From the beginning of the establishment of the Majiang defense line, Zheng Song did not place any high hopes on it, because the enemy's naval superiority was so great that any defense line along the river had no meaning in front of them.

According to Zheng Song's point of view, unless the main force of the Manchurian Franc machine man was dispatched to fight against the combined fleet of Gao and Mozambique, this fleet could completely run rampant along the coast and rivers of Annam with impunity.

The Portuguese launched a war to invade Malacca as early as 70 years ago, and defeated the Malacca people in one fell swoop, occupied the city of Malacca, and controlled the Strait of Malacca, the best sea route connecting the Pacific Ocean with the Indian Ocean.

In the decades that followed, the Portuguese devoted themselves to transporting spices from the Spice Islands to Europe and trying to contact the Ming Dynasty, but this does not need to be elaborated on for the time being.

However, it is said that the Portuguese also made contact with Annam, but the Mo Dynasty was relatively conservative, and the Portuguese fixed their main trading partners on the Hou Li Dynasty in the south, to be precise, they started trading with the Zheng family.

However, in Zheng Song's view, there are two things that are most attractive to him about the Portuguese: ships and cannons.

After all, Mo Jingdian was still there at that time, and Zheng Song was always worried about the military threat to him from the Mo Dynasty, so only ships and artillery were his concerns, so Zheng began to do arms trading with the Portuguese.

In Zheng Song's opinion, the Portuguese stuff is very good, but there is one worst point: it is too expensive.

Therefore, over the years, Zheng Song bought no more than 100 Francophone guns from the Portuguese, and two ships.

But these two Portuguese warships were not ordinary warships, but two large Galen ships that were sent to Asia because of the beginning of the replacement of the Portuguese dynasty - and they were rib-dense military types, not commercial ones with sparse ribs.

These two giants are Zheng Song's hope now, because he has already listened to the detailed reports of his subordinates, and the largest batch of "Ming Army Warships" is only half the size of the two military big Galen ships.

This has to be explained, the main force of Gao Pragmatic's dispatch this time is the so-called "armed transport ship", a ship of 1,600 materials, equivalent to a displacement of 800 tons, which is certainly not small among the transport ships of this era, but compared with the Western warships that have entered the specialized navy, it is certainly far less.

Because of the shipbuilding industry, the high pragmatic can be opened is relatively limited, and the Dabao ship construction technology of the Ming Dynasty in the past glorious era on the sea was forced to burn the design drawings because of the pit of Liu Daxia in the past, and the shipyard of the government has long become a wasteland overgrown with weeds for more than 100 years, and those craftsmen who can build big treasure ships know where they have gone, maybe they have been completely lost.

Therefore, Gao pragmatic tried his best to recruit talents, and in the past few years, he has been able to build to the current level, and he is currently thinking of designing and building a larger professional warship at the shipyard in Laizhou.

This professional warship in the pre-research and development state belongs to the lowest level of professional warships in the shipbuilding plan that has been planned for a long time by Gao Pragmatic, and is called a "second-class cruiser", which is expected to be 2,000 materials, 1,000 tons, one deck gun, and the whole ship is divided into two levels of artillery, with a total of 42 guns and a capacity of 288 people.

Although the tonnage of the current armed transport ship does not seem to be much higher, it is much more expensive because it is completely in accordance with the military design. The current cost of a single armed transport ship is 55,000 taels of silver, while the estimated cost of a second-class cruiser is as high as 120,000 to 130,000 taels.

And in fact, the two obsolete military galens that Zheng Song bought from the Portuguese are 1,600 tons, and even if the high-level and pragmatic second-class cruisers are built, they can't be compared now.

Sixteen hundred tons of cargo, in a highly pragmatic plan, had to cross two levels upwards: first a 1,200-ton cruiser, and then a 3rd class battleship.

Heavy responsibilities......

Zheng Song knew that the scale of the combined fleet of Gao and Mo was huge, and his navy was not worth mentioning except for the two big ships sold to him by the Franc man, so he thought about it and thought of only one way, that is, when the Ming army was preparing to drive the navy into the Majiang River to attack his defense line along the river, he suddenly attacked on the sea near the mouth of the Majiang River, hoping to sink some Ming warships, so as to force the Ming army to abandon entering the river.

Only in this way can the defense line along the river be called a meaningful line of defense, otherwise the artillery of the Ming navy warships fired thousands of cannons, and all the defense line was paper-paste-his detailed work in Thang Long City had already reported the "real reason" of Mo Maoqia's surrender: Mo Maoqia was frightened to surrender by the naval guns of a Ming warship that destroyed the corner tower of Xiangfu Gate in one round.

On the 21st of February, the weather on the sea outside the mouth of the Majiang River was not very good, and a light rain fell in the sky, accompanied by the sea breeze, drenching the sailors on the deck.

Fortunately, this is Annan, the weather is not cold, and the sailors of the Jinghua fleet have long been accustomed to this kind of life, and everyone does not take this level of wind and rain seriously, so what should they do.

However, since there is rain on the sea, it will inevitably affect the line of sight, and even the lookout hand on the watchtower can now see at a much lower distance. Fortunately, the Mozambican navy is quite familiar with the environment in this area, and the liaison officers and navigators stationed on the ships in Beijing and China said that there is no need to worry, there is no danger in the sea lanes ahead, and there will be no unfortunate incidents such as inexplicable landing.

Because Gao Jue was transferred to the original Mo Yulin Department in charge of Toucheng, and the Jinghua Jiading Escort Regiment controlled by Gao Zhang has now become Gao Shishi's personal guard of the Chinese army, the commander of the Jinghua fleet this time has been replaced, and he is the leader of the Jinghua Guangzhou Port Transport Fleet, named Gao Jing.

This person was not originally a member of the Gao family, he was a native of Guangdong, surnamed Chen, and his name was Jing. His father used to have a small fleet of three seagoing boats, which had been accumulated by three generations of the family. It's a pity that I was attacked by pirates when I went to sea - generally speaking, when I met a pirate, I only needed to pay some money to buy money, which was the default rule, but unfortunately the pirate had just been suppressed by Yu Dayou for a while, and was on the verge of collapse in desperation.

So there was nothing, and the Chen family not only died as the head of the family, but also owed a lot of debts.

Chen Jing had been accompanying his father to the sea since he was thirteen years old, but that time it was a coincidence that he went to the Xiucai exam, so he missed the sea, so he escaped.

Who knew that this farewell was actually a farewell, his father died, his family was ruined, and Xiucai was not admitted......

Desperate, he thought of the recruitment list of Jinghua Guangzhou Private Port at that time, and applied with the attitude of trying it out, but because he went to sea since he was a child, he was not only experienced and familiar with the sea routes, but also was a child, so he was directly selected.

However, the money owed by his family is really a lot, as high as more than 5,000 taels of silver, and now he has lost his capital, and he has to pay it back for 30 years just by relying on the salary he normally recruits. Chen Jing thought about it for a month, and finally made up his mind to "sell himself".

After Gao Pragmatic learned the news, he personally wrote to him to help him pay off the arrears, and changed his name to Gao Jing - the name next to the word Wang is not given easily in the Gao family, and belongs to cronies, such as Gao Jue and Gao Zhang.

In fact, Gao Xiaozhuang now also has a big name, called Gao Rui, but Gao Pragmatic calls him Gao Xiaozhuang, so this big name is used less.

Chen Jing became Gao Jing and quickly rose to prominence in the port of Guangzhou, rising to the rank of captain of the Jinghua Guangzhou Port transport team at the end of last year — in fact, if you put the military on this fleet, he is the commander-in-chief of the fleet.

The last time Gao Jue was in charge of the fleet, because of his identity, Gao Jue naturally became the commander, and he was actually in charge of navigation and other things as a deputy. And this time Gao Jue was not there, he was "corrected" by Gao Pragmatic, and he really became the commander-in-chief of this "combined fleet".

Gao Jing is very grateful for Gao Shishi's trustworthiness, so he also regards this errand very seriously, and refuses to let go of every detail.

After hearing from the navigator of the Mozambican army on the flagship that the Majiang Mouth was not far ahead, he immediately ordered the whole fleet to be on alert.

Zheng Song knew about the ambush of the Ming fleet at the mouth of the Majiang River, and of course Gao Jing also knew that the Majiangkou was the last pass where the Zheng army could threaten or block the Jinghua fleet.

With the change of flags, the entire fleet began to act, and the originally sparse fish through formation turned into a goose-shaped formation that cautiously met the enemy, Gao Jing saw it and breathed a sigh of relief.

However, before he could completely relax his mind, the lookout on the watchtower suddenly waved his flag downward and shouted: "There are enemy ships ahead!" There are enemy ships ahead! The head ship has three masts, and it is a soft-sailed ship with red hair! ”

Gao Jing Huoran walked to the edge of the bridge and said loudly to the sailor in charge of delivering the message: "Let him see clearly, there are several three-masted soft-sailed ships!" ”

The big ships of the red-haired fanzi are powerful, but their strength has always been very limited, Gao Jing is very clear about this, his family is also from the South Seas, and it is not that he has never been to Manraka, the Franc machine man has no more than twenty three-masted soft-sailed ships in Manraka at most, and under normal circumstances, it is generally about ten to thirteen ships, even if Zheng Jun can invite them, the number will definitely not be much.

It didn't take long for news to come from the watchtower, saying that there were only two three-masted soft-sail ships on the other side, and the rest were hard-sail boats - the shipbuilding technology of the Annamite people was basically a copy of the Ming Dynasty, while China has always used hard sails, so the Annamite people's own ships are also hard-sailed.

Gao Jing breathed a sigh of relief, there were only two, which meant that they were the two Franc warships that Gao Tuanzuo mentioned before, which he bought from the Francoman.

Of course, the ship is powerful, otherwise how could the Franco-Rang machine man use so many people to form such a big force in the South Seas?

However, although ships are very important in naval warfare, the role of people cannot be ignored either—can the Annamites play the sea ships of the Franc machine?

Gao Jing took a deep breath and said calmly: "Raise the flag, the whole fleet will maintain a goose-shaped formation and prepare for battle; The ships immediately prepared gunpowder and shells, and at the same time prepared to turn around, pay attention to the flagship's banner at any time, and prepare to turn left! ”

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Every day is to rush the manuscript, and I almost forgot to say: Happy Mid-Autumn Festival!