On the evening of May 3rd, the twenty-sixth year of the Yongli reign of the Ming Dynasty, the Ming Dynasty eunuch Wang Dingzi, Zhongshu Ling, and the commander of the Jinyi Guards, Zhu Heji, a former Confucian scholar, led his troops into Guangzhou, which had become an empty city.
And on another evening three days later, on the water near Houzhu Port at the mouth of Luoyang River in Quanzhou Bay, Fujian Province, a thousand and hundreds of miles away from Guangzhou City. After a water battle that lasted for most of the day, it was finally time to decide the winner.
"The great Ming Dynasty, Wan Sheng! The country's surname is Wan Sheng!"
Above the water, there was a huge shout like a mountain roaring and a tsunami, spreading from the wide mouth of the Luoyang River to the narrow water surface upstream.
In the area around the Luoyang River Estuary, the wide water surface is dotted with burning wooden ships, large and small, including six three-masted warships of the Dutch East India Company that were almost burned out. These ships have a deadweight of one hundred to three hundred. Sailboats weighing between 1,000 tons and tons are called "large speedboats" by the Dutch.
They are nothing on the ocean, but in offshore areas or at the mouths of large rivers where the wind direction is changeable and the water conditions are complex, their combat effectiveness is quite reliable.
This is because they have a shallow draft and move quickly, making them very useful in shallow water with complex water conditions. And the number of artillery they are equipped with is not small, which is enough to deal with the weak navies of Eastern countries, so they have become the main force of the Dutch East India Company in the Indian Ocean and the South Ocean.
In the Battle of Liaoluo Bay nearly forty years ago, the main force of the Dutch was this large speedboat. Although the Dutch lost that naval battle, they did not suffer in the exchange ratio, and the large speedboats still performed well in naval battles for many years. So to this day, they are still the maritime backbone of the Dutch East India Company!
Shi Lang, the Fujian Navy Admiral of the Qing Dynasty, certainly knew the power of this kind of Western warship in coastal water battles. Therefore, after he became the admiral of the Fujian Navy, he came forward to contact the Dutch representatives stationed in Fuzhou (the Dutch contacted the Jingnan Palace again and signed a "Qing-Dutch Treaty") to remove the six ships wandering in the coastal waters of Qing Dynasty and Vietnam. Several large Dutch speedboats were invited to Houzhu Port in Quanzhou where their old navy camp was located.
I want to use these Dutch warships to protect my newly built navy, and I also want to ask the Dutch to help me train my navy... The current Zheng Ming Navy cannot be compared with the era of Zheng Zhilong. Zheng Jing is a third-generation rich man who is "not richer than three generations", and the Qing Dynasty's maritime ban policy has wiped out the roots of Zheng Ming's navy!
This Zhengming Navy is actually a bit similar to the Dutch Navy. It is not a "state-owned navy" at all, but a private navy.
Before the Qing Dynasty banned the sea, among the 20,000 to 30,000 sailing ships active in East Asia and Southeast Asia, one or two hundred were owned by Westerners, and the others were owned by "Hu Jianren" and Cantonese... and were obtained by the Ming Dynasty. The canonized Zheng Zhilong is the leader of all Chinese sailing owners!
With this status, it was impossible for the Dutch East India Company to completely defeat the Zheng family, and Shi Lang was even less capable.
But now, the Qing Dynasty has dug up the roots of the Zheng family!
So the opportunity for the Dutch East India Company and Shi Lang came!
Moreover, Shi Lang's navy is not starting from scratch. He is a big pirate himself, and he was the admiral of the Fujian Navy before, so he has many old troops that can be used, and he can also recruit some pirates who have been cornered by the sea ban to serve as the navy. Clear effect.
In addition, Huang Wu, the Duke of Haicheng in Zhangzhou, also had a small naval force, which was handed over to Shi Lang after Shi Lang arrived in Fujian.
However, this improvised navy also faced the dilemma of insufficient training and no available warships - Huang Wu got a lot of civilian ships for Shi Lang, but these ships could be used for training and anti-smuggling, and they could be used to fight against Zheng Ming's navy. A water war is definitely out of the question.
That's why Shi Lang invited the Dutch to help.
But he never expected that these six Dutch warships, which looked very capable, would be attacked by Zheng Ming's navy disguised as fishing boats (Shi Lang had recruited many pirates, so he naturally had to relax the local sea ban). ....Six sturdy-looking Dutch boats were set on fire by a few kerosene bottles for some unknown reason!
Moreover, the fire could not be extinguished, and it burned more and more fiercely, until all six Dutch ships were turned into fire ships.
While all six Dutch warships were burned, hundreds of warships from Zheng Ming's navy also entered the Luoyang River estuary with great momentum.
These Zheng Ming's tactics were also quite strange. Except for a few large bird ships and old lock ships that adopted long-distance bombardment tactics, the other warships all swarmed up and started a melee. It seems haphazard, but the actual effect is extremely amazing.
Because Navy Zheng Ming has now practiced a strategy of first throwing a grenade hammer at close range, and then jumping into a gang to seize the ship, he blew up the navy fleet that Shi Lang had finally put together and turned his ship upside down.
Only a galley speedboat aboard Shi Lang himself, under the personal command of General Shi, broke through the encirclement and escaped into the narrow upper reaches of the Luoyang River - Shi Lang had deployed a fort there to prevent the Ming and Zheng naval forces from going further.
So Shi Lang, who fled into the upper reaches of the Luoyang River, could finally breathe a sigh of relief. He stood on the stern of the ship and looked at the scene of burning fire on the water near Houzhu Port in the distance. He just murmured to himself: "Here we come, the Ming Dynasty is back. ....."
At this moment, one of his soldiers suddenly walked up, holding a bright yellow spherical object in his hand.
"Junmen, I picked up a dumb thunder thrown by a pirate!" The soldier handed over a wet thunder with both hands - the reason why the surface of this thunder was wet was because Shi Lang came up with the idea A stupid way is to let each sailor on the deck carry a bucket. When I saw the grenade hammer being thrown towards me, I immediately used the seawater in the bucket to pour it over.
Although the method is a bit clumsy, it seems to be effective.
Shi Lang took the wet thunder, and then felt that the hand holding the thunder was a little sticky and very uncomfortable.
"What water did you pour on it? Why is it so sticky?"
"This... is just ordinary sea water." The soldier also felt his hands were sticky, as if he had pinched a handful of melted sugar. Now when Shi Lang asked, he simply put a sticky finger into his mouth and licked it.
Shi Lang looked at him and asked, "What does it smell like?"
"Sweet......"
"Sweet?" Shi Lang was stunned, "How could sea water be sweet?"
As he spoke, he picked up the Thunder Ball and studied it carefully. After some research, I discovered that there was a hole in the thunder ball, and the area around the hole was particularly sticky, as if it had been coated with sugar.
He was so courageous that he was not afraid of being poisoned. He stuck out his tongue and licked the sticky layer, and then said, "It's sugar... How come this thunder ball leaks sugar?"
"Is there a mistake?" said the soldier, "Maybe it's just a sugar bowl?"
This imagination is really rich!
Shi Lang frowned and thought: "Maybe... sugar was added to the gunpowder?" He thought for a while, "No, I have to try! If it is true, the secret of Tianlei will be revealed. , this can offset the sin of defeat!"
...
"Hahaha... My surname is Zhu Jing, he is back again!"
On an old lock ship that combined Chinese and Western elements, Prince Zheng Jing of Yanping County held a telescope and looked at the scene of the Qing navy being annihilated on the Luoyang River Estuary. He also laughed excitedly, and he also claimed to be " The national surname is Ye Zhu Jing."
The so-called "national surname" is "Zhu surname". Zheng Jing's father Zheng Chenggong was given the surname Zhu by Emperor Longwu, so he was also called Zhu Chenggong or the national surname Ye.
Zheng Chenggong can be called Zhu Chenggong, then of course Zheng Jing can also be called Zhu Jing.
However, after his defeat in Xiamen, he stopped using the names "Zhu Jing" and "Guo Xingye", and instead called himself Zheng Yanping.
Maybe he feels that his fighting skills are too bad to deserve the title of Lord of the country, right?
But this time the Battle of Luoyang Jiangkou made him feel proud.
With the hard work of Liu Guoxuan, Qiu Rong and others, as well as the help of grenades and heavy fire bombs, not only Shi Lang's navy was completely annihilated, but also several clippers from the Dutch who came to help in the battle were also given heavy fire oil. The bomb burned.
This time he is really awesome!
This kind of record is much better than Zheng Zhilong's Battle of Liaoluo Bay back then!
