The naval divisions of the Ming army stationed in Xiamen, Zhangzhou, successively pulled anchor and set sail to Shangchuan Island, and 5,000 land divisions took the ships of the naval division to Shangchuan Island together. The 5,000 land divisions www.biquge.info are all elite firearms soldiers, with 2,000 flintlock muskemen, 1,000 soldiers, 1,000 baggage soldiers and 1,000 auxiliary soldiers, and the auxiliaries and baggage soldiers are all equipped with bird guns. The leader of this land division is Gong Xiaoda. This is a firearms army organized according to the new type of army.

Wang Yu's upcoming army reform, the first thing to change is the auxiliary army and the people's strength. According to his request, the auxiliaries will be classified into transporters, engineers, and medics; Minzhuang will be transformed into engineering soldiers and railway soldiers.

In the future, the establishment of the new land division will also change, the establishment of the town will remain unchanged, and the town mayor will be the commander; An association was set up under the town, and the chief soldier served as the commander; The subordinate set up the standard, and the guerrilla served as the commander; Under the mark is the battalion, and the commander is the commander of the thousand; A team is set up under the battalion, and the general is the commander; A platoon was set up under the team, and the original sentry officer became a platoon leader; Squads were set up under the platoon, the original chief became the squad leader, the captain became a corporal, and the ordinary non-commissioned officers were divided into senior soldiers and privates.

However, it is still too early to carry out the reform of the combat corps, and Gong Xiaoda's firearms are still in accordance with the original establishment.

The military merit system adopts a point system, and military merit is no longer calculated by the head cut off by a single soldier, so as to avoid the soldiers stopping chasing and killing the enemy to cut off the head on the ground during the battle. As for harvesting heads, capturing prisoners, there are special personnel statistics.

With the exception of sharpshooters, who specialize in shooting senior officers of the opposing side, who count their merits based on the number of enemies killed and the rank of the enemies killed, the rest of the combat units calculate their merits collectively and distribute credit according to the role played by individual soldiers and officers in battle. Non-combat units can also calculate military merits, such as transporting food, digging trenches, and building siege weapons, all of which have collective military merit points that can be distributed.

The main task of this firearms army was to make a surprise attack on Xinhui and cut off the connection between the Qing army in Guangxi and the Qing army in Guangdong.

After taking Xinhui, Minzhuang and auxiliary troops landed in Xinhui, settled in the city, and were responsible for defending the city.

This is the advantage of having the right to control the sea, as long as it is not the typhoon season, the vast sea is at the mercy of the Ming army's sailors. In the south, the typhoon season was actually the season of armistice between the two sides, and the southern armies rarely fought in the hot summer, and the general time of war was from the end of autumn to the beginning of the following summer.

It was also when the Ming army took advantage of the convenience of the sailors to transfer troops to the west of the Qing army, and a catamaran clipper with a reconnaissance mission came to Shangchuan Island.

"The fleet of red-haired ghosts has appeared in the South China Sea! It's likely to come to the Pearl River Estuary! "The catamaran sent inform.

Next, the catamaran clipper sent this urgent information to the camp of the Ming Army in Zhangzhou.

"The red-haired ghost fleet is entering the South China Sea?" Hearing this news, Wang Xinyu's face suddenly changed greatly, "We captured Batavia of the red-haired ghosts, and we didn't hold them back?" They actually gave up Batavia and went straight to the mouth of the Pearl River? When this red-haired devil's fleet comes, it's a great threat to us! ”

Now is a critical moment in the battle against the Qing army in Guangdong, and the transportation of the Ming army is completely dependent on sea transportation. Once the Dutch fleet entered the South China Sea and the Taiwan Strait, it would pose a serious threat to the Ming army. It stands to reason that the news of the British occupation of New York has been sent back to the Netherlands, so why hasn't the Dutch fleet returned?

This was due to the lack of communications, and the commander of the Dutch fleet, de Knight, did not yet know what was happening in the West or that Britain had declared war on the Netherlands. At this time, the clipper ship sent by the Netherlands to deliver the letter had just arrived in Batavia, because the ship that delivered the letter did not know that Batavia had been occupied by the Ming army, so it threw itself into the net, and after arriving in Batavia, the clipper ship responsible for delivering the letter was captured by Emperor Hude.

After interrogation, Hood learned that this Dutch armed merchant ship was a ship to deliver a message to the Dutch fleet, in order to get the Dutch fleet to leave the Far East as soon as possible, return to Europe, and devote itself to the war against the British.

"Looks like we're going to have to release the red-haired ghosts and let them send this news to their fleet, and that's good for us! As long as the red-haired ghosts get the news, they will withdraw their troops from the South China Sea! Zhang Yukun thought for a moment and said.

Emperor Hu replied: "I'm afraid it's too late to let them go now!" The red-haired ghost's fleet has entered the South China Sea, and I am afraid that it has threatened the safety of our sailors! ”

The Dutch fleet had already posed an extremely serious threat to the Ming army's anti-Qing cause. The Ming army had only two fast galleys on hand to deal with the Dutch fleet, and they could not be carried hard, and could only be shelled from afar. With just two ships, they can't protect the huge fleet of Chinese sailors.

In the vast South China Sea, about 700 kilometers from Macao, in the waters south of the Pearl River estuary, a huge fleet flying the Dutch flag is slowly sailing on the sea. Because the wind was not in the right direction, the Dutch fleet could only take a zigzag route, so the speed was very slow.

It's winter, and it's a northwesterly wind; The Dutch fleet, on the other hand, sailed from south to due north, and the angle of attack in the same wind direction was too large, so it had to constantly turn on the sea surface and use the side winds to sail.

Western-style soft sailing boats are not as good as Chinese hard sails because they cannot sail in a sidewind situation with too many angles of attack, nor can they sail in a positive crosswind. The catamaran clipper designed by Wang Xinyu is the fastest in the case of side wind, because the kind of boat can use the principle of aerodynamics to create a front and rear air pressure difference to propel the catamaran clipper at high speed.

As for the galley cruiser, it is a combination of Chinese hard sail and Western jib, front jib, etc., which can sail even when the wind is not good, and it also has oar power.

When the galley was first designed, someone once proposed a plan for a car and a ship.

The so-called vehicle ship is to use the foot pedal to drive the paddle wheel to drive the boat to sail on the water. As early as the end of the Tang Dynasty, the car and ship had been invented, and by the time of the Song Dynasty, it was the peak of the car and boat, and the Southern Song Dynasty sailors used the car and ship to defeat the sailors of the northern Jin State again and again, and kept half of their own country.

Because of the labor-saving and fast sailing speed, the vehicle and ship were mentioned again by Song Yingxing, Xu Zhengming, Dai Cang and others.

However, Wang Xinyu rejected the proposal of the car and boat, because the efficiency of the paddle wheel of the car and ship is not high, if the efficiency of the paddle wheel is high, why should the later ship be replaced with a propeller? In addition, in the case of strong wind and waves, the efficiency of the paddle wheel is even lower, and the waves are large and the shaking is severe, often the paddle wheel on one side enters the water too much, and the other side is completely out of the water, and it is difficult for the vehicle and ship to play an effective role in that case.

There is also the most critical point is that the vehicle and ship is the use of wood mechanical gear transmission method, a new vehicle and ship efficiency may be quite high, but with the use of vehicles and ships, wood mechanical gears continue to wear out, gears and gears will gradually become less consistent, then the transmission efficiency will be greatly reduced, resulting in the problem of vehicle and ship speed decline.

Wang Xinyu's galleys used slave sailors, and the method of supervising fourth-class slaves by second-class people could ensure that the galleys sailed at high speed on the sea.

"Oh my God! Damn the Ming people! Their ship is coming from behind! "In the Dutch fleet, suddenly someone shouted.

Behind the Dutch fleet, the figures of two warships appeared, approaching the Dutch fleet at high speed.

De Knight stepped out of the cabin, stood at the stern, picked up the ships he had observed through his binoculars, and found that they were the two haunted galleys and fast cruisers! They followed them from Malacca to the South China Sea, and for a while, the two ships disappeared, but now they followed.

"It must be the kind of boat I saw the other day to report the letter!" De Knight said angrily. The boat he was talking about was a catamaran clipper. The other day the catamaran saw the Dutch fleet and ran away in a puff of smoke.

Although the catamaran clippers themselves have almost no combat effectiveness and are surprisingly expensive, they are the best maritime scouts and maritime communication troops of this era, and the Nanyang naval fleet with catamaran clippers is equivalent to mastering one-way transparency to the Dutch! And it has the fastest tools for information transmission and communication.

Before the invention of wireless telegraphy, catamarans were the best means of communication.

Tepra shook her head helplessly: "But what can we do?" We simply can't catch up with them. ”

De Knight put down his binoculars and said angrily, "When we get back to Europe, we must make a replica of this ship!" No matter how much money you spend, you have to build it! ”

The Dutch had nothing to do with the catamarans, the kind of ships that were small and extremely expensive, and they were worth the money, and their high speed made it impossible for any navy or pirate to catch up with them. And Wang Xinyu is not worried at all that someone will be able to imitate his catamaran clipper. The brass hull and the silk-coated sails were the highest technology of the era.

Therefore, there is almost no possibility that the Dutch want to imitate this kind of ship.

At this time, the Ming army's fast galley cruisers were approaching.

On the two fast galleys, one of the cruisers was captained by Albert; The other captain was Zhang Jian. Two ships quickly approached from behind the Dutch fleet. At this time, they no longer bothered to keep the secret of the performance of the rifled guns, but when they were still two kilometers away from the Dutch fleet, they opened fire on the Dutch fleet.

"Boom, boom, boom" The two galley fast cruisers spat out tongues of fire.

Zhang Jian knew that he didn't have many rifled artillery shells, but they had no choice but to shoot out all the rifled artillery shells that were left, and how many Dutch ships they could sink were counted. Otherwise, once the Dutch fleet is allowed to enter the Taiwan Strait and cut off the transportation line of the Ming army, then the Ming army will not want to attack Guangdong, and can only honestly nest in Fujian and not move.

In the first round of firing, none of the eight shells fired by the two fast cruisers hit, and all of them fell into the sea, raising columns of water that rose into the sky.

Although they did not hit any targets, the whistling sound of rifled guns startled the Dutch.

"Oh my God! How big of a cannon did they really have on board? A Dutchman exclaimed.

When they were in Singapore before, the Dutch suffered a big loss of artillery batteries, and were attacked by the Ming army at night, losing many ships, and even the battleships were blown to the bottom of the sea by the Ming army. The Dutch did not yet know what the Ming army had attacked their battleship, but they still remembered the power of the Ming artillery.

"Reload the shells! The battleships of the Easterners will soon approach us! A Dutch officer shouted.

The two fast cruisers continued to approach, and when they were only a kilometer away from a fourth-class cruiser of the Dutch, the Star Island erupted two fireballs and two shells whizzed out. At the same time, the fast cruiser Hindu also fired two shells, which were smashed at the Dutch's fourth-class cruisers.

Two ships fired four solid shells, at a distance of only a kilometer, and three of the four shells hit!

The Dutch fourth-class cruiser, which was hit by three shells at the same time, was already in flames, two large holes had been broken in the bilge, and seawater was pouring into the ship. The reason why a solid shell caught fire was because one of the shells had pierced the hull of the ship and grazed a powder keg, causing a gunpowder explosion.

The shells of the hexagonal rifled gun cannot be heated by a stove like a solid shell, and the incendiary shells can only be specially manufactured, and the price is much more expensive than ordinary solid shells, so there are very few incendiary shells equipped. However, the power of solid shells is already quite large, equivalent to the power of more than a hundred pounds of smoothbore artillery shells.

One can imagine a situation in which a 450-ton 4th class cruiser was hit by three more than 100-pound smoothbore shells, where could this cruiser withstand the blow.

The fourth-class cruiser, which was hit by a bullet, burst into flames and began to sink slowly.

"Fighting a cruiser, it's like playing! The firepower of a ship like ours is already equivalent to that of a battleship! Single-handedly, not a single battleship is our opponent! Albert felt that it was a pity that such a powerful ship would fight the Dutch cruisers. But he had no choice, the Dutch battleships were in the center of the fleet, and if his fast cruisers were to attack the Dutch battleships, they would definitely be beaten to death by the group of cruisers around the battleships.

"Turn, disengage! Don't get out of range of the red-haired ghosts! Zhang Jian shouted.

The oarsmen on the two fast cruisers, under the whips of the second class, rowed desperately their oars, and the ships turned, breaking away from the Dutch fleet, and once again pulled away, while the guns were reloading shells.

"Boom, boom, boom" The Dutch fleet erupted in flames, and the shells whistled and smashed towards the two fast cruisers of the Nanyang Navy a kilometer away.

Although the salvo of hundreds of naval guns of the Dutch was spectacular, at such a distance, to hit a Ming cruiser moving at high speed was no different from winning the lottery.

The two fast cruisers were reloaded, turned back again and attacked the Dutch fleet. This round of attacks sank a Dutch fourth-class cruiser to the bottom of the sea. (To be continued.) )