Xinshun 1730

Chapter 1258: Voyages to the West after the Voyage ([-])

If you only look at the sunken tonnage, this naval battle that took place south of Portugal and west of Gibraltar is not a major battle.

No matter for Britain or Dashun, it was not an unbearable and decisive battle.

But the chain reaction it triggered has more important strategic significance than the losses of both sides in the battle.

According to Dashun's geographical understanding, the current situation in France can be seen as the fact that Dashun's main fleet is divided into two sections, one in Calcutta and the other in Weihaiwei. The enemy occupies Malacca, and the enemy's main fleet is at The Weihaiwei base blocked the gate, and the enemy squadron wandered around the Indian Ocean all day long.

The significance of this battle was that the British Mediterranean Squadron had to retreat.The main British fleet that blocked Brest was unable to support it alone.

Louis XV was a pure opportunist. Strategically, he was either thinking about negotiating in Hanover or landing in Scotland.

Britain is indeed most afraid of these two directions. Once the French fleet in Brest joins the Dashun and Toulon fleets, the impact on Britain will be all-round.

Psychological, financial, diplomatic, strategic...all will be affected.

However, Dashun and France have their own ideas.

France hopes that Dashun will cooperate with France's strategy.

Dashun hopes that France will cooperate with Dashun's strategy.

The routines of the eighteen princes begging Dong Zhuo are always repeated.

But for the time being, it's not to the point of crossing the river in white.

Of course, Dashun's strategy is very simple: I take the lead, and I take the lead.

Dashun's fleet will not participate in the French adventure decisive battle, nor will it escort the French landing ships to Scotland.

Instead, it was trimmed in Toulon and the rest cruised the Mediterranean.

Anyway, if France is willing to do it by itself, then it can fight by itself. Obviously France knows that it can't win, so it didn't fight before.

That being the case, the actual initiative is in the hands of Dashun.

France wants to fight at any time, but whether to fight or not depends on the face of Dashun's main fleet.

Dashun's attitude is also very clear.

Hit, yes.

The two sides joined forces to send troops, and first gnawed down Gibraltar.

Eat Gibraltar and talk about the rest.

Ordinarily speaking, this method of Dashun is the safest way to fight steadily, and it can ensure that Spain directly participates in the war, thus gaining the final strategic advantage.

However, for France, especially for the Duke of Choiseul, who is now in charge of the army, navy and foreign affairs, it is difficult for him to make up his mind about the correct strategy of Dashun.

The reason why the fleet was divided in the first place was that William Pitt was fighting political battles.

Constantly sending fleets and landing troops to harass the coastal cities of France.

Ordinarily, from the perspective of pure warfare, this is an act with a problematic head.

Is there a fart for the British army to go ashore?Can it turn the tide of battle on land?Or can it really capture the fortified cities in France that have been transformed from the old Vauban era on land?Or is it counting on three to five thousand marines to invade Paris with one enemy and one hundred to call the French army to surrender?
Nothing can be done.

But it can cause an uproar in French public opinion: What do you navy do for food?The Minister of State grew up eating shit, right?Britain has landed in France, why is the navy so reluctant to fight the British army?The Minister of State hastily stepped down and replaced with a Minister of State who can protect France!
Of course, the same is true in the UK: William Pitt grew up eating shit, right?Sending the marines to France in waves, is there any result?Every attack will be beaten into the sea by the French, and even the fortress of Brest can't be taken down. What do you do, the Minister of the Navy and Army?
it's the same.

Admiral Edward Hawke, who had not captured the main force of the French navy before, was clamored by members of parliament and businessmen to hang him on the mast and shoot him like John Bean, and his portrait was burned.Fighting the French is secondary, party struggle is more important.

On the French side, every time the news of the British army landing came, waves of palace conspiracies would be detonated.Fighting the British is secondary, the court struggle is more important.

Choiseul, the Minister of State, had already made many enemies.Although he relied on the Enlightenment to check and balance the high court, it was only a check and balance.When it comes to noble privileges and tax reform issues, he can only persuade him, otherwise various schemes will make him step down directly.

The original plan to land in Scotland was a desperate gamble after being impatient.Now that Dashun is officially participating in the war, Choiseul feels that I have the advantage. I naturally hope that the Dashun navy can cooperate with the French navy and fight the British navy in a decisive battle in the strait.

It is not only the possibility of defending France's victory, but also the long-term protection of his minister of state.

But obviously, this is not in the interests of the Dashun bourgeoisie.

If we talk about fighting India, it is more about the interests of the imperial power to collect taxes to strengthen internal rule.

Then, participating in the European war was essentially fought by Liu Yu pulling the emerging classes and bourgeois groups in Dashun, but he just borrowed the name of "elimination of all evils and roots, and the Indian issue can only be completely resolved west of the Cape of Good Hope". emperor.And the basis of deception is the emperor's certain path dependence on Liu Yu's staff judgment.

Therefore, does the emerging class in Dashun care whether Scotland believes in Catholicism or Anglicanism?

Is it hoping to prop up France as a European hegemon?

Obviously not, the domestic industrial substitution and tariff protection that the emerging class in Dashun felt disgusted and disgusted by, doomed the interests of the emerging class in Dashun to make France a European hegemon at all.

The purpose of Dashun's participation in the war was to use the French naval power and Britain's fear of landing in Scotland to contain the main force of the British navy, so that Dashun's cruise ships could cut off the connection between Britain and the colonies.

And within a few years, the decoupling of the British colonial economy from its overlord country will be completed.

In short:
Cotton, clothes, tea, silk, porcelain, daily necessities, etc., are provided by Dashun.

Molasses, sucrose, wine-making sugar, etc., provided by France.

This difficulty is not great.

After all, the "Honey Law" itself has a great relationship with the independence of North America, because sugar is cheaper in France and Spain.

The Boston Tea Party incident was essentially a tea smuggling war with tariff-added tea, all of which were Wuyi tea.

In the early days of the North American independence movement, it was not uncommon for Gandhi of India to weave his own textiles for his own use instead of using British goods.

Because the root cause of Dashun's large-scale participation in the European war is purely economic and trade issues.

Rather than territorial issues, inheritance rights issues, religious issues, Protestantism, old religion issues, jurisprudence issues, etc., they are all out of the question.

Therefore, the cooperation between Dashun and France, of course, seems to be inseparable, with different dreams in the same bed, and each has its own ideas.

Moreover, Dashun has firmly grasped the initiative in the cooperation.

One is that if the navy is united, it will live, and if it is divided, it will die, but the death is the death that the French Dashun cannot die.

This is coercion.

The other is that Dashun secretly stated in private that he could sell the southern part of the Netherlands, that is, the Catholic Belgian region, in the future.The premise of this kind of sale is that in the future when there is no need for the cooperation of the Netherlands in smuggling together, the Netherlands will be kicked away and France will be allowed to occupy the Catholic areas in the lowlands. With the cooperation of the Netherlands, it is obvious that Austria cannot beat France, which is in a state of bloodletting from the United Kingdom.

It's a lure.

In addition, Dashun promised to mobilize elite engineers to participate in the attack on Gibraltar within a few months, and France was unable to launch an attack on its own, so it could only obey Dashun's strategy.

Today, the situation in Europe is that the British fleet is rushing back from all directions, including the fleet in North America, and the fleet that was preparing to attack Senegal before.

Because Brest is in Brittany, it is too close to the British mainland, which is the distance from Shanghai to Nanjing.

Moreover, Brest is the same as Toulon, including Dashun’s Weihai, Lushun and other military ports. They are all standard Baoyue Bay headland terrain. It is unsolvable for the navy.

Edward Hawke, succeeding John Bean, who had been shot on board his flagship for the loss of Menorca, took over as Admiral of the Channel Fleet.Before that, he did a good job, withstood the pressure of domestic public opinion, and creatively used the supply ship to replenish, so that the navy could not return to the port for a long time to rest and block Brest all the time.

However, the current situation has no solution.

With the size of the British Channel Fleet, it is no problem to block Brest.

But the premise is that the Toulon fleet did not sneak out to join.

Coupled with the sudden appearance of Dashun's fleet, which defeated the British Mediterranean Fleet, the task of the Channel Fleet to block Brest became a death order.

Very simple.

It could be blocked before, but the terrain of Brest and the cape fortress made it easy for the Atlantic Ocean of the French Navy to learn from the tortoise, and there was no way to shrink in.

But now it is blocked, once Dashun's navy and the Toulon fleet rush over together, and the Brest fleet in the port stabs them in the back, then the British "Oak Great Wall" will collapse.

Therefore, he could only choose to retreat one after another, abandon the blockade of Brest, and prepare for the decisive battle in the strait.

Britain used the mobilization force it had used to fight against the Spaniards, and began to prepare defenses on the coast, and even introduced a special trial law—for those who might be Jacobites, or Catholics, or people who might be French spies, they should be arrested and shot. Quickly and seriously.

In this strategic game, William Pitt's strategy was actually very correct, and he was one of the few people in Britain with a real strategic vision at this time.

It can be said that he and Hastings, who was hacked to death by Dashun cavalry in India for a pocket watch, can be regarded as the founders of the era when the sun never sets in Britain.

Without Hastings, "the first active imperialist of the East India Company", to systematize the colonial theory, the basis of imperial studies, and the practical theory of science and art, Britain would only have half of the world, and would not be able to colonize the land east of the Cape of Good Hope. A traditional country with a long history.

Without William Pitt's maritime strategy, and desperately borrowing the national debt, and its follow-up led to the policy firmness of North American independence, there would be no follow-up ocean monopoly that lasted for 50 years.

But the premise of William Pitt's strategy itself was that France sent the navy itself.

If France sends away the main force of the navy, then Britain only needs one-third of the fleet to monitor France, and the remaining two-thirds can attack the French colonies, so as to support the war with war until France can't hold on eventually surrendered.

So, what if the French Navy doesn't send it?

Obviously, it is impossible for the French navy not to send heads, because France's finances can't support it, and France can't pay the gentry as a whole, so it can't collect money, so it must take an opportunistic gamble.As long as they go to the gambling table, France at sea basically loses.

From the perspective of a feudal country, the preferential treatment of the nobles and gentry is actually not wrong. After all, the essence of this tax exemption is that the nobles are paying the blood tax.The problem is that with the advent of the musket era, the blood tax is worthless, and the nobles no longer have the ability to wear a plate armor and rely on a war horse to be unrivaled among the peasant uncles. Heavy artillery and shrapnel as well as bayonets and muskets, continue to use Wushuang to defeat a hundred, cavalry guns poke 24-pound iron shells hard, and grenade armor immunity, then of course there is no problem with tax-free privileges, and reproductive isolation is no problem.

So France is facing a severe problem of transitioning to a new era, and the transition era is of course fragile and chaotic, unable to collect new money to support new soldiers, and the cost performance of the blood-taxed soldiers in the past has dropped greatly.

Britain can deal with such a transitional, painful France that cannot exert its full national strength.

Because the annual income that the British treasury can receive can reach 14% of GNP; while France and Dashun are almost the same in terms of nominal tax, lower tax at the bottom, and heavy middlemen to make the difference, so they cannot collect money that matches their national strength, or the money collected cannot enter the treasury. , I don’t know where it went, everyone thinks the tax is heavy, but the treasury has no money.

Therefore, the United Kingdom can fight against France, whose national strength is actually more than double its national strength. It has an advantage at sea, and the army has Prussia as an excellent thug.

However, if you add a Dashun, you can't deal with it.

Indeed, the situations of France and Dashun are very similar, both in the era of gunpowder and printing technology, they could not solve the problem of the privileged class who could really fight against a hundred in the past.It's just that Dashun's size is too large, and he can still make many amazing moves despite the huge debuff of his own transformation period.

For example, the premise of all William Pitt's strategies is the Eurocentric perspective, and it is acquiesced that Dashun will not use troops across tens of thousands of miles crazily.

Only on this premise can his strategy be correct.

But that's not the case, so something went wrong with his strategy.

The biggest danger of his entire strategy is that Dashun treats his own body with his own way.

Because his strategic premise is that while naval superiority can block France, it can also strangle colonies and trade.

Then, on the other hand, how to deal with the trade strangulation war where the main force of the British navy is restrained by the Dashun Navy, and Dashun built a large number of cruise ships because it was useless to build battleships?

(End of this chapter)