Cai Ye is going to Yanjing, he wants to come to Shanghai, Chen Jingyun can't care, and now he is too lazy to care, when Cai Ye announced that he would go north in early November, Chen Jingyun had no hope for Cai Ye at all. Since you Cai Ye have to go to Yanjing, then he Chen Jingyun has nothing to say, and next, Chen Jingyun immediately increased his contact with Tang Jirao.

Before Cai Ye went north, he had already announced his resignation from the post of governor of Yunnan, and Tang Jirao took over this position, that is to say, from the day Cai Ye announced his resignation, he was no longer the actual leader of the Yunnan army, and now the leader of the Yunnan army is Tang Jirao. These days, Chen Jingyun has been actively contacting Tang Jirao in an attempt to establish a strategic cooperative relationship between the two sides.

In order to win over Tang Jirao, Chen Jingyun not only promised to sell 5,000 rifles to the Yunnan army at a preferential price within one year, but even promised to provide some machine guns. You must know that although the output of the Fuzhou Arsenal has surpassed that of the Hanyang Factory and has become the largest arsenal in China, the demand of the Nationalist Army is greater, and the output of this Fuzhou Arsenal has always been unable to meet the needs of the Nationalist Army.

You must know that the price of arms in the Far East has risen by more than half compared with before Xinhai, and the price of the previous Hanyang-made in Xinhai was only about 40 yuan, but now even if it is an old Hanyang-made, it cannot be taken down without 40 or 50 yuan, and if it is brand new, it will be even more expensive. Under such circumstances, if the Dian army purchased arms from the Fuzhou Arsenal at a preferential price, it could save a lot of money.

Chen Jingyun expressed his sincerity, and Tang Jirao also expressed his sincerity, sending a secret telegram saying that as long as Cai Yi left Yunnan, then he, Tang Jirao, would publicly declare his support for Chen Jingyun. Although this is only lip service, it can at least give the National Army great support in terms of momentum.

The combination of so many circumstances made Chen Jingyun less concerned about Cai Yi's journey to the north, and now he is more concerned about the war in Zhenjiang and Nanjing.

After the First Division suffered a heavy defeat, Chen Jingyun immediately dismissed Chen Weihua, the commander of the First Division, and before Shen Gang arrived in Hangzhou from Guangzhou, the troops of the First Division would be temporarily led by Xu Jingqing, deputy division commander.

Speaking of which, this Xu Jingqing is also the first senior general in the National Army to come from the old army patrol battalion, he had fought with the National Army in the northwest of Fujian before, and later surrendered to the National Army and entered the Fuzhou Military Academy, and then served as a staff officer in the first brigade at that time, and finally slowly climbed up to become the commander of the 13th Regiment, through the first battle of Hangzhou and the previous few days of operations, he was finally concerned by the upper echelons of the National Army, especially Chen Jingyun, so he jumped up and became the deputy commander of the first division, Now the commander of the First Division, Shen Gang, is temporarily in command of the First Division when he has not yet arrived.

"Brother Li, see if you want to give me another base cannonball!" Xu Jingqing stood in front of Li Jimin, and there was a hint of pleading when he spoke.

The current First Division is a bit miserable, not only lost a lot of heavy weapons and equipment during the retreat some time ago, but also lost all the ammunition brought with the army, and after returning to Zhenjiang, it can only rely on the ammunition reserves of the Fourth Division. The supplies organized by the logistics department have not yet come up, but Cao Kun's third division is like an appendage, and the national army is chasing him all the way when he escapes, and now it is not easy to stabilize his position, and his Cao Kun's third division has attacked and fought fiercely.

Although it relied on trenches, barbed wire and a large number of machine guns to hold it, the ammunition consumption was also very large, and the first division could only ask for help from the fourth division due to the lack of ammunition.

Li Jimin also sighed and said: "Alas, we are ......also in difficulty" The fourth division is the last step to reach Shanghai, but unlike the first division, after the first division captured Shanghai and Suzhou, it did not care about the local garrison at all, but the whole army continued to go north to Zhenjiang, and when the fourth division came, not only did it have to leave a rather wrong garrison in Shanghai, but then along the railway, Jiangyin and other important places had to place a part of the troops to defend, although these places did not have many troops in one place, it may be a company, a battalion or so, However, such a large area combined contained a lot of troops in the Fourth Division. In the end, the main force of the Fourth Division that Li Jimin was able to bring was only an infantry regiment plus an infantry battalion, and the rest also had some artillery battalions and auxiliary troops. When this unit came to reinforce the First Division, in order to help the First Division stabilize its position, it took the initiative to undertake the main attack of Cao Kun's Third Division, so the losses were also great after two days of fierce fighting.

However, looking at Xu Jingqing's pleading look, he couldn't bear to refuse, and immediately said: "In this way, you can take half of the base ammunition and go!" ”

Xu Jingqing smiled after hearing this: "Then brother, I will thank Brother Li instead of the brother of the first division!" ”

The supply difficulties faced by the 1st and 4th Divisions in Zhenjiang were only temporary, and the next day, the emergency supplies organized by the Logistics Department had already arrived in Zhenjiang by train, thus greatly alleviating the supply difficulties of the 1st and 4th Divisions. This batch of supplies not only included consumable materials such as bullets and shells, but also some heavy weapons and equipment, including mortars and light and heavy machine guns, which were first stockpiled by the national military in Hangzhou as a precautionary measure. However, rifles, machine guns, and mortars can be replenished, but there is no way to use artillery, although Chen Jingyun bought artillery every time he bought a regiment, he would buy one or two more as inventory, but the number was not much, and even if these artillery were in stock, he could not really put them in the warehouse, and now the national army is short of artillery, so there is no way to add it.

That is to say, now the artillery in each division of the Nationalist Army is missing one and one is missing, and it will take a long time to make up for it, not only the Nationalist Army, but also other warlords in the country and even the Beiyang Army, and the heavy weapons and equipment such as artillery can basically not be replenished in wartime.

Based on the fact that the First Division had previously set up defensive positions on the periphery of Zhenjiang and suffered a blow, now Xu Jingqing and Li Jimin decided not to advance rashly, and took the initiative to abandon most of Zhenjiang's periphery defensive positions, and chose to concentrate their forces to hold the core position of Zhenjiang. The advantage of this is simple, one is to be able to concentrate forces on defense, and the other is to be close to the river and can be effectively supported by naval artillery. Anyway, Zhenjiang is an important point for both sides is along the railway, as long as the Shanghai-Nanjing Railway passes through Zhenjiang, then it is impossible for the Beiyang Army to bypass Zhenjiang to attack Shanghai, if it really wants to fight, then the Nationalist Army in Zhenjiang can threaten the long supply line of the Beiyang Army at any time, and even be able to surround and annihilate the Beiyang Army that bypassed Zhenjiang and attacked Shanghai in one fell swoop.

With this choice, the 1st and 4th Divisions began to rely on the core position of Zhenjiang for defense, and dug numerous trenches and constructed numerous defensive positions between battles, coupled with the cooperation of barbed wire and heavy machine guns, which prevented Cao Kun's 3rd Division from advancing for several days.

Watching his subordinate troops charge over and over again, and then fall to the ground by the heavy machine guns of the Nationalist Army, even if they reached the position of the Nationalist Army, they were blocked by barbed wire, and they could not take a step forward at all.

Although the quality of the soldiers of the 3rd Division of the attacking party is stronger than that of Zhu Rui's troops, and the artillery preparation before the attack is many times stronger than that of Zhu Rui's troops, the firepower density has not changed much in essence. As for the defenders, the Nationalist Army relied on a triple combination of heavy machine guns and barbed wire and trenches for defense, plus the pre-selected positions occupied a certain terrain advantage, which made the attackers somewhat helpless.

If both sides have a huge industrial system behind them, then the next thing will become a confrontation, and the two sides will increase the deployment of heavy machine guns, dig trenches, and build a complete defensive trench system, and then it will become a trench war for a long time. However, it is very unfortunate that neither side has a strong industrial base behind it, and Zhenjiang is not the Western Front of Europe during World War I, so it is unlikely that such a large-scale trench station will occur between the Beiyang Army and the Nationalist Army.

Playing trench warfare also requires capital, and the number of machine guns in each division of the European troops during World War I was as high as hundreds, and the density of artillery support behind it was not something that could be seen in the eastern battlefield.

Therefore, in the face of the blockage of the attack, Cao Kun quickly changed his tactics, on the one hand, he retired one after another, and then took over Zhang Xun's Eighth Division to prepare to cross the river.

At this time, I have to say that Zhang Xun is a little unlucky, he has already arrived at the north bank of the Yangtze River in Zhenjiang, but because of the Yangtze River moat, he has not been able to continue to go south, originally planned to make a detour to Nanjing and then cross the river, but at this time Cao Kun said that the third division could cover him to cross the river, Zhang Xun thought that the detour to Nanjing was too far, and if he left, the national army was likely to cross the river directly, flank Jiangsu and the north of Nanjing, and cut off the Jinpu line, so he gave up the idea of bypassing Nanjing, Instead, he chose to cross the river directly.

It just so happened that Sa Zhenbing's fleet was on the river south of Zhenjiang at that time, and the Haiqi and Hairong and several other gunboats returned to Jiangyin for replenishment, while the rest of the fleet was on standby, ready to provide artillery support to the defenders on land at any time.

If things had gone well, Sa Zhenbing's fleet would not have discovered that Zhang Xun's Eighth Division had secretly crossed the river under the cover of Cao Kun, but they didn't know that in addition to the army and navy, there was also an aviation unit in the national army system.

On the morning of 30 October, Zhang Xun's troops and the engineer unit sent by Cao Kun began to erect pontoon bridges, and this situation happened to be seen by a reconnaissance plane of the 3rd Reconnaissance Squadron of the Nationalist Army Aviation Unit in the sky. When the reconnaissance plane discovered that there was an unusual movement in the Yangtze River, it immediately lowered its altitude, and then the pilot of the reconnaissance plane took out a telescope and made a detailed observation.

As the altitude of the plane became lower and lower, the roar became louder and louder, and the Beiyang Army on the ground also discovered that there was a strange big bird flying overhead.