In fact, as a naval stronghold, after the loss of the last warship, Cavite no longer poses any threat to the Zheng family's military operations. Pen? Interesting? Pavilion wWw. ｂiquge。 The main purpose of the attack on it is twofold for the Zheng family, one is to rescue the sailors who were captured during the last attack on the Krabi military port. In the last operation, a number of fireships were lost, and many of the sailors on these fireships became prisoners of the Spaniards; Another goal is to conduct corresponding drills. Provide experience for future battles that may occur in other regions.

This time the battle in Luzon was close to Fujian and Taiwan, but on the contrary it was far from Spain. Coupled with the strength of the local Chinese, these gave the Zheng family an overwhelming logistical advantage. So on land, Zheng Sen could rely on the tactics of a long siege against the Spaniards, and at sea, he was also confident that he could defeat any fleet that arrived from the Spanish mainland. But Zheng Sen's ambitions are not limited to Southeast Asia, there are so many places to compete in the world: Australia, Chile and Argentina in North and South America, and South Africa, which has a lot of gold, and ...... In short, when fighting for such an area, the Zheng family may no longer have the advantage of logistics and time, and may have to complete the offensive operation within a certain period of time. Although Zheng Sen himself knew some military technology of this era, his knowledge of how to attack fortified positions was also limited, and only through such operations and accumulating data could he obtain better ways to tackle fortified positions.

The topography of Cavite Naval Port is very interesting, it is a C-shaped harbor at the top of a peninsula, and the whole peninsula looks like a lobster pincer. Before the start of the war, the Spaniards built a wall in a relatively narrow part of the peninsula to prohibit the Chinese from approaching, but now this wall has been abandoned because it cannot be defended anyway.

The peninsula is full of forests, and there are only open areas and roads close to Minato Ward. This also brought great trouble to the deployment of the model army. As a result, the Model Army even had to use Chinese laborers to cut down trees to clear an empty camp before the attack.

In addition to logging out of the camp, engineers also built a temporary dock near the camp. At this time, the port of Cavite did not have a land road directly connected to Manila, and in the past, the goods and personnel between them were transported by sea. At this time, to support the attack of the model army, it is natural that the only way to rely on the sea route is to support the attack of the model army.

Two 18-pounder guns were already in place, and the improvised forts made it fire at a height higher than the small Spanish bastions on the opposite side. The artillery group above was also ready to attack.

The Model Army sent an envoy to the Spanish defenders, demanding that the Spanish defenders surrender unconditionally. Such persuasion was insincere and even insulting to the Spaniards. In fact, the term "unconditional surrender" was originally coined by the Romans to humiliate the Carthaginians, who had fought against them for a long time. In an era without the Geneva Conventions, unconditional surrender meant that they would be stripped of their personal possessions and that they themselves would be enslaved. Such an outcome was naturally difficult for the Spaniards (who ventured to the Far East, far from home, in order to get rich). So such persuasion was naturally rejected. However, although the Spanish defenders felt that such persuasion was an insult to themselves, they did not dare to embarrass the envoys of the model army. This is not because of the spirit of contract, nor because of any civilization, but because of two reasons, one is that the model army has enough Spanish prisoners of war in their hands, and the other reason is that the war situation is obviously unfavorable now, and they must leave themselves some way back.

Fifteen minutes after the envoy left, the cannons of the Model Army opened fire on the small fortress.

The 18-pounder gun was the gun of the navy, and it was the gunners of the fleet who operated the cannons, and it was also the marines from the fleet who fought with them. Song Ran is now a company commander, and he took his company with him to be responsible for the first tentative attack. According to the offensive plan, the artillery would use shrapnel shells to fire at exposed infantry on the enemy's small forts in order to suppress enemy infantry fire and kill as many people as possible. The task of the Marines is to lure the enemy into the range of shrapnel as much as possible to reduce their losses.

To this end, the Marines learned from the Manchu Qing Dynasty and also used local trees to improvise a batch of shield vehicles. These shield wagons certainly couldn't stop the bombardment of solid shells, not even enough to block the shotguns fired by the Spaniards' cannons and the projectiles fired by the Spaniards' heavy arquebuses at close range, because their planks were so light and thin that they couldn't even block a good bow and crossbow, and only served to block the view a little. But the Marines didn't think about relying on such a thing to push all the way to the bottom of the bastion.

"All of them! Prepare for the offensive. Song Ran gave the order, and the soldiers pushed up five so-called shield carts and began to approach the Spanish fortress. Because the planks on it are so thin and light, it can be easily pushed by only one person.

The Spaniards reacted quickly, and their artillery immediately began firing solid shells at the Model Army, but due to distance, none of their four guns could be hit in the first round.

The Spaniards opened fire, revealing the position of their cannons at once, and on the fort, the two 18-pounder guns also reacted quickly, replacing them with shrapnel shells and firing a round at the positions of two of the four guns that had just fired.

If you want to directly destroy the opponent's artillery, in this day and age, it is necessary to hit it directly with a solid shell. It's just that the Navy's 18-pounder gun is a long-barreled cannon, which is significantly better than the army's guns in terms of accuracy alone, but it is a smoothbore gun after all, and it can't be compared with the later rifled guns in terms of accuracy anyway. If a rifled gun could accurately hit the door of a large villa a thousand paces away, then an 18-pounder gun was only guaranteed to hit the villa at best. With such accuracy, it is almost impossible to hit the opponent's cannon directly with a solid shell. Therefore, the model army adopted the means of using shrapnel covering, not seeking to destroy the opponent's artillery, but only to take the opportunity to kill and wound the opponent's gunner. The number of Spanish gunners was also limited, and as long as they killed more, the attack from behind would be much easier.

The guns of this small fortress near the port of Krabi were erected directly on the city wall in the open air, and there was no semi-enclosed fighting compartment that only opened at a certain angle in the direction of the muzzle, so the shrapnel could indeed effectively hit the gunner who controlled the cannon, and this round of fire from the 18-pounder gun immediately killed and wounded more than a dozen Spanish gunners.