Chapter 398: The Crisis of Felburg

Since the advent of artillery, traditional square castles, no matter how tall and sturdy, have become unreliable for the defenders.

The enemy often first blasted several gaps in the battlements through artillery bombardments, and then erected ladders to allow the infantry to rush to the city, so to speak, if one wall was breached, the whole city would be lost.

Against this backdrop, during the Renaissance, Europeans invented the "bastion" – a fortress with a large number of irregular walls, whose high and low walls provided an abundance of firing points, and even if one was destroyed, the rest could still be quickly remedied.

Therefore, under the layers of fortification and repeated resistance, it was extremely difficult for the enemy army to calmly enter the city and rush in.

It can be said that this can be regarded as the germ of the concept of modern urban street fighting.

Historically, the Maltese knights, numbering less than 1,000 people, relied on these castles to successfully defend themselves against tens of thousands of Ottoman soldiers.

……

At the foot of Fairburg, the "city of Geranza" has a high base with a radius of about three miles, and there are four floors including the base.

The entire base is roughly rectangular, but the most important feature of the castle built on it is that it is irregular.

The façade of the fort, including the pedestal platform, is two stories high, and the only gatehouse opened in the north is itself a semicircular fortress protruding forward.

Entering the gatehouse, you will be flanked by corner stairs that lead straight to the second floor, and there are wells dug next to the stairs, so that even if the whole fortress is surrounded, the water will not be cut off.

However, the walls that extend to both sides do not spread out in a straight line, but gradually stretch forward like the wings of a great bird, so that the gatehouse is not alone, and at the end of the wall, at the corner, there is a strong fortress full of shooting holes.

This protruding fortress they called the "Bulge Fort".

The ground floor of each skew fort is solid, the second floor is connected by a corridor, and the roof is a fort.

In this way, no matter where the enemy attacks from, if you try to get close to the wall, you will be hit by fire from the left and right.

The other three walls, except for the absence of gates, are of the same structure.

Ascending the upper floor is the third floor, which is a stone fortress of similar shape, but with a large circle of shrinkage inward, which has the advantage of being staggered from each of the upper and lower levels of the convex fort to ensure that it constitutes echelon fire.

The Doge's Palace, located directly behind the fort's gatehouse, was a two-storey independent fortress, all made of large stone bars.

Behind the Doge's Palace, however, led to another separate fortress, inside which was a barracks—a steeple-roofed house with enough room for thousands of soldiers.

In addition to the dwellings, there are warehouses in these houses, and at the highest point of the four corners, there is an observation tower.

Inside the castle, in the open space in front of the barracks, a flagpole was erected, and on top of the high flagpole, a tricolor flag of the Republic of the Netherlands was messy in the wind......

Feuerburg knew that in the beginning, it was just a simple fortress, and later, it was rebuilt on the site several times to form its current size.

In 1627, his predecessors renamed the city "Zeelandia" after the name of the Netherlands, and it was not until 1632 that the first phase of the fort was completed.

Although the castle, which could accommodate more than a thousand soldiers, was considered to be very strong, Fairburg spared no expense and desperately strengthened the fortifications.

In addition, he also sent ships to Batavia to urgently ask for help, not only asking the Council of the East India Company to urgently increase the number of troops and deliver a large number of artillery, ammunition and other materials, but also asked for the dispatch of at least three large Galen gunboats......

The reason why Felburg is so nervous is simple - not long ago, they broke into a monstrous disaster!

Out of a moment of greed, his men not only attacked a large iron ship passing through the strait, but, more than a month later, they sent someone to track them down to Haojing, where they did something even more serious with the lurkers there.

"What a stupid thing to do!"

Looking at the busy harbor, Fairburg frowned slightly and muttered to himself.

It was almost dusk, and the red roofs of the large buildings outside the city reflected the setting sun, and the scenery was very beautiful, but Felburg was not in the mood to appreciate it at all.

Feuerburg knew that because of this incident, they were bound to offend the hottest force on the other side of the continent, the mysterious Ming Capture Army.

Numerous intelligences show that this group of Ming troops, which suddenly rose up, has incomparably powerful strength.

For more than half a year, everyone who opposed them, no matter how strong they were before, all became ghosts under their swords.

Feuerburg knew very well that paper could not contain the fire, once this group of Ming troops knew the truth and crossed the sea to attack in a rage, only with the strength of the Daguan himself, not only the city of Gelan would not be protected, but the fall of the entire Daguan would be inevitable.

For this reason, Fairburg was worried, and compared to the imminent formidable enemy, even if nothing else was taken into account, his troops were severely short.

He carefully calculated that all the soldiers on his hands were less than 5,000 people, of which at least 1,500 belonged to the fleet, and there were only more than 3,000 infantry soldiers who could really be used to defend various places.

Thus, in a letter to the Governor of Batavia, he stated that the Council of the East Indies would have to send him at least 1,500 to 2,000 soldiers and the necessary weapons, and that if the Council did not respond to its help in time, they would lose their vital outpost.

Felburg knew that the manpower problem was not the most serious, and that the current army was facing several crises, and even if the Ming army did not attack, their rule would be in jeopardy.

In addition to the threat of the Ming army, the financial revenue and expenditure of the current Dayuan are already facing serious losses.

Due to the increasing profits extracted by the Batavian authorities from the big officials, and the insatiable old men in the country who refuse to raise their hands and watch the autumn breeze every year, they have to increase their taxes repeatedly.

Under the successive tax increases, the public resentment has boiled, and Fairburg has a faint feeling that the patience of the Han people is about to reach the explosion point.

On the other hand, the outlook for foreign trade is bleak.

Although trade with Japan went fairly smoothly - since they did not preach in Japan, they were at least more popular than the Spaniards.

However, in recent years, the shogunate has become more and more assertive on the ban on the sea, and the total amount of legal trade has been decreasing year by year, and at the same time, the shogunate has also been quite dissatisfied with their large-scale practice of taking in Japanese believers and ronins who have fled abroad, and Nagasaki is the only trading port that has been opened.

And trade with Chinese mainland is about to fall into despair.

In the past, the Dutch had not been able to open the door to direct trade with China, but at least they had an agreement with the Zheng family on the coast of Fujian to export large quantities of grain, rice, sugar, and small quantities of arms each year in exchange for high-quality goods such as silk and ceramics.

In addition, some sporadic pirates who were keen on smuggling and looting still maintained their dealings with them, and the Portuguese, who occupied the mirror, had always acquiesced in their smuggling deals.

However, because they could not treat the Han people well, the successor of the original Han leader Zheng Yiguan, Zheng Sen, who was named the "national surname master" by the Ming court, was quite annoyed and had repeatedly expressed his dissatisfaction, and there was a faint intention to use force between his words, which made Felburg's heart extremely uneasy.

Thank you for the book friend "20180925021742700" for your reward on the starting point! Thank you!

(End of chapter)