Chapter 803 The troops are approaching the city
On both sides of the lower reaches of the Tamsui River, there is only a decent pier outside Santo Domingo. Other than that, it is almost all riverbanks and beaches in a natural state. It is extremely difficult to load and unload shipping supplies from water to land. Although there are several village wharves left by the indigenous tribes who originally lived here further upstream, those places are far away from the city of Santo Domingo, and the time required to transport them by land there is not cost-effective.
The combat operations of the special operations battalion have always focused on mobility, so they rarely carry heavy equipment and large amounts of supplies into battle. They always go into battle lightly to perform combat tasks such as raids, pursuits, and annihilations. Most of the time, the company is even responsible for the logistics of transporting supplies and baggage. The team won’t take it either. Wartime coordinated operations with the logistics department are not very smooth for the special operations battalion. Although Takahashi Minami has considered this in advance and conducted one or two specialized trainings, the difference in the specific landing environment is still at this time. Slowing down the pace of deploying troops to the battlefield.
Sun Zhen was standing in the river water up to his knees, carrying supplies unloaded from the boat to the shore with others. Since the supply ship carrying combat supplies could not completely approach the river bank and had to rely on manpower to transport them from the near shore, there were about two companies of soldiers on this section of the river doing the same thing as him. Although he did not know the specific battle plan, looking at the anxious expressions and constant urging of the superiors, he could also imagine that this link must have consumed too much unplanned time.
Takahashi Nan ordered to stop unloading the goods on the shore. When everyone was preparing to enter the battle, the combat materials were actually far from being completely unloaded. However, Takahashi Minami believes that the materials currently unloaded are enough to support the troops for about two days of operations. Instead of spending time unloading here, it is better to control the outside of Santo Domingo City first, and then slowly transfer the remaining materials There was also time to transfer ashore.
Sun Zhen and his comrades got fifteen minutes of precious rest time. They quickly returned to the shore to sort out their personal belongings, eat a small piece of compressed biscuit to replenish the energy consumed by the physical labor just now, and then listened to their superiors' arrangements for the next march route.
When the special operations battalion completed its repairs and began to move westward from the landing point, the sky was slowly getting brighter. Without the help of binoculars, the soldiers could see the smoke rising from the distant city of Santo Domingo. The residents here probably didn't expect that on this unremarkable morning, they would already welcome a group of hostile uninvited guests.
The landing point is only three miles away from the city of Santo Domingo. In fact, it is only a little more than one mile away from the farms and plantations cultivated outside the city. It can be reached in a matter of seconds at the marching speed of the special operations battalion. When soldiers from the special operations battalion wearing flashy military uniforms filed out of the jungle, the few local residents who witnessed this spectacle outside looked bewildered. Even people with quick reactions took a long time to realize that what appeared in front of them was not the indigenous armed forces from the nearby mountains, but a terrifying army-the soldiers were not holding indigenous weapons. The bamboo spears used were rifles that could fire bullets!
"Intruders!" When someone shouted out the identity of this group of uninvited guests, the others woke up, dropped their farm tools and began to run away in a panic towards the city of Santo Domingo. In the past few years, the number of local immigrants and soldiers killed by indigenous armed forces has totaled dozens. This is a big shadow for everyone. Regardless of the identity of these invaders, in short, first It is more important to escape to a safe place to save your life.
The soldiers of the special operations battalion did not pursue these panicked people. They still marched forward silently along the established route, and divided into small groups to search the farmhouses on the advancing route.
Of course there won't be anything valuable in the farmhouse. On the one hand, this is to ensure that no one will escape Haihan's encirclement by this method. On the other hand, it is also hoped to capture alive so that the latest situation in the city can be learned through surprise interrogations. .
The manhunt did not disappoint Gao Qiaonan, and soon the soldiers found two shivering farmers in one of the farmhouses. These two people are not Spaniards, but mixed descendants of Han Chinese and Luzon natives. However, probably because of their living environment, they do not speak Chinese and only speak Spanish. Fortunately, the military was well prepared for this and specially transferred translators who knew Spanish from the Ministry of Commerce to accompany the army on the expedition, which came in handy at this time. Of course, there is no need for Minami Takahashi to deal with such a small role personally. He now needs to focus on the more important command work.
With the strength of the special operations battalion, it is difficult to completely blockade the area where Santo Domingo City is located, because the hills where this stronghold is located are not only the small area occupied by the city, but are one kilometer long from east to west and from north to south. Above, the city of Santo Domingo is located on the south-facing slope of this hilly area near the river bank. In later generations, institutions such as the University of Truth, Peace Park, and Taiwan Golf Club were built on this hill, of which the city of Santo Domingo only occupied a few tenths of the area.
If you want to completely seal off such a large area, it is probably impossible to leave enough troops to attack the stronghold. Therefore, Takahashi Nan can only divide small groups of troops to guard those leading from Santo Domingo City to the outside world. The small roads and mountain paths try not to leave any chance for the city's defenders to ask for help from outside.
Luis Gersman woke up to the panicked exclamation of the servant. Without even opening his eyes, he slapped someone in the direction of the sound and accurately hit someone on the side. Face.
"You idiot, didn't I tell you last night not to wake me up this morning?" Gesman, who had not yet woken up from the hangover, was very angry. The combination of alcohol and wake-up energy made him feel like he was about to explode. Like firecrackers. If it weren't for the fact that this servant had been following him for many years, Gesman would have even jumped out of bed with a heartbeat, pulled out his sword and stabbed this ignorant guy to death.
"Sir, it's bad, something happened outside, please get up quickly!" The servant who was slapped inexplicably did not have the sense to leave the bedroom, and still asked Gesman to pay attention in a panic tone.
"What's going on!" Gesman sat up angrily, pointed at the servant and cursed: "If it's those trivial things again, I'll ask the guards to drag you out and give you twenty lashes!"
"Sir, there is... a foreign enemy has invaded!" The servant stammered the key point.
Gesman's mind was agitated, and his sleepiness immediately faded away. He opened the quilt and jumped out of bed. While putting on his pants, he asked: "How many people are there? Where are they? Where is Captain Lopez? Let him gather the troops quickly." "It's nothing new for Tamsui strongholds to be attacked by foreign enemies. Since the Dutch first set foot here in 1628, armed conflicts with local indigenous people have never stopped. Although the Dutch had defeated all the indigenous tribes in the surrounding areas in 1629 and forced the Guiroushe, the largest local tribe, to move away from here and move into Yangmingshan, they still could not completely eliminate small-scale sporadic conflicts.
Gersmann came here after the founding of Santo Domingo in 1630, but there had already been at least double-digit conflicts during his tenure. The two most serious ones even attracted nearly a thousand indigenous warriors to besiege the city of Santo Domingo, killing farmers and patrolling soldiers working outside the city, and completely destroying production facilities and farmland outside the city. These two conflicts also left a great psychological shadow on the residents of the city. Farmers were unwilling to go out of the city to farm, and soldiers were unwilling to go out of the city to patrol. This led to a sharp decline in the cultivated area of farmland outside the city. It is still impossible to achieve self-sufficiency in food. , still partly dependent on supplies shipped from Jilong Port every month.
There were only two hundred buglers in the city, which was barely enough to defend such a small stronghold, but if he had to go out of the city and into the mountains to annihilate the indigenous tribes, Gesman would never take such a risk. Being able to securely hold the stronghold of Santo Domingo City and finish his term safely and leave this unfortunate place is Gesman's biggest wish at the moment. After being transferred back to Manila, his qualifications as a colonial governor may help him take another step forward in his official career.
Staying in this remote place in the countryside, unable to guarantee absolute safety even if you go out of town for some activities, the chief executive must be feeling quite aggrieved. In the three years since he took office, the population of Santo Domingo has only increased by less than fifty people than when the city was first founded. This is simply a joke for Spain, which has always been proud of expanding its overseas colonies. But the Manila authorities have never mentioned replacing Gesman, which shows that the people above know that the situation in this place is not good, and whoever replaces him will basically have the same effect.
There was not much money that Gersman could make in this position, and most of it was sent back to Manila to deal with various gods, hoping that the people above would be merciful and transfer him away from here as soon as possible. Two months ago, he finally got the news that the superiors wanted to transfer him back to Luzon and send him to Batangas, a newly developed port in the south, as a commander, but the condition was that he had to stay in the Tamsui stronghold until October 1633. to complete his three-year term.
Now that he has seen the light of exit, Gesman naturally has no plans to achieve anything during his term. The ideal result is to be able to survive the last half year of his career peacefully and then leave this hellish place. So recently, he has basically adopted a "do nothing" attitude to deal with local affairs - to put it bluntly, he doesn't care about anything.
But God obviously did not intend to let Gesman pass so smoothly. Just when he thought he saw hope, the sudden intruder appeared at an inappropriate time. Gesman's first reaction was that one of his subordinates probably took advantage of the other party when trading with the natives, and the natives, as always, adopted simple and crude methods to recover the losses. Although these natives can't do much against the fortified city of Santo Domingo, they are extremely powerful in wreaking havoc outside the city. If they wreak havoc outside the city once, the people inside the city will have to spend dozens of times the time afterwards. Recovery, it's no wonder that Gesman immediately became furious when he heard the news of the invasion.
But today's situation is obviously different. The servant responded: "Captain Lopez is waiting outside. He said...the enemies coming this time are not natives."
"What are they if they're not natives? Are they Dutch?" Gesman frowned and said, "These guys haven't even cooled the rice in their own bowls, and they want to grab it?"< br>
"It seems... they are not Dutch..." the servant said tremblingly: "I heard from people who escaped from the city that these invaders wore strange but uniform styles, and they were all equipped with rifles!"
"What!?" Gersmann responded in disbelief: "You mean there are a large number of musketeers occupying the land outside our city, and these musketeers are not Dutch?"
This was even more surprising to Gesman than the enemy invasion itself. As the official opponent of the Spaniards, the Dutch have frequently dealt with the Spaniards in recent years. The Spanish side has a slight advantage in the long-term tug-of-war. The main reason is that Manila, the center of Spain in the Far East, is not too far from Taipei and is much closer than Batavia, the headquarters of the Dutch. But since the Dutch were defeated by the combined fleets of Ming Dynasty and Haihan in the Fujian Strait the summer before last, they have restrained themselves a lot and have not taken the initiative to provoke again. After Batavia was attacked by the Malan Army last summer, the Dutch East India Company's vitality was severely damaged, and the Damuan Port area also ceased and became quiet. But if the attacker was not Dutch, who could it be?
"Sir, the troops outside the city are Haihan people, and they have shown their military flags. If our judgment is not wrong, there should be a unit outside the city belonging to the Haihan Militia."
Later, Gesman got an answer that surprised him from the local military commander Captain Lopez. Gesman didn't quite understand why the Haihan militia, which had nothing to do with Spain, appeared outside the city of Santo Domingo and came fully armed. It didn't look like they were preparing for friendly exchanges with their side.
Gesman didn't know much about the Haihan Militia. He only knew that this private armed force had a deep relationship with the Fujian Ming Army. The Haihan militia appears to have provided some technical support to the Fujian military in exchange for the rights to trade the Haihan trading fleet along the Fujian coast. In fact, both Spain and the Netherlands planned to do similar things, but the Netherlands had chosen the wrong partner before, and the situation was irreversible. However, Spain did not join in time because it had been sitting on the sidelines for too long. As a result, Heihan took advantage of every opportunity and snatched it away. Ming Jun is a potential partner.
"We have never had any dealings with Haihan, and we have never had any trouble. Why do they come here to cause trouble for us?" Gesman asked innocently.
(End of chapter)