New Shun 1730

If we only look at the tonnage sunk, this naval battle south of Portugal and west of Gibraltar is not a major war.

For both Britain and Dashun, it was not an unbearable and decisive battle.

But the chain reaction it triggered was of more important strategic significance than the losses of both sides in the battle.

According to Dashun's geographical understanding, the current situation in France can be seen as Dashun's main fleet being divided into two parts, one in Calcutta and the other in Weihaiwei. The enemy occupied Malacca, the enemy's main fleet blocked the gate at the Weihaiwei base, and the enemy's squadron strolled in the Indian Ocean all day.

The significance of this battle was that the British Mediterranean squadron had to retreat. The British main fleet that blockaded Brest could not support itself.

Louis XV was a pure opportunist. Strategically, he was either thinking about negotiating with Hanover or landing in Scotland.

Britain was indeed most afraid of these two directions. Once the French fleet in Brest joined the Dashun and Toulon fleets, the impact on Britain would be all-round.

Psychologically, financially, diplomatically, strategically... all will be affected.

However, Dashun and France have their own ideas.

France hopes that Dashun will cooperate with France's strategy.

Dashun hopes that France will cooperate with Dashun's strategy.

The routine of the 18 princes to fight against Dong Zhuo is always being played out.

But for the time being, it has not reached the level of crossing the river in white clothes and stabbing in the back.

Of course, Dashun's strategy is very simple: I will take the lead.

Dashun's fleet will not participate in France's adventurous decisive battle, nor will it escort French landing ships to Scotland.

Instead, it will rest in Toulon, and the rest will cruise in the Mediterranean.

Anyway, if France is willing to do it by itself, then it will fight by itself. Obviously, France knows that it cannot win, so it did not fight before.

In this case, the actual initiative is in the hands of Dashun.

France wants to fight at any time, but whether to fight or not depends on the face of Dashun's main fleet.

And Dashun's attitude is also very clear.

Fight, yes.

Both sides will join forces to take Gibraltar first.

Take Gibraltar, and then talk about the rest.

In theory, this method of Dashun is the safest and most steady way, and it can ensure that Spain directly participates in the war, thus gaining the ultimate strategic advantage.

However, for France, especially the Duke of Choiseul who is now in charge of the army, navy and foreign affairs, it is difficult for him to make up his mind about the correct strategy of Dashun.

The reason why the fleet was separated in the first place was because William Pitt was fighting a political war.

Constantly sending fleets and landing troops to harass the coastal cities of France.

In theory, from the perspective of pure war, this is a brain-worried move.

What's the use of the British army landing? Can it turn the tide of the war on land? Or can it really capture the fortified cities in France that have been transformed in the old Vauban era on land? Or is it expected that three or five thousand marines will attack Paris against one hundred and ask the French army to surrender?

Nothing can be done.

But it can make French public opinion uproar: What do you navy do? Did the Secretary of State grow up eating shit? The British have landed in France, why is the navy so cowardly and not going to fight the British army? The Secretary of State should step down quickly and be replaced by a Secretary of State who can protect France!

Of course, it is the same in Britain: William Pitt grew up eating shit, right? Sending the Marines to France in waves, what results have you achieved? Every attack will be beaten into the sea by the French, and even the bastion fortress of Brest cannot be taken down. What do you do as the Minister of the Navy and Army?

It's all the same.

Admiral Edward Hawke, who had not captured the main force of the French Navy before, was clamored by parliamentarians and businessmen to hang him on the mast and shoot him like John Bean, and burn his portrait. Fighting the French is secondary, party struggles are more important.

In France, every time the news of the British landing came, it would trigger waves of court conspiracies. Fighting the British is secondary, court struggles are more important.

Secretary of State Choiseul has many enemies. Although he relied on the Enlightenment to check and balance the High Court, it was only a check and balance. When it came to the privileges of the nobility and tax reform, he could only be timid, otherwise various conspiracies would make him step down directly.

The original plan to land in Scotland was a desperate gamble after getting angry. Now that Dashun has officially joined the war, Choiseul feels that he has the advantage, and naturally hopes that the Dashun Navy can cooperate with the French Navy to fight a decisive battle with the British Navy in the Channel.

It is not only to protect the possibility of victory in France, but also to protect him as a minister of state forever.

But obviously, this is not in the interests of the Dashun bourgeoisie.

If we say that fighting India is more about the interests of the imperial power to collect taxes and strengthen internal rule.

Then, participating in the European war is essentially Liu Yu pulling the emerging class and bourgeois groups of Dashun to fight, but just borrowing the name of "eradicating all evil, cutting the grass and rooting out the roots, and the Indian problem can only be completely solved west of the Cape of Good Hope" to fool the emperor. And the basis of fooling is the emperor's path dependence on Liu Yu's staff judgment.

So, does the rising class of Dashun care whether Scotland is Catholic or Anglican?

Do they hope to make France the hegemon of Europe?

Obviously not. France's domestic industrial substitution and tariff protection, which disgusted and disgusted the rising class of Dashun, meant that the interests of the rising class of Dashun would never allow France to become the hegemon of Europe.

The purpose of Dashun's participation in the war was to use the French naval power and Britain's fear of landing in Scotland to contain the main force of the British navy, so that Dashun's cruisers could cut off the connection between Britain and the colonies.

And within a few years, the British colonial economy and its mother country were decoupled.

In short:

Cotton cloth, clothes, tea, silk, porcelain, daily necessities, etc. were provided by Dashun.

Molasses, cane sugar, sugar for brewing, etc. were provided by France.

This is not difficult.

After all, the "Honey Act" itself has a huge relationship with North American independence, because French and Spanish sugar is cheaper.

The Boston Tea Party was essentially a war of smuggled tea. The tea with tariffs was all Wuyi tea.

In the early days of the North American independence movement, there were also similar actions like Gandhi in India to weave and use it for their own use and not use British goods.

Because the fundamental reason for Dashun's large-scale participation in the European war was a simple economic and trade issue.

It was not territorial issues, inheritance issues, religious issues, Protestant and Old Church issues, legal issues, etc., which were not related.

Therefore, the cooperation between Dashun and France was of course superficially harmonious, with different dreams and different intentions.

Moreover, Dashun firmly grasped the initiative in the cooperation.

One is that the navy will survive if it is united and die if it is divided, but the death is the death of France, which Dashun cannot die.

This is considered as coercion.

Another is that Dashun secretly expressed that the southern part of the Netherlands, that is, the Catholic Belgian region, can be sold in the future. The premise of this sale is that when the Netherlands is no longer needed to cooperate in smuggling in the future, the Netherlands will be kicked away and France will be allowed to occupy the Catholic region in the lowlands. Although it theoretically belongs to Austria at this time, as long as Dashun acquiesces and cuts off cooperation with the Netherlands after the war, it is obvious that Austria cannot beat France, which is bleeding heavily from Britain.

This is considered as inducement.

In addition, Dashun promised that within a few months, it would mobilize elite engineers to participate in the battle to attack Gibraltar. France was unable to launch an attack alone and could only obey Dashun's strategy.

Today, the situation in Europe is that the British fleet is rushing back from all directions, including the fleet in North America and the fleet that was preparing to attack Senegal.

Because Brest is in Brittany, it is too close to the British mainland, which is the distance from Shanghai to Nanjing.

Moreover, Brest, like Toulon, is similar to the military ports of Weihai and Lushun in Dashun. They are all standard Baoyue Bay Cape Bay terrain. Unless the army's artillery is used to launch an attack on land, such terrain is unsolvable for the navy of this era.

Edward Hawke succeeded John Bean, who was shot on his flagship because of the loss of Menorca, as the commander of the Channel Fleet. Before that, he did a pretty good job, withstood the pressure of domestic public opinion, and creatively used the method of supplying supply ships, so that the navy could not return to the port for a long time to rest and blockade Brest.

However, the current situation is no longer a solution.

With the size of the British Channel Fleet, it is no problem to blockade Brest.

But the premise is that the Toulon Fleet does not slip out to join.

In addition, the Dashun fleet suddenly appeared and defeated the British Mediterranean fleet, which made the task of the Channel Fleet to blockade Brest a suicide order.

Very simple.

It could be blocked before, but the terrain of Brest and the Cape Bay artillery made the French Navy learn from the Atlantic Ocean and simply learn from the turtle. Once it shrank inside, there was nothing it could do.

But now the blockade, once the Dashun Navy and the Toulon Fleet came together, and then the Brest Fleet in the port stabbed it in the back, the British "Oak Great Wall" would collapse.

Therefore, he could only choose to retreat first, give up the blockade of Brest, and prepare for the decisive battle in the Channel.

The whole of Britain took out the mobilization force when fighting against the Spaniards, and began to prepare for defense on the coast, and even introduced a special trial law - for possible Jacobites, Catholics, or people who might be French spies, they would be arrested and shot, as quickly as possible and as severely as possible.

In this strategic game, William Pitt's strategy was actually very correct, and he was one of the few people in Britain who really had a strategic vision at that time.

It can be said that he and Hastings, who was hacked to death by the Dashun cavalry for a pocket watch in India, are the founders of the British era.

Without Hastings, the "first active imperialist of the East India Company", who systematized the colonial theory, the foundation of imperial studies, and the practical theory of Lifanxue, Britain would only have half of the world and could not colonize the traditional countries with historical accumulation east of the Cape of Good Hope.

Without William Pitt's maritime strategy, and his determination to borrow the national debt at the cost of his life, and his subsequent policy determination that led to the independence of North America, there would be no subsequent 150-year-long maritime hegemony.

But the premise of William Pitt's strategy itself is that France gave up its navy.

If France gave up the main force of the navy, then Britain only needs one-third of the fleet to monitor France, and the remaining two-thirds can attack the French colonies, so as to fight to support the war and persist until France can no longer hold on and finally surrender.

So, what if the French navy does not give up?

Obviously, the French navy could not avoid losing lives, because France's finances could not sustain, and France could not make the gentry pay taxes together, so it could not collect money, so it had to take an opportunistic gamble. As long as it was at the gambling table, France would basically lose at sea.

From the perspective of a feudal country, the privileges of the nobility and the preferential treatment of the gentry are not wrong. After all, the essence of this tax exemption is that the nobility is paying blood tax. The problem is that with the advent of the musket era, the blood tax is worthless. The nobility no longer has the ability to wear plate armor and ride a warhorse among the peasants. This problem is naturally big - if the nobility can still fight against hundreds of people with 24-pound heavy artillery and shrapnel, bayonets and muskets, and continue to fight against hundreds of people with 24-pound heavy artillery, lances and 24-pound iron cannonballs, and fighting armor and exempt grenades, then there is certainly no problem with tax exemption privileges, and there is no problem with reproductive isolation.

So France is facing a serious problem of transitioning to a new era, and the transition era is of course fragile, chaotic, and unable to collect new money to support new soldiers, and the cost-effectiveness of the blood tax soldiers in the past has greatly decreased.

Britain can deal with such a France in transition, which is in pain and unable to exert its full national strength.

Because the annual revenue that the British treasury can receive can reach 14% of GNP; while France and Dashun are similar, with low nominal taxes and high base taxes, and middlemen earning the difference, and they cannot collect money that is consistent with their national strength, or the money collected cannot enter the treasury, and no one knows where it goes. Everyone thinks that the tax is heavy, but the treasury has no money.

So Britain can fight against France, whose national strength is actually twice that of France, with an advantage at sea and an excellent fighter in the army, Prussia.

However, with Dashun, it can't be dealt with.

Indeed, the situation of France and Dashun is very similar. Both of them could not solve the problem of the privileged class that could really fight one against a hundred in the past in the gunpowder era and the printing era. It's just that Dashun is too big, and it can still make many amazing moves despite the huge debuff of its own transformation period.

For example, the premise of all William Pitt's strategies is the European-centric perspective, and it is assumed that Dashun will not frantically cross tens of thousands of miles to use troops.

Only under this premise, his strategy is correct.

But the reality is not the case, so his strategy has a big problem.

The biggest danger of his entire strategy is that Dashun will use its own tactics to retaliate.

Because the premise of his strategy is that the naval advantage can blockade France while strangling colonies and trade.

Then, in turn, the main force of the British navy is pinned down by the Dashun navy, and Dashun builds a large number of cruisers instead of battleships. How to deal with the trade strangulation war?