In January 1797, a cruiser fleet of the Tang Navy, consisting mainly of light cruisers and frigates, shelled the city of Surat on the west coast of India. Pen? Interesting? Pavilion wWw. ｂiquge。 infoThe city was originally British, but in the previous war, the French took it, but due to lack of management ability, it returned to the Marathas, and the British also wanted to take it back, but were blocked by the French and the Tang.

After the shelling, the defenders of Surat did not attempt to resist, but simply hoisted the white flag, and then the Gurkha soldiers entered the city and occupied the most strategically valuable port city on the west coast of India except Mumbai.

Subsequently, the Don army, dominated by the Gurkha brigade, made a major attack on Gujarat, and similar to the situation in Orissa, the combat effectiveness of the princely army was quite limited. However, several princely princes who opposed Peshwa gathered their forces and formed a coalition army in an attempt to defeat the invading Tang army.

Many of the troops were instructors hired from Europe, mostly French, who were the forces that France helped train the princes of the princely states. Before the start of the war, the French instructors and officers immediately turned their backs on the Maratha League in the name of friendly relations with the Tang Dynasty, causing chaos in the modern army of up to 40,000 people.

The Tang army raided this modern Maratha army, although only one regiment of the Gurkha army and two regiments of the regular Tang army actually participated in the battle, with a total strength of about 5,000 people, but the Maratha army was still defeated, and was interspersed back and forth by the Tang army, divided, surrounded and annihilated.

The Maratha princes organized an army of 200,000 to resist, and most of these 200,000 were low-caste peasants pulled out of the fields, not to mention without proper weaponry or training. The low-caste Indians had an advantage in enslavement, but when they became soldiers, they could not really become soldiers who could fight. There were also some high castes that specialized in warfare, such as the Rajputs, who were once excellent cavalrymen in the Mughal Empire. But obviously the times have changed, and the Rajput soldiers have gradually eroded over the years, and when facing the Tang army, they were beaten to the point of crying and crying for their mothers in just one or two rounds.

On the battlefield, there was even a situation where the artillery battalion of the Tang Army bombarded with more than a dozen howitzers, and as a result, nearly 100,000 troops of the Maratha Princely State were repulsed. Therefore, whether it is the natives in the Tang army, the Gurkhas, the Burmese, and the Siamese, almost all look down on this group of Indians. The South Asian theater is extremely optimistic, believing that the war can end soon.

Although the strength of the Tang Army was the consensus of Britain, France and even all the great powers, the Tang Army only used brigade and regiment-sized combat forces on the battlefield, driving tens of thousands or even more than 100,000 Maratha troops back and forth like sheepdogs driving sheep, completely exposing the weakness of India's local forces.

The British summed it up, and the Duke of Wellington wrote to his homeland: "Ten or twenty years ago, we thought that the conquest of India would be a long and difficult task, rich and populous, and that the princely princes, though so divided, were many times superior to ours, and which, if united, would have made Britain suffer." But while Britain was advancing at a rapid pace, the kingdom was not changing, and we had new weapons and new tactics to enable our armies to defeat more than ten times our number of enemies on the battlefield. The victory of the Don at Maratha amply proves this. As far as I know, the Don army did not massively use their armored forces, and even less their bombers, because it was clearly wasteful to use these weapons against the Indians with scimitars and spears. I think that the level of equipment of the Don Army, which sent troops, is close to that of our British army, perhaps with a slight advantage in machine guns and artillery. It was such an army that easily defeated the Maratha coalition and seized vast lands. England cannot wait any longer, we need to strike immediately, first Mysore, then Nizam, to ensure our control of southern India, to form a rivalry with the Tang Republic on the Indian subcontinent, and to fight for the interests of the United Kingdom as much as possible. ”

The French were also gearing up, sending General Jourdham, who had distinguished himself in the Revolutionary War, to bring 24,000 French soldiers from mainland France to India, intending to get a piece of the Maratha Empire.

However, the efforts of Britain and France were still a little bit petty compared to the Tang Dynasty's largesse, and the Tang army that landed from Surat reached the foot of the Himalayas after only two months and fifteen days, and a large number of princely states were wiped out, and the Tang Dynasty drew capable civil servants from its own country and various overseas territories to govern the vast India.

In the more than ten years of overseas consular construction, a considerable number of overseas consular residents have been able to use Chinese proficiently and have received a certain degree of Tang-style education. These people all have a strong sense of identity with Datang, and they are also so-called vested interests. Compared with ordinary overseas residents, they enjoy higher social status and economic conditions, and everything they have is basically given by Datang, so they naturally have to vigorously support Datang.

There is also a shortage of administrative personnel in Datang itself, and a large number of newly developed cities can use civil servants, so it is becoming more and more difficult to transfer administrative personnel from the mainland, and civil servants usually feel that they are recruited from the mainland to overseas, even if the rank is generally promoted by one level or more, but there is also a feeling of exile, so there are not many people who are keen on this. Therefore, most of the Tang civil servants who went to India were ethnic minorities, most of whom were Japanese and Siamese.

In April, the Tang army captured the nominal Mughal capital of Delhi and captured the Mughal emperor. This emperor has long had no real power, not even a rubber stamp, because there is also a Maratha empire underneath.

More than 20 days longer than Ju Guochong's estimate, Datang completed its strategic goal in 200 days, seizing a large area of land from the Indus River Plain to Orissa. At the same time, Datang officials also announced that the Mughal and Maratha would automatically end, and Datang would establish a North Indian overseas territory in the actual control area to govern Delhi.

In the short term, Datang has no intention of investing heavily in this overseas territory and tilting towards immigrants, but will still use local forces to rule the local area, slowly expand Datang's influence, and cultivate a group of locals loyal to Datang, and then gradually realize a series of plans such as land reform in the overseas territory. (To be continued.) )