The opening of the Suez Canal, or the Anhua Canal, brought more to the Mediterranean than just the mountain-like ships. Pen ~ fun ~ pavilion www.biquge.info

There are also huge ships like mountains.

"This is Europe?"

Duke Luo Zhang, Chief of the General Staff of the Ming Navy and the only Marshal of the Ming Navy, who once led this navy to win all naval battles, stood on the deck with his hands behind his back and looked at Gibraltar, looking at the ancient stone castle and sail warship, and said in a disdainful tone.

"Yes, sir!"

Xu Shou said respectfully: "They are too much worse than us, completely destroying the navies of all European countries, they don't need battleships at all, just our invincible-class cruisers can do it, and even the difficulty is not too high, maybe a few will be lost, but it will definitely not exceed a single digit." They don't have steel battleships, at most they pack the civilian steel plates they bought from us in the key parts of some wooden sail battleships, not to mention naval guns with a caliber of more than four inches, even our one-inch rapid-fire guns can easily penetrate them. And their best naval gun is only fifty-eight pounds, which is basically equivalent to our three inches, but it is still an old breech gun, and in fact the power is far from our three inches. Because there is no rangefinder, you can only rely on the experience of the gunner, and you don't know how to calculate ballistics, unless you get closer to two miles, you will almost miss the target, and such guns are only equipped on battleships above the second level, and there are not many in total. It can be said that they have no combat ability in front of our warships at all, let alone the limitation of the maneuverability of the sail warships, if you want to count, they are at most the level we were twenty years ago. ”

"Then let them see what a strong ship and a cannon are!"

Luo Zhang said with a sneer.

"Prepare to fire!"

Xu Shou hurriedly shouted.

Behind him, a steel square turret slowly turned, and soon the slightly inclined front was facing the coastline of Africa to the south, while the two giant naval guns side by side raised their heads, the muzzles of the black holes were so huge that it was obvious that they could penetrate into an adult's head, and through the muzzles of the guns, you could see the complex rifling on the inner wall of the barrel, like a magic dragon with a glow of steel.

At the same time, in front of the right turret, another identical turret also turned, and a third turret in the rear left did not move due to design limitations that prevented it from firing in the same direction.

And at the stern of the ship, forty feet away, the same scene was also playing.

This is a seven-inch cannon.

And at their feet was the battleship Hongwu.

With a displacement of 30,000 tons, twelve seven-inch guns, a 28,000-horsepower steam engine, a maximum speed of 20 knots per hour, and a maximum range of 11,000 nautical miles, this battleship is actually close to the data of a dreadnought.

Not steam turbines, of course.

Although the steam turbine has also been developed in Daming at this time, and has been installed on the test type of destroyer, but there is still some distance from the actual installation of the battleship, which is used by the next generation of battleships, the three-cylinder steam engine can fully meet the power needs of the Hongwu class and Qi Jiguang class, after all, Germany also uses a three-cylinder steam engine to build a dreadnought, and the Hongwu class is close to the Nassau class except for the small caliber of the gun.

This is already zenith.

After all, this is 1730, not 1930.

Behind the battleship Hongwu, its sister ships Yongle, Zhengde, and Wanli were lined up, and these steel behemoths entered the Mediterranean Sea through the Anhua Canal, and then behind them were six Qi Jiguang-class cruisers of almost the same size but could reach a speed of twenty-three nautical miles per hour, lined up on the sea with the same attitude, and ten of the latest warships, all of which aimed their 120 main guns at the coast of North Africa, where it was nearly fifteen miles away.

"Fire!"

Luo Zhang said.

"Fire!"

Xu Shou said.

One hundred and twenty seven-inch cannons suddenly erupted into blazing flames, and one hundred and twenty shells weighing more than 300 pounds whistled through the sky, and almost in the blink of an eye, a fortress on the coast of North Africa was engulfed in flames, and when the smoke of the explosion dissipated, the fortress completely disappeared from the ground.

In the distance, in Gibraltar, a Spanish general holding a telescope shuddered without hesitation.

"It's not a cannon, it's hellfire!"

He muttered to himself with a pale face.

"This is an invincible enemy, there is no point in our struggle, such a battleship can destroy our entire navy, maybe we should disband our fleet, dismantle our battleships, move those cannons to the land to defend our cities, our battleships have no value of existence, if we resist with the navy, we can only waste the lives of our soldiers in vain."

Beside him, another general, who was also holding a telescope, was muttering to himself.

"Your Excellency Marshal, Duke, it seems that this should not be your concern, right? Didn't you see that they had just shelled Ceuta? ”

An officer said weakly.

The first general was stunned for a moment.

"Damn, they're shelling our castle!"

Then he let out a cry of grief.

Well, it was true that the Ming army bombarded the coast of North Africa, but the problem was that it belonged to His Majesty the King of Spain, and it belonged to Ceuta in Spain, and the Ming army wiped one of the fortresses that the Spaniards controlled this strait directly from the ground with a salvo. Of course, Luo Zhang was not interested in explaining this problem to them, and he didn't know that he had made a mistake, and the Spaniards couldn't catch up if they wanted to negotiate with him, how could a fleet sailing at a speed of twenty nautical miles be able to catch up with their sail warships. It was not until the Ming fleet passed through Gibraltar and headed north to the Portuguese coast that the news reached Madrid on fast horses.

And then there's the matter of diplomats.

But it was not until Luo Zhang's fleet entered the Strait of Dover that the Ming diplomats in France waited here for the fleet, met with the Duke, and then returned to Paris to express the Duke's apologies to Philip V.

The Damingdi icon is wrong.

Well, that's the reason.

The map of the Ming Dynasty was wrong, and the Hugh mark belonging to Spain was turned into Morocco, and Morocco, as a country of heresy, according to the will of His Majesty the Emperor, was also one of the enemies of the Ming Dynasty, so Luo Zhang bombarded it by the way when he passed through Gibraltar. I didn't expect that because of the wrong map marking, this small place in the territory of Morocco actually belongs to Spain, this is an unfortunate misunderstanding, it is indeed regrettable, but it is limited to that, as for the follow-up compensation, let the diplomats solve it, anyway, things have happened, we still face the future!

This explanation almost made Philip V so angry that he almost vomited blood.

But he can only look to the future.

After all, it is impossible for him to start a war with Daming because of this, if he dares, then it will not only be Ceuta, it is estimated that this Daming naval marshal will turn around and go back and bomb Barcelona into ruins, so in the end we can only talk about compensation. This is a very troublesome thing, and it is necessary to investigate and bargain, in short, this kind of thing has always required diplomats to spew saliva for a long time, after all, they rarely have such an opportunity to show the value of existence, in fact, they have been spraying until the war between the Ming and Spain, and there is no final result, as for the Ming and Spain after the war......

That's a piece of!

However, this incident also allowed the Europeans to really see the Ming Dynasty's strong ships and guns, if the past Dingyuan-class battleships and five-inch guns were already invincible, then the current Hongwu-class battleships and seven-inch guns can be said to be completely desperate. During the investigation, the Spaniards found that their Ceuta Castle had actually been completely destroyed after the first shell, and then a series of shells, but the wreckage was destroyed again and again, and finally the entire castle completely disappeared from the ground, leaving only horrific craters.

A single cannonball destroys a castle.

The result was horrific, considering that it was a real fortress, a fortified fortress, which was Spain's second fortress in the Strait of Gibraltar after Gibraltar, and after years of painstaking management, it thought it was the largest fortress in Europe, and then it was destroyed by a shell.

Moreover, the warships of the Ming army were nine thousand yards away from this castle at that time.

This result was like the tip of a needle poking at a balloon, instantly piercing the last bit of illusion of the Europeans, and then pessimism and despair spread among the monarchs and their admirals, which meant that all their efforts were in vain, and their fleets that they had built with all their financial resources, their sail battleships that they thought they could resist, and their coastal defense system, which they had exhausted with all their might, were all swept into the garbage heap in front of the seven-inch main guns of the Hongwu-class battleships.

Even those hundred-pound coastal defense cannons are useless!

What about a hundred pounds?

Not to mention piercing nearly a foot thick steel plate from 9,000 yards away, it was impossible for that thing to hit a shell 9,000 yards away.

And the hundred-pound cannon is already the limit of the ability of the Europeans, this kind of giant cast with steel from the Ming Dynasty, only on a few of the most important fortresses, can be equipped with one or two, and because of the huge size and incredible weight, it takes more than ten minutes to re-complete the aiming of a cannon, but it is such a thing, the longest range is only 7,000 yards, but it is almost impossible to hit the target at such a distance, because it is far beyond the ability to aim.

If they say that they can resist the Dingyuan-class battleships of the Ming Army, then they can only say that they can only say that they have two legs against the Hongwu-class battleships, and the Hongwu-class battleships that the Ming Army has built have already reached six, not to mention that the guns of the Qi Jiguang-class cruisers are the same as the Hongwu-class, and the Qi Jiguang-class ones that have been built are ten. What's more, these two warships are still under construction, it is said that at least dozens of them will be built, and they will easily smash the coasts of Europe, Spain, France, England, and the coastal ports of the Netherlands like broken porcelain bottles, all of which are lambs to the slaughter in front of these terrifying behemoths, that is, too far away......

Well, that's it, no.

At a time when the whole of Western Europe was trembling in front of the Ming fleet, this fleet did something even more desperate.

Great Belt, Denmark.

"Invasion?"

Luo Zhang looked ahead with interest.

There several Danish Navy warships were sailing at full speed through Cape Fiying, and at the same time the signal soldiers on the mast were constantly waving the signal flag, you must know that the universal flag language was spread from the Ming Dynasty, as the first person to use this set of flags, Luo Zhang certainly understood the meaning of this signal flag.

"Then it's an invasion!"

He said indifferently.

At the same time, his hand waved forward, and then Xu Shou picked up the phone and gave the order to move forward at full speed, and the fleet that was originally sailing at a cruising speed of ten knots immediately began to accelerate, and in front of them on the right, those Danish battleships were still sailing slowly, of course, this is already the fastest speed that these warships can reach under the current wind, about seven or eight knots, as a sail battleship, this speed is considered high.

But it didn't work.

If the Ming fleet still maintained a speed of ten knots, perhaps they would be able to intercept it in front, but soon it would be completely impossible for the Ming army to accelerate.

Under the helpless gaze of the Danish naval officers and sailors on those warships, ten Ming warships spewed billowing black smoke and roared an arrogant whistle into the Great Belt Strait, sailing south along this strait more than 20 kilometers wide at full speed, and soon appeared in the frightened eyes of the residents of Niburg, and everyone rushed out of the houses, silently staring at these steel warships from the Eastern Empire tens of thousands of miles away, watching their terrifying cannons slowly turn in their field of vision.

Of course, this time Luo Zhang will not open fire.

After all, Daming and Denmark are still friendly countries, at this time Denmark is actually the Kingdom of Denmark and Norway, and since it was defeated by Sweden in the Northern War, this country has actually become a vassal of Charles XII, and it is also protected by Charles XII, Emperor Yang and Charles XII still maintain their friendship for nearly 30 years, even the Far East Company is still in operation, and Luo Zhang himself still holds a lot of shares of this company, including a Danish concubine in his family!

The fleet soon passed through the Great Belt Strait into the Gulf of Kiel, and a few dozen miles to the southeast of them was the famous Port of Kiel, and from this moment they officially entered a new sea for the Ming Navy......

Baltic Sea.

Sailing from the base in Zhenxi Harbor, they have sailed more than 10,000 miles here, without stopping at any port on the way, although one cruiser broke down and had to stop for repairs and was delayed for two days, but at other times it can be said that the journey went smoothly, like a group of beasts declaring their territory, which made all European countries tremble along the way.

But their voyage doesn't stop there.

"Turn east and keep going at cruising speed!"

Luo Zhang stood on the deck and said as he looked at the coast of Jutland that loomed in the distance.

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