Although Yang Zhen failed to capture Yamauchi Tadayoshi or other Japanese navy generals alive, the unexpected collision with the Japanese patrol ship also changed the course of the combined fleet.

Because of the reappearance of more than a dozen Japanese patrol boats and their heading, many people, including Lemaia and Yang Zhen, realized that the main force of the Japanese navy might be nearby.

Therefore, when the pilot Provencha suddenly turned around and followed the escaping Japanese patrol ship towards the west side of the Uraga Channel, other ships of various sizes that followed, including Yang Zhen's Yingzhou, almost did not hesitate.

Then it turned.

Thomas Peder, the commander of Provenance, was right in his judgment. A few miles northwest of the mouth of Edo Bay, a bay at the southern end of the Miura Peninsula was where the main force of the Japanese navy was stationed.

The sudden arrival of the combined fleets of Lemaia and Yang Zhen was entirely triggered by an unexpected event.

As for the occurrence of this unexpected event, not even the troops of the joint fleets of Le Maia and Yang Zhen could have predicted it, let alone the Japanese naval forces gathered in Uraga Port at the southern end of the Miura Peninsula.

At the entrance of Uraga Port, the several Japanese patrol boats that escaped were overtaken by the pursuing combined fleet.

After directly crushing those few small boats, the pursuing combined fleet finally saw the densely packed ships of the main force of the Japanese navy parked in the misty bay.

The bay where Uraga Port is located is relatively open, neither like Port Arthur nor like Hirado West Bay. It is not a closed bay, but a semicircular bay with a large mouth and a shallow depth.

But even so, the arrival of the Dutch and Yang Zhen joint fleets still used the battle line tactics to block the Japanese warships anchored in the bay.

In the early morning of that day, it was just dawn, the sun had not yet risen, and the fog had not dispersed much. A large number of Japanese ships parked in the bay were moored quietly on the water, and the port of Zhengege Uraga was almost still sleeping.

Hundreds of artillery pieces from the combined fleets of the Dutch and Yang Zhen suddenly fired together. The earth-shattering sound of the cannons and the dense and heavy projectiles instantly woke everyone in Uraga Port.

Matsudaira Nobutsuna, who had just fallen asleep, was awakened from his dream, and immediately screamed and issued an order, ordering Inaba Masanori to command the Uraga Fort to fire artillery to bombard the incoming enemy ships.

However, the forts on the west side of Uraga Suidou have fixed orientations, and they are not facing the direction of Sagami Bay, but are set up facing Uraga Suidou.

Moreover, most of the forts equipped with the "National Collapse" Folang machine cannons were built on the dangerous coast on the west side of Uraga Suidou, and the bronze cannon bodies were also fixed on the forts.

Unless the fixed-orientation bronze Franco machine gun bodies are dismantled and rearranged, their orientation cannot be changed at all.

Therefore, facing Matsudaira Nobutsuna's order, Inaba Masanori, who was in charge of all the forts of Uraga Yard, was confused and had no idea how to implement the order of this veteran shogunate.

Inaba Masanori could order the cannon to be fired, but there was no Dutch fleet or Akito fleet in the Uraga water channel where the cannon muzzle was directed.

What's the point of such bombardment? Is it just to embolden yourself?

When Inaba Masanori reported the actual situation of the fort to Matsudaira Nobutsuna, Matsudaira was so angry that he jumped and cursed, and ordered the fort to be dismantled and redeployed immediately.

However, such a thing is easier said than done.

In order to protect the Uraga Suido at the entrance to Edo Bay, the shogunate took over Uraga Port as its direct territory and built a large number of permanent fortifications on the coast facing the Uraga Suido.

The most important permanent fortification among them is the Uraga Fort.

Therefore, how difficult it was to build Uraga Fort in the first place, and how difficult it is to dismantle it now.

As a result, before Masanori Inaba could transfer the several gates that had been dismantled through hard work to the Tosa Navy berth in Uraga Port facing Sagami Bay,

The Tosa clan and the naval vessels from other clans that came to support the navy that had anchored near Uraga Port for the night were completely destroyed by the fierce attack of the combined fleet commanded by Lemaia and Yang Zhen.

In terms of quantity alone, there are not many warships in the combined fleet. In total, there are only more than a hundred large and small warships.

In the bay besieged by them, there were nearly 500 Japanese boats and small morning boats anchored overnight.

However, almost every warship in the combined fleet is equipped with artillery.

Just the four giant plywood ships of the Dutch fleet and the flagship Yingzhou of Yang Zhen's fleet, these five giant ships have more than 300 heavy guns.

Although the bay where the Japanese navy parked for the night was relatively open, the entire bay was blocked by hundreds of artillery fire.

The Japanese guanchuan and small early boats parked densely in the bay had no ability to fight back, and were completely vulnerable to the direct bombardment of Hongyi's heavy artillery. Often one shot passed by, and the huge solid iron bullets could penetrate the cockpits of several ships or

Shipside.

The most important thing is that in this siege, the Japanese firearms and roasting fire arrows that Yang Zhen and others brought along the way came in handy.

Zhang Tianbao and the grenadiers he led were reluctant to waste the tens of thousands of enemies, flying generals and explosive cannons they had brought across the ocean, but they were not willing to stand aside and watch.

So he asked for orders, used Japanese firearms to bake fire arrows, changed to a small boat and advanced into the bay. He tied the captured bunches of baked fire arrows like bunches of grapes, lit them and threw them on the unattended enemy ships.

There was shelling on one side and fire attack on the other. After just over an hour, the large number of Japanese ships anchored in the bay where Uraga Port was located were almost completely wiped out.

Of course, it is not necessarily how many Japanese naval forces the joint fleet of Yang Zhen and the Dutch killed or burned to death in this battle.

Because the Kanbune and small morning boats are not large and are anchored in the bay where Uraga Port is located, many of the boats are not manned overnight.

Therefore, not many Japanese navy soldiers died as a result.

But the Japanese ships suffered a devastating blow.

By the time Yang Zhen and the Dutch combined fleet stopped bombarding, piles of driftwood fragments were everywhere in the bay, and few Japanese ships were intact.

And that's not all. The fire caused by the baked fire arrows did not weaken at all because the bombardment stopped. On the contrary, it burned stronger and stronger under the blow of the sea breeze.

The reason why this situation finally occurred was entirely due to the sins of Matsudaira Nobutsuna, Yamauchi Tadayoshi and others.

Sagami Bay is very open, and along its northern coast, except for Edo Bay, which has a relatively closed entrance, there are no other relatively closed small bays.

The bay where Uraga Port is located is said to be a bay, but in fact it is just an arc-shaped and somewhat concave coast.

Since there were too many Japanese navy ships gathering here, not every ship had the opportunity to be tied to the pier on the coast using cables.

Therefore, in order to ensure the safety of ships and ensure that ships in the bay would not drift away or capsize with the rising and falling tides, Matsudaira Nobutsuna, Yamauchi Tadayoshi and others ordered that the navy should link up large and small ships after landing ashore.

Then, wait until you get on the ship to go to sea or board the ship for combat, and then untie the connected ships.

Facts have proved that doing so, whether on the sea, rivers or lakes, is very dangerous.

If you don't encounter an enemy attack, that's it. Once you encounter an enemy attack, especially a fire attack, it will simply burn an area and a large area.

What happened on the morning of September 12, the 14th year of Chongzhen's reign, near Uraga Port in the northeastern part of Sagami Bay in the Japanese Kingdom, once again confirmed this truth.

Of course, the fire caused by the baked fire arrows thrown by Zhang Tianbao and others almost wiped out the damaged Japanese ships floating in the bay. However, the fire that burned for several hours also blocked Yang Zhen and He

The combined fleet attempted to land at Uraga Port.

The coast of the Miura Peninsula is mountainous, especially the side facing Sagami Bay. Only the bay where Uraga Port is located has relatively flat terrain and is directly connected to the town of Uraga Port.

This is also the reason why Uraga Port is not located in Edo Bay, but in Sagami Bay.

Of course, this was also one of the reasons why the Japanese later reopened a port on the inside of Edo Bay in the north of Uraga and built a Yokosuka military port.

In fact, Uraga Port is not far from Yokosuka in later generations. It can even be said that the two places are directly connected side by side and back to back on land.

However, Uraga Port and Yokosuka Port are separated from each other, and what separates them is the steep mountain range at the southernmost tip of the Miura Peninsula.

To the east of the headland at the southern end of the Miura Peninsula is the Uraga Waterway, which is the gateway into and out of Edo Bay. Not far to the west of this headland is the bay where Uraga Port is located.

On the afternoon of September 12, the 14th year of Chongzhen, the driftwood in the bay where Uraga Port is located burned out, the fireworks went out, and the combined fleet commanded by Lemaia and Yang Zhen arrived near the bay again.

At this time, on the relatively flat coast of Uraga Port, the Japanese army commanded by Matsudaira Nobutsuna, Inaba Masanori and others were already well prepared.

Matsudaira Nobutsuna ordered several Kokubōro machines to be dismantled from one side of the Uraga waterway, and they were also deployed on the coastal pier of Uraga Port. The atmosphere was quite tense.

However, Lemaia did not directly launch a landing operation. Instead, he sent a small boat carrying a Japanese Ashigaru leader selected from the prisoners on Izu Oshima with a letter suggesting that the two sides cease fighting and make peace.

Arrived at the shore.

Of course, along with this peace letter was sent ashore the conditions for an armistice with the Tokugawa shogunate proposed by the combined fleets of Le Maia and Yang Zhen.

Among the conditions for the armistice, in addition to the conditions required by the Dutch East India Company to open the coast and provide comprehensive trade, it naturally also included provisions such as requiring the Tokugawa shogunate to recognize the peace treaty that the Kyushu vassals had previously reached with Yang Zhen and Lemaia.

However, when faced with the letter sent by Lemaia's people and the truce conditions proposed, Matsudaira Nobutsuna became furious again when he saw the letter. Not only did he draw his sword and kill the Japanese prisoner who sent the letter on the spot, but he also immediately ordered the artillery in the harbor to move towards

The combined fleet approaching the bay began bombardment.

However, the so-called national collapse that the Japanese highly praised was far from as severe as they boasted.

Perhaps facing Japanese mountain fortresses without artillery, or Japanese warships equipped only with iron cannons or large barrels, the power of the Fo Lang machine gun was outstanding.

However, in front of the combined fleet equipped with hundreds of heavy naval guns, also known as Hongyi heavy artillery, the Folang aircraft rear-mounted mother-and-bone cannon, known as Guobeng, pales in comparison to the big one.

Whether it is the size of the caliber, the size of the projectiles, the range or the power, compared with the heavy naval guns equipped on the large armed merchant ships of the Dutch East India Company, the breech-mounted sub-gun of the Franchise is far behind.

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Even compared with the thirty imitation heavy Hongyi cannons equipped on Yang Zhen's flagship Yingzhou, it's not even a bit worse.

The so-called national collapse of the Japanese is that they have an advantage in rate of fire.

But when you can't reach the enemy, the advantage in rate of fire is meaningless and cannot be converted into an advantage on the battlefield.

In this way, after firing at each other for less than half an hour, the Kokubang in Uraga Port became silent one after another, and the Japanese troops gathered on the coast and deployed defenses along the coast had to retreat again and again after leaving corpses on the ground.

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Seeing that the Japanese were unwilling to submit, Lemaia finally accepted Yang Zhen's suggestion again. In the evening of that day, he divided the combined fleet into two. After some adjustments and deployment, the entire combined fleet was divided into east and west routes.

The East Route Squadron was led by Lemaia and was mainly composed of the Dutch fleet. At the same time, a group of 200 warships under Yang Zhen were added. After nightfall, they took advantage of the high tide and rushed into the Uraga Channel and into Edo Bay.

middle.

The West Route Squadron was led by Yang Zhen, and was mainly composed of Yang Zhen's flagship and the 400 warships under Yang Zhen's command. It also incorporated the Provencha commanded by Thomas Peder.

This way, led by Yang Zhen, they turned around and headed south after nightfall, heading to Osaka Bay, where Osaka is located, to implement the previously formulated plan to attack the west.

And He Tingbin, who had been to Osaka Bay and Osaka Port, was also transferred to Yang Zhen's side at Yang Zhen's request.

In this way, after Le Maia finally made the decision to split up, at dusk that day, Yang Zhen, who had already retreated to the open sea, led the West Route Squadron back to the vicinity of Uraga Port and began the artillery bombardment of Uraga Port again.

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Chapter completed!