Hu Zhentong to prepare them to prevent these escaped foreign devils from attacking them from behind."

"Li Mingguang also asked the Marshal to punish him!"

Not until then did Teng Yuzhao breathe a sigh of relief. Only more than 10,000 foreign devils had escaped, which did not affect the overall situation.

The only danger was that this group of escaped foreign devils would launch a surprise attack from behind on Hu Dianjia and Cao Futian's troops who were trying their best to stop the enemy in Tianjin, and the enemy in Tianjin would break through the blockade.

Fortunately, Li Jinyu thought of this and not only sent troops to pursue the fleeing enemy, but also reported the situation to Hu Dianjia. So the worst outcome should not occur.

Teng Yuzao smiled and said, "Call Li Jinyu again and tell him that I won't punish him. Although their two towns have more troops than the foreign devils in Langfang, they have to allocate troops to various places to besiege the foreign devils. The advantage of tens of thousands of extra people will no longer exist if it is evenly distributed."

“It’s only over 10,000 people running, I can accept that.”

"You also need to inform him of the battle situation here and tell him that I will lead the main force back soon and then deal with the foreign devils inside."

Although this encirclement and annihilation battle north of Xianghe took a longer time to prepare and was more complicated to organize, it ended very quickly. Less than two hours after it started, the foreign devils from various countries began to raise the white flag and surrender.

The first to raise the white flag was the Italian army. They did not suffer much damage and their organization was still relatively intact, but they were still the first to surrender.

With the Italians leading the way, the Americans followed closely, and then the Indian British soldiers and the French army's Asian natives.

With these precedents of surrender, the coalition forces that were divided into small pieces began to surrender one after another.

Originally, Liu Jiujiu was planning to find an excuse to eliminate some foreign devils and refused to accept the other side's surrender. In the end, Teng Yuzhao sent someone to give the order directly, and Liu Jiujiu angrily ordered to stop the attack.

Teng Yuzhao had no choice but to issue such an order.

The entire battlefield was only a dozen square kilometers. After the battle began, the coalition forces were compressed from all sides and concentrated in a small area. If the interspersed and divided troops of each town had not been mixed with the coalition forces, Teng Yuzao even wanted to use intensive artillery fire to inflict the greatest damage to the remaining coalition forces. Now there are 60,000 to 70,000 coalition forces surrendering. Killing prisoners at this time will inevitably leak out. Moreover, if the powerful countries learn of such a large-scale public killing of prisoners, they will be furious.

With public resentment boiling over, even their king and prime minister had no choice but to continue fighting.

Teng Yuzhao could not afford to lose the big picture for the sake of small gains, so he finally ordered to accept the surrender of the foreign devils.

In this battle, more than 64,000 coalition troops were captured and killed, and more than 38,000 were killed. Only a few coalition troops jumped into the Chaobai River to escape the encirclement.

Cao Liugezhuang was indeed the joint command center of the coalition forces. Unsurprisingly, during the shelling, more than a dozen commanders of troops from various countries in the capital, including Russian Lieutenant General Lenavich, were killed. This was also one of the reasons why the coalition forces gave up resistance early.

The seized weapons and ammunition piled up like a mountain, and the exact number has not yet been counted.

Only the large and small artillery pieces that Liu Changfa had been keeping an eye on were counted, and 243 mountain and field artillery pieces of 75mm and above were seized, while the rest were destroyed in the artillery strike.

One thing that caught Teng Yuzao's attention was that it was reported that the captives had a lot of gold and silver.

These foreign devils were stationed in the capital for several months, so looting was inevitable.

Among them are the coalition forces that invaded the south and escaped from the Taihang Mountains. These people will also participate in looting along the way.

Teng Yuzhao immediately ordered that all prisoners, including those who were killed, be searched carefully, and not a single ounce of gold or silver should be missed.

Teng Yuzhao also made specific arrangements for the wounded among the prisoners.

According to his order, prisoners of different countries should be managed separately, and the British, American, German, French, Austro-Hungarian and Italian soldiers should be singled out, and the wounded among them should be given medical treatment.

All the other prisoners, including Indian soldiers and indigenous soldiers, who were injured, were ignored and told that due to our shortage of medicines and their army's refusal to provide them with the necessary medicines, the vanguard army had no other choice.

The main reason for providing medical treatment to prisoners of war from Western powers such as Britain, France, Germany, the United States, Italy and Austria was that Teng Yuzhao took into consideration that peace talks would be held soon, and after the talks, in order to promote Westernization, it would be inevitable to deal with these countries, and now their prisoners of war should not be treated too harshly.

Then, Liu Yuzhi left the First Town to guard the prisoners of war, clean up the battlefield, and search for the remaining enemies. That afternoon, he hurriedly took the Fourth and Fifth Towns back to Langfang.

Li Xianze's Second Town and Artillery Town had already left in advance.

Among them, Li Xianze led the Second Town to rush to Hu Dianjia, and the Artillery Town was going to Langfang, but the cannons of the Artillery Town had a slow marching speed, so they had to let them go first.

Although Teng Yuzhao led his troops to hurry all the way, it was still ten in the morning when they returned to Langfang.

Teng Yuzao and Wei Jinghai did not have time to rest, and immediately brought up the prisoners they had brought back from Xianghe.
(End of this chapter)