The navy's previous actions were strictly constrained by the Ministry of War, and it resolutely refused to agree to the navy's request for war, how could a costly fleet risk smashing in a disadvantaged decisive battle, this is probably also Li Hongzhang's mentality during the first day of the war, and the literati always lack the spirit of adventure. Pen | fun | pavilion www. ｂｉｑｕｇｅ。 ｉｎｆｏ

Therefore, before the navy, the navy only sent cruisers to search on the sea sporadically, hoping to find the weaknesses of the opponent, such as the French army dividing troops for no reason, leaving a chance for the Ming army to eat their detachment.

The main fleet has always rested in coastal defense, because of the lack of wireless communication era, they can only wait for news in this place, once there is news of the division of the French army, they can immediately light a fire and anchor and rush to the French army.

But they never waited for this opportunity, so the war was fought for more than a year, and they only tried each other sporadically with small forces of the other side, and the seas of East Asia were unusually calm, and there was not a single great war that took place.

But this time they are going to act, and ten 3,000-ton armored cruisers launched the year before last will be organized into a fast fleet to go south, crossing the French-occupied Da Nang for the first time and going deep into the southern seas, and the combat goal is not to fight a decisive battle with the French navy, but to carry out a battle to break diplomatic relations.

Part of the purpose was to harass the French transport lines from Saigon to Haiphong, after the encirclement of Da Nang, supplies could only be obtained by sea, the French navy did not dare to divide the forces, so not every transport ship could be protected by the navy, for these ships, directly sunk, because there was no chance of capture at all.

The 10 second-class ironclads continued southward, detouring around the Gulf of Siam and cruising on the line from Singapore to Bangkok, cutting off the French troop convoy passing through the Strait of Malacca at any time.

British-controlled Singapore will not be open to the Ming Navy, but the British will not refuse to have businessmen buy coal and other materials in Singapore to supply the Ming Navy, they intend to use this way to circumvent the neutrality law, but Bangkok is open to the Ming Army, not because Siam is not afraid of France, but because they chose to take sides, they see the advantage of the Ming Dynasty, and think that the Ming has the hope of driving France out of Vietnam completely.

The expulsion of the French from Vietnam was something that Siam, Vietnam's sworn enemy in history, was very willing to see, because the French had brought them more pressure and a worse impression than Vietnam. The French took away Cambodia and made it a French protectorate, and before that, Cambodia was a protectorate of Siam, but also a vassal to Vietnam, sandwiched between Vietnam and Siam, and always a victim of Vietnam's struggle for hegemony on the South China Peninsula.

As soon as the French come, let alone Cambodia, Vietnam itself will not be able to protect itself. At first, Siam may still feel happy, and it is delightful to see the appearance of a mortal enemy, but there are always long-term people who will feel that the death of a rabbit and a fox is sad, and Vietnam cannot resist France, and the next target of the French is obviously Siam.

In the past, Vietnam was able to keep their country, but this time France directly entered the Vietnamese Nanjing Division, obviously with the intention of exterminating Vietnam, and Vietnam's today is not Siam's tomorrow.

In terms of understanding international diplomacy, Siam and Vietnam are two completely different countries, and Vietnam, like the Manchus, is extremely conservative, proud of its Chinese etiquette, and considers itself Little China. Siam is an Indian cultural country, historically Brahmanism and Buddhism were introduced from Vietnam and conquered here, and now it is a purely Buddhist country, and it is not interested in Confucianism.

Therefore, Siam itself was not closed, and the emperor was relatively enlightened, and King Rama V (Chulalongkorn) began to carry out gradual reforms more than ten years ago, with the establishment of a councillor in 1874, the gradual introduction of a new administrative structure, the establishment of a standing army, the reform of the tax system, and the construction of a railway network.

One of the biggest reasons why Rama V is different from other Eastern kings may be because he was educated in the West since he was a child, and his father was a relatively enlightened person, who recognized the general trend of Western invasion and invited an American female teacher to teach Rama V since he was a child, which is the famous story of Anna and the King.

He was educated in the West and was relatively open-minded, and after the reforms of Rama V, he continued to send the children of the royal family abroad, which gave him a large number of reformers with the same worldview, so that his reforms would not be isolated.

However, Siam is not a nation with a strong personality, and cannot carry out drastic reforms like Japan, so it can only take small steps and jog, and the reform is carried out very slowly, and the improvement of national strength is limited. As a result, they were unable to resist the invasion of the colonists, and signed unequal treaties with Britain and France.

In this diplomatic activity, the Ming army did not lack contact with Siam, and at first it was mainly hoped that Siam would speak out politically and condemn France. But Siam, believing that his French power was close at hand, remained silent. This time, the Ming army decided to go south, needed a supply base in the south, and found Siam again, hoping that Siam would provide support.

To this end, the Ming army promised to allow Siam to occupy Cambodia once the Ming army expelled France from Vietnam.

And Siam was allowed to not need to conduct substantive military operations until the Ming and French armies decided the victory, but only needed to provide some non-military help.

Attracted by the lucrative profits and under the pressure of the crisis, Siam felt that it would be beneficial for Siam to form a good alliance with the Ming Dynasty and confront or even expel the French forces.

At the same time, they also consulted the British, and found that although the British did not explicitly express their support, they emphasized that they would not interfere in the normal diplomatic activities of Vietnam and the Ming Dynasty, and Siam judged that the British supported the Ming in this war. They are even more confident in the final victory of Daming.

So they accepted the Ming's request and opened Bangkok to the Ming, allowing Ming warships and merchant ships to supply here, and Siam was willing to provide grain and grass help.

In this way, the southbound detachment of the Ming Dynasty found a base with a suitable location, and the main fleet of the Ming Dynasty was divided into three.

The first, with first-class ironclad ships as the core, based on coastal defense, regularly went to sea to patrol south to Da Nang; The second, based in Hue, cruised south to Saigon, waiting for an opportunity to attack the Vietnamese convoy. The third was to go directly south to the South Seas as an interceptor fleet to block the French troop carriers.

The division of the Ming navy gave the French a chance to eat the Ming fleet in batches. But at the same time, it also aggravated their threat, because at any time facing the threat of the main fleet of the Ming Dynasty moving south to Da Nang, the main French fleet could only continue to stay in Da Nang to defend. They were also worried about the safety of the Ming cruiser fleet for transporting supplies, and they also had to divide their forces to escort the transport fleet.

As a result, after the Ming Dynasty gave up the tactics of concentrating the fleet for a decisive battle, the French army also gave up the plan of concentrating warships for a decisive battle, and both sides actually divided their forces.

The Ming army was divided into three, and the French army was also divided into three, the main force was still stationed in Da Nang, and the main fleet was here, so the Ming navy could not rest assured that it would go south, but it maintained a fast cruiser fleet in Saigon, the main purpose was to escort the ship, and as for the third one, it also went to the South Seas to pursue the Ming fleet.

Obviously, the French army planned to use their naval superiority to divide their forces and gather to annihilate the southward fleet of the Ming Dynasty, and the Ming Dynasty had been waiting for the French army to divide the troops, but in the end, they gave the French a chance first.

At this time, the French fleet in Da Nang was 20 main ironclads, the Saigon fleet was 10 armored cruisers, and the southbound fleet was also 20 warships, 10 main ironclads, and 10 fast cruisers.

The French did not pose an obstacle to the destruction of the railway, the technicians of the Ming Dynasty have been trained, and the Vietnamese people are not lazy, the railway bridges blown up by the French, the Ming army engineers temporarily replaced them with wooden bridges, and the bridges on the Taiping Railway in the United States, many of which are also wooden bridges, the bearing capacity of wood is much larger than the average person thinks, and it can fully support the temporary opening of traffic. The French did not dismantle many rails, because they did not have time to rip off every inch of rails. Maybe there is no such will, maybe the French colonial governor still has the dream of counterattacking as soon as reinforcements arrive.

With the railway foundation basically intact, the Ming engineers quickly re-laid the tracks, and the train moved towards Saigon kilometer by kilometer.

In the vicinity of Saigon, small groups of Ming troops and local Vietnamese militias have become generally active. Their role here is not to fight the French army, but mainly to fight the local puppet army formed by the French, and the purpose of the battle is not to destroy many enemies, but to hinder the concentration of strategic materials to Saigon, to put it bluntly, to attack the local grain delivery team.

The whole of Vietnam was fighting, with the rumbling of artillery on the frontal battlefield, the escort of the naval fleet, and the resistance to food and donations in the vast countryside.

The French reinforcements are also getting closer and closer, from Marseille by boat, through the Suez Canal to Vietnam, the fastest as only a month and a half, the Suez Canal is built by the French, although the British have seized most of the shares, but the French are navigable from here, and the British can not stop it, but the British can inform the Ming of the movements of the French army, it can be said that to a certain extent, the British army has begun to tend to the Ming Dynasty to win the war as soon as possible, and then go north to resist Russia.

As for France's withdrawal from Vietnam, or even the proposal of East Asia as a whole, that would be nothing more than one less competitor for Britain.

The French army passed through the Suez Canal, the French army passed through Pondicherry, and the French army entered the Strait of Malacca.

During this period, the mixed formation of 20 French ironclad ships and cruisers has always been maneuvering with the Ming fleet going south, and has almost bitten the Ming fleet many times, and the Ming fleet has successfully escaped, and once again the French navy even sailed into Bangkok, only to find that the Ming fleet left the port an hour earlier. Although the French wanted to bombard Bangkok, they were forced to withdraw from Bangkok after the protests of the Siamese and the intervention of the British. At this time, the French did not want to force Siam into the war again, but they probably had already made up their minds to teach Siam a profound lesson and seize Laos from Siam as soon as the war was over.

Just when the French troop transport, escorted by twenty warships, passed through the waters of Singapore, the Ming fleet, which they had been pursuing for more than a month, suddenly appeared in front of them, and at this time the French army was horrified to find that the Ming fleet concentrated here was not ten as shown in the intelligence, but thirty, and the main fleet of the Ming Dynasty had all arrived!

It turned out that the Ming Navy, which had the initiative in information, had been setting up a trap for the French, making the French think that the Ming Navy had been divided into three fleets to break diplomatic relations, and the Ming Southbound Fleet had always been circling with the French army, making the French always think that only these ten warships were operating in the Gulf of Siam.

However, when the French troop transports entered the Strait of Malacca, the three fleets of the Ming Dynasty quietly converged south last night, just waiting to make a deep impression on the French army.

Just when the Ming fleet thought that it had the advantage and used thirty warships against the French ten, it suddenly found that a French fleet appeared behind it, and it turned out that the French also kept a hand.

The Ming fleet immediately divided ten cruisers to turn around and intercept the French fleet behind it, and the main force of twenty first-class ironclad ships and second-class ironclad ships went straight forward to meet the French escort fleet, twenty against twenty, equal in strength.

The rumbling of cannon soon rang out over the sea south of Singapore.

Built in 1843, the carriage road of Bukit Timah Mountain is filled with Western-style carriages one after another, and although the mountain is only more than 100 meters high, you can still see the battle on the sea in the distance from the park built on the top of the mountain!