On the evening of May 3, the 26th year of the Yongli period of the Ming Dynasty, Zhu Hechan, the prince of the Ming Dynasty, the secretary of the Ming Dynasty, the commander of the Jinyiwei, and the former Grand Secretary of the Ru family, led his troops to enter the Guangzhou city that had become an empty city.

On another evening three days later, on the water surface near Houzhu Port at the mouth of Luoyang River in Quanzhou Bay, Fujian, which was 1,000 miles away from Guangzhou City, a water battle that lasted for most of the day was finally time to decide the outcome.

"Ming Dynasty, Wan Sheng! The master of the country, Wan Sheng!"

Above the water, a huge shouting sound like a tsunami sounded, and it spread from the wide Luoyang River mouth to the narrow water surface upstream.

In the Luoyang River Estuary area, the vast water surface is full of large and small wooden ships burning, including six nearly burnt three-masted warships of the Dutch East India Company. This sailboat with a load of between 100 and 300 tons is called a "large speedboat" by the Dutch.

They are nothing on the oceans and seas, but their combat power is still quite reliable in the offshores with varying wind directions and complex water conditions or at the estuary of major rivers.

This is because they are shallow in water, quick in action, and are very useful in shallow waters with complex water conditions. The number of artillery they are equipped with is not small, and it is enough to deal with weak navies in the eastern countries, so they have become the main force of the Dutch East India Company's rampant in the Indian Ocean and the South China Sea.

In the Battle of Liaoluo Bay nearly forty years ago, the main force of the Dutch was this large speedboat. Although the Dutch lost that naval battle, they did not suffer any loss in exchange ratios, and the large speedboats still performed well in the naval battles in the following years. So to this day, they are still the maritime pillars of the Dutch East India Company!

Shi Lang, the admiral of the Fujian Navy of the Qing court, of course, knew the power of such Western warships in nearshore water warfare. So after becoming the admiral of the Fujian Navy, he came forward to contact the representatives stationed in Fuzhou (the Dutch and the Prince of Jingnan, and signed the "Qing-Holland Treaty") and invited the six large Dutch speedboats wandering the coast of the Qing Dynasty and Vietnam to Houzhu Port, Quanzhou, where their naval camps were located.

I want to use these Dutch warships to escort the newly built naval army, and at the same time I want to ask the Dutch to help me train the naval army. The current Zheng Ming naval army cannot be compared with Zheng Zhilong's era. Zheng Jing is a rich three generations who are "wealthy is not as rich as three", and the Qing Dynasty's maritime ban policy has already broken the roots of Zheng Ming's naval army!

This Zheng Ming navy is actually a bit similar to the Dutch Navy. Its foundation is not a "state-owned navy" at all, but a private maritime businessman.

Before the Qing Dynasty's sea ban, among the 20,000 to 30,000 sailboats active in East Asia and Southeast Asia, one or two hundred were Westerners, and the others were "Hu Jianren". Zheng Zhilong, who was enthroned by Guangdong and was the leader of all Chinese sailboat owners!

With this identity, it is impossible for the Dutch East India Company to completely defeat the Zheng family, and Shi Lang is even less capable.

But now, the Qing Dynasty has dig the roots of the Zheng family!

So the opportunity for the Dutch East India Company and Shi Lang is here!

Moreover, Shi Lang's navy did not start from scratch. He was a big pirate himself and had been the admiral of the Fujian Navy before, so many old subordinates could be activated and recruited some pirates who were forbidden by the sea to serve the Qing Dynasty.

In addition, Huang Wu, the Haicheng Gong of Zhangzhou, also owned a small navy, which was handed over to Shi Lang after Shi Lang arrived in Fujian.

However, this temporary navy also had the dilemma of insufficient training and no warships available. Huang Wu brought a lot of civilian ships for Shi Lang, but these ships could only be used for training and anti-smuggling, and it would definitely not work to use them to fight water battles with Zheng Ming's navy.

So Shi Lang invited the Dutch to help.

But he never expected that these six Dutch warships that looked very capable were disguised as fishing boats (Shi Lang recruited many pirates, so he naturally had to relax the local sea ban). The Zheng Ming navy attacked six Dutch ships that looked quite strong. They didn't know what was going on, but they were actually lit by several tinea bottles!

Moreover, the fire could not be extinguished, and it became more and more prosperous, until all the six Dutch ships were turned into fire ships.

While all six Dutch warships were burned down, hundreds of warships from Zheng Ming's navy also rushed into the Luoyang River mouth with great momentum.

These Zheng Ming's tactics are also quite strange. Except for a few large bird ships, the old gate ships adopted the tactic of long-distance artillery, and all other warships rushed up and started a melee. It seemed to be out of order, but the actual effect was extremely amazing.

Because Zheng Ming's navy has now mastered a set of tactics of throwing grenades at close range and then jumping to grab the ship, and blowing up the water fleet that Shi Lang had finally pieced together and capsized his own boat.

Only the galloping and fast ship that Shi Lang himself rode out of the encirclement under General Shi's personal command, Shi Lang set up a fort there under the narrow upper Luoyang River waterway, which could prevent the Ming Zheng's naval army from further deepening.

So Shi Lang, who escaped into the upper reaches of Luoyang River, could finally breathe a sigh of relief. He stood at the stern of the boat and looked at the scene of burning on the water near Houzhu Port in the distance, and just muttered to himself: "Here, the Ming Dynasty is back."

At this moment, one of his personal soldiers suddenly walked up, holding a yellow ball-like object in his hand.

"Military Gate, the little one is picking up a dumb thunder thrown by a pirate!" The personal soldier handed a wet thunder with his hands. The reason why the thunder surface was wet was because Shi Lang came up with a stupid solution, and asked the sailors on the deck to carry a bucket of water by themselves. Seeing the grenade hammer throwing over, he immediately took the sea water from the bucket to water.

Although the method is a bit stupid, it seems to have any effect.

Shi Lang took the wet sky thunder, and then felt that his hands holding the sky thunder were a little sticky and very uncomfortable.

"What water did you water? Why did it get sticky?"

"This is just ordinary sea water." The soldier also felt that his hands were sticky, as if he had pinched a handful of melted sugar. Now that Shi Lang asked, he simply stuffed a sticky finger into his mouth and licked it.

Shi Lang looked at him and asked, "What does it taste?"

“Sweet”

"Sweet?" Shi Lang was stunned, "How could the sea water be sweet?"

As he said that, he picked up the Tianlei Ball and started to study it carefully. After research, he found that there was a hole in the Tianlei Ball, and the hole was particularly sticky, as if it was covered with sugar.

He was also brave and was not afraid of poisoning. He stuck out his tongue and licked the sticky thing, then said: "How come the candy, the Heavenly Thunder Ball, leaked candy out?"

"Are you a mistake?" said the personal soldier, "Maybe it's just a sugar bowl?"

This imagination is really rich!

Shi Lang frowned and thought, "Maybe it was adding sugar to the gunpowder?" He thought for a while, "No, I have to try it! If it is true, it will break the secret of the sky thunder, which can offset the crime of defeat!"

"Hahaha, my country's surname is Zhu Jing, I'm back!"

On an old gate ship that combines Chinese and Western styles, Zheng Jing, the Prince of Yanping, held a thousand-mile mirror and looked at the scene of the entire Qing army's naval army being wiped out on the water surface of the Luoyang River mouth. He also laughed excitedly, and he also claimed to be the "King of the People's Republic of China".

The so-called "national surname" is the "Zhu surname". Zheng Jing's father Zheng Chenggong was given the surname Zhu by Emperor Longwu, so he is also called Zhucheng or the national surname.

Zheng Chenggong can be called Zhu Chenggong, so of course Zheng Jing can also be called Zhu Jing.

However, after his defeat in Xiamen, he did not use the names of "Zhu Jing" and "Guoshi Master", but instead called himself Zheng Yanping.

Maybe I think my skills in fighting are too bad and I don’t deserve to be called a master of the country?

However, this battle at Jiangkou in Luoyang made him proud.

With the hard work of Liu Guoxuan, Qiu Rong and others, and the help of grenade hammers and sulphur bombs, not only Shi Lang's navy was defeated, but even the several clutches that the Dutch came to help the battle also burned the sulphur bombs.

This time, it's really awesome!
Chapter completed!