Chen Fan had long been prepared to teach Ricci a lesson. If he didn't do it now, he wouldn't know what he would do when he continued to use him. It would be more convenient to teach him a lesson now and make him more obedient in the future.
Xiao Ruxun had learned a lot from Yuan Huang. The old man had been around for a long time and knew a lot about this. He often taught Xiao Ruxun some tactics that he didn't know where he got them from.
Xiao Ruxun's tactics were partly honed in the apocalypse and on the battlefield. More of them were from the theories he learned from Yuan Huang and slowly put them into practice.
True knowledge comes from practice!
After settling Ricci's matter, Xiao Ruxun announced the emperor's decree to the army. He announced the time and the number of troops to be sent to Spain. He ordered the navy to prepare as soon as possible.
The army had to depart at the end of October and finish the battle by the end of November. They would then spend some time to settle the post-war matters and return to Myanmar to celebrate the New Year with their families by the end of December.
There would be three thousand troops, all of which would be dispatched by the navy. There would be no land forces.
In fact, Xiao Ruxun had already proposed the idea of having a Marine Corps when the navy was reestablished three years ago. The Ningxia Firearms Battalion, who came from the main force of the northwest along with Xiao Ruxun, were all from the northwest. They weren't familiar with swimming and would get seasick when standing on a ship, so they weren't very suited for water battles.
China had a tradition of northerners riding horses and southerners sailing boats. Northerners were good at riding horses and southerners were good at sailing boats. Naturally, the northerners would form cavalry and southerners the navy.
To Xiao Ruxun, the navy was more important than the land force. The land force didn't have many battles. Other than the small group of bandits at the beginning, there weren't many battles. Now the land force was mainly responsible for protecting the secret base in the mountains of northern Myanmar and preparing to deal with the restless Myanmar natives. There were no large-scale battles.
However, the navy was different. Xiao Ruxun's navy was the strongest in Southeast Asia. After the rise of commerce in Southeast Asia, they became famous for their pirates.
In order to train the navy's combat ability, Xiao Ruxun took the initiative to take on the task of annihilating the pirates. In three years of battle, he constantly polished the navy's combat ability and expanded the size of the navy. Finally, he built a navy that was not afraid of the Spanish and could fight them head-on.
In the early Ming Dynasty and Zheng He's Great Voyage Era, the main battleships of the Ming Army had a tonnage of about 2,500 tons. The largest battleship was even larger than a standard football field. It was a well-deserved giant of the ocean.
But time flew, and by the end of the Ming Dynasty, the Ming Army's shipbuilding technology had regressed. None of the warships that Xiao Ruxun took over were over 400 tons.
Because of this, the more than 100 battleships that the Ming court had left for Xiao Ruxun were all converted into auxiliary ships by Xiao Ruxun. They had their hulls remodeled. The old and worn-out sails were removed and replaced with high-quality new sails. Then, oars were added to the sides of the hull, cannons were added, and all the unnecessary armaments were removed.
Then, within the scope of current technology, Xiao Ruxun ordered his shipyard to do its best to build large sailboats and multi-deck decks to increase the number of soldiers and cannons. Unfortunately, most of the shipbuilding technology of the ocean-going ships used by Zheng He's fleet had been lost. This made Xiao Ruxun feel that it was a great pity.
When it came to the choice of sails, Xiao Ruxun still chose to use Chinese-style hard sails instead of soft sails. It was not that he had not done any research. When fighting with the pirates, Xiao Ruxun had captured more than one Western-style soft sailboat. He had done some research and then dismantled it.
In comparison, under the current conditions, Xiao Ruxun decisively chose to use hard sails and abandoned soft sails.
In another shipyard, when building merchant ships that needed to sail to Europe, some of the ships were built with Western-style soft sails.
Military battleships were basically all built with hard sails. They required very few sailors, and there would not be a large number of sailors dying when they were put away. More importantly, Xiao Ruxun currently had no way to build larger battleships.
The largest battleship under his command currently had a draft of about 700 tons. It was about twice the size of the current Ming Army's battleships, but it could not be compared to the main battleships of the early Ming Dynasty. In order to quickly form a combat force on the sea and train the navy, Xiao Ruxun did not have enough time to let the shipbuilders explore the construction technology of treasure ships in reverse.
Therefore, Xiao Ruxun was also very resentful of those bureaucrats who decided their heads based on their positions. So many important technologies had been lost. As a result, the shipbuilders under Xiao Ruxun could not imagine how their predecessors built super huge battleships that were four times the size of the current largest battleships. They also did not understand how they could use such heavy hard sails and still have the mast support it.
Their main task was to build battleships, and exploration was a problem that they discussed with each other when they were resting. In the past three years, they had almost never stopped building ships. Until the start of this war, they had only built 300 battleships.
Of course, regardless of equipment or manpower, Xiao Ruxun's shipyard could not be compared to the Ming Dynasty's official shipyard. It was impossible for them to produce 1,300 battleships a year, but it was not tiring to build 300 battleships in two years.
Therefore, these shipbuilders also studied Western-style soft sails in their spare time. Then, they built a 400-ton Western-style soft sail battleship for Xiao Ruxun using the leftover wood.
Xiao Ruxun jokingly scolded them for having no place to use their energy. They might as well think of ways to study the treasure ships. They said that they must study the soft sailboat and their hard sailboat to see which was better.
Xiao Ruxun had no choice but to make a comparison for them. He sent a battleship to compare the two sides. As a result, during the raising of the sails, a young man accidentally fell from the top of the mast into the sea.
Fortunately, he fell into the sea, and he survived. If he fell on the ship, he would definitely be smashed into meat paste.
The shipbuilders looked at each other in dismay. They all buried their heads in building their own ships. This ship was assigned by Xiao Ruxun to be a frigate for the ocean-going caravan.
For the current Xiao Ruxun, people were very precious resources. A population of more than 1,300,000 people was just a drop in the bucket for him. Based on the current productivity, he needed at least a million people to roughly carry out the preliminary development of Myanmar. When the population reached five million, he could barely meet the needs of further development of Myanmar.
Currently, except for the area in the south that was close to the sea, most of Myanmar was still uninhabited. There were only roads and infrastructure, but no people. From a little north of Bogu to the military base in the mountains of northern Myanmar, a large area was desolate and uninhabited. There was only fertile soil and sufficient water.
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