In the second half of the night, the breeze gently pushed the waves to set off tiny sprays, but there was a loud noise, and the sea was pitch black, and only the ships could see the sea through the faint light of the cabin, and on the dark sea, led by the old fishermen, with their usual familiarity, the whole fleet quietly sailed out of the harbor channel and turned to the anchorage of the British fifty nautical miles away.

The officers of the Military Intelligence Department in the port watched the battleship depart, and then waited for the final result of the Spanish fleet.

After the victory, the British were completely defeated, the Spaniards gained the upper hand, and there will be another opponent of the Chinese Empire here in India, although this was recruited by the Chinese Empire itself, with the purpose of confusing British rule here and making trouble for the British.

Defeated, the Spaniards will be gone, they will not get any compensation, because they are here to find a foothold in the Far East, every sea frontier and every island of the Chinese Empire, even if they have ruled for a century before, it is not theirs now, they can't find any opportunity, or even if they have the opportunity to land in a place where the patrols of the Chinese Empire's sailors are weak, they don't dare, the combat effectiveness of the Huaxia Navy's divisions is not comparable to them.

In the distance, the Celestial Shadow disbanded the Bengali troops, most of the troops were taken over by the Spanish army major, the war was won, of course they had to take back the command of the troops, but the troops were left with less than 5,000 soldiers and horses, the battle was won, and the various tribal warriors who had been recruited as they were going home, only some tribal warriors who had nowhere to go, and the soldiers recruited by the Spaniards remained.

The British were able to control the whole of India, which was as big as China in later generations, and the Spaniards also had more than 1,000 regular army soldiers and more than 700 mercenary soldiers, and these people were scattered among the more than 5,000 indigenous soldiers, which was enough to make this army an elite force, even more elite than the British.

There are more than 3,000 British, more than 1,000 of whom are stationed in various places, and they cannot be transferred, and more than 2,000 people are scattered and 7,800 people control more than 100,000 Indian troops.

The Spaniards sent only 300 regular army soldiers and 500 mercenary soldiers, including only a dozen regular army officers and dozens of mercenary officers, who controlled more than 5,000 indigenous armed forces in Bengal, which was almost equivalent to teaching the indigenous troops hand-in-hand compared to the British.

The Spaniards left in Dhaka three hundred mercenary soldiers and five officers, three regular army officers, more than a thousand indigenous soldiers to control the locality, more than two thousand indigenous soldiers in the port, more than three hundred mercenary soldiers, eight officers, ten regular army officers, a hundred regular army soldiers, and of course the troops guarding the wounded barracks, which are now overcrowded.

Nearly 8,000 were seriously wounded indigenous soldiers, more than 800 regular army soldiers were wounded, more than 500 mercenary soldiers were wounded, and they were guarded by more than 100 Spanish regular army soldiers, dozens of mercenary soldiers, and 500 indigenous soldiers.

The remaining regular army officers, as well as mercenary officers and soldiers, more than half of them patrolled the land, clearing out Indian deserters and rebellious indigenous tribes in Bengal, bringing back the wounded and their captured guns, gold, silver, goods, and so on.

A small half of the forces boarded the battleships of the fleet, assigned to the Spanish battleships, about a few hundred native soldiers, more than a hundred mercenary soldiers, and the rest of all the regular army soldiers except for the guards of the port, more than a thousand people.

Of course, so many soldiers are to guard against the ship's jumping gang combat during the naval war, hand-to-hand combat, and it is still the era of sails, everyone ships rely on the ship, and when the ship is captured, the close-range shootout, and then stab each other with knives, axes to cut off heads, teeth bite necks, these are still the mainstream, although the British have pioneered long-distance artillery combat, but the sea combat in the era of sails, it is still inevitable to capture the enemy's ships in close combat.

The Spanish fleet sailed into the darkness in a neat queue and headed for the enemy at a speed of six knots per hour.

But soon as the sea breeze increased, the speed of the ships began to increase to eight knots, and the Spaniards intended to end the battle quickly, sailing at the speed of combat cruising, and the speed of the ships was raised to about nine to ten knots, and after four hours of sailing, the fleet appeared near ten nautical miles to the left of the enemy's anchorage, and since the sky had not yet completely dispersed, and it was still in the darkness before dawn, it was impossible for the enemy lookout posts to find them in the darkness.

The fleet lined up in battle formation, the contact lights at the stern of each ship became brighter, and the contact lights began to appear in the bow, and it was impossible to ignore the fact that they had to fight in the dark, otherwise their own fleets would have collided with each other first.

Lined up in a long snake formation, the whole fleet began to circle around, in a semi-arc state, with a radius of five nautical miles, towards the harbor, all the artillery has begun to open the gun doors, load ammunition, although in the dark, the movement will not be too slow, no matter how to say that it is also the regular fleet of Spain, and those pirates are not the same, training every day, at this time it shows their quality.

In the sea breeze, the inevitable sounds and collisions, and the shouting, and the increased signal lights between the ships, attracted the attention of the British lookout posts, and the British lookout sailors on duty on the masts stood up, squinting sleepy-eyed and hazy eyes, and carefully searched for the flickering lights with binoculars.

Suddenly he shuddered, remembered what it was, the fleet, only the fleet has such a frequent flickering large-scale light signal, the lookout post grasped the telescope with both hands, his body stiffened for a moment, then put down the telescope, pulled the bell white pull rope at the top of the mast, and shook it vigorously, vigorously, and a crisp, loud, eager bell spread throughout the entire fleet, and the flagship at his feet.

He opened his throat and shouted below, "Enemy attack, massive enemy attack, enemy fleet is coming, prepare for battle, prepare for battle." ”

The urgent bell made the British battleships in the entire harbor anchorage brightly lit up, in the sea breeze, in the bells, shouts and footsteps, and many dark shadows up and down, climbing all over the masts and hulls of each battleship, and then all the battleships began to move, and the signal lights of the communication flashed continuously, which gave a clear sign to the Spanish fleet that had completed the turn and lined up in battle formation.

Three miles away, the gunners of the Spanish fleet, who were passing in a battle line, raised their barrels, aimed the barrels of the bow of the ships at the anchorage of the British, and with a cannon sound, the flames soared into the sky, and then the guns of the bow of the fleet, which were advancing in turn, began to fire, and the fierce unloaded shells faced the sea breeze, and violently rubbed against the air, making a sharp sound, which was like a reminder, and the hearts of the entire British fleet fighters were suspended.

The shouts came and went, and in the panic, two British thousand-ton sail warships collided head-on, the battleships that had just set sail and accelerated were entangled together, and the two mainmasts were tilted together, and a lookout fell from the height of the mast with a scream, and crashed headlong into the deck of another battleship, making a ——, bang, and then the sound stopped abruptly.

However, as the sound disappeared, thirty-five shells hit the British anchorage in a trapezoidal fan, and although it was impossible to stop the ships at sea one by one, the distance would not be too far, because the anchorage was also limited in space, and it was still in a harbor, and soon as seven British warships were hit and caught fire, and the others rushed to the exit of the harbor in a panic, pulling the sails, filling the sails, and facing the wind, while hastily using their bow guns to return fire.

When the second round of artillery fire came, most of the British fleet had already rushed out of the anchorage, almost less than 800 meters away from the Spaniards' trapezoidal battle line fleet, and the guns on the battleships on both sides opened fire one after another, and for a time the smoke of gunfire was confused, the fire ignited the darkness, and the sky had gradually brightened, and the two sides had almost a general understanding of the comparison of the strength of the two sides.

Lieutenant Colonel Portman, the commander of the fleet on the British side, and Captain Phillips of the Army, held the binoculars with a confused expression, they had just returned from the negotiations with the Spaniards, and they did not achieve results, they thought that they would prepare tonight, and go to fight the Spanish fleet tomorrow, let the Spaniards know that they were powerful, and don't think that their original dragon crossing the river could suppress their local snake.

No matter how they have been operating in India for a century, the whole of India is their sphere of influence, and they all listen to them, and the explosive population is not inferior to the Chinese Empire, which has grown from tens of millions of people to nearly 600 million people after more than 30 years of development and more than 20 years of war.

But that kind of development is urgent development, and the Chinese Empire has taken the measures to disrupt the nation, the residential area, the administrative deployment, and the cultural attributes, so that everyone has become a rootless drifter, so that it is convenient for the Chinese Empire to control the population, control them, from culture to ideology, from personal to living arrangements.

The Indians are better than the Chinese, their ancestors have lived in one state for generations, even if one village goes to another, it is hundreds or even thousands of years old, even if it is a war, even if it is a brutal suppression carried out by the British colonists, they are not dead, they still firmly control their tribe, unless this tribe perishes, and other tribes have survived here, it has a history of one or two hundred years, and the British have been dealing with them for a hundred years.

They believed in the English more than they believed in their king.

With this confidence, the British were not afraid that the newly arrived Spaniards would shake their roots, and if it was the Dutch and French, they might panic, but the Spaniards never ruled any part of the place, not even a village.

Heavy artillery fire, gradually forming a fleet in battle formation, under the destruction of the enemy, the British launched an orderly return fire.

In the face of the attack of Spanish artillery mixed with solid shells, the British ships were only injured, as long as the mainmast was not broken, they still had the ability to maneuver, and they still had combat effectiveness.

(End of chapter)