On the banks of the Huai River in Zhuzhen, which has been renamed Bengbu, the railway line extending from the south reaches its end here. Pen ~ Fun ~ Ge www.biquge.info This railway line, named Ningbu Railway, is the southern section of the Jinpu Railway in the future, and is currently a railway line used to connect the transportation between the Yangtze River and the Huai River.

On the Ningbu Railway, trains came from the south, and the flatbed carriages carried small and medium-sized naval warships. Due to the limited capacity of trains in this era, ships transported from railways were all hulls under fifty tons. Among these sails or oars were four special ships, which were small steam river gunboats.

These four river gunboats, strictly speaking, were the hulls of four ships, and the rails covered with iron sheets of wood could not bear too heavy weight, and the weight of each carriage could only be less than twenty-five tons. This is also a helpless move, Wang Yu is not yet able to have the luxury of laying all the railway lines with all the tracks.

The hull of a ship weighs fifty tons and is transported in two carriages. Steam engines, artillery, superstructures, cabin equipment, all were dispersed and transported separately.

After the train arrives in Bengbu, it stops at the riverside pier. The auxiliaries and civilians on the dock were busy, tying up the sailors' warships with ropes and sturdy. With a deafening roar, a steam crane docked on another railway line lifted the warship and ran along the railroad tracks for a smooth drop into the water.

The hulls of the four steam river gunboats were also hoisted into the riverside docks, and the boilers, steam engines, artillery, superstructures, and cabin equipment were also hoisted down in turn. Then the shipbuilders who arrived by train began to get busy, installing boilers in the cabins, installing steam engines, sealing the top cabins with wooden planks, erecting chimneys, and erecting the superstructure. The hoisted guns were fixed on the deck of the ship, gun mounts, shields and rotating devices were installed.

The main gun of the gunboat is two recital six-pounder rear-loading rifled guns, the caliber of this type of gun is 57 mm, the gun weighs 2,448 pounds, the barrel is two meters long, the effective range is 2,000 meters, it can fire solid shells, head hollow shells and flowering shells, the gun mount and deck use the gun carriage erected on the rails, and the gun mount can be rotated, after firing a shot, the gun carriage will retreat on the rails, stuck in the card slot at the tail of the rails. After the reloading, pull the reset handle and the gun carriage is reset by gravity. Underneath the gun carriage and track is a rotatable gun mount with iron wheels and chutes underneath it, which allows the entire gun mount to be turned as long as the gun is pushed. The gun also had an iron shield on top of it to keep the gunner safe.

There are four secondary guns, all of which are three-pounder rear-loading rifled guns with a caliber of 47 mm, and the same gravity reset gun carriage and rotatable gun mount are installed as the main gun, with a barrel length of one meter and a half, an effective firing range of one thousand meters, and can fire solid shells and head hollow shells, because the caliber of the gun is too small, the rifled gun fuse is too expensive, and the three-pounder gun is not equipped with flowering shells.

The shipbuilders were busy, installing iron plates on the hull shell, this kind of river gunboat is actually the simplest kind of small ironclad ship, after all assembled, the ship weighs 150 tons, the maximum speed is 8 knots, there are 50 crew members on board, in addition to two main guns and four secondary guns, it is also equipped with 20 breech-loading rifled guns.

In addition to these four steam river gunboats, the rest of the naval warships were old sail river warships and oars, with a displacement of 100 tons of three-masted schooners, the hull weighed 50 tons when transported by rail, and 100 tons when assembled, and the ships were equipped with four four-pounder guns; The other was a fifty-ton oared rowing boat, equipped with two three-pounder guns. In addition to the ships with artillery installed, the train also brought a large number of small sampans.

After more than a month of transportation, more than 100 gunboats and more than 500 sampans were successively transported by the Ningbu Railway, and a part of the Yangtze River Inland Water Division successfully entered the Huai River by land.

The reason why the army mobilized the people, built railways, and transported the warships of the naval division into the Huai River by land was that the goal was Hongze Lake, a huge hanging lake on the ground. If the Ming army launched an attack from the canal, the Qing army only needed to open the sluice gates and release water, so that Huai'an and other places could become a Ze country. In order to solve the threat of the hanging lake on the ground, Wang Yu formulated a plan to go upstream.

The warships of the naval division were all sent to the Huai River, and the railway line connected the Yangtze River with the Huai River, and the grain, ammunition, and all kinds of baggage and goods could be sent to the Huai River by rail, and then loaded onto the ship.

In the south of Fengyang City, the Ming Emperor's Mausoleum, the railway line passes near the Imperial Mausoleum. A group of people recruited from the refugees from the north are busy on the construction site to restore the badly damaged imperial tomb. More than ten miles away, under Fengyang City, the fortifications of the Ming army have surrounded Fengyang Mansion City like an iron bucket.

Fengyang Mansion City is not so easy to fight, the remaining more than 60,000 Qing soldiers and more than 100,000 auxiliary soldiers and people are all shrinking into the small Fengyang Mansion City, there are not many people in this city, they have long been driven out, and only Qing soldiers and people are left in the city. After several months of operation by the Qing army, the buildings in Fengyang City were strengthened and turned into strong street fighting fortifications. If the Qiongzhou army wants to storm Fengyang, it will inevitably be stubbornly resisted by the Qing army, and the losses will be very large.

However, Wang Yuyou did not intend to storm Fengyang, but adopted the method of siege.

The Qing court was already short of food, and the food reserves in the Fengyang area were seriously insufficient, and they could only last for a month at most.

The lack of grain in the city was not due to the mistake of Dadu, but the lack of grain by the Qing court itself, and a considerable part of the grain was smuggled and transported from the south to the north. After the autumn harvest in Shandong and Beizhili, before the grain could be harvested and transported to Fengyang, the Ming army had already launched an attack, arrived at the Huai River, and cut off the transportation and supply lines of Fengyang.

Originally, Fengyang's grain was transported by Linhao on the side of the Huai River, but after the Ming army's sailors entered the Huai River, the Qing army's sailors and transport fleets no longer dared to come, and the grain transportation line in Fengyang City was completely cut off.

On the Huai River, four steam river gunboats spitted black smoke and led the fleet down the river. Along the way, there was not a single Qing naval division warship visible on the river. Hearing that there were four ironclad fire dragons on the water, the Qing army sailors had already been frightened, where did they dare to fight, and they heard from a distance that the army sailors were coming, and the Qing army sailors had already run out. The Ming army sailors arrived at Linhao and shelled the city from the water, and the Qing army land divisions stationed here ran out overnight.

Linhao is a small town, there is no strong city to defend, the Qing army has no intention of fighting, the Ming army bombarded the city, the Qing army abandoned the town, along the Huai River downstream, fled to Hongze Lake.

After more than a month of siege, more than 100,000 Qing troops in Fengyang City lacked food and clothing, the rats in the city were eaten up, and the Qing army's main general Dadu ran away early, he knew that Fengyang was a Jedi, rather than stay here and starve to death, it was better to go to Hongze Lake to meet with the water division, as long as the Hongze Lake embankment was guarded, the Qing Dynasty could still be saved.