1627 Rise of the South China Sea

Chapter 726 Approaching Reconnaissance
The two small-scale confrontations in this day and night were just appetizers before the big war, but the corpses of several enemy soldiers hanging in the central square did have a certain soothing effect on the emotions of the people in the city.After all, this is the third time that Batavia City has been attacked by the Matalan army in the past five years. Although the first two battles ended with the voluntary withdrawal of the Matalan side, no one knows. Can Batavia City survive the third offensive.Being able to achieve some victories at the beginning of the siege can somewhat make the people in the city a little more optimistic about the future trend of this battle.

However, some well-informed people, such as Su Keyi and Cheng Dapeng, have already learned from special channels that it was only the vanguard of the Mata Blue Army that was fighting with the defenders, and that the people hanging on the square may It wasn't a few casually picked up from the piles of enemy corpses outside the city, but a total of so few people were killed under the city, and it would be impossible to hang a few more to show off their prestige.

After initially testing the strength of the defenders at the top of the city, the Matalan troops who followed up did not start the siege immediately, but set up a camp outside the city and began preparations before the siege.However, according to their previous practice, the preparation period is only two or three days, and by then it will no longer be a small disturbance.

Taking advantage of this rare period of peace, Cheng Dapeng took his condolences to the city defense headquarters outside the north city gate, and under the introduction of Su Keyi, he met Anthony Fan, the supreme commander of the city's defenders. Dimen.

Due to the language barrier between the two sides and Fan Dimen's busy military affairs, the two only exchanged a few words through Su Keyi's translation.As for Cheng Dapeng's intention, Su Keyi had already told Fan Dimen in advance.Because of the Su family as a guarantee, and Cheng Dapeng himself is considered a well-known businessman in Batavia, Fan Dimen did not doubt Cheng Dapeng's true intention to come to the door this time, and soon His application to go to the front line of the city wall to condolences to the combat troops was approved.Of course, for safety reasons, Su Keyi also went to the top of the city as an escort.

During the wartime siege, it was difficult for even a well-off businessman to organize decent consolation items, so what Cheng Dapeng prepared was extremely simple and crude—it was all boxes of cash.After leaving a pair of heavy gold ingots for Fan Dimen, Cheng Dapeng commanded his followers to lift the box containing the silver ingots all the way up the city wall.

The city wall of Batavia, designed and built by the Dutch, is an irregular bastion structure, and the Dutch-style bastion can undoubtedly occupy a place in the history of warfare.During the War of Independence in the Netherlands, fortresses such as bastions were used to make the Spanish army's battle in the Netherlands difficult. In the end, although the Spaniards had the upper hand in force, they had to withdraw because they could not conquer the large number of bastions. area.

Most of the land in the Netherlands is flat and lowland, and there is almost no danger to defend. This allowed the Dutch to gradually design more and more complex fortresses during the war. Its structure alone can add a bit of combat effectiveness to the defenders.And the Batavia city they built in the northwest corner of Java Island can be said to have concentrated the essence of the Dutch bastion fortifications. In terms of defense reliability, there is basically no second city in Southeast Asia that can match it.

Of course, due to the intervention of the Haihan people in this time and space, the bastion is no longer just a unique fortress built by European colonists.In fact, the Victory Fort in Sanya is a defensive fortress designed according to the principle of a bastion. Its designed defense capability requires less than a thousand guards to resist an enemy army ten times its own, which shows the power of this fortress.

In the history of world wars, bastions began to rise widely in Europe from the 16th century, and did not gradually withdraw from the battlefield until the second half of the 19th century.It's not that someone invented a more advanced form of fortress than a bastion, but that at this time, flower bombs began to be widely used in wars. The traditional bastion walls cannot effectively defend against the damage of this new type of artillery shells, and the defensive effect they can play It's not as big as it was in previous centuries.However, from the present point of view, only Haihan can fully grasp the black technology of flowering bombs, but it has not yet officially installed artillery units, so the bastion structure is still a very powerful defense system.

The main city wall of Batavia City is not high. According to Cheng Dapeng's visual measurement, its height is only eight to nine meters according to Haihan's measurement scale. It is obviously shorter than the city walls of Guangzhou and Zhaoqing, but the thickness is about the same.However, it is obviously different from the Ming-style city wall in that the rammed-earth city wall is not covered with a layer of wall bricks. This is because the masonry structure is easily damaged by artillery strikes, and it is prone to ricochet, which increases the casualties of the defenders. .

In addition, there are obvious differences in structure. The city wall here is not a straight line, but a prismatic structure protruding outward every other section, and the outside of the city is between the two prismatic structures. At a distance of 40 meters, a small triangular fortress was built, with one to two hundred soldiers stationed inside, and its position was also within the fire range of the prismatic structures on both sides.

Beyond this layer of defense is the moat that connects the water veins.The Mada blue army who swam in the dark and attacked the city before was discovered by the fortress garrison outside the city. Under the attack of firepower inside and outside the city, they quickly repelled the night attacking enemy army.

If Cheng Dapeng had never been to Sanya, then he would probably be surprised by the weird city walls of Batavia City. However, with Victory Fort, a fortress with more mature design and construction, Cheng Dapeng felt that the Netherlands The city wall built by people can only be regarded as mediocre.After all, Victory Fort has already completed the reconstruction of the concrete structure, and the degree of sturdiness is far from what this rammed earth wall can compare.Of course, he didn't relax because of this, he carefully measured the data of the city wall with his eyes, hands and feet, and silently remembered it in his heart.

Cheng Dapeng received special city defense reconnaissance training during his training in Sanya. Most of the content was taught by teachers from the military and the Ministry of Construction, allowing students to learn how to complete the survey of city defense fortifications in a short period of time and make their structures Copy it onto paper.The more advanced application is to infer the firepower points, weak points, and garrison points of the city defense fortifications through observation.Cheng Dapeng was able to go up to the city wall to observe at a close distance, naturally he had minimized the difficulty of this reconnaissance mission.

But God seems to be particularly partial to Cheng Dapeng, and wants to change the trick to lower the difficulty even more.After Cheng Dapeng and Su Keyi went up the city wall, an officer soon came to receive them.I don't know if it's a coincidence or a deliberate arrangement, but this officer named Bart is actually related to Su Keyi, and the woman he married in the local area is considered a cousin of Su Keyi.Although Bart has a family himself, and the relatives he married here are only concubine, but this kind of relationship cannot be faked.Su Keyi introduced the relationship between the two succinctly, and Cheng Dapeng was immediately relieved, at least the difficulty of dealing with them has been greatly reduced.

And this Bart's attitude towards Su Keyi is obviously much warmer than his boss Fan Dimen. After seeing Su Keyi's Fan Dimen warrant, his face no longer has the slightest rigid expression. The big tongue accent spoke Chinese: "Thank you, Boss Cheng!"

Cheng Dapeng said a few words of humility, and asked his followers to open the silver box, and introduced to Bart: "I have no power to restrain a chicken, and I can't participate in the battle. I can only use this thing to comfort the brothers under Lord Bart. Everyone Two taels of silver, please call the brothers to collect it!"

Bart's eyes lit up, he summoned the soldiers behind him and ordered a few words, and immediately someone came over to take over the silver box.Of course, Cheng Dapeng would not insist on distributing it by himself, so he signaled his subordinates to hand it over.As for how much of the money can be leaked to the people below after it is in Bart's hands, it probably depends on his mood.

Of course, these are not the key points, whether it is money or anything else, these are just a means used by Cheng Dapeng to trick information.This Bart happened to be one of the officers in charge of guarding the northern city wall. Of course, Cheng Dapeng hoped to get some first-hand information from him.

"I heard that the Mata blue army has fought against our defenders. Can Lord Bart point out the place where the battle took place? The villain also wants to pay his respects." Cheng Dapeng asked humbly.

Bart is obviously a person with no intentions, and he didn't think it was wrong to hear such a request, so he immediately pulled the two of them to a nearby prismatic protrusion, pointed to a place outside the city, and said, "Look, there is a lying area over there." The undergrowth is where the shells fall."

The first thing Cheng Dapeng paid attention to was not the battlefield outside the city, but the setting of the protrusion.Here is a fort with two cannons.Judging from the caliber, it should be a 12-pound gun, but the gun body is obviously larger and bulkier than Haihan's standard gun.Although Cheng Dapeng is not a military expert, he has also received relevant training. He knows that this is because the Dutch cannon casting technology and materials are not as good as Haihan, so they can only cast the cannon body thicker to ensure its sturdiness.

Cheng Dapeng looked at the location Bart was pointing at, measured the distance with his eyes, and continued to ask: "Lord Bart, I see that place is at least a hundred feet away from the city wall. The artillery fire is so fierce that it can kill the enemy." Beyond a hundred feet?"

When Cheng Dapeng muttered the ancient Chinese, Bart couldn't understand it, so Su Keyi could only translate it.After hearing this, Bart laughed and said, "Actually, this is not our maximum range. These two cannons can at least reach... Well, using your measurement unit, it is about 150 feet."

Although this range is not as good as the range of the Haihan artillery that Cheng Dapeng knows, it is already quite impressive. I just don’t know how accurate the artillery is. , it is difficult to have any actual threats.

Cheng Dapeng deliberately pretended to be a layman and said: "With such a sharp weapon, surely with only ten or twenty gates, my lord will be able to defend the city defense?"

"Ten or twenty?" Bart shook his head resolutely: "Boss Cheng, just the north city wall that I am in charge of has deployed more than fifty artillery pieces. If the battle is fierce, the number of artillery pieces at the top of the city may be increased. "

Cheng Dapeng said: "Ma Dalan is so powerful?"

Bart was silent for a moment this time before responding: "Although I don't want to admit it, the horse-fighting blue army is not weak. We have the weapons, and they also have them. The final victory must belong to us, but this battle is not It will be easy."

Cheng Dapeng didn't respond after hearing this, and looked up into the distance.Outside the faintly visible enemy camp, there are a small number of cavalry operating on the outskirts, which seems to be preventing the defenders in the city from leaving the city to attack and harass.Under the cover of these cavalry, about a thousand people were digging fortifications on the plain outside the city and carrying some war supplies.Although he didn't know how the Matalan people would attack the city, after hearing Bart's introduction, Cheng Dapeng felt a little uneasy about the direction of this war.

If the Haihan militia came to defend the city, would they be able to do better than the Dutch?That's a matter of course, after all, the place guarded by the militia has never been captured.So if the Haihan militia were to take the offensive, how would they attack this fortified city?

Thinking about these questions, Cheng Dapeng unconsciously lost his mind.Seeing this, Su Keyi thought he was really scared because the city of Batavia was in crisis, so he comforted him kindly: "Boss Cheng, you have to have confidence in the defenders. When the city was besieged, the situation was far more critical than it is now. At that time, the council had discussed whether to surrender the city. If it hadn’t been for Mr. Cohen’s strong opposition, this place would have become the territory of the Matalan Kingdom. Lord Cohen took advantage of the truce period to strengthen the city wall, and brought a large number of guns and artillery from the West to increase the defense. The strength is much stronger than that of the previous few years. From what I can see, the Matalan country’s invasion of the border this time, most likely It’s going to suffer a lot.”

Cheng Dapeng came back to his senses and replied: "Brother Su Shi said that with a general like Lord Bart leading troops to guard, the city of Batavia will be safe from danger. Although there are many enemy troops, but for Lord Bart Said, these are all real military achievements waiting to be obtained!"

After listening to Cheng Dapeng's compliment, Bart was also very helpful, patted his chest and said: "Don't worry, Batavia is not so easy to be breached. The Matalan people will leave their blood and lives as an offense to us." cost!"

Bart probably felt the atmosphere of fighting against each other from Cheng Dapeng, and in the following time, he unexpectedly introduced to him the situation of the city defense area he was in charge of.Cheng Dapeng was so happy that he didn't need to use his brain to make routines anymore. It was enough to just listen to Bart's own introduction. When the time was right, Bart would tout a few words, and Bart would continue to talk cheerfully, unaware that he was revealing important military secrets to outsiders.

(End of this chapter)