Oxford is just a small city on the Northern Expedition, and the real strategic target is still in Birmingham in the north.This central English city, which started with coal, was the birthplace of Britain's Industrial Revolution.Britain's railway locomotives, steam engines, and automobile manufacturing centers were concentrated here, and it was also the location of Britain's important military industry.Because the regular army under Edward VII ran to the southern territories of Scotland, England and Wales, and there was almost no regular army defense.However, in order to maintain the supply of arms to the British army, more than 100,000 regular troops were left in the city of Birmingham.The city now has more than 700,000 citizens, and because there is never a shortage of arms, it has also armed more than 400,000 militias.Almost men, women, and children went into battle, and no one had a rifle.Almost all the young men in the city picked up guns and ammunition, ready to fight the Huaxing army outside the city.It's still a short distance from the city of London, just over 200 kilometres.So everything that happened in the city of London was reported to the city.It's just that there is the control of the garrison here, and the Huaxing Army is propagandized like the Eastern Devil, and the locals still reject the Huaxing Army.The most important thing is that the Huaxing Army has not done anything good in Britain, and many people have fled north.As long as the refugees are hiding in Birmingham, they all promote the evil of the Huaxing Army.The people here are fierce, and they have a lot of weapons and equipment in their hands, so of course they choose to resist without hesitation.The Huaxing army also wanted to fight a big battle to deter these southern cities.This is located in the territory of England, and what the Huaxing army wants at the moment is to take England and cause a split with Scotland in the north.So their goal, the far north, was only going to hit Leeds City, and then here to split England in half.Birmingham's central location in Leeds and London makes it an ideal target.Ruined the city, soon the cities of the north and south will make a wise choice.The atmosphere on all sides of Birmingham quickly became tense.The remnants of the defeated army defending this place knew the strength of the Huaxing army, so they dug more than a dozen layers of trenches outside the city, and they were connected to the solid buildings and factories in the city, which was completely a strong military fortress.Birmingham is located inland and has no wide waterways, only man-made canals.As a result, large warships could not come in to provide support, but the Huaxing Army had carved out a wide asphalt road in the city of London to serve as a landing base for the Air Force.At this distance, the Air Force is quite capable of providing support.The role of the Air Force is not only to carry out aerial bombardment, but also to be responsible for reconnaissance.Birmingham is home to an important military industry, and according to the reports of front-line reconnaissance, there are more than 5,000 artillery pieces of various types alone.Of course, there are thousands of finished products, most of which are semi-finished products that have not left the factory.Either there is a lack of kinematics, or there is a lack of aiming equipment.But whether it is a finished product or a semi-finished product, as long as it is artillery, it is a big enough threat.In the face of such a heavy industrial base, Huaxingjun did not dare to be careless at all.In addition to an armored division commanded by Yang Jincong, Zhang Zhenwei has not supplemented them with an ironclad chariot brigade.Now there were six hundred ironclad combat vehicles, and an artillery brigade armed with thousands of breech-loading howitzers.The more than 500,000 soldiers commanded by Zhang Zhenzhi were mainly for defense, and the ironclad chariot brigade was born for attack, which was of little use in defense.More than 600 ironclad chariots gathered, and it was the largest ironclad chariot battle of the Huaxing Army.In the beginning, in other battlefields, there had never been such a big stroke.Two days before the attack, the Air Force, in consultation with the ground army, took the lead in taking off from London to carpet bomb Birmingham's military factories.Although Birmingham had a lot of artillery, it was used by new workers, and there was not a single serious artilleryman.They lined up on the battlefield and had no tactics at all.It's just that according to the four sides of the battlefield, it is evenly distributed on all four sides.The main thing is that they piled ammunition boxes with artillery.As soon as Huaxingjun's plane dropped the bomb, it quickly triggered a series of reactions.After the bomb exploded, several bombs landed right on the ammunition pile of the artilleryman.A huge explosion came, scaring the Huaxing army who were preparing to attack on the battlefield.The city is even more miserable, and there are advantages and disadvantages.The military factories in Birmingham were still intensifying the production of artillery and guns before the Huaxing army attacked.So the gunpowder piled up in warehouse after warehouse, and these workers didn't even have any sense of defense.They still have a traditional war mentality, because the factory is dozens of kilometers away from the front line, so they don't believe that the artillery of the Huaxing Army can hit here.But after a thousand calculations, they didn't expect that the Huaxing Army would actually send planes to fight.At this time, the Wright brothers had not yet invented the airplane.Most of the world has yet to see an airplane, especially one so advanced that it carries a hundred rounds of bombs.The bombing was mainly aimed at the munitions factory, where forty planes dropped thousands of bombs on British artillery positions.Birmingham's munitions factory buildings collapsed one after another, and soon under the cover of bombs, smoke rose and fell apart.After two bombardments a day, it is difficult to see intact houses in the military factories on the ground.The explosion caused a chain reaction, and the powder magazine of the military factory was quickly ignited by the fire.An even more violent explosion rose into the air in the city, and the black smoke of gunpowder shot straight into the sky like mushrooms, and all the glass within a radius of dozens of miles was shattered.The next day, the Air Force continued to carry out bombing in the sky.The British defenders on the ground cursed angrily, and thousands of machine gunners fired volleys into the sky.But because the power of the machine gun was too small, the root could not hit the height of the aircraft.The British army could only be passively bombed over and over again, and the infantry was okay, hiding in the trenches and saving their lives.The artillery was miserable, there was not even a bunker.One position after another was razed to the ground by the Huaxing army, and more than 5,000 artillery pieces were also blown to pieces, most of which were shattered by their own shells.The ammunition of the artillery was carefully arranged, and it was estimated that no one could pile up shells in front of the artillery like the militia in Birmingham, and when they exploded, like firecrackers, they quickly ignited on the entire front.The infantry attacked Birmingham's position on the third day, because the main British artillery force was bombed, and the infantry, deprived of artillery cover, now had the advantage only in the trenches.The distance between the two sides was still thousands of meters, and the militia on the position could not wait to shoot.On the one hand, there are indeed a lot of bullets, and on the other hand, these militias have just learned to fire guns, and they are simply an unorganized rabble.This gunshot immediately triggered gunfire on all fronts.Whether it was a rifle, or a machine gun hidden in the Ming Castle, or a machine gun in the Dark Castle, they all followed the dense salvo
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