Malacca.

"Admiral, a Ming reconnaissance ship!"

On the battleship Trafalgar, which was sailing out of the mouth of the Malacca River, the captain hurriedly walked into the command room of the fleet commander Yilu and said.

The latter is the best candidate for this position.

Although Yilu left due to illness immediately after the capture of Zhenjiang and had to return to England, the fact that he led the British army to victory in all battles was enough for him to win the title of Prime Minister Robert Brown. Peel's favor, especially since he had forced the Ming army to fight in Humen, and because of the last war, he was also promoted to admiral, and finally with Victoria's ardent hopes, Admiral Yilu once again led the new Eastern Expeditionary Force to fight the Ming army to the death.

"Scout ship?"

Yilu got up, walked to the window, raised his binoculars, looked at a battleship sailing west in the distance, and sneered.

It's a small boat with only one chimney.

The Ming battleships were all two chimneys, and the cruisers were all one chimney, and at this moment the smoke was constantly billowing from this chimney, and it was slowly westward no more than five thousand yards away, although the sails of the three masts were lowered, but the visual inspection was still close to ten knots, and this speed was still impossible for the sail battleships to pursue.

"Did you order the steam ship to pursue?"

The captain asked.

"Forget it, it's just a small boat, there's no need to waste time on it, immediately send the order to sail to Singapore at full speed!"

Yilu said.

Of course, the main thing is that he knows that it is useless to chase.

Although there were also eight steam warships in his fleet, including even four iron-hulled ones, they were all paddle gunboats, and although the maximum was more than a thousand tons, the horsepower was only more than three hundred, and it was impossible for such a ship to catch up with the propeller cruisers of the Ming army.

The speed gap is the biggest gap between the two sides.

The gap between simple artillery is not so deadly, the Ming army's rifled guns do have a longer range and greater power, but the sea battleship firing does not mean that the range is long, and the Ming army is also a waste of ammunition to pull the distance by 2,000 yards. It is more reliable to get closer to within 1,000 yards, but although the Ming artillery shells within 1,000 yards can exert their power, not to mention his 68-pounder cannon at this distance, even the 32-pounder cannon can also penetrate the Ming battleship, in fact, the ultimate range of these cannons can also hit 4,000 yards. But the actual combat still has to be 400 yards, in the era when a slight shake of the battleship can make all the efforts of aiming wasted, fighting bayonet style close-range face is the standard tactic, although the Ming army still has the accuracy advantage of rifled guns with a higher hit rate, but he has a numerical advantage to make up for it, there are 112 32-pounder guns on the Trafalgar, and only 42 guns on the Ming battleships.

They won't have three times as many hits as you, right?

But there is no solution to the speed gap.

The speed advantage allows the opponent to choose the attack position and attack target at will, and the speed difference of twice is simply one-sided abuse.

Fortunately, he never thought of attacking Guangzhou.

He's just here to defend Singapore.

The British government never thought of attacking Canton, and the descendants of these old pirates knew very well that a fleet with a maximum speed of no more than ten knots could simply defeat a fleet at sea that could reach a speed of nearly twenty knots, and that the latter had countless ways to play them to death, and the difference in speed between the two times was unsolvable. They sent this fleet only to protect Singapore, then blockade the straits to stop the export of rice from Bengal to Daming, block Yang Feng from buying rice from Burma, and threaten the Dutch and Siamese in Java with force to stop selling rice to Yang Feng. In addition, they could sell arms to the Qing army through the Burmese trade routes, and even simply send some British troops to Yunnan and Sichuan through Burma to help the Qing army there train their troops, in short, choking Yang Feng's neck to make it more difficult for him to fight the Qing army, forcing Yang Feng to release those prisoners and reopen the passage of the Taiwan Strait.

And then......

Ten years later, Britain built a large number of new warships, and then cleaned him up.

Construction of the newest Duke Wellington-class 1st class battleship has begun.

This wooden sail battleship has a terrifying displacement of up to 6,000 tons at full load, is equipped with more than 120 guns, and is also equipped with a steam engine of more than 1,000 horsepower, which is improved according to the steam engine purchased by the East India Company from the Ming Dynasty, and also drives a propeller, although it is too large to compare with the maximum speed of the Ming army, which is close to 20 knots, but it is estimated that it is no problem to run to 14 knots with the same tailwind and maximum horsepower, and the battleships of the Ming army are actually only 18 knots.

The gap is not so exaggerated.

In particular, getting rid of the dependence on the wind allows for flexible adjustment of tactics.

At this time, six of these ships were under construction.

In fact, not only Britain, but France has also begun to build the Valmy and Louis XIV, which also use sail and steam hybrids, and Europe is entering the era of sail battleships in full swing.

Even some of the older battleships have begun to be converted and steam-powered.

In less than five years, the Ming army will no longer have an advantage.

It won't take ten years for the Royal Navy to be able to dominate the crowd again with its strength, as for Yilu's fleet, it is for defense, the Avenger-class battleships are about to be scrapped, and even in the United Kingdom, there are many such warships in the cutting of decks and weight reduction, that is, the shell planks are removed and a new layer is removed, and the protection is weakened and the speed is changed to a large cruiser, which is similar to the battle patrol of the Ming army.

With a hint of embarrassment, Yilu stared at the Ming cruiser farther and farther away, while the giant battleship under his feet slowly turned east and sailed towards Singapore.

And in the back, one after another battleships rushed out.

A huge fleet of more than sixty warships, including more than forty cruisers and steam-powered gunboats, also turned east and followed their flagship straight for Singapore, not knowing what they had missed, only that the Ming fleet had arrived in Singapore and had begun its assault on the capital of the Straits Settlements.

Singapore, Governor's House

"Is this the dragon's wrath?"

Sir Bonham, Governor of the Straits Settlements, or Sir Bonham, as he later became Governor of Hong Kong, said with a wry smile as he watched the flames of warships in the distance.

At the moment these shells are at Fort Corning......

Of course, at this time, it was not called this name, this modern more common name, the hill of Fort Canning Park, the official name is Fort Corning Hill, at this time the core area of Singapore's military and government, but it was named after the Indian Governor General Inspector Les at the time of the Indian uprising. Canning's name, and at this time Canning was still in London as undersecretary for the Foreign Office! However, this fortress has been built in advance, after all, Yang Feng has already threatened to attack Singapore, with this hill on the north bank of the Singapore River only fifty meters high as the core, a newly built fortress constitutes the Singapore fortress at this time, surrounded by fortress-like walls, a fort and thousands of defenders guarded here, at this time they are operating a heavy artillery to shoot at the sea, and the whistling of cannonballs in the sky keeps flying.

Of course, it was the shells fired by the Ming army.

Shells flying from the estuary of the Singapore River, 2,000 yards away, trailed with faint traces of smoke and faint fire, continued to fall on the hill and then turned into terrifying explosive flames.

The power of the 120-pound blossom bullet is on display.

The huge cannonballs fired from this large cast steel rifled cannon were tearing everything apart with the twenty pounds of gunpowder filled inside, everything inside the fortress was shattering, the barracks were blown to pieces, the warehouses were reduced to rubble, the colonial officials and their Indian servants who were screaming and running away were also shattered in the explosion, and even on the city wall that was directly hit, those defenders and cannons were flying into the sky, and the whole fortress was full of fire and billowing smoke, and the craters and ruins were like pus sores on the noblewoman's body, In the basement, the old and weak women and children are holding their heads and wailing, and the most important city of the British Empire in the Far East is being wiped off the face of the earth......

Erased by the dragon's wrath.

"Your Excellency the Governor, the Ming army has landed!"

An officer rushed in with blood on his face and said.

"It seems that they are ready to humiliate us in the same way that we humiliate the Tatars, fight back, fortunately they have what we have, so it depends on whether our soldiers are more heroic or their soldiers are more heroic."

Sir Bonham shrugged as he looked at the dingries that were washing up on the beach in the distance.

Half an hour later.

"Forward!"

British Army Lieutenant Colonel Townlinson raised his white gloved right hand and raised his saber and pointed forward.

He participated in the Battle of Zhenjiang.

It's just that he was slightly wounded in that battle and returned to Singapore to recuperate, avoiding the fate of the Ming army's prisoner of war camp, and his companions are still in Guangzhou! Because of his experience in fighting against China, he was promoted to lieutenant colonel and led a regiment to Singapore.

In front of him, the lobster soldiers in a neat formation stepped forward, the flag bearer in front of him held the military flag, and the drummer who beat the war drums was followed by him, just like in the Napoleonic Wars, nearly two thousand lobster soldiers lined up in two horizontal columns marched forward with a slow but firm pace, and opposite them, a team of military uniforms of the same color was also marching forward, if you don't look at the overhead, there is actually no difference between the two armies, not only the uniforms are the same red, but even the shoulder straps and belts are the same white, but the pants are different colors, the British army is gray, the Ming army is black... …

Well, it's actually far away in the grass and I can't tell the difference.

So the way to distinguish between the Ming army and the British army is very simple......

Just look at the top of their heads.

The British army was a military hat, and the Ming army was a helmet.

At this moment, a battalion of Ming troops wearing helmets on their heads is also moving forward, neither side is firing, only the artillery behind them is constantly firing, the nine-pound howitzers of the Marine Corps and the twelve-pounder field guns of the British army are bombarded at a distance of 1,000 yards, one is a flowering shell and the other is a solid bullet, and soldiers on both sides fall from time to time during the march, but it is not enough to affect the advance of both sides, and soon the two branch columns entered a distance of two hundred yards, and then stopped advancing almost simultaneously.

"Raise your gun!"

As the British lined up a series of shouts, the lobster soldiers raised their rifles.

Minnie rifle.

In fact, it is based on the rifle purchased from Yang Feng to transform the brown bass, because of the use of the Griner cork expansion cartridge technology that was disdained and abandoned by the British Army, in order to avoid being considered an imitation of the Ming Army rifle, so it is collectively referred to as the Grenner rifle, the actual model is Enfield P1839, and it is also fired, the British have almost been able to fully replace this rifle, but the tragedy is that last year's Royal Arsenal armory fire, A full 250,000 ...... that have been renovated and are ready for renovation were burned

Well, this tragedy has nothing to do with Lieutenant Colonel Townlinson.

His regiment was all this latest cork-bottomed expandable rifled rifle.

Lieutenant Colonel Townlinson looked confidently at the other side.

"Aim!"

The sound of the password sounded at the same time.

Before his eyes, there seemed to be a scene of Ming soldiers falling in pieces, and then the well-trained British soldiers fired at a rate of five rounds per minute, all the time, and the Ming army collapsed in an instant, just like the Tatars at the beginning......

Uh, what about people?

Lieutenant Colonel Townlinson suddenly found that there was no one across from him?

The lobster soldiers who were ready to fire looked at each other in the same way, and the Ming army suddenly disappeared from their field of vision, and only the metal reflection of the helmet could be seen in the barren grass along the coast.

And almost at the same time, the reflection of the metal was densely sprayed with firelight, and the next moment the lobster soldiers who were lined up in a neat formation and were still raising their guns to find the target fell down in a dense bullet whistling like a storm, and the fire continued to spray like it never stopped, and the bullets kept hitting those dazed lobster soldiers, making their flesh and blood splash, and they fell down in pieces like encountering a cannon shotgun at close range. By the time Lieutenant Colonel Townlinson came to his senses from his astonishment, his men had lost nearly a third.

"Charge, they lie in the grass!"

He roared like mad as he spurred his horse forward.

A small group of cavalry who had been waiting on the side also attacked, they had been waiting for the Ming army to rout in pursuit, but this time there was no need for it, less than two hundred cavalry rushed forward, and the remnants of the British infantry also showed their bravery, and began to run wildly with their rifles on bayonets.

And the torrent of bullets on their side did not stop for a moment, and the British infantry who were charging intensively also kept falling, and the dead bodies stretched among the barren grass.

Staring at the tall grass that was spewing flames, Lieutenant Colonel Tang Linsen desperately urged the war horse, the cavalry beside him was also constantly falling, but he was still charging forward, and almost in a blink of an eye he saw the Ming army, the latter were all kneeling on one knee in the sand, under the cover of the wild grass nearly one meter high on all sides, repeating the action of loading and shooting at great speed, and their bullets were not loaded from the muzzle but from the tail of the gun, and the bullets from the muzzle could not shoot like this, he didn't think much about it, Just recently, a Ming soldier swung his knife forward while loading his bullets......

Suddenly, he received a blow to the chest.

He looked up in amazement and looked at the beach in the distance.

There were two small artillery-like weapons that had just landed, and the flames were constantly spraying, and the cavalry on both sides of him who rushed to the Ming line was constantly falling, and the next moment a roar sounded in front of him, and two bayonets pierced his body almost simultaneously......