On Chongming Island, huge warships are moored on the docks on the shore, and people are constantly carrying goods up and down. Pen @ fun @ pavilion wWw. ｂｉｑUｇE。 ｉｎｆｏ

On the battleship Nanjing, there were people working on the mast and above, and the workers were disassembling the soft sails on the mast piece by piece. This is the work of changing the sails.

Why change the sails? In fact, whether it was the Dutch or the Portuguese, after the arrival of Western soft sailing ships in Macao, if they wanted to go north to Japan in winter, or to go south from Japan in summer, many Western ships would change their sails and replace Western-style soft sails with Chinese-style hard sails, but they were specially made hard sails, and they were not entirely Chinese-style hard sails.

This is related to the direction of the wind, although the speed of the Western-style soft sailing ship is very fast when it is downwind, but in the case of a large angle crosswind, or a headwind, the Western-style soft sailing ship can only take the "zigzag" route, but not a straight line.

When Western-style boats pass through some relatively narrow waters, because the channel is not particularly wide, and there are islands and reefs in between, the fleet can no longer take a zigzag route to take advantage of the wind. In this case, Dutch, Portuguese and Spanish ships often change their sails in Macao, replacing soft sails with hard sails.

In some documents of that year, there was a mention of changing sails, so in the Taiwan Strait to the Japanese waters, you can often see some Western-style hulls and masts, Western-style nose spinnakers and various small sails, but the main sail is a Chinese-style hard-sailed ship.

In fact, in the case of headwind and crosswind, the utilization rate of wind power is higher than that of soft sail, because soft sail purely uses wind power to propel the ship to sail; Hard sails, on the other hand, have aerodynamic principles.

For example, in the case of a stiff sail with a large angle crosswind, the wind blows diagonally from the front, almost a headwind, in which case a Western-style soft sailing ship cannot sail, but a hard sailing ship can. Because when a hard sail is subjected to such a large angle headwind, as long as the sail turns at a certain angle, it is equivalent to the wing propelling forward in the air, but it can provide the aircraft with a thrust from the bottom up, and the thrust is at a right angle of 90 degrees to the direction of the wing.

The sail rotates at a certain angle, and the wind blows in front of it, forming an air flow of different speeds on both sides of the sail, which gives the boat a forward thrust. This push is a bit not very straight, so it relies on other small sails, as well as the rudder at the back to make up for it.

In fact, manoeuvring a sailboat is a very complex technique.

The battleship was about to enter the Yangtze River channel, the tailwind season had passed, and the narrow Yangtze River channel was not conducive to the ships taking the "zigzag" course in the Yangtze River, so the sails had to be replaced.

In the Opium War, which occurred later in real history, the British fleet entered the Yangtze River in the southeast wind season, that is, from July to August, and used the wind direction to enter the Yangtze River, so the British fleet did not need to change its sails. The Ming Nanyang Navy had the original plan to enter the Yangtze River in May and attack Jiangning before August because of various factors such as crew training, but the plan changed, and when the fleet arrived at Chongming Island, the wind direction had changed, so the sails could only be changed.

In addition to the Nanyang Navy fleet, Zhang Huangyan's 30,000 Zhejiang troops also participated in this attack on Jiangning.

In terms of combat effectiveness, Zhang Huangyan's combat effectiveness of the Zhejiang Army was far inferior to that of the Qiongzhou Army. According to Wang Xinyu, the Zhejiang army could only retreat in the castle and hold on, and it was difficult to defeat the enemy in the field. But now it is different, there are warships of the Nanyang Navy, plus the Marine Corps, which can completely cooperate with the Zhejiang army to fight.

In addition, the main force of the Qing army was in the Wuchang area, and even the Cao Yun troops were sent to Wuchang, the Qing army in Jiangning was weak, the Eight Banners were transferred to Wuchang, and the main force of the Green Battalion also went to Wuchang, and only Geng Jingzhong's 10,000 Han Eight Banners and Liang Huafeng's 5,000 Green Battalion soldiers were left in Jiangning, as well as 80,000 Minzhuang and auxiliary soldiers recruited in Jiangning and other places.

Minzhuang and temporarily recruited auxiliaries are ordinary people, whose combat effectiveness is very poor, and they are not considered an army at all, and only with the help of the city wall defense can they stop the elite troops.

However, with so many battleships and cruisers, relying only on naval guns, they could completely suppress the Qing army and destroy the city walls. The Ming army also had siege mortars. With the development of gunpowder technology, it was no longer a problem to blast through the city walls. Once the city wall is blown open, the people and the auxiliary soldiers are like fish on the chopping board, and they are not the opponents of the regular army at all, even if they encounter the Zhejiang army, they can't beat it.

To conquer Jiangning City, the most important thing is whether Geng Jingzhong is willing to cooperate. In terms of combat effectiveness, the 30,000 Zhejiang army may not be able to defeat Geng Jingzhong's 10,000 Han and Eight Banners. If Geng Jingzhong was reversed, Liang Huafeng's five thousand green battalion soldiers would be nothing at all.

At present, the Zhejiang army is also a semi-firearms army, and the long-range weapons of the Zhejiang army are mainly bird guns, with about 9,000 bird guns, of which 8,000 bird guns are equipped, 1,000 self-fired guns (flintlock guns), and 1,000 artillerymen. The remaining 20,000 men were cold-armed, armed with spears, halberds, axes, knives, shields, bows and arrows.

Of course, the strength of the artillery of the Zhejiang army is far from being comparable with that of the artillery of the Qiongzhou army. The main artillery force of the Zhejiang army used heavy artillery such as Hongyi cannons that were not easy to move, and some small cannons on the city walls. Because most of the artillery did not have a large wheel gun carriage that was easy to move, the main artillery force of the Zhejiang army did not follow the army to the battle, and only sent 1,000 new artillery to the battle.

The artillery of the 1,000 Zhejiang Army on the expedition also used the same new artillery as the Qiongzhou Army, installed a large-wheel gun mount, and adopted the method of gun carriages and ammunition trucks, which could be pulled by mules and horses to move quickly. In addition, there were four 64-pounder mortars in the artillery of the Zhejiang army, which could be used to bombard the Jiangning city wall.

Of course, the firepower of the 1,000 Zhejiang artillery was still not enough to suppress the artillery of the defenders in the city. But it doesn't matter, there are Nanyang Marines to cooperate.

At that time, when attacking Jiangning City, some naval officers and men can disassemble the naval guns from the ship, load them on vehicles and transport them to the siege positions outside the city, and under the protection of the marines, bombard the city wall with naval guns.

In Jiangning City, the original Nanjing Forbidden City has been changed into a full city by the Qing court, and the banner people live in the original Nanjing Forbidden City. After the Qing army occupied Nanjing, the Nanjing Forbidden City was changed on a large scale, some of the main halls were changed into generals and capital yamen, and some of the main halls were demolished and converted into houses for the banner people. Originally, the building that inhabited the Forbidden City in Nanjing was inhabited by high-ranking officers of the Qing army and their families.

The Forbidden City of Nanjing has long been unrecognizable at this time, and has become a full city of people living in banners, and the Qing court also raised the wall of the Forbidden City, and arranged cannons on the city wall to prevent the Han people in the city from rebelling.

After Geng Jingzhong came to Jiangning, he did not live in Mancheng, but chose another site to build a new Jingnan Palace. (To be continued.) )