My Daming New Empire

Page 434

The soldiers of the Ming Dynasty were short of meat to eat, but here they ate mutton, beef head meat, and camel meat casually.

The local people had never eaten rice or stir-fried vegetables, and the military camp had a lot of exchanges with the nearby people, and both sides were very satisfied with the changes in their meals.

After August [-]th, the preparations for this battle against Ceuta have been fully prepared. The fleet carried hundreds of Marin nobles and set off in a mighty way.

Target, Cape Ceuta on the south side of Gibraltar!

Daming will formally announce his arrival through a war that does not touch Europe's sensitive nerves!

Thank you for seeing people with lights, Shan Qingying, and Chongji City rr for their rewards. I have been on a business trip for the past few days, and I will update [-] words every day.

Chapter 48

For the first time since going to sea, Zhu Zhanji's heart became boiling.It's not because of fear, but because of excitement.

Except for him, no one knew that Europe, which was beaten up by the Ottoman Empire, would become the representative of modern civilization in the world in the future.

This impoverished place, where internal strife is fierce and people's livelihood is dying, has risen rapidly due to the influence of the Renaissance.

Because poverty leads to change, they dare to venture into the unpredictable sea, and they have obtained countless development resources in Asia, Africa, America, and Australia.

Relying on these resources, he occupies the top of the food chain with less than one-tenth of the world's population.

Although they declined in the twentieth century, their race has spread all over the world.Occupies more than half of the world's resources.

Until the 21st century, they are still the masters of this world.

It all started from this era.

And Zhu Zhanji came to this era just to change all this.

The Chinese nation has had an advantage for more than 1000 years in the history of civilization development, and Zhu Zhanji will never give up this advantage to others.

In front of Zhu Zhanji is a detailed topographic map of Ceuta, although the Marlins still have the fallacy of disproportion in large-scale map drawing.

However, the area of ​​Ceuta is less than [-] square kilometers, and it belongs to the simple terrain of two mountains sandwiching a flat land. There is only a narrow strip in the south that connects with the mainland.

The mountains here are mainly limestone, with cliffs everywhere, easy to defend but difficult to attack.The flat land sandwiched in the middle is a slender strip with a width of only 100 meters at the narrowest point.

But here is a natural deep-water bay. According to Marin's information, most of the water depth here exceeds ten meters. Even Zhu Zhanji's flagship can directly dock.

The Strait of Gibraltar is [-] kilometers long and [-] to [-] kilometers wide. It is the only sea channel between the Atlantic Ocean and the Mediterranean Sea.

The narrowest point is Ceuta in the south and Gibraltar in the north.

Because of the barrier of the Alps in southeastern France, in this age without trains, this golden waterway was the only passage between Western Europe and Southern Europe, and all trade had to be carried out through this strait.

Seizing Ceuta first and proclaiming Ming's strength to the whole of Europe is a common decision of the entire upper echelon.

Because this place belongs to Africa, and it was only occupied by Portugal two years ago, the occupation of Ming Dynasty will not touch the nerves of Europeans.

In the last war against Bengkulu, because Xue Lu was the army commander, he did not get the opportunity to go on an expedition. This time, he would never let go of this opportunity to make contributions in front of Zhu Zhanji.

Zhu Zhanji did not dampen his enthusiasm, and agreed that the young army's attack would be under his command.

According to intelligence, the Portuguese soldiers stationed in Ceuta only had 1000 soldiers in the army and about 3000 soldiers in the entourage.Besides that, there was a fleet of twenty ships.

However, the Portuguese ships were relatively small, and half of the twenty ships were messenger ships, so the total number of naval soldiers was just over 1000.

The existence of the fleet is not mainly to fight, but to inform.

Ceuta is only more than 200 kilometers away from Cape Vicente in the southwest corner of Portugal. When the wind is down, the light sailing ship can return to the Portuguese mainland in one day and call the Portuguese navy stationed there.

In the second year after Portugal captured Ceuta with only eight people killed, Osman III sent a large army to regain Ceuta.

But because the Portuguese had muskets and artillery, they were unable to take back Ceuta even after nearly 2000 people died.

The Portuguese reinforcements rushed over three days later and repelled the Marlins.

It was also after this time that Osman III no longer had the confidence to regain Ceuta.

With an army holding sticks and spears to face the formation of muskets and spears, it is difficult to pile up victories even with human lives.

But Zhu Zhanji was not worried after learning about the specifications of the Portuguese muskets and artillery.

The development of firearms in Europe began slowly during the Hundred Years War between Britain and France, and the history is only a few decades.

The muskets and cannons used by the Portuguese were not as good as the arquebus guns before the Ming Dynasty. They belonged to the most elementary Huomen guns. This kind of gun is very cumbersome to use and difficult for ordinary people to operate.

The so-called cannons are actually not the later cannons, and they are several levels behind Daming's current steel pipe caliber cannons.

They are enlarged fire door guns, about two meters long, with a hook in the middle, which can be mounted on the wall to shoot.This kind of gun generally requires two people to operate, and the rate of fire is three rounds in about 2 minutes.

The opponent's total strength is only about 5000, and the number of muskets is at most [-]. Most of the soldiers still rely on cross swords and spears to fight against the enemy.

For this battle where the big bullies the small, the fleet made serious preparations, reorganized the fleet, and took out the spare [-] heavy shields from the transport ship.

This kind of heavy shield is wrapped with pine wood and iron sheet, with a height of 1.5 meters, a width of 1.2 meters, and a weight of [-] catties. It requires two soldiers to move easily on the battlefield.

On the back of the heavy shield is a movable square wood, and below is a handle for soldiers to move.There are also two handles on the square wood. Open the buckle and put down the square wood. It is a natural support frame, which can make the heavy shield form an inclined surface of about [-] degrees.

When making these heavy shields, many people thought it was unnecessary, because apart from Ming Dynasty, no other country had muskets.

It was later that Chen Cheng and the others brought the news that the Central Asian Timur kingdom was also equipped with muskets, and the Ministry of Industry produced a batch of heavy shields.

However, these heavy shields were not used on the Timur country, but first appeared in Europe.

Although this kind of heavy shield is somewhat inconvenient to move compared to light shields, it can effectively protect soldiers from muskets.

The weight of eighty catties is not too heavy. According to the formation of the young army, two or five ten people can be accommodated behind a shield.Two people hold the shield, two hold the knife, and six people divide the shooting rhythm into three sections, which can form a strong continuous firepower.

On the nineteenth of August, the fleet sailed off Cape San Vicente in Portugal.When the mighty Deming fleet arrived at Sagres in Cape Vicente, the whole town was shocked by the invisible fleet on the sea.

Prince Henry, known as the navigator by later generations, is an engineer who is obsessed with sailing. As the third prince of Portugal, he hates politics. After he was named the governor of Agarve Province, he has been preparing for sailing in Sagres.

Just last year, he founded a nautical academy in Sagres, recruiting sailors from Italy, training native sailors, and improving their nautical skills.

He also set up an observatory in San Vicente, recruiting geoscientists, cartographers, mathematicians and astronomers from all over the world to study together and formulate plans and programs.

In addition, he extensively collected various documents such as geography, meteorology, trade winds, ocean currents, shipbuilding, and navigation, and analyzed and sorted them out for his own use.And based on the known map, redraw a new map.

He funded mathematicians and craftsmen to improve and make new nautical instruments.Improve the compass, quadrant (, horizontal scale) imported from China.

In sailing, ships are the most important.Due to the different sailing conditions between the Mediterranean Sea and the Atlantic Ocean, ships sailing in the Mediterranean Sea are not suitable for sailing in the Atlantic Ocean. Therefore, Henry put his greatest energy on shipbuilding.

To this end he adopted many preferential measures to encourage shipbuilding: anyone who built a ship of more than one hundred tons could get wood from the royal forest free of charge, and any other necessary materials could be imported duty-free.

But so far, Portugal has still not been able to build sailboats suitable for sailing in the Atlantic Ocean, and they can only move in the bath tub of the Mediterranean Sea.