"You mean, you didn't see any 10,000-ton giant ships in the enemy's fleet?"

"Reporting to the general, it is indeed true."

"...Hmph, this must be a cunning trick by the Western thieves to lure my main force closer! Which Ming general wouldn't use this tactic of showing the enemy weakness?"

"General, the Admiral thinks so too. But if this news reaches the shore, what if the Army and Prime Minister Wen ask us to engage in a decisive battle with the enemy ships?"

"Haha, Cao Bianpeng, you are still a little too young. What are we? The Royal Navy belongs directly to the emperor. Why should an Indian governor-general give me orders directly? Not to mention that he has been in India for only three years and has basically been ruined.

Army."

Speaking of which, the navy actually got involved in Indian affairs earlier: starting about twenty years ago, after the Ming Dynasty captured Burma, the navy took control of the island of Ceylon. However, the reason why the navy did not corrode as quickly as the army did was, on the one hand, Li Guozhu

, Yan Siqi, Du Youning and other chief officers are much younger than Mao Wenlong, Li Yongfang and others, and they still have the idea of ​​​​making contributions, so they run the army very strictly. On the other hand, the soldiers of the navy have long been exposed to high salt, high humidity and even

Working in a high-temperature environment, the skin is generally darker, and most of it is also rough. Among Hindus who initially identify castes by skin color, this is a symbol of inferiority. As a result, girls in Ceylon, especially barkers,

Women from the upper class are not very fond of them.

With less temptation, there will be less corrosion. In addition, the chief officer himself still has pursuits. Therefore, the combat effectiveness of the naval fleet stationed in India is still considerable at this time.

"Admiral, if we don't go to a decisive battle with those white-skinned fleets, what about us?"

"Of course we have something to do." Yan Siqi turned to the staff behind him and said, "Record it."

"Please give me your instructions, General."

"First draft several reports and notifications. The first one will be given to the emperor. We say that we judge that the scale of the pirate fleet must be very large. Our Indian squadron cannot fight head-on, so I am going to lead the entire squadron to sea and wait for an opportunity to sneak attack on the enemy.

Transport supply vessels.

The second copy is for Prime Minister Wen and General Mao. The content is the same as the first copy. Just pay attention to the wording.

The third letter was given to Lieutenant General Du Youning, commander of the Nanyang Fleet, asking him to lead the Nanyang Fleet into the Bay of Bengal and organize transport ships to depart from Yangon to deliver supplies to Calcutta.

The fourth letter was sent to the commander of the Home Fleet, Admiral Li Guozhu, saying that the general suggested that the current enemy situation is unknown and the Home Fleet will not move for the time being. Admiral Li is asked to wait for follow-up news from the fleet. Well, write it all down?"

"General, remember this."

"Next is the announcement. Inform all the ports on the east and west sides of the Bay of Bengal that the Western pirates are invading in large numbers, and all merchant ships should be prepared to escape. If they must go to sea, they should be concentrated in Calcutta and Yangon and escorted by our Nanyang Fleet."

"yes."

"Order all ships in this fleet to implement plan No. 1. All supply ships will arrive at their scheduled locations as soon as possible according to our prior plan. All warships and soldiers must return to the team within 24 hours. At eight o'clock tomorrow morning, all warships will go to sea!"

"yes!"

"Give orders to the Colombo garrison base. After the warships leave the sea, the minelayers will immediately block the Strait of Ceylon with mines."

"yes!"

Just as Yan Siqi was making arrangements in an orderly manner, Cao Bianjiao and Zuo Mengeng led a force of more than a thousand people to the Khyber Pass.

"I've seen two majors."

"Ma Baihu's hard work, how is it? You Jin Yiwei went out to inquire about the news in Persia, did you gain anything?"

"Hey." The Jin Yiwei man surnamed Ma sighed leisurely: "After losing seven brothers, I finally brought the news back. The two of them are on the west side of the Hindu Kush Mountains.

At least more than 200,000 troops are gathering. According to the information provided by our informants, the Ottoman general leading this time is Boris, the same Rakshasa who defended Alexandria for half a year during the previous European-Austrian war."

"Hey~" Cao and Zuo looked at each other and burst into laughter.

"Why are the two majors laughing?"

"Oh, Ma Baihu, actually we were very confused after receiving the task of defending the Khyber Pass. Major Zuo and I are both good at attacking but not good at defending. Shangfeng actually picked the two of us to defend.

Such an important place. And the other party is even more outrageous. They actually picked a general who is good at defense to attack this place... Hahaha..."

"How dare you two still have fun? I see you don't have many people with you. With these people, I'm afraid it's less than three thousand, right?"

"Brother, you are wrong. There are only more than a thousand real soldiers, and the remaining two thousand are to transport ammunition to us."

"Ah? How can that be enough?"

"One thousand people are definitely not enough. What if we add 10,000 Sikhs?"

"The fighting power of the Sikhs is trustworthy, but more than 10,000 versus 200,000?"

"Hahaha, that's enough, that's enough, but we don't even look at who built the Khyber Defense Line."

The so-called Khyber Pass is actually the general name for the valley formed by two rivers in the Hindu Kush Mountains and the surrounding mountains. In other words, it is actually a canyon with mountains on both sides and a flat land between the rivers in the middle.

The total length of this canyon is 53 kilometers. The surrounding mountains are not too high. The average mountain top is only about a hundred meters higher than the valley below. The average width of the entire canyon is about 1,000 meters, and the narrowest point is nearly 600 meters.

Because the valley is relatively warm and the surrounding mountains block the cold current, this valley is accessible all year round and there will be no heavy snowfall.

In short, building a defense system here is much simpler than building the Great Wall in China. But the terrain is dangerous and easy to defend but difficult to attack? Well, at least compared to passes like Jiange, it is far behind.

.

At the end of 1634, Wen Tiren came here in person and asked Ming engineers to design a large-scale defense system based on the terrain here. In the next three years, most of the balance of the Indian Governor's Palace was invested here. By this time

In May 1638, although the entire project had not yet been completed, the usable parts alone were already considerable.

The core of the entire Khyber Pass defense line is the narrowest part of the canyon: on this section less than 600 meters wide, the Ming Dynasty built a small city made of reinforced concrete here: Wen Tiren named it Zhang Xun

Village.

In front of Zhang Xunzhai, there are three lines of defense consisting of trenches, barbed wire, mine arrays and various bunkers. In each line of defense, with a cross-section of only a few hundred thousand meters, Lao Wen, as a civil servant, also has a deep lack of firepower.

People with phobias. So each of them packed in twelve 150mm fortress guns.

Considering that although it is only a short dozen kilometers from Peshawar to here, the altitude rises rapidly in such a short distance, which makes it extremely difficult to carry heavy equipment on this mountain road of more than ten miles. Therefore, Wen Tiren planned this defense back then.

During the system, Nanjiyun Fort and Xuyuan Fort were also built behind Zhang Xunzhai. These two forts were on the one hand military fortresses made of reinforced concrete, and on the other hand they were also large warehouses that stored a large amount of ammunition.

and food.

The defense in the canyon is like this. On the ridge above the canyon, Lao Wen also built heavy machine gun fire points and various turrets of different sizes in many dangerous locations. In short, this defense system, in Lao Wen's words, is as good as

Guan Wan Fu Mo Kai is an exaggeration. But as long as ten thousand people stay here, and as long as the defenders are determined, the enemy, even if they are one hundred thousand or two hundred thousand, can't even think of crossing here.

Of course, the total strength of the Ming army in India was limited, so Mao Wenlong and Li Yongfang only sent one battalion here. The real main defensive force was the Sikhs.

"This school is Cao Bianjiao, and this is Zuo Menggeng. What is your name?"

"Dear Majors of the Ming Dynasty, I am Singh, commander of the First Division of the Kingdom of Sikhs. Following the orders of Governor Wen and His Majesty, I led the entire First Division of 13,000 people to follow your orders."

"Haha, you're welcome then. Commander Singh, this is an overall bird's-eye view of the Khyber defense system. Please ask your division's staff to allocate troops according to the drawings. This work must be completed before six o'clock tomorrow afternoon.

.After dinner tomorrow night, we will inspect each defense point with you."

"As you wish, please rest assured that we Sikhs have our own country thanks to the gift of the Ming Dynasty, and we will definitely fight to the end to maintain our country's independent status and the kindness of the Ming Dynasty."

…

At the same time, in the city of Bombay on the west side of the Indian peninsula, Mao Wenlong also gathered generals here to discuss strategies to deal with the enemy.

In addition to its own three divisions and five Indian divisions controlled by Ming officers, the forces controlled by the Ming Dynasty in India also included many other side forces.

When the Ming Dynasty conquered India, it used the skill of the Ten Thousand Dogs Heavenly March. After the battle, naturally the vassal states that had given their efforts would receive certain rewards. The Ming Dynasty took away the essence of the Ganges Plain and gave it to each vassal state.

The country must have certain weapons, open a border on the map, and let them take the land in the southern part of the Indian Peninsula.

After more than three years, Japan, which invested the most and had the strongest combat power under the Ming Dynasty, obtained the most land: Not only did they completely take over half of Andhra Pradesh assigned to them by the Ming Dynasty, they also continued to move south, destroying two or three

A small independent Hindu country. It gained a total of nearly 200,000 square kilometers of land - which is almost the same as Honshu Island.

Of course, the natural conditions in India are much better than those in the Japanese archipelago, where volcanoes and earthquakes occur frequently. So although the area is still a little smaller than Honshu Island, its food output is 1.5 times that of Honshu Island!

This made the Japanese manage this new territory with a local mentality. For this reason, Toyotomi Tohide not only sent his second son here to take charge, but also asked the 71-year-old Yukimura Sanada to come here personally to guard it.

Each family under his command also sent their capable personnel to station... After Wen Tiren announced the general mobilization, the Japanese in India immediately pulled out three divisions with nearly 50,000 troops - this is not a Japanese officer

The so-called Indian division of Indian soldiers is a force with considerable combat capability composed entirely of Japanese.

The Japanese are like this, and the Fukuoka is similar: the Korean peninsula is generally barren, and the unique land of Andhra Pradesh is also very treasured by the Koreans. Therefore, Fukuoka's personnel in India also recruited two Koreans.

division.

In addition, other vassal states, as well as Kathmandu, Gorkha, Bhutan and other vassal states in the north of the Indian Viceroyalty were ordered to lead their troops to join together. Starting from the general mobilization order issued by Wen Tiren in early March, by this time in early May, in a short time

In just two months, the number of soldiers under Mao Wenlong soared from 80,000 to 290,000, a total of 19 divisions!

Although the combat strength of this 290,000-strong army is definitely uneven, once there are more people, everyone's courage will naturally increase.

However, the military meeting in Bombay lasted for several days, and everyone felt that it was a bit troublesome: if the navy could not defeat the enemy, any place along the long coastline of the Indian peninsula might be a landing site for the enemy, so this defense was really

There is no way to do it.

Finally, Mao Wenlong made the decision: the 290,000 people were divided into three parts.

The weakest group of troops from the vassal states formed four divisions and went to Karachi to defend the Indus Delta: In Mao Wenlong's view, the core of the Indian Peninsula is still the Ganges River Basin. If the enemy's main force lands in the Indus River Basin, it will have to cross

A large area of ​​desert. Therefore, the possibility of the EU's main force landing here is extremely small. However, it is possible for the Ottoman troops to land here.

Five Japanese divisions and two Fukoku divisions with relatively reliable combat capabilities, led by Yukimura Sanada, headed south to Goa - Goa had been operated by Portugal for hundreds of years, leaving behind not too many profit networks.

Therefore, although Goa is already in the southern part of the Indian peninsula and is somewhat far away from the Ganges Plain, there is indeed the possibility of large-scale enemy landings.

Eight of the Ming Dynasty's own divisions were stationed near Bombay—to the northeast of Mumbai is the Ganges Plain, the two core cities of the Indian peninsula, Delhi and Agra.

…

On May 6, 1638, after Mao Wenlong decided on the deployment of troops, he required all armies to arrive at the designated positions and deploy fully by May 20 at the latest.

On May 7, the first batch of European coalition troops landed on Socotra Island.

On May 20, Ming Dynasty's armies in India successively arrived at designated positions and deployed.

On May 21, the transport fleet carrying the first five divisions of Ming Dynasty reinforcements had just sailed through the Strait of Malacca.
Chapter completed!