open sea

Chapter 940 Fleet
Alva is gone.

The old duke didn't know until he left that the not-so-rich but extremely delicate food that Chen Mu gave him was Ming army rations.

Because the guards who ate in the guest room downstairs of the military government office ate the same food as him, except that they lacked the Daojie County sheep enema and roasted mutton with green onions, and the military guards who ate with the guards ate the same food.

Even in the conversation between the Spanish guards and the Ming soldiers, they knew that all the Ming soldiers in the New World ate these things. They ate better when they were stationed, and they ate other easy-to-carry rations when they went out to fight.

Compared with the conversation between the commander-in-chief, the chat between the guards and the soldiers is much easier. The soldiers of the Ming army can generally speak Spanish, and the Spanish guards can also generally speak Chinese. I can understand.

It's just that the mentality is complicated, with both the idea of ​​wanting to get close and the desire to compare with each other.

In the comparison between the guards and the personal soldiers, it was found that the rations of the Ming army's resident soldiers were much better than those of the Spanish Legion, but the level of combat rations of the two sides was similar. The biggest difference may be that the Ming army's cooking skills were better.

The military rations of the Western Army are not bad, and they may be the country in Europe whose taste is closest to that of Ming Dynasty.

The staple food of the soldiers in the Western Army was rice, with bacon, cheese, soybeans, and peas as the main side dishes, and the ingredients were salt and vinegar, and the daily ration was ten times more wine than the fresh water they carried.

Needless to say, although Chen Mu did not say anything nutritious about the relationship between the two countries at the banquet, this meal made Duke Alva, who was about to leave the New World, feel very good.

Even in the next half month, when the Western Army made a massive rectification and started to deliver armaments, amidst the deafening salutes from the newly built Cannon Temple in Shelter Bay, Li Dan escorted Alva with his flagship Liujia and twelve big shark ships, which made Alva very happy. .

To a certain extent, the seven-year contest between Wanli and Chen Mu opened a new chapter in the diplomatic history between Ming and Spain. The two countries quickly entered the honeymoon period after the war that lasted for several years.

This situation is both strange and not surprising.

To the Spaniards, Ming is a giant beast that walks in the dense forest. When the Governor-General of the Philippines entered the dense forest as the first beast and was eaten, the Spaniards felt the threat from the forest and sent stronger The ferocious beast entered the dense forest, but it was slapped to death on half of its body just after entering.

When this giant beast really walked out of the forest and greeted Spain on the bones of the New Spain garrison, Spain could only say hello tremblingly.

If the difference in strength is not too big, even if there is a good trade relationship, it will still bring a huge sense of threat, but once the difference in strength is too large, good trade is really just good trade.

This is amazing, obviously nothing has changed except strength, but it can change people's mentality.

The Spanish fleet still has absolute dominance in the Atlantic.

Since the first battle of Mingxi, when the Western Army of Linlai Island was completely wiped out, King Philip devoted all his energy to building warships along the coast and forming his fleet to transport the elite Iberian army across the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans.

The plan couldn't keep up with the changes, and Fei Lao Er was not yet ready to show his shame. Three regiments in New Spain were beaten by the Beiyang Banner Army and even their organizational system was cancelled.

In fact, this is the tragedy of Spain. This powerful kingdom bears the ambition of its king to unify Europe with religion, and it has to face threats from the Ottoman Empire. The backstab of the Pope of Rome resulted in the fact that its huge military force, which was in full swing for a time, had to be stationed in the Netherlands, the Mediterranean, and Italy.

If these places are not guarded, Spain's basic game will be gone.

But by guarding these places, Fei Lao Er's ambitions would have no place to rest.

When Li Dan and Chen Jiujing joined this large-scale voyage, they had a premonition in their hearts that what they saw was not Spain.

It was not New Spain, which was powerless to compete after being defeated by force in the New World, nor was it the Alva Fleet of more than [-] warships and merchant ships in the Caribbean Sea.

Alva knew that the two young captains of the Ming Dynasty were both Chen Mu's adopted sons. It seemed that in times of crisis, people would inevitably have this kind of kinship relationship beyond blood relationship to enhance mutual trust. Iberia, which was ruled by Rome for 500 years, also has this tradition.

Li Dan, who boarded Alva's flagship, was not stingy with admiration for the huge Spanish fleet. Even though he didn't know the organization of the Spanish fleet, he just looked at it with his eyes and knew that this fleet meant a lot to everyone at sea. Huge threat.

Spain's main warships have always been very large, so they were called big-bellied ships by the Ming Dynasty.

This is especially true for the Spanish fleet on the Atlantic Ocean. Among the more than 46 warships and merchant ships transporting troops and supplies, there are nearly [-] Galen ships with a size of more than [-] large shark ships, and the tonnage is between [-] and [-]. There are [-] large Galen ships, all of which are equipped with large-caliber heavy guns at the bow.

"These warships were originally ordered by the king to deal with you."

In the six-storey poop of the flagship, the Duke of Alva covered the glass of the window with his old and loose hands, looking at the huge fleet sailing on the undulating sea behind the ship. It was hard not to wear a proud look on the galen's sails and jibs.

It's just that this pride was quickly overshadowed by greater joy. He said: "Even in the face of the Ming fleet... fortunately, they were not used."

Li Dan agrees with this sentence, but the speaker and the listener have different thoughts.

The reason why Alva said that it was lucky that the Great Galenic Fleet was not used was because a fleet of this size could be dispatched to a more useful place instead of engaging in a meaningless sea fight with the Ming army.

The value of the land ceded to Ming by the treaty is not as valuable in the eyes of Spain as the defeat of the army.

Their invasion policy has no assimilation effect on the aborigines, not to mention using the power of the aborigines for their own use like Daming. The endless resistance of the Indians makes the cost of maintaining every inch of land extremely high.

In fact, apart from the gold and silver-rich Peruvian Viceroyalty, the large amount of land that Spain ceded to the Ming Dynasty was either not actually occupied, or it was like throwing away a burden. After the signing of the New Spain Border Treaty, Spain’s income in the New World not only did not decrease. It has risen a lot.

Li Dan has another idea. He is thinking about the battle between this fleet and the main force of the Eastern Fleet. Who will benefit in the end?

he does not know.

It's not that he has weak confidence in the formation of Liujia battleships, but that when more than forty big Galen with bow heavy guns roared like huge waves on the sea, under the bombardment of forty-jin boulders, how many ships in this world can block?
But he knew that Daming must win in the end.

This confidence does not stem from the fact that the Liujia battleship is better than the Galen ship. In fact, Li Dan also has a hard time evaluating which of these two warships of similar size and different combat methods is better.

However, Daming has a shipbuilding industry that is not weaker than Spain's. Daming has a larger and huge production capacity.

Therefore, this sea battle that took place in Li Dan's heart, although the process may be more tragic than Mingxi's second war, the ultimate winner must be Daming.

　Good morning!

　　
　
(End of this chapter)