The sea water is more than three feet deep, which is not too much of a problem for good divers. The only trouble is that it is November, and the sea water is already relatively cold, but fortunately, there are many crew members of the Zheng family, and there are many people who are good at diving.

In order to get half of the artillery under the sea, Zheng Zhilong actively organized the crew who were proficient in diving, arranged groups for them, and took turns to launch the water to find the wreck.

After finding the ship, Liu Jun and Zheng Zhilong drove the big ship to the sea above the sunken ship, then lowered the rope and hoisted thousands of catties of artillery with pulleys.

Fortunately, it is near Penghu Island, and the sea is not deep, and if there is a battle in the middle of the strait, the sea water there is at least 30 zhang deep. The water is so deep that no matter how good a sailor is, he can't dive.

On the second day of the Battle of Penghu, more than 200 artillery pieces were salvaged in one day. And also picked up a half-sunken battleship, after Liu Jun's Spanish shipwright on the ship saw it, said that the battleship was not damaged much, and it could still be used after repair, this news made Liu Jun very happy, and he immediately asked the ship to be towed back to the port of Penghu to repair the battleship. He didn't even let go of other shipwrecks, and organized people to find a way to fish them up together, repairing what could be repaired, and dismantling the useful materials on it if it couldn't.

These cannons on the Dutch warships are all new cannons, which are far larger and more powerful than the Hongyi cannons used in the Ming Dynasty today.

While continuing to salvage, Liu Jun asked people to go back to Fujian to mobilize new warships. Zheng Zhilong still has a lot of ships in Fujian, and the imperial court still has a lot of ships along the coast, although these ships are relatively small, but now the Dutch fleet has also suffered heavy losses, as long as Liu Jun reorganizes a fleet, even if it is still an old ship based on some lucky ships, it can still form an advantage.

In the naval battle, many ships of the Ming army were sunk, and more than 3,000 soldiers were killed in the battle, and hundreds were seriously wounded. This loss is not insignificant. However, the casualties of the Dutch were no less than this number, and more than 1,000 of them became prisoners of Liu Jun, while many of the Ming army's overboard were eventually rescued.

Zheng Zhilong wanted to kill the Dutch and British captives, but Liu Jun saved them. Most of these captives were army members, many were crew members, some were merchant sailors, and some were even South Asian servants on Dayuan Island, Taiwanese natives, and employees of the East India Company.

Liu Jun used five thousand taels of silver to take these people into his own hands, and was ready to find a way to collect them like the Spaniards.

The Ming army was able to pick up hundreds of artillery pieces from the sea every day, and Penghu Island was even more crowded with soldiers and horses. It's getting more and more lively. While waiting for the arrival of the newly mobilized fleet, Liu Jun asked people to continue to strengthen the shore defense fortifications on Penghu Island, and also repaired and expanded the fortress built by the Dutch on the island in those years.

The Battle of Penghu is not the end, but only the beginning.

Since the defeat of Penghu back to the general, in the castle of Gelanjia, a group of British and Dutch officers sighed for a long time, no one expected that they had gathered such a strong fleet, and they would be defeated so badly.

World War I lost three battleships and five armed merchant ships. Not to mention those two-masted and one-masted caravels were almost all lost in Penghu.

"The Ming army will soon attack Dacheng, and with our current strength, I am afraid it will be difficult to fight again." Captain Debaul Dao.

The commander of the British fleet, George, also had been languishing, and of his five battleships, one was lost. A seventy-four-gun double-deck four-masted battleship. By today's new naval standards, this is a standard battleship. He had a total of five ships, which were originally there to enforce the blockade of the China Sea and strike at the Spanish port of Manila in Luzon. As a result, I folded one here.

He felt that he should not have come to mix in the troubled waters at all, a battleship like this would take more than a year to build, not to mention. The construction cost was more than £30,000.

It's already November, and it's winter winds at sea, and it's not a good wind to get here from the East Indies, and the news reports that even if a fleet is sent to reinforce it at once, it will at least get next summer or even later. And this time they have gathered so many ships here, and there are not many ships on the East Indies side.

After all, those places are not peaceful, there are constant wars, and troops have been used. And George was thinking that the big man was Dutch, not British, although the Netherlands allied with Britain to fight against Spain, but they did not form an alliance to deal with the Ming Empire.

Debaul was still talking, but George couldn't listen anymore.

Fuck the war, it has nothing to do with me.

He slapped the table, "Everyone, I'm very sorry to inform you here that from now on, we, the British, will withdraw from the battle against the Ming Empire. Early tomorrow morning, I will leave the Grand Crew with my four ships and return to Batavia. When I get there, I will report the war here to your governor. ”

The Dutchmen, such as Van Brunn and De Baul, were all stunned.

Van Buron's face was full of anger, "What do you mean by this, do you want to run away?" ”

George spread his hands, "This is your war with the Ming Empire, it has nothing to do with us in Britain, we remain neutral, friends, goodbye." ”

Debaul tried to persuade George to stay, but George left without stopping for a moment.

George was gone, and so were his four ships, and the Dutch fleet, which had suffered heavy losses, was now reduced to only four battleships and five armed merchant ships, plus six two-masted caravels.

"The cowardly British have fled, and we are left with only fifteen ships, and it will be at least half a year before reinforcements from Batavia arrive."

Paul. Duradinius said, "The losses of the Ming fleet are greater than ours, and they don't have a few ships left now, so I propose that we go to Penghu again." ”

"Stupid." Van Bronn shouted.

After the defeat and retreat, a group of Dutch officers such as Paul were questioning Van Brunn's decision to retreat, they thought that the situation at that time, although they lost many clippers, but their main battleships only lost three, they still had more than ten ships, and the capital ships were all preserved, and they could take advantage of the huge ships and cannons to continue the battle until the Ming fleet was annihilated.

Van Bronn had also heard of such rumors, which he regarded as being instigated by Paul in order to replace himself and shirk responsibility for the defeat in the naval battle.

"Penghu is the base camp of their empire across the sea, they can mobilize more warships at any time, our ship is indeed large, but there is no escort of the clippers. How to deal with the large number of fireships of the Ming army? Van Bronn asked. He still can't forget the ferocity of the hundreds of fireboats rushing over by the Ming army.

Paul sneered a few times, "Then according to your plan, do you also want to escape with the fleet like George?" ”

Van Brunn replied, "I think that our current confrontation with the Ming army is the result of a defeat for both sides, and I have heard that when the Ming army attacked the Spaniards in northern Taiwan, they once said that they were willing to trade with other countries. If this is true, then we can negotiate with the Ming army. ”

"The Spaniards surrendered to the Ming army, do you want to surrender the Ming army too?"

"How can the Spaniards compare with us, how many men and a few boats they have? We have a fleet in Dacheng. There are also two castles, several fortresses, and we have more people. Van Bron continued, "We should send people to Penghu to negotiate with the Ming army and find out what they mean. If they are really willing to trade with other countries, I think it is not impossible for us to evacuate the big people and return them to the Ming Empire. ”

"You are cowardly!" Paul said.

De Baul said, "I think General Van Brunn has a point. Blindly relying on force to solve the problem will no longer work. I think that in the current situation, we must start negotiations with Mingguo. ”

Debaul immediately sent an envoy to Penghu.

Liu Jun heard that the Dutch were going to negotiate. I couldn't help laughing.

He met the people, made direct conditions to them, and then let him go back.

The messenger returned to the Grand Commander in a boat and reported the results to De Baul, Van Bronn, Paul, and others.

"What are Akito's requirements?"

"The official in charge of Penghu is the righteous son of the Ming Emperor. is still a marquis, Zheng Zhilong obeys orders under him. The marquis said that Da Ming was ready to lift the sea ban. We have a full trade market with various countries, and we can also trade with the Netherlands. However, the premise is that we return the great officials to the Ming Kingdom and at the same time obey their laws in the future. ”

"That's it?" Debaul couldn't believe it. "Will Akito sign a contract with us?"

"Yes, but they still have a request."

"They demanded that the Dutch, including the army, surrender to them immediately, and that they should pay them compensation for the losses of the Battle of Penghu, as well as for the losses we had infringed upon their territory over the years. All the indemnities amounted to ten tons of gold. ”

"Ten tons of gold?" Debaul's mouth was wide open, and he didn't know what to say. Actually use tons to calculate gold, and ten tons, the marquis of the Ming Kingdom is so greedy, is there still any sincerity.

Van Buron also made it clear that they could surrender to the Ming army, provided that the Ming army signed a trade treaty with them, and that they only surrendered nominally, and after the surrender, the Ming army had to let them take the property of the Dutch and the East India Company with their large numbers and leave with the fleet.

But it is obvious that the ideas of the Ming people are not in line with their requirements.

"Let's talk about it again." Debaul is a little reluctant to give up, and also wants to use negotiations to stall for time.

"We have to prepare for the worst."

Debaul sighed, "Well, move all the Han people in the castle of Relanjia to Dayuan Town, and don't prevent them from responding to the Ming army." Also, immediately convene a tribal assembly and summon the elders of the villages and communities, and we must use the power of these natives. ”

"Would you like to send someone to the north?" Paul asked.

"You mean to borrow troops from the Potbelly King?" Debaul asked.

The Potbelly King is the leader of a tribal alliance in the Taichung region, they claim to be the Potbelly Kingdom, which is formed by dozens of villages and communities of several large clans along the west coast of central Taiwan, the alliance has been around for a hundred years, and the Potbelly King is the most powerful indigenous in the whole of Taiwan. In the past, they had many conflicts with the Potbelly King, and just a few years ago, they had sent troops to attack the Potbelly King, and finally forced the Potbelly King to sign a contract with them.

The Potbelly Kingdom, led by the Potbelly King, was called the Potbelly Society, which recognized the rule of the Dutch in Taiwan and came to attend rallies every year.

"The Potbelly King has a lot of men under his command, and if we give them gold and silver, we should be able to hire them to help us fight."

"These people don't have any skills." Paul said disdainfully.

Debaul shook his head, "It's good that they are willing to come if they are still picking anything at this time." ”

The Dutch envoys traveled back and forth between Dayuan and Penghu every once in a while, and Liu Jun sent them directly to He Tengjiao, the governor of Taiwan. Anyway, Liu Jun didn't think about talking to them now, and if he wanted to talk, he would talk about it after this battle. Now talking about it, it is just the Dutch who paralyze the subordinates.

In this kind of slow negotiations, the fleet mobilized by Liu Jun from Fujian, Guangdong, Zhejiang and other places finally arrived, and once again gathered more than 500 ships, but this fleet was weaker than the last fleet, and there were fewer large ships.

On the first night of the twelfth month of the twelfth year of Chongzhen, Liu Jun led this huge new fleet from Penghu and successfully arrived at Luermen in Dayuantaijiang at noon on the same day.

At this time, the Dutch occupied the area of Tainan, Taiwan, where there were many sandbanks at that time, surrounding Taijiang Bay like an island chain enclosing a Taijiang Inner Bay. The Dutch stronghold, Gelanja Castle, was built on Dayuan Island.

And Luermen is a waterway into the inland sea.

At that time, one side of Dayuan Island was the open sea, and the other side was the inland sea of the Taijiang River, which was surrounded by islands. However, the water near Rejiao Castle on Oyuan Island is very shallow, and it is impossible to enter or exit the big boat. Large ships generally stop at the north and south berths outside, and then use small boats to transport goods to the dock of Dayuan Island.

There are three waterways to enter Dayuan Island from the north and south berths, and outside the two waterways in the north and south, there is a shallower waterway Luermen, which can only accommodate three boats.

The north-south waterway outside the Luer Gate is silted up and cannot be navigated. The shallow water of Luermen is narrow, and only the south waterway is better to navigate, but the Dutch are enthusiastic about the blockade of the waterway by the artillery of Lancheng, so Luermen has become the first choice of Liu Jun and Zheng Zhilong when they repeatedly discussed the battle plan earlier.

However, there is a very peculiar thing about Luermen, that is, this waterway is difficult to pass through large ships most of the time. But every day at noon, it happens to be the time when the tide is full, and at this time, the Luermen waterway can pass directly through the big boats.

Liu Jun and the others had already found out this information clearly, and their departure time was also specially chosen, setting off in the middle of the night in the dark, and then waiting until noon when the tide was high to pass through the Luermen waterway.

The north of the Luermen waterway is Luerdao, the south is the north line of the tail island, after the waterway is the Taijiang Inland Sea, and the south end of the north line of the tail island is the hot land city of Dayuan Island, and the middle is the southern waterway.

Zheng Zhilong stayed behind to lead all the big warships to defend the Beibokou outside the Luermen Waterway, and Liu Jun took the rest of the smaller ships under the guidance of several small sailing boats, and slowly entered the Taijiang River into the sea. (To be continued......)

PS: Thank you for the people on the left and the support of the monthly pass!