As it got closer and closer, the accuracy of the artillery bombardment improved, and in the enemy's counterattack fire, the Huaxia fleet withstood the enemy's intensive firepower, relying on its own hull to be harder than others, and forced to kill from the east to the southwest, and from the other side of the harassing Huaxia division, their addition made the Huaxia fleet have 20 warships that could fight, with the situation of the battle line, once again around the north periphery, to attack the enemy's fleet.

Because there are fewer and fewer warships, the warships of the two sides before, there are more than 600 warships, circling in the wide sea of thirty nautical miles, close to each other to fight, Zheng Zhi and their fleet also rushed over to fight in a gang, because there are too many, so many ships in Xie Lan's fleet are actually overwhelmed by the number and number of ships of the enemy, because there are too many ships, thirty nautical miles looks wide, but in the fight between more than 600 ships, it is really not very wide, so many ships were captured and burned.

At first, except for Xie Lan, who killed nearly a dozen enemy ships with the advantage of long-range artillery fire, and later damaged and sank more than a dozen enemy ships again with the fierce artillery at close range.

Several sides also lost one or two warships, so that the two sides reduced a total of more than 30 warships, every 30 warships, the battlefield was a point wider, in the second half of the early stage, it was Xie Lan's Huaxia Navy fleet that lost the most, nearly 70 warships and warships lost, in the middle period, the battlefield was even wider, the eldest prince was led away by the new warships of the Huaxia Navy Division, more than a dozen ships, sunk fifteen, the battlefield was wider again, and finally the eldest prince's fleet was led away by the Huaxia fleet, driven away, and finally eliminated, the battlefield suddenly opened up.

As a result, Xie Lan's fleet was able to fight with Zheng Zhi's fleet even though it was seriously injured and greatly attrition.

When Du Ge's fleet came, there was pressure, but in the end it was violently beaten by the Huaxia fleet, sinking more than a dozen ships and destroying three ships as soon as they came up, so that they could run to the periphery to continue to deal with Zheng Zhi's fleet, at this time Zheng Zhi's fleet was only about thirty ships, although it was supplemented by the old-fashioned armed merchant ships on Palawan Island, but it was contained and crushed by five Huaxia ships, and finally when the twenty warships of the Huaxia fleet took over Du Ge's fleet, Xie Lan and they finally breathed a sigh of relief.

With twenty wounded warships and warships, they reached the periphery to chase the fleeing Zheng Zhi fleet, and yes, Zheng Zhi's fleet escaped.

In order to escape, Zheng Zhi changed to a three-hundred-ton Dutch warship, the smaller the tonnage and the higher the speed, and left the remaining dozen warships, allowing them to block the pursuit of Xie Lan's nearly thirty warships and warships.

Du Ge's side was actually very angry, losing nearly sixty ships, and later, seeing that he had no hope of victory, he fled with his fleet in the direction of Siam.

But how could Zhang Qiang give up on him?

Leaving the fleet to go around in circles and drag the nearly seventy or eighty warships and battleships that Du Ge left on the battlefield, he quickly chased after five Huaxia battleships, causing more than a dozen warships to lose power along the way and could only float on the sea.

By the time they reached the southernmost sea of Annan, it was already completely dark, and Du Ge and their fleet had only a dozen or so warships left.

"Catch up with him and annihilate them." Zhang Qiang roared on the deck of the ship.

Kodak rested wearily against the hard abutment at the bottom of the ship's mast.

Today can exhaust him, he has never experienced such a high-intensity battle since he became a soldier, he is not as old as the middle-aged Zhang Qiang, he is fifty years old this year.

"Separate, each boat is spaced five miles apart, communicate with light signals, light a bonfire at the bow of the ship, reflect the light with a glass mirror, and search the sea." Zhang Qiang gave orders in succession and walked around tirelessly, this was the only time he approached the traitor Du Ge at close range, and he must be arrested.

Kodak said weakly: "Your Majesty, the enemy still has more than a dozen ships, and if we go west, maybe the Dutch on Gogong Island will meet them, in the dark night, we can't compare with the enemy who surpasses us in number except for the speed, so forget it, the army of the Third Fleet will arrive tomorrow, and we will look for them then." ”

"No, no, I must find him, I will divide him into five horses, this traitor." Zhang Qiang still gave orders unrelentingly.

So in one night, the five Huaxia ships searched for nearly 80 nautical miles, but they found nothing, and when it was darker, the overcast weather on the sea continued for the previous few days, and the distance that could be seen was no more than 30 meters from the hull, so the enemy disappeared in the vast sea under such circumstances.

When the sky was about to dawn, Zhang Qiang woke up from his dream, feeling a chill on his body, and the chill made him have to wake up, with a wool felt on his body, the bonfire around him had not been completely extinguished, and the energetic Kodak was commanding the fleet to meet, and eight Huaxia ships were coming at high speed not far behind him, looking at the speed, it reached a speed of eleven knots in the six-level wind, which completely exceeded the speed of ten knots during the operation.

It seemed that they were worried about their safety and chased after them from behind.

Chasing after was Perran, who led eight battleships of the Huaxia.

On the battleship were the soldiers of the original Zhang Qiang's personal guard regiment, as well as the personal guard battalion of Peilan of the Third Fleet, and a battalion of the Marine Brigade of the Marine Division of the Third Fleet.

When Peilan got on the Huaxia 310 ship, Zhang Qiang learned about the battle situation near Palawan.

"Your Majesty, this is the case, the temporary fleet I led finally dragged Du Ge's seventy warships and warships, those battleships and warships led by the capture of our Fifth Fleet, and then the Huaxia auxiliary ships, the flying clippers dragged the British fleet, and sank, destroyed thirteen enemy warships, and when the five Huaxia ships that were held prisoner were replaced by Xie Lan's fleet, five Huaxia joined the battle, and they broke the British fleet, but the British were cunning, and their ships were shallow, Eventually, we escaped into the heart of the Borneo archipelago, and with the presence of Han Chinese pirates from the South Seas on board, we escaped from us in the small islands of Borneo and disappeared. Eventually, they had three ships fleeing the battlefield.

Later, the addition of seventeen Huaxia ships inflicted heavy losses on us, and captured fifteen of the seventy warships, and sank the rest, and we sank a total of four hundred and fifty enemy ships in Palawan, destroyed one hundred and thirty enemy ships, captured two hundred and thirty ships, captured the eldest prince, the second prince, Zheng Zhi, Du Ge, and the English, and the Spaniards, a total of seventy-five thousand sailors and soldiers.

We lost 630 warships and 260 warships in this battle, and one Huaxia was severely damaged, one lost power, one auxiliary ship was sunk, one was heavily damaged, the other Huaxia were all wounded, there were still 20 Huaxia ships that could fight, and only 9 auxiliary ships remained.

In addition, our personnel losses amounted to 53,000 sailors, 13,000 were taken prisoner, most of the rest were killed in battle, and a small number were seriously or lightly wounded. ”

Zhang Qiang felt that the sky was falling, the Fifth Fleet was destroyed, the Sixth Fleet was cut and sold by him, and the rest were arranged to the Fifth and Fourth Fleets, and some of them were arranged to the Third Fleet and the defenders of the Third Fleet in the Trench Gate Realm.

When he was worried about how to reduce and arrange the manpower and ships from the Sixth to the Fourth Fleet, this naval battle seemed to have helped him, directly destroying most of his two fleets, the two fleets totaled only 800 warships, battleships, and the loss of more than ninety percent of this time, if you add the losses of the Third Fleet and the losses of the Huaxia Fleet, then it is equivalent to the Fifth Fleet is gone, and the Fourth Fleet can be directly abolished.

Originally, he wanted to dismantle or sell all the remaining 2,300 warships of the Huaxia Naval Division, but now he no longer needs to use them, and he directly has about 1,500 warships and warships left.

This amount of troops was not enough to cover the coastline of nearly 2,400 nautical miles of the entire Huaxia Kingdom.

If you expand outward, from Shikoku Island to the Gulf of Siam, the entire East China Sea, the South China Sea, and the defense line in the inner circle of Luzon Island is more than 5,700 nautical miles, which is not enough for the ship to cover.

However, this also reduced the military and maintenance expenses of the naval division, the salaries and pensions, and the welfare expenses, and the officials of the household department were afraid to die of joy.

The cabinet's Zhou porridge is about to snicker.

The financial expenditure has been reduced, and they can use all of it for domestic development, instead of investing a lot of money in the sailor, who previously had 6,000 warships, but it was a gold-swallowing monster, and it would eat nearly one-third of the financial expenses of the Huaxia Kingdom every year.

The battle was a pyrrhic victory.

But on the other hand, it also established the sea power of the Huaxia Kingdom, and there was no longer a strong water enemy that could threaten the Huaxia Kingdom in the thousands of miles of sea around the Huaxia Kingdom.

Just as everyone was cheering for the arrival of reinforcements, Zhang Qiang was exchanging information with Peilan and Kodak, and a six-hundred-ton warship of the Huaxia Navy fleet came from the sea in the distance.

The captain of the Huaxia 310 shouted in surprise: "Oh, isn't that the first 600-ton warship we sent to reconnoiter the direction of Manila?" Wasn't he sunk by Du Ge's fleet? Or was it not caught by the later Spanish fleet? ”

As the six-hundred-ton warship approached, Zhang Qiang saw the dense bullet holes on the warship's body, which were smashed by the enemy's solid bullets, and the mast on the sailing ship was also lowered a lot.

There were also a lot fewer people on board, and for a six-hundred-ton warship, according to the past, there were more than 300 sailors, gunners, soldiers, and twenty or thirty miscellaneous servants in a boat, but now there were only fifty or sixty people in the queue, and it seems that they escaped after a hard battle.

When the captain and captain of the navy board Zhang Qiang's ship and tell what had happened to them, they brought the news that Zheng Keshuang had arrived again, and that he would be waiting for him in the Trench Gate.

Zhang Qiang was a little distressed, I don't know if this Zheng Keshuang and Zheng Zhi are all the way, whether Zheng Zhi's behavior is the collective resolution of the Zheng family, and whether it was instructed by Zheng Chenggong.

(End of chapter)