"Mr. Van Longen, what is your opinion on the current situation of the war?"

Although Van Longen did not want to actively participate in the combat decision-making, his two companions would not let him stay out of the matter like this, and such "attention" made Van Longen helpless.

"My opinion...... Gentlemen, we can't send envoys to talk to each other first? we don't even know who they are!" Van Longen tried to find another way to try to resolve the present impasse in a peaceful way.

But the answer he received was very consistent, and Spikes and Brower shook their heads at the same time and vetoed, "Of course it won't work!"

"The other side is clearly hostile to us, look at the three ships on the docks! they have attacked our merchant ships before this, and may well have poisoned our crews! The East India Company will never forgive such an act!" Spikes said loudly.

Brouwer also added: "As soon as we got here, they took the initiative to attack, and that is enough to prove their attitude. Now that the situation is passive, it is the other side, and I do not think that there is a need to start peace talks immediately! Mr. Van Longen, you just have to tell us, do you support the pursuit as much as possible, or do you hold the port and wait for reinforcements to arrive?"

"This ......" Van Longen hesitated for a moment before saying, "Sir± ☆±☆☆±☆±☆, m.♀.c☆om, I think we should at least settle down in the harbor first, and now there are about two or three hours before dark, are you sure that we can end the battle during this time?

Spikes and Browaux looked at each other before Spikes spoke, "You have to be right, our soldiers do need time to recuperate, and it is not a good day to continue fighting. However, I still insist that we cannot wait for reinforcements, we must maintain enough pressure on the enemy. ”

Spikes' concessions, though extremely limited, at least eased the stalemate. Brower also cautiously endorsed his law, ordering his men to begin camping in the harbor and setting up a perimeter guard. Although this island has been the territory of the Dutch East India Company for the past few years, most of their people usually stop here for a day and a half to replenish their supplies, and they do not know much about the geographical environment here.

The news of the opponent's stop to recuperate was quickly fed back to Mushaber's side by the scouts, which made him a little relieved, which meant that the Dutch probably would not take the initiative to attack today. However, since the other party began to camp in the port, it also means that they do not plan to leave here, but will wait until they have rested before fighting with Haihan.

Both sides were very vigilant that night, beware of the other side sneaking up on the night, but the commanders of both sides were worried that the active night attack would cause losses to their own small forces, so they reached a wonderful tacit understanding and spent a peaceful night.

On June 161, after a night's rest, the Dutch finally pulled their troops out of the port and began to march inland. However, in fact, the distance between the port and the Haihan defense line is not far, and if you turn over a dirt slope from the outside of the port, you can see the town and the conspicuous defensive wall on the periphery of the town in the distance.

"You see, these guys are obviously not willing to retreat like this, they are planning to have a good head-to-head showdown with us!" Spikes said with a gloomy expression as he put down his monoculars. Van Longen took the binoculars from his hand and began to survey the enemy positions in the distance.

The brass-cased monoculars used by Spikes were made in the Dutch Liberty family, and the refracting telescope was made in 1608 by the glassesman Liberhue in Middelburg, the Netherlands, using crystal lenses. In 1609, Galileo Galilei also built a telescope model that could observe the starry sky based on this telescope and his own knowledge of optics.

However, this kind of high-end goods is not unique to Europeans, and the Portuguese missionary Jan Mano, who entered China in 1610, has already introduced this advanced technology to the Ming Dynasty, and mentioned it in the book "Astronomical Strategy" that he co-translated with Li Zubai. In 16 years, the German missionary John Tang brought the first physical object to the Ming Dynasty, and his "Telescope" written in 166 was a book dedicated to introducing the telescope to the Ming Dynasty.

In the second year of Chongzhen, the scholar Xu Guangqi asked to assemble three telescopes for observing the celestial phenomena, and later after the telescope supervised by Tang Ruowang was completed, Emperor Chongzhen also went to see it personally, but during this period, the Ming army did not widely use this tool on the battlefield.

Of course, there is still a certain gap between the monoculars made by the Europeans and the models equipped by the Haihan militia in terms of performance, and the black technology telescopes brought by the senior officers of the Haihan from another time and space are even more incomparable. For example, the telescope used by Mushaber was a German-made Steiner military telescope that was purchased from foreign arms markets before the crossing. From the binoculars, he could clearly see the movement of the opposing team, and naturally he also noticed Van Longen and the others who were looking at this side with a telescope.

"It's really a food delivery home!" Mu Shabai let out a sigh of emotion, put down the binoculars and gave an order: "Let the sniper enter the firing position, the target is the three officers under the opponent's flag, and they can fire freely after entering the firing range!"

As one of the first units to begin training professional snipers, the Annan militia has always retained the special unit of snipers in its combat establishment. And the battalion, which was stationed on Ambuna Island with Mushaber south, was also equipped with a squad of snipers. Of course, the weapon they used could not be the high-end goods of the old Morgan, just the Triple Zero sniper rifle produced by the Sanya Arsenal, but this rifle that has been modified twice can be the most accurate of the rifles produced in this era, and the range is far greater than that of its competitors of the same era.

In all the operations in which the Haihan militia participated, the sniper unit played a more or less certain role. Although the cost of training snipers is relatively high and the training period required is particularly long, the top level of the Central Military Commission still believes that the deterrent and role of this special branch of arms on the battlefield are worth investing resources, so they still insist on retaining the establishment of this branch.

According to the statistics of actual combat training, the first hit rate of the militia snipers within a distance of 300 meters can maintain a relatively high percentage. An excellent sniper can even maintain a hit rate of more than 50 percent at a distance of 200 meters to hit a chest target with a diameter of two feet, and 300 meters will drop by another three or four percent on this basis, and at a distance of more than 300 meters, it can basically only rely on the concentrated fire of a few snipers to improve the hit rate. However, when conditions permit, the commander will also let the snipers shoot at a longer distance, such as four or five hundred meters, although the hit rate is low, but it is still within the range, and there is still a certain chance that the concentrated fire can hit the target.

Of course, shooting a fixed target in training is completely different from shooting a moving target on the battlefield, and no matter how much live-fire training you have, you also need a real combat environment to further temper the sniper. Therefore, every time there is a combat mission, the commanders generally use this elite class without hesitation.

Mushaba, of course, could do it himself, and among the personal equipment he brought to Ambuna was a Type 85 sniper rifle. This individual weapon imitating the former Soviet Union's Lagonov SVD is very powerful at medium and long distances, and the sniper distance is more than 1,500 meters. However, Mu Shabai himself did not learn sniper tactics as professionally and systematically as Morgan Sr., and his use of sniper rifles was not professional, and he was a senior commander in the local area, so he needed to control the entire battle situation, so this combat task could only be completed by snipers who specialized in it.

Of course, Mushaber did not expect the snipers to be able to kill a few of the Dutch's senior officers in one fell swoop, and wanted to get a shot at a distance of four or five hundred meters, which was similar to the probability of breaking the enemy's mast with a single shot of a naval gun from a distance of three hundred meters in a naval battle. However, if it can play a certain deterrent role in the enemy commander and interfere with their command, it can be regarded as achieving a part of the combat effect.

The Dutch team stopped at a distance of three hundred meters, and then began to line up and set up gun emplacements. Instead of rushing to get the soldiers behind the line to open fire, Mushaber went to the various gun emplacements first to assist them in calibrating their targets. The opponent's artillery is almost all temporarily unloaded from the ship, but the caliber is large but the range is very close, and there is nothing to be said about accuracy - these guns are designed to hit large targets within 100 meters. Although their range is not more than 100 meters, after several times beyond this distance, only God really knows if they hit.

Compared to the opponent's primitive naval artillery, Mushabai trusted the weapons of his army. Although these pounds and 6-pounder army guns are not very powerful, their accuracy at a distance of 500 meters is very impressive, and if the two sides start an artillery battle next, then Mushabai will have full confidence to defeat the opponent.

The Dutch followed the European method of warfare step by step, and after the troops were assembled and the gun emplacements were placed, the heralds sounded their trumpets and drums, preparing for the first round of the offensive by the artillery, and then the musketeers composed of infantry pressed on foot.

However, Mushaber did not intend to give his opponent the upper hand, and at his command, the rear posts of the Haihan line were heard, and then the guns on the eight gun emplacements rang out one after another, and several shells whizzed through the air and smashed into the Dutch position.

The first round of shelling was more effective than Mushaber had expected, with two of the eight shells hitting their intended targets, knocking out one of the Dutch's guns and knocking over the four gunners next to them. Two of the shells that did not hit the gun position flew into the ranks of the Dutch infantry, and five or six lives were taken by surprise.

"These bastards, shoot me!" a frustrated Spikes gave the order to fire.

However, as Mushaber had predicted, the enemy's artillery fire seemed to be intense, but due to the limitations of its weapons, there was almost no accuracy to speak of, and the first round of shelling all missed, and not a single shot was missed. While the Dutch were reloading, the second round of shelling began, and this time the calibrated shelling hit rate was significantly improved, with four of the eight shells hitting the Dutch artillery positions and destroying two guns that had not yet had time to fire.

For the Dutch, the loss of artillery was a matter, after all, the entire fleet was equipped with dozens of guns, and only half of them were unloaded and pushed to the front line to fight. However, the opponent's two rounds of artillery bombardment directly hit their own artillery positions, and this accurate hit rate greatly shook the confidence of the Dutch gunners to continue fighting. Brouwer had to personally lead the law enforcement team behind the artillery position to supervise the battle, and immediately executed two gunners who were afraid of the battle.

Under this means, in the fifth round of shelling, the Dutch finally had a shell concentrated on the defensive wall on the side of Haihan, and the flying debris injured several Haihan soldiers, which can be regarded as the beginning of today's record of the Dutch. However, by this time they had already lost four guns and more than twenty gunners, and the Dutch had obviously suffered much worse losses than the Dutch.

After ten rounds of shelling, the Dutch artillery positions were muted, not because their gunners were afraid of the battle or because they ran out of ammunition, but because the guns were too hot and had to stop and wait for the chambers to cool down a little before they could continue to reload with gunpowder. On the Haihan side, it continued to carry out five rounds of shelling before the bombardment stopped, and the gap between the two sides in the performance of weapons was once again reflected.

"It's only been a long time, and we've lost seven guns!" After listening to the battle damage report with a dark face, Brower couldn't help but complain: "If we continue to fight like this, we will lose all the artillery until tomorrow at most!"

"The opponent's artillery is so powerful, so we can't send infantry to fight!" Spikes frowned, and there was no better solution to the situation in front of him: "These guys are probably really the Annan troops trained by the Portuguese, otherwise there is no reason why they have so many artillery!"

Judging from the current state of operations, the Dutch were obviously facing a much more ferocious opponent than the pirates they had seen in the past, not only did they have a large number of firearms in their hands, but also the methods of combat were very organized, and they were very experienced in artillery battles, and they did not hurry to clear the artillery positions on the Dutch side by means of concentrated fire.