Luzon, Manila

This is a large city in Southeast Asia with a total population of nearly 440,000, and it is also the center of Spanish colonialist rule for 300 years, there are almost no traces of industry in the city, there are no railways and trams, no factory chimneys, you can see Tang-style wooden buildings and low-rise shacks with distinctive characteristics everywhere, and some stone buildings with distinctive Spanish style stand out from the crowd, and the towering roof of the Catholic church in the distance points to the sky, becoming a unique South Asian style.

In the chaotic port of Manila

Brigadier General Duan Qirui, Colonel Zheng Tieniu, Lieutenant Colonel Bian Chunsong and a group of more than a dozen people stood by the fence of the British cruise ship "Rossiysk Apostle", condescending to overlook the entire port.

Accustomed to the orderly, clean and clean cities of the Ocean Kingdom, and then looking at the cities under the rule of the Spanish colonists, the sewage is overflowing and chaotic, which really makes people feel a maddening impulse.

"I came, I discovered, I conquered ......," Duan Qirui muttered, his eyes flashing with fanatical adoration.

This is a famous quote from His Majesty the King, and it makes people's hearts boil every time they think about it, and there is no greater joy in life than the meritorious deeds of opening up territory and leaving history forever, which may be unfair to the weak.

But in this world of the jungle, who cares about the feelings of the weak?

Duan Qirui's words aroused the ambition of the people around him, and they looked at each other excitedly, silently conveying the meaning of encouraging each other.

The opportunity is just around the corner, and it's up to anyone who can grasp it.

The officers in their group were all dressed in civilian clothes, mainly in light-colored casual suits, wearing white bowler hats, and looked like successful businessmen who had come to Manila to investigate business opportunities.

In fact, they are now disguised as wholesale cigarette merchants.

As for the real identity, Duan Qirui is the brigadier general and division commander of the first division of the Royal Praetorian Guard, and the original position of the general army of Guangdong has long been relieved, he doesn't care about the general military officer of the Qing court, what really gives him a sense of belonging is the Viscount Hanhai of the Ocean Kingdom, the status of the brigadier general of the army.

The two words "Hanhai" in front of Viscount Hanhai are allusions to the Han Dynasty champion Huo Quai's pursuit of the Xiongnu army until the wolf Juxu Mountain and Guyan Mountain, sharing the sacrifice of heaven and earth, and returning to the Hanhai Sea.

Next to Duan Qirui's Viscount fiefdom, there was a rather large Season Lake, which he named "Hanhai", and Viscount Hanhai came from this.

In Duan Qirui's noble badge, the blue waves below symbolize his ambition, dreaming of galloping across the battlefield like the champion of the Han Dynasty, leaving a name in history and establishing immortal feats.

forced the Huns to flee far away, and there was no royal court in Monan......

As long as I think of this, my little heart will "plop" and beat non-stop, and my heart is full of pride and ambition, dreaming of dominating in this troubled world.

Colonel Zheng Tieniu is his old subordinate, a battalion commander of the former Railway Independent Cavalry Division, a strong man who has repeatedly made meritorious contributions in the Battle of "Sad Heart Ridge", and a senior officer with great experience after dozens of battles in the subsequent Civil War, and now he is transferred to the commander of the Second Regiment of the First Division of the Royal Praetorian Guard, and he is still Duan Qirui's old subordinate.

Lieutenant Colonel Bian Chunsong is the commander of the experimental tank regiment of the 1st Red Division, and after participating in the military operation on the Indochina Peninsula with the high-level military observation group to Vietnam, he achieved double excellent results in the thesis evaluation of military academies after returning.

The reason why he appeared here was because the tank test regiment of the 1st Red Division was temporarily reinforced to the Royal Praetorian Guard for wartime fortification.

This group of people has a clear purpose for this trip, which is called "stepping on the plate" according to the jargon, uh...... Pre-war field surveys.

The former South Asian city was not what it was in the eyes of military commanders, they did not care about the distribution of streets, low shantytowns and dirty streets, but in their eyes they focused on the terrain, strong commanding heights and bridges, purely from a military point of view.

All the way

Let Duan Qirui and others have an intuitive understanding of the city, and in general, the defense is sparse and focused, and this focus is the Santiago Castle built by the Spaniards for 300 years.

The castle of San Diego is a city within a city in Manila, where only Spaniards, white Europeans and merchants of the Ocean Kingdom can live, and the aboriginal people are strictly forbidden to stay in the castle, let alone spend the night in the castle. Think of it as an enlarged version of the Portuguese castle fortress on the island of Mozambique, built extremely tall and fortified.

Following the local personnel infiltrated by the Political Intelligence Bureau, Duan Qirui and the others changed their faces after entering the San Diego Castle, and a trace of worry appeared.

Since the Middle Ages, the castle buildings in Europe have not been played, and the Spanish fortresses have been tested by cruel wars, and they have not hesitated to spend a lot of money to build defensive fortresses, and only a small number of troops are enough to discourage the enemy.

The entire castle of Santiago has 7 gates, 12 Catholic churches, and the walls here are all made of boulders with a width of 3.5 meters, and the gates are even wider than 7.4 meters, and the huge wooden gates reinforced with steel bars can only be opened by guns of at least 95 mm or more.

in the castle

All of them are fist-thick coarse granite pavement, and most of the residential buildings are 2~3 storey Byzantine or Mediterranean style, carved and decorated with flowers, and are extremely luxurious.

The most beautiful is the cathedral in the castle, which is a large or small church in the heart of the Spanish Catholic faith, but it is all resplendent in gold, with biblical frescoes and sculptures overlooking it, and it is full of heavy and sacred religious atmosphere.

But in the eyes of the officers, every tall and sturdy stone church in it was a small fortress, and it would not be easy to take it if it was garrisoned by troops armed with muskets and artillery.

Considering that the Spanish colonial army was small in number and it was difficult to play the role of these fortress-type fortresses, Brigadier General Duan Qirui personally gave the attack difficulty of Santiago Castle A, which meant that it could be conquered at a heavy price.

Investigate here

Everyone couldn't help but sigh in their hearts, there were still three inches of nails in the rotten ship, and the ancients were honest and did not deceive me.

The Spaniards are not easy to deal with!.

Pinch your fingers and count the world-class colonial powers of Spain, Portugal, the Netherlands, Britain and France, each with its own characteristics.

The Netherlands and Britain belong to one type, pursuing a dualistic colonial system, that is, supporting local indigenous forces or minority forces to control the vast colonies, and the colonists are high and detached.

This type of colonizer has a relatively relaxed policy, which can control a large area of colonial areas with minimal manpower and material resources, mainly to obtain colonial interests, and does not pay attention to sovereignty.

This was represented by the Dutch East India Company, the Dutch West India Company, and the British East India Company, which mainly aimed at grabbing huge colonial interests and did not pursue absolute control over the colonies.

The second is represented by Portugal and France, eliminating the original local rulers and directly establishing rule in the colonies, which requires a great deal of manpower and material resources, the French did this in the Saigon Governor's Palace, and the same is true in French Libya, and the same is true of the Portuguese colonial policy, so after the independence of Brazil, the Kingdom of Portugal was dealt a heavy blow, and its power declined sharply.

The third type is Spain, in the history of world colonization, the colonial rule of the Spaniards has always been cruel, bloody, and famous for naked exploitation and oppression.

In 1531, Pizarro led 167 Spaniards to conquer the Inca Empire, which once had a glorious civilization, which directly and indirectly led to the death of millions of local natives and the decline of a human civilization.

Despite the brutal rule of the Spanish colonizers in Central and South America, hundreds of local uprisings were suppressed, including more than a dozen massacres in historical history.

The Spaniards treated the local native whites of Spanish blood in Central and South America as equally cruel and regarded as aliens, and they destroyed villages and towns at every turn in their repression, and did not show mercy at all.

In the past few years, the bloody rule of Virel Nicolau, the governor of Spanish Central America, has led to more than 200,000 recorded deaths, more than half of which were native-born whites and their families who participated in the struggle.

Just talking about the Spanish colonization of Luzon, there were five massacres against the Chinese, resulting in the death of no less than 80,000 Chinese immigrants, the most recent of which was in 1762.

Therefore, the ferocity of the Spaniards comes from the bones, and it is unique among all the old European colonists.

Because Spain formulated this "most effective and direct" policy of bloody colonial slaughter when it began its foreign expansion.

Therefore, wherever they ruled, whether they enslaved natives or outsiders, they would follow this policy, and use it many times, in order to protect the fundamental interests of the Spaniards in the colonies.

Looking back on the past, how can it not make people feel a lot of emotion?

After looking at the San Diego Castle built by the Spaniards in Manila, Duan Qirui and other officers felt heavy in their hearts, even though the Spaniards were now in decline, they did not underestimate it in their hearts.

The eagle of the Andes has sharp teeth and claws, even if it has folded its wings.

"Division, judging from the strength of the Spanish defenders in Manila, there are about 2,700 people, if most of them are cowering in San Diego City, this thing is a stone town, and it is difficult for the army's heavy artillery to bombard, it is not easy to attack!"

"By your calculations, what are the casualties?"

Facing Duan Qirui's question, Colonel Zheng Tieniu replied in a deep voice; "There are three types of battles;

Worst-case scenario

If the Spaniards had been able to show their old bloodiness, defend with their fortitude, fight to the death, and inflict heavy casualties on us by virtue of their geographical advantages, our army might have paid the price of four to five thousand casualties before they could completely capture the castle of Santiago.

In general

Our army pressed the border, and the Spaniards had no intention of fighting, so they could take advantage of the disadvantage of fewer troops to blast one or two city gates, and seize control of the city with a thunderous force, and the casualties should be less than 1,000, about five or six hundred.

At its best

Our army pressed the border, so that the Spaniards could realize that the reality could not be changed, and through diplomatic negotiations and pressure, they could get the city without a single soldier. ”

Speaking of which

Colonel Zheng Tieniu lowered his voice and leaned into Brigadier General Duan Qirui's ear and said; "Master, I have a distant cousin in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and he once revealed a little bit of a mouth, as if this matter is being worked on above......"

"Alright, don't be foolish, just do your own thing." Duan Qirui doesn't gossip about the news with his subordinates, he is a prudent person who strives for perfection in everything he can do.

So instead of answering Colonel Zheng Tieniu's words, he smacked Lieutenant Colonel Bian Chunsong with his eyes and asked; "Well, your ironclad troops should be fine."

"I've seen the terrain, it can be said that there are two extremes, one extreme is that as long as there are enough troops to cooperate, it is easy for the ironclad troops to sweep the whole of Manila." Bian Chunsong looked up at the heavy castle, with a helpless look on his face, and continued; "At the other extreme, the ironclad troops have no way to deal with this castle, and their role may not be as good as that of the infantry troops."

"That's it!" Duan Qirui smashed his mouth regretfully, and then said something very demoralizing; "In this case, then it's one thing whether your ironclad troops come or not, I've seen all the urban areas of Manila outside, give me a division and two days, and guarantee that it can be taken. The only thing that frightens me is this San Diego castle, and it seems that you can't help it. ”

"Or ...... Coming to the inside and out? ”

"Fart, you really think that the Spaniards are dead, once the war breaks out, all Chinese and people who have close business contacts with the Ocean Kingdom will be expelled from the castle of San Diego if they are not centrally imprisoned, and there will be no obvious loophole left at all."

"Master, I don't believe that those people in the Political Service Bureau haven't thought about this, you must know that those people are all ghosts and goblins, and they will definitely stay behind."

"Uh...... Kind of makes sense. ”

Duan Qirui nodded, out of his usual caution, he didn't dare to pin all his hopes on outsiders, so he thought about it and said; "You act in groups, the focus is to investigate the geographical location around the castle of Santiago, what are the weak points of firepower output, my request is that once the battle starts, consider the worst-case scenario, the casualties of the castle must not exceed three hundred, and the casualties of the entire occupation of the castle must not exceed one thousand, otherwise it will be a complete failure."

Are you kidding?

His fully staffed Royal Praetorian Guard Division is more than 8,600 people, and it will cost more than 5,000 casualties to fight a San Diego castle, so it's a fart!

When the time comes, there is no need for His Majesty to scold, he Duan Qirui himself will be ashamed, and directly give himself a shot in the head to atone for his sins.

What Colonel Zheng Tieniu said was a theoretical war game deduction, and under the condition of completely occupying the geographical advantage of the castle, the 2,700 Spanish soldiers who swore to the death fought to the last man could indeed cause such large casualties.

Here's the problem

The attacking Royal Janissaries could call in the support of the fleet's artillery fire, and the 95 mm army artillery could not open the fortified Santiago Castle (which refers to piling up boulders behind the city gates to seal the city gates. However, the Navy's 305-mm cannon can collapse at least 50 meters of the city wall with just one hit.

Such power is Duan Qirui's sufficient confidence.

Even if you're a lump of iron, you're a slag in front of the cannons of the fleet, not to mention the tiny Castle of Santiago.

In this case, a part of the credit will be given to the navy, which is a situation that the Royal Janissaries do not want, and it is rare to have the opportunity to show their faces in front of His Majesty.