Chapter 176: The Dutch Fleet Arrives
The biggest problem at the moment is that he does not have enough production capacity for the time being, and he is armed with enough soldiers, especially the scale of his gun work, which is limited by the number of craftsmen, and when the output of the gun work reaches a certain level, it is very difficult to improve it, after all, he does not have any modern machinery to replace labor, and can only rely on some simple and primitive machinery to improve production accuracy, and the production of most parts still depends on pure manpower to build by hand, and it is impossible to continue to increase production.
By October, although the guns in the two places worked overtime day and night to produce, they only provided the Seawolf Army with more than 200 new wolf-tooth rifles, and armed a company composed of pure musketeers.
After taking stock of the strength at hand, Yu Xiaotian could only sigh, for now, he still had to do the most important thing in front of him in a down-to-earth manner, and after solving the matter of the official army's invasion this time, it was not too late to talk about anything else.
On the surface, it seems that the Fujian authorities have used a lot of troops this time, but he has always been paying attention to the movements of the officers and troops, and in the past few months, he has sent a large number of meticulous works to various parts of Fujian, keeping an eye on the preparation and training of the officers and troops in various places.
Although Zhu Yifeng has vigorously rectified Fujian's officers and troops in the past year, both building artillery and training troops, it is simply impossible for him to reorganize Fujian's officers and soldiers into elite divisions in a short period of time with his own strength.
Although the officials and soldiers in various places have strengthened some training, because the food and salary allocated by the government to the army must go through the hands of many officials, these officials will not retract their dirty hands because Zhu Yifeng wants to fight Nanri Island, although Zhu Yifeng tried his best to raise a lot of silver grain, but when it is allocated to the hands of the officials and soldiers, it still has to go through layers of exploitation, and after it is in the hands of the officials and soldiers, there is still not much left.
In fact, the level of Fujian's officers and soldiers has not improved much, don't look at Zhu Yifeng's three days and two ends of the military camp, urging training and preparing for war, but those generals only pretended to pull out the officers and soldiers at hand to practice and put on a show when he went.
Zhu Yifeng didn't know about these deceptive practices, but they all fell into the eyes of the sea wolf, and he was soon sent back to the wolf's den with a pigeon.
As for those officers and sailors, it seems that during this period of time, a lot of ships have been increased, and many fishermen have been forcibly recruited into the army, but the drill is not very good at all, at best, it is just to go out to sea for a circle, so that the soldiers and sailors on the ship can get acquainted with each other, and in addition, they will be familiar with the skills of boating.
Although many ships have been modified with Hongyi cannons, these officially cast Hongyi cannons are dead and heavy, and the quality does not seem to be very good, in order to deduct some money to fill their own pockets, the officers and soldiers on the ship are rarely allowed to shoot live ammunition, and many officers and soldiers gunners did not even let go of a single cannon, while the officials reported a lot of ammunition consumption to the above.
At this time, many coastal and even inland gentry have built their own forts outside the city and buy some artillery privately, but it is not easy to prepare gunpowder, this is a technical work, not everyone can prepare gunpowder casually, so many gentry will use guò private channels to contact military generals and buy gunpowder from the army at a high price.
As a result, the ammunition that was originally going to be practiced by the officers and soldiers was sold by the officials in this way, and even the sea wolf himself hooked up with Zhang Jiace, the deputy commander-in-chief of Fujian, through a secret way, and one guy bought thousands of catties of gunpowder and tens of thousands of catties of cast iron shells and iron materials for casting shells from Zhang Jiace's hands.
Zhang Jiace was impeached last year because the sea wolf shelled the Puxi Institute and burned down the Nanri Water Village, and was later impeached and accused of poor command and refused to send troops to rescue the Nanri Water Village.
In order to exonerate himself, Zhang Jiace later spent a lot of money, up and down, and really shed some blood, which kept his deputy general soldier from being dismissed, but also made him lose a lot, and now when he encounters such an opportunity, how can he not make money hard, so he tried every means to deduct food and salary, and even deducted ammunition and sold it, as for who bought him, he didn't care, as long as he gave money.
It's a joke that some officers and soldiers who have never fired a cannon to fight with a fleet armed to the teeth with the sea wolf are simply delivering food to the door, if the sea wolf's fleet can't take them, then the sea wolf should really find a place to wash and sleep.
A fleet of seven Western-style plywood boats finally appeared outside Dayuan's port, and the harbor batteries immediately resounded with a roar of salutes, and the Western-style fleet that slowly sailed into the port also began to fire salutes, and the entire Dayuan port suddenly became lively.
The Dutch governor of the Netherlands, Peter, was stationed in the Grand Governor. Noiz immediately led his men to the docks, and looked at the fleet sent by their East India Company from Batavia with joy, and finally let go.
Recently, they have found that more and more sea wolf ships have appeared in the vicinity of Dayuan Port, and the sea wolf ships have often begun to be in the area of Dagou in the south of Dayuan Port, and sent personnel to land in Dagou Port to explore on land.
Such an action made the new Grand Governor Peter. Nuitz was worried, since Xu Xinsu brought official news from Daming Fujian last year, and soon after the two sides agreed to deal with the sea wolf together, Peter found that the sea wolf began to intensify its activities in the vicinity of Dayuan.
This is not what he is most worried about, since the end of August, the sea wolf's ships have appeared more and more frequently in the sea around Dayuan, and they have also blocked the route to the Dayuan area, so that after the end of August, until now, there is not a single ship sailing into Dayuan Port.
From this point, Peter sensed that something was wrong, and felt that their agreement with the Ming Fujian officials might have revealed the news, which caused the sea wolves to be hostile to them, blocking the shipping route to Dayuan, and no longer allowing any merchant ships to enter Dayuan Harbor.
For this reason, Peter also sent two warships stationed in the army to try to drive away the ships of the sea wolves, but the results were very unsatisfactory, either the sea wolves ignored them and immediately turned around and sailed away when they saw their ships come out, or they simply confronted them.
Although the firepower of these sea wolves was not very strong, the sailors on the Dutch ships found that they had a very fast dhow that was not the style of a Chinese Kron ship, but the style of their Western clipper.
Although the number of guns on board is not very large, it should not be underestimated at all, because the guns loaded on these ships are all Western-style guns, and the projectiles fired are about the same weight as the main guns on their warships, and the range is also very long, and the accuracy is also very high.
There have been several clashes between the two sides on the ocean around Dayuan, and these sloops have taken the initiative to engage their warships, and the other side often adopts the method of striking and leaving, with several ships acting at the same time, and after a long-distance artillery bombardment, they will immediately turn around and sail away without waiting for the two sides to close the distance of the artillery battle.
And these fast sailing ships flying the sea wolf flag were fast, agile, and had a high ability to sail in the wind, so that the Dutch warships that were beaten first could only stare dryly, and could not find a way to restrain the other party at all, and could only watch the other party show off their might and roam around them.
In several encounters, the Dutch suffered losses, were killed and wounded several crew members, and the ships were damaged, but they could not be cheapened at all.
The number of Dutch ships stationed in the company was very limited, and after Peter learned of the situation, he did not dare to let the warships go out to drive out these ships of the sea wolves, and could only hope that the company would quickly send a fleet to lift the blockade of the sea wolves against them.
Now not only have the sea wolves blockaded Dayuan Port and prevented others from trading with them in Dayuan Port, but even Yan Siqi, who had dealt with them before, also stopped interacting with the Dayuan Dutch.
However, the number of Dutch stationed in the big staff is not very large, and there are many natives in the surrounding area, who have always had a hostile attitude towards them, and the Dutch actually have a very weak control over the big man, far less powerful than others think.
Even if the Dutch had a lot of muskets, but these natives were difficult to deal with, and always liked to use sneak attacks to deal with them, once the Dutch were far away from their station, they would be attacked by the natives, this situation was not only encountered by the Dutch, including Yan Siqi and Yu Xiaotianchu when they landed in Taiwan, they also encountered it.
Dutch patrols often only dared to leave their garrison a few miles away, and they had to be accompanied by dozens of men, otherwise a few people would be eaten by the natives, and their heads would be cut off by the natives, and the natives would be used as trophies to decorate their villages.
The natives of many tribes in Taiwan have the habit of headhunting, and sometimes they will attack strangers not because of anything, just because they like headhunters to decorate their villages and show off their strength.