In contrast to what was previously expected, it seems that the Potosí silver mines are not as important to the Spaniards as they once were. Of course, it may also be that the devastating wind from the west made the Spaniards at this time have to shrink their forces, so when the main force led by Shi Yong approached the Potosí mining area, the defenders only had two or three thousand men.

Shi Yong is not an officer who is easy to underestimate the enemy, especially when he has had a lot of confrontational deduction experience in China. The team did not first launch an offensive to the north as soon as they captured Mexico City, but stayed for several days, how could the defenders here not get heard?

"This time our army is still organizing the offensive during the day, and the troops are careful when they advance. If the enemy is not strong, let the attacking formation be more dispersed, launch a tentative attack from all directions, and pay attention to the explosive defenses that the enemy may take... ”

If you think about it from another perspective, Shi Yong is convinced: when he gets the relevant news, he will either invest more than 10,000 heavy troops to defend the northern mining area, or he will completely abandon this place or at most leave some symbolic Indian servants to arm, and there is no reason to leave only two or three thousand people to send meat. Therefore, when it came time to attack, I prepared for the worst.

Indeed, as Shi Yong had predicted, during the attack on the Cassino mine, a violent explosion suddenly launched a directional blasting attack along what seemed to be an easy route, and in addition to the use of lead bullets, there were also many easily available gravel in the mining area that were used in the blasting attack. At the same time, because of the proximity to the mining area, the scale of black powder stored here is not small. This caused Shi Yong's 1,000 elite soldiers to encounter a lot of risks even when they had been prepared for a long time, and more than 40 people were killed and hundreds were killed or injured in a blasting attack by the defenders. If the attack had been carried out at night, there would have been no doubt that the losses would have been more severe.

If it weren't for the fact that the previous reconnaissance of the hot air balloon had roughly judged the strength of the defenders here, and judged that the size of the defenders was only about 2,000 people, and there were not many artillery, although they had some geographical advantages, they could not be compared with the defenders of Mexico City at all, and after a series of fierce battles, it was likely that the willingness of the rest of the team to attack would be significantly discounted.

When the team attacked again and approached not too far from the defenders of the mining area, but still did not encounter a demolition attack, the whole team regained the morale of the attack, and easily dealt with the defenders in a short period of time. After all, for the top combat sappers and archers of this era, without the support of super artillery, the opponent with a strength advantage of less than three times is often enough to inflict heavy damage on the opponent under the preparation of long-range projection.

This time, Shi Yong did not carry out a thorough purge against the surrendered enemy, because Shi Yong had already made up his mind at this time: the silver mines here were still valuable to the country for the time being. Many of the construction and renovation in the country also need the most sufficient hard currency, at least as much as possible, so the more manpower that can be used is a point, so it began to mobilize the Spaniards here and the Indians who did not escape under the original management system to continue the construction work.

After Shi Yong learned some about the situation here, he gave up the relevant emergency mining preparations, and went all out to prepare for the construction of basic fortifications and barriers. After all, the garrison of the entire opponent is very limited now, and if it encounters tens of thousands of decent enemy troops to launch a surprise attack, the entire team will not be completely sure of the chance of victory.

Thus, after five days of toil by Potosi with thousands of Indians and captives, the new reinforcements finally began to make the line seem to be much more fleshed out. The entire Potosi mining area also has a garrison of about 3,000 troops, and there is an escort team of about 1,200 people at any time. Clearly, Shi Yong has no intention of safely giving up on taking over the production of the silver mines. In addition to the financial benefits, this can also maximize the temptation of enemy forces to fight. Although the number of troops going deep into the interior is very limited, in fact, after a series of previous encounters and understanding the general combat effectiveness of the Spaniards, the officers and men of the Marine Corps are not afraid to engage in field confrontation with an enemy force of considerable size, but only feel a trace of fear of the pressure of the "Thousand Days of Thieves".

Contrary to Shi Yong's expectations, the Spanish counterattack did not come as fast as possible after a few days to ten days. At a time when the army had occupied the Potosí mines and even Mexico City for more than two months, and had made some stockpiling preparations in addition to a relatively complete defensive system. The children, who had taken turns on the hill in the Potosi mines, had noticed a movement, as if a relatively large enemy force had begun to assemble at a distance of forty or fifty miles, about a day's or so, as if ready to move at any moment.

After a closer and more daring reconnaissance by the team under the cover of the cavalry, it was finally determined that the scale of the enemy's counterattack this time was not 10,000 or 20,000, but about 40,000 or 50,000 troops.

This also made Shi Yong feel more or less strange: from the beginning of the naval battle of Manila, the Spaniards lost more than 50,000 or 60,000 troops from the sea to the road, although the previous Spanish Empire should have far more than this scale of troops, but its main force should have suffered a lot of blows in the expedition that year, even if there are still considerable remaining troops, how can they intervene so easily to overdraft their families to launch a full-scale counteroffensive?

It was only when the troops approached closer that they could be sure that the armor and even the armament of those men seemed to be significantly different from those of the Spaniards, and it was probably the forces of the other European armies that concentrated their forces to launch a counteroffensive against the seemingly weakly defended Potosí mines. After a lot of tentative encounters with the landed elites, it seems that the opponent has also begun to understand the contrast of combat power between the two sides.

Even with such a large military advantage, it seems that he is not ready to directly attack the Potosi mining area, which looks relatively weak, but pays attention to the encirclement and reinforcement with the transport team as the core, so he did not approach at the beginning, but prepared to launch an ambush battle with dozens of times the force, which also made Shi Yong have to pay attention to it, and this time he did not plan to fight a rout again.

(End of chapter)