1627 Rise of the South China Sea

Chapter 729 Between Offense and Defense
For the Mata Blue Army with a scale of tens of thousands of people, the offensive in the morning was just a tentative attack, and for the commander of the Mata Blue Army to test the strength of the city defense with hundreds of lives It's just an ordinary means of combat.The casualty rate that the defending army cannot afford is not a big problem for the Mata blue army.The tactical intention of the Mata blue army is very clear, that is, to use a simple offensive to find a breakthrough in the Batavia city defenses.At least after the match in the morning, it can be said that most of the Dutch army's defensive methods have been exposed, and after a few hours of adjustments by the Mata blue army, its offensive will also be more targeted.

The troops of the Mata blue army stopped at a distance farther than in the morning, and then began to place and debug the trebuchets.After Bart noticed this, his face became even more gloomy.Although the trebuchets in the Mata blue army were slow to launch and had limited damage to personnel, they were no match for the city fire artillery in the morning battle with the defenders, and several of them were destroyed by shells during the battle, but Bart was very Understand that this primitive weapon has its advantages.

First of all, the strike accuracy of this weapon determines that its target is not a single point, but an area.For example, if a certain section of the city wall is designated as the target, the probability of hitting this area is much higher than that of the artillery used by the city defense army to accurately hit the trebuchet, and this is the main attack method currently used by the Mata blue army.Secondly, the lethality of this kind of weapon to personnel is relatively limited, but the degree of damage to the city defense fortification cannot be ignored. Gradually smash the city wall into gaps and cracks. If the opponent keeps using catapults to focus fire somewhere, the defenders actually have no special defensive measures available, and can only watch the stone bullets falling from the sky. Destroy the walls.Third, the range of the trebuchets used by the Mata blue army is extremely long, and they have no obvious disadvantages compared to the artillery at the top of the city. This makes it impossible for the defenders to use the range advantage of their own weapons to suppress the opponent's long-range firepower output. .

The battle in the morning has obviously allowed the Mata blue army to detect the hit rate of the city fire artillery at that time, and consciously retreated the trebuchet for a while, on the one hand, to reduce the chance of the trebuchet being hit by the city fire artillery The probability, on the other hand, is probably to change the target of the attack-this is one of the things Bart is most worried about.

In the previous battles, only about half of the casualties of the Mada Blue Army under the city were caused by the blows from the top of the city, while the other half were caused by the small wedge-shaped forts outside the city that made it difficult for the Mada Blue Army to launch an offensive smoothly.Although there are often only one or two hundred soldiers stationed in these fortresses, the firepower output by the platoon formed by them can firmly lock the Mata blue army trying to attack the city through the ladder bridge near the moat. .

Since the siege troops are almost all lightly armed, it is difficult for the weapons in their hands to cause any damage to the strong fortress-in fact, the Mata blue infantry can't even charge within [-] steps of the fortress, and they have already fallen in the inner city. Under the attack of the Musketeers outside.With such cross-fire strikes, the Madalan infantry could not carry out a frontal confrontation with only the short spears and bows in their hands, and the facts have proved that their attack methods have achieved extremely limited results. Although they also killed some defenders in the fortress, but There is no way to capture these troublesome fortresses and advance the offensive to the city of Batavia.

When the first stone bomb flew through the air and hit the moat and splashed a lot of water, Bart knew that the commander of the Mata blue army had obviously realized this, and had adjusted his priority target from the city wall to the garrison fort outside the city .

After the first round of throwing, the trebuchet on the opposite side stopped for calibration.But Bart didn't dare to wait for the opponent to adjust slowly, and immediately ordered all the artillery within the range to fire, trying his best to bombard the enemy's trebuchets.

Almost all the wedge-shaped fortresses outside the city were built after the last World War. As the outer fortifications, the height, thickness, and strength of the walls cannot be compared with the walls of the main city, and their ability to resist attacks is naturally much worse.When the Mata blue catapult launched the second round of throwing, several stone bullets hit the outer wall of the fortress outside the city, setting off a large cloud of dust.

The fort outside the city is also equipped with artillery, but because of the limited space in the fort, there are only two to four small-caliber artillery in each fort, which are mainly used to kill the troops who forcibly cross the moat. The trebuchet is not within its range.Therefore, for the attack of the trebuchet, the garrison in the fortress had no effective countermeasures other than yelling and hiding everywhere like headless flies.

After the Mata blue army retreated the catapults, the Dutch army's shelling hit rate really began to decline.Although Bart adjusted his tactics in time and let the artillery on the city wall start to focus their fire on different areas, the effect was still not satisfactory.After five rounds of shelling, only one trebuchet was hit. This performance made Bart almost jump in a hurry.

Of course, Bart didn't dare to order the army to go out of the city to fight back. That would definitely be fulfilling the opponent's wishes. The Mata blue army would like the defenders to go out of the city to fight, and then use their strength to forcibly attack them.In addition, before the Mata blue army landed, the defenders had already destroyed several passages on the moat, leaving only the passage on the front of the north gate. narrow and unable to retreat back into the city in time.Under such double risks, Bart naturally did not dare to act rashly.

The Mata blue army carried out stone-throwing attacks on several forts outside the city for two full hours without haste. The walls were dusted everywhere.During these two hours, the Dutch defenders also hit twelve trebuchets successively, but the casualties caused were too far away to be counted.

The commander-in-chief of the Mata blue army was obviously more patient than the Dutch army expected in the start of the battle. In this round of confrontation, the opponent did not send infantry to charge the battle again, and basically used long-range weapons to attack the fortress outside the city.Although these trebuchets require a lot of manpower, their cost of use is actually far lower than that of artillery. During the two-hour battle, the trebuchets can fight almost continuously, but the artillery on the top of the city needs to be cooled intermittently. , and the commander must also take into account the consumption of ammunition and the loss of artillery life.In contrast, although the defenders have advanced weapons, they are much more passive than their opponents who mainly use cold weapons.

In the end, it was dusk that came to save the defenders who were about to collapse in the fortress outside the city. The Mata blue army packed up the siege equipment without haste, and slowly retreated to the camp three miles away.The defenders, on the other hand, seized the time to count the battle damage outside the city.

The result of the inventory really made Bart feel worried. Of the six forts outside the northern city wall, only the two forts next to the north gate were built more carefully than other forts because of their dangerous location and the function of covering the passage into the city. It is the most sturdy, so the damage is not bad, and a little repair will be fine.But the other four fortresses were not so lucky, and the parapet walls all collapsed to varying degrees.In the most severely damaged fortress, one-third of the parapet wall has collapsed or cracked, and the difficulty of its defense will also be greatly increased.

In addition, the casualties were more serious than in the morning. The number of soldiers killed in the fortress by stone bullets or the collapse of the parapet unexpectedly exceeded the number killed in the morning, and the number of wounded was nearly a hundred.Such a battle loss is absolutely unacceptable for the defenders with limited strength.If the fight continues like this, it may take less than ten days for the Mata Blue Army to rely on this primitive tactic to wear down the elite defenders bit by bit.

Bart originally thought that Van Diemen would come to the front line to deal with the situation in person, but when he came down from the city wall, he learned that Van Diemen had rushed to the east, where the fighting situation was worse than the north. When the fortress was attacked by trebuchets, the parapet collapsed, crushing the artillery in battle below and the soldiers on the entire emplacement, causing the kindling used to ignite the fuze to ignite a barrel of black powder not far away, and the subsequent explosion The entire artillery group was sent to the sky, and more than 20 unlucky ghosts nearby were implicated.What's more serious is that the explosion also blew up a large part of the wall that had not yet collapsed, making nearly half of the fort's area lose its basic protection—if the Mata blue army attacked again trenches, the soldiers had to fight these Nanyang barbarians face to face.

Although this is not good news to be thankful for, Bart secretly heaved a sigh of relief.If there hadn't been this big leak on the eastern front, then the performance of the northern front he was in charge of in the afternoon would obviously have been severely criticized.Although there were no major problems with Bart's command, as a commander, the position he was in charge of did suffer undue casualties and losses during the battle.

"Immediately mobilize manpower to repair the fortress wall outside the city overnight!" Bart can't think of a more effective way to defend against the enemy now, so he can only hurry up to repair the damaged fortifications.As for whether this kind of temporary repair can face the next wave of offensive by the Matalan people, he no longer wants to imagine.

"Second Lieutenant Bart, that Boss Cheng is here again."

As soon as Bart returned to the headquarters under the city wall, the guards came in and reported to him the news of Cheng Dapeng's visit.

"Didn't I ask him to contact Su Keyi first?" Bart muttered, but he still didn't refuse Cheng Dapeng's request: "Bring him in."

Cheng Dapeng entered the house with a lacquered wooden food box, and after seeing Bart, he worked hard.After fighting for a whole day, Bart lost his energy and didn't even think about standing up to greet him. He just nodded and said, "Boss Cheng is here at this time, what's the matter?"

"The villain knows that Master Bart has been fighting hard today, so he specially ordered someone to make some western dishes, hoping to replenish his strength for Lord Bart." After finishing speaking, Cheng Dapeng put the food box in front of Bart without waiting for Bart's response. Open the table.

"Delicious bacon and pea soup!" Bart originally wanted to be polite, but when he saw the dishes in the food box, his attention was immediately attracted: "Mini muffins! And French fries! Boss Cheng, you really So caring!"

"Not only that." Cheng Dapeng unhurriedly uncovered the first layer of grids, and it turned out that there is another layer below: "This is seafood rice, and there is also a small bottle of wine. Lord Bart has probably heard of the brewing by the Haihan people." 'Sanya wine'?"

"Of course, this wine tastes very good. I didn't expect you to hide so many good things!" Bart took the wine bottle from Cheng Dapeng's hand with a smile on his face, carefully looked at the "Sanya" mark on the glass bottle, and nodded Said: "That's right, this is the authentic Haihan product. The Batavia market is often out of stock, and the price is also frighteningly high. If I remember correctly, such a small bottle of 'Sanya wine' costs one florin , my salary is not even enough to drink a bottle of this wine every day."

"If Lord Bart likes it, I'll send some more to him in the future. There is still a small amount of stock in my house." Cheng Dapeng said as he took out all the bowls, chopsticks, spoons and cups, and arranged them neatly for Bart. .

Bart felt a little sorry: "Boss Cheng is too polite, why don't you... have a drink together?"

"I'm too strong to drink, so it's better for Mr. Bart to enjoy it." Cheng Dapeng spent all his time here, and naturally he didn't come to find Bart for a drink.

After meeting Bart last time, Cheng Dapeng was thinking about how to continue this line, and specially recruited several colleagues in the same group to come up with ideas.After much deliberation, it seemed that using food as a comfort food was a feasible idea.So he spent money to find a cook from Nordic in the city, and then made some so-called Nordic delicacies.

However, the Netherlands does not have any good food. Even the Dutch themselves once complained that "the French live to eat, while the Dutch eat to live."In addition, the ingredients that can be found in the local area are very limited, so the dishes that are actually made make Cheng Dapeng a little unsightly.So he asked the chef of his own rice shop, who was also a colleague from the security department who had received culinary skills training in Sanya, to add a Haihan's signature paella.Cheng Dapeng was afraid that the portion would not be enough, so he added a two-pack of "Sanya Special Brew".

Facts proved that Cheng Dapeng's worries were overstated. Bart, who had been starving for a whole day, obviously didn't have any thoughts of being picky about food, and almost swept away all the food in a whirlwind.As for the bottle of Sanya special wine, he finished it as an aperitif before eating.

(End of this chapter)