Volume 4: Hot! The whole world is a warring state Chapter 646 Spain’s Response
“Boom~”
Another batch of shells fell, exploding violently, raising clouds of dust and making a huge noise. The entire Lima city's already dilapidated walls began to crumble.
"Your Excellency, the enemy may enter the city in an hour at most. I once again ask you to retreat immediately!"
Prince Condé of the French Bourbon dynasty, now Grand Duke Henri, sat stupidly in the Governor's Palace in Lima, without any response to the repeated urgings of the anxious guards below.
How could this happen? How did those Indians, no, those Chinese, suddenly become so powerful? And what was our fleet doing? The enemy's nearest naval base was in Hawaii, thousands of miles away . They had so many ironclad ships coming from so far away, and outside the port, the bombardment of 150mm naval guns was almost inaudible. Where was our fleet? Where was our fleet stationed in Buenos Aires?
He was confused there, while Sun Chuanting outside the city was in high spirits.
It wasn't easy. He had been in America for more than half a year and had carefully prepared such an offensive. Now, he had already seen the dawn of victory.
He arrived in the Americas last August and, after spending several months gaining a deeper understanding of the situation, began to make adjustments.
The first thing was of course to reorganize the army. Zhu Youdong asked him to bring a Ming army division, and he had no intention of disbanding it. Instead, he added some Indian guides and translators and reorganized it into the First Division of the American Volunteer Army.
Afterwards, more than 3,000 elite soldiers in Zhu Shengmiao and Tia's Andean base were reorganized into the Second Division.
Li Zicheng's troops were given the number of the Third Division, and Zhang Xianzhong's troops were given the number of the Fourth Division.
At this point, the name of the armed forces controlled by the Ming Dynasty in America was unified for the first time.
After the names were settled, the next step was to send out political commissars: Chen Zilong went to the Second Division, Yan Yingyuan went to the Third Division, and Xia Yunyi went to the Fourth Division. The eldest son of the emperor, Zhu Ciyan, served as the political commissar of the First Division and the chief political commissar of the American Corps. Of course, except for the eldest son of the emperor, the other three political commissars certainly did not go alone: this time, Zhu Youdong was determined to properly rectify the forces in America. So when these political commissars went to the troops, they also brought a large number of literary and artistic workers...
After these people joined the army, they spent every possible moment to learn the local Indian language: the so-called Indian language is not a single language, but a collective name for thousands of languages of the indigenous people of America. Although in recent years, in order to unify military orders and truly occupy this land in the future, Zhu Shengmiao, Li Zicheng, Zhang Xianzhong and others have spared no effort to promote Chinese in their own troops. But since we want to publicize and mobilize the masses, we must first learn the language most used by the masses.
Two or three months later, the political commissars of each division spontaneously organized the Indian soldiers to watch a new version of the White-Haired Girl, which was adapted from the White-Haired Girl and incorporated local conditions in America, highlighting the cruelty and perversion of Spanish farmers and mine owners, as well as the blood and tears of the Indians. All of a sudden, the emotions of all the soldiers were completely ignited.
Afterwards, in successive small-scale military operations, once the 3rd or 4th Division captured a certain manor, the political workers would organize the Indians and black slaves in the manor to come out and speak out, and then hold a grievance meeting, and then publicly criticize and execute the most heinous farmers... After several processes, the trust and psychological dependence of the vast majority of Indian soldiers on the political commissar quickly surpassed that of the previous military commanders Li Zicheng and Zhang Xianzhong.
After winning the hearts of the army, especially the ordinary Indians in the two bases, Sun Chuanting gave orders to Li Zicheng and Zhang Xianzhong: Bring all your troops here! In the past, our mission was to set fires everywhere and let more Indians know of our existence. Now the goal of the struggle has changed: we must concentrate our strength to capture a big city, and then use it as a foundation to build our new base. In this base, we will establish a real Indian country where Indians are the masters, and our Ming officials serve as consultants and provide arms trade!
In Sun Chuanting's view, it was necessary to establish an Indian country in any form at this time: Li, Zhang and others had been in America for eight years, and Tia had been back in America for more than ten years. In such a long time, without even revealing a "country name", how could you mobilize the vast number of American Indians to join your team?
This is how he saw it, and this is what he did. But his decision was very painful for Li Zicheng and Zhang Xianzhong, who had been used to being free and undisciplined in recent years: Was this considered handing over the foundation to others?
Unfortunately, the Ming Dynasty at this time was completely different from the Ming Dynasty in 1636 in the historical plane. And unlike the Han troops led by Li and Zhang in the historical plane, more than 99% of their men were Indians at this time—and they were Indians who had been won over by the political commissars!
So at this moment, no matter how dissatisfied Li Zicheng and Zhang Xianzhong were, they could not think of resisting. After all the entanglements and pains, they finally led their troops honestly, found the nearest coastline, boarded the ships of the Ming Navy, and finally landed and gathered near Lima.
During the half-year-long process of military reorganization and transfer, Sun Chuanting made full use of the sparsely populated characteristics of America: before Li and Zhang moved, he asked them to send small troops all the way north and south, exposing their whereabouts as much as possible along the way, showing that they could not hold on here anymore and had to find another place to develop. He successfully led the main forces of Raimondo and Cromwell away from Mexico City and Buenos Aires.
In April 1636, after the entire American Corps was assembled, Sun Chuanting ordered a joint attack by sea and land to attack Lima.
At that time, America was too big for Spain, which had a population of only more than 10 million . Therefore, Spain's colonial rule in America could only be centered on towns, and then send teams of varying sizes through towns to search for various resources in the surrounding areas, and then let Indians and black slaves from Africa to exploit resources or build large plantations.
Among these towns, when Spain was still unable to effectively develop North America, the northernmost core city was Mexico City, the southern one was Buenos Aires, and the one in the middle was Lima.
Now, Sun Chuanting wants to take over this place and use it as a base to establish an independent Indian nation.
Lima is a port city, so in this siege, the fire support provided to the American Corps was not the 75mm breech-loading gun commonly used by the army, but more than 20 150mm naval guns on the navy's 5,000-ton steam ironclad ships!
It was also because of this that Lima was captured extremely quickly: the attack was launched on April 13 and it was captured on the 17th.
Although Archduke Henry finally retreated safely ten minutes before the Ming army rushed into the city, the loss of Lima interrupted the land transportation of the Spanish American colonies. This was an extremely heavy loss for Spain, which did not have the Panama Canal.
Due to the vastness of the American continent, it was not until late May that Raimondo in Mexico and Cromwell in Argentina received the news of the fall of Lima. The two men, in addition to leading their respective main forces back, also sent messengers to report to Philip in Europe and apologize!
…
"Ladies and gentlemen, this is roughly the situation in America. Now it seems that the Chinese have revised their previous guerrilla warfare and have once again added new chips to cause greater damage to our cause in the American continent."
"Your Majesty, I think we should strike back hard against these hateful Chinese. Please give me a division so I can go to America and bring back the heads of Li and Zhang for you."
"Hahaha, my Louis, you are ambitious enough, but you are still too young."
"Your Majesty, I am fifteen years old this year. When you asked Raimondo to lead a division to America, he was only seventeen years old."
"Dear Louis, America back then was not America today. There is no doubt that the Chinese deployed regular troops this time. Not only that, they also deployed several ironclad ships..." After saying this, Philip asked Louis, the Grand Conde of the original historical plane, to sit down, and then said to Barudes: "My naval commander, when can our battleship Prince of Asturias be put into actual combat?"
"I'm very sorry, Your Majesty. The outfitting of the Prince has not been completed yet, and the sea trial has not been officially carried out. So..."
"Well, it seems that the Prince will not be able to be put into combat in the near future. Then, Your Excellency, since the Chinese have sent such a powerful fleet, it seems that we should also send an equal fleet."
"I'm sorry, Your Majesty. I have carefully read the battle report sent by Archduke Henry. From the report, it can be inferred that the Chinese should have deployed about ten 5,000-ton ironclad ships this time. As for our ironclad ships, uh, because you said five years ago when the keel of the Prince of Asturias was laid, after the Prince was put into service, the previous ironclad ships would immediately become obsolete products. Therefore, in the past five years, the Kingdom Navy has only added two 5,000-ton ironclad ships in addition to the Prince. Together with the previous warships, the entire navy only has six 5,000-ton warships... In other words, before the Prince joined the battle, our navy was not sure of victory against the Chinese Navy."
After Barudis said this, the atmosphere in the entire conference hall suddenly became cold.
After a while, Prime Minister Osvalles stood up again and said, "Your Majesty, although you asked us to make a plan to expand into India after the opening of the Suez Canal, the situation in America has changed. I think we should temporarily suspend our Eastern strategy and focus on America . After all, we cannot do without the gold, silver and rubber produced there."
Damn Chinese time traveler, he successfully disrupted my rhythm!
After cursing Zhu Youdong in a low voice, Philip raised his head and showed his signature gentle smile: "My Prime Minister, you are absolutely right. So, what do you think we should do now?"
"Your Majesty, if the Chinese want to deploy their forces to America, they need to cross the entire Pacific Ocean. It is much more time-consuming and laborious than just crossing the Atlantic Ocean. So I think that consuming the Chinese's power in America is a good deal for us. Therefore, I suggest that we should not deploy forces on a large scale at one time, but gradually increase the pressure on the Chinese in America by two or three divisions. Forcing their emperor to gradually increase the stakes in America. I firmly believe that as long as we fight a war of attrition in America, even if we don't fight India, we can still drag down the Chinese!"
