Chapter 546 Strong Enemy

Chapter 540 Strong Enemies

The unyielding will could not hide the gap in tactical quality and personal physical fitness between the soldiers of both sides.

Although the Shanzi Battalion was an old battalion of the Guangdong Yong, it was one of the most elite troops in the Qing army and was not afraid of cautious hand-to-hand combat.

But it was obviously inferior to the well-trained French army that had experienced the baptism of high-intensity warfare. The French army gradually gained the upper hand in the hand-to-hand combat.

Even the retired veterans of the 13th Regiment of the Western Brigade, who had their first close-quarter combat with the French Army in the trenches, had to admit that with the same number of people, their close-quarter combat ability was only 40% to 60% of the French army.

Although the Western Brigade was not lacking in combat experience and its physical fitness was much better than that of the Guangdong Yong, it lacked experience in fighting strong enemies, especially experience in close-quarter hand-to-hand combat with strong enemies.

The Mexican army on the Mexican plateau and the native soldiers of the Dutch-Indonesian authorities in the tropical rainforest of Borneo were not considered strong enemies. The British troops in North Oregon on the northern border were barely strong enemies, but the Western Brigade had not fought a high-intensity battle with these British troops.

Seeing that the French army was gradually gaining the upper hand, the British troops stationed in Hong Kong, with the mentality of picking peaches, finally dispatched three companies to launch a fierce attack on the positions of the Guangdong Brave.

The British army quickly assembled and organized the troops, and slowly advanced forward under the Union Jack of Britain in the Grenadiers March played by the military musicians.

"Damn it, it's too late! Sentry A! Sentry B! Fill them all up!"

Looking at the old soldiers of the Shanzi Battalion falling one after another in the position, Liang Shaoqiong's heart was bleeding.

The French army's close combat ability was extremely strong, and it was not like what some scholars who had never even been on the battlefield said, that the foreigners were only relying on strong ships and powerful guns to show their power for a while.

The Shanzi Battalion was already the elite of the Guangdong Yong, and had strong melee capabilities, but in hand-to-hand combat with the French, it would take about two veterans to knock down one French soldier.

The Guangdong Yong was already in decline, and was only holding on with the last breath of the soldiers. Now the British army has joined the battle again, and Sartre did not hold back, and also pressed all the three companies of reserve troops he brought.

The two sides fought until sunset, and only with Liang Shaoqiong and Sartre investing in the reserve troops at all costs did they barely hold their positions and keep the French out of Xiangshan.

After the British and French coalition forces took the initiative to withdraw from the Guangdong Yong position, the battlefield fell into a dead silence.

The wavy trenches were like a corridor of death, with corpses lying in all directions on the muddy ground, with distorted shapes. The living pushed away the corpses on top of them and struggled to crawl out of the sea of ​​corpses and blood.

The survivors, covered in blood and muddy blood, looked like demons who had just crawled back to the world from the underworld.

The dead French and Guangdong soldiers were entangled in the arms of death, bloody and bloody, and it was difficult to distinguish between the enemy and the enemy. Some of the dead still had twisted and crazy expressions on their faces during the battle.

The walls of the trenches were covered with bullet holes and knife marks, and the soil became slippery and sticky due to the moisture of blood, emitting a gloomy and fishy smell.

Outside the trenches, scorched earth and gunpowder smoke blackened the sky, and even the grass and trees could not escape the ravages of the war. The trees were blown into charred branches, and the ground was pitted by shells, and many pits still had bloodstains.

Liang Shaoqiong stepped into the battlefield on the sticky bloody mud, with mixed feelings in his heart.

This was the most difficult and miserable battle he had fought since he led the troops, and it was also the battle that was closest to failure.

"Liang Shuai! There are only 18 brothers left in the C-post! C-post, I have not embarrassed you, I have not let down Xiangshan, and I have not let down the elders of Guangzhou!"

The C-post chief of Shanzi Battalion, who only had one leg left, came to Liang Shaoqiong with the help of two soldiers.

Liang Shaoqiong originally thought that the French army landing at Gongbeikou was a feint, so he asked the C-post to block the French army on the left wing. Unexpectedly, the two directions of the French army were all main attacks, without feints, and the position of the C-post was close to the coast, within the range of the British and French fleet's naval guns. Therefore, the C-post suffered the most casualties, and almost everyone was injured.

"You are very good, all good! This is like my Liang Shaoqiong's soldiers!"

Liang Shaoqiong controlled his emotions, gently patted the shoulder of the sentry chief, and asked.

"Where are your sentry officers?"

The organization of the Guangdong Brave was equivalent to that of the Hunan Army. The sentry officer was the chief officer of a sentry, and the sentry chief was the adjutant.

"The sentry was blown up by the ship's gun. A 60-jin iron bomb hit him. There was not much good flesh left on his body." The sentry leader said in a crying voice.

"Gui! Fuck your ancestors!" Liang Shaoqiong rarely lost his composure.

The sentry officers of the Guangdong Yong Battalion were the first batch of veterans who followed Liang Shaoqiong to the northern Guangdong expedition, so Liang Shaoqiong had the deepest feelings for these veterans.

The officers of the 13th Regiment who participated in the battle also reported the casualties to Sartre. The casualties of the 13th Regiment were better than those of the Guangdong Yong, but they also suffered heavy casualties.

"Go back and write a battlefield report and hand it in." Sartre instructed the officers of the 13th Regiment who participated in the battle.

At the same time, he also instructed the military doctors of the 13th Regiment to treat the wounded and sick soldiers of the Guangdong Yong in the Shanzi Battalion after treating the wounded and sick soldiers of the regiment.

The prisoners of the British and French Allied Forces were quite honest. They all honestly threw away their weapons, raised their hands and knelt on the ground, waiting for disposal.

The Shanzi Battalion suffered heavy casualties and needed to be repaired, so Liang Shaoqiong sent a new battalion to take over first.

The new recruits who had never experienced actual combat had not yet reached the trenches, but they vomited when they smelled blood not far away, and were immediately punished by the squad leader and sentry officer.

These squad leaders and sentry officers were all from the old battalions, and there were quite a few veterans from the Shanzi Battalion.

Both sides suffered heavy casualties in this battle.

377 people were killed in the Shanzi Battalion, and 321 people were seriously injured. Except for the A and B sentries that participated in the battle later, the other three sentries were directly destroyed, especially the C sentry, which had 185 people before the war and only 18 remnants after the war.

The casualties of the 13th Regiment were not as serious as those of the Shanzi Battalion, but it also paid the price of 156 deaths and 141 serious injuries.

The casualties of the French army were also not light, with 361 direct deaths and 245 serious injuries that completely lost their combat effectiveness.

The British army benefited from the commander's good observation of the battlefield situation, entering the battlefield last and withdrawing first, so there were only 54 British soldiers who were directly killed and only 42 British soldiers who were seriously injured.

Another 85 French soldiers and 31 British soldiers were captured, and no one from the Yueyong Shanzi Battalion and the 13th Regiment of the Umbrella Mercenary Corps was captured.

The casualties of the Shanzi Battalion and the 13th Regiment were mostly caused in close combat.

In this battle, except for the relatively small casualties of the British troops stationed in Hong Kong, which were still within the tolerance range of the British high-level officials, the other three parties were already seriously injured.

Especially the French army, the number of participants in the battle was directly reduced from more than 1,800 to 1,100.

As for the Guangdong Yong, although the casualties were greater than those of the French army, the Guangdong Yong were fighting in their homeland after all, and the lost troops were easier to replenish than those of the French army.

After the war, the French high-level officials had a lot of complaints about the British army, and the little Meng Toban even fought with the British commander.

The little Meng Toban believed that if the British troops stationed in Hong Kong had been engaged in the battle earlier, they would have been able to take the position, and they would not have paid such a high price and got nothing in the end.

This was also the idea of ​​many French officers, and a rift had already appeared between Britain and France.

The heavy casualties of the French army made the French commander-in-chief Meng Toban's eyes darken, and he could not accept it for a while, and even had the idea of ​​withdrawing troops.

If he was fighting the Russian army in Crimea, he could still accept such casualties, as Crimea was relatively close to the French mainland and colonies, and the lost troops could be easily replenished.

But in the Far East, such heavy casualties without any substantial benefits were completely unacceptable to Mentoban.