On the same day, it was agreed that the Ming army decided to attack the fort first, annihilate the Dutch sailors, and then trap Heyi.

However, although the fort does not have many tricks like the fortress, it is also built on a hill after all, and it is not easy to attack.

In order to take Port Arthur, the Japanese attacked the heights and forts around the port, which took five months and suffered 110,000 casualties.

Of course, the Dutch could not have such advanced weapons and modern fortifications as the Russians, but the Ming army also had to pay attention and make full preparations for the attack.

In view of the shortage of manpower, Li Dingguo took advantage of the night to send people into the city of Malacca under the fortress, drove all the residents of the city out, and then set fire to the city to prevent the Dutch from leaving the fort to get supplies from the city.

Originally, there were more than 50,000 people living in the city, but because of the war, most of the population ran away, and the Ming army only captured more than 10,000 people.

At this time, there were only about 4,000 Dutch in Malacca, and of course more than 2,000 native soldiers to handle some odd jobs and assist in the defense.

Of the four thousand Dutch, fifteen hundred were in the fort, and five hundred in each of the three forts. There are only more than 1,000 men and horses in charge of the warship, and the reason why there are so few people is because the Dutch are almost all sailors, and they have to guard the forts and forts, and there are naturally fewer sailors to drive the ships, which is why they do not go out of the port to fight with the Ming army sailors.

After the Ming army captured more than 10,000 people, they began to prepare for the attack on the fort, first using these laborers to build a wharf in a nearby harbor, so that the main force of the naval division could come from Pahang to the vicinity of Malacca, and the grain transported from Cham could also be transported directly, so that the Ming army could be besieged for a long time.

Fortunately, this attack was convenient by sea, otherwise if grain was transported by land, the manpower consumed and requisitioned would be unimaginable.

After Li Dingguo clearly rejected the conditions of the East India Company, seeing that the Ming army burned the city under the fort, Moschel, the president of the East India Company, also began to prepare intensively.

The three forts, the easternmost one, sat on the top of a hill of seventy or eighty feet, and when taken overlooking the entire harbor, it was guarded by Dutch officers who had returned from Taiwan.

As a Dutch officer who had fought with the Ming army, he was not as arrogant as other Dutch, and when the company voted to tear up the peace conference, as a member of the council, he voted against, but those Dutch in Malacca and Batavia did not understand him at all, nor did they know the strength of the Ming Dynasty, let alone that the Ming Dynasty could send tens of thousands of troops at will.

The country they know in their minds is still a feudal state like Europe, and they can't understand how terrifying a centralized power with a population of 40 or 50 million is.

He repeatedly stressed that the Ming Dynasty was not weaker than the Ottoman Empire, but only a few supported him, and most of them were Dutch who had withdrawn from Taiwan.

They lost Taiwan, causing the company to suffer losses, and the Dutch in Malacca and Batavia felt that they were trying to shirk their responsibilities and deliberately make the Ming Dynasty strong, so they did not listen to his advice, and eventually provoked the incident.

At this point, regretting that it was useless, and that he could only defend with all his might, he inspected all kinds of fortifications over and over again, and personally inquired about the range of the cannons, the number of shells, the reserves of gunpowder, and even the health of the soldiers.

On 20 November, the Ming army began preparations for the attack on the fort after using the captured strong men to build a temporary wharf in a bay more than 30 miles from Malacca.

On this day, he personally walked up to the fort early in the morning to check on the enemy's situation.

Although he recognized the strong military strength of the Ming Dynasty, he was still relatively confident in the defense system of guarding the forts and Malacca.

The last time he surrendered, firstly, because of insufficient troops, and secondly, he was cut off from water and food supplies by the Ming army, so he could only give in.

This time, the fort he guarded was stocked with a lot of food, as well as a cistern, so he didn't have to worry about running out of supplies, and even if the supplies on the fort ran out, they could still get supplies from the sea.

Because the fort is close to the sea, the main fort can use ships to transport supplies at any time, and even troops come to support, if the Ming army attacks, he is confident that he will knock off the teeth of the Ming army.

"Cheer up and pay attention to the movements of the Ming army!" He walked up to the fort and reminded the Dutch soldiers on the fort from time to time.

Then he walked to the stone wall and stopped, and looked down at the fort with the clairvoyant as usual, but as soon as he picked it up and looked at it, he suddenly put it down, and then immediately picked up the clairing mirror and looked down again.

In his circular vision, a trench suddenly appeared in the distance parallel to the fort, and he could see many heads leaking out, and a spade of dirt was thrown out of the ditch by the diggers, raising a cloud of dust.

The situation was the same for the other two forts, where the Ming army used earthwork methods to dig a deep trench parallel to the fort about two miles from the fort.

I don't understand what the Ming army wants to do, what is the point of digging a parallel trench a few miles from the fort?

At that moment, he ordered people to fire a few shots tentatively, but because of the long distance, the accuracy of the artillery was insufficient, and the people digging the trench were hiding in the ditch, the artillery on the battery basically did not cause any damage.

The shells were fired for a while, but they had no effect, only ammunition was wasted, and the shelling could only be stopped, and as soon as the shelling stopped, shovels of dirt were thrown out of the ditch again.

In the afternoon, after the first parallel trench was wide enough, the Ming army began to rely on the first parallel trench and continued to dig towards the fort.

This time they took the "Zhi" line, and such a trench approached the battery, which could ensure that even if the shells fell into the ditch by chance, they would not cause a dozen lines.

For a while, the dust under the fort was flying, and the three zigzag trenches quickly approached the fort.

The strong men in front quickly dug and deepened and strengthened the trenches until the soldiers walked in the trenches without leaking their heads.

On the first day, the trench advanced more than a mile, and the intention of the Ming army was soon discovered.

The artillery of the fort can hit four or five miles in an effective range, and the Ming army will inevitably suffer great damage when approaching the fort from such a distance, but you can go directly to the foot of the mountain by taking the trench, avoid the shelling range, and then attack on the back after entering the dead end.

On the second day, the Ming army continued to send people to dig trenches, and after a burst of bombardment by the hilltop battery, nearly 100 Dutch suddenly rushed down, killed hundreds of trenchers, destroyed a section of the trench, and then returned to the top of the mountain.

The Ming army then sent musketeers into the trenches in order to defend the coolies digging the trenches and prevent the Dutch from coming down to destroy them.

There was no way to see this, but to watch the Ming army trenches approach the mountain step by step, which made the Dutch a little anxious.

But at this time another thing happened, the East India Company organized a thousand reinforcements from India and Ceylon, but rushed through the blocking of the Ming ships and successfully sailed into the harbor, so that the Dutch increased the strength of the Dutch to 5,000, and the Dutch were in high spirits and confidence.

At this time, the trenches of the Ming army almost reached the foot of the mountain, so between the three "zigzag" trenches, they began to dig a second parallel trench to connect the three trenches so that people and horses could be mobilized.

The whole trench lasted for nearly six days, and the width of the trench reached one zhang, which was enough for the artillery to pass, and although the Dutch troops on the fort did not stop firing artillery harassment during the whole process, in addition to the hundreds of coolies killed by the sneak attack, the Ming army was killed by the shells of less than 100 people.

At dawn on the 27th, the Ming army began to pass through the trenches, and transported the 30 heavy guns borrowed from the Ming army's naval division to the second parallel trench and arranged the artillery array.

He first saw the Ming soldiers of the brigade, jumped off the first trench, and then passed through the "zigzag" trench to the second parallel trench under the fort, but did not attack the mountain, because the purpose should be to protect the heavy artillery placed by the Ming army in the second trench.

The Ming army dug many gun pits along the second parallel trench, and the gun carriage and most of the gun body were in the pits, only the muzzle of the gun was raised high, sticking out of the sandbags, aiming at the top of the mountain.

"Your Excellency, we must adjust our position immediately!" A Dutch soldier saw the artillery array arranged by the Ming army, and his tone was a little panicked.

I don't blame him for his gaffe, he originally thought that the Ming army was digging trenches, just so that the soldiers could impact from the foot of the mountain and shorten the distance of the charge, but he didn't want the main goal of the Ming army to be not to transport troops, but to put the cannon under the nose of the battery.

Li Dingguo came up with this method of attacking the fort, but the inspiration came from the battle of Wanxian that year, the prison country dug a trench and feinted to attack Li Guoying's cottage, but because the fort is close to the sea, there is no vegetation on the mountain to catch the soil, the mud layer is not as thick as Wanxian, there are too many stones on the mountain, it is not easy to dig, it needs gunpowder blasting, and the amount of work is too large, otherwise he can dig all the way to the mountainside.

This tactic of digging trenches and attacking is actually a bit against Li Yunlong.

Now the artillery of the Ming army has advanced to the second trench at the foot of the mountain two hundred paces, so that the artillery of the Ming army can shoot on the top of the mountain, but the artillery on the battery is too close to shoot down, because the gun emplacement is designed, I did not think to put the muzzle down, and the second is that the muzzle is not easy to load, and the artillery of the Ming army is equivalent to moving to the dead angle of the battery.

Many Dutch people were aware of this problem, and their faces were a little ugly, and at this moment, the Ming artillery array suddenly rose up clouds of white smoke, and the sound of "boom boom" resounded through the front, and more than 30 shells rushed out of the gunsmoke, at first it was just a black dot, but in an instant, an arc had been drawn in the air and smashed towards the fort.

A cannonball fell sixty or seventy paces away in front of the fort, smashing out a deep pit, and the cannonball bounced, making it difficult to find a trace. Other shells crossed the fort and fell into the sea behind the fort, splashing up columns of water that only rarely hit the fort.

Soon the Ming army adjusted the gun position, and the second wave of bullets struck, which immediately hit the turret, and the Dutch rushed with their heads in their hands.

These batteries were originally used to deal with the enemy on the sea, and they were all long-distance targets, but now that the Ming army was close to their feet, they had no skills, but they didn't know how to use them.

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(End of chapter)