Even if the Seventh Army on the side of the army will not be able to take Malacca for a while, it will not be in danger of the battle situation, at most it will only delay the capture of Malacca for a period of time, not to mention that the troops that the army is preparing to send to fight in Nanyang and India are more than the 19th Infantry Division and the Seventh Artillery Brigade.

There were two divisions ready to enter the battle, and these two divisions were also units belonging to the Seventh Army, namely the 35th Infantry Division and the 36th Infantry Division, both of which were reorganized from the reserve divisions.

Although the Tang Empire decided to let the Seventh Army participate in the war very early, the two divisions also carried out personnel replenishment and related training two months in advance, but now although the troops are available and the equipment is also available, if you want to restore the combat effectiveness of those veterans who have returned to service, it is not just one or two months of training, at least adaptive training must be carried out.

And then, they'll have to wait for capacity to become available!

For this Battle of Malacca and the subsequent Indian Ocean Campaign, the military not only sent warships, but also recruited a large number of merchant ships, but merchant ships could not be recruited uncontrollably.

Although it is a big deal to fight Portugal, it is definitely not as important as maintaining the stability of domestic production and transportation.

Therefore, even if the military wants to conscript all the civilian ships, the cabinet will not agree, and Li Xuan will not agree, so the military can only conscript some civilian ships.

These conscripted ships, together with the various military transport ships, had to transport not only the nearly 30,000 ground combat troops, but also the various supplies needed for these 30,000 men, as well as for the many sailors who were equally numerous.

In fact, the tonnage of ships transporting supplies was higher than that of ships transporting personnel.

The military simply could not spare more ships to transport the remaining two divisions, in fact, there was no need, and the Portuguese and the indigenous army on the Malacca side were only 8,000 men.

The remaining two second-line infantry divisions of the Seventh Army were only used as reserves in the early stage, and if the battle in Malacca did not go well, then the ships of the combined landing fleet would be used to organize the second batch of transports, and if the battle in Malacca went well, and the losses of the 19th Infantry Division and other troops were not large, then the time for them to go south by ship would be further delayed.

According to the military's speculation, after the defeat of Malacca, the remaining strength of the southbound troops was enough for subsequent battles, and there was no need to transport the second batch of reinforcements.

After all, to organize such a large-scale cross-sea landing operation, what it is necessary to do is not only to transport the combat personnel there, but also to transport a large amount of combat materials needed to maintain the combat troops.

If it is not necessary, the military will not invest too many troops in the South Seas or India, and it will be too much trouble to maintain supply lines.

However, such a large-scale cross-sea landing operation is estimated to be just like this in the near future, because Malacca is relatively special, the Portuguese attach great importance to it, and organize a total of 8,000 troops to defend, and Malacca itself is a fortress.

However, except for Malacca, the other Portuguese strongholds in the Nanyang region are basically small strongholds, with no less than 100 people, and no more than 3500 people, and the number of Portuguese strongholds on the Indian side is not very large.

If the Portuguese had built every colonial stronghold as strong as Malacca, they would not have had so many troops at all, nor would they have such a strong national strength.

The existing nearly 30,000 ground combat troops fighting in the south are sufficient.

No matter how much it is, not to mention the waste of troops, and the military is also unbearable.

However, in order to prevent any eventuality, the Army still had the 35th Infantry Division and the 36th Infantry Division of the Seventh Army reorganized and mobilized, and carried out relevant adaptive training.

Whether or not such reserves can be used in the future is another matter.

On the huge joint landing fleet, Vice Admiral Ding Chenzhen, commander of the Seventh Army of the Army, was standing on the bow deck of the Dinghai, the flagship of the Army's First Maritime Transport Division.

However, his eyes were on the front of the huge fleet!

At the very front of the joint landing fleet was a huge battleship, which was belching with smoke and all the sails raised.

It was the Navy's Liaoxi battleship, a behemoth with a standard tonnage of 1,580 tons, and its tonnage was even larger than the Jiangnan steam battleship, and it was also the largest pure sail battleship built by the Datang Navy in the sail era.

It's a pity that when the ship was still on the slipway for the final outfitting, it was already outdated, because it was already the nineteenth year of Xuanping at that time, and the high-pressure steam engine of the Tang Empire was officially developed, and the high-pressure ship-based steam engine was also tested, and it was soon loaded and used.

At that time, the outfitting of the ship was already in the final stage, and it was not long before it was launched and officially put into service, and became the new flagship of the Second Fleet.

In addition to daily training, after the service, he did not even carry out an ocean voyage, and most of the time he stayed in the port, because the internal structure of the ship used a lot of steel frames, and these steel frames had some minor problems, so that even the sea trials in the early stage of service had not been completed, and they hurriedly returned to the slipway of the shipyard again!

Therefore, after only three months of service, when the sea trials had not even been completed, and the combat effectiveness had not yet been formed, the ship returned to the dock of the Qingdao Naval Shipyard to repair part of the steel frame in the hull.

At the same time, he also took advantage of this opportunity to carry out the steam engine modification, after all, the navy had already decided to steam the existing sail capital ship at that time, but the fate of the ship was really a bit bumpy.

Finally, after several months of refitting, during the first steam-powered sea trial, the steam engine on the ship had a major accident.

A high-pressure steam leakage accident occurred in the steam engine, and after the high-pressure and high-pressure steam leaked out, it instantly killed more than a dozen officers and soldiers who were in the engine room at that time.

There have been two problems, which also led to a large number of people being implicated in the navy and in the Qingdao Navy Shipyard and the Navy Steam Factory, after all, this is the largest sail battleship built in the history of the Tang Empire, costing hundreds of thousands of yuan.

For this reason, a commodore in charge of the ship's supervision was ordered to retire from active service and became the person directly responsible for these two accidents, or the man who took the blame!

In the process of repair, it was found that the steam engine installed before was not installed properly during the installation process, resulting in a violent shaking after the steam engine was started and the ship was pushed to sail for a period of time, and the violent shaking directly led to the deformation and rupture of the steam pipeline, as well as a series of other serious accidents.

In the end, it was determined that many parts of the steam engine were seriously deformed and damaged, and it was better to repair it and install a new one.

Therefore, the Liaoxi could only continue to lie on the slipway, and it went through several months of refit, and this time in order to avoid another problem, the navy's technicians were very conservative, and did not use the three-cylinder steam engine that had just appeared at that time, which was not too stable, and continued to use the two-cylinder steam engine.

Finally, after modification and sea trials, it was not until the beginning of this year that the combat effectiveness was re-formed!

At this time, it has been six years since the official start of construction of the ship, and three years have passed since the ship was completed and launched!

For the past six years, the ship has spent most of its time on the slipway!

The fate of the Liaoxi, after returning to service, was once again assigned to the Second Fleet, but this time it was no longer the flagship of the Second Fleet, because the title of the flagship of the Second Fleet had been taken away by the Jiangnan.

When the Tang Empire was scheduled to conduct a campaign against Malacca, the ship, as one of the first-class capital ships of the Navy, was naturally included in the combat sequence, but it was not incorporated into the Indian Ocean Fleet, but was incorporated into the Joint Landing Fleet, becoming the flagship of the Joint Landing Fleet and performing escort missions.

In addition to the Liaoxi, there is another sail battleship that has been incorporated into the joint landing fleet to carry out escort missions, and it is also the Shanxi with good strength, second only to the Liaoxi in terms of tonnage and firepower in the Datang Navy.

The reason why the navy incorporated the two main battleships, which have the largest tonnage and the strongest firepower, into the joint landing fleet for escort is because the joint landing fleet carries nearly 30,000 ground combat troops and countless supplies.

Its importance is undeniable.

Of course, this is also because these two battleships, although the tonnage is large and the firepower is strong, but the power is average, and the more conservative steam engine modification scheme is used when refitting, so that the steam power on these two battleships is not very sufficient, at most it can only be used as auxiliary power, and it is difficult to rely purely on steam engines for combat.

However, the other nine battleships in the Indian Ocean Fleet are all battleships with sufficient power and fast speed, and most of them are equipped with three-cylinder steam engines, and have the ability to sail and fight independently by relying on the power of steam engines.

Therefore, after some trade-offs, the navy incorporated these two stupid big men into the joint landing fleet and let them escort them.

In addition to these two battleships, the combined landing fleet also had three cruisers and nine frigates to escort them, and the ships they escorted together amounted to more than sixty.

This is also a huge fleet that is not inferior in size to the Indian Ocean Fleet!

Of course, the combat effectiveness of the two at sea cannot be compared!

Although the Portuguese in Malacca did not know that a huge landing fleet was approaching behind them, they saw the Indian Ocean Fleet of the Tang Navy!

I also know that the two countries have entered a state of war!

What's even more interesting is that even the Portuguese in Malacca knew that the two countries were already at war, but the Portuguese diplomats who were expelled and returned to Malacca from Shanghai were still floating on the sea at this time!