Chen Pengming didn't hesitate at all, he had to attack before the Portuguese could react, whether they stopped abandoning the fleet and re-sent the fleet out of the port to meet the battle, or before they moved a large number of large-caliber fleets to the head of Malacca.

Therefore, Chen Pengming's attack plan was not just to send a detachment to conduct a tentative attack as before, but to directly dispatch the main fleet, ready to carry part of the Portuguese battery fire, and shell the enemy's batteries and their fleet.

After the order was issued, Chen Pengming also ordered the flagship to raise the battle flag, preparing to personally take the flagship to lead the fleet to attack!

The commander led the flagship to take the lead in the charge, which made the army liaison personnel accompanying the ship frown a little, thinking that Chen Pengming was too reckless in doing so, a dignified admiral, the supreme commander of more than 100 warships and tens of thousands of officers and soldiers.

Taking the lead in charging and fighting during the critical period of the campaign can certainly boost morale, but if you are not afraid of 10,000, you are afraid of what if, if you Chen Pengming is accidentally killed or seriously injured in battle, and you can't command the fleet?

It doesn't matter if you Chen Pengming is dead, but because of this, the troops are leaderless, and the command is chaotic, which is troublesome!

In a large-scale battle, a general-level commander personally leads the team to launch an attack, this kind of thing is almost unimaginable in the army, because in the army, general-level generals generally sit firmly in the rear to transfer troops, where they will personally go into battle and fight the enemy, not to mention the level of general, even the general of the level of brigadier general, basically will not personally go into battle to fight.

Therefore, the army liaison officers in the fleet did not quite understand Chen Pengming's actions.

But within the navy, Chen Pengming's approach is understood and accustomed to it!

In the Navy, it is nothing that the commander of the fleet personally leads the fleet in battle.

This is because the flagship of the fleet commander is often the most powerful in the fleet, and it is also the warship with the most complete command system, and this is the case with the flagship Guangdong in which Chen Pengming is riding; although the protection capability is a little worse than that of a battleship of the same tonnage, the firepower is not bad at all, and at the same time, its maneuverability and related command system are among the top in the battleships of tonnage.

Naturally, it is impossible for such a powerful warship to watch a play in the rear when the fleet is engaged in a decisive battle.

In this case, it became quite normal for the flagship to lead the fleet to attack.

Chen Pengming raised the battle flag and led the main fleet towards the port, which instantly made the Portuguese ships in the port and the Portuguese on the many shore defense batteries nervous.

Dozens of warships outside the harbor acted together, especially the nine battleships inside, which formed two huge battlefleets, not to mention other warships, just these nine huge battleships were enough to make those Portuguese tremble.

It was a warship with a tonnage of more than 1,000 tons, and this kind of tonnage warship belonged to the top warships no matter what it was placed in the navy of that contemporary country.

From more than 100 years ago to decades ago, in fact, the European seafaring countries represented by the Portuguese and Spain, in fact, they did not have professional large-tonnage ocean-going warships.

Because the seafaring nations of these two countries, which were mainly engaged in maritime trade, needed ships with large carrying capacity and were armed at the same time, the boundaries between merchant ships and warships were not clear during this period.

At the same time, naval warfare is not dominated by artillery battles, but in fact is still dominated by broadside battles, so ships are usually very tall and can carry a large number of combatants in order to gain an advantage and defeat opponents in broadside battles.

The most typical types of ships of this period were the Clark and the Spanish galleon.

However, this situation has gradually changed in recent decades, as warships of various navies have begun to be generally equipped with large-caliber naval guns, and at the same time, the power of naval guns has also increased, so warships with naval guns as their main weapons have gradually appeared.

However, it is worth noting that even though the ships of the navies of various countries began to add more guns and began to use the lower deck to deploy guns, so that dozens or even hundreds of guns could be deployed in a battleship, the ship type was still generally Clark and Spanish galleons.

At the same time, there are still some inherent problems with these ship types, such as the superstructure is too tall, and the center of gravity will be unstable when a large number of guns are arranged.

At the same time, the hull will retain a large amount of tonnage for transporting cargo and carrying personnel.

Among them, the most typical is undoubtedly the contemporary Spaniards' round-the-world fleet, the Spaniards' treasure fleet, almost all of them are large ships, with a tonnage of more than 1,000 common, carrying more naval guns, more personnel, and extremely large cargo volumes.

But both the armed Spanish galleons and the Clark were actually transitional from merchant ships, and they were not designed as warships per se.

At the same time, the Spanish side began to appear Galen ships, which were relatively lower in bow and tail, with a more slender length-to-width ratio, and could deploy more naval guns for combat.

However, what is interesting is that this kind of Galen ship, which first appeared in Spain, has not been carried forward in Spain at present, on the contrary, this type of ship appeared as an armed merchant ship off the coast of East Asia, and was accepted by the Tang Imperial Navy, and then the Datang Imperial Navy referred to the Galen ship, and also referred to some designs of traditional Chinese ships, and finally a new generation of Tang ships appeared.

To put it bluntly, the Tang ships of the Tang Empire were the first warships in human history specially designed for ocean-going naval artillery battles.

From the very beginning of its existence, it was specially designed for ocean-going sea operations.

In the past ten years, as the Tang ships gradually spread to Europe through the Portuguese, the Europeans, especially the Portuguese, began to directly build the Tang ships as warships, and I heard that England and other countries also imitated the Tang ships and the Galen ships to design and build a new generation of Galen ships.

Well, I have to focus on the Spaniards here, although they have also noticed the situation of the development of this battleship, but they still think that the artillery combat ability of the battleship is important, but if you want to completely defeat the enemy, you still need to rely on the side battle, so they will still deploy a large number of combat soldiers in the fleet, especially the heavy sword and shield soldiers.

Therefore, although the development of warships in the last ten years of the Spaniards has also improved, it is not as extreme as the Tang Empire, the Portuguese and even England and other countries.

This is not to say that the Spaniards did not develop their fleets, in fact they were still very enthusiastic about developing their navy, but their tactical concepts were not the same as those of the Tang Empire, the Portuguese, and England.

This different tactical concept was vividly embodied in the Battle of Gravolinne in the original plane.

The Spanish armada had about 130 warships, armed with about 3,000 naval guns, and had a crew of more than 8,000 people, but they also carried more than 20,000 additional infantry.

As for the English, the number of their fleet is almost a hundred, and there are more than 9,000 combat personnel in the fleet, but these more than 9,000 people are all crews. In addition, most of the guns equipped in the English fleet were long-barreled naval guns, which had an advantage in range, and the ships of the same period were more flexible and more suitable for sea combat.

The outcome of this battle was naturally clear at a glance, ending in a crushing defeat for the Spanish Armada, although in this naval battle, the real naval engagement, the British survived and sank five Spanish warships, and the Spanish Armada was really destroyed, resulting in the loss of more than half of its fleet and even the violent storm and rain in the North Sea plus dense fog.

But in any case, the impact of this naval battle was enormous, and even opened a new era of naval warfare, and later even the Spaniards began to pay attention to artillery warfare, and quickly equipped a large number of long-barreled naval guns to resist the British pirate ships.

At the same time, it is even more noteworthy that in this naval battle, the number of warships on both sides was more than 100, but in fact there were not so many real professional warships, the Armada was only 28, the Anglo-Dutch coalition was only 34, and the rest were all armed merchant ships.

From this, we can know that in fact, there are not many professional warships in the navies of contemporary countries, and even fewer of them have a tonnage of more than 1,000 tons.

This is true of countries such as the Tang Empire and Spain, or the Portuguese, England and other countries.

Not even professional warships, even if the range is expanded to warships with a tonnage of more than 1,000 tons, including armed merchant ships, that is not much.

This is also the reason why when the nine battleships of the Tang Navy began to move, it attracted the attention and even panic of the Portuguese.

On the many batteries on land, the Portuguese were nervously preparing for battle, trying to defend the harbor with shore fire artillery, and the Portuguese fleet in the harbor was in some confusion at this critical moment.

Because at this time, some of the ships also raised their sails and began to slowly leave the port, heading out of the port, and among the Portuguese fleets that rushed out, there was a battleship, but more of them were ordinary armed merchant ships.

However, the other ships in the harbor are still in place, and they can be seen through the telescope hurriedly loading and unloading naval guns.

Obviously, there were disagreements within the Portuguese fleet, some chose to stay in the harbor and withdraw their sailors and guns to the city to defend to the death, while others took the initiative to intercept the Tang navy in principle.

It's just that no matter how the Portuguese move, they can't stop the attack of the Tang Navy!

Chen Pengming personally led the main fleet, all the way forward, and used the steam engine to assist the power, so that the fleet's navigation did not depend too much on the wind direction, so as to obtain a better course and shooting angle.

It didn't take long for the rumbling of cannons to sound in the port of Malacca!

Not the sound of a few or dozens of guns firing, but the sound of hundreds or even thousands of guns shelling intensively!