New Shun 1730

In the evening, the reconnaissance balloons on the Dashun side were withdrawn, and the British army began to gather the defenders in the direction of the bay under the cover of night.

After the officers passed the order, the soldiers were very excited. Rather than waiting to die in this besieged state, they would rather fight.

However, this time the attack can only rely on infantry and sailors who landed after the ships were burned, and the artillery cannot provide support.

Because the siege fortifications on the Dashun side, even during the day, and even if the Dashun and French artillery did not fight back, the artillery would have no effect, let alone at night.

It also takes time to change the state of deploying troops to various artillery positions, to assemble, and then to attack and deploy.

It is not that the officers give an order, and the soldiers stationed at the bay artillery a few miles away can instantly complete the reorganization and formation and counterattack the siege trenches of Dashun.

The time when the British army began to gather troops was in the evening. After resting, the time to launch the attack was late at night close to dawn.

Because of the moon's trajectory, the moon that rises in the second half of the night can also provide some light for the attack.

Because of the ebb and flow of the tide, if the Chinese and French coalition forces in the Gulf want to use floating artillery to bombard and then cover the French Marines and the small number of troops of Dashun there to attack from the Gulf, it will take at least until nine o'clock in the morning.

Therefore, the British army theoretically has about four or five hours to raid the camp of the Dashun army in the direction of the Isthmus, seize supplies, burn cannons, and rob the shops of Spanish merchants.

It should be said that the British army is still well-trained. In this case, it does require a certain degree of organization to reorganize the team and complete the attack without being noticed by Dashun.

And the British army stationed in Gibraltar has such an organization, or what kind of comparison is there between the British Army and the Dashun Army in terms of tactical system, which is a long story.

The main force of the British army stationed in Gibraltar at this time was the 20th Infantry Regiment, whose old commander was James Wolfe, whose original title in history was "Conqueror of Canada".

He was the commander of the classic scene in the line-soldiers era - the British army marching in formation, facing the French muskets, advanced to 30 steps, stopped, fired a volley, and defeated the French army in one wave, and Canada changed hands.

James Wolfe and John Mordaunt, the commander of the British army in Gibraltar at this time, were old acquaintances. At that time, he was still pursuing his niece, and he was considered a niece's husband.

When James Wolfe served in the European war, he was with Mordaunt. Later, he was promoted to colonel and served as the commander of the 20th Regiment, which was the main force of the British army stationed in Gibraltar at this time.

During the siege of Rochefort Port, his troops were mobilized to participate in the war, and they were still under John Mordaunt.

However, when discussing whether to continue the attack when the neutral Dashun merchant ships were in the port, Wolfe believed that the navy did not need to bombard, and the Marines could directly attack on the shore without cover, so as to avoid the merchant ships of neutral countries and pose a threat to France.

In the subsequent blame-sharing meeting, Wolfe was not implicated because of this remark, but was reused instead.

The reasons are naturally multifaceted.

First, his father had just been promoted to admiral.

Second, William Pitt's strategy did not think that he could turn the tide of the war by landing in France from the beginning - the core interests of strategic defense can sometimes be expressed in the form of offense. If you don't understand, you can think about why China in later generations was a standard strategic defense under the state of hegemony between the United States and the Soviet Union, so why did it have a nickname like "Fighting Rooster" that was full of martial virtues.

William Pitt's purpose of attacking France was not to defeat France, but to attack purely for the sake of attacking, and the attack itself was the purpose. Only by attacking can France be mobilized, so that France cannot gather troops to the north line, nor can it concentrate its fleet to threaten Britain and North America. Instead, it will reserve a large number of troops and fleets on the long coastline to guard against British harassment, and Britain can use this worthless attack to guarantee its core interests.

Therefore, Wolfe, who insisted on launching an attack on Rochefort, and William Pitt, who was one of the few army officers who understood Pitt's intentions after the Battle of Menorca and determined that France would not land in Britain unless Hanover failed, recognized his overall view and believed that he was the best executor of his North American and Caribbean strategy.

Third, when suppressing the Scottish and Catholic uprisings, Wolfe refused to massacre British Catholic women and children, and refused to shoot a wounded opposition nobleman, forcing the Duke of Cumberland not to let a soldier shoot again, thus earning a very good reputation among the Whig Party and the urban industrial and commercial classes. Because he refused the order of the Duke of Cumberland, there is a fourth reason involved.

Fourth... the issues involved here are more complicated. He has the support of London Financial Street. This is closely related to the third thing, which involves some British military reforms, the game between the Whigs and the royal family; the Duke of Cumberland's intention to strengthen the royal power and his military reform ideas to strengthen the standing army made the Whigs and financial capital feel strongly uneasy, and they needed a living "conscience of a true gentleman who defied the butcher and tyrannical orders" as a model.

The core issue involved here is why the British army, which had been besieged for two months, could still assemble at dusk, execute military orders, and launch a counterattack against the siege fortifications of Dashun.

In fact, people often have similar ideas, especially the thinking of fighting beasts and the view of heroic history.

For example, many people in later generations will wonder what history would have been like if so and so had lived, so and so had not died early, and so and so had lived for as long as so and so.

People in the British circle also have such fantasies. Regarding the issue of the North American War of Independence, the two people they most often fantasize about are: if Clive had not committed suicide due to opium torture and went to North America to become governor; if James Wolfe was not killed in the volleyball show in Canada, but as the military commander in North America, what would happen...

There is no need to consider the economic foundation, no need to consider trade, no need to consider the combination of financial capital and the nobility, no need to consider the contradiction between forced feudal monopoly and free trade, no need to consider the European market's demand for raw materials, etc.

But in turn it also proves two things:

One is that people who have established a certain reputation should die as early as possible. The sooner you die, the more perfect your reverie will be in the afterlife.

Second, James Wolfe is really implementing the reform of the British Army, making the British Army truly an army capable of fighting, and can be regarded as a representative figure of the reform of the British Army.

In fact, the military reform and tactical system reform that Liu Yu presided over in Dashun was not an isolated incident.

Almost at the same time as Liu Yu's Dashun military reform, there were also British military reform, French military reform, Russian military reform, Prussian military reform and Austrian military reform - including the military reform to be carried out by Carlos III of Spain not long after in history. Military reform can be regarded as the aftermath of this wave of military reform around the world.

From a purely technical perspective, this worldwide trend of military reform among major powers originated from the War of Spanish Succession. The standard configuration of a flintlock gun and bayonet has been proven by the blood and fire of actual combat to be the most cost-effective tactical system of this era.

The tactical system that matches the arms technology requires formations, queues, discipline, treasury revenue, a strengthened centralized government, and a standing army.

In Dashun, this manifested itself in the officer corps, the recruitment tactics system, the franchise system, and the increased treasury income from the development of overseas trade.

In the UK, there is one more issue of "royal power" than Dashun.

Before this new era of military reform, which began thirty or forty years ago and was carried out by major military powers around the world, Britain's theoretical standing army almost did not exist.

Both the Tories and the Whigs opposed Britain having a standing army.

It is very easy to understand from a class level.

The last time Britain actually had a standing army, it was called the Republic of England, and its leader was not the king but the Lord Protector.

Although Cromwell did this and that, he did carry out a social revolution involving production relations to a certain extent. Although it was not complete, the Tories also suffered serious losses that time.

They still have lingering fears about the standing army that affected their social revolution, as well as the intensifying "digging faction" and "land equalizing faction" movements in the standing army, and the land equalizing mutiny that almost led to it.

The Tories believe that the standing army is a breeding ground for the spread of "extreme" ideas such as the Diggers and Land Distributors, allowing various ideas to spread rapidly in the efficient organization of the army. Therefore, they firmly oppose the establishment of a formal standing army in the United Kingdom.

The Whigs were naturally opposed to it.

The reasons for their opposition are also closely related to their class attributes.

The Whig party only tolerated the existence of the army during peacetime. As prominent families, local forces in counties, and capital groups, they were confident of controlling the army under the previous "ownership of captains of merchants" and making the army permanent. Seeing it as autocracy and tyranny, he believed that no standing army should exist in any country, but that the army of each county should be formed by the reputation of each county.

The Whig Party publicly stated: [The officer purchase system is the guarantee of parliamentary sovereignty to prevent royalist rebellion].

There are two things involved here.

1: The officer purchase system, which is also the regimental commander ownership system, may also be called the "county soldier system" or the "buqu system".

Two: Does sovereignty lie with the Whig-controlled Parliament, or with the monarch, that is, parliamentary sovereignty? Monarchy?

The officer purchase system and regimental commander ownership system here... If it were before the military reform, the 20th Regiment currently stationed in Gibraltar would not actually exist. Instead, it would be known as "a certain knight's regiment", "a certain lord's regiment", Named after "a certain group of gentlemen".

Spend money and buy the leader. The army is formed with the regiment as a unit, the finance provides ordnance, basic food and grass, and the regiment leader provides bounties, allowances, salaries, etc.

The regiment leader can sell the lieutenant colonel, major, captain, company commander and other commanders in the regiment. Generally speaking, the more he pays, the more he earns.

In English, "company" and "company" are the same word.

Those who buy company commanders and battalion commanders are equivalent to buying shares. Including the profits from battlefield trophies and the "legitimate exclusive commercial and trade rights of the regiment", the profits are naturally distributed reasonably by the "shareholders".

The Whigs said, "The officer purchase system is the guarantee of parliamentary sovereignty to prevent royalist rebellion." This sentence is of course very correct.

Simply looking at it from the perspective that the military is an institution of violence: after Emperor Ling of the Han Dynasty reestablished the state pastoral system, were there still "royalists"? Sovereignty is not firmly in the hands of the "prime minister".

Of course, the situation is different, but the topography of the UK determines something that is essentially the same as Dashun, but behaves differently.

That is, Dashun can develop the navy, because the emperor of Dashun knows that although battleships are strong, they cannot sail on land. However, within the army, the elimination of Liu Yu's influence has already begun.

In Britain, its terrain determines that the navy is the pillar of the interests, while the army is the force that determines the political struggle on the island. The republic, restoration, anti-restoration, Catholicism, and state religion have come one after another. The Tories and Whigs are full of vigilance against the standing army.

And obviously, such an army cannot adapt to the era of flintlock arrays, nor can it achieve professional confrontation with thousands of people in this era. The various restrictions on the army, the South American expedition in the Jenkins Ear War, became the biggest military laughing stock in Europe, which triggered the military reform of the Duke of Cumberland.

The problem is that the Duke of Cumberland is the king's own son, so what will this military reform make the parliamentary faction think?

Does the standing army mean royal tyranny?

Standing army reform, and it was proposed by the king's own son, what is this trying to do?

Coupled with the theory of restoring the monarchy that the Prince's Party had been advocating, it was inevitable that the Whigs would feel uneasy: the Prince was gone, and the princes had grown up watching Viscount Bolingbroke's ways. It was unimaginable if they could still control a standing army.