The Qing Dynasty is about to end

Chapter 749: Xianfeng: Win! Win again!

On November 1862, 11, the water of the Mississippi River, wrapped in broken ice, crashed into the dock of Hannibal Town. Xianfeng's military boots stepped on the icy blood pool beside the dock. On the road beside him, teams of black officers and soldiers in gray uniforms, carrying Minié rifles or Mississippi rifles, snaked out of the city like a silent gray snake.

"Remember, just send the black and white cavalrymen to their deaths." Xianfeng leaned sideways on his horse and poked his finger at the chest of Black Whirlwind Tom. "If too many of my black cavalrymen are killed, you will hang your head on the gallows!"

Tom licked his cracked lips. There was a deep red blood stain on his whip, which was left when he whipped the female guards who were caught trying to escape last night. He glanced at Bell who was chained in the prison car - this woman secretly let eight white female guards go yesterday. But she was unlucky this time, three of the female guards accidentally ran into the patrolling black knights and were caught.

But Bell himself did not run away. Instead, he slipped back as if nothing had happened and spent a happy "minute" with Xianfeng.

As a result, early this morning, Black Tom brought three female bondservants who were badly beaten and bruised to report to Emperor Xianfeng.

"Don't worry, Governor!" Tom grinned, revealing his yellow teeth. "The blood of the white maggots can dye the Mississippi River red. Your cavalry won't suffer too many losses!"

"Very good!" Xianfeng punched Black Tom on the chest and whispered in his ear, "And Belle. Just scare this woman a little, but don't throw her away."

"Know!"

Chen Yucheng was checking the baggage wagons at the end of the column. The twelve Armstrong guns were tied tightly with hemp ropes. When his artillery team passed the column of the female Baoyi Corps, he heard a white woman crying in English: "General Chen, please, take me away." His hand holding the reins paused - it was this voice, the voice that panted and cried in his ear last night.

He immediately turned his head and winked at his "black guard", then pointed at the blonde girl who looked only seventeen or eighteen years old: "Bring her along!"

Then he mounted his horse and followed his artillery team out of the city.

Suddenly, there was an explosion in the west of the city. It was the Black Bunkers who stayed behind on a stone bridge north of Hannibal town.

Xianfeng kicked his horse and chased his army southward without looking back. Bell looked at the smoke and dust going away, digging his nails into the cracks of the prisoner's car, his eyes full of tears.

The Union Army's 3rd Division's artillery bombardment began at noon.

Bell curled up in the basement of the court, listening to the occasional muffled noises coming from above her head. With her were about fifty white female Baoyi - they were all prizes left by the devil Nicholas Zhao Si to encourage more than a thousand black Baoyi in Hannibal to fight to the death.

Bell heard with his own ears Black Tom tell the black bondservants who had actually become abandoned that as long as they killed one Northern soldier, they could raise the flag, and if they killed another, they could get a white bondservant woman as their wife!

The black bandits who had been bullied by the black flag master for a long time cheered excitedly when they heard Black Tom's lies, and hundreds of fiery eyes were cast on Bell.
"Nicholas Zhao Si, you are a devil, you will go to hell!" Suddenly, a curse came from upstairs from a man in white.

It turned out that dozens of white guards were chained and forced to line up in a row, and the 200 black guards brought by black Jerry were used as human shields, and they were led by bayonets to attack the Union Army that was attacking on the ice of Hannibal Creek. However, black Jerry and his fellow guardsmen did not know that their behavior would only anger the white people on the opposite side, which was a way to their own death, and would also make the attacking white masters lose their minds.

When the black and white guards commanded by black Jerry were about to engage in a firefight with the white infantry on the opposite side, Bell and dozens of white female guards were dragged to the street. Black Tom grabbed her hair and pressed her against the broken wall. The Northern Army outside the city launched another attack, and the blue uniforms crawled like ants.

"Follow me, white bitch," Black Tom said to Bell in a low voice, "From now on, you must follow me everywhere."

As soon as he said this, the black guards and the white infantry on the opposite side had already started exchanging fire. Bullets rained down on the battlefield, and the fifty white guards who were pushed in front by the black guards all fell to the ground after the gunshots. It was unknown whether they were killed or pretending to be dead.

After losing the protection of the meat shield, the black jackets who only had the outdated smoothbore rifles at hand were no match for the white master on the opposite side. Bell saw from a distance that a ball of blood burst out from the head of the black Jerry, and then he fell to the ground.
The position on the west bank of the Mississippi River flying the "black, red and yellow" tricolor military flag was once again covered by shrapnel fired by an inland ironclad ship.

On the east bank, Harding, commander of the Union Army's 7th Division, held up a telescope and watched the engineers build the third section of the pontoon bridge on the river. Bullets were fired from the other side of the river from time to time, and engineers from the 7th Division were constantly shot and fell into the icy Mississippi River.

"Tell the engineers to speed up, there aren't many people on the other side!" He shouted to his adjutant, "We must take the other side before noon!"

"Hurray!" "The floating bridge is closed!"

As soon as Harding's order was issued, the officers and soldiers of the 7th Division around him burst into cheers.

Harding quickly raised his telescope and looked across the river, only to see a reed marsh suddenly shaking - hundreds of "black soldiers" emerged from the dry grass, their worn gray uniforms covered with mud, and their muskets pointed crookedly at the sky. They looked like a mob.

"A motley army of Southern niggers!" Harding sneered and drew his sword. "The 19th Regiment crosses the river! Show these niggers what a regular army is!"

As soon as the first group of Union troops stepped onto the pontoon bridge, the black soldiers on the other side fired two random volleys of gunfire and turned to hide in the woods.

"Chase!" Collins, the commander of the 19th Regiment, immediately became excited. "Kill all these niggers. White people are supreme!"

When three battalions of the Union Army rushed into the bushes on the west bank of the Mississippi River with the support of the "Missouri River", a steamship equipped with artillery, Chen Yucheng was squatting behind the shield of the Armstrong gun and chewing tobacco. The barrels of the twelve guns were covered with dead leaves, and it was impossible to see what they were from a distance.

"put!"

Twelve 70mm shells whistled over the treetops, one of which hit the river surface next to the pontoon bridge, creating a yellow-green fireball, which startled the Union officers and soldiers crossing the river! The second shell hit the east entrance of the pontoon bridge, and the picric acid flames instantly engulfed seven or eight engineers who had just withdrawn. The "Missouri River" was also hit by a 32mm picric acid shell, which created a huge fireball on the bow deck, and the -pound cannon that had been firing non-stop since this morning suddenly stopped firing.

Before the Union troops on the river beach could react, the second round of shells had already fallen on their heads. A green wave of fire swept across the river beach, burning a group of white soldiers from the 19th Regiment of the Union Army who were chasing black soldiers into charcoal!
"We've been fooled!" Just as Collins, the commander of the 19th Regiment, was about to order a retreat, Zeng's Black Wall Brigade rushed out from a forest on the flank. Three thousand elite black soldiers wearing gray woolen uniforms and holding Minié rifles formed two lines of skirmishers, like a "black tiger" descending from the mountain, and rushed the battle line of the 19th Regiment of the Northern Army into pieces.
"Win, win, win again!"

Standing in a forest by the Mississippi River, Xianfeng was so excited that he was dancing with joy when he saw that his plan of "attacking the enemy halfway across the river" had succeeded.

He is getting better and better at fighting now! Last time, he showed the power of the "Blackwall" Brigade at Manassas, and this time he defeated the Union Army halfway across the Mississippi River. It's a good start. If he can fight well in the next battle, he can crush Grant's round of joint attack, and then he can safely cross the Missouri River and retreat to Nebraska to spend the winter.

"Governor, Governor, General Zeng requests to lead the Black Cavalry to attack!"

Heidehai's voice suddenly rang in the ears of Xianfeng, who was a little too proud. Xianfeng then remembered that the battle was not over yet and he couldn't hold a celebration banquet halfway through!

"Quick, raise the red flag!"

Following Xianfeng's order, several bright red flags immediately rushed out of the woods where Xianfeng was.

Lin Shu, who had been ready for battle, saw the signal to charge and immediately drew his saber and pointed it forward. Then he shouted, "Black Knight Charge!"

When Lin Shu's black cavalry appeared behind the Northern Army, the pontoon bridge had been broken into three parts by Chen Yucheng's 12 70mm Armstrong breech-loading guns. The hooves of a thousand war horses made a rumbling sound, and the black men holding carbines were like tigers descending from the mountains, unstoppable. Collins' 19th Regiment had no time to form a hollow square before it was completely overwhelmed by the thousand black knights and lost any organized resistance.

On the east bank of the Mississippi River, Harding watched the 19th Regiment being squeezed on the river beach, dispersed by black cavalry, and overwhelmed by black infantry and bayonets. Suddenly, a loud bang broke out on the Mississippi River, and the "Missouri River" steam gunboat was finally turned into a floating ball of fire by the picric acid shells fired by the 12 70mm breech-loading guns personally controlled by Chen Yucheng.

The bell tower of Hannibal collapsed in the artillery fire, bricks and stones smashed into the frozen streets, and the splashing blood froth froze into dark red ice crystals. Black Tom's saber was stuck on the stone steps in front of the courthouse, and the handle was wrapped with a strip of cloth torn from the hem of a woman's blouse - that was his counting method, one strip for every ten Union soldiers killed, and now it was tangled into blood clots.

Bell huddled in the cellar vent, watching the massacre in the square through the iron bars. The last three hundred black guards were chained into three rows, and each was given five bullets. The officers with black flags kicked them in the knees with their leather boots: "Kneel down! When the white ghosts show their heads, blow their heads off!"

The Union Army's artillery suddenly roared, and a shrapnel shell exploded in the first row of black jackets, instantly creating a large "gap". The people in the second row were about to flee, but were dragged back by the black cavalry who were supervising the battle, who used a lasso to strangle their necks. Bell saw a one-armed black jacket suddenly jump up and split his companion's chain with an axe, but was shot through the spine by a Spencer repeating rifle that had just returned to her on horseback, and fell to the ground trembling.

"We should go." Tom grabbed Belle's collar and dragged her onto the back of his tall horse like a sack. When leaving Hannibal with Black Tom, Belle found a strange red light in the Mississippi River in the distance - it was the Missouri River steam gunboat burning.

(End of this chapter)