October 3, 1630, Baimajing Wharf, Danzhou Bay.

More than a dozen sailing ships packed the dock here, and if it weren't for the expansion of the dock organized by Haihan two months in advance, the number of ships that could dock might only be half of what it is now. And the huge fleet of ships still has many ships that cannot be directly docked, so they can only stop in a slightly farther water, and then use small boats to ferry the people on board to the shore.

The armed men on board landed in quick succession, quickly assembled the whole group on the shore, and then marched east in a group, the whole process was busy but not chaotic, and no one shouted to leave the group. The residents of the fishing village who witnessed the whole process were silent, although they had little knowledge, but they could also see that this group of people was definitely not a rabble, the rules were much stricter than the guards of Danzhou City, and the weapons they were equipped with were almost uniform, saying that they were pirates? As long as they were not blind, they could see that these people must have received a long period of military training.

As the saying goes, bandits are like combs, and soldiers are like grates, but this group of pirates, who are more like regular armies than regular troops, did not loot the local residents after they landed, and basically did not do anything other to disturb the people except to block the entry and exit of the village.

This does not seem to be particularly accurate, because the only small restaurant at the entrance of the village was directly raided by this group of pirates of unknown origin. The shopkeeper and the guys in the store did not run away, they were all arrested and tied with thick ropes, and shackles were added to lock them in a long string, and they knelt on the side of the road at the entrance of the village.

This is not a move to set an example, but because this small restaurant is the secret outpost of the Danzhou Guard, and at the same time as the fleet sailed into Danzhou Bay, the action team lurking here in the early stage took the lead in ending this camouflaged outpost, preventing them from sending a warning signal in the direction of Danzhou City in advance. And there are three early warning posts like this between Baimajing and Danzhou, but at this time, they must have been taken by the advance team that started at the same time.

Outside the gate of Danzhou City, a Ming army officer stood at the gate of the city with a gloomy face, looking at the far end of the official road. From early in the morning to now, except for a few farmers who have entered the city to sell vegetables, there is not even a commercial house, and it has reached noon, and more than a dozen copper plates have been collected.

This errand of guarding the city gate is the fat difference in the city defense army, and in Danzhou City, it is the most oil and water to guard the Rouyuan Gate, because the official road outside the city gate is the main road leading to the White Horse Well Wharf, and all the foreign merchants who come from the sea are all coming by this road. The officer had a hard time getting the job, and it was his turn to take the squad to guard the city gate every five days, and if he didn't receive a few dollars today, it would almost be a waste of the opportunity.

"It's strange! In the past, the goods of Fumaochang, Haifeng, and Zhan Family Shipping Company entered the city almost at this time of month, but today, none of them appeared!" The officer looked at the empty official road and couldn't help but complain. Although the people of these trading houses are not as generous as Haihan, it is definitely no problem for the caravan to enter the city to get a few taels of silver.

"Here, here, there's a caravan coming!" and "As the officer hesitated, the soldiers on the tower shouted loudly to inform the people at the gate below.

Sure enough, it didn't take long for a convoy of horses to appear in the field of vision of the Ming army guarding the gate, but the style of these carriages looked a little strange, and it seemed to be a little different from the usual carriages.

But before the Ming army could see the clues, the huge convoy of twenty wagons had reached the gates of the city, and the officer finally noticed that something was wrong—the convoy did not raise the flag of a single firm, and he did not find a single familiar face among the chauffeurs.

"Stop, stop!" the officer shouted loudly to stop the car, and motioned to the soldiers behind him to move the horse and deer from the side of the road to the middle of the road.

However, the carriage at the head had no intention of stopping, and the driver at the front of the carriage threw his right hand, and seven or eight ingots of shining silver flew to the side of the road. The driver shouted, "Everyone, let's go, there is something urgent to hurry into the city!"

When the soldiers who were about to move the barricade saw the silver flying out, they had already left their work behind and rushed over to pick up the silver on the ground. Seeing this, the officer stopped stepping forward to stop him, and just stared at the motorcade rushing towards the city gate and snorted: "Damn, it's great to be rich!"

The convoy did not continue into the city, but skimmed to the left and right, and stopped along the base of the wall. As soon as the tarpaulins on the carriages were lifted, seven or eight men armed with short-barreled muskets alighted from each carriage. Ignoring the astonished eyes of the people in the surrounding streets, these people rushed straight up and down the city gates.

The unit trained on Cat Ba Island for three months, rehearsing the battle of taking the city on several specially replicated gates in one to one, and their task was to disarm the defenders of the city gate in the shortest possible time, suppress all resistance, and hold the city gate to open the way for subsequent reinforcements to enter the city.

When the Ming army under the city tower was still in a pile to count the total number of silver taels just picked, there was a crisp bang from the city gate tower, and the officer headed by him looked up at the city tower, lowered his head and began to calculate how much silver each person could get. But soon there were several similar noises on the castle tower, and the officer finally came to his senses and threw the silver on the ground: "Not good! Something is wrong at the city gate! Go back quickly!"

However, when he rushed to the gate with the group, he found two rows of people standing in the gate, one in front and one behind, both holding fire guns in their hands, and were silently aiming at them.

"It's a pirate ......" Someone finally remembered the recent rumor that the pirates who had recently been raging on the northern coast of Qiongzhou Island would send troops to attack the island's cities. The vast majority of people thought it was just an unrealistic rumor, and no one was worried that there would actually be such a thing as a pirate siege.

However, something beyond imagination seems to have happened. The Ming army officer led by him felt a slight tremor on the ground under his feet during this moment of silence. When he slowly turned around, he saw a larger convoy of horses approaching from the official road.

Since there is a distance of nearly 20 miles from Baimajing to Danzhou City, in order to save the body of the siege troops, the relevant departments not only transported personnel to Danzhou Bay by boat, but also transported a large number of horse-drawn carriages at the same time. However, these dozens of carriages can carry only a few hundred people, but only about one-tenth of the total strength used in this operation, except for a few elite personnel who rushed to Danzhou City in carriages, most of the combat personnel still had to rush to the combat site on foot.

Hundreds of soldiers who arrived at the Rouyuan Gate of Danzhou City in advance seized the control of the city gate as quickly as possible, and quickly erected a barricade in the city gate with the carriage they were riding, and also erected four portable three-pounder army guns, and the muzzles of the guns were aimed at the avenue leading to the northern city in the city.

I have to say that although the defenders of Danzhou are very scumbag in combat, their reaction speed is still very fast, and only ten minutes after the accident at Rouyuanmen, a team of about two hundred people hurriedly rushed over from the avenue to reinforce. However, this ill-prepared reinforcement was still about fifty meters away from the barricade set up by the attackers, and was broken up on the spot by the dense bullets.

When the officer in command of the force tried to reorganize a wave of offensive, four small cannons rang out from the gun emplacements in the middle of the street. At this distance, the gunner didn't even have to take special aim, and each shell tore a long blood groove in the Ming army on the opposite side. After leaving behind about forty corpses, this wave of Ming troops who rushed to the rescue fled the battlefield at the same speed.

Almost as soon as the cannon fired, the inhabitants of the city immediately closed their doors, lest the war affect them. The defenders of the castle were at a loss as to how to deal with it, because the Sendo of the castle had already been killed on the spot in the first wave of battle. Some people believe that they should take advantage of the fact that the pirates are not firmly established, immediately organize a counterattack, and recapture the city gate, so as to have any hope of holding on. However, some people think that the pirate artillery fire is fierce and cannot be resisted at all, and the top priority is to send envoys to quickly ask for help from nearby prefectures and counties.

The troops who captured the city gate were not in a hurry to expand the control area, nor did they pursue the fleeing Ming army, their task was to control the city gate first, and until the large army entered the city, no other troops would hand over the defense of the city with them.

This kind of tactical arrangement is naturally not perfect in the eyes of the military leadership, and it can be said that it is a delay in the fighter plane in another time and space. But from the perspective of the battle for the capture of Danzhou City, arranging such tactics is also a helpless move.

However, because the landing site of the large army was too far away from Danzhou City, and the military lacked sufficient mobile transport, the large army could only rush to Danzhou City on foot from the seaside, and this time difference was a defect that could not be made up for even the best battle plan.

However, the armed cross-country project, the Annan militia army has also practiced a lot, so for them, this 10-kilometer cross-country is not a particularly difficult thing, not to mention that in order to reduce the burden, their outfit has been reduced to the level of maintaining basic combat effectiveness, which is far less important than the usual training.

The special service company of the Annan People's League Army, led by Qian Tiandun himself, rushed from the landing site to the Rouyuan Gate in Danzhou in only 70 minutes, and the more than 200 people in the establishment did not fall behind and leave the team. This special service company can be regarded as the elite of the elite, everyone is personally selected and trained by Qian Tiandun, in his words, those who can enter this company must at least learn six or seven percent of their own skills, then they can be considered qualified. When they arrived, it was only about ten minutes before the vanguard repelled the first wave of counterattack by the Ming army.

The second wave arrived at Danzhou City is the other troops of the militia group, this full three battalions of troops, the formation is much larger, immediately after entering the city, there are troops to take over the defense of the city gate, some troops began to clean up along the city wall is still involved in the city defense of the Ming army, and two companies of troops directly around the city to continue to advance, their destination is several traffic arteries west of Danzhou, where with the vanguard troops that have been lurking in place in the early stage to set up a defensive line, blocking the route of the Danzhou rout to flee to the city.

And the three thousand Annan soldiers who were borrowed, Su zhì was far inferior to these people under Qian Tiandun. After marching seven or eight miles, the ranks of the Annam army began to gradually become disjointed, and some of them had to stop and rest halfway because they were physically exhausted, so that the whole army soon became fragmented.

The Annan officer in charge of commanding this army was Zheng Ting, who was directly named by Qian Tiandun, and when he saw that the militia army was gone, but his own troops were marching so slowly, a strong sense of powerlessness also rose in his heart.

For a long time, the main reason for the gap in combat effectiveness between the Haihan militia and the Haihan militia army in Annam was the power of weapons, and many Annan officers believed that as long as the weapons of the Haihan militia could be used, the combat effectiveness of the two sides could be rapidly narrowed, or even inferior. This is also one of the reasons why Annan has been sparing no expense in recent years to buy a large number of Haihan-standard weapons.

However, a new generation of officers like Zheng Ting, who has received formal military training from the Haihan Dynasty and has had several experiences in coordinated operations, knows very well that the gap between the two is far more than just weapons and equipment, and there is a considerable gap between the two sides in terms of strategy and tactics, mobility capability, logistical supply, and even the most fundamental ideological building of the army. Moreover, many of Haihan's practices cannot be simply imitated or copied.

For example, this year, Haihan has recently set up a new organization, the Youth League, in the militia army, and all combat units at and above the company level must have an officer with the qualifications of the Youth League as the commander's deputy, who will be responsible for the ideological work of soldiers and grassroots officers. This configuration made many people unable to understand its role, but Zheng Ting quickly realized that his role was much more than it seemed.

Although the soldiers of Annan protect **** in peacetime, they will also indoctrinate the idea of loyalty and patriotism, but when they really fight, most of them still rely on a blood spirit. And the soldiers of the Haihan militia group, that is really for the executive committee to be able to spare their lives, this kind of brainwashing ability has always been the envy of Zheng Ting, and now the Haihan people seem to think that Cheng dù is not enough, and specially set up an officer position to do this, it is conceivable that the Haihan high-level attaches great importance to the army's ideology Cheng dù.

The Annan army also made arrangements for this kind of armed cross-country training, but the training effect was much worse than others. Where exactly is the gap? Zheng Ting could only understand this to mean that the ideological level of the soldiers on both sides was not at the same level at all, and he even wondered whether he should write to the military department after returning this time and learn Haihan's method of operation.