The First Fleet had made some preparations, and set sail again.

This time they had twenty warships and twenty frigates, as well as eight troop carriers, with the newly reorganized Nanyang Marine Brigade.

At the same time, there is also the newly established Australian Gold Force.

Exploration of Australia is also planned for this year, with the Golden Force being dropped to southeastern Australia.

Seventy per cent of Australia's land is dryland and 30 per cent is desert where agricultural activities are not permitted. The areas suitable for planting are like a green circle, distributed in the coastal areas, of which the southeast region is the most suitable for agricultural production.

Australia is a place with a lot of minerals and is suitable for grazing.

In later generations, Australia, known as the country that sits on the back of sheep, has more than 170 million sheep, and although most of the area is dryland, the groundwater is very abundant, which provides favorable conditions for animal husbandry.

At the same time, it is also called "the country that sits on a minecart" and "the country that holds an ear of wheat", and the so-called "sitting on a minecart" means that Australia has too many minerals. The southeast region is a concentrated production area of wheat. The tropical coastal areas of northern Australia are home to sugar cane.

It is a huge island with an area of 7.692 million square kilometers, and although it is not as big as Greenland, it is already four-fifths of China.

Zhao Yan felt that the Americas were too far away, and it was too difficult to immigrate there for a while, so it was better to choose north and south first.

To the north is to expand to the northwest, and it will collide head-on with Tsarist Russia, which is expanding head-on.

To the south, it is to expand to the Indochina Peninsula, the Indonesian archipelago, and Australia. It will collide with Vietnamese, Khmer, Thai and South Sea monkeys.

These are the two main directions of future immigration.

By March, the battalions were almost reorganized, and although the conscripts had just been recruited, they had undergone military training before they were enlisted.

After all, this recruitment is to recruit the population engaged in agricultural production, Zhao Yan has sent regiments to train in every village, these recruits have learned to queue before joining the army, and at the same time, in recent years, Zhao Yan has changed the main content of training from spears to muskets and horsemanship.

And this time, most of the recruits were musketeers and cavalry.

Those who didn't pass the test were all transferred to the baggage troops as baggage soldiers.

At present, Shandong's troops have a characteristic that they have strong logistics, and on average, every three combat soldiers can be assigned one baggage soldier, and with the logistics personnel who have not gone to the battlefield, they can almost reach the level of 3:2.

Such logistical strength is unique in such an era.

The reorganized battalions are also about to go to the combat area one after another.

Han Shenggang took the Nanyang Infantry Brigade to the south with the First Fleet, preparing to attack Taiwan and Batavia, Zhao Yan was very strange, why the Dutch have not come to contact until now, but if they don't come to contact, then let's fight! Defeat Taiwan first, and then defeat Batavia, so that the trade route between Nanyang and the Indochina Peninsula can be opened. At the same time, Batavia can be circumnavigated from the strait on the side to India.

This year's target in the north is Mongolia!

Zhao Yan intends to raid Mongolia in two ways, and the first division will be responsible for the war against Mongolia this year, part of which will enter Mongolia from Liaoxi, and part of which will enter Mongolia from Shanxi, and at the same time go to raid the house by the way.

And the second division, one infantry brigade and two cavalry brigades, will be transferred to the Nurkandus Division and expand into the Siberian region. Of the remaining three infantry brigades, two of them were guarding Shandong and one was guarding Liaodong and Korea.

The Marine Brigade of the Americas has not yet departed because there are not enough ships. Although there are quite a lot of merchant ships now, it is obviously not appropriate to send 30,000 soldiers to the Americas just now. Wait until the 30,000 villagers come back. Before the 30,000 villagers returned, the American Marine Brigade would cooperate with the war in the South Seas at any time.

Liu Guoneng's regiment stationed in the mountains will also leave for Nagasaki. Three other mountain regiments were on their way to Nagasaki.

The mountain regiment has no target for training in the country, and it has not yet reached the level of attacking Zheng Zhilong, nor is it going to attack the Indochina Peninsula, so these mountain troops might as well throw three to Yueben for training, and the other two will be sent to the mountains of North Korea for training, and by the way, they will hunt down the remnants in the mountains.

Yue Tuo and Kong Youde are still in the mountains of North Korea, and judging from some recent clues, they have not yet broken through the blockade and returned to Liaodong.

At the same time, the armed police force will also be sent to the provinces.

The whole of Shandong began to carry out large-scale troop movements, and the news that Zhao Yan was going to conquer Mongolia also appeared in the "Daming Daily".

This news made people all over the world look sideways.

Conquest of Mongolia! This is a feat that the Ming Dynasty only had at the time of the founding of the country.

Last year, Zhao Yan annexed North Korea, subdued Yueben, and recovered Liaodong, eliminating the Ming Dynasty's henchmen, and now he wants to conquer Mongolia.

This conquest of Mongolia, with the strong strength of the Shandong army, defeat is almost impossible.

But if you want to sweep away the Mongols, I'm afraid it will not be so simple.

Mongolia is a steppe, and the Mongols are a people on horseback, they can't beat and run, and the soldiers and horses of the Central Plains often have no way to take them.

But this time, Zhao Yan obviously made a huge determination to increase the military expenditure for the war from the original two million taels to four million taels.

Desperate consumption has to fight to the death of the nomads in the north.

…… And in faraway California, the clouds of war have loomed over the port of Jinshan.

The British, French, and Dutch allied forces came quickly, and in January they had already passed through the Strait of Magellan, and hundreds of warships were rushing towards Jinshan Harbor.

According to Western calculations, it was February 13. They passed through the foggy Strait of Magellan, and the Spaniards in the Strait of Magellan, gave them a convenient door.

But after they passed through the Strait of Magellan, the exit on the west coast was attacked. It was a small fleet of five British [***] ships and five corsairs.

This fleet is the fleet arranged by the American Fleet to harass the open sea, consisting of five fast British [***] ships and five fast pirate ships.

As soon as the combined fleet left the Strait of Magellan, it was hit head-on by the fleet responsible for harassment, and with only one round of artillery bombardment, a French [***] ship was sunk on the spot.

Just as the Combined Fleet was about to pounce on and destroy the hateful Far Easterners in front of them, the Far Easterners turned around and ran away after a volley...... The coalition forces were in hot pursuit, and by the time they squeezed out of the Strait of Magellan, the disturbance team sent by the American Fleet had already run some distance.

Due to the high speed, the other warships were obviously unable to catch up, and the twenty British [***] ships in the coalition separated and pursued the harassment team.

The British are simply in hot pursuit.

They understood that as long as they caught up, they could kill these hateful Far Easterners, twenty against five would be absolutely easy, and as for the other five pirate ships that did not enter the stream, they were not yet in their eyes.

The British were so persistent because they saw their own warships, and the warships used by the Far Easterners in front of them were their Royal Navy.

How this calms the British.

The two sides chased one after the other, from morning to noon.

The British sailors, with their superb navigation skills, have been biting the disturbing fleet of the American Fleet, and the distance between the two sides is getting closer and closer.

It's just that...... And that's all.

The British came close to catching up several times, but unfortunately they were all shelled. And the guns on the bow of their ships could not hit the enemy in front.

This disturbing fleet sent by the American Fleet used stern guns all the way to force the British [***] ships that caught up, often smashing shells on the decks of the British.

It's just that the shelling is very sparse, and there is at most one cannon in the stern.

The distance between the two sides is still considerable, and under the interference of artillery, the British [***] ships are unable to intersperse and encircle this disturbing fleet.

You can't hit the other side with the guns in the bow alone.

But the British still pursued it.

The two sides chased and fled for hours, and suddenly the harassing fleet fled towards a bay, and the British, relying on their absolute superiority, ignored the strangeness of the waters, and crashed directly into it.

According to their thoughts, even if they run aground on the reef, there will be other ships to pull it, and there is no danger at all.

As a result, when they bypassed the cliff wall of the bay, they were directly dumbfounded!

In that bay, there were ten warships in ambush.

When rounding the corner, the two sides are almost close to each other. And the five warships and the five pirate ships that had fled all the way did not run away, and had already turned around and crashed into them.

Fifteen enemy warships plus five pirate ships.

And they also have twenty warships.

The British quickly understood that this was a trap, that the current strength was not at all proportional, that the artillery of these Far Easterners was very advanced, and that the Royal Navy had almost no chance of defeating it once it had lost its superiority in artillery.

The commander of the Royal Fleet immediately ordered a retreat.

But the American fleet on the opposite side had already rushed over, and the British had not turned around for a while, and the American fleet ambushed around the corner was very close to them, and the distance between the two sides was only more than thirty meters.

As a result, by the time the British turned in disarray, the American fleet had crashed directly into the British Royal Fleet, without any formation, and it was pure - a melee.

A tragic scuffle began.

In such a situation, the British have no way to avoid it.

The two sides were less than ten meters apart, and some were only a few meters away, violently bombarding each other's hulls, and for a while, the hulls of both sides were flying with sawdust.

The soldiers on the deck began to shoot at each other with muskets.

The longbows and muskets in the hands of the British sailors were very sharp, and they were inseparable from the sailors of the American Fleet, but after a while, the sailors of the American Fleet began to throw poison balls at each other, and immediately stunned a large area.

It is a smoke bomb made of petroleum and some mixture, which emits a large amount of pungent smoke when lit, not unlike the smell of a ping-pong ball wrapped in paper and then stepped on.

The poison ball is equipped with a very small scale and very low-cost jamming weapon, which is projected with a reduced version of a trebuchet, and a single projection is a large number of throws, but the range is not far, and the Shandong Navy, which wins with long-range firepower, can rarely use this thing.

More than the poison ball is the Molotov cocktail, which is made with alcohol and some mixture that increases viscosity, and the gauze on the outside is dipped in alcohol, and then a little fire is used to throw it out.

There was a crisp snap, and after the glass bottle shattered, there was a bang, and the deck of the British was immediately burned.

And the rocket is not used at all, the range of the rocket is too long, it is easy to fly around so closely, it is okay to fly into the sea, in case it is not good to shoot your own people.

Under the interference of poison balls and Molotov cocktails, those Royal Navy sailors either covered their noses to avoid the smoke or were busy fighting fires, and under the suppression of the opposing fire, they were powerless to fight back.

And the artillery battle was even more intense.

The artillery of the American Fleet fired desperately, the rate of fire was 4 times that of the British Royal Fleet, and the power of the guns was more than twice as strong.

As a result, the shooting turned out to be a tragic one.

After the first round of shelling of the British Royal Fleet, the second round was not ready, and the American Fleet had already begun there.

The shell smashed into the hold of the British [***] ship from the wreckage that had just been blown up.

Many of the British artillerymen in the cabins were killed directly by the shells fired in, and the gunpowder in several British [***] ships even exploded.

Such a situation is undoubtedly extremely tragic for the British.

But for the American fleet, it is also a hard-fought style that is not very willing to choose, although they are very hard, much harder than the enemy, but this also has its own damage.

If these British [***] ships can be eliminated, this kind of hard-hitting style of play is worth it.

There were two plans when this trap was set before, that is, if the British [***] ships caught up, then they would eat them as quickly as possible in this bay.

If they did not catch up, the ten warships that had been lying in ambush in the bay would retreat.

…… The interspersed Royal Fleet of Great Britain was a complete tragedy, and under the tyrannical firepower of the American Fleet, it was blinded in place before it had time to retreat.

There was not much suspense, the two sides only lasted about five minutes, and the warships of the British Royal Fleet were ruthlessly disintegrated one after another, and it was impossible to sink the other side in such a close fire, because the artillery could not hit the waterline, and could only hit the hull of the other side.

The shells of the American fleet are much more powerful than the shells of the British, and they will explode after hitting them, and they are also heavy artillery shells, which is unimaginable in this era.

The British [***] ships were beaten to a thousand holes, and they could not escape the American fleet that bit up like mad dogs, and several British [***] ships had already escaped the range of fire, but unfortunately they were crossed by the Shandong warships and knocked out their sails with their side guns, and at such a close distance, the naval artillery, which was known for its accuracy, hit the sails with ease.

Shandong's artillery is the best in the navy, and the army's artillery is almost all left over from the navy.

The American fleet does not take prisoners this time, just sink!

Twenty minutes later, after the American Fleet killed the last British [***] ship that was about to escape, the battle was resolved, and the American Fleet did not stay long, and returned directly to Jinshan.

This battle was an ambush of great significance for the American fleet.

This time, the British Royal Fleet in the coalition was directly disabled, and the fast warships in the coalition were also destroyed, while the Dutch and French warships were not very fast in speed.

In such a situation, the American Fleet could boldly send the five captured British [***] ships and corsair to harass the coalition forces.

As soon as the American Fleet walked on the front foot, the huge combined fleet behind came.

The Europeans of the Combined Fleet looked dumbfounded at the large amount of floating debris on the sea in front of them, and they could tell from these floating debris that a naval battle had taken place not long ago.

And it was a very tragic naval battle, and there were so many floating objects on the sea! Never before had even the most experienced naval officer seen so much floating debris on the surface of the sea, which was full of parts from a warship and barrels from the ship's oak barrels.

What stunned them even more were the British sailors floating on the sea, and they didn't have to think about it to know that it was the British who were defeated.

When the Combined Fleet fished up the British sailors, they were stunned by the battle described by the sailors, and the British Royal Fleet, chased to this bay, was ambushed by the Far Easterners, and what was even more shocking was that the twenty warships of the British Royal Fleet were all wiped out.

None of them escaped from the hands of those Far Easterners, all of them were beaten and disintegrated, no wonder there were so many floating objects on the surface of the sea.

The British royal commander in the combined fleet was also killed in a vile ambush launched by the Far Easterners.

But this did not disintegrate the fighting spirit of the combined fleet, on the contrary, they were angry and the fighting spirit went up.

They believe that the Far Easterners are too despicable, and they must be caught head-on, taught them a hard lesson, and completely uprooted their strongholds.

They want revenge!

After this painful lesson, the Combined Fleet was much more cautious in its actions.

And the small fleet of disturbances sent by the American Fleet appeared in front of the coalition forces again, but the coalition forces did not give any chance to sneak attack.

But the endless harassment began, and although the fleet was small, it followed the coalition forces, firing all the way with the guns in the bow.

Some of them first drove five or six hundred meters away from the coalition forces, and then fired out a row of sideboard guns with a horizontal hull.

And the coalition forces can't catch up with these warships responsible for harassment in terms of speed, and the range of artillery is not as far as theirs. Is it one, or ten, or twenty?

One is completely ineffective, and will be wiped out by a ruthless wheel.

Ten ships, others are still very calm, fighting and retreating, but they still can't do it.

Those twenty!

It's not a matter of quantity! The combined fleet with more than eighty warships dares to disturb, and is it afraid of twenty?

Lin Jun, who was in charge of harassment, was so excited that he found that such an obscene style of play was invincible.

After not bothering for a few hours, Lin Jun changed his strategy.

In the open sea area, bite up from the outskirts of the coalition forces, walk side by side with the coalition fleet, and then five warships and five pirate ships open fire together.

When walking side by side, it is the side side that hits the side side.

They have more heavy shells, longer range, faster firepower.

The scramble starts again!

Lin Jun, who used this set of tactics, quickly made the coalition fleet scramble.

It's useless to chase, it's even worse if you don't chase, you still have to chase.

As soon as the coalition forces chased after him, Lin Jun ran away with his people. Then bite it again and shell again.

One by one, the shells fell on the allied warships, killing many Europeans.

But Lin Jun soon discovered that such a harassment could not achieve much success, because he could not sink the warships of the coalition forces.

Driving side-by-side like this, the shells could not hit the opponent's position below the waterline.

The first day's haunting came to an end as night fell, but with a fleet as large as the coalition forces, it was almost impossible to run away in the darkness.

Because the night is not dark, you can still see distant objects with the help of starlight. Lin Jun simply ran to the front of the combined fleet, anyway, they were going to attack the stronghold in California, as long as they walked in front of them, even if they lost their traces, they would soon be able to search for them on the sea tomorrow.

"Tomorrow we should go around to the upwind and hit their waterline." Lin Jun said to a few captains who had gathered over.

"That's right, and it's going to be a hit."

"Hehe, it's fun to be hit by our heavy artillery down there......"

The heavy artillery used by the American Fleet is a caliber of 200 millimeters, and the shell can tear a large hole in it as long as it explodes.

(To be continued)