Australian Storm 1876

  Chapter 746 Step on the plate

  Luzon, Manila

This is a large Southeast Asian city with a total population of nearly 440,000. It is also the center of Spanish colonial rule for 300 years. There are almost no traces of industry in the city. There are no railways and trams, no factory chimneys, and distinctive features can be seen everywhere. The characteristic Tang-style wooden buildings and low stilt houses, as well as some stone-built buildings with distinctive Spanish style, stand out from the crowd. The towering roof of the Catholic Church in the distance points directly to the sky, becoming a unique South Asian style.

  At the chaotic Manila port

Brigadier General Duan Qirui, Colonel Zheng Tieniu, Lieutenant Colonel Bian Chunsong and a dozen people stood by the fence of the British cruise ship "Rosisk Apostle", overlooking the port, rickshaws, human pickers, flatbed trucks and coolies crowded together at the exit of the cruise ship. Tuan, the chaotic shack built on the side of the wharf is messy. The **** and cow dung mixed with the smell of rotten and smelly fish under the strong sunlight, making their brows frowned.

  I am used to the orderly, sanitary and clean cities of the Ocean Kingdom, and then look at the cities under the control of Spanish colonists. The sewage flows and chaos is really a kind of maddening impulse.

   "I came, I found, I conquered..." Duan Qirui murmured, his eyes flashing with fanatical worship.

  This is a famous sentence of His Majesty the King. Every time I think of it, it makes people's mind boil. There is no more joy in life than the feat of opening up the territory and staying in the annals of history. For the weak, this may be unfair.

   But in this world where the weak eat the strong, who cares about the feelings of the weak?

   Duan Qirui's words aroused the ambitiousness of the people around them. They looked at each other with excitement, silently conveying the meaning of encouraging each other.

  The opportunity is right here, it depends on who can grasp it.

  The officers in this field all wore casual clothes, mainly light-colored casual suits with a white dome hat on their heads. They looked like successful businessmen and came to Manila to investigate business opportunities.

  In fact, they are now disguised as cigarette wholesalers.

As for the real identity, Duan Qirui is the commander of the brigadier general of the first division of the Royal Guards after his reappointment. He has already been discharged from the Guangdong commander-in-chief position. He doesn't care about the commander-in-chief of the Qing court. He really belongs to him. I feel the status of Viscount Hanhai of the Ocean Kingdom, brigadier general.

  The word "Hanhai" in front of Viscount Hanhai, the allusion comes from the deeds of Huo Qubing, the champion of the Han Dynasty, who pursued the Xiongnu army until the wolf lived in Xu Mountain and Guyan Mountain, offering sacrifices to heaven and earth, and returning to Hanhai.

  Beside the fief of Duan Qirui's Viscount, there is a fairly large Lake of Season, named "Hanhai" by him, and that is why Viscount Hanhai came.

  Duan Qirui’s badge of nobility, the azure blue sea waves below symbolize his ambition, dream and hope to be able to ride the battlefield like the champion of the Han Dynasty, stay in the annals of history, and establish immortal feats.

  Forcing the Xiongnu to escape, there is no royal court in Monan...

  As long as you think of this, the little heart will "thump and thump" continuously, full of lofty ambitions, and dreams of going all out in this troubled world.

Colonel Zheng Tieniu was his senior inferior, a battalion commander of the former Railway Independent Cavalry Division, a strong man who made many contributions in the battle of "Sad Heart Ridge", and a senior officer who has gone through dozens of battles in the subsequent Civil War. Now transferred to the head of the first division and second regiment of the Royal Guard, he is still Duan Qirui's old subordinate.

Lieutenant Colonel Bian Chunsong is under the command of the experimental tank of the Dahong First Division. After participating in military operations in the Indochina Peninsula with the high-level military observation group to Vietnam, he returned and obtained double excellent results in the thesis evaluation of military academies. He was originally Red River Valley. After the university's academic masters have added a wealth of practical experience, the level of military papers written by them will naturally not be bad.

  He appeared here because the tank test regiment of the Dahong First Division was temporarily strengthened to the Royal Guards to fight fortifications in wartime.

  The purpose of this trip is clear. According to the jargon, it is called "stepping on the plate", uh...pre-war field survey.

The former South Asian city did not appear to the military commanders as it should be. They did not care about the distribution of streets, low shanty towns and dirty streets. In their eyes, they focused on the terrain, strong commanding heights and bridges. It is entirely from a military point of view.

  All the way

   Let Duan Qirui and others have an intuitive understanding of the city. Generally speaking, the defense is sparse and focused. This focus is on the construction of the 300-year-old Santiago Castle by the Spaniards.

  Castle Santiago is the city within the city of Manila. Only Spanish, European whites and merchants from the Oceanic Kingdom can live here. Aboriginals are strictly forbidden to stay, let alone overnight in the castle. It can be regarded as an enlarged version of the Portuguese castle fortress on the island of Mozambique, which is extremely tall and strong.

  Following the personnel who infiltrated the local political situation, Duan Qirui and the others changed their faces after entering the Santiago Castle, showing a trace of worry.

  Europe’s castle defenses since the Middle Ages are not for fun. Spanish fortresses have even undergone the test of brutal warfare. The defensive fortresses built at the expense of a huge amount of defense can only be garrisoned with a small amount of troops, which is enough to discourage the adversary.

The entire Castle Santiago has 7 gates and 12 Catholic churches. The 3.5-meter-wide city walls here are all made of boulders, and the gates are wider than 7.4 meters. The giant wooden gates reinforced with steel bars are the least expensive. Cannons with a caliber above 95 mm can be fired.

  In the castle

   is full of fist-thick coarse granite pavements. Residential buildings are mostly 2~3 floors of Byzantine or Mediterranean style, with glyphs and flowers, which are extremely luxurious.

The most exquisite is the cathedral in the castle. Due to the devout Catholic faith of the Spanish, every church here is large or small, but it is magnificent. The frescoes and sculptures from the Bible are all overlooked, full of heavy sacredness. Religious atmosphere.

  But in the eyes of a group of officers, every tall and solid stone church in it is a small fortress. If an army armed with muskets and artillery is stationed, it will not be easy to attack it.

  Considering the small number of Spanish colonial troops, it is difficult to play the role of these fortress-type fortresses, Brigadier General Duan Qirui personally graded the attack difficulty of Santiago Castle A, which means that it can be overcome at a heavy price.

  Inspected here

  Everyone can't help but sigh in their hearts. There are still three-inch nails in the rotten boat. The ancients are sincerely not deceived.

  The Spaniards are not easy to deal with! .

   Count with your fingers, the world-class colonial powers in history, Spain, Portugal, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom and France, each have their own characteristics.

  The Netherlands and the United Kingdom belong to a type that pursues a dual colonial system, which is to support the local indigenous forces or ethnic minority forces to control the vast colonies, and the colonists are superior and have aloof status.

  This type of colonial policy is relatively loose. It can control a vast colonial area with a minimum of manpower and material resources, so as to obtain colonial benefits, and does not pay attention to sovereignty.

  This is represented by the Dutch East India Company, the Dutch West India Company, and the British East India Company. The main purpose is to capture huge colonial interests and does not pursue absolute control of the colony.

The second type is represented by Portugal and France, destroying the original local rulers and directly establishing rule in the colonies, which requires a lot of manpower and material resources. This is how the French did in the Saigon Governor’s House. In French The same is true in Libya, and the Portuguese colonial policy is also the same, so after Brazil's independence, 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 Spanish has always been cruel, bloody, and famous for naked exploitation and oppression.

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

   Regardless of the cruel rule of the Spanish colonists over Central and South America, hundreds of local uprisings have been suppressed, and there have been more than a dozen massacres in history.

  The Spaniards are equally cruel to the native whites of Spanish blood in Central and South America. They are treated as outliers. They destroy villages and towns at every turn during the repression, and they are not merciless at all.

Regardless of the past few years, the Spanish and Central American Governor Viller-Nicolau’s **** rule in Cuba, the number of documented deaths exceeded 200,000, and more than half of them were native whites and others who participated in the struggle. family.

  Only speaking of the Spanish colonial rule on Luzon Island, there were 5 massacres against Chinese people, causing no less than 80,000 Chinese immigrants to die. The most recent was in 1762.

  So the fierceness of the Spaniards comes from their bones, and is unique among all the old European colonists.

  Because Spain formulated this "most effective and direct" policy of **** colonial slaughter when it first started its foreign expansion.

  So no matter where they rule, whether they enslaved locals or outsiders, they will follow this policy and use it many times to protect the fundamental interests of the Spanish in the colony.

  Reminiscing about the present and the past, why not make people feel a lot of emotion?

  Looking at the Castle of Santiago built by the Spanish in Manila, Duan Qirui and other officers felt heavy in their hearts. Even though the Spaniards are now declining, their hearts are not underestimated.

  The eagle of the Andes still has fangs and claws even if it folds its wings.

"In the division, judging by the Spanish defending forces in Manila, there are about 2,700 people. If most of them are huddled in San Diego, this thing is a stone city, and the army’s heavy artillery is also difficult to fire, and it is not easy to attack. what!"

   "According to your calculations, what are the casualties?"

   Facing Duan Qirui’s question, Colonel Zheng Tieniu replied in a deep voice; “There are three situations in this battle;

  Worst case

  If the Spaniards can show the blood of the old days, rely on perseverance, persist in a deadly battle, and rely on the geographical position to give me serious damage, our army may pay four to five thousand casualties to completely capture the Santiago Castle.

  Generally

  Our army is under pressure, and the Spaniards have no intention of fighting. They can use their weaker strength to blast one or two city gates and seize control of the city with thunder. The casualties should be less than 1,000, between about 500 and 600.

  Best case

  The pressure of our army's soldiers made the Spaniards realize that the reality cannot be changed, and pressure through diplomatic negotiations can get the city without hurting a single soldier. "

  Speaking of which

   Colonel Zheng Tieniu lowered his voice and said in Brigadier General Duan Qirui’s ear; “Master, I have a distant cousin in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. He once said a little bit, as if he was working on this...”

   "Okay, don't force yourself, just do your own thing." Duan Qirui doesn't know how to gossip with his men. He is a prudent person and strives for perfection in everything he can do.

  So I didn’t answer Colonel Zheng Tieniu’s words, but slammed Lieutenant Colonel Bian Chunsong with his eyes, and asked, “How about it, your armored troops should be fine.”

"I have seen the terrain. It can be said to be two extremes. One extreme is that as long as there are sufficient forces to cooperate, the armored troops can easily sweep the entire Manila." Bian Chunsong looked up at the heavy castle, showing a look of helplessness on his face, and continued. Said; "The other extreme is that the armored troops have no way to deal with this castle, and the effect may not be as good as the infantry troops."

"That's it!" Duan Qirui regretfully smashed his mouth, and then said a morale-damaging remark; "In this case, whether your armored troops will come or not is the same thing. I watched all of Manila outside. , Give me a division for two days, and I’m guaranteed to win. The only thing that is frustrated is this Santiago Castle, it seems you can’t help it.”

   "How about...come inside and out?"

"Fart, you really treat the Spaniard as a dead person. Once the war breaks out, all Chinese and people who have had close business relations with the Ocean Kingdom will be expelled from the Santiago Castle if they are not centrally detained. This obvious thing will not be left at all. Loopholes."

  "Master, I don’t believe that the people in the Political Service Bureau have not considered this. You must know that these people are all ghosts and spirits, and they will definitely stay behind."

   "Uh...it makes sense."

Duan Qirui nodded. Out of his usual prudence, he did not dare to pin all his hopes on outsiders, so he considered it and said, "You are working in groups, and the focus is to investigate the geographical location around the Castle of Santiago. What is the weak point of firepower output? My requirement is that once the battle starts, considering the worst case scenario, the casualties of conquering the castle shall not exceed 300, and the casualties of occupying the castle shall not exceed 1,000, otherwise it will be a complete failure."

  What's the joke?

  His full-staffed Royal Guards Division has more than 8,600 people, and it will cost more than 5,000 casualties to hit the Santiago Castle. What a fart!

  No need to scold his majesty when the time comes, he Duan Qirui himself will be ashamed, and shoot himself directly in the head to atone for his crime.

What Colonel Zheng Tieniu was talking about was theoretically wargames. Under the circumstances of completely occupying the geographical advantage of the castle, the 2700 Spanish soldiers who stubbornly fought to the last person could indeed cause such a large casualty.

The problem is

The attacking Royal Guards can call for the support of the fleet's artillery fire. The 95mm Army artillery can't open the fortified Santiago Castle (referring to pile up huge rocks behind the city gate to seal the city gate.) But the Navy's 305mm cannon can only hit one shot. , You can collapse the city wall at least 50 meters.

The power of    is Duan Qirui's full confidence.

  Even if you are just a piece of iron, you will **** in front of the fleet's cannons every minute, not to mention the small Santiago Castle.

  In this case, part of the credit will be given to the navy. This is a situation that the Royal Guard is unwilling. It is rare to have the opportunity to show up in front of your Majesty. If you don't show it at this time, when will you wait?

  (End of this chapter)