Since there will be no attack on Britain before the spring, Jiexuan's latest plan is to first use most of the Allied navy and army to besiege Spain.
The French Atlantic Fleet is responsible for the Bay of Biscay and the waters to the west. The task of the Mediterranean Fleet is to support the army in the siege of Barcelona. At the same time, it can go south to the waters near Sardinia and Sicily.
The two Ming expeditionary fleets can cut off Spain's connection between the Atlantic Ocean and the Strait of Gibraltar, and conduct repeated sweeps of the western and southern Mediterranean.
If the cooperation is effective, this will directly cut off Spain's connection with all overseas possessions, turning its mainland into a giant isolated island.
Jiexuan has already sent people to inform D'Estrère and Turenne of this plan. Anyway, he and Zheng Shengying have already done this, whether the French want it or not.
Of course, Jiexuan did not forget to give the other party certain benefits in the letter.
That is, after blocking the waters of southern Spain, Spanish merchant ships sailing from the Americas to the mainland will flock to northwest Spain and the Bay of Biscay. This is equivalent to a school of tuna in the sea...
As for how many fish can be caught, it depends on the ability of the French navy. Anyway, this is an obvious thing.
Spanish merchant ships had two choices: stay in America or surrender.
If you want to break through the blockade and reach the mainland, you can only take risks at night or in bad sea conditions.
Jiexuan believed that Louis XIV and his generals agreed to this plan for a simple reason.
The Netherlands' old enemy is the United Kingdom. France wants to dominate Europe. After defeating the Habsburgs in the east, Spain is the only one left behind.
Once the Ming army joins forces to destroy Spain, then within the next hundred years, no country in the entire European continent, or even an alliance of several countries, can threaten France's hegemony.
For Louis XIV, destroying Spain was a higher priority than attacking England.
The United Kingdom is an island country, and the implementation of landing operations is relatively complicated.
The Spanish mainland borders southern France, which allows the army to attack frontally, or use the naval fleet to outflank it like Turenne did.
There is not a single French soldier in Britain yet, and the size of the French army in Barcelona is approaching 100,000...
Through the current situation, Jiexuan believes that Turena is determined to win Barcelona.
On the one hand, he wanted to prove to Louis XIV that his tactics were correct, and on the other hand, he wanted to boost the morale of the French army by capturing the city.
The French army has also attacked Catalonia before, but it did not reach the farthest location.
Now Barcelona is just the starting point for the French army to occupy the entire Spain. As the saying goes, "a high starting point leads to high requirements"!
The corresponding difficulty is to eat the entire Spanish mainland, which is more difficult than carving up Britain.
Although this camel is very thin, it is still larger than a horse. Jiexuan estimates that the Spanish army can reach 150,000.
If a general mobilization is carried out, the total strength will reach 500,000 to 600,000, or even more...
Had the Ming Expeditionary Force not possessed absolute firepower superiority, it would have been impossible to achieve its set goals.
Jiexuan can help Zheng Chenggong defeat four Spanish second-tier cities-Valencia, Murcia, Malaga, and Seville.
It's like half a coconut shell has been opened, there is still a lot of coconut meat inside, and it will be a while before you can drink coconut milk.
After a relatively small naval battle in the Gulf of Cadiz, the expedition fleet arrived at Ayamonte, a small town on the Spanish side of the Portuguese-Spanish border, with seven captured merchant ships.
The city's defenders raised a white flag and surrendered without even making any resistance.
In view of his cooperation, Jiexuan only confiscated his weapons and did not order the personnel to be escorted to the ship.
Jie Xuan had an interpreter make a statement, advising him to flee to Portugal and never come back for the sake of Ju Min in the city.
Because Spain will no longer exist in the future, all the Spanish soldiers or Ju Min who are stubborn and try to resist the Ming Dynasty will be taken as miners to the east to mine.
This is tantamount to giving a lifeline to all the Western barbarians in the city, but Jiexuan also said that some people may not believe this statement and will leave here and seek refuge inland.
At the end, he reminded me that if he was captured again, he would not have such good luck.
Without exception, they will be taken to the Eastern World for mining, or directly killed in battle.
This is not in line with the Ming Dynasty's established strategy for Spain, but as the commander of the expedition fleet, Jie Xuan still has this power, especially when he is in a good mood.
Just after winning a naval battle, he captured thousands of people to mine, which seemed a bit awkward.
So a bold idea came up, and it was widely publicized...
The Spaniards in the city were all confused about this. It was a bit strange that these enemies were kind enough to release themselves unconditionally and pointed out the way to survive.
As a price, all the food stored in the city, as well as the livestock and poultry raised by each family, except for the riding parts, must be kept.
In order to show his benevolence and kindness, Jiexuan allowed these Westerners to escape with their belongings.
If someone is not satisfied with this condition, then they can just stay and work as a miner, and the mine will take care of food and housing!
"Commander, are you just going to let these Xiyi go?"
"Yes! Just let it go!"
"...I'm afraid that all the Western barbarians will seek refuge in the interior of their own country instead of in neighboring countries!"
"Wouldn't it be better to capture him again? Now that the Western Barbarians have just surrendered, how can our army lose its moral integrity?"
"...The commander is wise!"
A group of subordinates were impressed by the boss's answer. The coach had already thought about what would happen in the future. He was really a genius who took one step and saw three steps!
What if they surrender again?
Then just capture them as miners, and you won’t be able to let them go next time.
You only have one chance to survive. If you choose wrongly, no one can save you.
After learning the contents of the statement, I realized that I could indeed leave.
After packing up and paying homage, less than 30% of the people went to the border in the end, and most people chose to go north.
They believed that the yellow-skinned monkey could only succeed for a while, and the final victory would belong to the great Spanish Empire.
After the fleet had eaten and drank enough, it set off again and arrived at the sea outside the city of Huelva. The 4th Marine Brigade had already captured the city.
The city is small and cannot be compared with Seville, so it cannot withstand the bombardment of tungsten-tipped bullets.
In just two days, the city wall was destroyed by artillery fire, and then the Marine Brigade attacked the city through the gap.
About two hundred enemies were killed and wounded, and more than two hundred were captured!
That's right!
This is all the results!
A total of five hundred people were stationed in the city, including two hundred cavalry.
These cavalrymen took the initiative to attack before the Ming army attacked the city. After about half of their troops were killed on the spot, they no longer planned to resist and chose to turn around and run away.
After that, more than 30,000 Jumin became prisoners, and they will definitely become the pillars of mining in the future!
Seeing that Jiexuan's fleet had returned, the Marine Brigade hurriedly escorted the prisoners to the seaside.
After all the loot is on board, everyone can rest peacefully, eat and drink well before boarding the ship to attack Cadiz.
Within half a month, the 4th Marine Brigade swept across Cadiz, Tarifa, Gibraltar, Marbella and other places like a whirlwind.
The 2nd and 3rd Marine Brigades respectively completed their early goals and are now heading towards Granada.
The 1st Marine Brigade attacked freely along the coastline, conquering more than a dozen large and small cities along the way and capturing about 100,000 miners.
The soldiers of the King's Division didn't scrape much trophies, mainly because they were not very valuable and very inconvenient to carry. They only carried the silver and gold coins they scraped, and that's all.
A miner earns five silver coins, and 100,000 people are worth half a million. The average profit per person is 100 silver coins. Taking into account the gap in levels, ordinary soldiers can pocket at least 50 silver coins.
This is equal to one and a half years' salary, plus the part in his pocket, it is two years' salary. This trip is not in vain.
After another half month, the 2nd and 3rd Marine Brigades jointly captured Granada. They did not plan to return to the seaside, but planned to attack all the way west until they arrived outside Seville.
Later, considering that the land attack distance was about twice that of the sea route, and there were few cities along the route, it was not cost-effective to scrape the land like this, so we had to return to the seaside.
The fleet regrouped and sailed to the east of the Gulf of Cadiz, disembarked from there, and then headed straight for Seville.
In the previous battles, the four brigades lost less than a hundred people, injured less than a thousand people, killed more than a thousand enemy soldiers, and captured nearly 10,000 people.
The main reason is that there are more defenders in Malaga, more than 2,000 people, and the numbers in other places range from 100 to 1,000. Such great results are achieved piecemeal.
The fleet was not idle during this period. Through continuous pulling of the net, a total of forty-seven merchant ships were captured and another sixty-four were sunk.
Although the result of the battle was only about a hundred ships, it was commendable given that Xiyi deliberately saved the ships to avoid the battle.
All the captured merchant ships were sold to Zheng Shengying at a discount, because there were few people in the Jiexuan fleet who could drive Western-style sailing ships.
There aren't many on Zheng's side, but they can still make up enough. Once they reach the mainland, they will switch to Ming-style hard sails, which will be much easier.
Ships transporting prisoners always followed the coastline of North Africa, which was safer and could provide supplies at any time.
Towards mid-January, four marine brigades gathered outside Seville, each occupying a direction, and began bombarding the city.
According to the accounts of prisoners captured along the way, there were tens of thousands of defenders in the city at this time, and they would not surrender easily.
Jiexuan gave the Marines two months to return to the shore and board the ship before the beginning of April. This could not delay the attack on Britain again.
Whether the city can be captured in two months depends not on the strength of the defenders, but on whether the Marines have enough tungsten-headed artillery shells!
The Ming Dynasty King's Division came from the west. After discussion, the four brigade commanders decided to concentrate all the tungsten-headed cannonballs to bombard the west side of the city wall.
The four powerful attacks looked spectacular, but the actual effect was far less than concentrating superior firepower to attack one side.
Just a small breakthrough will inevitably lead to the collapse of the enemy's entire line.
So far, only the Dog Tartars dared to engage in hand-to-hand combat with the Ming Dynasty King's Master, and after three battles, they were beaten so hard that they no longer dared to act recklessly.
The tactics adopted by the Ming army were to shell during the day and sleep at night. It would be great if the opponent dared to take the initiative.
Before the city wall is blown down, never consider sending infantry to attack by force. This can avoid unnecessary losses.
We will have to attack Britain later. If there are a lot of casualties now, we won't be able to go to Britain to gain ground...
After five days of continuous bombardment, all the bricks of the city were blown apart and fell off, exposing the rammed earth foundation inside.
Rammed earth can absorb the kinetic energy of artillery shells very well, but it cannot withstand such a violent bombardment.
The defenders at the top of the city could only wait and see what would happen, because they had suffered a large-scale attack by the "Evil from the East" before.
That is to say, the Marine Corps launched a large number of "Scud" tactical missiles at the city defenders. By this time, the defenders had lost a large number of heavy weapons.
When to fight back, when to get beaten!
The Marines did not give the opponent's artillery a chance to evacuate the artillery positions. The officers used binoculars to keep an eye on the city.
If you find that the opponent is firing, you can immediately order the launch of the missile, which will land on top of the opponent's head and explode within twenty seconds.
Which Xiyi feels tired of living? You can try to light a fire. Grandpa Ming guarantees that you will be burnt on the outside and tender on the inside!
Since Seville is a city built along a river, it is not difficult to get water.
Therefore, when the Marines saw the defenders resisting desperately, they resorted to the same methods they used when fighting Rio de Janeiro.
Let the steam tanks rush underground to the city's roots, and start water cannons to repeatedly scour the city's rammed earth foundation.
Forty tanks are the strength of a tank battalion, and the three battalions will go up together. After they are all sprayed, the second echelon will fill in.
Under the suppression of the Marines' artillery fire and bullets, it became very difficult for the defenders to throw grenades downwards.
Because the parapet that could cover the bombing had long been destroyed, the Spanish soldiers fought on the rammed earth layer.
As long as you show your head, you will definitely be shot by the Ming army infantry. There are many snipers in the back row who specialize in doing this kind of thing.
Especially the generals and officers of the Western Army were the priority targets to be shot.
To this day, more than thirty people have been killed on the spot or carried to the back and died of excessive bleeding.
More than 5,000 soldiers were wounded and killed, accounting for almost half of the defenders.
If 20,000 minions had not been mobilized in advance to defend the city, the defensive capabilities at this time would have been greatly weakened.
Even at this point, the defenders had no intention of surrendering and were still resisting desperately.
This was the most difficult battle the Marines had fought since they landed in Spain.
Bronze cannons, tanks, rocket launchers, tungsten-headed artillery shells and airship aerial reconnaissance, basically all available weapons were used.
On the morning of the eighth day since the bombardment of the city, the rammed earth wall on the west side was finally collapsed alive!
About a company of Marines took the lead in attacking the city through the gap, while the Western Army in the city used cavalry to counterattack.
Thousands of infantrymen attacked the Marines from both sides, and thousands of Min soldiers served as reserves, preparing to launch a second charge.
The counterattack steps arranged are good, but the battlefield area is not large and so many people cannot be fully deployed.
Everyone was crowded together, fighting hand-to-hand in front, and grenades were being thrown from behind.
Obviously the Ming army was more familiar with this tactic, and their cooperation was flawless.
In addition, everyone has a magazine-type bolt-action rifle in his hand, and the firepower of a hundred people is more intense than that of thousands of people on the opposite side.
The follow-up troops used engineering shovels to dig holes in the rammed earth city wall and climbed up to the top of the city step by step.
With the addition of thousands of marines, a large-scale melee broke out between the two sides...
