Canakkale. Pen & Fun & Pavilion www.biquge.info

"Quick!"

Under the cover of night, Sunai, an officer of the Ottoman Guard, whispered.

Beside him, a dozen soldiers pushed a front-loading rifled cannon, struggling through the muddy ground, next to a few horses loaded with ammunition, and in front of them to the right, a stretch of ruins, huge craters in the ruins, the air was filled with the stench of rotting corpses, the nearest carrion was less than two meters away from him with its mouth open, telling how ferocious the demon's minions were.

Of course, Sunai and his soldiers were not interested in this, they marched cautiously like the resistance in the apocalyptic times of the Terminator.

Suddenly, a pillar of light swept by.

They lay down as fast as they could, in the stinking mud mixed with flesh and blood, and then the pillar of light swept over their heads, and below the pillar of light was a huge black ship sailing slowly, its towering chimneys spewing smoke against the night background, and the barrels of the guns sticking out to the sides looked horrific and terrifying in the light of electric lights. This is a cruiser patrolled by the Ming army, the Ming army only landed in Istanbul, but did not land on both sides of the Dardanelles, and the Dardanelles Strait is the throat leading to Istanbul, this strait of more than 100 miles, the narrowest point is only three miles, not to mention rifled guns, even smoothbore guns can block. I don't know if it was too arrogant or what, in short, after the Ming army bombarded the fortresses along the line into ruins with naval artillery, they did not let the infantry land to control, but only used warships to constantly patrol and shell any Ottomans who came into their range, so as to prevent the latter from attacking those armed transport ships that transported goods.

This gave the Ottoman army a chance.

These days, countless Ottoman warriors pushed their cannons in this way, bravely rushed into the range of the Ming army's terrifying naval guns, and fired hateful shells at the invaders.

Sunai cautiously raised his head, vigilantly staring at the black shadow on the sea that shot a strange bright light, until the latter gradually sailed away, he breathed a sigh of relief, and waved at his soldiers again, he pushed the cannon to a high ground less than a thousand yards from the coast as fast as he could, and then used branches to disguise himself while erecting the ten-pounder cannon, which was purchased from the Ming back then, and now has become their main weapon against the Ming, which has to be said to be a kind of irony.

"Quick, ready!"

He said suddenly.

At the same time, a large ship slowly approached in the direction of the entrance of the strait to the south, and in the light on the ship, it could be seen that it was an ordinary transport ship.

The Ottoman warriors immediately began to reload their cannons, of course they would not be stupid enough to attack the Ming cruisers, it was a complete joke about the ten pounder guns hitting the battleships, they made the steel behemoths lose some paint at most with one shot, and then the latter fired a salvo and they were gone, they were brave but not brainless, so they attacked the transport ship.

Soon the transport, which was larger than the cruiser, came into range, and when it reached the closest place to them, Sunai waved his hand without hesitation.

"Fire!"

He yelled.

The muzzle flames of the ten-pounder cannon erupted, and a solid cannonball the thickness of a wine bottle flew out, instantly striking a spark on the starboard side of the transport.

"Reload!"

Sunai yelled.

At the same time, the searchlight of the transport ship suddenly turned on, and the dazzling pillar of light suddenly covered their position, and the busy figures on the high ground and the cannon could no longer be hidden, and then a little fire lit up on the ship, and before the Ottoman artillery could finish loading the shells, the five-barreled rapid-fire cannon shells exploded around them like a raging storm

Sunai screamed, and at the moment when a cannonball exploded two meters away, he jumped up and threw himself into the dirt pit next to him, but at the same time he found that the lower half of his body was gone.

"Check the loss!"

On the 18,000-ton armed merchant ship Taiping, which was two thousand yards away from him, Captain Xie Sheng said speechlessly.

"No loss!"

The first mate next to him lay on the starboard railing and shined a flashlight on the bullet point, looking at the obvious scratch and said.

It is true that there is no loss, although the Ming Dynasty can easily hit the ten-pound rifled gun here, but as far as the solid lead shell, the hardness and the two-inch thick steel plate are not at all a level thing, if the lead bullet can still penetrate the steel plate at such a distance, it is a joke, if it hits the superstructure, it may still cause some loss, but the only damage on the hull is to lose a layer of paint.

"Mada, these madmen!"

Xie Sheng scolded.

"Keep going!"

He pulled out a cigarette and said as he lit it.

"Sir, the Taiping reports that it has been attacked, the enemy has been destroyed, and there are no losses!"

Five minutes later, on the cruiser Weihai, which was about to turn around in the distance, an officer reported to the captain that the cruiser was the one Sunai had seen, but by this time it was almost four miles away from the place of the firefight, and it was blocked by the ruins of Canakkale Castle.

"It's a good trick, it's insidious enough."

The captain smiled and said to the first mate who was drinking tea together.

Well, the Ming army did this on purpose, using the main guns of the battleships to destroy the Ottoman coastal fortresses and heavy artillery, and then using cruisers to constantly patrol, and when they found the Ottomans, they would shoot shells, in short, all those threatening heavy weapons were killed, and what was left was nothing more than some ten-pound and twenty-pound field guns, even if they could attack the armed merchant ships of the Ming army. The merchant ships of the Ming Dynasty have long been eliminated from wood, and now they are all thousands or even tens of thousands of tons of steel steam ships, because this thing has to bear the huge weight of the cargo itself, in addition to the impact of the waves of ocean voyages, the hull is even thicker than a small cruiser, and the ten-pound and twenty-pound field guns want to penetrate it, which is a complete joke.

It's also a bit of a threat with flowering bombs.

But even if the Ottomans bought the flowering shell from the Ming Dynasty back then, it was only loaded with a small amount of black powder, and a flowering shell of a 20-pound field cannon was nothing more than two catties of gunpowder. What's more, it was still a medicine tray fuse, and the time had to be set fairly accurately to ensure an explosion on the ship.

And the Ottomans did not know.

They only knew that they finally had the opportunity to attack the Ming merchant ships, and then they kept running one after another, and they were also constantly torn apart by the artillery fire of the armed merchant ships, and Istanbul was captured, forcing them to have no choice but to continue to attack these merchant ships, in order to cut off the logistics line of the Ming army that landed on them, so they were like moths to a fire, and they kept coming to send them to death.

"It's true to hunt buffaloes, but that's the work of lions and tigers, and if you can't do it, wolves can make do with it, but what is the use of a group of kittens?"

The first mate said with a smile.

Amid their laughter, the Taiping slowly passed by, and the spot on the starboard side was more like an ornament.

And this is only the most commonplace scene in this narrow strait, and the Ottoman warriors, who have no idea that they are nothing more than a decent little toy in the boring life of these guys, are valiantly looking for every opportunity every day, toiling their cannons to show their wrath to the armed merchant ships of the Ming Dynasty sailing in those straits, and then being happily bombarded into slag by the sailors or reserve crews with rapid-fire cannons.

Not only that, but in order to recapture Istanbul, the Ottomans were also trying to cut off the route by doing everything they could, such as suicide sailboats, indulging fire boats down the current, and sending warriors with good water skills to play frogman attacks......

I don't know how their frogmen chased the ten-knot steamer, and they didn't know how they were going to let the frogmen climb the smooth steel plates several feet high, but in short, the Ottomans gave full play to their imagination and launched a fun-filled attack on these 10,000-ton ships in their own brain-opening ways. Of course, all the attacks turned into jokes in the end, and the sheer size, the steel plates that were an inch or even two inches thick, and the large number of rapid-fire guns of one and a half inches made these armed merchant ships a steel fortress that made the Ottomans desperate. In their futile attacks again and again, these steel giants kept shuttling through this strait, loaded with tens of thousands of tons of various supplies and sailing towards Istanbul, Batumi, and Poti, supporting the Ming army to conquer cities in Ottoman territory.

Also at this time, in the southern part of the Anatolian Plateau, on the meandering Tigris River, diesel-powered river flat-bottomed boats lined up in a long line, loaded with all the supplies needed by the Ming army. On either side of these flat-bottomed boats were countless Wugang wagons of Ming cavalry and infantry, carrying billowing sand and dust, constantly advancing on the empty desertified steppe, like a sharp sword into the heart of the Ottoman Empire, turning the cities into ruins and the countryside into a sea of fire, they swept the land like the legendary devil.

Snatch the wealth, kill all the men who dare to resist, and take all the women they fancie.

Just like the ancestors of these people, holding the scriptures in one hand and the sword in the other, those who believe in me are brothers, and those who do not believe in me die, as their footsteps move forward, as the slaughter spreads, the light of the holy religion gradually shines forward from the east to the wider and wider land, and the old religion dies in fire and blood, and the new faith is established in fire and blood. But no matter what happened here at this time, as long as all written records were erased, then no one would remember it in two hundred years, and two hundred years later, the holy oracle sent by fire and blood would be sacred and inviolable to all people here......

Faith.

"Faith, I need you to believe in the true gods!"

In Shouning City, the capital of the Shouning Domain of the Ming Empire, or in the military camp of Cape Haiti, the capital of the former French Spanish island, Wu Zhong, the prime minister of the Ming Dynasty in Shouning, said: "I admit that our goal, or His Majesty's goal is to unify the world, but what's the problem? You see how we run the subject country, the people here elect their own prime ministers, the people here don't have to pay a penny of taxes to the empire, and even the king of Shouning doesn't need them to provide for them, but the king of Shouning also pays for their own money to help them build, you can see how much they like this kind of life when you look at the smiles on the faces of your former compatriots outside.

And the purpose of our Emperor Majesty's conquest of the world is to let all those people in this world who are still under the rule of the monarch live a free and prosperous life.

If this also counts as aggression, then ......

Even if it's good to invade.

The people should not be afraid of us, we are not conquerors, we are liberators, the righteous teachers who liberate them from the monarchs and nobles, who will grant them peace and happiness, and in the future they will have no wars, no famines, and the world will be one. So it is the monarchs and nobles who are afraid of us, who deceive the populace with lies to serve as cannon fodder for them, but we cannot make your compatriots understand this, after all, the gap between us is too deep, and this is where the tragedy lies, and we have to solve this problem by means of war.

If they can understand this and stop working for the monarch and the nobility, then there can be no war between us. ”

"But you need us to convert."

In front of him, an exile from the French Republic said cautiously.

"Yes, that's His Majesty's only request."

Wu Zhong said.

"But don't you understand? Who has been colluding with the monarchs and nobles to oppress the people for thousands of years? Isn't that the god who needs you to buy indulgences? The monarch and the nobility are the enemies of the people, but is not the church? What kind of deity is a god who needs the people to worship with their hard-earned money? The true deity has nothing to give to the people without taking anything, and our Emperor His Majesty has done that, so we are convinced that he is the true deity, and not your God.

And now, His Majesty the Emperor wants to expand the scope of his gift to the whole world, so shouldn't those who receive his gift believe in him? ”

A group of French exiles in front of him looked at each other, of course, they were certainly not fools, Wu Zhong said that so much was nothing more than an exchange, the Ming supported them to make a comeback to rebuild the republic, but the condition was that they must convert to the Holy Religion, and France would become a subject state of the Ming Dynasty in the future. Of course, this subject country is like here, it is completely autonomous, at most it will be a daughter in the future, although this article does not say but it is estimated that it is indispensable, of course, it is just a virtual monarch, will not interfere with how they manage the country, and does not even need the country's tax support, all the sources of life of King Shouning come from some economic monopoly on the territory.

But this one is acceptable.

You must know that King Shouning himself still has to pay taxes.

This should be regarded as a very reasonable exchange, at least it is completely reasonable for them as exiles, after all, even without them, with the strength of the Ming army, it is not too difficult to conquer France, with them nothing more than a few soldiers to die, and the Ming has a population of three or four billion, there is no shortage of soldiers, but they can rebuild the republic, even if it is a republic with a virtual monarch.

"Your Excellency, I am willing to pledge my allegiance to His Majesty the Emperor of the Ming Dynasty!"

One of them stood up first and bowed.