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Zhao Yapeng came back to report to Tang Tong on the work progress during this period. Since the Hei Pi people occupied Malaysia, there has not been much development. First of all, Zheng Zhilong and the remaining Dutch people tied up a lot of Hei Pi people's energy. Without a strong naval strength, Hei Pi people did not dare to expand rapidly.
Another situation is that Heipi, Zhao Yapeng and others sent a team of 500 soldiers and 1,000 Japanese auxiliaries to India with the Spaniards, which was considered to be cooperation with the Spaniards to compete for colonies in India.
In this era, India was a place where Westerners were competing with each other. Not only the Dutch and the Spanish, but also countries like Britain and France each occupied a piece of land as a colony. Because this was the period of the Thirty Years' War in Europe, most of the Westerners' energy was focused on the European mainland, and the competition for India was not very fierce at the moment, so that the largest colonizer in India was now the Dutch mercenary group.
The Dutch military was tied up in European affairs, but the Netherlands was the richest country of the era, so it had a lot of money to hire a large number of mercenaries. The Dutch East India Company was a colonist armed force built entirely by money. The Spaniards, together with Tang Tong's men, fought several battles with the Dutch East India Company in India, with both sides winning and losing. Later, because they did not gain any benefits in India, Heipi felt it was difficult to report to Lord Tang, and the supply of arms was inconvenient, so they withdrew their troops from India and devoted themselves to operating Malaysia, a maritime foothold.
The greatest achievement of Heipi and his men in Southeast Asia, apart from occupying Malaysia, was to establish a large shipyard in cooperation with the Spanish. However, due to the lack of artillery, it was temporarily difficult to expand the naval force. Zhao Yapeng came back this time to seek funds from Tang Tong to buy artillery from the Spaniards.
Tang Tong did not want to spend money to buy cannons from Westerners. He preferred to make cannons by himself. To make cannons, he needed technical talents and workers. So after listening to Zhao Yapeng's report, Tang Tong planned to take people to Europe to recruit the people he needed.
Not to mention that Tang Tong was making preparations for his trip to Europe, since Sun Chengzong discovered that the musket array used by Tang Tong was indeed very powerful, he gathered all the old musket battalions in the army and expanded the number of people to about 17,000. After training for a while, Sun Chengzong felt very satisfied and wanted to find a place to test the power of the musket team in his hands.
Sun Chengzong and Zu Dashou did not know that the breech-loading rifles of Tang Tong's soldiers had a range of up to 150 steps, which was much longer than the 150-step rifles in the hands of the most elite Jiannu soldiers. The muskets under Sun Chengzong were not uniform in model and quality. The best quality ones were the ones sold to them by Tang Tong, which had a range of 130 to 140 steps, which was slightly better than the muskets in the hands of Westerners. But most of the other muskets were not so good. The good ones had a range of less than 100 steps, and the bad ones had a range of only a few dozen steps. Sun Chengzong did not pay attention to these things when he first came into contact with this kind of musket tactics.
Fortunately, the first battle of this Guanning Musket Battalion was not against the Jiannu, because after Huang Taiji and Tang Tong signed a five-year peace treaty, he did not dare to cause trouble for Da'an again. Sun Chengzong, Zu Dashou and others did not dare to cause trouble for Huang Taiji either. Sun Chengzong placed the objects of the experiment on the rebels such as Gao Yingxiang and Li Zicheng.
At this time, the peasant uprising army had nothing but people. Many of them used wooden sticks as weapons. Sun Chengzong submitted a memorial to Emperor Chongzhen, requesting the dispatch of a 5,000-man musket team to support the officers and soldiers in Shaanxi to suppress the rebels. Emperor Chongzhen quickly approved this memorial.
At this time, Gao Yingxiang had assembled an army of 100,000 and had won a series of great victories since the beginning of the year. The court first dismissed Governor Song Tongyin and appointed Xu Dingchen, Zhang Zongheng, He Renlong, Zuo Liangyu and others. They joined Gao Yingxiang in crossing Taiyuan to Shanxi, and directly attacked Shunde and Zhending, approaching the capital. Emperor Chongzhen hurriedly summoned Lu Xiangsheng, and Sun Chengzong asked to send troops to participate in the war, and Emperor Chongzhen naturally agreed.
In order to test the power of the musket battalion, Zu Dashou personally asked for help to lead the team to Shanxi. Facing the Shaanxi rebels who had basically no long-range attack weapons and cavalry, Zu Dashou won a great victory with great pride.
Gao Yingxiang's army won victory after victory and its morale was high, but they unexpectedly encountered the musket battalion led by Zu Dashou. The 20,000-strong army was wiped out in the first charge. Zhang Xianzhong, who was under Gao Yingxiang's command at the time, was also injured. If it were not for his subordinates who fought to the death to protect him, Zhang Xianzhong would probably not have become the murderous devil he later became.
The first battlefield performance and the power of the musket gave Zu Dashou great confidence, and also made Gao Yingxiang a little dizzy from the head-on attack. More than a hundred years ago, Dali had already used muskets on a large scale, and at the beginning of the founding of Dali, a general named Mu actually invented this volley formation. However, for some unknown reason, this fighting style disappeared in the long river of history. This time, the volley appeared again, and for these people holding wooden sticks, it was simply a massacre.
Even with the worst fire control, the power was terrifying when used in a volley of guns. Even a martial arts master like Zhang Xianzhong could only be injured and hated in the face of such dense bullets. The annihilation of the 20,000-strong army caused the morale of Gao Yingxiang's men to plummet. Gao Yingxiang was smart enough not to organize his men to charge again, but chose to retreat.
This retreat quickly turned the peasant uprising army, which had not received strict military training, into a major rout. More than half of the 100,000-strong army was killed or wounded. Fortunately, most of the casualties were old and weak, while the young and strong elite suffered heavy casualties. Afterwards, Gao Yingxiang led his men to fight in other places and refused to fight with Zu Dashou's musket battalion again.
Moreover, Gao Yingxiang, who was very militarily minded, realized the importance of muskets after suffering a great loss this time. He began to pay attention to collecting muskets and forming a musket battalion. Tang Tong's flapping of butterfly wings changed Gao Yingxiang's idea of not attaching importance to muskets.
Zu Dashou's victory strengthened the idea of the Guanning Army headed by Sun Chengzong. However, the generals of the Guanning Army generally felt that the price of the muskets sold by Tang Tong was too high, and believed that Tang Tong made too much profit from these muskets. Later, they did not purchase muskets from Tang Tong again, but made their own products in the workshops of their own army, which laid a great threat to the Guanning Army in the future.
Before Tang Tong went to Southeast Asia, he once again sent people to contact Zheng Zhilong and invite him to develop Southeast Asia together. However, Zheng Zhilong always believed that Tang Tong was his biggest competitor for interests in the Chinese sea and his natural enemy, so he did not accept Tang Tong's invitation. This made Tang Tong know that Zheng Zhilong still had evil intentions, so he did not dare to withdraw troops to support the development of Southeast Asia.
Tang Tong only brought three ships, three hundred soldiers and three hundred Japanese to assist the army. In addition to Dayuer and Hailanzhu, those who set out with Tang Tong also included Hongniangzi and the grown-up Liu Rushi.
The three ships carried a lot of goods produced by Tang Tong's factories, including a large number of glass mirrors, which Tang Tong planned to take to Europe for dumping. In addition, although the ships were not equipped with ordinary copper cannons, they were also equipped with 300 muskets. This type of gun was an enlarged version of the breech-loading gun and was fixed on a movable base on the ship. The range could reach three meters. Although it was not as powerful as artillery, it had one advantage: it was more accurate than artillery. When shooting at the enemy's ship, it would hit the target every time. Even if it was shooting at the people on the ship, there was a high chance of hitting them within three meters.
Although it was not the first time for the four women to go out to sea, they had received more than ten days of sea training before that. Tang Tong did this for their own good so that they would not get seasick. Hong Niangzi had a generous personality, and Liu Rushi was still a little girl. They were very excited about going out to sea. Moreover, because Tang Tong was not very strict with them, they were not afraid of Tang Tong in the past two years and were very relaxed in front of Tang Tong. For example, when they saw the seagulls for the first time, Hong Niangzi and Liu Rushi ran around on the boat without stopping, and at the end they did not forget to pull Tang Tong to watch with them.
However, after more than ten days at sea, the boring days finally made Hongniangzi and Liu Rushi quiet down. They began to ask every day how long it would take to reach the destination. Tang Tong himself had no way of telling this, because the ships at that time were not like those in later generations, where one could know how much distance they had traveled every day.
The journey was calm. The remaining Dutch troops hiding in Manila did not dare to patrol the sea at this time. Most of the pirates in this area also dispersed due to the rise of Hei Pi and his men. Besides, the pirates did not dare to attack armed warships like Tang Tong.
After setting foot on the land of Malaysia, this exotic scenery quickly attracted Dayuer, Hongniangzi and the other three. Tropical plants were hardly destroyed in this era, so Tang Tong also felt very good about the scenery here.
Hei Pi and his men had been waiting for Tang Tong and his men at the port early. When Tang Tong appeared on the gangway, Hei Pi and his men shed tears of excitement. After all, they had been away from Da'an for such a long time, it was impossible for them not to miss their hometown. Now that they saw Tang Tong, Hei Pi felt like he was seeing a relative, so this excitement was inevitable.
Hongniang and Liu Rushi followed Tang Tong off the boat. When they suddenly saw a group of strange people on the shore, their faces changed drastically. Even Dayuer and Hailanzhu couldn't help but spit.
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