Chapter 1064: The Territory of the Tang Empire: Yakushima (Expanding the Territory)
Chapter 1064: Tang Empire Territory: Yakushima
Lieutenant Commander Zhang Linong, although he holds the rank of navy and is a naval officer, the military school he attended was a serious maritime academy and has nothing to do with the army, but his fighting style has a strong army style!
When commanding the troops to attack, the formation listed is exactly the three-row formation commonly used by the Army, and there are shotguns in front of the formation. When launching an attack, the shotguns fire first, then use muskets to suppress them, and then launch
charge!
When charging forward, don't forget to fire a volley and then a wave of grenades!
After such three blows, the pirates who were still resisting at the dock were basically more than half dead or wounded. Many of them died under gunfire without even a chance to escape!
Some people may ask why they didn't hide and rely on obstacles and buildings to resist. In this way, they might be able to persist longer and inflict greater damage to Zhang Linong's troops.
The reason is simple!
They are not an army!
They are just a group of pirates. You can't expect them to be able to make the perfect tactics that only the regular army has, and they can fight independently after being dispersed. In today's world with backward communication methods and command methods, let alone these pirates, even if they are large
It would be difficult for Tang Junjun to do this.
If you do this, you will end up fighting on your own and then being defeated separately.
Why were there no street fightings a few years ago, but only around World War I did large-scale street fightings appear?
Because it was not until after World War I that there were machine guns, wireless or wired communications, and the army was more organized, making it possible to conduct decentralized operations. Before that, decentralized operations were a dead end.
The combat mode of street fighting is dispersed combat!
In several battles before, the Ming army also tried to abandon the city wall and carry out stubborn resistance in the city. In the end, they were not divided, surrounded and then wiped out. As for more, after the city wall fell, they were forced to retreat to the city to resist.
These battles were all failures without exception.
If the Tang Army was offended, they would simply bombard the whole city, or even set fire to the whole city.
Cities are not big these days. Most small cities are only a few hundred meters long and wide, and medium-sized cities are only a few kilometers long and wide. Only super cities such as Jinling City and Youzhou are more than ten kilometers long and wide.
, so most cities don’t have much space for street fighting.
Not to mention, this is just a small dock on a remote island, with just a few houses. If these pirates were not just behind the slope, the naval gunfire could have killed them directly, without allowing them to hide and disperse.
Space.
They can only gather together and fight head-on!
As a result, they were defeated simply and neatly!
After more than half of the more than a hundred people were killed or injured, the remaining swarms ran away again!
Zhang Linong, like last time, still did not let the troops pursue the pursuit. Now his most important task is not to pursue, but to occupy the dock, stabilize the defense of the dock, and then receive the transport ship to dock.
When his field artillery is transported from the transport ship, it will be time to launch an attack on the towns deep in the interior. It is too early now.
Anyway, it's just an island, and there are only a few small towns on the island. You can attack them anytime, and you don't even have to worry about them running away.
Now almost the entire Yakushima Island is surrounded by the Ryukyu Squadron, and the only major port is also blocked. They want to escape without a boat, and even with a boat, they can't break through the Ryukyu Squadron's blockade.
Yakushima is not a big island, with a total area of only 500 square kilometers. This number sounds large, but when converted into length and width, the length from north to south is only more than 20 kilometers, and the width from east to west is only about 20 kilometers.
Only about twenty kilometers.
Moreover, most of the terrain on the island is mountainous, and the island is densely covered with various peaks. There are more than 30 peaks with sea waves exceeding 1,000 meters, and the highest one is even more than 1,900 meters. What does this mean?
This means that most of the island's terrain is actually unsuitable for human survival. Only a small part of the coast has flat terrain that allows locals to farm and live.
At present, there are not many people on the island, only more than 2,000 people in total, and nearly half of them are pirates. These pirates and indigenous people basically gather in and around a small port on the northeastern coast of Yakushima.
In fact, before the pirates arrived, Yakushima was even more desolate, with only a few indigenous people living there, and not even a port town. It was just a small village at most.
The arrival of pirates gradually developed this area, and finally a dock was built that could berth large ships, and many buildings were built. It could barely be regarded as a small town.
The port that the Ryukyu Squadron of the Tang Dynasty attacked was the only small port on Yakushima. Of course, this small port city was not crowded on the seaside. The seaside was just a dock.
A few hundred meters past the pier is the center of this small port city. There is a simple city wall with earthen ramparts and wooden fences, but even such a simple city wall is estimated to be only more than 500 meters in circumference.
A town of this size, placed on the mainland of China, is at most the level of a small village, and is not even as defensive as the farms of those powerful people.
Zhang Linong felt that there was no pressure at all to deal with such small towns like villages. As long as the artillery was transported ashore and bombarded with artillery, these earthen fortresses and wooden fence walls could basically be blown to pieces, leaving them with nowhere to hide.
At that time, they had to either die in battle, surrender, or flee into the deep mountains and forests of the island. They had no other choice.
At the same time, the topography and traffic conditions of Yakushima mean that as long as this small port city on the coast is captured, the rest will basically be ignored. As long as the coast of the island is blocked, those who flee into the mountains and forests will sooner or later starve.
If you die or starve to death, you will become a savage, which poses no threat to the Tang Navy's next actions.
Anyway, the commander of the Ryukyu Squadron, Major General Feng Qirong, is not interested in any subsequent large-scale immigration on this mountainous island. He only needs a port and a supply depot.
Next, the Marines led by Zhang Linong began to consolidate the defenses on the pier, and at the same time began repairs to the crude wooden pier.
When the fleet bombarded the port just now, some of it was not contained, and the accuracy of the bombardment these days is not very good. Many shells fell into this small pier, causing damage to the pier.
Without simple repairs, it would be impossible to park and transport artillery and other large quantities of supplies ashore.
As for the pirates hundreds of meters away, Zhang Linong had no intention of paying attention to them for a while. As long as the pirates didn't stupidly rush over and actively ask for a fight, he was in no mood to attack now and just wait.
Those pirates may have been frightened by the bombardment of naval guns and the attack by Zhang Linong's Marines, so they hid in a simple village hundreds of meters away and did not come out to counterattack.
As for running away, there must be a few people, but most of them still don't run, because they don't know where to run. Could it be that they really run into the deep mountains and old forests, so they don't need to be beaten, and they will starve to death there.
.
By the time the dock was repaired and the transport ship began to dock and unload the artillery, it was already evening. We had been busy unloading the artillery for more than an hour, and by the time we were done, it was already evening.
So after nightfall, Zhang Linong ordered the troops to be on alert and then start to rest. As for fighting, there was no rush to come back tomorrow.
The pirates hundreds of meters away, probably unwilling to give in, actually launched a small-scale sneak attack under the cover of night. The result was very tragic. Although Zhang Linong's troops had rested, they arranged a guard force, and it was on point.
There were a lot of torches and the lights were bright. When I saw the dark figures approaching, I fired a volley of shots without saying anything.
As a result, when it dawned the next day, they found several corpses in the open space, and then nothing else.
After using rebellion, Zhang Linong led the Marine Corps to officially launch an attack on the town several hundred meters away!
Needless to say, the process of the attack was just a blast from the artillery and then a charge. After yesterday's failed day and night attacks, the pirates had no intention of resisting. After some casual and symbolic resistance, that's it.
He surrendered obediently.
Of course, it’s not ruled out that someone escaped!
But that's not important!
The important thing is that they have completely captured this small port city and used it as a supply port!
When Rear Admiral Feng Qirong led the officers of the squadron ashore, they also held a simple monument erecting ceremony. There were several lines of words on the monument, namely: Yakushima, territory of the Tang Empire, April 19, Xuanping 8
.
When the Tang Dynasty Navy went to many islands, they would do this regardless of whether there were indigenous people on the islands!
Well, the Datang Western Company is similar, except that after the monument of the Datang Western Company, there is also a sentence added: the territory of the Tang Western Company!
In order to stabilize the rear area, the naval officers of the Ryukyu Squadron did not embarrass the ordinary natives on the island after landing. They were just ordinary farmers and fishermen, and had nothing to do with the pirates or the samurai of the Kanfu clan.
As for the hundreds of surrendered prisoners of war, according to the rules of the Tang Dynasty against pirates, they were all to be shot and then hung on the dock to dry.
However, Feng Qirong considered that his fleet was too far away from the mainland, and he did not have enough manpower on hand. It would be difficult to build Yakushima into a stable logistics supply port.
Therefore, it was decided that except for those pirate leaders who had committed serious crimes and should be shot as a warning, other ordinary pirates should be left alone and let them work as coolies and contribute their power to the construction of the Yakushima port by the Tang Dynasty Navy!