Daming: Apocalypse of Longevity

Chapter 247
The damage to a warship made the Taixi people realize that it was impossible to catch up with the Ming army's eleven strange ships that emitted black smoke. If they were kept being led by the Ming army like this, it would only be a matter of time before they were defeated. .

Therefore, the Taixi people decided to give up chasing the eleven main warships of the Ming army, turn around and clean up the rest of the surrounding warships, and then lure the main warships of the Ming army to a wider sea area, so that they can use Is it not easy for thirty warships to besiege eleven warships with a numerical advantage?

Seeing that the Taixi warships began to turn, and the hull gradually returned to the right side, no longer facing the eleven steam paddle-wheel warships with its broadside, Zheng Zhilong immediately guessed the Taixi people's intentions, and immediately ordered the warships on both sides to surround them. Start to attack with all your strength, and you must not let the Taixi warships escape.

For a time, the encirclement of more than 2000 large and small warships was completely closed, cutting off the Taixi people's retreat, and then besieged the thirty warships of the Taixi people.

The Taixi people didn't panic about this. After all, they couldn't do anything about the eleven main warships of the Ming army. Couldn't they also do nothing about these dilapidated warships?
After the Taixi people turned the bow of the ship, they immediately opened fire on the Ming army warship facing the side. More than 2000 artillery pieces were fired at the same time. The shells were as dense as rain. In an instant, a gap was opened in the Ming army's encirclement. Hundreds of large and small warships were instantly turned into powder, and the Ming army on board suffered heavy casualties.

However, even so, the Ming army remained unmoved at all, and no one was frightened by this. The Ming army's offensive did not show any lag, and they still besieged the Taixi warships lifelessly.

Although the Taixi people's firepower is powerful, their attack direction is greatly restricted. Now they have no target in the direction facing their sides. If they want to launch an attack on the Ming army who came to besiege them, they will have to continue turning. But on the sea Steering is not an easy task, even with the agile Galen ship.

Just as the Taixi warships slowly turned, many Ming army warships had already approached the Taixi warships. The slightly larger warships began to fire at the Taixi warships at close range, although the caliber of the artillery was very small. , the power is limited, but the Taixi warships cannot withstand such a close-range bombardment. After all, the current warships have wooden hulls.

Many Ming army sailors began to use scratching hooks to climb onto the Taixi warships and climb towards the ship. They carried short knives on their waists and carried firecrackers on their backs. There were other Ming soldiers below holding firecrackers and shooting at the ship to cover these people. The sailors overwhelmed the European and American sailors on the ship.

Soon, the thirty Taixi warships were densely wrapped by thousands of Ming army's large and small warships, and each warship was covered with Ming army sailors like honey wrapped in ants.

Even though the Thai and Western sailors were condescending, they could not withstand the large number of Ming army sailors. There were Ming army sailors climbing onto the ship almost everywhere. It was not easy for the Thai and Western sailors on the ship to get over at all, not to mention that there were Ming soldiers below carrying muskets. When shooting from the ship, Thai and Western sailors were often concentrated by the cannons as soon as they showed up, and lost their lives.

However, with this kind of fighting method, the casualties of the attacking Ming army will naturally be very heavy. It is like a siege battle. The tall ship hull is like a city wall. The defenders who stand on the top of the city will always have an advantage. , but the soldiers who climbed the city wall to attack were unable to escape intact.

That is to say, the Ming army is now equipped with firecrackers on a large scale. It can provide fire cover for the Ming army sailors who climb aboard, and the Ming army sailors who board the ship will not be suppressed by the firepower of the Thai and Western sailors on the ship. If it is like before Close to the cold weapons, even if they boarded the ship, they would not be able to fight the European sailors carrying muskets.

After these Ming army sailors boarded the ship, they did not engage in ship-seizing battles like before. After all, fighting the Taixi people was different from dealing with water bandits. The Taixi people's warships were so big that they were difficult to control. In addition, there were many sailors on board. It was difficult to defeat them all, so after the Ming army boarded the ship, they directly started setting fires everywhere, cutting cables and other sabotage activities.

Some people rushed directly to the gunpowder magazine on the Taixi warship and set it on fire. The violent explosion instantly broke the Taixi warship at its waist. The Taixi warship was equipped with nearly a hundred artillery pieces. Naturally, there is much more gunpowder than before, and once it explodes, it will be fatal.

In this chaotic state, the thirty Taixi warships no longer cared about the formation and teamwork. They turned around and fired randomly. Anyway, they were surrounded by ships of the Ming army, and they could basically do nothing. False hair, except for the small boats on the bottom of the ship, the Ming army warships on the periphery could not escape the shelling of the Thai and Western warships, and the Ming army's warships began to sink in pieces.

Seeing this, Zheng Zhilong narrowed his eyes slightly, and immediately waved the command flag, ordering Zheng Zhibao to continue to fire and bombard the Taixi battleship.

You know, the Taixi warship is now surrounded by Ming army warships. Once it cannot hit the Taixi warship, it will hit its own warship.

Moreover, the Taixi battleship is now full of Ming army sailors who have climbed aboard. Even if they hit the Taisi battleship, they will inevitably injure their own people.

But in the current situation, it seems that they no longer care about these considerations. The Ming army has become red-eyed at this time, vowing to fight to the death with the Taixi people and die together. If Zheng Zhibao cannot be cruel enough to fire on the Taixi warships, Then the Taixi warships would keep bombarding the outer Ming army warships, causing greater casualties to the Ming army.

Zheng Zhibao did not dare to hesitate, and immediately pressed forward and fired at the Chinese and Western warships. At this time, the Taixi warships could no longer care about avoiding the bombardment. They had become Zheng Zhibao's living target, but they did not expect the main force of the Ming army. The warship would fire in this situation. Aren't they afraid of accidentally injuring their own people?
Under the desperate siege of the Ming army, the Taixi warships sank one after another. After an hour of fierce fighting, there were only seven Taixi warships left that could sail and fire, and the entire sea area was also destroyed by the Ming army's warships. Covered in wreckage and floating corpses, it was a miserable scene.

The seven Taixi warships had realized that the Taixi fleet was defeated in this naval battle, and immediately gave up their plan to continue fighting with the Ming army, and turned and fled toward the southwest.

At this point, how could Zheng Zhilong let them go? Otherwise, wouldn't the sacrifice of those Ming soldiers have been in vain?Zheng Zhibao's eleven steam paddle-wheel warships braved billowing black smoke and quickly caught up. The seven Thai-Spanish warships traveling against the wind couldn't run fast at all, and were soon overtaken by Zheng Zhibao. The seven Thai-Spanish warships hurriedly opened fire, even though Although he knew that he could not hit the Ming army's warships, he was not willing to fight back in vain as if he was being beaten in vain.

Zheng Zhibao had enough patience. He carefully kept the eleven steam paddle-wheeled warships at a sufficient distance from the Thai-Western warships, and then kept bombarding the seven Thai-Western warships with steel cannons. The big steel cannons all have a steering base, and the shooting angle can be adjusted at any time, and it is not affected by the position of the ship at all. The Taixi people are about to be beaten crazy.

Eleven steam paddle-wheel warships surrounded the seven Spanish warships. Soon, the seven Spanish warships were shot one after another. Some could no longer continue sailing, and some had begun to slowly sink to the bottom of the sea.

The Thai people on the seven Thai warships began to put down their escape boats to escape. For a moment, Zheng Zhibao was unable to stop them. At this time, the only ones catching up were his eleven steam paddle-wheel warships. It was impossible for him to abandon these seven Thai ships. It is impossible for a warship to pursue the escaping Thais and to leave the Thai warships alone and fire cannons at those small escape boats.

In the end, only the last two of the seven Thai-Spanish battleships were still intact, but there were not many people on them. Most of them ran away. Only about a hundred unlucky ones did not grab the escape boat and were left on the ship. In order to survive, they had no choice but to surrender to the Ming army.

The first large-scale naval battle between the Ming Dynasty and the Taixi people finally ended with the victory of the Ming Dynasty navy. The news was brought back to Manila by the escaped Taixi people, which shocked the three countries participating in the war: Helan, Franji and the United Kingdom. Only then did they realize that they had underestimated the enemy and far underestimated Ming's strength.

However, although the Taixi people lost miserably in this naval battle, the Taixi people's fighting will and ambition to conquer the Ming Dynasty were not crushed. On the contrary, the Taixi people were inspired by this battle, because in their view, although The Ming Dynasty won this naval battle, but it was also a very difficult victory for the Ming Dynasty. It could even be said to be a miserable victory.

In other words, if the Ming Dynasty uses all its strength, it can only defeat the Taixi fleet of thirty warships. If the Taixi people use their full strength, how will the Ming Dynasty respond?
Furthermore, although the Thai and Western countries lost thirty warships in this naval battle, which can be said to be heavy losses, the Ming Dynasty's losses far exceeded those of the Thai and Western countries. According to Taixi people's estimates, the Ming Navy had only ten warships. Except for one main warship that was not damaged, almost [-]% to [-]% of the other large and small warships were destroyed in this naval battle. This was undoubtedly a devastating blow to the Ming Navy.

For the three countries that participated in the war, Helan, Franji, and Britain, they only lost ten warships each. They were far less damaged than the Ming Dynasty. Each of them still had dozens of warships available. , a super fleet of nearly [-] warships can be easily formed, and the combat effectiveness will be ten times that of the Ming Dynasty.

And how many warships does the Ming Dynasty have available?Will they be able to recover before the arrival of the Teishi Super Fleet?
Therefore, after this battle, the Taixi people not only were not discouraged by the defeat, but also strengthened their belief in conquering the Ming Dynasty. If they had some hesitation before, they no longer have the slightest hesitation because they have invested in this effort. With the capital of thirty warships and tens of thousands of troops, if we don't completely conquer the Ming Dynasty, wouldn't this deal be a huge loss?

This battle, for the Taixi people, they believed that they had figured out the details of the Ming Dynasty and had a clear understanding of the strength of the Ming Dynasty. At the same time, they also weakened the strength of the Ming Navy through this battle, allowing the Ming Navy to It will never be possible to recover in a short period of time. Under such circumstances, if we don't take the opportunity to conquer the Ming Dynasty, then when will we?

After the three countries of Helan, Franji and Britain reached a consensus on this matter, they immediately wrote letters to the kings of various countries, requesting the kings to send all warships to form a super fleet and conquer the Ming Dynasty in one fell swoop.

The governors of the three countries all wrote the pros and cons of the matter very clearly in their letters, so the kings of each country were naturally not willing to give in. Since the matter had reached this point, they naturally wanted to take the opportunity to conquer the Ming Dynasty to recover the losses in the previous naval battle.

At the same time, Li Banghua and Zheng Zhilong also completed the statistics of the casualties of the Ming army's warships and soldiers in this battle, and reported it to the court truthfully. They heard that the Ming Navy suffered such heavy losses, which made all officials in the court feel sad. I was greatly shocked. Naturally, it is not difficult for some people to imagine that thousands of Ming warships would have to pay such a heavy price in casualties when facing a mere thirty Thai and Western warships. If the Thai and Western warships sent more warships, how would the Ming Dynasty respond? Woolen cloth?
In fact, not to mention the lay officials, even Li Banghua and Zheng Zhilong had no confidence in their hearts. The statistics of the battle loss ratio between the two sides were shocking. After this battle, the Ming Navy was indeed seriously injured. If Taixi If people attack again, I'm afraid this battle will not be easy to fight.

However, Zhu Tianqi did not show the slightest concern about this matter. Instead, he celebrated the victory of the naval battle, praised Li Banghua and Zheng Zhilong, and even made bold remarks at the court meeting: "This battle, This is just a small punishment given by the Ming Dynasty to the Western countries. If they dare to invade our territory again, I will not be lenient. At that time, I will make the Taixi people pay an even heavier price. The mighty anger of the Ming Dynasty will It will turn the Taisi fleet into ashes!”

Although the officials in the court felt that this was a bit outrageous, they no longer dared to laugh at or discuss the emperor's nonsense in private. After all, there were lessons learned from this matter. Back then, when the emperor said that he wanted to pacify Liaodong and annihilate the Jiannu, it was as big as today. He spoke boldly, but the facts proved that the emperor kept his word. He was not bragging at all, he was really powerful!

However, it was really difficult for the officials to change their pessimistic attitude towards the matter because of the emperor's heroic words. After all, the Taixi people were not slaves, and naval battles were different from land battles. The two things were still incommensurable.

However, today's court is a court where the emperor alone has the final say. Unlike in the past, no one of the officials dared to contradict the emperor. So since the emperor said so, naturally no one among them dared to refute, and they were all in agreement. Respond.

That is to say, several ministers in the cabinet still dared to speak their true feelings to the emperor. They also privately advised Zhu Tianqi to pay attention to the Taixi attack again and to strengthen the construction of the Ming Dynasty Navy. However, Zhu Tianqi did the opposite. Comfort them and tell them not to worry. He has already thought of a way to deal with the Taixi people.

Since the emperor has his own plans, it is natural for several cabinet ministers not to say much else. After all, the emperor had already had his own plans when he was encircling and suppressing the Jiannu slaves. However, such confidential matters cannot be discussed until the time comes. It was easy to disclose, and they also knew enough not to inquire too much.

(End of this chapter)