The Han culture is spreading strongly in Southeast Asia

Chapter 427 Those who are not from my race must have different hearts.

A heavy rain brought a rare respite to William III's Bastion, but the port castle on the other side suffered.

Heavy rain is not conducive to firing artillery on the city walls, but it has little effect on the naval guns on the deck, and the shelling can still continue.

The muskets of both sides could not fire, but the absence of muskets was actually more advantageous to the Dayu Army.

Because the Dutch army has long been in decline and is completely relying on guns and artillery to hold on.

As for their vassal native soldiers, not to mention factors such as morale, based on their organization and skills alone, they could not defeat the Divine Lightning Guards composed mainly of Emperor Mo's fellow villagers in western Guangdong, the Chinese volunteers in Java who were full of anger and wanted to take revenge, and the vassal samurai of Southeast Asia such as Penggangzi.

Especially the latter, they are professional colonists who have been killing indigenous people in Southeast Asia for many years.

Witnessed by this heavy rain, the two sides engaged in a truly classical battle at the end of the 18th century.

No, it should be said that it is more classical than classical, because it is just swords and spears stabbing each other, without even bows, crossbows or armor.

Lei Ahu was holding a big knife, and as a captain, he rushed to the front line in person.

In front of him, the fat elephant who was born in the wrong era roared, and together with more than twenty strong soldiers, they pushed the newly built battering ram, and with a bang, they knocked open the door of the port fortress.

"What do you think? Do we want to drag out all the natives in the city and execute them?" Lei Ahu stuck his big knife into the soft soil and asked Shi Yaer beside him.

"General Pingnan gave us this power."

Shi Yaer shook his head. "After the failure, the surviving Chinese were expelled to the Grodok district west of the city, while a large number of the natives were rewarded with the opportunity to live in the port castle and enjoy a good life."

"Then why are you shaking your head? Isn't now a good time for revenge?" Lei Ahu looked at Shi Yaer in confusion.

"Hahahaha!" Shi Yaer suddenly laughed heartily, "So I don't want to execute them directly, that would be too easy for them.

General Lei, the William III Redoubt has not yet fallen, and I think these people are the best cannon fodder."

Lei Ahu thought it was right. Just as he was about to give the order, Chen Lian's messenger came galloping towards him from a distance.

"General Pingnan has ordered that all Dutch and native males over the age of twelve in the port castle be arrested. The army will use them to practice attacking and defending the bastion.

The remaining women and children will be counted and handed over to Mr. Lin of Penang Port for centralized sale.”

The city of Grodok, located outside the walls of Batavia, is actually just a village developed in the jungle with two streets intersecting in a cross shape.

The intersection was the center of the city, where the Dutch established a tax collector, a sheriff, and ten native soldiers as police.

There are not many Chinese here, only about seven or eight hundred. Most of them are descendants of Chinese who were relocated from the Omelanden area in the city center after the Red Creek Massacre, as well as a few Chinese who arrived in Batavia over the years.

In the pouring rain, the Chinese people walked in the yellow mud that was up to their ankles, chasing each other around with sticks in their hands, shouting loudly.

The sheriff stumbled and fell to the ground, mud splashing all over his face. Before he could get up, he was overwhelmed by the figures. Without even a scream, he was beaten to death.

The rest of the indigenous soldiers were even worse off, with almost none of them still having their limbs intact.

In the end, some of the other ordinary natives who lived in the Grodok area were also affected and were all beaten to death.
Who said that there was no nationalism before the concept of nationalism emerged? In the Grodok area, the Chinese and the natives are clearly distinguished. Once there is an opportunity, people who are not of our race must be eliminated.

Dai Yanbo and Wu Yuansheng did not stop the Chinese people from expanding the scope of their attack because he knew that the Chinese in Batavia had been oppressed for a long time and they must be allowed to vent.

Only after all the Dutch and natives in the Grodok area were killed did Wu Yuansheng begin to arrange defenses.

He brought with him fifteen members of his own clan, two hundred samurai, and more than three hundred samurai and soldiers from other vassal states transferred to him by Chen Lian.

A total of 550 people came here to prevent the Dutch in Batavia from going down the river to support William III's bastion.

Of course, this was also to intimidate all the Dutch in Batavia.

If the lives and property of the more than 2,000 Chinese living in Batavia were threatened in any way, then what happened in Grodok would definitely happen in Batavia.

After the clouds cleared and the rain stopped, and all preparations were made, the attack on William III's Bastion officially began.

Chen Lian, Major General Su Fran and a number of middle and high-level military officers gathered together to study it carefully.

The Dayu navy and army soldiers who received the order also followed the action plan strictly. Even though the artillery on the William III bastion did not fire, they still made maneuvers to avoid the artillery.

Anyone with a discerning eye could see that this was not an attack on Fort William III, but a drill. Chen Lian was attacking Fort William III, mistaking it for Fort William in British India.

Well, both are Fort William, and both are named after William III, who was both the ruler of the Netherlands and the king of England.

Chen Lian had also come into contact with bastions before. After all, Europeans had come to help Siam and Guangnan build bastions before.

But those bastions were all very small without exception. They were called bastions, not just fortresses with relatively reasonable firepower configuration.

What was now in front of him was a real, typical Italian bastion, with a wide protruding surface like a snake's head extending from each of the four corners of the city wall.

This wide protruding surface can be used to mount cannons on three sides, and there are hidden openings on the city wall to provide musketeers with accurate shooting.

The wide protruding wall is vertically drooping, and the foundation below is an inclined slope.

This made it impossible for the attackers to use tools such as wooden ladders to attack the city, or if they had to use ant attacks, the casualties would be so great that no army could bear it.

And if a tunnel was to be dug, the defenders on the bastion could see it clearly from above.

If the excavation is too deep, it may take several months or even a year to dig forward without making any progress.

If you dig too shallow, the tunnel you worked so hard to dig can be destroyed by simply hitting it with a cannonball.

If you still don't give up and want to rush to the city to plant explosives and blow things up, the wide protruding surface allows for shooting in three directions without blind spots, and still no one can withstand it.

Therefore, the only way to attack the city is to keep digging trenches forward. First, dig a horizontal trench at a place far enough away from the range, and use the excavated soil to build a breastwork to avoid artillery fire, which serves as the basic position.

Then starting from here, zigzag trenches were dug continuously towards the bastion.

Because it is a solid shell, the shot will be in a straight line. By digging the trench into a zigzag shape, the damage of the opponent's artillery can be greatly reduced.

When they dug to a distance of six or seven hundred meters, they would dig a parallel front trench, and then use the excavated soil to build a solid breast wall.

Finally, pull your own artillery over, use the breastwork as cover, and bombard the top of the bastion.

In this way, the bastion's artillery would be largely neutralized by the zigzag and parallel trenches and breastworks.

The attacking side's artillery can directly hit the top of the city wall, eventually forming a unilateral suppression. After trampling the city wall, they can attack the bastion.

To put it bluntly, it was a clumsy method of digging at the cost of the lives of the laborers, and finally using artillery to forcibly destroy it. After seeing the troubles of this bastion, Chen Lian was no longer anxious. How could he not make good use of such a good training opportunity?

Therefore, the navy and army of Dayu divided the more than 4,000 Dutch and native men captured in the port castle into ten groups, and forced them to carry out arduous civil engineering work at gunpoint.

Even the soldiers of Dayu had to dig for more than an hour every day to accumulate experience.

"This method is indeed effective, but it is too slow. Moreover, I heard that the English Fort William is much more difficult to capture than the Dutch Fort William. I'm afraid this battle will not be over in a short time." After seeing that there were no people around, Chen Lian whispered to Major General Sufran.

Major General Sufran nodded in agreement, but his expression was not as serious as Chen Lian's.

“Duke, although the English Fort William is more solid, we have more natives to use.

There are only a few thousand natives here. Back in Fort William, England, we can capture at least tens of thousands, or even hundreds of thousands of natives.

The Indians are the most obedient slaves. As long as we organize them and use their flesh and blood to keep pushing forward, even the strongest Fort William will not be able to withstand it.

"Perhaps, we can achieve our goal without taking Fort William," said Lieutenant General Van Ginsburg, who had just defected.

“Fort William is extremely important to the English. Once it is captured, the image of invincibility that they have painstakingly built in India for over a hundred years will be shattered.

This is a loss that the English in India absolutely cannot afford.

So I thought, as long as we can show up at the gates of Fort William and demonstrate our ability to capture it.

If we were to ask for the gold tooth in Warren Hastings's mouth, he would be happy to knock it out and give it to us as compensation."

"Hahahaha!" Chen Lian laughed loudly, "The empire's finances are already in great difficulty, and His Majesty is just waiting for us to make a fortune from India.

Everyone, we must make the British bleed."

. . . .

Just when everything was going smoothly in Batavia, the situation in Lower Burma suddenly became chaotic.

At the end of February, after Tong Xingye returned to Siam, Chu Zhi, who stayed behind, could no longer bear it.

At the instigation of the British, he issued orders to the three marquises of Lower Burma, namely, Marquis Su Kyi of Yangon, Marquis U Win of Pegu, and the chief of the Chinese vassal states of Mawlamyine, requiring them to pay homage to the city of Toungoo.

Of course the three refused, so in early March, Chu Zhi mobilized 30,000 naval and land troops and marched along the Sittang River to lower Myanmar. He also sent a messenger to ask the Burmese King Meng Yun to join him in sending troops south.

Upon hearing the news, Governor-General Andai Huang Zhen immediately summoned his troops in Yangon and gathered more than 30,000 people to march north. The two sides confronted each other north of Pegu City, and for a while neither could do anything to the other.

In other words, both sides were waiting for the arrival of Burmese King Meng Yun.

At this point, Meng Yun, who controlled 20,000 troops, became the key to determining victory or defeat.

If he helped Huang Zhen, he would cross the Pegu Mountains in the middle and attack Chu Zhi's base camp, Toungoo, and the Siamese would be killed without a burial place.

If he wanted to join the British camp, he would go south along the Irrawaddy River and attack Su Kyi's base in Rangoon.

Since Meng Yun was the legitimate King of Burma, his father was the famous Yongjiya, and Su Ji was just an old general of their family, so as long as Meng Yun attacked Yangon, Su Ji would not be able to withstand it.

Chu Zhi felt that Meng Yun had discussed the alliance with him.

Huang Zhen thought that since Meng Yun slid to his knees so quickly, there shouldn't be any problem.

As a result, Huang Zhen waited in Pegu for almost a month, but the news he received was that the Burmese King Meng Yun went down the Irrawaddy River, imprisoned Bala Mindin and his son in Yenangyaung, and appeared north of Yangon.

Although Meng Yun did not attack Yangon, everyone thought that he had chosen the British. Suddenly, the Lower Burma Army organized by Huang Zhen became unstable.

Over the years, after Mo Zi Bu shifted his attention away from Lower Burma, the only people still truly under Mo Zi Bu's control were General Su Kei in Yangon and a dozen or so Chinese vassals such as Chen Guangtai and Chen Jiansheng near Mawlamyine.

As for U Win, the Marquis of Pegu, as a Burmese, he was actually just afraid that the Siamese forces would further enter Pegu and harm his interests, so he stood on the side of the Chinese.

As for Mingxin of Mawlamyine, he died of illness in the fourth year after Mo Zibu's withdrawal.

The thirteen tribes of Bai Kelun under his control, with more than 300,000 people, were split into five large and small forces, which were controlled by his brothers, sons, and brother-in-law respectively. Their strength declined greatly and he could not control the situation at all.

Faced with this situation, Huang Zhen, who had only 3,000 Chinese soldiers in the territory where the Burmese and Mon peoples were in the absolute majority, did not dare to stay for long and could only give up the confrontation and retreat.

However, as soon as the army retreated to the outside of Pegu City, Pegu King Wu Wen took away his 10,000 troops and exposed the flank of Huang Zhen's troops to the Siamese army.

It turns out that this guy has also been bribed by the British.

Before this, Wu Wen didn't dare to betray, but he accepted the benefits and was a little shaken when he was caught with the evidence.

But now that he saw that it was really the Burmese King Meng Yun, the Siamese Governor-General and the British who were fighting the Chinese together, he was immediately tempted.

Huang Zhen then realized that something was wrong. Fortunately, Wu Wen did not dare to completely betray Emperor Guangzhong and gave way to the flank. It was better than attacking directly, and there was still time to retreat.

In mid-April, Chu Zhi, who was in pursuit, led an army of 30,000 and caught up with the retreating Huang Zhen outside a small fishing village called Maye.

The two sides fought a fierce battle, and Huang Zhen lost more than 3,000 people, but fortunately there were enough warships and the large army successfully retreated from the sea.

At the end of April, with the help of the British, Wu Wen finally made up his mind to rebel.

He joined forces with Chu Zhi and, relying on the ships, gunpowder and artillery provided by the British, successfully captured the panic-stricken Rangoon.

Fortunately, General Suki never returned to Yangon, and his family had already evacuated when they saw the situation was not good, otherwise his entire family would have been almost wiped out.

At this point, the entire Lower Burma that Mozibu had conquered in the past, except for the area of Mawlamyine bordering Tanah Ratan, was lost in more than two months.

The biggest reason why Mawlamyine was able to hold on was that Mozbin married General Suki's youngest daughter and had a prince with Mon ancestry, which made the Mon people in Mawlamyine closer to the Chinese.

At the same time, there were eleven Chinese vassal states around Moulmein, and there were about 40,000 immigrants from the mainland, Annan, and a small number of Japanese.

Only with these basic foundations could Mawlamyine be guaranteed not to be lost.

In areas like Yangon and Bago, where there are probably only a few hundred Chinese people in total, the loss was very clean and efficient.

It seems that if we want to expand the territory, we still need our own talents.

　I have to ask for leave from everyone tomorrow. My child is going from primary school to junior high school and the school district has changed. The school he is directly admitted to is too bad. Lao Hu has to look for someone tomorrow to see if he can change the school. I really don't have time to update.

　　
　
(End of this chapter)