The Wanli Emperor of the Ming Dynasty was extremely rebellious

Chapter 697 Epic Naval Battle
The Dutch and Anglo-French allied forces did not expect that the Ming Empire was preparing to have a decisive battle with them at Pernambuco.

This is not because their commanders were incapable of fighting.

The key issue is that the east coast of the Americas is too far from the Ming Dynasty's mainland.

The Ming Empire's decision to fight them here is the same as their decision to fight them in the Far East.

It would take at least several months for a ship to make a trip over such a long distance.

There was simply no way they could run to the Far East to fight a decisive battle with the Ming Empire.

Therefore, they believed that the Ming Empire could not possibly travel tens of thousands of miles to fight them.

Actually, this has a lot to do with their lack of productive activities.

The food consumption of hundreds of thousands of troops is terrifying. No matter how many ocean-going ships they have, they can only carry enough food for hundreds of thousands of troops for a few months at most.

More importantly, they didn't have any steamships at all, and they didn't know how fast steamships were. They only knew that it would take at least several months for a sailboat to travel tens of thousands of miles.

In other words, if they gathered hundreds of thousands of people and traveled tens of thousands of miles, the food they carried would most likely be exhausted on the way. Even if they could manage to bring hundreds of thousands of people to the Far East, they would have to rely on plundering for sustenance.

Even if they are very good at looting, they may not be able to loot enough food to feed hundreds of thousands of people.

They understand the principle that an army must be well-fed before it can move, but if they can't solve the food problem for hundreds of thousands of troops, how can they go to fight a decisive battle with the Ming Dynasty tens of thousands of miles away?

Transporting grain over such a distance of tens of thousands of miles wouldn't be fast enough. Were they really going to send hundreds of thousands of people on horseback to starve to death tens of thousands of miles away?
It's obvious they wouldn't do something so absurd.

Therefore, they believed that the Ming Empire would not do such an absurd thing.

They never imagined that the Ming Dynasty would specifically bring hundreds of thousands or even millions of people here to grow grain, and they certainly didn't expect that the Ming Dynasty had already built a large number of steamships capable of traveling a thousand or even two thousand miles a day.

This is beyond their comprehension.

They truly do not engage in production. Even when they enslave the natives to farm, they mostly force the natives to grow cash crops such as spices, pepper, sugarcane, and cotton, and rarely grow grain.

This is also the fundamental reason why they stationed so few troops in their overseas colonies.

They all believed that this place was tens of thousands of miles away from the Ming Dynasty, and there was simply no time to transport the grain.

This place is only about 10,000 miles from the European continent, and with the Gold Coast as a transit point, they have time to transfer the food.

Under such circumstances, how could the Ming Empire possibly gather hundreds of thousands of troops to fight them here?
They haven't even considered this issue!
At that time, all they wanted was to quickly seize Brazil, this huge colony.

In early October, the Dutch and Anglo-French allied forces began a probing attack on Pernambuco.

Upon receiving the news, Emperor Wanli disregarded the danger and personally went to the front lines.

On the eleventh day of the tenth month, around 3 PM, the Weiyuan warship he was on appeared in the middle of the naval fleet deployed off the coast of Pernambuco.

Upon hearing the news, Deng Zilong quickly changed to a centipede boat and rushed over.

After the emperor and his minister exchanged greetings, Wanli asked, "Yunqing, how many warships did the Dutch and Anglo-French allied forces send to probe us?"

This wasn't clearly stated in the urgent report.

Deng Zilong explained in detail: "Your Majesty, they should have sent over a hundred warships, but only about ten actually rushed over to test the waters. The rest are still stationed more than ten miles away and haven't come over."

It seems that the commanders of the Dutch and Anglo-French allied forces were not reckless.

This guy probably feared that if hundreds of warships rushed over, he would be overwhelmed, so he sent ten warships up first to test the waters.

Wanli nodded slowly, then asked, "Have you checked how many cannons their warships are equipped with?"

Of course, I saw that clearly.

Deng Zilong nodded solemnly and said, "Your Majesty, I have carefully inspected them. The ten warships that rushed up were all single-deck and equipped with twenty-four cannons."

Many of their warships, which were moored more than ten miles away, were double-deckers and were estimated to be equipped with around fifty cannons.

Your Majesty, I have also discovered another problem: their warships can sail against the wind and are very agile.

At the time, the wind was blowing from the southeast. I was worried that our sailboats would be blown to the north side of the port, exposing the port to enemy warships' cannons, so I did not raise the sails.

Originally, I thought that no matter what, their ten warships would be blown by the southeast wind to our fleet and come to be hit by cannon fire.

To our surprise, they made a sharp turn about two miles southeast of our fleet, fired a volley from their broadsides, and then headed straight south.

Our Fujian-style warships cannot sail against the wind, therefore, I did not give chase.

Can a sailboat sail against the wind?
There's no need to ask; in later sailing races, the course had to go around a large buoy back and forth, which proves that sailboats can sail against the wind.

Modern sailing ships were invented by the Dutch.

This is one of the reasons why the Netherlands was able to become a maritime superpower in history.

A sailboat can sail against the wind by changing the angle of its sails.

However, this makes the mast structure quite complex. It requires not only an upright mast but also a horizontal mast to adjust the angle of the sails, and the sails themselves need to be divided into many sections.

Emperor Wanli nodded slowly, then asked, "Were their masts and sails very complicated?"

Deng Zilong nodded repeatedly and said, "Yes, Your Majesty, their masts and sails are very complicated."

Their upright masts had many smaller, horizontal masts attached to them, and the sails were also segmented.

really.

Wanli nodded slightly and said, "If they can sail against the wind, then they can sail against the wind. We shouldn't bother studying such outdated ships as sailboats."

Let's think carefully about how to minimize casualties among our soldiers.

"The reason I rushed here is to discuss this with you, Yunqing. Do you think that nailing a wooden frame together and then fixing an iron shield to it would be enough to stop a cannonball?"

This is a good idea!
The cannonballs used by the Dutch and Anglo-French allied forces were still the original type, not the conical type. Round cannonballs could only pierce through wooden planks, and were unlikely to penetrate sheet metal in one go. Meanwhile, the soldiers of the vassal states were equipped with an overwhelming number of sheet metal shields.

The problem is the timber; they don't have any readily available here.

Upon hearing this, Deng Zilong nodded repeatedly and said, "Your Majesty is wise. As long as we fix the iron shield at an angle above the support, a cannonball will at most deform the iron shield, and it is unlikely to penetrate it directly."

However, we don't have any timber readily available here; I must immediately order men to cut down some trees."

Since I'm discussing this with you, naturally there are timbers involved.

Emperor Wanli shook his head slightly and said, "You don't need to order the soldiers to cut down timber anymore. I have already ordered people to haul a large amount of timber for building the dock to the bay more than a thousand miles to the northwest."

All you need to do is send a message to them to bring it over; the flying dragon ship will pull it over, and it will arrive tonight.

Tomorrow morning, order your soldiers to install iron shields on all the gun emplacements of the Fujian warships. This way, when enemy shells come crashing down, the soldiers operating the cannons can hide under the iron shields and save their lives.

Deng Zilong nodded repeatedly and said, "I understand."

Wanli thought for a moment and then carefully instructed, "Yunqing, the Dutch and Anglo-French allied forces have already discovered your fleet here, so it's fine for you to send ships to investigate their situation."

You could send flying dragon ships far to the south or even east to scout their situation, so you'd know in advance how many warships they'd have for each attack.

Yeah, anyway, the enemy has already seen their ships, so if they go to investigate, it won't alert them.

Upon hearing this, Deng Zilong nodded repeatedly and said, "Your Majesty is wise, this humble general understands."

The Dutch and Anglo-French allied forces probed the waters but did not immediately launch an attack.

They discovered that there were more Ming warships in the waters off Pernambuco than they had imagined, and that their two hundred-plus warships might not be enough to take them down.

They also brought in dozens of warships from the Gold Coast, making a total of more than 300 warships before launching an attack on Pernambuco.

It was already early November, and Deng Zilong had covered all the Fujian warships with iron shields that looked like eaves.

He not only ordered them to be installed on both sides of the cannons, but also on every part of the deck where people were.

Now, the sailors and soldiers on the Fujian warships were no longer afraid.

On the sixth day of the eleventh lunar month (Xinwei day), the great battle that would determine maritime hegemony finally began.

The Dutch and Anglo-French allied forces had assembled more than 300 warships and were coming in a menacing manner. Deng Zilong, who had already learned of this, also mobilized 300 Fujian-style warships to meet them.

Early that morning, around 7:00 AM, the two sides engaged in a major naval battle in the waters about 20 miles southeast of Pernambuco.

The sailing warships of the Dutch and Anglo-French allied forces were indeed agile, turning more than twice as fast as the Fujian-style warships. Moreover, their sailing warships were not affected by wind direction and could turn and sail without any problems.

In this respect, the Dutch and Anglo-French allied forces seemed to have a significant advantage, which was also the basis for their courage to confront the Ming Empire's fleet head-on.

However, their firepower was far inferior to that of the Ming Empire's warships, because apart from the one hundred modified thousand-ton Fujian warships, the cannons on the other Fujian warships were all loaded from the rear, and could fire ten cannonballs in a row within a quarter of an hour.

The Dutch and Anglo-French forces were still using muzzle-loading ammunition, and it was considered remarkable if they could fire four or five shells within fifteen minutes.

More importantly, the Ming soldiers seemed to have no regard for their lives. As long as the warships of both sides entered the range of the cannons, they would relentlessly bombard the enemy warships, completely disregarding the fact that the enemy's cannonballs could also hit them.

As a result, both sides suffered significant losses of warships.

On the first day of the battle, both sides lost dozens of warships and several were sunk.

In just two days, both sides lost over a hundred warships, and more than ten warships were sunk.

Within three days, the Dutch and Anglo-French allied forces could not hold out and retreated.

There was nothing they could do; their warships had suffered more than half damage, while the Ming warships were still determined to fight to the death.

If this continues, even if they can take down three hundred of the Light Army's warships, they won't have many of their own warships left.

They had no choice but to urgently request assistance from mainland Europe and send more warships over.

As for abandoning the attack on Pernambuco, that's impossible.

The Battle of Ostend proved that once these guys start fighting, they're like desperate criminals, determined to settle things once and for all.

In that battle, they were only defending a castle and there was no real benefit to be gained. They fought for several years.

This battle concerns the ownership of the vast Brazilian colony, and the potential profits involved are immense, so they certainly wouldn't give up easily.

More importantly, the Ming Empire's strength was not invincible.

The piecemeal tactics employed by Wanli and Deng Zilong always made them feel that if they put in a little more effort and brought in a few more warships, they could win.

Under these circumstances, they are even less likely to give up.

They acted as if they had gone mad, constantly mobilizing warships to fight the Ming Empire to the death.

The Ming Empire seemed unwilling to back down either. They mobilized warships, and the Ming Empire mobilized warships in return. No matter how the fighting went, the Ming Empire fought to the death and refused to retreat.

This epic naval battle lasted for nearly a year, and both sides lost more than a thousand warships!

The Dutch and Anglo-French allied forces had already exhausted their warships; the ships that came later were all converted and armed merchant ships.

On the Ming Empire's side, nearly a thousand Fujian warships were wiped out, and over a hundred of the two hundred Weiyuan warships had their armor penetrated!

Such an epic naval battle was unprecedented in European history.

The largest naval battles they fought were the Spanish expeditions to England. At that time, although the Spanish Armada once had more than a thousand warships, it was only Spain that had that many warships; England did not have that many warships.

By the time the Dutch navy rose to prominence, the Spanish Armada had already been wiped out, so there had never been such a large-scale naval battle in European history.

This decisive battle between them and the Ming Empire was the largest naval battle in history.

(End of this chapter)