The shells fired from the "bang-bang" three-pounder cannon landed in the sea around the Dutchman's boat, raising columns of water. Pen? Interesting? Pavilion wWw. ｂiquge。 Suddenly there was a loud bang and a Dutchman boat was shot. The shells hit the planks of the ship, the wood flew sideways, and the remaining shells drilled a hole in the hold, and the boat soon entered the water and began to sink.

The three-pounder cannon is surprisingly accurate, and the hit rate of the small cannon fired from 800 meters to a kilometer away is actually an astonishing 34 out of 10! Ten shells were fired, and three to four of them hit the target, which is a frighteningly high accuracy.

If the artillery on land bombards a fixed target, or a dense infantry phalanx, it is nothing to have a high hit rate, anyway, the target is very large, and you can hit it at will. This is a small boat on the sea, the target is small, or in motion, the hit rate of the guns on the shore is so high, this is too scary.

The small cannon not only has high accuracy, but also has a very fast rate of fire, and not long after a shell is fired, another shell flies over. The four small cannons took turns firing without stopping for a moment.

Although the three-pounder cannon is also a rifled gun, because the gun is small, it is much easier to clean the chamber, the ammunition is light, and the loading speed is fast, so the speed of firing is much faster than the heavy gun.

The gunners of the Ming Army Army Army who came from the east lit the artillery, fired the shells, and immediately cleaned the chambers with wet mops. A soldier stuffed a wet mop in to clean up the gunpowder residue and cool the gun slightly, then used a dry mop to clean it a second time, then stuffed the medicine bag in, and then stuffed the shells in.

In about half a minute, the shells were loaded, and the gunners turned their muzzles, aimed at the boats on the sea, and ignited the guns again.

De Knight watched as the boats that cleared the obstacles and mines were sunk one after another, and in desperation, he ordered the boats to retreat.

"What the hell, where did the people of the Ming Kingdom get so many small cannons that hit so accurately? It's just too accurate! At such a distance, you can hit a small boat! De Knight said with a sad face.

"We send small boats in at night to clear obstacles and clear mines," Trop said. I don't believe that they can hit our boat at night! ”

As night fell, the Dutch again sent small boats in and began to clear the channel of obstacles and mines. As Trop expected, the Ming artillery battery could not see the sea target clearly at night, and it could not open artillery to bombard the sea surface.

However, it was very dangerous to go into the water at night, and it was pitch black in all directions, and the Dutch sailors could not see the underwater objects clearly when they went into the water, so they could only grope their way to cut the underwater stakes. But it is not easy to cut off the underwater piles, these underwater piles are driven into the bottom of the sea, and they are very strong, and people can not hold their breath for too long when they dive underwater, and there is buoyancy in the water, and they can't be cut for half a day.

The sky is dark, underwater work is extremely difficult, and the danger is particularly great, and you can drown if you are not careful. However, the Dutch, fearing shelling, could not light the lamps, so they could only go blind and dark.

However, when the Ming army arranged the underwater pile, it was much easier, when arranging, as long as a few people held the wooden stake into the water, held the wooden stake, and the people on the boat beat it with another wooden stake, and the underwater hidden pile could be laid. In fact, it is also a very easy thing to clean up the underwater piles, as the saying goes, it is easy to destroy and difficult to build, as long as the mines are thrown into the water, you can easily blow up a large area of underwater piles.

It's just that the Dutch haven't invented mines yet, and mines were the first to be invented by the Ming Dynasty.

The Dutch sailors were busy for a long time, and they did not clear a few underwater piles. It was at this time that a Dutch soldier accidentally touched a mine in his boat. Although the boat is small, the force of hitting it is not small. Ordinary people encounter mines, and the fish in the water touch the mines, which is not enough to detonate, but when a boat hits, the mines explode immediately.

A loud bang sounded on the surface of the sea, and the small boat that hit the mine was immediately blown to pieces.

"The red-haired ghost is demining!" The sound of the explosion alarmed the Ming troops in the port.

A group of large and small boats in the inner harbor immediately moved up and headed for the mouth of the bay. These ships were all Dutch warships and armed merchant ships captured from the port of Batavia, and now they are being used by the Ming army against the Dutch. The warships of the Ming army were not afraid of the Dutch warships, and one by one the ships lit wind lanterns to illuminate the sea. The large warships of the Dutch were afraid of mines and did not dare to approach, because the distance was so far that even if the Ming ships exposed themselves, the Dutch naval guns could not hit them.

Countless small boats rowed out, and a Kong Ming lantern was released on the boat, plus the light on the boat itself, illuminating a large area of the sea.

"Fire!" The three-pounder hexagonal guns of the shore batteries, with the help of the light of the fire, aimed at the Dutchman's boat, and flew out accurately one after another, hitting the Dutchman's boat continuously.

The small boats of the Ming army rushed towards the small boats of the Dutch, and the guns and cannons on the boats spewed fire, causing the small boats of the Dutch to scream again and again, and a large number of people were killed and wounded. The Dutch, who were not dead, could no longer bother to clear the obstacles from demining and immediately rowed out to sea. There were quite a few poor Dutch sailors who were still underwater, and they didn't have time to climb into the boat, but they were all fished up by the Ming boats and honestly taken prisoner.

The Dutch suffered another defeat and had to temporarily retreat to the open sea.

"It's clear that Batavia has been occupied by the Ming! It's their ships that come out of the harbor! It was all our ship, they had captured it! If the castle is still in our hands, the ships of the Ming people will not be able to dock in the inner harbor. "Tropp said what worries the Dutch the most.

"Batavia is occupied by them! We've got to call back as soon as possible! De Knight said angrily.

Batavia was so important to the Dutch, it was the address of the East India Company, and it could control the whole island of Java, part of Sumatra, the Spaniards in Luzon, the Portuguese in Indochina, the British in the Strait of Malacca, and Batavia as a transit port from Japan and Korea to the Indian Ocean.

If Batavia could not be recaptured, then the Dutch colonization in the East would be over!

De Knight was furious, craned his neck and shouted, "No matter what the cost, we must take Batavia!" We can't afford to lose this battle! Batavia is lost, and the hateful English will take advantage of it! They have long wanted routes to the East! We can't give them the eastern route! We can't lose Java either, we can't lose Sumatra! We can't afford to lose the rich East! ”

Originally, Batavia was snatched by the Dutch from the British, and the British strength in the Far East was very weak at that time, so it can be said that the naval strength of the whole of Britain was not very strong at the beginning, and the Dutch were the hegemon of the sea in the early seventeenth century.

Who knew that the Ming people suddenly rose up, seized Batavia, and gradually controlled the whole of Southeast Asia.

De Knight didn't know what the reason was, long before the Western colonizers were rampant across the oceans, the Ming Dynasty already had a huge fleet of tens of thousands of people and a super ship of 2,000 tons. Later, Western colonizers occupied colonies everywhere, and Western soldiers in each place were only a few thousand, or even more than a hundred, to occupy a large area of territory.

In fact, the ancient countries of the East had a large population, and even if they devoted one-tenth of their energy to the sea, the Western colonizers were not the opponents of the East at all!

It's a pity that the big country in the East, from the upper rulers to the grassroots gentry, only focus on their own land, and they think that the land in the East is rich and they don't look down on the barbarian land overseas. The energy of the Orientals was either focused on dealing with civil strife or nomads from the north.

If during the Chongzhen period, when the civil strife broke out, Chongzhen could give up the northern land, retreat to the south, take the Jianghuai as the line of defense, block the retreat of the homeless thieves, let the homeless thieves and the northern Jurchen Jiannu go to the death, let them fight for the Central Plains, defend the south by themselves, develop the economy, develop marine transportation, and open up overseas colonies, as long as they can hold on for a hundred years, after entering industrialization, the barbarians on the grassland will no longer be the opponent of agricultural civilization!

Now that Wang Xinyu has come to this era, he is taking the road of the ocean. The defeat of the barbarians on land by maritime civilization is the natural law of historical development, and if Zheng Chenggong is not unlucky, he will really succeed.

How easy it was for the Dutch to retake Batavia! First of all, the port was inaccessible, batteries and mines blocked the harbor, and the Dutch had to land from elsewhere. However, the Nanyang Company escort and a part of the Ming army left by Li Dingguo were stationed in the castle, and it was extremely difficult for the Dutch to capture the castle.

Although the Dutch fleet, which came from afar to the east to make a bargain, is very powerful, human beings are not sea creatures after all, they are life on land, and no matter how powerful the fleet is, it needs supplies and support from the land.

The Dutch had all their ports in the East, and the Spaniards and the Portuguese were hostile to the Dutch, so how could they let their ports supply the Dutch.

"General, are we going to continue to go north and capture Macao? As long as we take Macau, we will have a port. A Dutch officer suggested. As for the attack on Manila, the Dutch did not dare to think of it, everyone knew that the entrance to Manila Harbor was extremely narrow, the forts on both sides were strong, and the artillery was powerful.

Manila is very difficult to fight, in real history until the nineteenth century, Spain has long been weakened, or no country can capture Manila, until the later Spanish-American War, the Americans with advanced ironclad ships and breech-loading rifled guns to bombard Manila.

In comparison, Macau's defense was much worse, as long as the Dutch really attacked Macau, the Portuguese would definitely not be able to hold it. By taking Macao, the Dutch would have a port for supplies from the East.

However, de Knight was not willing to let Batavia fall into the hands of the Orientals: "The capture of Macau is a matter of later, and Batavia's position is much more important than Macau!" We lost Batavia, and it will be difficult for us to get to the East in the future! As long as the Orientals are stuck in the Strait of Malacca, our merchant ships will not want to come in! Only by retaking Batavia will we have a foothold. ”

Dutch troops avoided the fire of the Batavia batteries and landed on a beach west of Batavia.

Java is the most populous island in Southeast Asia at any given time, it doesn't have a lot of primeval forests like other islands, there are no roads, it's full of farmland, local villages are everywhere, and the Ming army didn't have that many troops to control the whole island despite occupying Batavia.

After the Dutch army landed, the locals saw the Dutch coming, and many locals took the initiative to step forward.

After all, the Dutch have been operating on the island of Java for half a century, and the Indonesians recognize the Dutch, and after the Dutch came ashore, the local Indonesians helped the Dutch a lot.

Another reason is that Wang Xinyu's army was really ruthless to the Indonesians, many Indonesians were captured as coolies, or taken as slaves, and some disobedient Indonesian villages were slaughtered by the Ming army.

Listening to the cries of the locals, de Knight felt very strange: "Didn't the Oriental people say that they believed in Confucianism? What do you say to convince people with virtue? When the Orientals entered the Indian Ocean and arrived in Africa, they had never done such a thing, so how could these Orientals be different from the original? ”

"Cruelty to the natives of the South Seas is not a characteristic of the Orientals, although they are very barbaric to their own people, but they are very generous to the people of the overseas wild lands in their eyes, what is the reason for the Orientals to become like this?" Looking at the local villages slaughtered by the Ming army, Trop was also very puzzled.

Before the Dutch came from afar, Trop and de Knight consulted with a number of missionaries, and they received information that the Orientals were good at infighting and cruel to their own people, but they preferred to think of themselves as heavenly and tolerant of overseas barbarian lands. Every year, small countries go to pay tribute, and the gifts given by the big countries in the East always far exceed the tributes of the small countries. Even the invincible Zheng He's fleet did not go with the idea of colonial rule, but to spread civilization, carry forward the tolerance and tolerance of the eastern powers, and to convince people with virtue.

If Wang Xinyu had slaughtered the indigenous people in Southeast Asia a few decades ago, he would definitely have been impeached by the Donglin Party and scolded to the blood, saying that he was brutal and cold-blooded, destroying the relationship between the Ming Dynasty and the vassal states, which would cause the vassal states to no longer come to pay tribute, making the court very faceless.

But now it's completely different, the Donglin Party has long been divided, some have surrendered to the Qing court, some are insisting on resisting the Qing Dynasty, plus Wang Xinyu supports Xinxue to fight against Lixue, and he has a strong army in his hands, who dares to say that he is not.

Seeing many local villages that had been slaughtered, Trop had a very bad feeling: "These Ming people are different from before!" I'm afraid it's hard to deal with! ”

But no matter what, Batavia must be regained.

After the Dutch army landed, it swooped down on Batavia. Three days later, the Dutch army arrived under the city of Batavia.

The Dutch themselves could only be blamed for building the city of Batavia too strongly, and after the Dutch army approached the city, the Ming army at the head of the city launched a fierce artillery battle with the Dutch, and the Dutch siege was defeated. (To be continued.) )