On his way back to Los Angeles, Los Angeles was greeted by a diplomat of a truly official nature. Pen & Fun & Pavilion www.biquge.info This man's name is Alfonso, and he is the envoy of King Carlos III of Spain, and he is also the king's confidant. As early as when His Majesty King Carlos III was King of Naples and Sicily, Alfonso followed him, and although Alfonso was only a minor nobleman, he was deeply trusted by His Majesty the King, and repeatedly entrusted him with important tasks, and during the Seven Years' War, he also represented the Spanish army in the past.

After the rise of the Tang Dynasty in California, successive military victories, and the intimidation of the Mexican colonies, Governor Baccarelli could no longer deal with these problems on his own, and sent people to send the situation across the Atlantic, to the Iberian Peninsula, Spain proper. From the autumn onwards, Baccarelli sent a special person to report to Carlos III, and the ship arrived in Spain two months later. What happened in North America shocked the king, who was determined to forge ahead and achieved a lot, and shook the Spanish government and the public.

There are hawks in every country, and after the Seven Years' War, the national pride of some hawks was affected, Spain lost all its European enclaves, and even gave Florida to others, although it was a last resort, but it also greatly hurt the Spanish hawks. Spain has been looking for an opportunity to rebuild their confidence and play with their prestige and ambition. Therefore, when a little-known small colonial country actually offended the power of Spain, sank a frigate, and even seized the evangelistic offices and fortresses established by Spain, the hawks felt that although this opponent was not very good-looking, they should not be too picky.

"War, we should teach any guy who defy the Spanish throne a lesson!" After all, it was King Carlos III of Spain who personally paid out of his pocket to support the exploration and colonization of California, and now California has become the Jiazhou of the Tang Dynasty (when Bai Nan left, the cabinet had passed a resolution to officially determine Jiazhou as the official name), which was equivalent to giving His Majesty the King a slap in the face.

However, the opposition's opinion is also very clear, they have two main arguments, first of all, according to the Mexican side, although the Tang Republic is a newly established colonial country, but it has a strong military force and incredible military technology, in order to be informative, the information sent back by Baccarelli contains information on several Datang weapons.

For example, the Devil's Battleship, the White Shark, which sank the frigate USS San Diego, can sail at a speed of thirty or forty knots on the water without sails, and has a powerful and long-range gun. Baccarelli said directly that there is absolutely no warship in this world that can defeat this devil's warship. Even if the Spanish Navy sent a whole fleet, a dozen battleships would not work.

Then there is the firearms of Datang, the rifles used by ordinary soldiers, which can shoot continuously, and the bullets fired within ten seconds are the bullets fired by Spanish flintlock pistols in one minute. What's even more terrifying is a machine gun that can spray bullets like a torrential rain as long as the trigger is pulled, and the Spaniards don't know the name of this thing, so they use the transliterated name of the Datang Chinese machine gun. The artillery of the Tang Dynasty is also particularly terrifying, and judging from the artillery deployment of the Tang Army, the artillery equipped by the Tang Army of the same formation may be several times that of the Spanish Army.

The second argument put forward by the anti-war faction was that California lacked material production and that colonization was particularly difficult. Water is scarce and it is difficult to hunt large game animals, and growing food requires a lot of migration and water conservancy. It is significant that nothing like gold and silver was found here in the Spanish intelligence.

In his report, Baccarelli wrote that if a war was to be fought on a par with the Tang Dynasty, at least 10,000 elite Spanish soldiers would need to be mobilized, and that it would not be enough to rely on the colonial army of the gangsters, but to send the king's guards from the Iberian Peninsula. Of course, this also requires Spain to break through the handle of the Datang Navy first, and it is not possible to determine how many warships Datang has for the time being, but looking at the conservative estimates of the ships in its port, Datang can mobilize more than 20 warships, plus the powerful White Shark, then Spain is very likely to need a fleet similar to the size of the Invincible Armada back then, and it is possible to defeat the Datang Navy head-on.

This is naturally a joke, because now Spain does not have a fleet the size of the Armada of the past!

Carlos III was a somewhat sane monarch, and after careful consideration, he decided that Spain could not afford to wage a large-scale and high-intensity war with the Tang Republic on the remote west coast of North America. According to Carlos III's profile of this country, this is a stubborn and tough country, and if it really does not handle its relationship with them, this madman-like country may directly enter Mexico and threaten the most important Spanish colony. Maybe the Tang Dynasty can't afford to occupy this place in its entirety, but as long as they destroy it, then the loss to Spain is no different from losing this colony that has been built for hundreds of years.

So, Carlos III found his henchman Alfonso and ordered him to go to the Tang Republic in person to see on his behalf how strong this country is, and if it is really invincible, then sign a peace treaty with this country, demarcate borders with it, and reduce disputes as much as possible.

At the same time, Carlos III also pragmatically asked Governor Bacalelli to strengthen Mexico's military construction, and asked the Mexican government to invest more money in weaponry, personnel training and fortifications. Even, Carlos III was determined to use the port of San Blas as a base to build a west coast fleet to counter the threat from the Tang Dynasty.

It took Alfonso more than a month to cross the Atlantic, then cross Mexico overland, and travel to Los Angeles in the port of San Blas aboard the Spanish frigate Favolita, which had last arrived in Los Angeles.

There is also an interesting anecdote, in an area more than 100 nautical miles south of Los Angeles, the Spaniards found several smuggling ships, these smuggling ships are of European type, and there are also Tang people's square-nosed ship type, and the tonnage is not large. Hesetta, the captain of the Favolita, immediately wanted to arrest these smuggling ships, and he had long heard that some guys in Vallarta who did not have the slightest sense of law and honor were smuggling goods from Datang and selling some Mexican products to Datang. But apparently local officials did not stop it. Now that they happened to run into each other, Heseta naturally had no reason to let them go.

Who knows, Alfonso said: "Mr. Lieutenant Colonel, I suggest that you better not do this, this is already close to the country of the Tang people, and the arrest of smuggling ships here is very likely to cause accidents." ”

Herseta naturally had a lot of respect for Alfonso, after all, this was the king's red man, the real kingdom's henchman, but all European captains could not tolerate being challenged to their authority on the ship, he said: "As long as we board these ships, we will be able to have evidence that they are smuggling into the Tang Kingdom, and according to the laws of the colonies, we can severely punish these people, and even sentence them to death." ”

Alfonso shrugged his shoulders and said, "It's up to you at sea, but I don't think it's wise." ”

Hesetta was also slightly hesitant, although he could not listen to Alfonso and make his own decisions. However, once Alfonso returns to Mexico City, he can speak ill of himself to Baccarelli, and his future career will be greatly affected. Compared with his own career, it seems that authority or something is not so important.

Just as Heseta hesitated, two black clouds of smoke rose in the distance, and a huge sailing ship gradually approached.

Alfonso saw the ship in the telescope, and then he exclaimed: "My God, is this ship from the Tang Navy?" Such a volume is probably even bigger than our Spanish super-battleship, the Holy Trinity. ”

The Holy Trinity was a super-battleship built in Havana, Cuba in 1769 with the assistance of Irish shipbuilders, originally a 120-gun battleship, and in 1790 it was refitted again and turned into a super-monster with four decks, a displacement of nearly five thousand tons, and 140 guns.

The Datang battleship in front of him is the lead ship of the Yangwei-class armored cruiser of the Datang Navy, which was originally planned to be completed in 1774, but because the development of the 155mm gun equipped on the ship was delayed, it was not completely completed until February this year. This cruiser has 6 155mm large-caliber guns, 12 105mm guns and 12 76mm guns, and its firepower is the highest among all the warships of the Tang Navy.

The Yangwei sailed here, not specifically for the Spaniards, but for adaptation training in the vicinity after just entering service, after all, the cruiser has undergone large-scale modifications, and even added armor, and no one knows whether she will be able to adapt to ocean-going combat and high-intensity combat.

Alfonso pointed to the Yangwei and said, "The hull is black, is that a layer of iron?" ”

Heseta had seen the manufacturing capacity of the Tang Dynasty, and he sighed: "With the luxury of the Tang people, I think it may even be a layer of steel armor." ”

Alfonso took a breath and said, "It's really strange to make the battleship look like a medieval knight, but it's terrible that such a huge thing can run so fast and have armor made of steel." ”

Heseta had the intention to board those smuggling ships just now, establish his authority, and maybe make a small fortune by the way, but after seeing this Datang cruiser, Heseta completely extinguished this thought. Those smuggling ships had Tang ships in them, and if they provoked the Tang people, the huge warship would be happy to send them to the bottom of the sea, not to mention that there was an envoy of the King of Spain on it.