I think the beauty of a person consists in a smile: if the smile adds to the charm of the face, the face is beautiful, if the smile does not change it, it is ordinary, and if the smile damages it, it is ugly.

- Leo Nikolayevich Tolstoy (one of the most outstanding writers in the history of world literature)

The officers and men of the Honma family's army, who had just fought four battles in a row, did not have even the slightest strength in their bodies, so how could they withstand the charge of the elite division under the command of Obwano? The more than 3,000 soldiers of the Honma family only symbolically resisted for about half an hour, and under the slogan of 'surrender and death' shouted by the soldiers under the command of Obwano, they put down their weapons and raised their hands high.

At the cost of 400 dead soldiers and more than 1,800 peasants, Obwano completely annihilated the invading army of the Honma family, and the commander-in-chief of the Honma family's army was killed in battle, and the number of Honma samurai who surrendered exceeded 300, and the number of ashigaru warriors exceeded 3,000!

The crux of the matter is that after this battle, the total number of samurai did not exceed 1,000, and the Honma family, which had less than 7,000 standing ashigaru, still had the ability to resist the landing of the Governor's Guard in Hamo-gun?

It is no exaggeration to say that now only Wendell, the commander of the Doge's Guard, needs to give Obwano an order to attack the Honma family, and Obouno, whose main force is still there, can lead the army to attack the Honma family and easily defeat the last army of the Honma family.

Whether Wendell will give such an order or not, no one has paid attention for the time being, because everyone's eyes have turned to the sea, and the Honma family, which has ruled Hamo County for a hundred years, has never been the most powerful army, but their Hamo navy!

The Honma family fleet, consisting of one Ataka warship, six large seki ships, twelve seki ships, and fifty Koza, encountered Brent's First Squadron not long after leaving the port of Hamo, and this time, the battle of the First Squadron did not go so smoothly.

The last time the First Squadron fought against Honma's fleet, the seven ships and sixteen Kozao of the Honma fleet did not pose any threat to the First Fleet, and Brent wiped out the Honma fleet and captured Honma with little effort.

Although the symbolic significance of the Ataka warships was greater than the actual combat strength, the combat effectiveness of the large ships was not weak; the fierce attack of the six large ships and the 12 ships of the gates, supplemented by the cooperation of the 50 ships on the periphery of the guerrillas, the First Squadron was inevitably a little tired of coping.

Brent was a good admiral who refused to admit defeat, but he was not a reckless man who did not know how to advance or retreat, and seeing that his fleet was besieged by the main force of the Hamao Navy, and one three-column battleship had been damaged and two double-lined battleships were in flames, he naturally could not fight alone.

Brent's signal for help had already been sent at the beginning of the war, but it would take time for Catrou's Second Fleet and Griffin's Third Fleet to arrive in the battled seas.

The large ships and ships of the Hamo Navy had been constantly closing in on the ships of the First Fleet, trying to use their best skills of hand-to-hand combat against the First Fleet, and Brent, who had the advantage of long-range engagement, tried to avoid this as much as possible.

While the warships of the First Squadron used evasive tactics to deal with the charge of the main warships of the Hachimo Fleet, Xiao Zao, who had a large number of Hazumo Naval Fleet, constantly interfered with the First Squadron with their rockets on the periphery and prevented the warships of the First Squadron from carrying out evasion tactics.

In the fierce naval battles between the two fleets, the ships of the Hamo Navy were constantly lit by the ships of Kohaya and Seki, and the warships of the First Fleet were constantly hit by rockets.

This kind of rocket, which has not undergone special treatment, can be easily extinguished by seawater; but how can there be so many idle manpower to extinguish the fire on a two-row battleship or a three-way battleship that is in a combat state? On the premise of not weakening the combat strength of the battleship, the captain of each ship can only send some oarsmen to extinguish the fire on the deck; in this way, the speed of the battleship with fewer oarsmen will inevitably be reduced.

The twin battleship that was the first to be hit by the enemy's rockets was also the first to reduce its speed, and as the speed of this battleship decreased, more and more Xiaozao launched an attack on them, and the dense rockets were almost every inch of the plank on the battleship.

The twin ships were getting slower and slower as the fire spiraled out of control, but the enemy ships besieging them were increasing, and the longbowmen and sailors on the ships were flesh and blood after all, and the dense rain of arrows killed them one after another, no one was exempt.

The captain of the command ship fighting on the deck was shot in the left eye by an arrow from an unknown enemy ship, and the severe pain made the captain instantly lose his combat effectiveness, and the only remaining right eye was obviously not enough to support him to continue directing the rest of the battle.

As a matter of fact, it took only about ten minutes from the time the captain was wounded in the left eye and lost his combat effectiveness to the time when the double battleship was engulfed in flames, and this double battleship of the First Squadron became the first battleship to sink in battle since the establishment of the Roman navy.

Seeing the twin battleship under his command sink to the bottom of the sea with burning fire, Brent, who had already prepared for loss, was still red-eyed, and no one could be indifferent to the death of his robe, especially Brent, who was extremely emotional.

Brent, who was clenching the wooden railing of the deck with both hands, shouted angrily at the helmsman below the deck: "Turn around, let's kill back!"

In a situation where his own fleet was clearly at a disadvantage, it was not an impulsive decision by Brent to abandon evasive tactics and turn around to face the enemy fleet, but a helpless choice he had to make, because there was not only one warship under his command that had lost its mobility advantage.

The loss of a twin battleship that had sunk was irretrievable in any case, and the two triremes and two twin battleships that were besieged by enemy warships were something that Brent could never give up, otherwise what difference would he have from escaping?

Brent, who returned with his own flagship, a triremitt, and a twinship, engaged in a hard-fought battle with the encircling fleet of the Hamo Navy, and the longbowmen, specially trained by barbarian warriors, were not weak in close combat.

After the hand-to-hand battle between the first squadron and the main fleet of the Hamo Navy broke out, the Admiral of the Honma family's navy, who thought that his fleet was about to win, was quickly attacked head-on; the barbarian warriors who put down their longbows and drew their short swords, and the sailors who had killed the Hamo Navy, who had boarded the double and triple ships, were defeated and retreated, and they could not even build a defensive formation.

Hundreds of Hashige Naval Warriors were slaughtered by the barbarian warriors on the battleships of the First Fleet, and Brent paid the price for this, one more twin battleship and one triremit were sunk one after another, and the remaining three triremes and two twin battleships were also covered in bruises, and there were fighting barbarian warriors and Hashimo Naval Ashigaru everywhere.