On April 5, 1783, at the end of February of the ninth year of Chengtian, when the Spanish governor of Guatemala gathered all his forces to counterattack San José, the expeditionary force unexpectedly chose to retreat.

The Spanish colonial army from San Diego is not huge, and it is not as strong as the expeditionary force, so it stands to reason that the expeditionary force should eat them in one bite, but Chai Dajibing, who led this force, did not do so. Instead, he quickly gathered some of the local poor Indians, generously dropped a few hundred muskets, a batch of ammunition, and a few cannons, and then boarded the ship with all the harvest and left San Jose to begin his new plundering journey.

He didn't want to fight the Spaniards now.

Let the Indians go with the big duck inkblot first, consume the Spaniards, and when they turn back, it will not be too late to clean them up and take Santiago.

While the Spanish colonial army was trembling and swooping towards San José, twenty-two ships of the expeditionary force had already raised their sails and were approaching Panama City.

As a symbolic city in the history of the American conquest, Panama City was once a base for the enslavement of American Indians and a center for religious activities, as well as a distribution center for the Spanish to plunder the wealth of the Americas and trade in black slaves. So much so that it attracted the coveting of pirates.

One hundred and ten years ago, the British pirate Morgan invaded Panama City by force, ransacked it, and set fire to the entire city. Two years later, the Spaniards built a new city ten miles from the original site, closer to the sea.

But Panama City's splendor has also cast a shadow over it, losing its original unique status on the West Coast of the Americas.

Before the Panama Canal was dug up, the city could only be said to be one of many important strongholds in the Americas, and its status was slightly inferior to that of Mexico City.

It's still important, though.

The Spaniards had always wanted to dig canals. More than 200 years ago, Spain, which had just conquered Panama, proposed to build a canal connecting the two oceans, and this proposal has been fluctuating in the upper echelons of Madrid for more than 200 years.

In the last decade or two, the Spanish team has also been constantly exploring the geography of the Isthmus of Panama, so in a sense, Panama is still by far the most important city that the expeditionary force has to conquer, although it has decreased from more than it was more than a hundred years ago.

It was one of the centers of defense in the Americas, and the fortifications of Manila City could not be compared to it.

Batteries and forts everywhere are not a joke.

The sea of Panama City is a small bay on the eastern coast of the Americas, named after Panama City, which is located at the very bottom of this bay, and along the bay is a plain coast except for the Sabo Hill of the Expeditionary Force, which leads directly to the coast. The rivers that flow into it are all short, with the larger ones being the Chukunak and Tuila rivers in the east of the bay. There are many islands in the central and eastern part of the bay, the larger ones being Rey Island, San Jose Island and the Pearl Islands. The island of Rey is an important naval outpost outside the port of Panama.

The expeditionary fleet that braved the wind and waves found a warship in the sea not far from the island of Rey, the tonnage of the battleship was very small, it is difficult to say whether it was 400 tons, it was a light two-masted cross-sailing warship.

"Order the bow of the warship to be cut and catch up with me."

Chai Daji commanded loudly.

The four shear-bow warships quickly increased their speed, and in order to maintain the same speed as the Chinese sailing ships in the fleet, they could only go at half speed, with half of the sails down.

"Raise the sails, raise the sails."

"Full speed ahead."

All four warships received the flag, and without hesitation, the same sound sounded on the ships.

On the other side was a small two-masted ship, which was not a threat at all compared to the four shear-bow warships, all of which were larger than it.

Even if they don't dare to fire rockets close to them now, they can quickly send them to the bottom of the sea by relying on their higher speed and absolute superiority in artillery fire.

Emily immediately spotted the expeditionary ships flying the red flag of the blue sky and the white sun, and in the face of such a strong enemy, they resolutely turned and fled, shouldering the responsibility of guarding the safety of the Panamanian sea.

There were so many enemies that the Emily went to meet them, and it was all about hitting the stone with an egg.

At this time, fleeing is the most correct choice, so as to preserve the next strength for Spain.

But the Emily, a brig that used to be nimble and swift in sailing, is now clumsy.

In less than an hour, the two destroyers had already overtaken the Emily from both sides.

The Spanish sailors on the battleship had long heard of the miraculous speed of the Chinese warship, but seeing the famous Emily being forced to a dead end so quickly, I don't know how many people were still full of shock in their hearts.

Today is a great favor from God, and it happens to be a tailwind. The wind allowed the speed of the shear bow warship to be used to the fullest.

Is there any non-mechanical sailboat in this world that can run faster than a clipper in a tailwind situation? Neither can brigs.

Even as the Emily stretched out her oars and fled towards Rey Island with all her might, the distance between the two sides was still getting smaller and smaller.

The Spaniards also seemed to find themselves unable to escape, and they began a desperate return fire with the few guns on board. A brig can only carry 10-18 guns, and the Emily may not even be 400 tons at the moment, and the minimum number of guns is exactly ten.

Some of the brave musketeers, too, stood on the deck and prepared to shoot at the ships of the expeditionary force. They were all experienced professional sailors, and of course they knew how far their muskets could hit, so they just aimed. But in exchange for this, the soldiers of the expeditionary force and the sailors laughed loudly.

The Spaniards were cornered, right? Someone actually picked up a musket. How ridiculous is this, when it was still a hundred years ago, when there were frequent gang wars?

Under the orders of the gunners, the few gunners of the two small flying scissors bow warships tore off the gun jackets covering the gun body, and then adjusted the muzzle angle, charge, and reload. The firepower of these two small flying shear bow warships is also not strong, and the hull structure is weaker than that of orthodox Western-style sailing ships, and if the two ships are purely single-handedly artillery, they will not necessarily win destroyers.

But now they're two to one. And two larger flying scissor bows will soon arrive behind him.

When one destroyer pinned down the Emily and another began to harass its rear tail, the speed of the Spanish ship immediately decreased.

Under the officer's order, the five guns on the starboard side of the Emily opened fire one after another, and the 18-pound and 12-pound iron balls whizzed towards the destroyer at a distance of more than five or six meters. Due to the wind and waves at sea, and the first round of shelling, the accuracy was certainly not much better. All five shells missed!

The return fire of the two destroyers was also very unreliable, and all the shells missed.

None of the sailors on the expeditionary side's ships dared to venture within 500 meters of the Emily, and no one dared to joke with their lives to test whether there were really rockets on the Spaniards' ship.

Once bitten by a snake for ten years, I was afraid of the well rope.

The lessons in Jiazhou Bay made the entire sailor unforgettable.

After two rounds of shelling, two medium-sized flying shear warships arrived, "boom, boom, boom ......"

The continuous sound of cannons was like a thunderbolt in the sky, and the accuracy was not enough to make up the numbers, and the two medium-sized flying shear bow warships took turns to go into battle, and all the cannons on their left and right sides of the ship were fired, of course, they were hugging the benefits.

Five iron balls hit the Emily, one of which damaged the Emily's rudder. caused the Spaniards to cry and cry for their mothers. And then it was all over.

There is no suspense in such a battle.

After watching for a while, Chai Daji instructed the left and right signals to send a signal to the flying shear warship to see if the Spanish ship could be captured, and then walked back to the captain's room. However, his order was given a little too late, and two twenty-pound iron bullets crashed under the level of the Emily's side of the ship, and then effortlessly opened two large holes in the same side of the Emily's side. The sea rushed wildly into the small Spanish sentry ship. After the blockade failed, the sailors jumped into the sea with wooden planks, barrels and other floating objects.

A number of small boats were lowered on the four shear bow warships, and the sailors of the expeditionary force rowed the small boats and began to capture the Spanish sailors who had fallen overboard. These Spaniards are all veteran sailors, and the expeditionary soldiers will naturally not let go, and they can not only increase their own income, but also reduce the combat effectiveness of the Spaniards.

The operation did not take long, and after an hour the surviving sixty or seventy Spanish sailors were rescued one by one and put on the board, and then everything they had, locked up in the cabin, and kept under strict guard.

This unexpected battle is just a small episode today, the ultimate goal of the expeditionary force is still Panama City, and Rey Island is not in the first target at all, but now this battle reminds Chai Daji. Upon questioning, the captured Spaniards confessed that there was a Spanish ship of the same size in the port of São Miguel on the island of Rey, and that a company of soldiers was stationed in São Miguel.

Chai Daji decided to send two slow-moving, somewhat unarmed Chinese-style five-masted ships to clear San Miguel of the threat.

And he led the remaining twenty warships to Panama City, first to destroy the fortress group in the north of the city, and then to capture the entire city.

The time was set for night, and they were going to sneak attack.

Panama City's defenses have been increasing since they were harassed by the ships of the previous sailors.

Even though Mexico began to gradually '100,000 troops', the Panamanian garrison was not drawn.

It's not a good idea to fight hard, enter quietly, and sneak attack is the best way.

As a city that the Spaniards have been guarding in the Americas for two or three hundred years, a large proportion of the inhabitants here should be supporters of the Spaniards, and these people are also in the target of Chadaki. He believed that these Spanish supporters, shackled and toiling on the plantations and fields of the East Coast of North America, would be their best home.

After last year's battle, the expeditionary soldiers also have a certain understanding of the combat effectiveness of the Spanish army, as long as they can touch their close range, hand-to-hand combat, the expeditionary force has a great chance of victory!

Therefore, Chai Daki didn't care about Rey Island at all, if he hadn't met Emily today, he would have forgotten Rey Island.

Rey Island is 1670 miles away from Panama City, and after 10 hours of sailing, the night has covered the entire Panama Bay, and Chai Daji and his entourage have arrived at the sea outside Panama City.

Standing on the deck, he could clearly see the fires lit up by the lighthouses and batteries of Panama City.

"Be careful. Go up quietly and don't be discovered. ”

"All ships are also ready for battle, and if the operation leaks, immediately bombard the No. 1 fortress for me."

There are a total of five fortresses in the whole of Panama, and the names are so awkward that Chai Daji numbered them and named them one, two, three, four, five.

Under his command, three battleships of the third rank swooped down in the direction of Fort No. 1 in a zigzag pattern. From ten miles away, quietly approaching three or four miles, all three ships were under light control, and everything was in the dark.

The three third-class battleships dropped anchor one after another, not daring to move forward, and they did not know much about the water conditions in the Gulf of Panama, and the information they received from the Spanish mouth was not sure whether it was really accurate, so they lowered a large number of small boats, and then still stood up, rowing small boats, gradually approaching the beach in the dark night.

Thankfully, there is no rain here, Panama is tropical, and a short walk south is the equatorial windless zone.

April is not the rainy season, but the tropics are never rainy.

This time, two squadrons were dispatched as the vanguard team, and the captain personally led the team, and it took them only half an hour to get to the shore. After landing on the shore, the captain hurriedly gathered another hundred or so people, and then swooped towards the No. 1 fortress city.

The walls of Fort No. 1 were not very tall, and in fact on the east coast of the Americas, no country had the strength to challenge the Spaniards before China entered the Americas. Even the British, their forces were mostly deployed on the west coast and the Caribbean.

Since Panama City was captured by 2,000 British pirates across the Isthmus of Panama more than 100 years ago, the situation here has been very stable. If it weren't for the frequent occurrence of Chinese warships in recent years, the Spaniards would not have brought so many troops over.

At its peak, Panama City had 5,000 naval and land troops, and after the Spanish navy was forced to leave, the Spaniards successively transferred some army miscellaneous troops, so that the entire Panamanian garrison exceeded 2,500 people. It's just that the combat quality is uneven, and the combat effectiveness is very different.

The entire fort is made of a mixture of volcanic rock and clay. There were a few Spanish soldiers standing at the head of the city, but they were not there and were not well guarded.

"Spotted the time their patrol has passed."

The detachment lurked under the fortress for half an hour, wearing black military uniforms, and even the barrels of their guns, bayonets, sabers, and faces were smeared with black putty, and the Spaniards did not notice it at all.

"Yo Xi. Sasuke-kun, yours, bring people, on. ”

A small Japanese soldier nodded heavily and waved his hand back, and the twenty or so Japanese soldiers quietly approached the No. 1 fortress with only the handcuffs and grenades on the waist of the saber river tightly bound on their backs with strips of cloth.

When the hooks were quietly thrown on the top of the fortress by the soldiers of the forward team, the iron hooks hit the ground, making a slight crisp sound in the night, but they were not noticed by the Spaniards, and the captain behind breathed a sigh of relief, the matter was done, as long as the vanguard could go to the top of the No. 1 fortress, the battle should be easy.

When the captain and others disembarked, Chai Daji gave them a very clear order: that is, to seize the No. 1 fortress with lightning speed, and resist the counterattack of the Spaniards, and wait for the follow-up troops to arrive.

Now, this task is not a problem at all.

No, the reality was even more optimistic than his most optimistic estimate before the battle, and the Spaniards on the top of Fort No. 1 had no courage to fight the soldiers at the front when they threw grenades, brandished handcuffs and sabers!

Some of them fled, others flinched and screamed.

"Banzai, Banzai!"

"Expeditionary Force, Banzai!"

The lights were lit on the three third-class battleships, and the oil lamps were also lit on the boats that picked up the soldiers. There is no need to hide it anymore.

The Japanese advance team let out a shocking cheer, and even Chai Daki in the back sea could hear it. This could not be clearer.

Fort No. 1 has been taken by the Advance Team.

Even if the Spaniards counterattacked and had the No. 1 fortress as a bridgehead, would Chai Daji still need to be afraid?

"Quick, quick. Attack, attack! ”

Countless lights lit up on the sea, and the cheers of the warriors were accompanied by the waves of the sea, and waves were transmitted to the land.