The Russian Navy is a joke, the bathtub navy blocked in the Baltic Sea, the basic strength is equal to zero, but Spain has always been a maritime power, the Age of Discovery depends, even if he declines, he has never fallen below the top three in the world.

But all this is the old calendar, a major war in Europe at the end of last year completely rewrote the world naval pattern.

The combined fleet of France and Spain, in the case of equal hard power, was annihilated by the British navy, and if the vast ocean was a casino, the casino was missing two gamblers.

This naval battle was the Battle of Trafalgar, and in the short term this naval battle did not seem to obscure Napoleon's light, because he won the Battle of the Three Emperors in Austerlitz shortly after, and the emperors of Austria and Russia fled in a hurry before him, and Napoleon stood at the peak of his life.

But this naval battle was of great significance to the British. Before the naval battle, the British were terrified, as an island nation, they armed their army on a large scale for the first time in history, with 590,000 conscripts, a rare size surpassing that of the Royal Navy.

It was not unfounded that the British were worried, they did have a navy far superior to that of France, but France controlled the Netherlands, and Spain allied themselves with France, and the combined navies of these three countries were enough to pose a threat to Britain. On top of that, Napoleon was already a living legend, and the British saw Napoleon building warships in the Straits, stationing army soldiers, and actively training. They understood that Napoleon really wanted to land in England, defeated the European coalition of the anti-French alliance twice in a row, annexed the Netherlands and northern Italy, Napoleon ascended the throne and proclaimed himself king of Italy, and now he is going on another expedition to England, wanting to become the master of London, the British Parliament and the Bank of England, will the British think that Napoleon is bragging?

Twenty years ago, maybe they really thought so, after the Spanish Armada, the British naturally thought that Britain could not be threatened by continental countries, as long as their navy was there, they were superstitious about their Royal Navy.

But Napoleon's legend is not only on land, Napoleon also created a miracle on the sea, that is, that expedition to Egypt, under the siege and interception of the British Royal Navy, Napoleon insisted on more than 30,000 soldiers, as well as 700 war horses, 500 vehicles of all kinds, 1,000 cannons, 12,000 spare rifles, 100,000 round shells and powder kegs, as well as food for 100 days and drinking water for 40 days to get to the coast of Egypt.

Napoleon could command the French Navy to cross the blockade line of the British Navy in the long Mediterranean, and who would dare to say that he was not capable of breaking through the narrow English Channel? Compared to sailing in the Mediterranean, crossing the English Channel seems to require only one assault. Napoleon was so confident that he proudly declared, "With only three days of fog, I can be the master of London, the English Parliament, and the Bank of England." ”

So the British panicked and began a general mobilization, 590,000 people were conscripted, and all reserve warships were transferred to active duty, bringing the number of active warships to 240 and 317 cruisers. Desperately to strengthen the defense of the English Channel, a large army was formed. As an aside, it was also in this context that Henry Pitt wanted to expand in the western part of India and had to turn to China for help.

But the end result was that the Royal Navy completely annihilated the combined Franco-Spanish fleet when the strength was equal, and even the British thought they were weaker.

Later, the British declared: "One Trafalgar, one Moscow, ousted the invincible Napoleon." ”

The British really exaggerated themselves a bit and exaggerated the strategic significance of the Battle of Trafalgar, but in reality, the naval battle was only a small battle on the edge of the battlefield. Before the war, Britain had 240 battleships, Napoleon also built 103, in this battle, France lost only 18 battleships, which did not solve any problems at all, the navy is still strong in Britain and weak in France, but the main force of the French fleet still exists, and they still maintain the possibility of landing in Britain through a sneak attack, and the pattern has not changed from before the war.

The goal of the combined Franco-Spanish fleet was not to attack Britain in southern Italy, to contain Naples' support for Austria, and indirectly cooperate with Napoleon's land decisive battle with Austria and Russia in Austerlitz.

So it was just a small fleet used to fight against the weak Italian state of Naples, and it became famous because the British had too much power to speak, and as a result, the naval battle was promoted as a great war that would affect the world pattern, comparable to the ground battle in which the Russians defeated Napoleon.

But in fact, he was an inconsequential encounter, which did not deal a devastating blow to France, nor did it change the balance of power between the French and British navies, except that Nelson created a miracle in the history of naval warfare, and fought a rare war of annihilation in naval battles, which did not affect the overall situation in Europe.

The threat of Napoleon's landing in Britain was not lifted by this naval battle, but by the land forces of Russia, Austria and other allies on the European continent.

In the aftermath of this naval battle, the British and French navies continued to engage in warfare in the seas of the world, attacking each other and capturing each other. The year after the Battle of Trafalgar, in 1806 the British and French naval losses were counted, with the British losing 19 ships and the French losing 28 ships. In 1807, the British Navy lost 50 ships, of which only 7 ships with 22 guns and smaller were captured by the French Navy; The French Navy lost a total of 3 small boats, all of which were captured by British cruisers. In 1808, the British Navy was captured, sunk or wrecked 7 large and medium-sized ships, 26 small ships, a total of 33 ships. The French Navy was captured, sunk or wrecked10 large and medium-sized ships, 11 small ships, a total of 21 ......

This battle between the two sides on the sea, which lasted until the fall of Napoleon, during the entire Napoleonic Wars from 1803 to 1815, 12 battleships, 58 cruisers, 155 small ships of the British Navy were sunk due to non-combat or combat reasons, the vast majority of which were non-combat reasons, and 2 battleships were burned; The French Navy had 18 battleships, 13 cruisers, 23 small ships sunk due to non-combat or combat reasons, the vast majority of which were non-combat, and 1 cruiser was burned.

The losses caused by this Battle of Trafalgar were not even as great as the losses of warships caused by the British and French navies for non-combat reasons.

In fact, the most affected in this naval battle was neither Britain nor France, but the unlucky Spain, who lost 15 battleships in vain, which was almost the entire main force of the Spanish Navy in the era of the waning days,

The Chinese Navy has been expanding in an orderly manner in recent years, and Zhou Lang's foreign sailors no longer use the old lock ships to support the façade, of course, the old lock ships are still in service in the army, the number is as high as 200, but it is mainly used as a cruiser, used to escort and transport supplies, this type of ship was originally designed by the Portuguese to be used as a cargo ship.

The real capital battleships have all been replaced by serious battleships.

Ten years ago, as early as in Taiwan, Zhou Lang began to hire Dutch technicians to try to build European battleships.

After three years of exploration, only two battleships were launched, but after mastering the technology, the construction of battleships began to proceed in an orderly manner, and the number of battleships in service in the Navy also seemed to increase in an orderly manner.

Two to four battleships will be launched every year, the reason why it is not more, it is not that it cannot be built, and it is not that it cannot be raised, but mainly because of the lack of suitable raw materials.

The battleship Lion, as Magalny called it, was a classic three-class battleship, up to 48 meters long, and an adult oak tree should grow to more than 40 meters, which can be more than 100 years. This is still a third-class battleship, and if you want to build a second-class and first-class battleship, you have to look at your face. Because trees do not grow higher and higher over time, most of the trees stop growing to a certain extent, there are many factors that affect the growth of height, health problems, climate problems, etc., as long as there are pests and diseases, basically do not grow tall, and some of the wood looks very tall, but after cutting, it is found that it is impossible to make keel at all, because the heart of the tree is eaten by insects.

In order to maintain a superior navy, the British sealed off their own forests as naval reserve forests, and forced the British iron smelting industry to start using coke. Oak plantations were also planted in Canada to reserve timber for the British Navy a hundred years later.

Over the years, Zhou Lang has been stockpiling suitable timber everywhere, purchasing large logs from Vietnam, Siam and Nanyang, and slowly drying them in the shade.

Therefore, what restricts the expansion of Zhou Lang's navy is the most important keel issue.

In addition, there is the question of time, the timber must be dried for three or five years, Napoleon was in a hurry to build a fleet, under the blockade of the British Navy, he sought to buy timber everywhere in Europe, and the timber arrived to build battleships immediately, and when the Napoleonic wars ended, the last warships had just begun to be launched, but the first batch of warships began to rot, and the British warships were no problem for thirty or fifty years.

Zhou Lang's difficulty in building a navy is greater than that of Britain, after all, Britain has formed a system, the military industry has been running, and they even have enough ships on their slipway that can be launched at any time, the purpose is to slowly release the stress on the hull by drying it on land, Nelson's flagship first-class battleship Victory, which began construction in 1759 and only began service in 1778, took Zhengzheng 20 years to build, stayed on the slipway for 20 years, the hull stress was fully released, and the performance of the battleship was extremely excellent. This was also proved in the battle, which withstood the fierce fire of the French, but not a single British battleship was sunk in the naval battle.

Zhou Lang eliminated all kinds of difficulties, and it took ten years to finally create a foreign sailor division that could barely go on the table, the number of warships is as high as 30, of course, mainly third-class battleships, each of which is not exactly the same, the same level of battleships, there are also differences in the number of artillery, 64 to 80 guns, the reason why each one is different, is because the keel material is rare, each warship is designed according to the length of the keel, as far as possible to use the keel material to the extreme, so it can be bigger, try to make it bigger. It can be said that each ship is an independent professional project, not a standard product.

The third-level battleship is already like this, not to mention the second-level battleship and the first-class battleship, Zhou Lang worked hard, and did not hesitate to use the national power to collect raw materials, from the deep mountains and old forests in the northeast to the tropical rainforests in the South Seas, there are people who are helping his sailors to find suitable raw materials, the country's power is so huge, especially in the northeast region, the primeval forests in the Heilongjiang River basin have not been cut down, and there is no shortage of trees for hundreds or even thousands of years, which finally solves the problem of keel raw materials.

But these situations were only solved after Zhou Lang's Northern Expedition, or even after he controlled the Northeast, that is, in the last two or three years, most of the raw materials could not be used, so the number of second-class and first-class battleships was still scarce. At present, there are only three first-class battleships and only five second-class battleships.

Such a fleet level, not to mention compared with the British, even the Spanish who are dying in the mountains can't compete, but now the Spanish fleet is unlucky to be annihilated by the British, which gives Zhou Lang the opportunity to clean him up, is this suspected of bullying the soft and afraid of the hard? That's right, this is bullying the soft and fearing the hard!

Because of a very cruel reality, Zhou Lang must accept: after the end of the Zheng He era, on this vast ocean, the Chinese are just a new soldier!