Dominate the Country

"Damn yellow monkeys, they don't have any military honor and courage. They can only hide behind the bunkers in the ruins and shoot!"

"Then use our cannons to tell them that wars cannot be won by hiding--"

Camacho, the Spanish commander of the West-Dutch land coalition, said to Neskender, the Dutch deputy who was complaining beside him. Camacho, with short golden hair, handsome face, upright and strong posture, was born in a noble family in Madrid. He is a lieutenant colonel in the Spanish army and an excellent public lover at the ball in Manila.

The so-called pirate soldiers on Hele Island are obviously the ghosts of the Spanish and the Dutch. The force they support the rebellious nobles is not only the pirate fleet, but also an elite selected from the Manila and Batavia armies.

Camacho and Neskender, who are in charge of the command of this army force, are both active officers of the two countries' armies, a lieutenant colonel and a major.

Standing next to Camacho and Neskend was Abdulragak, the new sultan and leader elected by the rebel nobles. He was as obedient as a tamed dog in front of them.

On the wide battlefield, more than 200 white soldiers and several times more indigenous soldiers stood in line.

A row of cannons pointed at Hele City. The once bustling town had long since turned into a ruin, but in the ruins, the figures of the defenders appeared from time to time, and sporadic cold lights shone among the rubble.

"Boom boom boom..."

"Boom boom..."

Twenty cannons were roaring. Shells fell one by one in the ruined Hele City, although they were all solid bullets. But there were still unlucky soldiers who were hit by the broken wood stirred up by the shells.

The defenders also had artillery teams, but the number was small and the shells were even more limited. Otherwise, how could the main force of the rebels be led to Hele Island? Therefore, in this battle, in terms of the military quality of the soldiers, firepower and training, the thousand-man Chen Han Marine Corps in Hele City was no match for the Western Dutch coalition.

The Marine Corps of the Nanyang Navy was not like the Marine Corps of the Southeast Navy and the Yangtze River Navy, which selected a part of the elite and then added most of the new recruits. The "Marine Corps" of the Nanyang Navy was self-resolved on the spot. The original sailors on the ship were now changed to the Marine Corps, and their combat quality can be imagined. Even though the Grand Commandery sent out a lot of instructors and coaches, the old habits and bad habits were still deeply rooted.

The Spaniards and the Dutch regarded them as bandits from the bottom of their hearts, not regular troops, so they rushed over with full confidence. Abu Beka's two sons who were still in Sulu, Abu Beka's most trusted brother, Su Yi, and the special envoy sent by Chen Han, except for the Nanyang Navy, all the powerful figures in the Sulu region were concentrated in Hele. In the eyes of the Western and Dutch people, this is a godsend opportunity. As long as they can take down Hele City at this time, they can open their arms and embrace victory in the next step.

The cannons in the city must be used at critical moments. So many times, the defenders on the front line of Hele City resisted stubbornly without the help of artillery. If it weren't for the bravery of the Sulu natives and the close combat weapons such as grenades in the hands of the Marine Corps, Hele City might have really been lost.

But when twenty cannons roared, even the bravest could only lie on the ground obediently. The Western army with artillery is a tiger with wings.

After the bombardment, accompanied by the sound of the attack, a large group of native soldiers howled and rushed towards the ruins of Hele City. Behind them, two hundred soldiers of the hundred, holding muskets, formed a thin yellow line and headed towards Hele.

All the white people were wearing soldiers' clothes, and the drummer had disappeared.

Because there were hunters in the Hele defenders, and they shamelessly hunted the officers and drummers in the army. If the officers of the West-Dutch coalition were still like they were at the beginning, wearing straight clothes, holding sabers, and walking at the front of the queue, they would be simply sending themselves to death.

For Western soldiers of this era, death is not terrible, but it is a brave sacrifice, not a foolish death.

That was the first attack. Dutch officers among the indigenous soldiers fell one after another, and then officers and drummers among the white soldiers also fell one after another. The gunshots from the opposite side were sporadic, but the accuracy was amazing.

Then the Dutch reacted quickly. There were hunters on the opposite side, and they were still very shameless hunters.

In the subsequent offensive war, the whites learned to be obedient, because they were not wearing regular military uniforms. Pirates should look like pirates. Their clothes are all kinds of strange, but they are yellowish when seen from a distance. As officers, of course, the standing position is different, and they are not holding muskets but sabers in their hands, and they wear hats on their heads.

Now the white officers threw away their sabers and picked up muskets with bayonets. They also replaced their black tricorn hats with cylinder hats or even top hats. Who cares? Then, when commanding the troops, as long as they don't wave their hands and voices, the Chinese can't recognize which one is an officer. The drummers were also laid off.

"God is great, kill!" Five or six hundred native soldiers shouted and rushed forward.

These native soldiers were not the rotten ones who were used to being dogs by the white people. They were not afraid of the Spaniards and the Dutch. Unfortunately, their masters were afraid of the white people from the bottom of their hearts. So at the order of Abdullagaq, who was servile in front of Camacho, these native soldiers rushed towards Hele City with their scimitars and spears.

"Fight closer, kill them all--" a Sulu noble shouted loudly while half-standing up. He looked at the native soldiers opposite with eyes full of anger, and the boiling murderous aura was even stronger than that of the Nanyang Navy Marine Corps.

Hundreds of figures were swaying in the ruins. These were the native soldiers of Hele City. They were only wearing simple single clothes, without even uniform clothing. Holding swords and guns, they stared at the natives rushing towards them with vicious eyes as if they saw their mortal enemies.

The sound of gunfire was as dense as fried beans. The native soldiers in the charge fell one after another, but compared with their total number, this amount of casualties could not immediately turn them into a group of frightened birds. And behind them stood 200 white soldiers, pointing their guns at them one by one to tell these native soldiers what to do next.

Although the ruined Hele City was conducive to the concealment of the defenders and could disperse the defenders' firepower, the gunfire was quite dense, but the endurance was not strong. Soon the sound of grenades broke out, and then the crowds on both sides quickly rushed together.

The sharp swords drew a deadly light, and soldiers on both sides kept falling down with the swords fighting. The white soldiers also rushed up with bayonets.

War is like a giant beast with its stomach connected to the abyss. Countless lives have been devoured by it, but it can never be filled.

"Chinese, damn Chinese..." Camacho's eyes flashed with hatred. He couldn't be as timid as yesterday. A strict order had been sent from the rear. Before sunset tomorrow, he must capture Hele.

"Go forward, go forward. Tell your soldiers to kill them all." Camacho roared at Abdulragak.

Since there is no way to defeat them, kill them. Camacho threw a hundred white people into the battlefield. Neskender did not object because these hundred people were a Spanish company.

Abdulragak's two thousand troops had lost two or three hundred after last night's battle, and today they might lose thousands. But just like Camacho didn't take those native soldiers seriously, Abdullagak never cared about the life and death of the soldiers. He only needed the throne of Sulu, and as for how many people died, what did it have to do with him?

Camacho, who was roaring, didn't know that just when he pushed all the native soldiers in his hands onto the battlefield, a large open space in Hele City was also cleared by manpower, and heavy rockets were placed on the launcher.

The war had already been going on for the second day, and no more rebels came. The rebels outside the city were either all here or couldn't come over, and the first battalion of the second regiment had already circled behind them, and now it was time to close the net.

Su Yi lay on the roof of Xingyue Temple in Hele City. This scene that was about to begin marked a turning point in the Sulu War.

"Perhaps this can't even be called a war, there are too few people..."

There are only a little over 200,000 Sulu people in total, not counting foreign helpers, and their original soldiers are less than 2,000. Although both sides have recruited soldiers since the rebellion, the total strength of the army has exceeded 5,000, but with the "reinforcements" on both sides, this so-called war - the total strength of the army is less than 10,000.

A "war" of less than 10,000 people, this can't help but make Sulu sigh.

"Boom boom boom..." The continuous and violent explosions never stopped.

The scene in an instant was so shocking that sand and rocks flew everywhere. Rockets fell near or in the Western Dutch army.

Groups of exploding flames wrapped in countless pieces of iron swept everything. The shock wave tore apart one fragile body after another, and a lot of splashing blood was instantly evaporated by the scorching high temperature before it fell to the ground.

More than a hundred Western Dutch soldiers were either killed or injured in the explosion.

Abdullagak had turned into a charred corpse in a ball of flames, and the charging native soldiers were completely stunned. However, the morale of the defenders of Hele City was instantly boosted. "Kill!" The horn of the counterattack of the entire counter-insurgency war was blown.

In the earth-shaking shouts, the Sulu native soldiers and the Nanyang Marines, um, to be precise, they are now all Chen Han Army, like demons coming out of the darkness, wantonly plundering the lives of the panicked rebels. The entire counterattack was unstoppable. The native soldiers ran away with their heads in their arms. These people were brave, but when they suffered a huge blow, they were often the first to collapse. And the Western Dutch soldiers who were stunned by the continuous rockets had no courage to resist.

From the explosion of the rocket to the collapse of the rebels, it took only a quarter of an hour in total.

On the sea, three huge sailing warships were like three huge torches, burning with raging fire. The special bombs with incendiary materials gave the pirate fleet a huge surprise. The dense rockets made the seven pirate ships in a row inserted into the Nanyang Navy. The battle was over.

Two of the seven pirate ships ran away. In addition to the three ships with blazing flames, two pirate ships with sails dropped on the sea not far away were like two huge coffins floating on the sea.

The Sulu War is really coming to an end.

But the war in Shandong has just entered its peak.

The Qingshui Sect attacked Tai'an, and the Hunyuan Sect attacked Yizhou. After Chen Ming led the army into Yizhou, he only sent a small part to the south of Yizhou Prefecture. The main force turned to Feixian not far from the north of Yizhou Prefecture. Chen Ming wanted to go from Feixian to Sishui, down to Qufu, and directly to Yanzhou City.

And in Qufu, the location of the Confucius Mansion, Kong Zhaohuan, the surrender letter handed over by the Yansheng Duke of the Qing Dynasty is now in Chen Ming's hands.

Although he was very impatient with the Northern Kongs, Kong Zhaohuan handed in a surrender letter and surrendered with more than 10,000 civilians. In addition, he could play an absolute role in the subsequent battle of Yanzhou.

The Kong family could not count on the title, but Chen Ming would leave their lives to them. As for the Kong family's property, it depends on whether Kong Zhaohuan is smart or not.

In Shandong, plains, mountains and basins intersect. The mountains in the middle of the province are protruding, the southwest [west of the canal] and the northwest are low-lying and flat, and the east is undulating, forming a terrain with mountains and hills as the skeleton and plains and basins interlaced in between. Chen Ming's current marching route is to bypass the Taiyi Mountains in the middle, and go around to the west from the plains between the continuous Taiyi Mountains in the middle and the mountains in the southwest of Shandong. As long as Yanzhou is taken, two-thirds of the Shandong territory east of the Grand Canal will be in the hands of the Fu Han Army, and the remaining one-third will be the northwestern part of Shandong centered on Tai'an and Jinan.

This is done entirely to prevent harassment by the Qing army's cavalry!

After Chen Ming captured Yanzhou, he joined forces with the Qingshui Sect in Tai'an. As long as Pingyi Village and Mengyin County in the passage were blocked, the artery from western Shandong to the east would be blocked. The Qing army's cavalry in the west might be able to pass through the mountains in small groups, but large groups of cavalry would not be able to do so. This would greatly facilitate the logistics supply work of the Fu Han Army. With the defense of the Fu Han Army's transport troops, the cavalry of a hundred or so riders could not bite them at all.

It is estimated that seeing this defect, the Qing army did not intend to mobilize a large army in southern Shandong. The Qing soldiers in Yizhou and Yanzhou did not seem to be mobilized, but the relatively elite training troops were all transferred to Jining.

But the question is, if the Fu Han Army took down Yanzhou City, how could the Qing army still defend Jining?

The answer is simply something that even a pig's brain can figure out.

...

Qufu Kong Family

Sitting in the hall were not only Kong Zhaohuan and other members of the Kong family, but also the Meng family of Zou County, as well as the descendants of the "old ancestors" of the Confucian school such as the Yan family and the Zeng family, and the heads of more than 20 families attached to the Kong family.

Kong Zhaohuan was wearing a bright red robe of the Duke of the former Ming Dynasty, and he had thrown the Qing Dynasty's hat and robe in the middle of the hall. There were seven or eight people in the Kong family who held official positions, and there were also seven or eight official positions and hats in the middle of the hall. By the way, Kong Zhaohuan also cut his hair.

Although the little hair he had left was pitiful, he looked like a monk with a black gauze hat.

Quite a few people sitting here cut their hair, and the remaining few, under the angry glares of a group of people, also took the scissors and twisted off their braids like cutting meat.

It didn't matter whether they were anti-Qing or not, or whether they surrendered or not, it was not the topic they were discussing today.

Kong Zhaohuan also wanted to take down Yanzhou City and give it to Chen Ming. In this way, the greater his merits, the harder it would be for Chen Ming to touch the Kong family's signboard. And those families that depend on the Kong family also hope to see the Kong family continue to prosper for a long time!

But to be honest, Kong Zhaohuan is really scared. Chen Han is completely different from the Qing Dynasty and the Ming Dynasty. The Qing Dynasty's own official newspapers have attacked Chen Han countless times, especially since Chen Han occupied the south last year and became completely big, the trend of leaning towards business and miscellaneous studies has become more and more obvious.

"Don't worry, sir, Pingyi Village, Sishui County, Zou County, Qufu, Ningyang, Wenshang, and Teng County are all ready."

"Then hurry up. Everyone will go back to your homes tonight, and the uprising will start at noon tomorrow, and then the various righteous armies will gather in Yanzhou City, and we will also take Yanzhou..."

"Does he really need the Kong family's signboard?" Kong Zhaohuan had asked himself this more than once. But he knew that if he wanted to protect the Kong family, he had no choice but to do so.