"His Majesty the Emperor is very greedy!"

To the east of Ambuna Island, aboard the battleship Cornwallis, or also the USS Cornwallis, George W. Eliot, or Yilu, looked at Zhennancheng in the sunlight and sneered.

The castle is actually not that big.

After all, there are only 10,000 people on the island, including the second brigade, which also includes some merchants, if you don't count those edges and corners, the circumference of the entire castle is three thousand meters, which is basically equivalent to the level of an ordinary county town, surrounded by a thick city wall with a total of nine edges and corners, made of cement and granite, but it is still a rammed earth layer. At the top of the city walls were a trench connected to the ring gun emplacements, but the cannons were not visible from a distance, although Yilu was well aware that there were more than sixty cannons up to one hundred and ten pounds aimed at him in the castle, and it was even possible that he had come within range of them.

"Why did the general say that?"

An officer next to him said with a smile.

"Isn't he greedy enough to reach out to the East Indies before he even gets China?"

Yilu said.

"But it is clear that he has done us a great favor, and I am looking forward to the day when we will be able to bring our soldiers into this castle, His Majesty the Emperor has prepared everything for us, and now we are waiting for him to give it to us, if he refuses to take this castle as compensation for his murder of our merchants, then we will have to blockade Canton."

The officer looked at Zhennancheng and said happily.

Then he turned to Yilu and smiled and said, "Then the Tatar Emperor will definitely give us the Zhoushan Islands as a thank you." ”

Well, that's what they're for.

They were not prepared to use a brigade of land to defeat Yang Feng, but their fleet had enough strength to blockade Guangzhou, forcing Yang Feng to cede Anbuna Island to them as compensation, if Yang Feng refused to do so, they would continue to blockade, and at the same time go north to find Daoguang to ask for credit, asking Daoguang to give them Zhoushan, after all, they can help the Qing army defeat Yang Feng if they continue to blockade Guangzhou. But if Daoguang doesn't agree, they will take advantage of the Qing army's inability to deal with them, use this brigade to directly land and occupy Zhoushan, and then help Yang Feng force Daoguang to admit the reality, in short, they will not suffer, even if Yang Feng ceded An Buna to them, they can also seize Zhoushan under the banner of helping Yang Feng, they are a clever plan to eat both ends.

Anyway, this plan is also perfect.

"So we shouldn't destroy this city that will soon be ours."

Yilu said.

Then the two laughed together.

However, at this moment, a puff of gunpowder smoke rose like a cloud on the walls of Zhennan City.

"How dare they fire?"

Charles said with a stunned expression.

"Leave them alone, they just want to hold us back, so that their communication ship can reach Guangzhou before we do, so that His Majesty the Emperor has more time to prepare."

Yilu sneered.

It was clear that he did not know that the Ming army did not use communication ships at all.

Before he could finish speaking, a piercing whistling whistle was heard overhead, and a cannonball was hitting the sea less than ten yards away, stirring up a striking column of water, and the sailors rushed to the side of the ship with a scream, looking at the water column and then looking at the distance of Zhennan City, one by one with shock.

"At least six thousand yards!"

Charles said with a solemn face.

Yilu nodded expressionlessly.

This is not good news, although this is a coastal defense artillery not a naval gun, but in their plan to blockade Guangzhou at the same time, it is also to shell Humen to show strength, but if the Humen Fort is also equipped with such a cannon, then the display of strength will become a self-inflicted humiliation.

Their naval guns don't have that range.

Actually, it's nice to be halfway there.

At this time, he was also glad that he did not attack rashly, if he got closer, he was afraid that he would be hit by these cannons.

Yilu immediately gave the order to advance.

Led by the 1,700-ton giant warship under their feet, the huge British fleet quickly moved away and rode straight to Guangzhou under the impetus of the southwest monsoon current.

And on the gun emplacement in the south of the city, the city's garrison officer and commander of the 2nd Infantry Brigade Mo Jie watched them leave, and then pulled the cannon rope again with an unhappy face, and the 180 shore defense gun in front of him, which was actually equivalent to the cast steel version of the 110-pound Armstrong gun, once again erupted in flames, and the huge cannonball whistled out, but because the distance was too far, this cannonball still did not hit the target, although the range of this cannon was more than 7,000 meters, but it was a bit too exaggerated to expect the cannonball to accurately hit the target after flying for more than ten seconds.

"Send a report to the God Emperor, and besides, our level is too poor, so we will strengthen our training from tomorrow."

He said as he threw away the cannon rope.

Guangzhou.

"Four seventy-four guns and three guns, to be precise, they should be eighty guns, they are all good things!"

Yang Feng looked at the telegram and said.

This is indeed a good thing, of course, to be precise, it is a good material, in other words, it is all high-quality oak and teak, he is lacking this now, although Guangzhou also has a large number of ship materials, but they are all materials for making small boats, like this kind of high-quality oak planks and teak planks more than a foot thick can not be found at all, so he does not have enough materials to rebuild battleships, Dingzhenwei three ships are also teak bought from the British at a high price, at this time he will definitely not be able to buy. And the current steel production capacity is not enough to make all-steel warships, even if it is only to make ordinary steel-hulled ships, the protective performance is actually not as good as these thick wooden boards, don't underestimate these wooden planks, the protective power of half-meter-thick oak or even teak planks is comparable to armored steel, unless he armors the battleship, but then the consumption of steel is more, until now his steel production capacity can not meet the rapidly expanding army!

Some army soldiers still have wrought-iron guns in their hands.

So in the short term, he can only continue to build warships with steel ribs and wooden hulls, so the planks on these sail battleships are what he wants most.

Of course, the British will certainly not give it to him.

"God Emperor, the minister thinks that the fleet should go south to meet the battle, our speed is fast, the cannon range is long and more powerful, we can continue to fly their kites, they are from Zhennan City here, although it is smooth sailing at this time, but it will take more than ten days to sail, let's let the battleships follow them, all the way to the distance to attack, it is estimated that they will not be able to reach Guangzhou."

Zeng Tao said.

"No, just let them come!"

Yang Feng said.

Zeng's tactics were right.

The three ships of Dingzhenwei went south like maggots with bones and followed the British to fly kites for half a month, and it was estimated that they would have to escape without crossing Hainan Island.

However, this is not what he is aiming for.

So he had to get this fleet over.

"By the way, what did you just say about the Tuke problem?"

Then he asked Chen Wenmao.

This Cantonese opera martial artist was picked out of the army by him because of his flexible mind, changed to a civilian position, and is now the secretary of the Commander's Office, mainly responsible for dealing with the situation of the directors of the military management committees and the captains of the land reform teams in various places, Yang Feng's control area is still under military control, he set up a military school in the Commander's Palace, and selected soldiers from the army who are flexible and suitable for government management to personally train or xi's brain, and then appointed as the director of the local military management committee and the captain of the land reform, responsible for local government affairs and land reform. As for those villages, he can only choose his own village head, but he has to be appointed by the military management committees in various places, because the territory is small at this time, his military management committee actually goes to the township level, and he himself often patrols various places to solve some problems, and at the same time serves as an example for other places, but during this time he went north, and the problems of those land reform teams have a lot of backlog here in Li Wenmao.

"Hui Shen Huang, at the beginning of the fall of Guangzhou, the Tartars carried out a large-scale massacre, resulting in a sharp decline in population and countless wastelands, and then the Hakka people in the north began to move south, and the contradictions between the Cantonese people became deeper and deeper, so there were often armed fights, and we also encountered this problem in the process of land reform."

Chen Wenmao said.

"Did you fight?"

Yang Feng asked.

"That's not true, it's just a skirmish, after all, this is still secondary compared to dividing the field, which both the Cantonese people and the Hakka people understand."

Li Wenmao said.

"Then it's okay, you have to understand that whether it is the people of Guangfu or the hospitable people, even those Yao people in the mountains, those messy little contradictions between each other in the past, such as living customs and language, are essentially not worth mentioning, what is the real root cause of the Tuke fight? Isn't it just for the sake of land and water? The Tatar government and those landlords control the land, they take the vast majority of the fruits of labor, and there is only a little bit of the poor left, they are unable to compete with the landlords, so if they want to eat a few more bites, they can only snatch it from other poor people, because their ability can only do this, so that the small contradictions that are not worth mentioning will become big contradictions that need to be solved by fighting, and if there are any more people behind them, it will become a big war.

But what if the land was given to the poor?

They might as well hoe a few more pieces of grass in their own fields if they have the strength to fight!

One thing to keep in mind ......"

Yang Feng groaned and said: "The internal contradictions of the people are not worth mentioning in the face of the contradictions!" ”

In fact, he is not worried about a repeat of the bloody Tuke chaos on his own territory, because the basis of this great melee no longer exists, as Li Wenmao said, everything else is not important compared to the division of the fields, and those poor people who are waiting for the division of the fields know this very well. Originally, the history of the Tuke chaos was to put it bluntly, or the government and those gentry were pushing behind, wanting to annex each other's land and let the poor people be guns, without those behind the scenes, it would not have evolved into a melee that lasted for more than ten years, and now these black hands have long been swept away, and even most of those patriarchs have been brought to the public trial table with the progress of land reform, and the people who have just been assigned to the fields are busy sweating just planting their own fields, how can they still have the energy to come out and fight.

Go back and personally select a group of Cantonese soldiers or Hakka soldiers, and then use them as matchmakers to hold a group wedding, so as to eradicate the stubborn problem of not intermarrying between the two parties.

He didn't believe that there were still people who didn't give face to the God Emperor.