On the thirteenth day of the fifth month of the sixth year of the Revolution, at the time of the fierce battle in Batavia, the sails had already blown in the upper monsoon wind of the South Seas, and only sixty nautical miles from the city of Batavia, a huge fleet was advancing.

At the front of the fleet are six third-class sail battleships, namely Dingyuan, Zhenyuan, Jiyuan, Jingyuan, Laiyuan and Zhiyuan, all of which are named by Ning Yu himself, followed by more than 30 traditional Chinese-style cantons, and then more than 80 large and small warships, most of which carry black guns.

Dingyuan is the current flagship of the Great Chu Navy, the Great Chu Navy flag is hanging high at this time, the regimental dragon flag on the red background and yellow side is flying up and down in the wind, several Great Chu naval officers are standing on the bow of the ship at this time, the first of which is the Great Chu Navy Admiral Qiu Ze, and there are several admirals who are talking softly around him.

"The Dutch naval strength is on paper, they are by no means our opponents, and we will win this battle!"

"However, according to the news from the inside, Batavia has five new third-class battleships, plus the original four, it has risen to nine, plus other armed merchant ships, it is still not to be underestimated!"

"Junmen, do we want to go faster? Although there is no delay at the moment, I am worried that the deployment of the Batavian side will not be in chaos......"

"Let's do our thing, don't worry about anything else......"

Everyone made suggestions, but these remarks did not really enter Qiu Ze's ears, he just quietly looked at the endless sea, like a carved stone statue, firmly occupying everyone's attention.

After a long time, this admiral, who can be called the soul of the Great Chu Navy, slowly spoke: "In the past year, we have been immersed in the sea in Guangzhou almost day and night, and the shells fired are almost all the sum of the past, but even so, I still dare not slack off——"

"We've seen the Dutch ships before, and we've fantasized about fighting with them, but I'm still going to tell you? No matter how much preparation has been made beforehand? No matter what kind of plan you have, is it really time to be on the battlefield? Will it all come to zero? We only need one thing, and that is victory! ”

Speaking of which? Qiu Ze turned his head solemnly, looked at everyone and said coldly: "We must not live up to Your Majesty's high expectations?" Failure must not be allowed? If I don't win this battle, I will sink with the ship on the sea! ”

Everyone's hearts sank, and they bowed their heads together? What are the thoughts in your heart? Excitement, nervousness, fear, fanaticism, etc., all are left behind, and all that remains is dead composure.

To make a thoughtless cannonball, with the ignition of the fuse, to be launched into the sky? Make a beautiful arc and eventually hit the ship.......

After a night of driving? As the sky gradually brightens, a small blurry black dot appears at the end of the sea? The black dots are starting to get bigger, and the outlines are getting clearer? And at this time, the fleet of the Fu Han Army also hung up the signal flag? War clouds for a while? The smell of gunpowder between the two sides rose to its peak.

Obviously, the whereabouts of the Great Chu Naval Fleet did not hide from the Dutch East India Company, and the two sides would set up a clear flag in this sea area, and they would live and die.

Whether it is Da Chu or the Netherlands, they all understand a truth, the victory of the land battle will be determined by the naval battle, if the Great Chu naval fleet wins, then the marines with the army can calmly land, and take Batavia with the rebel army, on the contrary, if the Dutch East India Company wins, then everything will come to naught, and the rebel army will be destroyed without foreign aid.

Therefore, the outcome of the naval battle is not only concerned about the heartbeat of the commanders of both sides, but also the fate of the two empires.

When the sails of the Dutch East India Company clearly appeared in front of everyone, Qiu Ze did not panic at all, because when he saw the other party, it did not mean that the war was about to break out, in fact, because the sailing ship in the sail era was narrow, there were not many guns, and the range of the artillery was limited, so when fighting, the gun holes opened on both sides were used to fire a salvo, because this method is very similar to the line tactics of land warfare, so naval operations are also called line tactics.

When the two fleets meet, they usually need to get close to a distance of two hundred yards or more, and then face the enemy from the side, forming a long line of end-to-end lines, which is conducive to the fleet's firepower, so that half of the guns of each battleship can shoot at the enemy, so as to ensure maximum firepower.

Qiu Ze unhurriedly ordered the fleet to open the battle line and seize the advantageous position of the T-shaped, this kind of naval battle tactics that appeared as early as 1652 broke out between Britain and the Netherlands, and also achieved certain results, so when the Great Chu Navy was training, it would naturally conduct targeted training.

With the sound of a series of drums, the signal flags on the flagship of the Great Chu Navy fleet began to evolve, and those complex and effective flag information constituted the real background color of naval warfare in this era - victory never only requires courage, but also sufficient order.

I saw that under the command of Qiu Ze, the signal flag on the Dingyuan was constantly changing, and all the warships began to adjust their direction slightly, and they began to cut from the upwind position to the direction of the Dutch Navy's advance, so as to maintain their advantageous position in the upcoming naval battle.

As the commander of the naval operations of the Dutch East India Company, De Vries naturally discovered the movements of the Dachu Navy at the first time, this Dutch naval veteran was very experienced in naval battles in the past, and he easily judged the opponent's movements, but at the moment he also gave the order to let the fleet change direction in a hurry.

The two sides have already launched a very fierce game from the beginning of the tactics of seizing the T-shape, but compared with the experienced De Vries, the Da Chu Navy is more like a teenager who has just begun to grow up, so under the premise that the distance between the two sides is gradually narrowing, there is no achievement in this kind of playing tactics.

Qiu Ze naturally knew that the other party was not the kind of opponent of the Great Clear Water Division, he frowned and observed the battleship of the Dutch East India Company through the clairvoyant mirror, and continued to say calmly: "We have begun to gain an advantage at present, pay attention to the change in wind direction. ”

"Yes."

Huang Zeru, the chief of staff of the fleet on the side, also nodded lightly, after all, in this era of sail warships, warships have very strict requirements for wind direction, and often when they have a favorable wind direction, they can find the key to victory.

By the time it was ten o'clock in the morning, the game between the two sides had lasted for more than four hours, and by this time the distance between the two sides had reached within a thousand yards, and the guns in the bow of each ship began to roar, but because of the extremely low hit rate, neither side caused any damage to the other.

This is not a strange thing to find in this era of sail warships, after all, warships rely entirely on the power of the wind, maneuverability is limited, and when the actual forces of the two warring sides are almost equal, it is very difficult to concentrate forces in any form, and naval battles often last for a long time.

Eight hundred yards,

Six hundred yards,

Time passed little by little, and the artillery battle between the two sides also entered a very fierce stage, from time to time scattered solid bullets hit the hull of the opponent, and carried a large number of wood chips, and from time to time the naval soldiers on the ship were hit.

Looking at the fleet that was getting closer and closer, Qiu Ze's face became more and more cold, and he gave a series of orders very calmly.

"The four ships of Dingyuan, Zhenyuan, Jiyuan, and Jingyuan are ready to cut into the past from the upwind and shorten the distance with the enemy ships, and as for the two ships of Laiyuan and Zhiyuan, they will attack the enemy's flagship from a concentrated position, and they must bite it to the death and drag it into the melee!"

This tactic is actually beyond this era, because with the help of rockets, the Dachu Navy can completely cut the local fleet, and then use its own firepower advantage to force the enemy fleet to engage in a melee, so as to concentrate on attacking the part of the enemy fleet that is in a relatively upwind position, and because this part of the fleet is relatively in a downwind position, it cannot be very flexible to turn around under the control of the wind direction.

When the order was issued, the adjustment steps of the Great Chu Navy on the sea surface began to become more and more orderly, when this scene appeared in De Vries's eyes, he couldn't help but feel a deep jealousy, this opponent does not seem to be as simple as it seems on the surface, but there is a faint taste of cunning in the jerky, if it is baptized by today's war, I am afraid that the future growth will exceed everyone's imagination.

.......

When the naval battle was about to break out, the battle outside Batavia was also in full swing, and Huang Chu and Lin Cheng, as the leaders of the rebel army, placed more than a dozen baskets of silver dollars and silver taels in front of the battle, which would be used as a reward for the army, to boost the morale of everyone, so as to fight the Dutch in a bloody battle.

"Brothers, if you kill a Dutch soldier, we will reward you with a hundred taels of silver!"

"If you kill one of the officers or the leader, not only will you be rewarded with five hundred taels of silver, but you will at least be a five-rank official in the Nanyang Political Envoy Department in the future!"

A series of inspiring rewards were proclaimed, which boosted the morale of the rebels, who had begun to wane, and made the battle in front of them more and more brutal.

As the chief of staff, Xu Lin distributed his forces calmly, and the task he got was not to really capture Batavia, in fact, this was not realistic - if these two thousand five hundred people were well-trained old-school Fu Han troops, with the help of a large number of artillery, it was possible to take Batavia directly, and these people were not enough to do this at the moment.

For Xu Lin, what he really wanted to do was only to draw the attention of the Dutch, and it was best to attract the Dutch defenders of Batavia to pour out of the city, so that after the landing operation of the Fu Han army in the future, it would be possible to capture Batavia by surprise and achieve a complete victory in the war.

"Bang bang bang-"

"Boom—"

The Dutch mercenaries are actually not a strong army, after all, it is just a colonial mercenary, only those officers are Dutch, the others are some Javanese or something, and some are originally Chinese, but after the Chinese uprising, these Chinese soldiers were also detained by the Dutch East India Company.

A large number of mercenaries lined up in a neat line to launch a surprise attack on the rebel line, they shouted one by one, brandished the muskets in their hands, and often rushed halfway through, they were killed by the scattered shots of the rebels, and then the others began to be a little timid, and when the rebels threw grenades again, these Dutch mercenaries who were not stubborn began to run back, so such an offensive is naturally inefficient, not to mention a day or two, Even if it takes ten days and half a month, it is estimated that it is possible.

Xu Lin is naturally not afraid of such an army, he commanded the rebel army to repel the attack of the Dutch mercenaries, and began to plan a counteroffensive, he was naturally not satisfied with fighting with the Dutch mercenaries here, but hoped to attract the real Dutch army from the city as soon as possible, the number is not large, probably more than 1,500 people, but these people are the entire ruling basis of the Dutch East India Company in the South Seas.

As long as these 1,500 people are eliminated, the capture of Nanyang will be completely just around the corner.

Seeing that the attack of the Dutch mercenaries was once again defeated, Huang Chu walked up to Xu Lin with an excited face, he was a little apprehensive in his heart, but now he was completely unflustered, and laughed loudly.

"Chief of Staff, these Dutch soldiers really can't help fighting, should we hurry up and counterattack once?"

Huang Chu, who has begun to think of himself as a peerless general, doesn't care about what kind of characters he commands, but he is ashamed to give a counterattack proposal.

However, Xu Lin did have this idea in his heart for a long time, so he nodded and said softly: "The fight is definitely going to be fought, the more fierce the fight on our side, the easier it will be to fish out the real Dutch red-haired ghost from Batavia!" ”

"Come on, don't worry, Chief of Staff, we're going to hit these Dutch ghosts hard this time!"

Huang Chu happily led the people away, after all, they had been fighting for more than a day, and many people gradually stood out from the battle, and they began to become the core backbone of Huang Chu's underneath.

I saw that with the sound of rumbling drums, hundreds of rebel soldiers, led by Huang Chu and Lin Cheng, launched a counter-raid in the direction of the Dutch mercenaries on the scale of a small team, and for a while, crackling gunshots and explosions continued to sound.

In fact, when formulating tactics at the beginning, Xu Lin had already understood in his heart that the traditional line tactics required a very high level of training, and they were by no means something that the rebels in the current state of scattered sand could play, so a squad assault tactic similar to skirmisher tactics was more suitable for the rebel army, and the core weapon was a grenade.

The whole tactic is very simple, that is, the squad of rebels disperses to narrow the distance with the Dutch mercenary soldiers, and then with the cover of their comrades, they throw all their grenades into the crowd of Dutch mercenaries, and when the explosion sounds, they directly greet with the bayonets in their hands and the big blades on their backs, and pull the Dutch mercenaries into the melee.

Under this simple but extremely effective tactic, the morale of the Dutch mercenaries gradually fell into a state of complete collapse, and many of them gradually scattered in the sound of explosions, but they all began to flee for their lives in confusion.