"Look, that's so good!"

Ma Xin said proudly lying on the back of the sand bank.

A cannonball whistled over his head, instantly sending sand splashes not far behind, and the same cannonball kept falling back and forth in the sandbank, but it couldn't do any damage......

All the Ming troops hid in the trenches.

A narrow trench zigzags from the improvised pier at least a mile behind, just deep enough to keep one's head out of the ground when one stands in it, and the coastal sandbar is the easiest to dig here. And the local young men who had been temporarily mobilized in this trench were carrying boxes of ammunition from Chikan in small boats and unloading them at the improvised dock, and they were rushing to the place where Ma Xin was. On the side of Ma Xin, twenty forty-pound mortar cannons were lined up on the leveled and compacted ground in one ring gun emplacement, and the periphery was all surrounded by sand banks.

So the Dutch simply can't see it.

In the same way, the shells they fired could not hit at all......

That's a solid bullet.

And because the distance is too far to really aim at the solid bullets, these shells can hit the Ming army above the head of the smoke even if lucky, if they can still fall into the gun position, it is too against the sky, in fact, because of the height difference between the two sides and the sand embankment, this kind of thing is simply impossible.

And what about the Ming army?

"Good!"

An officer held a hollow beam with several glass tubes on it, placed it on the oak base of a mortar cannon, and looked at the horizontal plane that formed a straight line inside the glass tube.

With that, he quickly took the thing.

An artilleryman carefully put a shell with a wooden base into the barrel, because the wooden base is not so easy to fall, and he immediately pushed it to the end with his hands.

Another artilleryman punctured the bag with an awl through the ignition hole, inserted a fuse into it, and then everyone around him backed away, and he quickly lit the short fuse. The next moment, accompanied by the deafening sound of cannonball, the shell shot into the sky with the smoke of the fuse burning in the flames and smoke from the muzzle. The bronze ferocious recoil of the barrel, like a small tank, pushed the anchored oak base that was fixed below, and jerked back in the sand along a laid sleeper track, striking hard at the sandbank at the end of the track, but the sand canceled out its remaining recoil, and then it slid forward again.

"Quick!"

The officer then shouted.

A crowd of soldiers rushed forward and dragged the hundred-pound creature back to its original position, the officer immediately put on his improvised spirit level, and the soldiers pried up the rail sleepers and began to fill the planks to readjust the level that had been damaged by the recoil, while others cleared the chamber and loaded the ammunition.

After a period of tedious work, the level was found again.

"Good!"

The officer shouted.

The same procedure is repeated over and over again.

The sandy land here has a huge restriction on the use of heavy mortars, after all, the mortars rely on the ground to bear the recoil, the ground is too soft is not good, and the solid ground directly fixes the base of the mortar with wooden stakes and ground nails, but such a ground can only lay tracks. And this kind of annular gun position is one and a half meters deep underground, and the sand around them protects them and also blocks their sight, this kind of gunner can't see the enemy's shot also means that the angle is difficult to adjust, and Yang Qing can't have a cannon mirror, so he simply fixes the angle and finds the level first every shot.

That's enough.

After all, their goal is big enough.

And their goals are also fixed.

As for making the already slow rate of fire even slower, this is not worth mentioning, such an artillery bombardment is to be carried out around the clock, even if it is a shot every ten minutes, it is not a big deal, just enough time for the mortar to cool down. In this way, twenty mortars hidden behind the sand bank, in a slow but firm way, kept firing powerful cannonballs into the sky, causing them to fall from the sky in a parabola at a large angle and fall under the protection of the fortress of the city of Geranza.

Then it turned into an exploding flame.

The Dutch all cried.

Everything they had was wiped out by the explosion of these shells, and although many of them were hidden in underground warehouses that were not destroyed, there was nothing above the ground, and all the buildings were reduced to rubble in the constant explosions. What is more important is that they could not return fire on this shelling, they could not see the enemy at all, they only saw the smoke that filled the area, and the shells they fired at the risk of being blown up were meaningless.

Such a battle......

"This kind of fight is bullying!"

Ma Xin said proudly.

"General, the red-haired ghost has fought back!"

An officer, who was also lying on the sandbank, suddenly shouted.

The Dutch struck.

They could not endure it any longer, and had to fight back to destroy the Ming mortars.

Originally, during the siege of Zheng Chenggong in history, the main battle between the two sides was also this, that is, Zheng Chenggong bombarded the Dutch to destroy his artillery, and this tug-of-war lasted for a long time. However, at that time, Zheng Chenggong landed at the dock of Dayuan Town, abandoned by the Dutch, and then bombarded at close range with cannons, including 24-pounder guns, and at the same time built a gun fort with bamboo cages filled with sand that resembled sandbags.

But the Ming army was different this time.

The Ming army was in Erkun, where it was cut off by the sea unless the tide was high, and it was usually a long tail to the south, and then relied on the advantage of the long range of the mortar artillery to attack outside the effective aiming range of the Dutch artillery.

The Dutch could only attack, too.

Hundreds of Dutchmen rushed out in a menacing manner to the south.

But the Ming army did not attack.

The Ming army had to face not only the enemies of the city, but also the Dutch warships that had been hiding under the protection of the city, and these warships also fired their guns from time to time at sea outside. Of course, they are also meaningless shells, the shells of the city of Geranza cannot hit the Ming army below the ground, let alone these cannons at lower heights.

But......

The inland sea is a Ming warship!

Among the twenty Ming cruisers, except for five Dutch warships, the remaining fifteen were all on the other side of this sandbar, and after the Dutch rushed out violently, they immediately began to bombard them with a total of nearly two hundred cannons......

"Haha, this battle is comfortable!"

Ma Xin lay there, admiring the scene of the Dutch holding their heads and scurrying under the bombardment of naval guns, nibbling on the pineapple in his hand and said.

"They're negotiating!"

The officer beside him said.

"Uh, so unbeaten?"

Ma Xin was stunned.

Anyway, Caron had no interest in dying in the city of Geranza.

He and his men were nothing more than mercenaries, he was a Frenchman, and he was even the governor of the East India Company in Batavia, but soon broke away from the East India Company due to the expiration of his contract. In other words, as an employee who signed a contract to serve, he obviously did not have the courage to fight to the death, including everyone in the city of Geranza, and those Dutch were also contracted to serve. So far, the shelling has caused more than 200 casualties, plus the battle at the end of the northern front, the Dutch here have been killed and wounded by nearly a third, and holding on is nothing more than waiting for reinforcements, but their base is in Batavia, and the news is sent over, and it will take at least half a year for Batavia to move its troops north.

And they know very well that they will not be able to last half a year anyway.

Negotiation is the only option.

Just when the Dutch who attacked were bombarded by the Ming warships and fled back, the three Dutchmen walked out with a white flag, and then waved at the Ming cruiser on the sea......

"Leaving with your possessions?"

Zheng Cai said with a funny look at the messenger who was taken to Chikan.

"Yes, Your Excellency, we are willing to hand over this castle to your army as long as your army allows us to leave with our possessions."

The messenger said.

Next to him, He Bin translated for him.

"You came to rob our land, robbed us of our silver, and killed our people, and now you can't beat it and want to leave with what you have robbed, how can there be such a good thing in this world? Wouldn't it be a joke if we could still say yes? You can surrender, just disarm and come out, we can promise not to kill you, but if you want to go back, it depends on whether the East India Company is willing to pay you a ransom. As far as I know, this is also the most standard treatment for you, since you are a prisoner, you have to be a real prisoner, and as for the rest, don't be delusional. ”

Zheng Cai sneered.

"Your Excellency, General, we have an impregnable fortress!"

The messenger said.

"Ah, I saw it!"

Zheng Cai pointed to the city of Relan and said with a sneer.

The messenger looked back at the smoke-filled city of Geranza, and it was clear that there was not enough evidence for what he had just said.

"Mortar can't open the fortress!"

He said with little confidence.

"Then you can take another look at this!"

Zheng Cai pointed to the dock and said.

Several transport ships from Penghu had just docked at the wharf, and locally hired workers were carrying wooden crates one by one, and several officers on the wharf were opening the wooden crates to check whether the shells inside had been damaged during transportation. And the wooden crates with shells in the cabin of the transport ship are still being lifted, and not only this, but more cannons are also being unloaded from the ship, and another Ming army has already landed in the big force and began to carry cannons to prepare to bombard the city of Geranza with solid shells.

"You think you're at war with a small, half-civilized native prince in the South Seas? Or do you think you're in the Netherlands? You run tens of thousands of miles away, a huge empire with a population a hundred times your population and a land a hundred times your own, like a praying mantis standing at the feet of a tiger waving your poor paws, and still want to retreat with your whole body? Are you fighting those half-civilized or even uncivilized savages in the South Seas and Africa, and you are even a little carried away? ”

Zheng Cai looked at the frightened look on the messenger's face and sneered.

The latter was silent.

"You have no other choice, either disarm and surrender and wait for disposal, or you don't have to surrender, we will break down your so-called castle, and then throw you into the sea to feed the fish, surrender or die, the choice is yours."

Zheng Cai continued. (https:)

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