War Palace and Knee Pillow, Austria’s Destiny

Hugh Gough's sudden order to retreat was indeed unexpected by Nanming, because such an advantaged and very proud opponent usually would only think of taking a step back after a bloody encounter.

In fact, in order to keep the British troops in "Xinjing", Zhu Qiongying sent people to spread rumors that there were tens of millions of taels of silver hidden in the palace.

But I didn't expect that the other party was completely unmoved. In fact, Hugh Gough's military thinking was indeed backward, but his intuition and judgment were very good.

At the same time, Nanming's performance was too fake, and the two sides acted as if they were going to die for their country even before they came into contact. This made Hugh Gough feel a great sense of violation.

And after arriving in Kalimantan, he felt that the Lion City had a serious lack of intelligence on the so-called "Nan Ming".

The barbaric tribes described by the officials actually had an astonishing rate of firearms equipment. In addition, this strange fortress and the spirit of the defenders surprised him.

Hugh Gough had never looked down upon any Eastern army, and this was true for India and the Qing Dynasty, but this time he admitted that he had failed.

The battle that he thought would be over in a week at most took five days on the road and three days of siege, but no substantial progress was made. Although he did not lose anything, his trump card was almost exposed.

Hugh Gough didn't want to engage in any digging and siege. He thought it would be more cost-effective to use the maritime advantage to continue to harm the enemy's ports.

Zhiyun, the Prime Minister of the Southern Ming Dynasty who stayed behind, immediately ordered people to dig up the dikes in order to flood the Seventh Army. However, the reality was that the river directly changed its course, and the flood bypassed the British troops.

But it was not completely useless. At least it created a floodplain and delayed the British army's return of reinforcements.

Hugh Gough looked at the flood of sediment in front of him and could only lament his bad luck. But he would not wait and immediately ordered the cannon fodder third brother to build a pontoon bridge.

On the other hand, Zhiyun couldn't believe the scene she observed through the telescope. Those British people actually dared to jump into the flood to build a floating bridge, but she had no time to admire their courage because the thunderclouds from the north had already arrived. The arrival of the rainy season will greatly weaken the combat effectiveness of the British army, and at the same time create opportunities for "closing doors and beating dogs".

Zhiyun still admires the strange foreign prince Zhu Qiongying talks about. Every "gift" he gives to Nanming is very important to this country.

For example, although the tactics at this time only had eight words, it was their only chance to completely defeat the British.

The five thousand men in her hand did not have the equipment of the "Three Battalions" and the Xinjing Imperial Guards. Most of them only had bows and arrows, spears, shovels, and hoes, so if they wanted to block the British army head-on, they would simply hit the stone with an egg.

Moreover, in fact, the power and range of bows and arrows will be greatly reduced after being stained with water, let alone fighting in the rain, which is simply a fantasy.

But she still has a way to delay the opponent's marching speed. Zhiyun ordered her men to immediately destroy all the bridges from Xinjing to Mara Port, then destroy the roads, and then use the little gunpowder in their hands to make a few "landmines". The rest can only be left to God's will.

In Mara Port, the fighting never stopped.

The heavy rain greatly reduced the combat effectiveness of the British army, but the gap in training between the two sides was still irreparable. The Nanming army had an advantage due to the tunnel surprise attack in the city, but the battle at the dock was not optimistic.

Although the British army on the dock only numbered four to five hundred people at most, the Nanming army could not charge forward at all.

It was precisely because of this that Lieutenant General Humphrey Senhouse and his adjutant did not follow the footsteps of Colonel Hardek Kreese, and they successfully escaped to the dock.

Seeing the Nanming soldiers pouring toward the dock like a black tide, Lieutenant General Senhaus decisively ordered everyone to board the battleship and fire.

The battleship salvo is so powerful that it cannot be resisted by flesh and blood.

General Liu Dadao didn't hesitate. He swung his sword and chopped off the head of a British soldier who was begging for mercy, and then raised it high.

"Brothers, kill a foreign devil and get ten acres of land! Catch them all for me!"

Then Nanming soldiers began a city-wide search for the remnants of the enemy. As for the British who hid on the ship, they encountered new problems before they had time to breathe.

Since the number of remaining sailors was limited, and Vice Admiral Humphrey Senhouse did not want British ships to fall into the hands of the enemy, there were only twenty or thirty men on each ship except his flagship.

Lieutenant General Senhaus also imagined that more survivors would rush to the dock and then all the ships would be driven away.

But a scream woke him up. A large number of Nanming soldiers were climbing onto his warship with knives in their hands. Some people had even jumped on the ship and started to chase and kill the British sailors crazily.

And these people not only had knives, but some also had revolvers. Lieutenant General Humphrey Senhouse leaned on the side of the ship, and screams came one after another around him.

He looked back and saw through the flashing thunder light that another battleship was already crawling with Nanming soldiers wearing black clothes or shirtless, and more people emerged from the black water.

Lieutenant General Senhaus collapsed on the ground. He felt that he was in hell at the moment, and his enemies were completely a group of demons from hell.

In fact, the first thing Zhu Qiongying did in Nanyang was to recruit local Chinese pirates, but these people were usually sent out to intercept merchant ships transporting piglets and do some shady things.

Ship hijacking is their specialty. These people are known for their ruthlessness, and it is impossible for real desperadoes to do such a thing as sneaking into a battleship in a small boat at night during a storm.

In fact, these pirates have much more experience in dealing with foreigners than the Nanming army. They often had to deal with these foreigners before they took refuge in Zhu Qiongying. If they ran slower, they would be killed or captured and taken back to collect rewards.

Once the opponent catches up, the only way to survive is to jump to another country and fight, so these people are extremely desperate at this moment.

The captain of the British ship "Hai Axin" had just shot and killed a Nanming soldier with a long beard when two more young soldiers jumped on the deck. The "Wolai" next door had been completely captured. , the captain who had been resisting just now had his head cut off and his body thrown into the sea.

On Humphrey Senhouse's flagship "Bengal", a British soldier stabbed a Nanming soldier into the body, but the latter clutched the rifle before he died and refused to let go, creating a situation for his companions to kill the former. A chance to be cut into pieces.

What was even more terrible for Humphrey Senhouse was that after the commotion on the ship, the Nanming army that had just retreated came back to fight.

The bloody killing continued like this, and the long night was like the scythe of death, constantly harvesting lives.

The next day, Senhaus leaned slumped on the mast. Only his flagship and less than a hundred officers and men were left in his entire fleet, and all of them, including himself, were injured.

If a few brave young men hadn't detonated the ammunition rooms of several other battleships last night, then I would have become a sinner of the British Empire.

Of course, Humphrey Senhouse also wanted to thank his adjutant, the brave young Welshman. If he hadn't cut the cable of the flagship, no British would have left the port of Mara alive.

Fog rose from the sea in the early morning, but the lookout still spotted a fleet slowly approaching. He shouted when he saw the Union Jack flag hanging high.

"Captain! It's our ship!"

"Great! Ask them for help quickly, tell them that pirates have attacked us, and ask them to help us take back Mara Port!"

However, Humphrey Senhouse could not be happy for long, because when the fleet approached, he discovered that although the two battleships leading the team also flew the British flag, they were all Easterners on board, and their guns were The door has been opened in advance.

Standing on the bow of the ship, Zhu Qiongying, wearing a Western-style military uniform, said "Fire!"

The two battleships fired a salvo at the same time as they approached the "Bengal". The iron ball smashed the wooden hull for a while, and sawdust flew into the sky. The people on board were either directly cut in two by the iron ball, or were killed by the scattered fragments. .

This was Zhu Qiongying's last trump card, the Nanming Navy, two battleships, three cruisers, and seven frigates. It was these guys that she relied on to conquer the pirates in Nanyang. This was also her confidence.

Two of the battleships were eliminated by Austria and were left to Zhu Qiongying by Franz. Three cruisers were captured from the British, while the other seven frigates were bought from the Dutch and Spanish, with the middleman being Austria.

In Mara Port, the heads of British soldiers have been piled up as high as a hill.

These Nanming soldiers did not know anything about international law. Most of them were farmers or coolies, or pirates, bandits or gang members.

Even if there are one or two people who have read occasionally, they only know that "anyone who offends our strong men will be punished no matter how far away they are."

When Zhu Qiongying's warship arrived at Mara Port, she stepped off the warship alone, holding something in her hand. She threw it casually and fell into Liu Dadao's hand.

It was a human head. Liu Dadao observed it carefully for a long time but could not see anything, because in his eyes, Westerners were all the same.

"It's Humphrey Senhouse's head. Send it to Hugh Gough and tell him to surrender or die."

"God bless the Ming Dynasty, long live!"

"Long live!"

The soldiers of Nanming shouted long live. They were all extremely excited because they had done something that the Manchus had not been able to do, and it was really a joyful thing to be able to behead the enemy chief.

All the generals felt that they had won 80% of this war, and all that was left was to wipe out the remaining enemies.

However, they did not know that in addition to the expeditionary force in Southeast Asia, the British also had hundreds of battleships and hundreds of thousands of troops.

On the other hand, Hugh Gough was already angry to death. He didn't know what a wicked person he was who had damaged the road so badly.

People and horses can make do with it, but the baggage cannot move on this road at all, especially the heavy artillery. Hugh Gough is reluctant to abandon it. He can only ask for help from Mara Port while filling the hole, hoping that the other party will He can recruit some native people to help him.

But the British did nothing along the way. How could it be possible now that they want the aborigines to help them?

As soon as the locals saw the British coming, they all fled into the mountains and refused to come out. The latter had no other solution. They tried setting fire to the mountains, but it was too difficult to burn the mountains in the rainy season, so they had to give up in the end.

Hugh Gough's messenger was arrested as soon as he arrived at Mara Port. He could not believe the scene in front of him. Thousands of British corpses were being collectively incinerated in the center of the port.

"Sir, please don't mind. The weather here is hot and humid, and the corpse will cause plague if it is not disposed of in time. But we can transfer your ashes to your country."

Luo Xiangnan, who is in charge of diplomacy, said in proficient English that he was the son of a wealthy businessman in Guangzhou. He had studied in Europe for many years and wanted to return to China to flex his muscles.

But things didn't go as planned. Luo Xiangnan thought he couldn't get enough of the officialdom of the Qing Dynasty. Instead, he was castrated and thrown on the street because he offended a certain nobleman.

In order to save the family business, his father chose to expel Luo Xiangnan from the house, but Nian still gave him some money to go to Nanyang during the father-son dispute.

Luo Xiangnan is the head of the Shenji Camp, the Minister of Honglu Temple (equivalent to the Minister of Foreign Affairs), and the only eunuch in the Southern Ming Dynasty.

"You?" The British soldier felt that the gay man's choice of words was a bit inaccurate.

"Yes, you guys."

"What do you mean?"

"I mean you are useless, and we don't have the habit of preparing rooms for invaders here, so please die!"

Luo Xiangnan pushed the British man into the burning pit of fire. He ignored the struggling and screaming man below and just said to the people around him.

"Tell your Majesty that there are still 2,700 people in Hugh Gough's team and more than 200 wounded soldiers, including 1,200 Indians. In his view, these people are unstable factors.

But you tell your majesty again that Indians are not good birds, and we have no spies who can penetrate into the other side. Tell Prime Minister Zhiyun that the alienation strategy is not easy to use against Westerners. "

However, Zhiyun still got a Spaniard to read the imperial edict in Hugh Gough's military camp.

The general idea was to "urge Hugh Gough to surrender, and made it clear that Mara Port had been lost and that they had no way out.

At the same time, a reward of 10,000 taels was offered for Hugh Gough's head. Each British soldier had a reward of 10 taels of silver, and other officers had a reward ranging from 20 to 100 taels. "

That night, many assassinations occurred in the military camp. Several soldiers had their heads cut off, and some officers were even among the dead.

At the same time, the number of deserters in the Indian military camps is also increasing. Some people are taking the heads of British people to receive rewards, and some are unable to bear the abuse of British people. However, most of them are just daily deserters because of the corruption of military discipline.

But this was a serious blow to the morale of Hugh Gough's army. He knew very well that all the soldiers would run away before he could reach Mara Port.

But it was impossible for the proud British general to surrender. He believed that the "Lion City" (Singapore) should have received the news and would send people to rescue them soon.

What he has to do now is to take the troops to Mara Port to wait for rescue, and for this, some things have to be given up.

The first was the seriously injured people. There was a lack of medical treatment in this place, and the terrain was rugged and difficult to navigate. It was really a burden to carry them around, so they were handed over to the army chaplain.

But those priests were not stupid, they just left the seriously injured people on the road and ran for their lives.

Naturally, Nanming's army would not take care of these people, but it was different for the indigenous people who had been bullied miserably by the British. They would seize this opportunity to complain and take revenge.

Then those heavy weapons also became the target of abandonment, because these big guys often got stuck in the mud and slowed down the march, so they had to be abandoned.

But Hugh Gough would not leave it to the enemy, so he blocked the bore with mud and blew it up. After losing two-thirds of their baggage and almost all their artillery, the British army finally arrived at Mara Port.