open sea

Chapter 1277 Gambling
Speaking of which, the aristocratic gentlemen in Plymouth are also miserable.

If you say that there is a plague, let it be a plague. It has been plagued by this disease for 300 years. Everyone is very experienced. They took their wives, children and servants out of the city to vacation in places where no one is around.

Black Death, take a vacation, and it will be gone when you come back.

But they didn't expect it to be different this time. A dozen jazz and knights living in Plymouth were horrified to find that not only the Black Death was gone, but their homes and property were also gone.

The jazz who came back first did not see the troops staying behind, and the jazz who came back later shouted at the city gate. The merchants of the Ming Dynasty who lived here, as well as the untouchables in the city.

The angry knights rushed back to the fief. Most of the knights whose fiefs were close enough to the town were ambushed on the way to the village. The pariah put on the mail armor of the Plymouth Guards and hid in the fields on both sides of the muddy path. The muskets fired at them.

Worse things happened on the Tamar River. The nobles on the west bank of the river were not ambushed, but the people in the seven villages along the river disappeared without a trace. Some nobles who had previously taken refuge on the nearby mountains claimed that they had seen Galen ships docked at Plymouth Naval Harbor appear along the coast, but no one pays any attention.

Some people's fiefs are farther away, but fortunately they are far enough to ensure that they can successfully recruit subordinates, but when they return to the city, they find that they have nothing to do with Plymouth.

Who the hell is traveling with siege weapons!
Plymouth is relatively independent geographically, with Tamar River on the west, Plymouth Bay on the south, and Plym River on the east. Only the north and northeast are connected to the land with a width of about four miles. It's just that no one proposed to cross the river by force.

They had no warships, but the Plymouth pariahs did, and they knew exactly what firepower those galleons had.

The swivel cannon made by the Plymouth Shipyard is the small Franco cannon, and the coiled iron forged steel cannon purchased from the Netherlands. The caliber is not large, but for the raft used for forced crossing, one cannon can Boom them up.

Moreover, on a river of such width, the possibility of artillery being missed is very small.

Although no one knows exactly what happened, it is clear that Plymouth rebelled during the plague, attacking the defenders, sweeping away the peasants, and taking warships in the harbor.

In fact, at this time, most nobles were still optimistic about the situation. They thought it was a peasant uprising.

It is not that there are no peasant uprisings in Europe, but their uprisings are too weak. One is weak in equipment, and the other is weak in revolutionary programs. The latter has far more decisive significance than the former.

In the past uprisings, most of the peasants were really poorly equipped. Hundreds of peasant armies carrying dung forks may only need two knights holding spears and wielding big swords to break up.

However, rich peasants participated in most of the peasant uprisings. For example, in the peasant uprising in England, many small landlords who owned hundreds of acres of land, and citizens who raised two to three hundred sheep and hundreds of large livestock also joined the uprising. They are capable of buying decent weapons for themselves, and they can also participate in wars as elite forces.

The main thing that leads to failure is that they don't know exactly what to object to.

The peasant uprising program in ancient China is indeed not very good, but the goal is very clear. If you dare to rebel, you are no longer your own. There is only one goal, to overthrow the imperial court. As for the next thing?I have a life to live until then to talk about it!
The peasant uprisings in Europe have never been this decisive. It is not their fault. When they think they are oppressed, who is the oppression coming from?And who should we fight against?
Regardless of the king's affairs, the king has nothing to do with them, he is the lord.

So as long as the lord is killed, the kingdom will send a new lord after the lord is killed. Everyone discusses the tax law, and the uprising is over.

Therefore, outside the city of Plymouth in the 11th year of Wanli, after discussions, the nobles also sent riders to the city to express their ideas for negotiation to see whether it was the apprentices who were dissatisfied, the peasants, or the untouchables in the city who did not have citizenship rights. , If there is any dissatisfaction, agree to it. Anyway, as long as they disarm and the nobles return to the city, everything will return to the original.

But what they didn't expect was that this time Plymouth was different.

The fat Protestant monk was said to have been released from the city crying, and brought shocking news to everyone—the leader of this rebellion was a businessman from Ming Dynasty!

"The Black Death destroyed the majesty of the church in the city. They said Puli County, they called Plymouth Puli County, and said that Puli County was under the protection of Emperor Wanli of the Ming Empire. You are required to evacuate twenty miles north, otherwise you will be regarded as To provoke the Ming Empire."

"They have fifty ships and two thousand soldiers. If they don't retreat to the north, they will attack you."

It was clear that fifty ships were possible at Plymouth, and that there were many armed merchantmen in port, but two thousand soldiers?There are only a few thousand people in the city, how could there be two thousand soldiers.

But Daoist Cao didn't lie, he was just exaggerating. There were more than 2000 people with weapons in the city, but not all of these people with weapons had fought in battle.

The siege begins.

An angry knight set fire to the fields, only to be even angrier when he discovered that his own farmland had been burned.

Ditches and roadblocks were laid layer upon layer, and the camps outside the city grew bigger day by day in the eyes of Cao Changqing and others in the city. Every day, new people came from all over Devonshire, ranging from a few to hundreds of people. Come together bit by bit.

There were no old war veterans in the city, and they didn't know what to do in this situation. Wang Jinzhong gathered a dozen cavalry and went out of the city to explore north once. The city is guarded—the food in the city is enough for another two months, and the food in the Daming Guild Hall is enough for the people of Daming to eat for the first half of the year. They are not in a hurry to leave the city.

They are not worried about the gathering of more and more noble conscripts on the northern land. The combat power of the two sides is no more than that of the middle class. Although those nobles have good armor and weapons, they also inherit the fine tradition of Emperor Wanli and copied the nobles' homes to get a lot of money. Without the exquisite armor, they might be stronger than the people outside the city in real fights.

When there is a city, they can defend it to the death. Even if the city is captured, they still have the Daming Guild Hall. No matter how bad it is, they can still escape by abandoning the city by sea.

The only thing that worries Cao Changqing is the sea. If the English fleet cuts off their sea route, things will be troublesome.

Now they have only one hope, and it's a gamble.

Bet on whether Makino's reinforcements will come first, or England's navy will come first.

(End of this chapter)