Xinshun 1730

Chapter 1257: Voyages to the West after the Voyage ([-])

For these soldiers at this time, this kind of pre-war mobilization of the "ups and downs" of the officer class is really like drinking and talking in the city's marketplace. Yu and Za sang music with Liu Zheng's skills.

Zhao Lisheng boldly asked: "Sir, we heard these days... If we play well, maybe we can retire early? Is this true?"

The officer looked serious, cupped his hands towards the north, and said: "We are serving as soldiers for the emperor. If we fight well and the emperor is kind, we can retire early. Besides, who dares to say such a thing? It's worth it When you are loyal to the country, don't think about retiring as soon as possible, you should think about eating official salaries and royal rations, and you should be worthy of the emperor."

Zhao Lisheng didn't dare to say more, so he retreated.

When there was no one around, Er Gou laughed and said, "You are really a day-to-day person, always wanting to go home and farm?"

"You do not want?"

Er Gou shook his head and said: "It's not very interesting. He eats the imperial rations, takes military pay, spends money when he has money, and gets drunk when he has wine. Isn't life going well? Come to India today and Burma tomorrow, say no Where to go the day after tomorrow. It’s much more interesting than farming.”

As he spoke, he took out a piece of yellow paper from his bosom, on which some strange words were densely written, handed it to Zhao Lisheng and said, "I'll give you a bullet-avoiding talisman."

Along with the expansion of Dashun in recent years and the development of the tertiary industry aimed at military pay, many characteristic industries have emerged around the Dashun barracks.

Consecrated amulets are old fashioned.

Now Dashun has also caught up with the era of queuing up and shooting, and many wonderful things have come out.

New gadgets such as bullet-avoiding talismans, bullet-wrapping spells, and the tactic of avoiding shooting guns have emerged in an endless stream.

Soldiers hang around with their heads pinned to their trouser belts. Although they don't believe in such crap at all, they can't help getting a bunch of them every time they go out for an expedition.

This is lighter on the side of the engineers, but quite serious on the side of the cavalry. Many cavalry will mutter a "scattering spell" before charging.

It was the most superstitious artillery 100 years ago, and it was necessary to sacrifice to the God of Artillery before the war. With the progress of metallurgical technology in the Dashun War in these years, it has become the most disbelief in the army.

Conversely, because of the appearance of four-pound cannon shells and shrapnel, the cavalry who did not believe in these things 100 years ago became the most convinced people in the army at this time.

Zhao Lisheng took the bullet-avoiding talisman, took out a small brass box with a string from his neck, and stuffed the bullet-avoiding talisman into it.

The two went to join the soldiers who were burning the yellow paper for blessing, burned two knives of yellow paper, kowtowed to the east, and finally completed the preparations for boarding the ship.

After boarding the ship, the fleet set sail, but life was not so difficult.

This time, it can be seen that the imperial court has really paid for it.

Not only were woolen military uniforms and boots distributed to them, but each ship even had a storyteller on board.

These combat engineers can also be regarded as experiencing the feeling of thousands of years in the pot.

When they wake up in the morning, they are not sailors, and they don’t need to scrub decks, build hammocks, and tie bulletproof soft fences.

Breakfast is usually camellia noodles, a spoonful of pickled lard, and half a lemon.

After breakfast, we began to get together to listen to storytelling.

There will be dry cakes, jerky, and onions for lunch.

Continue to listen to storytelling after lunch.

In the evening, the specifications are relatively high. One person has two catties of sugarcane wine mixed with water, one lemon or orange, four taels of peanuts, one piece of bacon or dried salted fish, and two pieces of sugar biscuits.

Such boring days are repeated day by day, but fortunately, this time the court spent a lot of money, and they can still listen to storytelling on the way, so it is finally easier to endure.

But he said that he didn't know how long he had been away, and that day he was hearing the storytelling writer talking about the key points.

"However, after the city of Ying was broken that day, Shen Baoxu fled to Yiling Mountain to hide. He heard that Wu Yuan had exhumed the tomb and flogged his corpse, so he wrote a letter to Wu Yuan. As I said before, they were childhood friends. When Wu Yuan fled back then, he told Shen Baoxu that I would destroy the state of Chu. Shen Baoxu said that day: Encourage him, work hard! You have your filial piety, and I have mine. If you If Chu is destroyed, then I will rejuvenate Chu, let’s talk about our own, this is called..."

Just as I was talking about the key point, I heard an officer standing on the narrow stairs of the cabin, whistling and whistling, and shouted: "Stop! Stop! Get ready, move around, and we're going to dock!"

"It's autumn outside, put on your new military uniforms, and check your packages."

It's March and April now, but the officer said it was autumn outside. Although he knew that the four seasons were reversed in the south, it was the first time he had experienced such weather, and the soldiers were also surprised.

It's definitely not cold in the stuffy cabin.It is said that it is autumn, and the temperature is estimated to be not yet snowy.

The soldiers began to unpack, put on their underpants, and put on their military uniforms.

I don't know who it was, but they took the lead and cheered, and the second dog next to him also shouted, cursing: "I would rather go to war, and the **** don't want to go on a boat anymore!"

…………

Aside from the transport ships, there is a busy scene in the port. The forts and fortresses standing at the Cape of Good Hope are not theoretically the farthest forts in Dashun. After all, in Amsterdam, Dashun also has a small number of troops stationed there, but they are all staffed by company employees. The name is there.

In fact, the farthest fort fortress in the real sense is here.

April is the autumn of the Cape of Good Hope, the weather is a bit chilly, and the temperature is around ten degrees.

This batch of arriving fleets had already completed a division of troops when they were in Mauritius.

In view of the destruction of the British Indian Squadron, the French Mauritius Fleet was also liberated.Dashun's fleet sailed to the west, and naturally left six cruisers in Mauritius.

Two of the six cruisers were tasked with hunting down any possible British merchant ships.Make sure that none of the British merchant ships in the direction of India slip away.

The remaining four ships will go to the Pirate Bay in Madagascar, find suitable pilots from the pirates who "lost" in the Caribbean, and go to South America to find opportunities to use Suriname as a supply base to find opportunities to hijack the ship.

Cruisers are not in the hands of pirates.Anyone who has a cruise ship to be a pirate is basically the configuration of a pirate king.

These pirates had not been in contact with Dashun for a day. Before, they tried to find the Swedish East India Company to sell their stolen goods. Dashun had an exchange when Mantou was sending Swedish prisoners of war to Gothenburg.

Pirates, there is no faith to speak of, but Dashun’s trading companies are all chartered companies, and Dashun is different from those European companies as a source of supply and production—such as the British company, the ship may be fully equipped in November, then It takes a year for a ship to be fully stocked.

The merchant fleets in Dashun are all in groups, and there will be some ships escorting them as military training, so this is the greatest trust with the pirates. Pirates are not stupid, and they have nothing to do when they are free. Why rob a ship with an escort fleet.

Although most of the pirates in Madagascar are losers in the Caribbean pirate area, some of them are more foresighted, thinking that the Caribbean is not a good life, so come here to open up a new era and grab Indian ships.

In any case, although Dashun has the sea charts provided by France, the sea charts surveyed and drawn by itself, and the French officer corps, which is the only two longitude methods in the world at this time, it can be used for some special sea conditions. , still need some old fritters to help.

They have never been to Suriname, how to snatch it after they get there, what routes the British usually take, etc., all need the help of the old fritters.

The price is also very reasonable, 1.8% of the total value of all loot, which is the market price of a standard pirate navigator.

The four ships going to South America were to rob the South China Sea Company, or in other words, to help Dashun seize the South China Sea Company's smuggling market.After the previous bubble burst, the South Sea Company did not completely disappear, but it was only in the hands of the East India Company in a disguised form of holding shares.

Another one is to familiarize yourself with the venue in advance.

The secret order received by the squadron commander actually included Portugal, and Dashun might declare war on Portugal as well.Once war is declared against Portugal, Dashun will also intercept Portuguese merchant ships, and then try to find a way to burn some Portuguese ports in South America, if there is a chance.

Because the Portuguese took cinnamon to South America when they ran away from Ceylon, which made Emperor Dashun very upset because it seriously affected his income.

Although in the past few years, because of Dashun’s policy of reducing the price of spices, against the Dutch’s policy of hoarding goods and artificially creating scarcity to suppress the spice industry in South America, relying on the advantage of labor costs, a large number of spice hills in South America have gone bankrupt.

But Portugal still has some spice industries, so this time it declares war on Portugal by the way, one is because there are no competitors in Southeast Asia and India; the other is to use the power of Spain to destroy Portugal’s spice industry.

Basically, there is not much competition between Dashun and Spain in trade items.In the past few years when Dashun’s industrial revolution broke out, Mexico’s carmine was also a dye that Dashun urgently needed; Dashun didn’t pay much attention to Mexican silk at all, so it couldn’t form a competition at all.

Of course, Portugal is easy to do. If it is not a big country, Portugal will have little combat effectiveness.The capital has just experienced a rare earthquake, and the Enlightenment faction and the Jesuits have quarreled with each other to set up an inquisition. As far as the power of East Timor and Goa is concerned, it is just a matter of getting South American spices before the war.

Dashun's strategy is also very clear.It is to use thunderous means to capture Gibraltar, directly pull Spain into the water, and start a war.

As long as Spain chooses to go to war, the situation in the Atlantic Ocean will be fine in an instant-Havana is the largest shipbuilding base in Spain, and there are high-quality Cuban cedars that can be used as ship materials.

The capital fleet frightened the British fleet into contraction in Europe.The attacking cruise ship is based in Havana, and it can completely destroy the British colonial economy within half a year.

It can even be said that if Dashun can capture Gibraltar today, Spain will go to war tomorrow.

Now it seems that the situation is very good.

After the division of troops, the commander of the squadron quickly received good news from the fast ship from the north at the Cape of Good Hope:
Two months ago, Dashun's main fleet encountered the British Mediterranean Fleet in Gibraltar.

There was a battle between the two sides. Dashun sank a battleship, two cruisers, and five battleships were seriously injured.

HMS Namur, the flagship of the British Mediterranean Fleet, was sunk and Admiral Edward Boskorn was shot and killed by Dashun's mast shooters.Two battleships were captured and three were wounded.

The battle damage ratio of the two sides is almost one to one.Because the tactics of the two sides are not much different.

In terms of morale, Dashun is a newborn calf who is not afraid of tigers, and has never fought a large-scale naval battle, so he is not afraid of anything.

On the British side, they are full of confidence, because they have played a lot, so their morale is not low.

The newborn calf is full of confidence, and its morale is half-hearted.

In terms of tactics, although Dashun learned from France in terms of warship design and sailor system.

But in fact, the tactical system and strategic system are completely different from France.

To give a simple example: France knows that its navy is the second largest in Europe, so France's naval warfare system is based on masting and grabbing the wind.

If you win, the enemy ship with a damaged mast will not be able to escape.

If they are not victorious, the mast of the enemy ship is damaged, and they turn around and run away, but it is the leeward direction again, and they run very fast.

Moreover, since I am the second navy in Europe, unless I gamble on a decisive battle, otherwise, as long as I squat in the port and my army is not dead, then the enemy's main fleet will not dare to bluff around.Therefore, everything is for survival, survival is everything, and survival is the highest strategic existence.

Dashun is just the opposite.

Fighting at the door of the house is a crushing situation, needless to say.

Fighting in the ocean, grabbing the wind, all the guns were fired at the waterline, and I didn't have the heart to shoot the specialized guns facing the mast.

If you win, you don't need to mention it.

If you lose, it's okay, no one can hit Dagukou, but the European pack of wolves looks around, as long as the strength of one family is weakened, the rest will surround them.

Moreover, if the mast is broken, it can be repaired in many places.

If you work towards the waterline, you will have to return to a large base with a dock for repairs if you are seriously injured, and there will be less maneuvering power at sea.

Therefore, the strategy of the Dashun Navy is different from that of France where everything is for survival and survival is victory.But the battle is victory, and Duizi is a big victory, because I have thick blood, and because after bleeding the world's number one navy, the two, three, four, five behind will surround me like sharks.

In this encounter, although Dashun's loss was similar to that of Britain.However, this means that the French Brest Fleet divided by Britain, the French Toulon Fleet, and the main fleet of Dashun can join forces in Brest.

Tactical losses are far less important than the meeting of the Toulon fleet and the Brest fleet.

(End of this chapter)