Duke Villahermosa lay on horseback, under the protection of a group of German mercenary leaders who were still ready to ask him for debts, and once again retreated, and behind them, some German mercenaries who had not yet been frightened by the Aztec heavenly soldiers were still fighting and retreating, risking their lives to cover their Duke's retreat to the Chilpansinger fortress.

The Indians in the Aztec Republican Army were red-eyed, and they kept clenching and swept in the direction of the Southern Madre Mountains. A small number of German mercenary troops, which were barely organized to contain and cover, were overwhelmed by the Aztec Republican army in the blink of an eye. Later, the German mercenaries no longer had the courage to resist, and they just ran like frightened birds.

In their minds, there was one last point of hope that the follow-up troops mobilized by the Duke of Villahermosa, the unreliable mercenaries in New Spain, had arrived at the Chilpansinger fortress. In this way, the two combined forces can control the most important pass in the Sierra Madre do Sul, and block these Aztec Republican armies whose will to fight surpasses that of the French Heavenly Soldiers!

Duke Villahermosa was only dizzy and followed the ranks of these scattered German mercenaries, looking around, the German mercenaries who could still protect him in the direction of the Chilpansinger fortress were only five or six hundred horsemen, and almost all of them had lost all their fighting spirit. He didn't understand how he had managed to get all the way here.

He has an army of 10,000 men, all of which are the strongest troops the Kingdom of Spain can get its hands on - German mercenaries! Among them were also two thousand German cuirassiers! Even if the opponent is the Prince of Condé, Durrenny, or the Duke of Luxembourg, he has the strength to fight. How could it be defeated by a group of lowly Indians? But those Indians are really too fierce, even more fierce than the Japanese mercenaries of the Aztec Republic, as if they were born to settle accounts with the colonial masters from Europe, even if they drag the European masters to hell together, they are willing! The red flags that hunted and fluttered in the smoke of gunpowder, and the bayonets of the Indians who came in waves under the banner of the black cross on a red background, were simply the most terrifying nightmare!

And the most terrifying part of this nightmare is not on the battlefield today, but in the souls of the Indians!

The will to fight of this race, which had been exterminated by the Spaniards with a disease that had been deliberately spread by the Spaniards and advanced weapons that had been several generations ahead of them, had now begun to awaken!

In today's Spanish New World, the number of peninsulars (Europeans) and native whites is at most hundreds of thousands, while the number of Indians and Indo-European people is at least more than 10 million, and the vast majority of those who are now enslaved have awakened violently

On September 10, 1683, the former commander of the Flemish Legion, known as the best enemy of France, and now the commander of the Spanish New World Legion, the Duke of Villahermosa, was in the hall. The Battle of Carmen suffered a crushing defeat, with 10,000 elite German mercenaries suffering a near-total blow in what could be described as the battle for the founding of the Aztec Republic, and only a few hundred escaped back to the fortress of Chilpansinger.

And the Aztec Republican Army is in the hall. After the great victory of the Carmen estate, the morale was already so high that it was about to burst, regardless of casualties and exhaustion, and continued to advance towards the fortress of Chilpansinger! Chasing and fleeing the enemy all the way, the direction is like splitting mud, and after a day and a night of continuous pursuit, he also borrowed from the hall. Yu Yong, brought from the battlefield of Carmen, bites the butt of the remnants of the German mercenaries and rushes into the fortress of Chilpansinger.

And the thousands of New Spanish mercenaries stationed in the fortress saw that the white heavenly soldiers were actually chased and killed by a group of Indians wearing tiger hats to such an extent, where was there still the slightest sense of war? Almost without any resistance, they dispersed in a hurry, giving the entire fortress and the food, ammunition, and guns piled up inside to the Aztec Republic in vain, and many Indians and Indo-European mixed blood who served the Spanish army surrendered directly to the Aztec Heavenly Soldiers, and several squadrons surrendered in formation!

Takes place in the church. The decisive battle of the fortress of Carmen was undoubtedly a change of heaven that could change the course of history!

But due to the presence of the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans, the news of the rise of the Spanish Imperial State Building and the rise of the Aztec Republic will not reach the old continent for a while.

Therefore, the struggle on the Old Continent continues to advance along the lines that have been planned by all sides for a long time!

In the sea off Hangzhou Bay, above the calm sea in autumn, seagulls are dotted, the sky is blue and the sea is yellow, a quiet and tranquil scenery. There are several medium-sized bird boats with a deadweight of nearly 100 tons, with butterfly sails, rainnetting on the undulating seas. Now is the season of fishing in the East China Sea, the yellow croaker, hairtail fish, pomfret produced in the East China Sea, are so fat and oily, fresh and tender, if you can catch a boat and send it to Baoshan, Ningbo, Shaoxing, Hangzhou and other big cities, you can definitely sell it at a good price.

If the wind direction is not suitable, it doesn't hurt to rush back all of a sudden, these bird boats are carrying a lot of Huai salt, and the catch can be salted in time - such a good deal, it can't be done more than ten years earlier, at that time, the Qing Dynasty moved along the coast, and there were no people in the coastline for 20 miles, even if some coastal people escaped the butcher's knife forced by the Qing army, they could still go into the sea to fish, and there was no place to sell the catch, let alone salted fish with salt, how expensive was the salt of the year? Ordinary people are reluctant to put more in stir-frying, where are they willing to pickle salted fish? How can it be like now, under the personal management of Shangshu Zuocheng Chen Yonghua, the Lianghuai salt industry can still provide cheap and high-quality salt for the people of the Ming Dynasty under the premise of paying a full annual tax of 5 million taels of salt plus 1 million catties of fire and nitrate? Fishermen along the coast can even get a fairly discounted rate. The days are really getting more and more prosperous!

At that time, the coastal fishermen had a very difficult life, and when the wind and waves were calm, they could still have fish to eat, but if they encountered violent storms for days, the fishing boats could not go out to sea, and they were afraid that they would have to starve.

What's even more terrifying is that they have to avoid the smuggling ship of the Great Shimizu Division! That's right, it's the sailor's smuggling boat. They were the ones who smuggled silk, porcelain, and tea from the southeastern coastal provinces, and they were the ones who sold grain, ironware, and gunpowder to the Zheng family on Dayuan Island, and they were also the ones who were in charge of anti-smuggling along the coast and handed over the heads of pirates and smugglers to the top every year.

But the pirates are the parents of food and clothing, and the smugglers are the ones who kill their "parents", which is unfilial, and it is unfaithful to kill themselves at that time (how can they be loyal if they commit suicide?). The Qing Dynasty had to be loyal to unfilial ministers, so those fishermen who were struggling on the seashore just killed to repay their merits!

Anyway, resisting moving to the sea is a capital crime, and killing it is not a good killing!

Since killing is not a good killing, then these desperate fishermen naturally have to resist, and some of them simply do the work of little pirates while fishing, and from time to time they can go out to sea in a group to fight with the Great Shimizu Division.

Gradually, these coastal fishermen became accustomed to fighting and killing, and the Liangzi of the Qing Dynasty became deeper and deeper. After the third prince of Zhu launched the "Pingjiang (Suzhou) Riot", the coastal fishermen of Zhejiang and Jiangsu joined the Heaven and Earth Society one after another - the Qing Dynasty was so bad, and the anti-Qing people must be their own people! So now they have all become "republican veterans", and they have naturally obtained the status of national soldiers, and they have also been assigned a field house on the seaside.

Although he became a national soldier and had an industry on the shore, where can the income from farming be compared with fishing? In addition, the imperial court also encouraged the fishing industry (the fishing industry can train seafarers and prosper the shipbuilding industry), there are subsidies for shipbuilding, salt for salted fish can be discounted, and it will also help them find markets in coastal cities, and even newspapers promote the benefits of eating fish: the elderly can prolong their lives by eating fish, children can become smart by eating fish, men can aphrodisiac by eating fish, and women can beautify their faces by eating fish

Therefore, most of the "republican patriarchs" on the seashore have bought new fishing boats that are large and sturdy, so that they can run faster, farther, and safer when they go out to sea to fish. If the country needs it, these fishing boats can be converted into light warships, troop transports, and even directly used to land on the beach!

Plus, these new fishing boats are armed! Cannons are not available, but there are Furlong cannons and heavy arquebuses, and they are all serious military products, produced by regular arsenals! The sailors on the fishing boat will also participate in the training organized by the garrison chief soldier Yamen during the fishing season, and they can all use those things proficiently.

These days, the relationship between the Ming and Spain, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, Japan, Portugal and other countries has broken down, although there is no formal declaration of war, but it is almost in a state of war.

On this side of the sea off Hangzhou Bay, from time to time, foreign warships under the banner of the Spanish Invincible Armada will come to make trouble, and the news on Ryukyu Island has long been cut off, and it is said that it has been captured by the Japanese invaders!

The armed merchant ships that went to sea to trade on the Ming side did not dare to be left alone, but would form a ship group, and then be escorted by the navy's fourth-class warships and gunboats, so that they dared to act along the coastline. I don't dare to run too far, almost to the Jiulong River in the south, to Haizhou Bay in the north, and to run along the coast. In this way, it is necessary to have "armed fishing boats" from the coastal provinces go out to sea to control the wind and support a coastal sentry net as much as possible.

But even if he is so cautious, Zheng Jing and Zheng Da, the richest man, have lost more than a dozen merchant ships since this spring!

The sea off Hangzhou Bay, because it is close to the richest southeast coast of the Ming Dynasty and close to Japan, the base of Westerners near the Shenzhou Continent, has always been a key alert area, and almost every large fishing boat is the eyes and ears of the Ming Navy!

A lean-looking man slipped off the mast with a thud, and around his neck hung an elongated and retractable "Venice" monocular. This is a telescope made in Baoshan using glass lenses, which was opened by businessmen from the Republic of Venice in the Western Mediterranean - this factory was personally recruited by Jia Guozhu, the ambassador of the Ming Dynasty to various European countries, to the Republic of Venice to attract investment, for which he also promised a large subsidy, and also promised two years of tax exemption and three years of halving.

Although the conditions are good, it is still worth it, at least this factory can now produce glass telescopes that are no less than Western originals, and the glass used is also produced in the factory in Baoshan. This is not afraid of the "neck" of Spain, the Netherlands, and the British Cardamin.

And similar investment, Jia Guozhu also did dozens of transactions.

A sailor on the deck of the fishing boat saw his ship's boss Zhang Laosan sliding down from the mast, and he was still frowning and vigilant, so he asked curiously: "Uncle Zhang, have you found anything?" ”

Zhang Laosan shook his head and said: "I haven't found it yet, we can only go here at the farthest to go to the deep sea, even if we encounter a Westerner gunboat, our fishing boat can't outrun others, think about it!" When will we be able to have a group of third- and fourth-class battleships sail to the waters off London House in the United Kingdom and The Hague House in the Netherlands to block the door, then it will be called the four seas! ”

The sailor just smiled, he knew that what his ship boss said was all heard from Zhang Laosi, Zhang Laosan's brother. That Zhang Laosi is a character, a naval officer who graduated from the Chongming Island Navy Lecture Hall. The old Zhang family has declined since the defeat and death of the father and son of Cangshui, and there has never been an official until this Zhang Laosi was admitted to the Navy Martial Arts Hall!

I don't know where this Zhang Laosi is now? It's been almost a year since there was any news, don't be the same as his uncle Zhang Cangshui!

At this moment, the sailor's eyes were suddenly flashed by a light from a distance, and he quickly looked up, and saw someone on another fishing boat in the distance, reflecting the sunlight with a large mirror!

That's a warning sign!

"Third uncle, east, east!" He quickly shouted.

Zhang Laosan hurriedly shouted to the sailors who were busy fishing: "Hurry up, don't catch the fish, first lift the mirror out and signal the Zheyu No. 58 in the west!" ”

This signal had to be transmitted to the shore or to the small island along the coast by reflecting the sunlight from the mirror, where there was a beacon tower, and after lighting the wolf smoke, it could be further transmitted to the general Li Zhongshan.

After staring at his subordinates to set up the mirror and refract the sunlight out, Zhang Laosan jumped on the mast with bare feet, raised the "Venice brand" telescope to look east, and after about a quarter of an hour, he finally saw a few masts suddenly floating above the sea level and the bulging white sails hanging on the mast! Now the visibility was so good that he could even see the "red cross" on the white sail - what kind of "cross around the neck" was this, the flag of the Kingdom of Spain!

After a while, there were more and more sails on the sea, and they were all connected into a large area, like a floating white cloud! Zhang Laosan roughly counted at least 50 Spanish warships under the banner of "Neck Cross"!

This is the main force of the Spanish Armada coming!

He slipped off the mast and commanded loudly: "Rocket, set up signal rockets and shoot all signal rockets out of me!" Be sure to let the Admiral know that the main force of the Spanish Armada is coming! ”

With the sunlight shining from the mirror and the rockets hitting the sky one after another, coupled with the beacon fires lit off the coast of Zhejiang, the news that the main force of the Spanish Armada was approaching Hangzhou Bay, like having grown wings, flew to the Nanjing General's Mansion and reported it to Li Zhongshan, who had just given himself the rank of general.

The reform of the military rank system was something that Li Yat-sen had been promoting for a long time, but it was not finally implemented until the autumn of the tenth year of the Republic, before the Northern Expedition of the Ming Dynasty was about to be launched.

"The beacon tower in the direction of Zhejiang has been lit!"

Zhou Chang and Zhou Peigong, who had the rank of lieutenant general, walked quickly into Li Zhongshan's capital room and handed over a report with both hands.

"What?" Li Zhongshan squinted his eyes and looked up at Zhou Chang, "Peigong, what do you think?" ”

"The Japanese must be committing a big attack!"

The news that the Japanese are about to attack on a large scale, the Ming General's Mansion has long known! But they don't know which direction these wouldn't be coming from. And what is the quantity?

The Ming Dynasty has thousands of miles of sea borders, and it is really impossible to fortify everywhere!

Li Zhongshan thought for a moment: "Hangzhou Bay Wakou Peigong, go and send someone to inform Zhongzheng to come!" He smiled, "Fight the Japanese and find Zhongzheng, it's right!" ”

(End of chapter)