It was too easy to attack Penghu, Li Changgeng's fleet was greatly weakened after the last blow, and with Zhou Lang occupying Zhangquan, Fuzhou and other places, Li Changgeng could not even gain a foothold in the Fujian Sea, Penghu was isolated between Fujian and Taiwan, and even the most basic food could not be self-sufficient, even if he did not fight him, I am afraid that the defenders of Penghu were also thinking about it.

But unexpectedly, Li Changgeng chose to defend Penghu, which really wasted Zhou Lang's efforts. Although the ships with superior firepower did not suffer losses, more than 300 people died, which was the largest casualty in a single battle since Zhou Lang raised his troops, and there were no such large casualties in the attack on Guangzhou and Fuzhou.

To attack the Penghu Islands, 30 ships were mobilized, 4,000 infantry were dispatched, and it took 20 days. But the results were also brilliant, Li Changgeng's fleet was annihilated, and Penghu fell into the hands of Zhou Lang. Li Changgeng, the most capable sailor general of the Manchu Qing Dynasty, died in front of the battle, and he did not disgrace the identity of a soldier, but it is a pity that he sacrificed for a foreign regime as a Han Chinese, and he can't help but feel a little regretful.

After the occupation of Penghu, any ship that passed through the Taiwan Strait to the north, whether it was pirates or merchant ships, was under the cover of Zhou Lang's forces, and Zhou Lang could consider collecting tolls from incoming merchant ships.

It's just that the delay of more than 20 days makes Zhou Lang quite regretful. With the agreement with Chen Zhouquan on the Northern Expedition, Zhou Lang's strategy was adjusted, and he met the ambitions of his subordinates to attack the whole of Fujian. With Chen Zhouquan sharing the pressure in Zhejiang, Zhou Lang only needs to face the Qing army in Jiangxi and Guangdong, and the pressure is greatly reduced, and according to Zhou Lang's estimate, the Qing court will definitely focus on attacking Chen Zhouquan, and it may only be local troops to deal with him, in this case, if he still does not dare to act, it is not cautious, but cowardly.

So he immediately decided to give it a go and take the whole of Fujian.

Because it was necessary to establish a stable defense system before the Qing army counterattacked, Zhou Lang's time was very urgent, and he had to fight with the Qing army for speed, so Penghu's military operations affected Zhou Lang's actions.

The thirty warships sent to Penghu are not a problem, because Zhou Lang's fleet has now expanded to fifty, and if he sends thirty warships, he still has twenty to control the Fujian seas, and full control may not be possible, but no one can threaten the coastal prefectures and counties of Fujian where Zhou Lang's warships are at sea.

The main thing is that the thousands of infantry sent to attack Penghu weakened the forces that Zhou Lang used to attack Fujian.

10,000 infantry had been transferred from Taiwan, and another 20,000 pirate troops had completed their training and were temporarily used as infantry, but they were not able to equip them all with rifles, and half of them had to carry captured spears. Zhou Lang can use a total of 40,000 troops, Penghu accounts for one-tenth, and he is the most experienced veteran with combat effectiveness, which will of course affect the battle situation.

Because there are too many places to use troops, if you want to occupy the whole of Fujian, you need to ensure that you block the counterattack of the Qing army, fight the total strength, obviously you can't fight the other side, and you have spread out the competition with the Qing army one foot and one inch, even if Zhou Lang's army is stronger, sooner or later it will be consumed, so we must consider the efficient use of troops, the most effective is the old method proposed by Wang Fuqian, advance to the area of Wuyi Mountain, and use the dangerous pass to block the other party. It is possible to use a small force to contain a large number of Qing troops, but it can be done.

Wuyi Mountain has a saying that there are eight major Xiongguan passes since ancient times, and if you hold these passes, you dare not say that you will not let a Qing army enter the pass, but at least you can block the Qing army from entering Fujian head-on. A pass with 1,000 people and corresponding cannons is believed to be easier than the ancients to guard the pass.

However, Wuyi Mountain is located in the interior of Fujian, and if you want to fully occupy the Wuyi Mountains, you need to control the main roads along the way, and now most areas of Fujian are still occupied by the Qing army, although they are vulnerable, but to control is not the same as occupying, and the control needs to be guarded by dividing troops to prevent the Qing army from counterattacking, preventing them from destroying the communication lines, and preventing them from threatening the logistics lines. At this time, the mountainous terrain of Fujian caused trouble for Zhou Lang, because the mountains and forests were too convenient for the enemy to hide, so you had to occupy them all the way, and you had to divide your troops all the way.

In this way, Zhou Lang's troops are a little stretched.

Once he took control of Wuyi Mountain, with Chen Zhouquan attracting the main force of the Qing army, Zhou Lang had great confidence to hold Fujian, and then he would begin to clear the rout, win the support of the local tyrants, at least keep them neutral, and then completely control the whole of Fujian.

According to the experience of Fengshan County, two or three years is enough to control the situation, although it is not yet possible to get the support of the landlords, but it is already possible to draw resources from the countryside through commercial means. At the same time, it digested Fujian's manpower and material resources, and made efficient use of these resources with a modern business management model, so that it really had the capital to compete head-on with the Manchu Qing Dynasty.

Although controlling the whole of Fujian and digesting Fujian's human and material resources is still a shadowy matter, the fruits of the current victory are still worth digesting.

Zhangzhou, Quanzhou and Fuzhou, as the three richest and most prosperous prefectures in Fujian, have considerable technical resources, although the handicraft industry is not as good as Guangzhou, but the total is not much different, especially the resources that can be converted into military use, and even not lost to Guangzhou.

Due to the impact of the sea ban, China's shipbuilding industry regressed greatly after the Ming Dynasty, but after all, it is a superpower, the total production capacity is still considerable, the country's shipwrights combined, I am afraid will not lose to the United Kingdom, the Netherlands and other maritime countries, and the strongest shipbuilding capacity is Fujian and Guangdong.

Compared with Guangdong, Guangdong has been fortunate enough to retain the right to trade, and has never stopped the exchange of technology with the West, although the size of the ship is limited by the government, the Guangdong ship type has not been developed to be larger and heavier like the West, but it has also absorbed Western technology, and developed the old lock ship, which is a combination of Chinese and Western ship type; In Fujian, where there is no trade convenience, the shipbuilding industry has always maintained Chinese characteristics, and the main production is still Fujian's traditional Fu boat, and on this basis, artillery is installed, and the thunder ship is born.

What Zhou Lang wants to digest, of course, is not Fujian's thunderbolt technology, if he needs a thunderbolt boat, just copy it directly, not to mention digesting it. Zhou Lang had to digest tens of thousands of shipbuilders, although they lacked the technical reserves to build Western battleships, but a series of shipbuilding technologies were mastered.

Zhou Lang's shipyard in Tagu Port, with the help of the Dutch, has built two third-class battleships, which have been launched, and are undergoing final outfitting and weapons installation, and will be incorporated into the fleet by the end of this year.

In addition to the shipbuilding industry, Zhou Lang is also in short supply of military production talents, Fuzhou is the garrison of the Eight Banners, the Qing court is accustomed to garrisoning the Eight Banners camp or nearby, the establishment of various military workshops, into the bow and arrow work, iron work, gunpowder bureau, weaving and dyeing bureau and other institutions for the army to produce weapons and military uniforms, because the Manchu Qing Dynasty forbade the banner people to engage in other industries other than being soldiers, so these workshops, mainly hired Han craftsmen, many of the early days are to work in the workshop as a coat, and the craft is actually passed down from generation to generation.

At this time, there was a big gap between Chinese and Western weapons in terms of quality, but there was not much difference in production methods, and they were still mainly handmade, so these craftsmen could not only be used by Zhou Lang, but even directly let them build weapons according to Western technology.

In addition to these military workshop craftsmen, a larger number of civilian craftsmen still have a very important military significance, especially blacksmiths, at least in the Ming Dynasty, Fujian's iron-smelting industry, both in terms of quantity and quality, is the first in the country, known as Fujian iron armor world.

In the Qing Dynasty, Guangdong's handicraft industry sprung up, and Foshan's iron smelting industry surpassed Fujian's, but Fujian still retained a large number of folk blacksmiths. The recruitment of these skilled foundry craftsmen will greatly improve the status quo of military production, which is limited by the shortage of skilled workers.

Due to the alliance agreement reached with the East India Company, although the official text of the two sides has not yet been approved, Zhou Lang has hired a group of East India Company technicians from India through Henry Pitt.

Although the quality of bronze cannons is better than that of British iron cannons, China, like Britain, is also a country with scarce copper ore, and the copper that Zhou Lang currently uses to cast cannons mainly comes from Japan, which is exchanged for trade by Zhu Li's fleet, but the Japanese are also very cautious about exporting copper, and Japan's output is also limited, far less extensive than the source of iron.

So Zhou Lang has never given up the idea of casting iron cannons.

Now after occupying Fuzhou and other big cities with developed handicraft industries, the technical strength that Zhou Lang can obtain has been greatly enhanced, and these British technicians have also come in handy, leaving them in Taiwan, without enough manpower and resources to support, Zhou Lang simply transferred them directly to Fuzhou, and asked them to use the existing technology and resource conditions in Fuzhou to mass-produce infantry artillery as soon as possible.

Workshops for the manufacture of rifles and gunpowder were also quickly restored, and they were stepping up their expansion in order to provide sufficient weapons and ammunition for military operations in Fujian within a year.

Zhou Lang paid great attention to this, and went to the workshop many times to check the progress and understand various technical details.

Unlike the Dutch, the problem of communication between the British and Chinese craftsmen is still unsolved, and technical communication is often more difficult than ordinary communication, because there are many technical vocabulary problems involved, and poor communication will greatly affect the efficiency of communication, although it will not make technical communication impossible.