Master Yuan, start!

Not only did the bomb blow the French soldier to pieces, but it also knocked down the National Revolutionary Army on the left side of the bunker. They were bleeding from their mouths and noses, their bodies tilted, and they bid farewell to the world.

Thick columns of smoke rose from the bunker. The French artillery, who had been unable to obtain the coordinates due to the angle and were afraid of accidentally injuring friendly forces in the city, finally had a reference.

One after another, 75mm shells were ejected rapidly, emitting yellow smoke. In an instant, the entire area around the temporary shelter was filled with fireballs left by the shells.

Amidst the dust and smoke, military doctors quickly rushed up to bandage the injured soldiers, and the seriously injured were quickly moved into the civilian houses below.

Wu Yue simply put down the heavy machine gun, which had already fired countless rounds, and asked in his signature Anhui accent, "Is anything alright? More are coming soon. How many people are still available to fight?!"

"Don't worry, Captain, you're not going to die!" the Shandong soldier said loudly.

"Fuck him, I'm going to beat that bastard to death!" The young man from Henan cursed and stuffed the bullet into the magazine.

Wu Yue, a nationally renowned revolutionary who assassinated five Qing Dynasty ministers who were sent abroad in a parallel universe.

In this time and space, he joined the National Revolutionary Army and became an unknown artilleryman.

The timeline may change, but his heart dedicated to serving his country has never changed.

A soldier with the same Anhui accent cursed: "We don't have many cannons, and the French have naval guns, cannons, and machine guns firing everywhere.

Even so, they still couldn't capture Lianzhou City.

In my opinion, what is France? It is better to call it rotten, rotten thing! "

"Haha, hahaha!"

Amidst the laughter of the soldiers, Wu Yue did not feel relaxed at all. The scene just now showed that the French army was really anxious this time. They even sent people to pretend to be dead and waited for several hours. Then they took advantage of the chaos when the French side relaxed their vigilance and rushed to the front. This meant that the next war would become more difficult.

His guess was correct. Faced with a defensive force twice his size, Colonel Tosk could no longer sit still. He began to continuously withdraw troops from various places, wanting to break into Lianzhou City through this gap at all costs.

The entire coastline was trembling in the flames of war, and thick smoke extended from the offshore beach to the vicinity of Lianzhou City on the shore.

The French army exerted all its strength and fired thousands of artillery shells at Lianzhou City.

boom!

A loud bang suddenly pierced the eardrums of the resting soldiers. Wu Yue raised his head slightly and looked out from the bunker covered with dense bullets. He saw thick black smoke suddenly rising from the direction of Keyi Village, which was closest to them.

"Keyi Village, Keyi Village!"

Wu Yue knew that this was because the Keyi Village outside Lianzhou City, which was assisting in defending the city, was gone.

However, before he could feel heartbroken, eight consecutive heavy artillery shells from the navy were fired directly at Lianzhou City, completely disregarding the life and death of the French troops charging in the front.

Finally, the last remaining rammed earth layer, more than one meter high, was razed to the ground by artillery fire.

"Fuck it, come with me!" This scene made Wu Yue's eyes suddenly red. He threw his military cap to the ground, picked up his rifle, and quickly began to retreat towards the houses in Lianzhou City behind him.

The city wall was completely breached and could no longer be defended. He planned to engage in street fighting!

However, before he could move to the vicinity of the bungalow, a cannonball from outside the city whizzed past, hit the ground, and quickly rolled forward under the action of inertia.

Almost in the blink of an eye, Wu Yue was blasted into pieces, skin and bones included.

Even though the situation has changed, Wu Yue still sacrificed his life for the China he loved.

Lianzhou City was broken.

Chapter 446: The Southern Kingdom's Beacon Fire

In the early morning, on the banks of the clear Nanmen Creek in Xiamen, the once busy fleet of ore transport ships has disappeared. On the river near Linjiacuo, several floating bridges stretch across the river.

The National Revolutionary Army is crossing the river in full swing.

Dozens of miles away in the sea off Xiamen Island, French Captain Jacques was lazily leaning on the railing. Under his feet was an inland gunboat equipped with two 105mm naval guns and two 75mm naval guns.

Although this small warship can only be regarded as a second-class gunboat in the powerful French Navy, it is undoubtedly a giant near Xiamen.

Near the west side of Xiamen Island, it is more like a wider river estuary than an ocean.

The water is calm and mostly shallow, making it unsuitable for large warships to anchor.

So, this kind of inland gunboat came in handy.

The sailor came over and said, "Captain, I heard that a war has broken out in Indochina, and the Governor-General of Taiwan has even sent the navy to join the war!

When will we be sent over?"

The French army was well-informed, and the soldiers liked to discuss current affairs. Jacques was accustomed to this and very much agreed with it. He believed that it was a sign of progress for the soldiers to have their own ideas.

If everyone is like Russian soldiers, who only know how to eat and sleep, what is the difference between them and animals?

Thinking of this, he smiled and said, "Whether to go to the war or not is not something we can decide. We still have to wait for the decision from above."

"above?"

"Yes, either the Xiamen Consul or the Taiwan Governor agrees. Otherwise, we can't send troops." Jacques smiled, stomped on the floor, and said, "But even if we do send troops, we probably won't need the gunboats under our feet."

"I don't think so!" said the sailor proudly, because he believed that France was almost the strongest in the Far East at present.

Even though it was just a small gunboat, it was still irresistible to the backward Asian army.

Jacques smiled and didn't comment, but he knew the answer in his heart.

He knew more information than the sailors. He vaguely heard that Indochina seemed to have suffered a defeat and the Governor-General of Indochina was mobilizing troops for a counterattack.

After thinking for a while, Jacques put these things behind him. He looked at the continent not far away and said, "Okay, let's prepare to return home. I don't want to see the delicious borscht being drunk up by others!"

Every time we went out on a cruise, if we came back a little late, the borscht prepared by the Chinese chef would be finished.

But at this moment, a small boat suddenly emerged from the coastline not far away and sailed hurriedly towards the shore.

Seeing this, Jacques quickly ordered his men to change direction, ride the wind and waves, and catch up with the boat.

"What's going on?" Jacques was still in wonder when the observer on top of the mast began to shout, "Captain, Chinese, it's the Chinese, their army is coming!"

Chinese!

Jacques understood that the Chinese here were definitely not the local armed forces near Xiamen.

Then there is only one answer.

It was Yuan Shikai, the army of the Northern Republican Government!

Jacques quickly boarded the bridge and looked far to the north. On the coastline 1 kilometer away, patches of deep blue appeared in his retina.

He decided to go for some closer reconnaissance, so as not to return without any intelligence and have to go out again.

However, more than a dozen large-caliber artillery pieces have been set up on the coastline and are being debugged.

"The Chinese are bringing cannons. When did they come?" Jacques knew that the gunboat under his feet had almost no ability to defend against large-caliber artillery shells.

The steel plates were only a few millimeters thick, and they couldn't even defend against the 57mm rapid-fire guns on their own deck.

Therefore, he could only retreat quickly with his sailors and watch the Chinese build artillery fortifications on the coastline and place one cannon after another.

"With such a large-caliber heavy artillery, what do the Chinese want to do?!"

...

Wu Peifu walked along the coastline until he came to the gun bunker.

Heavy gunners from the army were bombarding targets on the sea with 150mm heavy artillery produced by the Incheon Machinery Bureau. Heavy shells flew over ten thousand meters and landed on the sea, splashing water droplets tens of meters high.

It's incredibly powerful, but not very effective.

It’s not that the French Navy’s sailing skills are so good, but that this heavy artillery, which was originally designed for naval ships, is not very suitable for aiming or firing on land.

The recoil is so great that it needs to be recalibrated after each shot. It can only be used to bombard fixed targets and is too difficult to bombard moving targets.

However, this is irrelevant. These cannons were not originally set up to bombard ships.

They have only one goal, and that is Xiamen Island!

Xiamen is only 2.1 kilometers away from the land at its narrowest point, and the average distance is 3 kilometers.

For a 150mm heavy artillery, this distance can even cover the entire island. If accuracy is not a concern, it is not impossible to hit the more distant Kinmen Island.

"It's strange, why are there no French gunboats? When we crossed the river just now, we heard that there were several gunboats on the sea. Why are they gone now?" Although Wu Peifu was in the army, he could also distinguish the names of some naval ships after fighting for half a month.

The artillery commander scratched his head and said, "He ran away. I guess he saw the caliber of our artillery and ran away without even looking back!"

"He's lucky!" Wu Ba Peifu said unhappily, and then he retreated to the rear.

...

"How is it possible that the Chinese are here? How is this possible?"

The French general defending Xiamen stamped his feet fiercely. He was just savoring the taste of his breakfast coffee, how come Xiamen was about to go to war in the blink of an eye?

He didn't understand how the local warlords in Fujian agreed to let Yuan Shikai transport troops and cannons to Xiamen.

Unfortunately, he didn't know that if it weren't for the great risk of naval warfare, Wang Shizhen would even want to dispatch the Beiyang Fleet to besiege Xiamen Island from all sides and launch a simultaneous sea and land bombardment.

However, it was precisely because the French Navy was so powerful that the Beiyang Fleet needed to hide its presence and not appear in the sight of the French Navy until the critical moment, that Wang Shizhen pulled the 150mm caliber imitation Krupp heavy artillery to Fujian.

On a naval ship, this is at best a medium-caliber gun. After all, the Zhenyuan also has an ultimate heavy gun with a 305mm caliber.

But on land, 150mm is already considered a giant among giants.

Although the Krupp cannon imitated by the Incheon Machinery Bureau did not achieve the same performance as the original, it was not as accurate as the original.

The original 150mm Krupp cannon had a range of 8000m. However, due to insufficient metallurgical standards and poor barrel quality, the Incheon Machinery Bureau's 150mm imitation cannon could only reach 5000m.

But this is enough. For Xiamen Island, which is only 3 kilometers away, is such a long range necessary?

Therefore, when the National Revolutionary Army suddenly appeared on the land separated from Xiamen by a river, the French officers stationed there were dumbfounded.

The French originally only forcibly leased half of Xiamen Island from the Qing Dynasty, located on the south side of the island.

However, after the fall of the Qing Dynasty, France continued to encroach and eventually took control of the entire island in disguise. It also built many magnificent buildings on the west side of the island, where it borders the mainland.

This also means that due to the French greed, their losses will be even greater.

The rumbling thunder had completely drowned out the shouts of the three, and shells fell one after another on Xiamen Island.

The goal is simple, just bombard the tall and magnificent buildings. Ordinary people are not qualified to live here.

Those who can live here are either foreigners or foreigners' lackeys.

One after another, 150mm shells fell on these magnificent buildings, instantly blowing them to pieces.

These scenic spots, which would later be exhibited as "European-style areas" and open to customers in a parallel universe, are now shattered into pieces of broken bricks and tiles by artillery shells.

"boom!"