The rumbling explosions continued to sound, and dozens of Portuguese people went to see their God.
The remaining Portuguese cried for their fathers and mothers and ran into various anti-artillery fortifications, trembling in fear.
After a few minutes of bombardment, the African fleet stopped the bombardment, but the Portuguese did not dare to come out for a long time. They hid in the artillery defenses for more than half an hour before a small number of them came out...
As a result, we got bombed again...
The warships of the African Fleet have actually been cruising at a distance of about 2,500 meters, and there are watchmen observing at all times. When they see the enemy dispatching, they will basically launch a burst of rapid-fire artillery fire. If the enemy comes out more, multiple ships will be concentrated. Fire and bombardment, the few that came out were single-ship fixed-point bombardment.
After this repeated several times, the Portuguese suffered many casualties one after another. Later, they simply stopped coming out and completely became a coward.
Not only were they huddled in forts and castles, but they were also hidden in various anti-gun fortifications within the fortress.
Fortunately, the Portuguese had a lot of dealings with the Chu army and suffered too many artillery shells from the Chu army, so they gained experience and paid special attention to the construction of anti-artillery fortifications.
Similar to the Ming Army back then, the Ming Army was also beaten to death by the artillery of the Chu Army, and then they studied the city defense fortifications in depth and built the first artillery defense fortification system in the world at that time.
This forced the Chu army to use large-caliber mortars that were dangerous and technically immature on a large scale, and the caliber of the mortars was made larger and larger.
The same is true for the Portuguese today, with all kinds of anti-artillery fortifications.
The Portuguese were unable to retreat. Naturally, the African fleet would not continue to waste artillery shells. Instead, they would just float on the sea, ready to shell at any time to provide fire support for the landing troops.
With the support of naval firepower, the landing force made the landing very easy. Except for a few unlucky guys who fell into the water and drowned during the landing and some sporadic casualties during the first wave of landing, there were basically no subsequent casualties!
Because they encountered no resistance from the Portuguese at all.
The first day of the landing operation passed like this. When night fell, basically all 3,200 infantry and artillery personnel of the third regiment landed, followed by more than 200 naval engineers.
However, the landing operation was not over. The navy's engineers continued construction with the assistance of indigenous soldiers, preparing to build a temporary trestle to facilitate the unloading of more ammunition, food and other materials.
As for large-caliber siege guns, there are no such things. There is no need for any large-caliber siege guns in this battle.
Because the Portuguese fortress is right on the seaside... the large-caliber naval guns in the fleet can fully cover it.
With the fleet providing direct fire support, there was no need for the army to work hard to land with those large-caliber smoothbore cannons.
Large-caliber smoothbore cannons are heavy and appear to have large calibers, but the actual power of the spherical grenades fired is not very good. The explosive power of the shells fired by the 200mm smoothbore mortar is not as powerful as the navy's 100mm. A cylindrical high-explosive grenade fired from a 2.5 mm front-loading rifled gun.
In the past, when there were no front-loading rifled guns, I felt that the shells fired by the 200mm short-barreled howitzer were very powerful, and the 250mm or even 300mm short-barreled howitzer heavy artillery was even more powerful.
But now that I look at it, it’s just like that…
If the Army hadn't been waiting for the emergence of breech-loading rifled guns, and there were actually very few opportunities to use large-caliber artillery to attack fortresses, it would probably have been unable to resist equipping front-loading rifled guns.
Now, let's use the smoothbore cannon to push it first...it's not that it can't be used anyway.
By the next day, the landing was basically completed, all the expected troops had landed, and a large amount of logistical supplies were also transported.
After everything was prepared, the third regiment of the Indian Army began to advance towards the fortress area, preparing to advance all the way to the outskirts of San Sebastian Castle.
The Portuguese defense system on the island was built around the Castle of San Sebastian.
The Castle of San Sebastian had already completed the bastion transformation before facing the Dutch attack in 1607, and in recent years it had undergone artillery-proof transformation.
It can be said that it is a veritable fortress, which can not only resist the solid shells fired directly, but also the grenade fired directly.
Its city wall is low and thick, and there are a large number of anti-gun trenches, anti-gun holes, etc. built inside.
If it is only used to defend against ordinary smoothbore cannons, even the Chu army's grenade-launching smoothbore cannons, then there won't be a big problem.
But the large-caliber front-loaded rifled guns used to defend the naval equipment of the Dachu Empire were not enough.
Especially the 170mm front-loading rifled cannon equipped on the battleship. Even during the First World War in later generations, this thing was still in the category of heavy artillery. Ordinary anti-gun fortifications were even slightly worse, and they could be destroyed by you.
If a cannonball happens to land nearby, even if you are not directly bombarded, the violent shock wave caused by the cannonball will shock you to death.
This is why the Portuguese did not dare to take the lead yesterday, but still suffered heavy casualties.
In fact, if the African fleet ignored the loss of life of the gun barrels and let go of the bombardment, it would be able to directly defeat the Portuguese by relying solely on the bombardment of naval guns.
But the African fleet will not do this... The front-loaded rifled guns only have a limited lifespan, and all of them are wasted here, so there will be no war later.
Besides, front-loading rifled guns are so expensive. Not only the artillery is expensive, but the shells and propellant are also expensive.
Solving the problem with shelling alone is too expensive and not worth it.
Relatively speaking, the cost is much lower if you use a servant army such as the Indian Army to attack with the support of your own artillery.
Servant soldiers are not worth much,
Even including their equipment, they are not expensive. After all, they are some old second-hand weapons. If these 21-year-old percussion guns are not used by the servants, they will often be directly retired and used by the militia.
To put it bluntly, except for the dozens of Chu officers in the third regiment of the Indian Army of more than 3,000 people, the remaining indigenous soldiers and weapons and equipment combined are not as good as the dozens of troops in front of a battleship. Rifled naval guns are worth a lot of money.
The large-scale use of Indian legions on the African battlefield was originally intended to save the cost of expansion in Africa.
Therefore, in actual combat, it is impossible to put the cart before the horse and use expensive fleet consumption to fight instead of the Indian Army.
As a result, starting from the second day of landing, the third regiment of the Indian Army began to advance. The advance was relatively smooth at the beginning, but after approaching the fortress area, it began to encounter resistance from the Portuguese.
Despite the support of naval guns, the Indian Legion still suffered a lot of casualties.
In the attempted attack on the second day after landing, the Indian Army suffered hundreds of casualties, but it did not disappoint its superiors, and was even quite satisfied with the result.
The Indian Army is not only low in cost, but its combat effectiveness is actually just that. It cannot be compared with the regular army of the Chu State. It can basically figure out the enemy's firepower points, deployment, etc. at the cost of hundreds of casualties, and it has also seized several important positions. Tactical nodes lay the foundation for the next stage of advancement.
This is already a very good result.
On the third day of the landing, the third regiment of the Indian Army, under the cover of its own field artillery fire and the fleet's covering artillery support, officially launched a full-scale attack on the Portuguese fortress area.
At noon that day, they broke through the outer wall of the fortress and then entered the fortress area.
The morale of the Portuguese defenders had long been shattered by artillery fire, and they had suffered heavy casualties. Now they were unable to stop them after facing a full-scale attack.
After the city wall was breached, although the Portuguese tried to organize a counterattack, they failed and were ultimately defeated.
During this process, the soldiers of the Indian Legion were sad and angry because of the deaths and injuries of their previous comrades, but more importantly it was the tradition they had developed during previous battles.
After entering the fort and crushing the enemy's organized resistance, these untouchable Indian indigenous soldiers became crazy and brutal, and began to hunt down and kill the remaining Portuguese soldiers. In the process, many indigenous soldiers even refused to surrender to the Portuguese. .
For the indigenous soldiers, it was very troublesome to accept prisoners, and it would not add a penny of military pay to their pockets. It would be easier to just kill them.
By the time the Chu officers realized something was wrong and began to gather and restrain the indigenous soldiers, more than a thousand Portuguese soldiers and civilians remaining in the fortress were basically dead.
Regarding this matter, the upper echelons of the Chu people were very helpless: they originally wanted to capture more prisoners, preferably some high-level Portuguese officials.
Ordinary prisoners can be used to build various fortifications and ordinary buildings on Mozambique Island. They can also be used to negotiate with the Portuguese, allowing them to exchange colonies for prisoners, and directly accept large areas of East African colonies in a simpler way.
The result was all mixed up by these brutal indigenous Indian soldiers.
But there was nothing we could do about it at this point. We just dealt with a few typical examples and put these typical indigenous soldiers in confinement for a few days. These examples were all killed directly under the eyes of the Chu people's officers. of the Portuguese.
There is nothing gentlemanly about the battlefield.
However, it was only a few days of confinement. After all, there was no order issued in advance to capture more prisoners, and the Chu army did not have any military law that said: After the enemy expresses its intention to surrender, the soldiers must accept the surrender... Whether to accept the surrender or not, This is the freedom of soldiers on the front lines.
Therefore, strictly speaking, the Indian indigenous soldiers did not disobey the order, but their fighting methods were a bit brutal.
Furthermore, and the most important thing is that if the prisoners are not captured, they will not be captured, and it will not have a big impact.
After completely occupying Mozambique Island, the Chu army took advantage of the situation and began operations in various parts of East Africa. The African Fleet left Mozambique Island, and then shelled the Portuguese coastal colonial strongholds one by one along the coastline.
As for the third regiment of the Indian Army... they are temporarily resting on Mozambique Island, while renovating local fortifications and building barracks.
After the renovation is completed, the Indian Legion will perform other combat missions depending on the situation and attack other Portuguese colonies in East Africa.
However, the scale of subsequent wars is not expected to be too large, because the Portuguese base camp in East Africa is on Mozambique Island. It is not only the administrative center of the Portuguese colonies in East Africa, but also a commercial and trade center, and even a military center.
After the Chu army directly captured Mozambique Island and wiped out all the Portuguese on the island, it basically wiped out more than half of the Portuguese troops in East Africa.
The remaining colonial strongholds of the Portuguese people are all small strongholds with no more than a few hundred people, no less than a hundred or even dozens of people. Attacking these small strongholds does not require a large-scale war, and any battalion-level troops are enough.
The Chu army moved very quickly in East Africa. Three months after capturing Mozambique Island, it basically eliminated and fully took over all the Portuguese coastal colonial strongholds in East Africa. Only some small Portuguese strongholds deep inland have not yet been removed. beat.
But those small strongholds in the inland areas are not in a hurry to fight, and the Chu army has no interest in fighting them for the time being. Anyway, the coastal areas have been captured by the Chu army. Let the Portuguese in the inland fend for themselves.
As for the Chu army going deep into the interior of Africa, the Chu army has no such interest.
Let alone East Africa, even in Northeast Africa where the natural conditions are better and there are not many messy diseases, the Chu army basically does not go deep into the inland areas.
The inland areas of Africa are still very dangerous for civilized people of this era, and the Chu people did not venture into the primitive deep forests.
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It would be good to do business along the coast, buying and selling matchlocks and the like to the indigenous tribes.
As the situation in East Africa stabilized and the Chu Empire completely established a foothold here, Chu's expansion in Africa did not stop, but continued southward.
The officials and generals sent by the Dachu Empire to Africa always kept their mission in mind. They did not come here to seize any colonies. The Dachu Empire did not immigrate on a large scale here in a short period of time, or even in ten or twenty years. development plans.
The purpose of the Chu Empire's expansion in Africa was simple and pure, which was to control the coastal areas and establish complete African coastal routes.
At the same time, do business locally.
Then control South Africa, an important strategic location heading to the Atlantic Ocean and to Europe.
Then I went to South Africa to look for gold.
His Majesty said many years ago that according to secret information, there are large gold reserves in South Africa, although it is not yet known where they are or whether the information is true or false.
But after occupying South Africa, it won't be a big problem to look for gold.
The important strategic node of the African expansion policy is South Africa, to be precise, Cape Town north of the Cape of Good Hope, which is now controlled by the Dutch in South Africa.
In the 18th year of Chengshun, that is, 1652 AD, the Dutch officially established an immigrant settlement in the northern area of the Cape of Good Hope in South Africa. The development history is not very fast. Until now, it is actually an ordinary immigrant settlement, even the castle. None of it has been completed...According to the Dutch plan, it is estimated that it will take about four years to complete.
Although this place is just an ordinary immigrant settlement for the time being, mainly providing supply services to passing ships, in the eyes of the Da Chu Empire Navy, this place is a strategic location.
Because all ships heading to the Atlantic and Indian Oceans and detouring around Africa must pass through here.
If the navy and merchant ships of the Da Chu Empire wanted to enter the Atlantic Ocean from the Indian Ocean, they had to pass through the Cape of Good Hope.
For such a strategic location, the Dachu Empire naturally could not let it go, and even let it be controlled by European colonists.
After everything was settled in the north, on December 26, the thirty-first year of Chengshun, at the height of summer in the southern hemisphere, the African fleet once again set sail on a large scale.
This time, in addition to more than a dozen naval warships that escorted and covered the landing operations, there were also dozens of various transport ships.
In addition to carrying more than 2,000 ground combat troops, there are also hundreds of engineering troops, and a large amount of reinforced concrete and other building materials transported from distant lands.
This time the expedition fleet of the Dachu Empire went to Cape Town, South Africa, not only to seize the place from the Dutch, but also to build this place into a super-large military fortress port to garrison a large number of troops and fleets. Guard and completely block the Cape of Good Hope, the strategic waterway connecting the Indian Ocean and the Atlantic Ocean.
The Chu Empire wanted to completely turn the Indian Ocean into its own internal ocean. To this end, it planned to directly block the Cape of Good Hope shipping route and prevent the ships of European colonists from entering the Indian Ocean.
