c_t; The two skirmishes on this day and night were just appetizers before the battle, but the corpses of several enemy soldiers hanging in the central square did have a certain calming effect on the feelings of the people in the city. After all, this is the third time in the last five years that Batavia City has been attacked by the Matalan army, and although the first two battles ended with the withdrawal of the Mataran side, no one knows whether Batavia City will survive the third offensive. Being able to achieve some victories at the beginning of the siege can also make the people in the city a little more optimistic about the future trend of this battle.

However, some well-informed people, such as Su Keyi and Cheng Dapeng, had already learned from special channels that it was only the vanguard of the Mata Blue Army that was fighting the defenders, and it was not a few bodies that were randomly picked up from the mountains of enemy corpses piled up outside the city, but a total of so many people were killed under the city, and it was impossible to hang a few more corpses to show off their majesty.

After initially testing the strength of the defenders at the head of the city, the follow-up Mataran army did not immediately start the siege, but set up camp outside the city and began to prepare for the siege. However, according to their previous practice, this preparation period is only about two or three days, and then there will be no more petty harassment.

Taking advantage of this rare period of calm, Cheng Dapeng took his condolences to the city defense headquarters outside the north city gate, and under the introduction of Su Keyi, met with Anthony Van Dimen, the supreme commander of the city's defenders.

Due to the language barrier between the two sides and the busy military affairs of Fan Dimen, the two only exchanged a few words with Su Keyi's translator. As for Cheng Dapeng's intention, Su Keyi had already told Fan Dimen in advance. Because of the guarantee of the Su family, and Cheng Dapeng himself can be regarded as a well-known businessman in Batavia City, Fan Dimen did not suspect Cheng Dapeng's true intention to take the initiative to visit the door this time, and quickly approved his application to go to the front line of the city wall to comfort the combat troops. Of course, for safety reasons, Su Keyi also had to go to the city as an escort.

During the wartime siege, it was difficult for even wealthy merchants to organize decent consolation items, so the things prepared by Cheng Dapeng were extremely simple and crude—all boxes of cash. After leaving a pair of heavy gold ingots to Fan Dimen, Cheng Dapeng commanded his retinue to carry the chest containing silver ingots all the way up the city wall.

Designed and built by the Dutch, the city of Batavia has an irregular structure of bastions, and the Dutch-style bastions undoubtedly have a place in the history of warfare. In the course of the Dutch ** war, it was the use of fortresses to make the Spanish army in the Netherlands difficult, and finally although the Spaniards had the advantage of force, they had to withdraw from this area because they could not conquer a large number of fortresses.

Most of the Netherlands was flat lowlands with little danger to defend, which led the Dutch to gradually design forts more and more intricate over the course of the war, and their structure alone could add some combat effectiveness to the defenders. The city of Batavia, which they built in the northwest corner of Java, can be said to concentrate the essence of Dutch fortress fortifications, and there is basically no other city in Southeast Asia that can compare with it in terms of defensive reliability. [Fast update, refreshing website pages, few ads, I like this kind of website the most, be sure to praise]

Of course, due to the intervention of the Haihan people in this time and space, the fortress is no longer a unique fortress structure built only by European colonists. In fact, Sanya's Victory Fort is a defensive fortress designed according to the principle of a fortress, and its designed defense capability requires a garrison force of less than 1,000 people to resist ten times the enemy's strength, which shows the power of this fortress.

In the history of world warfare, the fortress began to rise in Europe in the 16th century, and it was not until the second half of the 19th century that it slowly withdrew from the battlefield. It's not that someone invented a more advanced form of fortress than the bastion, but that flowering shells began to be widely used in warfare at this time, and the traditional bastion walls could not effectively defend against the destruction of this new type of cannonball, and the defensive effect it could play was not as great as in previous centuries. However, from the current point of view, the black technology of the flowering bullet can only be fully mastered by Haihan, but it has not yet been officially equipped with artillery units, so the fortress structure is still a very strong defense system.

The main wall of Batavia City is not high, and its height is only eight to nine meters according to the Haihan scale, which is significantly shorter than the walls of Guangzhou Mansion and Zhaoqing Mansion, and the thickness is about the same. However, unlike the Ming style city wall, there is no layer of wall tiles on top of the rammed earth wall, because the masonry structure is very easy to damage under artillery blows, and it is easy to produce ricochets and increase the casualties of the defenders.

In addition, there is a clear difference in structure, the city wall here is not a straight line, but a prismatic structure protruding outward every other section, and outside the city, between the two prismatic structures, about thirty or forty meters away from the city wall, there is a small triangular fortress, in which there are stationed between one and two hundred soldiers, and its position is also within the fire range of the prismatic structures on both sides.

Beyond this layer of defense is the moat that connects the water veins. The Mataran army that had sneaked up on the city before was discovered by the fortress garrison outside the city, and under the fire from outside the city, they quickly repelled the enemy army attacking at night.

If Cheng Dapeng hadn't been to Sanya, he would probably be surprised by the strange walls of Batavia, but with Victory Fort, a fortress with more mature design and construction, Cheng Dapeng felt that the Dutch could only be regarded as average. After all, Fort Victory had already completed the structural reconstruction of concrete, and the sturdiness was far from being comparable to that of this rammed earth wall. Of course, he did not relax because of this, and measured the number of the city walls very carefully with his eyes and hands and feet, and silently memorized them in his heart.

During his training in Sanya, Cheng Dapeng received special training in urban defense reconnaissance, most of which was taught by teachers from the military and the Ministry of Construction, so that the trainees could learn how to complete the survey of the city fortifications in a short time and copy their structures on paper. The more advanced application is to observe and deduce the key parts of the city fortifications, such as firepower points, weak points, and garrison points. Cheng Dapeng was able to go up to the city wall to observe it up close, so he naturally had minimized the difficulty of this reconnaissance mission.

However, God seems to be particularly partial to becoming a big friend, and wants to change the tricks to reduce the difficulty a little more. After Cheng Dapeng and Su Keyi went up to the city wall, an officer soon came to receive them. And I don't know if it's a coincidence or a deliberate arrangement, this officer named Bart is actually related to Su Keyi, and the woman he married locally is a cousin to Su Keyi. Although Bart himself has a family, and the relatives he marries here are only considered partial houses, this level of kinship cannot be faked. Su Keyi introduced the relationship between the two in a concise manner, and Cheng Dapeng immediately felt a lot relieved, at least the difficulty of dealing with it has been reduced a lot.

And this Barthes's attitude towards Su Keyi is obviously much warmer than that of his boss Fan Dimen, after seeing the Fan Dimen warrant presented by Su Keyi, there is no stereotypical expression on his face, and he smiled and said Chinese with a big tongue that is not very proficient: "Thank you Boss Cheng!"

Cheng Dapeng was modest, then asked his entourage to open the silver box and introduced to Bart: "I can't help the chicken, and I can't participate in the battle, so I can only use this thing to comfort the brothers under Lord Bart, two taels of silver each, please call the brothers to collect it!"

Barth's eyes lit up, and he beckoned the soldiers behind him to give two orders, and someone came over to take over the silver box immediately. Of course, Cheng Dapeng would not insist on handing it out himself, so he signaled his subordinates to hand it over. As for how much of the money can leak out to the people below when it reaches Bart, it probably only depends on his mood.

Of course, these are not the point, whether it is silver or something else, these are just a means used by Cheng Dapeng to trick intelligence. This Bart happened to be one of the officers in charge of guarding the northern city wall, and Cheng Dapeng certainly wanted to get some first-hand intelligence information from him.

"I heard that the Mada Blues have fought with our defenders, can Lord Bart point out the place of the battle, and the villain also wants to pay respects. Cheng Dapeng humbly pleaded.

Bart was obviously also a man with little scheming, and he didn't feel inappropriate when he heard such a request, so he immediately pulled the two of them to a prismatic protrusion nearby, pointed to a place outside the city, and said, "Look, there's a bush lying down there, which is where the cannonball landed." ”

Cheng Dapeng's first attention was not the battlefield outside the city, but the setting of this salient. It was a battery with two guns. Judging from the caliber, it should be a 12-pounder gun, but the barrel is obviously larger and more bulky than Haihan's standard artillery. Although Cheng Dapeng is not a military expert, he has also received relevant training, and knows that this is because the Dutch cannon casting technology and materials are not as good as Haihan, so they can only cast the cannon body thicker to ensure its sturdy.

Cheng Dapeng looked at the position pointed by Bart again, measured the distance visually, and then continued to ask: "Lord Bart, the villain sees that place is at least a hundred zhang away from the city wall, and this artillery fire is so fierce that it can kill the enemy a hundred zhang away?"

Cheng Dapeng chewed the ancient text, Bart couldn't understand it, and could only be translated by Su Keyi. After hearing this, Bart smiled and said, "Actually, this is not our maximum range, these two cannons can at least hit ...... Well, with your unit of measurement, it's about 150 zhang. ”

Although this range is not comparable to the range of the Haihan artillery known to Cheng Dapeng, it is already quite impressive, but I don't know how accurate the shooting accuracy of this artillery is.

Cheng Dapeng deliberately pretended to be a layman: "Such a sharp weapon, presumably as long as there are one or twenty gates, the adults can defend the city, right?"

"One or twenty?" Bart shook his head decisively: "Boss Cheng, just the northern city wall I am responsible for, more than fifty artillery pieces have been deployed. If the fighting is fierce, it may also increase the number of artillery at the head of the city. ”

Cheng Dapeng said: "Ma Da Blue Army is so powerful?"

Bart was silent for a moment before he spoke: "Although I am very reluctant to admit it, the Mada Blues are not weak. We have weapons, and they have them. The final victory will be ours, but this battle will not be easy. ”

Cheng Dapeng didn't respond after hearing this, and looked up into the distance. Outside the faintly visible enemy camp, a small number of cavalry were operating on the periphery, which seemed to be to prevent the defenders of the city from attacking the city. Under the cover of these cavalry, about a thousand people were digging fortifications on the plains outside the city to carry some war supplies. Although I don't know how the Mataran people will attack the city, after listening to Bart's introduction, Cheng Dapeng actually felt a little uneasy about the direction of this war.

If the Haihan militia came to defend the city, could they do a better job than the Dutch? That is a matter of course, after all, the place guarded by the militia has never been captured. So if the Haihan militia came to act as the attacking side, how should they attack this fortified city?

Cheng Dapeng thought about these questions, and unconsciously became a little distracted. Seeing this, Su Keyi thought that he was really scared because Batavia City was in crisis, and immediately comforted him kindly: "Boss Cheng, you have to have confidence in the defenders." When the Mataran Kingdom came to attack the city the first two times, it was far more critical than it was now. At that time, the council had discussed whether to surrender the city, and if it weren't for Lord Cohen's strong opposition, this place would have become the territory of the Mataran Kingdom. In recent years, Lord Cohen has taken advantage of the truce to strengthen the city walls, and has brought a large number of muskets and artillery from the West to increase the defensive strength, and his strength is much stronger than in the previous years. In the following opinion, most of the Mada Blue Country's invasion of the territory this time will have to suffer a lot. ”

Cheng Dapeng came back to his senses and responded: "What Brother Su said is that with a general like Lord Bart leading troops to defend it, Batavia City must be in danger. Although there are many enemy troops, for Lord Bart, these are all real military feats waiting to be taken!"

Bart was also very useful after listening to Cheng Dapeng's compliment, patted his chest and said, "Don't worry, Batavia is not so easy to attack." The Matarans will leave their blood and lives as the price for offending us!"

Bart probably felt the atmosphere of hatred and hatred from Cheng Dapeng, and in the following time, he actually introduced to him the situation of the city defense area he was responsible for. Cheng Dapeng is so happy that he doesn't need to use his brain to trick up, it is enough to listen to Bart introduce himself, and when the time is right, Bart will continue to talk happily, unaware that he is leaking heavy military secrets to outsiders