Xinshun 1730

Chapter 1241
While talking, the two looked at the surrounding terrain.

It's easy to see that this should be the mouth of a river.Three or five miles away from them was a rather large island stuck at the mouth of the river.

Dashun's warship was docked in the distance, there was a lighthouse on the island, and a group of soldiers also landed on the island, separated by the river two to three five miles away.

Rows of small boats kept sending people to the shore, and there were even seven or eight cavalrymen.

The follow-up troops also landed slowly. The officers commanded them to carry supplies, and sent out a guard, so that the cavalry who went ashore, with a few guides or translators who were probably Indian businessmen, dispersed.

Not far away, several military officers were looking at the map, and the landing arrangements deployed here.

These low-level soldiers only knew that this was the mouth of a river, but they didn't know that the river was called the Hooghly River.

The nearby island similar to Chongming Island is called Sagar Island.

After a while, it will be a Hindu festival.It can be roughly understood as the winter solstice understood by Dashun, that is, the day when the sun moves northward from the Tropic of Capricornus, which can be regarded as the New Year in Hinduism.

It is called the Sanggrati Festival. If it is translated free rather than literally, it can be called the Winter Solstice, Sun Festival, or Xihe Festival.

People will gather on Sagar Island in Bangladesh, and hundreds of thousands or even millions of people will go to bathe in the water of the Ganges River in later generations, which is counted as a kind of pilgrimage.But there must not be so many people at this time, because transportation, industrialization, cheap travel, etc. do not exist, how could it be possible to organize a large-scale festival pilgrimage of millions of people.The holiday population flow of millions of people must be a "humanistic spectacle" in the industrial age, which is not possible now.

The landing troops from Dashun landed on the north coast of Sagar Island.Calcutta is just upstream from this estuary.

If you have to make an analogy, the port location of Calcutta is more similar to Shanghai.It is not a good natural port like Ningbo. The port of Calcutta is in the middle of the river, and it takes a long distance upstream to enter the port of Calcutta.

Dashun’s staff chose to set up the camp on the north side of Sagar Island, also considering Dashun’s naval superiority, and blocked the British Indian Squadron in the Kolkata port on the Hooghly River. They did not dare to come out for a decisive battle. Instead, he chose to avoid fighting.

The advantage of setting up the camp here is that the amount of work required to build the camp can be greatly reduced—as long as the naval superiority can be maintained and the command of the sea can be grasped, then with the help of the muddy channel formed by the tidal flats, the defensive direction of the camp can be as long as it faces the north side. Can.

The camp chosen by the staff officers was about 500 paces from the coast and the Hooghly River, and took advantage of the terrain of Sagar Island to ensure that if the British fleet wanted to bombard the camp, it would have to face Dashun's navy.

According to the battle plan, there are fast and slow styles of play.

Since Fort George was captured at an extremely fast speed, the best choice is for Calcutta to attack slowly, steadily and steadily, and not to attack.

Although the sneak attack is actually very easy, because Fort William was breached by the young and frivolous Siraj before, and most of the buildings were burned. Its defensive ability is not the same as that of Fort William, which was later stabilized and rebuilt by the British.

However, the frontline officers on Dashun's side chose a steady and steady approach on the premise of ensuring the overall strategic guidance.

The first battalion of engineers and the rest of the troops to go ashore will build a camp on the north bank of the Hooghly River, accumulate supplies, and wait for the subsequent troops to land.

In this kind of battle, apart from the final decisive victory in the field, the only possible turning point was that the British army chose to leave the Hooghly River before the main force of Dashun had arrived, and go to sea to fight a decisive battle with the Dashun navy.

With an absolute disadvantage of one to three in gross tonnage, they wiped out Dashun's Indian squadron, controlled the sea power, and bombarded the camp of the vanguard of the Dashun army... Only in this way can they avoid the turning point of the battle.

Although the possibility was slim, Dashun still took the lighthouse on Sagar Island very cautiously. There was no army there, only some Bangladeshi defenders who could theoretically be counted as an army.

And soon around the lighthouse on Sager Island, three forts were built and three 24-pound heavy guns were deployed.

It echoes the campsite on the north bank of the Hooghly River.It is obviously very strong, but it is too cautious.

The battle planned by Du Feng is to block the Hooghly River with Dashun's naval superiority.

Then, within a month, all the field mobile forces in Nanyang were transported to the camp north of Sagar Island.

Including four combat engineer battalions, 6000 Ceylon private soldiers, six artillery battalions, four cavalry battalions in Temasek, four supply battalions, and relying on Siraj's prestige in Bangladesh, the local lords in Bangladesh and damaged Shiite merchants to provide supplies.

A total of nearly 2000 infantry, [-] cavalry, and a large number of powerful artillery.

As far as Dashun's current transportation capacity is concerned, this is not a problem, including supplies.

A large number of conscripted merchant ships, and the professional transport fleet that is itself a government-supervised and merchant-run office, and after being abolished, there are still professional naval transport ships that can transport 5000 troops at a time in the Nanyang region-this is to facilitate the colonization in Nanyang Reign, with a delivery capacity of 5000 at a time, can quickly suppress uprisings in any direction in Nanyang, so as to avoid the situation where small-scale uprisings like the Dutch cannot be suppressed and eventually become a prairie fire.

Du Feng was full of confidence in how long it would take for Yoniko Ming to capture Marlboro Fort in Bengkulu, and it would not be difficult at all.

As for the so-called mobile forces, except for those special Tianfu soldiers in Ceylon, the rest of the forces used were not at all Dashun's entire force in Nanyang.

For example, the garrisons in Java, Borneo, the Moluccas, Sulu and other places, as well as a small number of mobile forces other than the garrisons, do not need to move at all.

The main force of the infantry resistance line is the Ceylon government soldiers.Outside the resistance line, what really needs to be used to determine the victory or defeat is to rely on professional professional recruits.

As for how many troops the British have in Bengal, according to Dashun's information, the British are in Bengal at this time, excluding the navy, they actually only have 1800 troops.

Among them, 300 were desperadoes from all over Europe, mercenaries eager to make a fortune in India.The British may or may not hire them, and even these mercenaries may not be willing to accept the employment of the British. After all, the Indian maharajas give more than if they have money.

About 800 British troops.

The Indian soldiers trained by the British numbered about 600.

Basically, that's all the troops the British can muster here.

The force Du Feng wants to gather is three times that of the British army in the navy, ten times that of the British army if the army is included, and more than 2000 times that of the artillery if it is subdivided, and the cavalry cannot be counted... [-] Divide by zero, from a mathematical point of view, it is hard to say how many times this is.

On the whole, Du Feng is considered to be in line with Liu Yu's strategy: that is, to be superior in calculations, not to rely on tactical geniuses like Frederick and Napoleon.

It is quite sad to expect a famous general to win if you don't prepare well when the temple is counting and wait for the war.

Therefore, after 20 years of strategic preparations, with Ceylon as the fulcrum and the great emigration of the sugar crisis as an opportunity, Dashun has prepared [-] reservists for today's battle in Ceylon alone, and enough A fleet that went to the Atlantic to fight a "Trafalgar"-scale naval battle.

Cooperating with the perfect merchant ship registration and recruitment system and the monopoly authorized monopoly official supervision system, from the very beginning, we must have a goal of ten against one.

Of course, this calculation does not include the troops of the Bengal princes.

It is also difficult to say how many troops the Bengal princes can muster.

Because if Dashun only went ashore with more than a thousand people and wanted to have a fair one-on-one confrontation with the British army, then the Bengal prince might secretly come to negotiate with Dashun, trying to use Dashun’s strength to defeat Britain; or he might choose to stand by the British side, Make up more than 1 pieced together troops.

And if the army of Dashun goes ashore gradually from 1 at the beginning to more than [-], then the Bengal princes will take the initiative to run to Dashun, shouting "Jafar is a traitor, we have been waiting for the real Dashun" Wabu, the return of Siraj!"

Of course, a group of so-called "betrayers" such as Jafar, Siraj's aunt, and former Sikh businessmen will naturally choose to die hard.

In fact, there are two kinds of military myths in the world.

One is the kind where three thousand breaks fifty thousand and six hundred destroys the country, exclaiming invincible.

The other is that relying on its huge size, handicraft capabilities, wealth, taxation, and population, it can pull out tens of thousands of full-staffed troops, jaw-dropping artillery, and sails that cover the sky at any time.

The former will become a topic of discussion in the history of later generations, and it will still be talked about many years later.

The latter has also become a topic of discussion for later generations of history. Many years later, people will have a feeling of "such a battle, I can do it myself".

Not too realistic, there is no difference.Because the real rulers and ruling class at this time are not talkers who play famous military generals fighting beast chess, but a group of bastards who will weigh and consider whether it is more profitable to be a dog or to stand on their own.

Therefore, Du Feng, still adhering to Liu Yu's strategic conception, captured Fort George at an extremely fast speed, but he wanted to attack Calcutta slowly.

The tactics are simple.

One and a half months, garrisoning troops, garrisoning food, diplomacy, pulling people, plotting, and negotiating with the upper class in Bangladesh.

Then sent out troops, won the field battle, and captured Fort William.

The navy blocked the mouth of the Hooghly River, and the army set up cannons along the river to destroy the British Indian Squadron.

Du Feng was also very bold here, directly sending the vanguard to land and build a camp, and he directly sent the elite troops in his hand.

Because he forgot, the British fleet did not dare to leave the port and stayed in the river port, so the British army would not deploy troops at the river mouth.

And as long as the first batch of troops landed, even if the British reacted, it would take ten days to arrive here from Calcutta.

Besides, the British army was dispatched quickly, but they were few in number.To really form a deterrent, you have to win over the Bangladeshi troops. The problem is that the Bangladeshi troops have come from a distance to meet up, and I don’t know how long it has been.

Therefore, for the first batch of more than a thousand people who landed, the first task was to dig the barracks, parapets, and simple forts facing the north, and deploy the cannons.

Then set up the simple pier and wait for the follow-up troops to gradually arrive.

In the next few days, Zhao Lisheng and others continued to sweat like rain, digging holes, loading soil, building camps, repairing simple docks according to the orders of the officers, and assembling some military lifting machinery.

The rest of the time is to dig the toilet.

After the simple pier was repaired, more and more follow-up troops arrived, and the camp continued to expand.

The Moore businessman who suffered losses after the British army occupied here, under the temptation of money, helped Dashun to transport anything that Dashun wanted.

Planks, lumber, lime, meat, rice... Money can solve many problems.Dashun's silver and India's silver coins are all silver, and there is no stagnation in spending them.

With the gradual increase of Dashun's landing troops, as Du Feng expected, soon there were Bengal nobles who offered to send rice and firewood, and sent people to blend with Dashun's officers to test what Dashun was. mean.

By the time Dashun's army began to unload a large number of cannons and war horses, some nobles had already sent people to offer their own support as well as their own private soldiers.

After all, the former Jiedushi, Siraj, fled to Dashun before, but now he is coming back.Who knows, after returning to the throne, this little Jiedu envoy will treat the previous betrayal?

(End of this chapter)