"Hurry and protect your grandson and go to New Shuri City! Yun Yi, follow Gu to Fortress Mountain!"
Zhu Cizhao is indeed much more mature now. When he hears a rogue navy or a Western fleet approaching, he remains calm and composed, with no intention of running away.
"Hurry and protect your grandson and go to New Shuri City! Yun Yi, follow Gu to Fortress Mountain!"
Zhu Cizhao is indeed much more mature now. When he hears a rogue navy or a Western fleet approaching, he remains calm and composed, with no intention of running away.
After instructing the nanny to send his grandson Zhu Yijin back to New Shuri Castle, the capital of New Ryukyu Island, he immediately took Zhu Yunyi and went straight to Fortress Mountain to observe the enemy's situation.
Of course, Fortress Mountain has a fort. It is located in the west of New Shuri Island. It is a small hill extending into the sea and surrounded by water on three sides. Mounting a 12-pound bronze cannon on this hilltop can control two small bays, one in the south and one in the north. Among them, the Fortress Taiwan located in the south of Fortress Mountain is close to the New Shuri Castle located in the New Shuri Valley, which is very important.
However, holding Fortress Mountain and Fortress Taiwan does not mean that New Ryukyu Island can be saved. Because this island is full of beaches suitable for landing, it is very difficult to defend.
And the troops Zhu Cizhao had at hand were relatively limited - although Xiyang Town under his command was established very early, if it can be traced back to its predecessor Jing Haijun, it has a history of more than 20 years. However, because it is easy to get rich but difficult to survive in Nanyang, the number of military households in Xiyang Town has not been growing.
On the one hand, Nanyang is rich in resources, rich in rice, spices, sugar, wood, as well as gold, silver, tin and other metal resources. It is also at the throat of East-West trade, making money too easy; on the other hand, it is There were too many diseases, which kept the mortality rate among northern immigrants at a high level.
In other words, "colonizing Nanyang" is basically a business of exchanging lives for money!
For the poor people in Guangdong, Guangxi, Fujian and Japan's Kyushu Island, going to Nanyang is their last resort in life! Either return home in rich clothes, or die in a foreign land... Go to Nanyang with nothing, work hard for five to ten years, earn tens of thousands, go back to your hometown, marry a wife and have children, and live the rest of your life comfortably is what life is!
I have been staying in Nanyang, who knows when I will be overthrown by malaria? After finally getting rich, who doesn’t want to live a few more years?
It cannot be said that there are no northern immigrants who are willing to take root in Southeast Asia, but the number is very limited. Moreover, the Han people who have taken root in Nanyang are usually unwilling to join the army... They come to Nanyang to make a fortune, not to make achievements. Besides, when it’s so easy to get rich, who would want to be a soldier?
Therefore, after more than 20 years of development, the main force of the Western Town Jiedushi Division is no longer recruiting soldiers, but more than 5,000 feudal feudal families, called "Western Warriors" - only these have small fiefdoms, and there are a lot of them. Only the samurai master who was served by native slaves was willing to take root in Nanyang and join the army at the risk of being brought down by malaria.
After all, the happiness of being a feudal lord is difficult to buy with money in the Ming Dynasty and Japan!
As for the "Luofu warriors" who directly belong to Zhu Cizhao himself on the New Ryukyu Island (Zhu Cizhao conferred the title of King Nanluo), the number is even smaller. There are only 500 households. No matter how hard they mobilize, only a few can go into battle to kill the enemy. There are more than a thousand people, and the combat effectiveness of these veteran soldiers is not very reliable...
Therefore, after Luofu moved to the new Ryukyu Island, it was often harassed by the group of "maritime bandits" entrenched in Myanmar.
However, Zhu Cizhao is not an easy man. He has ways to deal with the "ocean bandits" under Li Jicheng. There are two specific methods. One is to hold on to the New Shuri Castle - this is a fortress that took more than ten years of hard work and countless manpower and material resources from the Shang Dynasty to build. Although it does not occupy a large area, it is very sturdy and easy to hold on for a long time. The biggest difficulty in besieging a castle here in Nanyang is not the castle itself, but all kinds of fatal diseases... Because the siege troops must be deployed in the wild, the risk of contracting diseases is far greater than that of the troops defending the city.
As long as the defending party persists until a disease breaks out in the opponent's military camp, they can win without a fight!
Compared with the long siege, Zhu Cizhao's second method is obviously more effective-almost every time, the "ocean bandits" can be made to retreat in a short period of time, and that is to use "silver bullets" to retreat.
The specific method is to give the "sea bandits" a large sum of money so that they can deeply feel the imperial favor of the Ming Dynasty, and then retreat without a fight out of shame.
This is called "conquering the enemy without fighting"... It sounds timid, but it is the cheapest way to retreat from the enemy with the least loss.
For the attacking "sea bandits", they would be satisfied if they could get the yellow and white things - although the scenery of New Ryukyu Island is beautiful, it is useless to defeat it... and it cannot be defended. ah! This place is located at the western exit of the trumpet-shaped Strait of Malacca, which is the north side of the big trumpet. It is only 2,000 miles away from Temasek Island, where the Malacca Fleet of the Ming Dynasty is based. The Ming Dynasty's "Malacca-type" galley gunboats can arrive within 10 days... Although the Ming Dynasty's army in Nanyang is not very capable of fighting (the troops that can fight are not willing to send troops to Nanyang), they can guard Malacca. The naval fleet in the Strait (the navy is stationed in a relatively clean and cool port, and will not contract malaria when operating at sea) can be very powerful!
The "Malacca Warship" of the Ming Dynasty Navy looks a bit like the large Calais ship operating in the Mediterranean area, driven by both long oars and sails. It is not good enough in sea areas with high sea conditions (the seaworthiness of galleys is poor), but in the Strait of Malacca where there is no wind and little wind all year round, this kind of galley gunboat is difficult to deal with.
Because they have long oars for paddling, they can sail quickly and flexibly without resorting to wind (Malacca doesn't have much wind to begin with), seize advantageous positions, and then use the ship's twelve-pound bronze long cannon to fire nail-headed shells. .
Due to the popularity of nail-head explosive ammunition, the number of ship-borne artillery is no longer a hard target pursued by navies of various countries - the more artillery, the more difficult it is to prevent the ammunition from exploding!
If one gun cabin explodes, half of a large battleship costing tens of thousands of taels of silver will be destroyed. Repairing it will be troublesome. If two gun cabins explode, the warship will have to be scrapped even if it doesn't sink... .
After this naval revolution caused by explosive bombs, 12-pound (or 12-pound) bronze cannons (including long guns and short guns) and corresponding nail-head explosive bombs (which need to be equipped with explosion-proof bomb bays and gun bays) cannot be equipped. The ships are no longer warships, but just armed merchant ships.
Even a first-class sailing battleship that can be equipped with hundreds of cannons is no exception - this former king of the sea cannot withstand the bombardment of a few nail-head shells! Even if you encounter a light warship with a load capacity of two to three hundred tons and only equipped with a few 12-pound or 12-pound short-barreled guns, there is a high probability of being sunk or disabled.
On the one hand, this naval revolution has raised the threshold of the navy, and on the other hand, it has also minimized the gap in naval strength between the first-mover naval powers and the late-mover countries.
Otherwise, the Ming Empire's navy would not be able to become the world's largest navy in another twenty or thirty years!
And Dashun, who was exiled to Myanmar, would not have become a "maritime bandit" in the Indian Ocean if he had not happened to encounter this naval revolution.
Of course, we cannot afford to prepare the large bombardment battleship Dashunchao with a carrying capacity of seven to eight hundred tons or even thousands of tons, and there is no need to build one. However, with the help of the Dutch, the "Haichuang King" type galley warship, which was small but strong, with a load of only two hundred and dozens of tons, and could install eight 12-pound bronze short-barreled guns imported from the Netherlands on the sides, came to Dashun Dynasty. You can still get some. This type of warship has now become a weapon used by the great ocean bandits to attack the coasts of Malacca Peninsula and Sumatra along the coast of India.
The Emperor of Dashun, Li Jicheng, is now sitting on a 250-ton "Haichuang King" type galley warship, leading a navy that is absolutely unprecedented in size compared to the Dashun Dynasty. Slowly , mighty, advancing from north to south along the western coastline of the Malacca Peninsula, it has already appeared in Zhu Cizhao's telescope.
He came here this time not just to collect a few small coins, but to establish a stronghold on New Ryukyu Island, and also use the new Ryukyu Island stronghold as a basis to compete with the Ming Dynasty's Malacca fleet!
