Because of the rush of time, Kong Tai could only ask Hadofer to help the Ming Dynasty build two forts to block the mouth of the Pearl River. However, this is also enough.

For Marin, what he wants is not for Daming to beat Portugal, but not to be beaten by Portugal. If the Ming Dynasty is completely defeated, coupled with the warlike Zhengde in power, it is likely to set off a wave of naval development, which Ma Lin does not want to see.

And helping Daming build a fort, this practice can suppress the Portuguese fire in the area where the fort is located. Then, let Daming see the hope of victory.

In other words, Marin hinted to the Ming Dynasty in this way - if you want to defeat the Francoman, you should overhaul the fort, not develop the navy!

As long as the two forts at the mouth of the Pearl River achieve good results, the Ming Dynasty will be led astray by Marin and embark on the road of overhauling the forts, instead of taking the route of developing the navy.

Besides, the cost of building a fort is low and the effect is good. With the character of those daimyo who did not want to cause trouble, they would definitely choose to build forts in key areas instead of building warships to fight the enemy to the death. After all, the expenses of Zheng Hebao's fleet have always made them scruples. Moreover, the practice of repairing forts is also consistent with the national policy of the Ming Dynasty to ban the sea......

In other words, the most fundamental purpose of Marin helping the Ming Dynasty repair the fort was not to help the Ming Dynasty abuse Portugal, but to fear that the Ming Dynasty would embark on the road of developing a navy because of the attack of Portugal!

The Ming Empire was a real sleeping lion, not a fake lion that had been drained of its backbone by enslavement education like the Qing Dynasty. Once the Ming Empire awakened its maritime consciousness, not to mention being able to participate in the world's great voyages, at least in the waters of East Asia and Southeast Asia, others would not be able to interfere. And this is not in Marin's strategic interests.

Therefore, in order to hinder the Ming Dynasty from engaging in great voyages, Marin specially offered a method of repairing forts to help the Ming Dynasty deal with Portugal with minimal effort and spend the least amount of money to get things done. Then, in the future, the Ming Dynasty will follow this example and vigorously develop coastal forts. As for the warships involved in the battle for supremacy at sea, they will naturally be gone.

The cost gap between repairing the fort and building a battleship is huge, and not to mention the cost of building a battleship, the daily maintenance of the battleship alone is a huge expense. You must know that warships at sea have to be overhauled at every turn because of maggots. Moreover, warships are prone to sinking at sea, or being sunk. All in all, the cost of the battleship was enormous. Moreover, the Ming Dynasty also currently lacked professional naval warfare talents.

However, building forts is different, as long as you build strong fortresses and erect cannons on key coastal points, you can block the shipping lanes and resist foreign invasions, which is very cost-effective.

And it's not that difficult. After all, it's a matter of building a fortress out of stone and then erecting a few cannons. This is not only easy to build, but also effective in combat!

After all, the battery had the cover of stone walls to withstand the shells of enemy warships. The wooden ships of the enemy ships, on the other hand, were not as solid as the stone structures of the batteries and could easily be damaged or even sunk.

In order to make the Ming Dynasty people recognize the fort, Ma Lin took out all the techniques of the fort in later generations. The solution was simple - a pair of cylindrical lugs were placed in front of the middle of the artillery.

Then, a stone platform was built, with grooves for the barrel and transverse grooves for cylindrical lugs. However, the grooves of the gun body are relatively deep, so that the gun body can move up and down with the cylindrical gun lug as the intermediate axis. However, because the lugs are placed in the middle of the gun shaft, the center of gravity of the gun is in the second half. All up and down angle adjustments can be done at the tail of the gun body.

In this way, the angle of fire of the gun is no longer fixed, but can be adjusted up and down. The adjustment range given by Marin is a maximum angle of 30 degrees, and the smallest, which is naturally a zero degree angle.

That is, the tail of the gun is completely down, that is, an angle of fire of 30 degrees. And if you put something on the tail of the gun, you can shoot the gun. However, due to gravity, the muzzle of the gun will be slightly adjusted to 5 to 10 degrees to meet the needs of shooting.

In addition, since it is a Beihai technology, the tail of the gun body can naturally be installed to look at the mountain, which can be convenient for shooting.

Although the caliber of the 12-pounder gun on the turret was a little smaller, in this era, the 12-pounder gun was already considered a heavy artillery. As for the Beihai State, which has larger-caliber artillery, it is still under secrecy and is unwilling to provide larger-caliber artillery to the outside world......

Under the guidance of Hadofer, the Ming craftsmen first built two durable stone forts with stones on the Weiyuan Fort and the Dingyuan Fort in Jiuwangmiao Village on the opposite bank (the Weiyuan Fort was proposed by Kong Tai according to the meaning of Ma Lin, and the Dingyuan Fort was named by Ming officials). Then, 10 battlements were left in each place, and the guns could be set up to shoot out.

The stone platform on which the cannon is installed is a fixed gun carriage that Marin copied from later generations and can adjust the upper and lower angles along the gun lugs. During shelling, the recoil of the gun is transmitted to the lugs, which in turn to the stone platform. However, the stone platform is very strong and heavy, and it is basically not affected by recoil. Thus, after the end of the shelling, there was no need for the artillery to be reset, and continuous stationary firing was possible. Of course, the gun body is fixed, which brings a bad consequence, that is, the difficulty of reloading the gun. But fortunately, the 12-pounder Napoleon gun was not very large, and it was not a hassle to reload. Moreover, because the barrel is not long, the muzzle is still in the battlement, which is also convenient for the gunners to load ammunition.

In fact, 10 12-pounder guns on the left and right are a bit few, and they are not powerful enough. Fortunately, the Portuguese did not have a professional warship like the 17th-century Galen. The carrak and caravel they use now are actually not very professional. The most important thing is that the sides of the mainstream European warships are relatively thin and have not been reinforced as they were later.

After all, artillery warfare was just beginning to become popular in this era, and everyone did not realize the need to thicken the side so that it would not be pierced. In the previous naval battles, which were mainly used to defend against bed crossbows and stone throwers on enemy ships, the side sides naturally did not need to be too thick. It is only after suffering a loss that the Europeans will choose to reinforce the side of the hull.

But apparently, the Portuguese had not suffered any great losses, and had not yet known how to thicken the hull. Unlike the Beihai Kingdom, because Marin is a traverser, he has long known the trend of future naval battles, and has thickened the side of the Beihai Kingdom's armed merchant ships early. As for the regular warships of the North Sea State, the side thickness is higher and it is more difficult to penetrate.

And the forts built by Hadolph for the Ming Dynasty happened to be one in the east and the west, and the Portuguese warships wanted to pass through the blockade line and go north to the Huangpu port in Guangzhou, and they would definitely expose the side sides to the range of the forts. Therefore, this time the Portuguese suffered a loss......

……

Of course, although Portugal is overshadowed, Marin will never admit it. Marin had already instructed Conté that once it was discovered that Da Gama's fleet had arrived at the mouth of the Pearl River, Conté would send a ship to tell Da Gama "sincerely" that we had not known in advance that your country was going to attack the Ming Dynasty, so we had helped them build a "fortress with artillery", and hoped that Da Gama would treat it carefully......

But with the arrogance of the Portuguese, coupled with the smooth sailing of these years, it is estimated that they will not listen to persuasion. However, as long as Conté's people persuaded Da Gama, and then the Portuguese suffered a big loss, it had nothing to do with the North Sea Kingdom - if you don't listen to persuasion, what can you do?

In addition, once the Ming Dynasty and Portugal started fighting, Conté would declare "wartime neutrality" against Portugal in accordance with Marin's orders.

What is "wartime neutrality"? In fact, it means that the two do not help each other. In the event of a war between the two countries, a third country that declares "neutrality in time of war" will not support either of the belligerents. At the same time, the armies and warships of the warring parties will not be allowed to dock in the ports of neutral countries. There will even be an "arms embargo" on both warring sides at the same time. In the early days of World War II, the United States connived at Japan and declared "war neutrality" and imposed an arms embargo on Japan and Chiang Kai-shek at the same time. However, at that time, Japan's own industry was much more developed than that of China, and it had a complete military industry, while Jiang Guangtou basically did not have any military industry. Moreover, the United States has not stopped exporting steel and other raw materials used to make weapons to Japan. Therefore, people thought that the United States was actually favoring Japan at that time.

In the same way, Marin asked Conté to declare "wartime neutrality", which seemed to be incompatible, but the Beihai State had already handed over the casting technology of the 12-pounder Napoleon cannon to the Ming Dynasty, and also helped repair the fort, and had completed the weapon support for the Ming Dynasty.

At this time, if "wartime neutrality" is declared, in fact, it is meaningless to declare it or not. Moreover, once the Beihai State engaged in "wartime neutrality", it meant that Portugal could not use the ports of the Beihai State on Taiwan Island for replenishment and ship maintenance. Once the Portuguese ships were damaged or undersupplied, they could no longer use the ports on the island. There were no supply ports for the Portuguese allies in the surrounding areas, so if you wanted supplies and ship repairs, you had to return to the port of Malacca.

However, the Port of Malacca is close to 3,000 kilometers away from Guangzhou, which is an extremely long way. Not allowing Portuguese warships to use the port of Taiwan Island seems to be neutral, but in fact, the ass has long been crooked to the side of the Ming Dynasty. However, even if the Portuguese knew it, they couldn't make trouble. Because, what people say makes sense. Moreover, they didn't let the Ming Dynasty warships dock for supplies......