In the war between the Tang Empire and the Portuguese, they used time and geographical advantages in the early stage to capture Malacca in one fell swoop, control the Strait of Malacca, and then control the entire Southeast Asia.
However, subsequent operations in the Indian Ocean coastal areas did not progress so smoothly.
This is not to say that the battle was lost. In fact, battles were often won. One day, a city was captured and hundreds of enemies were destroyed tomorrow. However, the Tang Empire seemed to have won victories on various battlefields along the Indian Ocean coast.
But there is still no way to expel the Portuguese!
The most obvious example is that the Portuguese still control at least one colonial stronghold in Myanmar. As for India, West Asia and the east coast of Africa, there are even more!
The Tang Dynasty seemed to have won victories everywhere, and its naval fleet also defeated the Portuguese navy. However, they still had many colonial strongholds, and Portuguese ships still traveled to various waters in the Indian Ocean.
This does not mean that the combat effectiveness of the Tang Navy and Army and the Datang Western Company fleet is not good, but that they are too far away from the mainland of the empire.
The long distance means that it is difficult to deliver supplies.
Difficulty in supply means that there are few troops to maintain!
So far, the total number of imperial ground troops deployed in battlefields such as India, West Asia, North Africa, East Africa, and South Africa is only more than 30,000. Among them, there is one division of the Army, which is the 19th Infantry Division, and one Marine Regiment of the Navy.
The more than 10,000 people below are all ground combat troops of the company's fleet.
And these troops were dispersed to garrison and fight in dozens of colonial strongholds of the empire, and their enemies were not only the Portuguese, but also the native Indians and African natives.
So much so that some small and unimportant colonial strongholds only have a hundred troops!
The Tang Dynasty had few troops, but the Portuguese had many troops. They were also not many!
However, their military strength will definitely not be less than the troops deployed by the Tang Dynasty in various places along the Indian Ocean!
Although Portugal has a small local population, it cannot form a large local army.
But they are not stupid, they will recruit colonial people to fight. When the Portuguese occupied Malacca before, the largest number of Portuguese troops defending the city were not local troops, but five thousand colonial troops.
By recruiting a large number of colonial young men to join the army, this is to make up for the Portuguese's disadvantage of a small native population. As long as they have money and ships and can maintain supplies, they can maintain an army with a total strength of 30,000 to 40,000 people.
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Scattered battlefields, insufficient troops, and supply difficulties are all problems encountered by the empire.
Well, the Portuguese are almost facing the same problem.
Moreover, there is another aspect of the war between the two sides that is very interesting and is a huge headache for the generals on both sides.
That's the bastion!
Everyone is familiar with the bastion. The Tang Dynasty has been playing it for more than ten years. The Portuguese came into contact with it earlier. Later, they effectively prevented the bastion design of the Tang Dynasty. So now, the bastion structures of both sides are similar.
Ah, and they all like to build bastions in colonies. Large colonies will build large bastions, and small colonies will just build small bastions.
Malacca used to be a large fortress.
In order to conquer a bastion fortress like Malacca, the Tang Dynasty used hundreds of artillery pieces and fired tens of thousands of shells, more than half of which were heavy artillery.
Although the other bastions are not as abnormal as Malacca, they are all veritable turtle shells.
So much so that when the Tang Dynasty wanted to conquer the Portuguese colonial stronghold, it had to prepare for a long time and mobilize a large number of troops and artillery before it could be conquered.
The same goes for the Portuguese!
A battle in Malacca allowed both sides to see the excellent defensive performance of the bastion!
And that would be great. If both sides want to attack each other's fortress, they will have to spend a lot of effort.
More than half a year has passed, and the war situation in the Indian Ocean is still dominated by a stalemate between the two sides.
Another data can also explain the stalemate on the Indian Ocean battlefield, that is, the two sides have been fighting for so long, but there has never been a battle involving more than 5,000 troops, nor a battle involving more than ten ships.
naval battle.
Because even the expensive army has to admit that in the vast area along the Indian Ocean, with extremely limited supplies, it is impossible to eliminate the Portuguese in a short time just by relying on ground combat troops. We really need to have such fortresses one by one.
If you chew on it, it will be less than ten years.
If you want to completely defeat the Portuguese, you have to rely on sea warfare!
To annihilate the Portuguese fleet and block the routes, as long as the Portuguese cannot get reinforcements and supplies from the sea, then sooner or later those Portuguese colonies will have to be eliminated one by one.
But the Portuguese are not stupid. They have long known that the Tang Navy was equipped with steam engines. Although they still do not understand steam engines and cannot build steam engines, it does not mean that they do not know the functions of steam engines.
Therefore, the Portuguese ships knew that the fleet's maneuverability was not good, so they did not give the Tang Navy a chance to conduct a large-scale decisive battle at sea. They did not even intend to fight a serious naval battle, but only acted as transport ships.
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The Indian Ocean is so big. Even with the dozens of warships of the Indian Ocean Fleet of the Datang Navy, even if they are combined with the warships and armed merchant ships of the Datang Western Company, they cannot expect to be able to completely block all routes.
At that time, the Portuguese failed to completely block the Indian Ocean, which allowed the Datang Western Company to slowly gain a foothold in India and gradually develop.
It is also difficult for the current Datang Navy to completely blockade the Indian Ocean.
Therefore, the current Indian Ocean war situation seems to have achieved a lot of victories and a lot of results, but it is still too early to completely drive out the Portuguese.
But Li Xuan didn't want to work with the Portuguese for more than ten years in the Indian Ocean. Life was short, and he didn't have so much time to spend with the Portuguese.
Since the Portuguese resorted to staying in the colony and breaking up their ships to avoid fighting, the Tang Dynasty should change its strategy appropriately.
The Indian Ocean strategy formulated last year no longer meets the needs of an Indian Ocean war.
To this end, Li Xuan once again convened an army and navy expansion strategy meeting one year after the war broke out, that is, in August of the 23rd year of Xuanping.
However, even though this strategic meeting discussed the Indian Ocean War, no senior generals who participated in the war in the Indian Ocean came back to participate in the meeting. The reason was that it was too far away!
This trip back, even if there is a steam engine ship, will take at least more than a month. If the round trip takes several months, they don't need to direct the war in India!
The meeting was attended by generals from the Gyeonggi region. The main content of this enlarged meeting was not to discuss how to solve the Indian Ocean war situation, but to discuss whether the Indian decisive battle plan proposed by the navy was feasible.
The navy discovered last year that it was impossible to realize that the Portuguese would gather the main force of the fleet and then engage in a vigorous naval decisive battle with the Tang Dynasty navy as they expected. The Portuguese had broken it into pieces from the beginning and pursued the
If I can't fight, I can't hide?
And it was impossible for the Tang Navy to completely block the shipping routes, let alone block every colonial port.
After this status quo was reported back to China, a large number of naval staff officers thought about it and finally came up with a so-called decisive battle plan in the Indian Ocean.
The combat plan put forward by the Navy is naturally centered on the Navy. However, considering the particularity of the Indian Ocean region, this combat plan also requires the cooperation of the Army and the Western Company fleet.
Otherwise, this plan would not have been discussed at the imperial strategic meeting, and the navy would have done it themselves.
It is precisely because it involves the issue of cooperation between multiple services that it needs to be discussed before the imperial court.
Most of the generals in the conference room are actually members of the Datang Joint Operations Department, so to a certain extent, this is also a meeting led by the Joint Operations Department.
At the beginning of the meeting, Li Xuan was an old monk in meditation as usual, and the imperial prince Li Hao, who accompanied Li Xuan to the imperial battle meeting, also sat under Li Xuan, among the ministers, just as he had followed Li Xuan to the meeting before.
Go up, and only listen but don’t speak.
However, the fact that the emperor and the prince did not speak did not mean that the meeting was extremely dull. On the contrary, the ministers had long been accustomed to this situation. Li Xuan had been doing this for more than 20 years.
Not long after the meeting began, generals from various services began to quarrel. Not only did the navy and the army quarrel, but the army and the company fleet also quarreled. Even the generals within the navy had different opinions.
As he said this, the meeting began to go off topic, from the plan for a decisive battle in the Indian Ocean to you blaming me and me pointing at you.
The Army scolded the Navy for being incompetent and unable to block even a single route, so that it allowed the Portuguese transport ships to run around and reinforce various places, making the Army extremely passive when conducting ground operations.
The Navy also scolded the Army for cherishing its life, saying that after taking down such a large fortress as Malacca, it could not even take down the small and medium-sized port fortresses on the coast of the Indian Ocean, and the Navy was exhausted and was running around the entire Indian Ocean.
Even people in the company's fleet have a lot of dissatisfaction, saying that the army and navy are unable to contribute to the Indian Ocean war. There are so many warships and ground combat troops, but in the end, the main battle is still fought with the strength of the company's fleet.
Mainly, and still gave an example of a battle that took place on the southern coast of India in the first half of the year.
At that time, the Portuguese gathered more than 3,000 troops to counterattack a colonial port under the control of the company's fleet, and launched a siege. They waited for more than a month for reinforcements from the navy and army. In the end, the company's fleet came all the way from Gohe Prefecture.
The fleet and more than a thousand troops were mobilized to reinforce, and then the Portuguese were defeated and driven away.
However, the Army said that they planned to send reinforcements, but the Navy refused to send warships to escort them.
The Navy also said that their force strength was tight, but most of the warships were sent to the western coast of India and the eastern coast of Africa to fight against the Portuguese, and there would not be many ships available for a while.
This goes on and on, you scold me, I scold you, and eventually we end up in a mess.
However, Li Xuan above was still indifferent, as if he didn't hear anything.
Of course, everyone knows that although the Holy Emperor seems to be aloof, others are listening and makes his decision based on the discussions among the ministers.
Otherwise, why were the ministers arguing so vigorously? It was not to gain an advantage in the argument and make the Holy Emperor lean towards their side.