Chapter 726: Close reconnaissance
The two small-scale confrontations during this day and night were just appetizers before the war, but the corpses of several enemy soldiers hanging in the central square did play a certain role in soothing the mood of the people in the city. After all, this is the third time in the past five years that the city of Batavia has been attacked by the Malan army. Although the first two battles ended with the active withdrawal of the Malan army, no one knows Can the city of Batavia survive the third offensive? Being able to achieve some results at the beginning of the siege can make the people in the city a little more optimistic about the future trend of the battle.
However, some well-informed people, such as people like Su Keyi and Cheng Dapeng, have learned from special channels that those who fought against the defenders were just the vanguard of the Ma Da Blue Army, and that the cannon hanging in the square was They were not just a few casually picked up from the piles of enemy corpses outside the city, but a total of so many people were beaten to death under the city. It would be impossible to hang up a few more to show off their prestige.
After initially testing the strength of the garrison at the top of the city, the large force of Ma Dalan that followed did not immediately launch an siege. Instead, they set up camp outside the city and began preparations for the siege. However, according to their past practices, this preparation period probably only lasts for two or three days, and by then it will no longer be a minor harassment.
Taking advantage of this rare period of calm, Cheng Dapeng brought his condolences to the city defense headquarters outside the north city gate, and under the introduction of Su Keyi, he met Anthony Fan, the supreme commander of the city's defenders. Diemen.
Due to the language barrier between the two parties and Van Diemen's busy military affairs, the two only exchanged a few words through Su Keyi's translator. As for Cheng Dapeng's intention, Su Keyi had already told Van Diemen in advance. With the Su family as a guarantee and Cheng Dapeng himself being a well-known businessman in Batavia, Van Diemen did not doubt Cheng Dapeng's true intention of coming to visit this time, and he soon His application to visit the front line of the city wall to visit the combat troops was approved. Of course, for safety reasons, Su Keyi also had to board the city as an escort.
During the wartime siege, it was difficult for even well-off businessmen to organize decent comfort items, so the things Cheng Dapeng prepared were extremely simple and crude - just boxes of cash. After leaving a pair of heavy gold ingots to Van Diemen, Cheng Dapeng directed his followers to carry the box containing the silver ingots all the way up the city wall.
The city wall of Batavia, designed and built by the Dutch, has an irregular bastion structure, and the Dutch-style bastion can undoubtedly occupy a place in the history of war. During the Dutch War of Independence, bastions were used to make the Spanish army difficult to fight in the Netherlands. In the end, although the Spanish had the advantage in force, they had to withdraw because they could not conquer the numerous bastions. area.
Most of the territory of the Netherlands is flat lowland, which is almost impossible to defend. This allowed the Dutch to gradually design more and more complex fortresses during the war. Its structure alone can add some combat effectiveness to the defenders. The city of Batavia they built in the northwest corner of Java Island can be said to have concentrated the essence of Dutch bastion fortifications. In terms of the reliability of defense, there is basically no other city in Southeast Asia that can match it.
Of course, due to the intervention of the Haihan people in this time and space, the bastion is no longer just a unique fortress building built by European colonists. In fact, the Victory Fort in Sanya is a defensive fortress designed according to the bastion principle. Its designed defense capability requires a guard force of less than a thousand people to resist an enemy force ten times larger than itself, which shows the power of this kind of fortress.
In the history of world wars, bastions began to appear widely in Europe in the 16th century, and they slowly withdrew from the battlefield until the second half of the 19th century. This is not because someone invented a more advanced fortress form than the bastion, but at this time, explosive shells began to be widely used in wars. The traditional bastion walls could not effectively prevent the damage of this new type of artillery shells, and the defensive role they could play was It's not as big as it was in previous centuries. However, for now, only Haihan can fully master the black technology of explosive ammunition, but the artillery unit has not yet been officially deployed, so the bastion structure is still a very powerful defense system.
The main city wall of Batavia City is not high. Cheng Dapeng visually estimated that its height is only eight to nine meters according to the Haihan scale. It is significantly shorter than the city walls of Guangzhou Prefecture and Zhaoqing Prefecture, but the thickness is about the same. However, the obvious difference from the Ming-style city wall is that there is no layer of wall bricks wrapped around the rammed earth city wall. This is because the masonry structure is extremely easy to be damaged under artillery strikes, and will easily produce ricochet and increase the casualties of the defenders. .
In addition, there are obvious differences in structure. The city wall here is not a straight line, but has a prismatic structure protruding outward every other section. The outside of the city is between the two prismatic structures, about 100 meters away from the city wall. Thirty to forty meters away, a small triangular fortress was built, with one to two hundred soldiers stationed inside. Its position was also within the firepower range of the prismatic structures on both sides.
Beyond this layer of defense is the moat that connects the water veins. The Ma Dalan army that had swam in the dark to sneak attack the city was discovered by the fortress garrison outside the city. Under the firepower from outside the city, they quickly repelled the enemy troops who attacked at night.
If Cheng Dapeng had never been to Sanya, he would probably be surprised by this weird city wall in Batavia City. However, with Fort Victory, a fortress with more mature design and construction, in front of him, Cheng Dapeng felt that the Netherlands The city wall built by humans can only be regarded as average. After all, Fort Victory has already completed its concrete structural reconstruction, and its strength is far beyond what this rammed earth wall can match. Of course, he did not relax because of this. He carefully measured the data of the city wall with his eyes, hands and feet, and silently remembered it in his heart.
Cheng Dapeng received specialized city defense reconnaissance training during his training in Sanya. Most of the content was taught by teachers from the military and the Ministry of Construction, allowing students to learn how to complete the survey of city defense fortifications in a short time and construct their structures. Copy to paper. A more advanced application is to deduce the firepower points, weak points, garrison points and other key parts of city defenses through observation. Cheng Dapeng was able to go up to the city wall for close observation, which naturally reduced the difficulty of the reconnaissance mission to a minimum.
However, God seems to be particularly partial to Cheng Dapeng, and wants to use different tricks to lower the difficulty. After Cheng Dapeng and Su Keyi climbed onto the city wall, an officer soon came to receive them. Whether it was a coincidence or a deliberate arrangement, the officer named Bart was actually related to Su Keyi, and the woman he married locally was considered a cousin to Su Keyi. Although Bart himself has a family, and the marriage here is only considered as a side wife, this level of kinship cannot be faked. Su Keyi briefly introduced the relationship between the two, and Cheng Dapeng immediately felt relieved. At least the difficulty of dealing with them had been reduced a lot.
And this Bart's attitude towards Su Keyi was obviously much warmer than that of his boss Van Diemen. After seeing the Van Diemen's warrant produced by Su Keyi, there was no longer any rigid expression on his face, and he smiled and used unskilled words. Speaking in Chinese with a big tongue: "Thank you very much, Boss Cheng!"
Cheng Dapeng said a few humble words, then asked his entourage to open the silver box and introduced to Bart: "I have no strength to tie the chicken, and I can't participate in the battle. I can only use this little thing to comfort Lord Bart's brothers. Each of them Two taels of silver, sir, please summon the brothers to collect it!”
Bart's eyes lit up, he called the soldiers behind him and gave a few instructions, and immediately someone came to take over the silver box. Of course, Cheng Dapeng would not insist on distributing the money himself, so he signaled to his subordinates to hand over the money. As for how much of the money will leak to the people below after it reaches Bart's hands, it probably only depends on his mood.
Of course, these are not the main point. Whether it is money or anything else, these are just a means used by Cheng Dapeng to deceive intelligence. This Bart happens to be one of the officers responsible for guarding the northern city wall. Of course, Cheng Dapeng hopes to get some first-hand intelligence information from him. "I heard that the Ma Da Blue Army has fought against our defenders. Lord Bart, can you point out the place where the battle took place? I also want to pay my respects." Cheng Dapeng requested humbly.
Bart was obviously a person with no scheming ideas. He didn't think it was inappropriate when he heard such a request. He immediately pulled the two of them to a nearby prismatic protrusion, pointed to somewhere outside the city and said: "Look, there is a place over there. The bushes below are the impact points of the cannonballs.”
The first thing Cheng Dapeng paid attention to was not the battlefield outside the city, but the setting of this protrusion. Here is a fort with two artillery pieces. Judging from the caliber, it should be a 12-pounder gun, but the gun body is obviously larger and bulkier than Haihan's standard artillery. Although Cheng Dapeng was not a military expert, he had received relevant training and knew that this was because the Dutch's cannon casting technology and materials were not as good as Haihan's, so they could only cast the cannon body thicker to ensure its strength.
Cheng Dapeng looked at the location that Bart pointed at, visually measured the distance, and then continued to ask: "Master Bart, I see that place is at least a hundred feet away from the city wall. This artillery fire is so fierce that it can kill the enemy." A hundred feet away?”
Butt couldn't understand Cheng Dapeng's ancient words, so he had to be translated by Su Keyi. After hearing this, Bart laughed and said: "Actually, this is not our maximum range. These two cannons can at least hit...well, using your measurement unit, it is about 150 feet."
Although this range is not comparable to the range of the Haihan artillery that Cheng Dapeng knows, it is already quite impressive. I just don’t know how accurate the shooting of this artillery is. If it is accurate, it will be fine, but at the maximum range, it basically relies on blindfolding. , then it would be difficult to pose any actual threat.
Cheng Dapeng deliberately pretended to be an amateur and said: "With such a sharp weapon, I guess as long as there are ten or twenty gates, you can defend the city, right?"
"One or twenty?" Bart shook his head decisively: "Boss Cheng, more than fifty artillery pieces are deployed on the northern city wall alone that I am responsible for. If the war is fierce, the number of artillery pieces on the city head may be increased. ”
Cheng Dapeng said: "The horse beat the Blue Army so well?"
Bart was silent for a moment this time before he responded: "Although I hate to admit it, the Horses are not weak against the Blues. They have the weapons we have. The final victory must belong to us, but this battle cannot be It will be easy.”
Cheng Dapeng didn't respond after hearing this, and looked up into the distance. Outside the faintly visible enemy camp, a small number of cavalry were operating on the periphery. It seemed that they were also preventing the defenders in the city from leaving the city to harass them. Under the cover of these cavalry, about a thousand people were digging fortifications on the plains outside the city and transporting some war preparation materials. Although he didn't know how the Ma Dalan people would attack the city, after listening to Bart's introduction, Cheng Dapeng actually felt a little uneasy about the direction of this war.
If the Haihan militia came to defend the city, could they do a better job than the Dutch? That's natural, after all, the place guarded by the militia army has never been captured. So if the Haihan militia takes on the offensive role, how will they attack this fortified city?
Cheng Dapeng was thinking about these problems and became a little distracted without realizing it. Seeing this, Su Keyi thought he was really scared because Batavia City was in crisis. He comforted him kindly: "Boss Cheng, you have to have confidence in the defenders. The first two times Ma Dalan came to During the siege, the situation was far more critical than it is now. At that time, the council discussed whether to surrender the city. If Lord Cohen had not strongly opposed it, this place would have become the territory of the Matalan Kingdom. Lord Cohen took advantage of the truce to strengthen the city wall, and also transported a large number of muskets and artillery from the West to increase the defensive power. In my opinion, the strength of the city is much stronger than that of the previous years. In my opinion, it is likely that the Matalan Kingdom invaded this time. It’s going to be a big pain.”
Cheng Dapeng came back to his senses and responded: "Brother Su Shi said that with a general like Lord Bart leading the troops to guard the city, the city of Batavia will definitely be in danger. Although there are many enemy troops, but for Lord Bart, Said, these are all real military merits waiting to be obtained!”
Bart was very pleased after hearing Cheng Dapeng's compliment. He patted his chest and said, "Don't worry, Batavia is not that easy to break. The Matalan people will leave their blood and lives as an offense against us." Price! ”
Bart probably felt the atmosphere of common hatred and hatred from Cheng Dapeng, and in the following time, he introduced to him the situation of the city defense area he was responsible for without any hesitation. Cheng Dapeng was so happy that he didn't need to use his brain to figure out the routine. It was enough to just listen to Bart's introduction. When the time was right, he would compliment him a few words, and Bart would happily continue talking, unaware that he was leaking major military secrets to outsiders.
(End of chapter)