"Not leaving? Give them some pressure! ”

Looking at the hesitant fleet of the British East India Company in the distance, Luo Zhang sneered. Pen, fun, pavilion www. biquge。 info

The officer beside him immediately gave the order, and then the signalman on the mainmast waved his flag, and the huge paddle wheels of the Zhen Wu and Bai Yue, which were shelling Colombo in the distance, immediately turned at high speed, and the two large schooners did not use sails, but only relied on steam paddle wheels to rush straight towards the British East India Company fleet, while the four eighty-pound cannons slowly turned, and the muzzles gradually pointed at the British warships.

A dozen or so cruisers that had not taken part in the bombardment of Colombo also set sail and cut from the other side in a line of battle to the British East India Company fleet.

Davis was still hesitating.

He's measuring the contrast of strength.

He had fifteen battleships, but all of them were medium-sized third-class ships, the largest one only carried more than fifty cannons, and most of the rest had more than forty guns. They are a company fleet authorized by the government, to put it bluntly, they are a group of armed mercenaries, and they don't need this kind of warship at all, even in Europe, it is a treasure of many countries, and that thing is a huge expense to use or maintain, not to mention that there is no opponent in the Indian Ocean who is worth using this level of warship.

In addition, there were three cruisers, twenty armed merchant ships and even two-masted frigates.

And their opponents are three large third-class ships that can almost be counted as second-class ships, three medium-sized third-class ships, and twelve more cruisers, but these cruisers were built by them, and they know very well that the gap between this thing and medium-sized third-class ships is not large, and the firepower of thirty-six twenty-pound rifled guns is even greater than that of those slightly smaller third-class ships, that is, the planks are thinner, but the advantage of rifled guns can allow them to open up the combat distance, so that the disadvantage of thin planks is not so great.

That is to say, the ratio of the capital ships of the two sides is eighteen to eighteen, and even the Ming army has a certain advantage.

What's more, the Ming army also has two paddle steamers.

"Retreat!"

Davis looked at the four hundred-pounder terror cannons pointed at him, and finally gritted his teeth and gave the order to retreat.

Luo Zhang didn't pay any more attention to them.

At this time, the Ming Marine Brigade has completed the landing and is attacking the port of Colombo, in fact, there is no suspense in this battle, there are not many Dutch people here, the real fortress is just a fortress battery, which was basically bombarded into ruins by eighty pounds of shells, and there are about more than 1,000 armed civilians and thousands of old and weak women and children who have no combat effectiveness, nearly 5,000 can show that the most elite marines of the army are killed, and it is only a matter of time before they are destroyed.

The result was similar to what he had guessed, and in less than an hour, the battleship Weihai was ready to dock at the port of Colombo.

"You were sent by the King of Ceylon?"

Luo Zhang stood on the dock with his saber in his hand, and looked at a black and thin native in front of him.

Not far from them, groups of Dutch prisoners of war were walking blankly under the bayonets of the Ming army towards the waiting merchant ships, where they would be sent to distant China, where they would wait for the ransom payers at a construction site. Of course, if no one pays the ransom for them, then they have to spend the rest of their lives as slaves, which is not uncommon, in fact, until now, many of the Dutch who were captured in Changguo are still working as coolies in the Keelung coal mines, and some of them have even been married by local natives, and they no longer have illusions about the future.

"Adult, villain exactly!"

The native groveled.

"We arrived here yesterday, and we were able to get the news to Kandy in such a short time, and then you can still come from Kandy, it's a bit too fast, isn't it? Maybe you don't know the consequences of deceiving the Celestial Empire! ”

Luo Zhang said with a sneer.

Immediately afterwards, the Ming soldier next to him put a bayonet on the chest of the native.

The latter was so frightened that he quickly lay on the ground and explained.

In fact, he was also an emissary of the King of Ceylon, but he was stationed in Colombo to deal with the Dutch, and after the successive colonization of Ceylon by the Portuguese and the Dutch, only a small territory remained under the rule of the Sinhalese king of Kandy. The main reason is that they are located in the mountains, and they are of little value to the Dutch, and they cannot risk tropical epidemics to go deep into the rainforest, anyway, this place is nothing more than the purchase of spices and gems for the colonists, as for the famous Ceylon black tea, it is in the late nineteenth century.

"Your king is not qualified to be the king of Ceylon at this time."

Luo Zhang said.

"Go back and tell him that you are ready to pay tribute to our Emperor Majesty, and then he will lead the team over, and I will arrange a boat to send him to Daming to meet His Majesty the Emperor, if he behaves better, maybe Your Majesty will crown him a king of Ceylon."

Then he added.

"If our king accepts the edict of His Majesty the Emperor, will your army return Colombo to us?"

The native asked innocently.

"That depends on His Majesty the Emperor's arrangement!"

Luo Zhang said with a smile.

The native immediately went away with a great sense of longing.

Looking at his back, Luo Zhang and the others finally couldn't help laughing, of course, after laughing, they still have to continue to work, capturing Colombo does not mean that they have complete control of Ceylon, the Dutch have been running this island of nearly 70,000 square kilometers for more than half a century, and they still have many small strongholds and many coffee plantations on the island. It was only cultivated by the Dutch in Asia in 1690, but it developed very rapidly, mainly in Ceylon and Java, and not even in the Americas, so the coffee trade in Europe was largely controlled by Yang Feng.

In addition, the Tamils in the north of the island also need to be deterred, in short, they still have work to do.

In fact, for the Ming Dynasty, the expansion is not the most important thing now, the important thing is the control of the colony, and the signs of rebellion have begun to appear, and the reason for not resisting before is because the natives of the Ming Dynasty replaced the Netherlands, especially the natives of the spice islands who believe in Mu Dabeard, still have a little illusion. After all, when Zheng He led the fleet to the Western Ocean, it was completely full of goodwill, and even if there were a few conflicts, it was purely because of their own death. They fantasized that the arrival of the new Ming army would still be like this, but now their illusions have been completely shattered, the current Ming is no kinder than the Dutch, in fact, it can be said that it is more ferocious, at least the Dutch do not castrate their brothers as slaves on a large scale. Over the years, at least 100,000 young adults of Javanese, Malay, Sunda and other chaotic ethnic groups have been sold to Daming to be slaves through various channels, which is obviously a serious injury to their faith and dignity.

In the Battle of Malacca, the Bugis had already sounded the horn of resistance, and after the defeat of the Dutch, they scattered in a hurry, but began to hide in the jungle to deal with the Ming army with guerrilla warfare, and Surabati, who originally rebelled against the Dutch on the island of Java, was also raising the banner of rebellion in Malang, relying on the terrain of the surrounding volcanic mountains to constantly run out to attack the sugarcane, rubber, and coffee plantations of the Chinese in Surabaya, and these required a large number of troops to solve.

Therefore, Yang Feng was not prepared to let his army continue to expand into the Indian land.

His forces are running out.

In fact, he was already preparing to form the Eighth Army, and then throw it into the South Seas to suppress the colonial resistance, so at least for a short time he needed to pause the pace of expansion, anyway, having Ceylon in hand as a trading base for the Middle East, Africa, West Asia, and India was enough.

On the same day that Luo Zhang conquered Colombo.

Goryeo, Incheon-gun, Jemulpo.

"Here, quick, music!"

Cui Xixian shouted with some excitement.

The musicians behind him immediately played various musical instruments, and then a set of firecrackers that had been prepared in advance began to be lit, and a large number of waiting Goryeo officials and civilians stared at the sea in the distance, taking advantage of the high tide of the sea water, paddle steamers spitting black smoke were approaching at high speed, and red flags on the masts were dancing.

Soon, the first ship docked with tens of thousands of migrant workers, and it took a month to exhaust thousands of people to build the wharf urgently.

"Master Cui, it's been a long time!"

A man about forty years old on the deck stood with a saber in his hand, looked at Cui Xixian on the dock and said.

"General Yu has worked hard from afar."

Cui Xixian said with a smile on his face.

This is the commander of the Seventh Army of the Ming Army, the new Goryeo envoy Yu Qin, he came to Goryeo many years ago, of course, at that time he came with the Second Infantry Brigade under his command, and His Majesty the Emperor who rode a rhinoceros, so he and Cui Xixian are indeed old acquaintances. Immediately after a wooden gangway was pushed out, the future Goryeo Emperor and a group of officers beside him, wearing shiny riding boots and woolen coats, walked off the ship with a saber, and behind him one transport ship after another docked at the dock, and a group of Ming soldiers kept walking down the gangway and stepped onto the land of Goryeo.

This was the first batch of troops of the Seventh Army to enter Korea.

As for the follow-up four infantry brigades, a cavalry brigade, and an artillery brigade, the huge corps will be transported in batches within at least three months, and these 30,000 troops will be withdrawn in batches from the front line of suppressing bandits in distant Guangxi and then transported to Guangzhou through the Pearl River, where they will be loaded on sea ships and go north, so it is normal for a longer time.

However, after Yu Qin arrived, the first thing he did was not to send reinforcements to the Huangzhou front, but to ......

Build a railway!

"I need 50,000 laborers to build the railway from Jemulpo to the Han River in the shortest possible time, and then build a big iron bridge over the Han River, so that the train can go directly from here to Seoul to Kaesong, to Pyongyang, Wonsan, to any place in Goryeo!"

Standing on the pier in Incheon, he said with a heroic wave of his hand as he looked out at the endless backcountry to the north. (To be continued.) )