Chapter 3570
Chapter 3570
Chapter 3570
Compared with the settlements cleared in the previous few days, the resistance encountered by Zheng Agui's company here was obviously much stronger, and it was very likely that there were organized armed forces stationed there.
This reminded Zheng Agui of the scene of attacking the Spanish city in the Philippine Islands two years ago. The defenders also relied on buildings similar to fortresses to put up a desperate resistance against the Hai Han army.
After realizing that the enemy's combat power was no longer at the armed level of the immigrants, Zheng Agui did not launch a strong attack, but instead asked his men to stabilize the front line in order to attract some firepower for the naval forces attacking head-on.
He knew that his company was not the protagonist on the battlefield today. If he wanted to break the situation, it still depended on whether Xiao Zhengyang's fleet could successfully destroy the opponent's naval forces.
In the naval battle with the Hai Han warships, the Spanish galleons had to fight as close as possible and use dense broadside firepower to effectively kill the Hai Han warships if they wanted to win. However, the fleet led by Xiao Zhengyang caught the Spanish off guard, and the galleons were hit and caught fire before they left the dock.
The problem now is that the distance between the two sides in the battle is close enough, but because the Spanish galleon failed to leave the dock, it undoubtedly became a sitting duck for the other side.
Moreover, the Hai Han warships were approaching the sterns of these large sailing ships, where their firepower was the weakest, and they had almost no ability to fight back. Although they were not about to capsize and sink, it was already very difficult for them to launch a counterattack.
This small port is not located in a key area, so there are no coastal defense fortresses or other facilities built there. Faced with the Hai Han fleet attacking from the sea, the defenders basically have no effective means of defense and can only watch helplessly as the large sailing ships docked in the port are bombarded by enemy warships.
About an hour after the battle started, the seven or eight Spanish sailing ships in the harbor had all lost their combat effectiveness. Two of them had serious water inflow at the rear, and the back half of the hull had sunk below the sea surface, making them basically useless.
Seeing that the situation was settled, Xiao Zhengyang ordered to shift the target and began landing on the nearby coast.
As for the fortresses and roadblocks near the shore, as well as those enemy firepower points that were still resisting stubbornly, Xiao Zhengyang ordered the ship's naval guns to attack them, reducing the pressure on the landing troops to attack.
When Zheng Agui saw the fireworks signals released from the direction of the port, he knew that the time for the general attack had come, so he ordered the troops to continue advancing into the settlement.
By noon, the sound of gunfire had basically stopped. The Hai Han army successfully captured the settlement. The remaining work was mainly to clean up the battlefield, search for prisoners of war, and count the results of the battle.
Although Zheng Agui's company did not carry out the main attack mission in this battle, it was thanks to his timely discovery and reporting of the enemy situation that Xiao Zhengyang praised him highly when rewarding him for his merits after the war, and specifically asked him to participate in the trial of enemy officials captured in this battle.
Although Zheng Agui had previously led his troops to destroy several settlements and captured many Spaniards, most of the intelligence obtained was of little value. Most of those immigrants had just been sent to Sumba Island and did not even know that there was such a large settlement in the north of the island.
Among the captives captured here were captains and first mates of the large sailing ships, as well as officers who led troops to fight in the settlements. They knew much more information than ordinary immigrants.
Xiao Zhengyang had hardly slept since last night, but he still insisted on personally interrogating these special prisoners to ensure that he would not miss any critical intelligence. The first thing he did was to confirm the identity of the fleet blocked in the harbor. It didn't take much effort to learn from a prisoner why the fleet appeared in Sumba Island.
The Spanish fleet was originally stationed in the Maluku Islands in the north and was one of two fleets that Spain had sent to the region just a year ago.
The two Spanish fleets had already lost some of their forces in previous battles at the hands of the Hai Han army, so the fleet retreated southward to the south of the Banda Sea. In order to avoid exposing their whereabouts, they specially chose the remote Sumba Island for replenishment and rest.
Unexpectedly, they had only been here for the fifth day when the Hai Han army suddenly came and blocked them in the bay, giving them a good beating.
Xiao Zhengyang also got a lot of information from the confessions about Spain's current military deployment in the area. However, after comparing the recent battle reports, he found that most of the garrisons mentioned by the prisoners had actually been cleared out by the Hai Han army in previous battles.
It’s just that due to the speed of information transmission, the Spaniards living on the ship have not yet learned the news.
The work of counting the results of the battle continued until night. This settlement of a thousand people was the most populous colony on Sumba Island. A total of more than 1,600 people were captured after the war.
However, among these more than 1,600 people, real Spaniards actually accounted for less than one-third, and the rest were basically servants and slaves of various skin colors and origins.
This is also a feature of the Spanish colonies. Whether it is the city of Manila occupied in the early years or the large and small settlements cleared on Sumba Island recently, they basically have a similar population structure.
This structure is also gradually appearing in Hai Han's overseas regions, such as Luzon, Xingdao, and Jinshan, far across the Pacific Ocean. The proportion of Han people in the population is slowly decreasing. The farther away from the mainland, the lower the proportion of Han people.
In the company led by Zheng Agui, Han Chinese now only account for about 50%. There are also quite a few Hispanic officers like the staff officer Juan.
The statistics of various seized properties were also available with specific data on the next morning. Compared with the operation against Spain two years ago, the harvest this time was not very rich.
After all, the development of Sumba Island is very limited, and it is not a prosperous trading port. After Spain snatched this place from the Netherlands, before it had time to manage it properly, it was taken over by Hai Han.
In addition, the prisoner also confessed an interesting thing. When the Luzon region's fleet to explore the New World set out from Davao Port on Mindanao Island, the Spanish colonial authorities had already received intelligence. They believed that the purpose of Hai Han's move was to clear out the area where they were. Instead of waiting to die, it would be better to take the initiative. Therefore, they concentrated their maritime armed forces and engaged in a fight with the Luzon fleet on its way south.
Although this action caused the Luzon region to lose to another fleet sent by Xingdao in the competition for exploring the New World, the Manila authorities were actually waiting for such an opportunity to find an excuse to attack Spain again. Now that Spain has taken the initiative to tear up the armistice agreement signed by the two sides in Cebu, it has saved the Manila authorities some trouble and they can go to war directly.
Xiao Zhengyang knew clearly what his father and uncles were planning. Even if Spain remained silent during the Luzon Fleet's march to the New World, it would still be unable to escape the war in the future. The area between the Luzon region and the New World could not accommodate the presence of the Spanish.