New Shun 1730

While talking, the two looked at the surrounding terrain.

It was easy to see that this should be the estuary of a river. Three or five miles away from them, there was a large island stuck at the estuary.

In the distance, the warships of Dashun were docked. There was a lighthouse on the island. A group of soldiers also went on the island, separated from them by two or three miles of river water.

Rows of small boats kept sending people to the shore, and there were even seven or eight cavalrymen.

The follow-up troops also slowly landed. The officers directed them to carry supplies and sent out alerts, letting the cavalrymen who came ashore, with several guides or translators who were probably Indian merchants, disperse outward.

Not far away, several officers were looking at the map and deploying the landing arrangements here.

These low-level soldiers only knew that this was the estuary of a river, but they didn't know that the river was called the Hooghly River.

The island next to it, which was similar to Chongming Island, was called Sagar Island.

After a while, it will be a Hindu festival. It can be roughly understood as the winter solstice understood by Dashun, that is, the day when the sun moves north from the Tropic of Capricorn, which can be regarded as the New Year in Hinduism.

It is called the Sankrati Festival. If it is translated rather than literally, it can be called the Winter Solstice, the Sun Festival, or the Xihe Festival.

People will gather on Sagar Island in Bangladesh. In later generations, hundreds of thousands or even millions of people will go to bathe in the Ganges as a pilgrimage. But there must not be so many people at this time, because transportation, industrialization, cheap travel, etc. did not exist. How could a large-scale festival pilgrimage of millions of people be organized? The festival population movement of millions of people would be a "human wonder" in the industrial age, but it is not possible now.

The landing troops of Dashun landed on the coast on the north side of Sagar Island. Kolkata is upstream of this estuary.

If you have to make an analogy, the port location of Kolkata is more similar to Shanghai. It is not a natural harbor like Ningbo. The port of Kolkata is in the river, and you need to go upstream for a long distance to enter the port of Kolkata.

The Dashun staff chose to set up the camp on the north side of Sagar Island, also considering the naval advantage of Dashun, blocking the British Indian fleet in the Kolkata Port on the Hooghly River. They did not dare to come out for a decisive battle, but chose to avoid the battle.

The advantage of setting up the camp here is that the amount of work required to build the camp can be greatly reduced - as long as it is determined that the naval advantage can be maintained and the sea control is grasped, then the defense direction of the camp only needs to face the north side with the help of the muddy channel formed by the tidal mudflats.

The camp chosen by the staff is about 500 steps away from the coast and the Hooghly River, and the terrain of Sagar Island is used to ensure that if the British fleet wants to bombard the camp, it must face the Dashun navy.

According to the battle plan, there are fast ways to fight and slow ways to fight.

Since Fort George was captured at a very fast speed, the best choice is to fight slowly in Kolkata, steadily and steadily, and not to launch a surprise attack.

Although it was easy to launch a surprise attack, because Fort William had been breached by the young and frivolous Siraj before, and most of the buildings were burned, its defensive capabilities were not comparable to the Fort William rebuilt by the British after consolidating its rule.

However, the frontline officers on the Dashun side chose to take a steady approach while ensuring the overall strategic guidance.

The first batch of engineers and the rest of the troops who landed on the shore had to build a camp on the north bank of the Hooghly River, accumulate supplies, and wait for the subsequent troops to land.

In this kind of battle, except for the final field battle, the only possible turning point is that the British army took advantage of the fact that the main force of Dashun had not arrived yet and let the navy choose to leave the Hooghly River and go out to sea to fight a decisive battle with the Dashun navy.

With an absolute disadvantage of one to three in total tonnage, the Indian fleet of Dashun was completely wiped out, the sea control was controlled, and the camp of the Dashun army's vanguard was bombarded... Only in this way could the turning point of the battle be avoided.

Although the possibility was slim, Dashun still very cautiously captured the lighthouse on Sagar Island. There were no troops there, only some Bengali garrisons that could be counted as troops in theory.

And soon built three artillery batteries around the lighthouse on Sagar Island and deployed three 24-pound heavy artillery.

It was in mutual care with the camp on the north bank of the Hooghly River. It was obviously very strong, but too cautious.

Du Feng's planned operation was to block the Hooghly River with Dashun's naval advantage.

Then use a month to transport the field mobile forces in Nanyang to the camp north of Sagar Island.

Including four combat engineer battalions, 6,000 privates of the Ceylon Fubing Line, six artillery battalions, four cavalry battalions in Temasek, four baggage battalions, and relying on Siraj's prestige in Bengal, the local lords of Bengal and the damaged Shiite merchants provided supplies.

A total of nearly 10,000 infantry, 2,000 cavalry, and a large number of powerful artillery.

With the current transportation capacity of Dashun, this is not a problem, including supply.

A large number of requisitioned merchant ships, and a professional transport fleet that is supervised by the government and run by merchants, as well as a professional naval transport ship that can transport 5,000 troops at a time in the Nanyang region after being disbanded - this is to facilitate colonial rule in Nanyang. The one-time delivery capacity of 5,000 can quickly suppress uprisings in any direction of Nanyang, so as to avoid the situation of small-scale uprisings like the Dutch that cannot be suppressed and eventually become a prairie fire.

Du Feng is confident about how long it will take for Mi Ziming to capture Fort Marlboro in Minggulu. This is not a difficult task at all.

As for the so-called mobile forces, except for those special land granting soldiers in Ceylon, the rest of the forces mobilized are not all the forces of Dashun in Nanyang.

For example, the garrisons in Java, Borneo, Moluccas, Sulu and other places, and the small amount of mobile forces outside the garrisons, do not need to be moved at all.

The main force of the infantry resistance line is the Ceylon soldiers. The real one to be used to decide the outcome outside the resistance line is to rely on professional recruitment.

As for how many troops the British have in Bengal, according to Dashun's intelligence, the British in Bengal at this time, except for the navy, actually only have 1,800 troops.

Among them, 300 are desperate people from all over Europe, mercenaries who are eager to make a fortune in India. The British may hire them or not, and even these mercenaries may not be willing to accept the British employment. After all, if they have money, the Indian princes will give more.

The British army is about 800 people.

And the Indian soldiers trained by the British are about 600 people.

Basically, this is all the troops the British can bring here.

The force that Du Feng wants to gather is three times that of the British navy, and about ten times that of the British army if all the army is counted. If broken down, the artillery is more than thirty times, and the cavalry is even more impossible to count... 2000 divided by zero, from a mathematical point of view, it is difficult to say how many times this is.

Overall, Du Feng is in line with Liu Yu's strategy: that is, to win when planning, and not to rely on tactical geniuses like Frederick and Napoleon.

It is quite sad to not prepare well when planning, wait for the war, and then expect a famous general to win.

Therefore, with 20 years of strategic preparation, with Ceylon as the fulcrum and the large-scale migration of people due to the sugar crisis as an opportunity, Dashun prepared 30,000 reserve personnel in Ceylon alone for today's battle, as well as a fleet enough to fight a "Trafalgar" scale naval battle in the Atlantic.

With the perfect merchant ship registration and conscription system and the monopoly authorized official supervision system, the goal of ten against one was to be achieved from the beginning.

Of course, if this is calculated, the troops of the Bengal prince are not included.

And it is hard to say how many troops the Bengal prince can gather.

Because if Dashun only has more than a thousand people on the shore and wants to have a fair one-on-one duel with the British army, then the Bengal prince may secretly negotiate with Dashun and try to defeat Britain with the power of Dashun; or he may choose to stand on the side of Britain and put together more than 10,000 troops.

And if the troops on the shore of Dashun gradually increase from the initial one thousand to more than 10,000, then the Bengal prince will take the initiative to run to Dashun and shout "Jafar is a traitor, we have been waiting for the return of the real Nawab, Siraj!"

Of course, people like Jafar, Siraj's aunt, the previous Sikh merchants, etc., who are called "traitors", will naturally choose to die hard.

In fact, there are two kinds of military myths in the world.

One is the kind that can defeat 50,000 with 3,000 troops and destroy a country with 600 troops, and exclaim that it is invincible.

The other kind relies on its huge size, handicraft capacity, wealth, taxation, and population, and can pull out tens of thousands of fully equipped troops, jaw-dropping artillery, and sails that cover the sky at any time.

The former will become a topic of conversation in later history, and people will still talk about it many years later.

The latter will also become a topic of conversation in later history, and people will feel that "I can fight such a battle many years later."

It is not too realistic, and there is no difference. Because at this time, the rulers and ruling class of reality are not talkers who play military generals fighting chess, but a group of bastards who will weigh whether being a dog or being self-reliant is more profitable.

Therefore, Du Feng, who still adheres to Liu Yu's strategic conception, captured Fort George at a very fast speed, but had to attack Calcutta slowly.

The tactics are very simple.

One and a half months, stationing troops, storing food, diplomacy, pulling people, conspiring, and negotiating with the upper class of Bangladesh.

Then they sent out troops, won the field battle, and captured Fort William.

The navy blocked the outlet of the Hooghly River, and the army set up cannons on the riverside to destroy the British Indian fleet.

Du Feng was also very bold here. He directly sent the vanguard to land and set up camps, and he directly sent the elite troops in his hands.

Because he calculated that the British fleet did not dare to leave the port and shrank in the river port, so the British army would not deploy troops at the mouth of the river.

As long as the first batch of troops landed, even if the British reacted and rushed here from Calcutta, it would take ten days.

Besides, the British army was dispatched quickly, but they were few in number. To really form a deterrent, they had to win over the Bengal troops. The problem was that the Bengal troops came from afar to join, and it was unknown how long it would take.

Therefore, the first task of the more than 1,000 people who landed was to dig the camp, breast wall, and simple artillery facing the north, and deploy the cannons.

Then build a simple dock and wait for the subsequent large troops to arrive gradually.

In the next few days, Zhao Lisheng and others were sweating profusely, digging pits, loading soil, building fortifications, building simple docks according to the orders of officers, and assembling some military lifting machinery.

The rest of the time was spent digging toilets.

After the simple dock was built, more and more follow-up troops arrived, and the camp continued to expand outward.

The Moorish merchants who suffered losses after the British occupied this place, under the temptation of money, helped Dashun to transport anything Dashun wanted.

Wood, wood, lime, meat, rice... Money can solve many problems. Dashun's silver and Indian silver coins are both silver, and there is no stagnation in spending.

With the gradual increase of Dashun's landing troops, as Du Feng expected, soon there were nobles in Bengal who took the initiative to send rice and firewood, and sent people to collude with Dashun's officers to test what Dashun meant.

While waiting for the Dashun army to start unloading a large number of cannons and war horses, some nobles had already sent people to offer to be the insiders and to provide their own private soldiers for support.

After all, the former Jiedushi, Siraj, had fled to Dashun before, and now he was coming back. Who knows, how will this little Jiedushi deal with the previous betrayal after returning to his position?