1627 Rise of the South China Sea

Chapter 1743
The secret deal between Haihan and Champa was originally to attack the Dutch so that their intelligence department could continue to control the direction of the grain market in Batavia. was unexpectedly out of the bidding for .If Thomas knew the truth, he might be so angry.

Fortunately, Champa is not as rich as Fujian and Annan. It only ordered [-] new rifles as a supplement to its existing military strength, so Portugal still has a chance to pick and miss, but it cannot buy in large quantities. That's all.

For the Fujian Xu family and An Nanguo, the purpose of buying weapons from Haihan is not only to arm themselves, but also to actively bind themselves with Haihan's interests, so as to obtain Haihan's long-term support and protection in the military.And Champa does not have enough military strength to complete its external expansion. Their purpose is to ensure that the country's armed level will not be too much worse than that of its strong neighbor in the north, Annan, and there are still many in the army that have been purchased in recent years. Rifles, so the need to replace new weapons is not so urgent.

The situation of Portugal is different from these countries. Since the colonies have not actually expanded in recent years, they have always maintained about 2000 to [-] armed personnel in the South China Sea east of the Strait of Malacca. Moreover, the conflict with the Netherlands in recent years has not been as intense as before, so there is actually not much demand for weapons and equipment.

However, the Portuguese are very shrewd. As long as they have the opportunity to buy Haihan weapons, they will still mobilize funds as much as possible to buy more.The performance of the weapons made by Haihan is better than that of their own. Buying these weapons and sending them back to Europe will also come in handy. At worst, they can resell them to other countries to make a fortune.

Haihan is not ignorant of Portugal's role as a middleman in the arms trade, but instead encourages Portugal to do so intentionally or unintentionally.At present, the intensity of wars in Europe is far greater than that in the Far East, and there is a great demand for high-performance weapons. As for the price, it is not so important in the intercontinental melee that frequently aims to destroy the country. People are willing to pay.

Regarding the historical process of Europe, Haihan is also relatively clear, and even understands the trend of the war better than the Portuguese, so he has always intended to export weapons and equipment to Europe through Portugal.On the one hand, the arms trade is lucrative, and this European guy’s money is not in vain; on the other hand, Haihan also has the intention to make the European war more intense. Weakened, so that the external pressure Haihan faces in the Far East can also be reduced.

As for whether these weapons will be imitated by local skilled craftsmen after they arrive in Europe, Hai Han doesn't have too many concerns.The light and heavy weapons that Haihan currently manufactures are all imitations of relatively successful weapons in history, and the origin of these weapons is almost all in Europe, but Haihan used the information he possessed to advance them by a century or two. Created.

Even without the existence of Haihan, the Europeans would have made these weapons sooner or later. Now it is only a few years ahead of time, but the imitated things will still have obvious performance gaps compared with those made by Haihan.This is because Haihan has technology beyond this era in terms of materials and craftsmanship. Even if others can imitate the structure of weapons, it is impossible to copy the performance of Haihan. What's more, they can only imitate the performance of foreign trade exports. The reduced version is even more incomparable with the model equipped in the Haihan Army.

Although Fei Cexian looked disdainful, he was actually quite interested in this new type of weapon.If all these thousands of rifles could be sold to Daming, it would be much easier to quell the rebellion of the peasant army in the Central Plains, or to resist the Jinmen's knocking.It’s just that this kind of situation exists in his imagination. He knows that Haihan intends to control the types and quantities of weapons exported to Daming. Except for Fujian, there is probably no place where the local government has a way to buy large quantities of weapons from Haihan people. The ammunition is gone.

Is it possible to let the Fujian army hand over the purchased weapons to the imperial court, or let them purchase Haihan arms on behalf of the imperial court?The answer is obviously no. The court had already tried this a few years ago, and neither Hai Han nor Xu Xinsu would cooperate, so they could only let it go.

Therefore, in the territory of Ming Dynasty, the Ming army under the command of Xu Xinsu in Fujian is the best equipped, and its training is arranged by Haihan. Fei Cexian has no doubt that the fighting power of the Ming army in Fujian has long been second to none in Daming. .It's a pity that the imperial court can't mobilize Xu Xinsu's troops at all, and the various orders issued can't be carried out after they arrive in Fujian. There is still nothing to do.Now they can only barely maintain the status quo, and they dare not use the name of the imperial court to force Xu Xinsu to submit, as long as there is no rebellion in Fujian.

However, after Fei Cexian suppressed his anger, he still decided to find an opportunity to contact Haihan's senior management again, to see if he could persuade them to release weapons supply to Da Ming, at least let Da Ming participate in the bidding in an event like today.Haihan kept saying that he and Daming were of the same family, descendants of Chinese Han descendants, so he couldn't really just leave him alone, watching Daming continue to suffer in the chaos of war, right?
When Fei Cexian was thinking wildly, the background cloth just now had been removed from the stage, and a new background was propped up with a shelf.The background of this painting depicts the battle between two armies on the battlefield, one of which is the Haihan Army with red and blue flags, and the other is full of cavalry charging across horses and wielding knives.

"It's the post-gold iron cavalry!" The first person in the audience to recognize his identity was Li Xi, the North Korean envoy.He was all too familiar with the weird money rattails of the golden soldiers, and he knew the identities of these cavalrymen at a glance.

"Everyone, the scene depicted in this background is the Liaodong battlefield. There is no need to introduce our army. I believe everyone has recognized it. However, our enemies may still be very unfamiliar with the countries located in the South China Sea. They just live in The Jurchens in the extreme north, their country is the Houjin that you have heard more and more in recent years, and the Houjin cavalry is currently the most powerful armed force in the area north of the Ming Dynasty."

Beks was not in a hurry to start displaying the next piece of weaponry, but first introduced the relevant situation of the content depicted on the background wall to the audience present.In fact, everyone here has heard about the rapid rise of Houjin in recent years. After all, the newspapers published by Haihan have published a lot of news about Houjin. Even countries in the South China Sea know about it. The horseback nation has suppressed the Ming Dynasty severely in recent years.

It has been more than two years since Haihan sent troops to Liaodong. Most of the main combat troops have set foot on the Liaodong battlefield through rounds of battles in the past two years. The scene depicted on the screen is the actual situation of the Jinzhou Isthmus battle last year. .

Bai Kesi continued: "Hou Jin's most powerful housekeeping skill is the cavalry charge. Relying on this tactic has made the defenders of the Ming Dynasty miserable in the past few years. Especially in the field state, there is almost no way to confront the opponent head-on. I Thinking about this point, Master Fei from Daming should be very clear about it."

Feeling the complicated gazes from around him, Fei Cexian just snorted coldly, and didn't respond to Beks' words.He couldn't refute the situation that Bai Kesi said. The northern frontier of the Ming Dynasty was getting tighter every year, and the later Jin army was able to advance all the way to the vicinity of the capital when it went south.The gap between the cavalry strength of the two sides is getting bigger and bigger. The defenders will hardly go out of the city to fight the opponent except to stay in the city and wait for the enemy to plunder enough to retreat.

Of course, Daming was not willing to be in such a passive situation, especially when Haihan won the cavalry with one step in the Liaodong Peninsula. The encouragement to Daming is still great.But the problem is that the combat power of the Ming army cannot reach the level of the Haihan army at all. If you fight against the Houjin army in the wild, you will undoubtedly have a dead end. The equipment problem is solved.

But in this way, it has entered a dead end again-Da Ming cannot purchase Haihan weapons in large quantities through normal channels, and it is difficult to systematically equip them to the Ming army to improve combat effectiveness.In the end, Haihan had to be allowed to act on his own in Liaodong, which was equivalent to exchanging the land of the Liaodong Peninsula for the military deployment of the Jin army after Haihan held back in Liaodong.Although other countries may not be aware of these inside stories, Fei Cexian himself knows them well. Of course, the insider has to add North Korea who also knows the inside story of the Liaodong transaction.

"As we all know, our country sent troops to Liaodong out of Ming's respect and the long-standing friendly relationship between the two countries to assist Ming in resisting the invasion of the Later Jin..."

Bai Kesi's words fell into Fei Cexian's ears, and they were automatically filtered out.Now he can't even believe a single word of the beautiful words of these high-ranking Haihan officials.

"...And one of the important reasons why our army was able to severely damage the post-Golden Cavalry in Liaodong is because we equipped the troops with heavy weapons with strong long-range lethality, artillery! To attack them, no matter how brave the Golden Cavalrymen are, they are all flesh and blood after all, and there is no way to compete with steel! Halfway through their charge, there are only piles of flesh and blood left. What else can you use to threaten our army?"

Bai Kesi's speech almost reduced the Golden Cavalry to nothing, but the more so, the more unhappy Fei Cexian felt in the audience. This opponent who gave Daming a headache was kneaded like dough in front of the Haihan Army. Come and pinch, doesn't this further show that the Ming army's combat power is vulnerable?
"Everyone, artillery can not only be used to defend and siege cities, but also can exert great power in field battles. Of course, some people may question why the Haihan Army can repel cavalry with artillery, while other countries cannot do so. Well, I'm here today to answer that question."

Fei Cexian pricked up his ears, wanting to listen carefully to what Beks had to say.The Ming army has a lot of artillery, but it seems that it is difficult to exert the same effect as the Haihan army in field battles. Could it be that Haihan has some advanced tactics.

Then I heard Beks say: "There are two reasons. First, the equipped artillery is not enough. Second, the lethality of the artillery is not strong enough."

Fei Cexian almost spit out a mouthful of old blood. These two reasons were so shameless that he couldn't think of any way to refute them.

Beks continued: "But the army artillery we want to provide to various countries this time is to solve the problem that the existing artillery is difficult to transport and deploy in field battles, and the lethality is not strong enough."

In fact, the field artillery used by the Army is nothing more than considering the direction of light weight and easy movement in terms of design ideas, and can be easily and quickly transferred by using animal power or even manpower.As for the problem of lethality, without increasing the caliber, we can only increase the effective range as much as possible, and at the same time improve the shell structure to achieve this goal.

For safety reasons, Haihan Ordnance must control the performance of the exported weapons and not be too close to their own weapons. Therefore, although artillery is also one of the exported weapons, the upgrade in performance is actually smaller than that of firearms.If you want to encourage donors to spend money to buy equipment, you have to find a promotional point that can impress them.

Fortunately, Haihan's foreign wars are very frequent, so there is no need to worry about not being able to find examples of actual combat to prove the excellent performance of Haihan's artillery. Beks used the battle in Liaodong as an example to illustrate that Haihan's artillery is enough to defeat the enemy in field battles. Powerful armed cavalry.Of course, the premise is still the sentence that Bex just mentioned: enough artillery is equipped to be effective.

How much is enough?Of course each army will have different standards.For example, Haihan troops with a mature tactical system and rich combat experience, perhaps a battalion with fifteen to twenty field artillery is enough to deal with enemy cavalry with three to five times its strength.The Ming army, which is not good at this kind of field battle, may need twice as many artillery pieces to stabilize the morale of the army, so as not to collapse on its own when facing the enemy cavalry charge.

The Xu family, which is not short of money, is of course the more the better. It is best that the battalion can be equipped with dozens of cannons, so that there is no need to start a fight. If you spread them out in front of the formation, you will scare the opponent to death.As for North Korea, perhaps a battalion of three or five guns is enough—it’s not that North Korea is arrogant, it’s because it doesn’t have that much military budget to buy expensive heavy weapons like artillery.

The number of equipped artillery will of course affect the combat effectiveness of the troops, but this is not the only factor that plays a role.The Haihan military has always emphasized that talent is the decisive factor in war, followed by weapons and tactics.However, when promoting arms sales to the outside world, this order has to be adjusted, emphasizing the theory of only weapons, and weakening the role of people and tactics intentionally or unintentionally.

(End of this chapter)