Latest website: Now that Napoleon disclosed part of the truth, then the whole country, all who know the truth naturally firmly support France to "fulfil its international responsibilities" and protect the "freedom of world trade routes." So France immediately began to prepare for this expedition.

With the strength of France today, it is quite easy to send a fleet that can suppress the two sailing frigates of the British in Cape Town. It is enough to send two colonial cruisers. Although the colonial cruiser has no armor, it is still steam-powered, and it still overwhelms the sail cruiser in terms of speed and sailing capability. As for firepower, the two sides are not of the same magnitude. Although in terms of the number of cannons, the British sail frigates have more cannons, but the 75 mm rear-mounted rifled guns of the colonial cruisers far exceed the British sail frigates in terms of power, range, and rate of fire. of.

Moreover, because the colonial cruiser saves on armor and has smaller artillery, the coal bay is larger than the armored cruiser. This means that the colonial cruiser is actually better than the armored cruiser in voyage, and even larger battleships. Second only to the super cruiser.

Obviously, the super cruiser cannot be used for this matter, because doing so is too eye-catching. Everyone should get rich quietly, don't shoot casually, don't make everyone notice it, and find that our actions are unusual, that's not good. Therefore, the troops sent by France should not be too conspicuous. Therefore, the colonial cruiser is the best choice.

However, the number can be slightly relaxed, so the Navy selected three relatively new colonial cruisers and leased two from the "Europa Shipping Alliance" (in fact, a shipping industry syndicate formed by the French smugglers). A passenger and cargo ship is used to load personnel and weapons; a pure cargo ship is used to transport coal for use by the fleet. After all, although South Africa also has coal resources, at this time, these resources are still in an undeveloped state. And limited by distance, there are also infrastructure problems. In a short period of time, the development of resources such as coal and iron ore in Africa is not on the agenda. The French Navy itself does not have many transport ships, and their maritime power depends more on civilian power. And transnational syndicates like the "Europa Shipping Alliance" are an important part of France's maritime power.

Everyone can see what ships the navy moves; the army is much better, and the best personnel and equipment can be used. If it weren’t for worrying too much, if it wasn’t because France had just declared war on Britain, some field marshals would want to personally lead the team. Of course, it is impossible to send a field marshal to such a small battlefield, but it is also a relatively background person in the army. One is that everyone trusts more, and the other is to let them go gilding-anyway, this battle is unlikely to fail.

The marshals of Napoleon were generally young, and there were no suitable heirs who could perform such tasks. But they still have a lot of suitable relatives. The commander in charge of the land battle in this expedition, Major Leon Berthier, is a relative of Marshal Berthier.

Therefore, when the people with Babel’s letter arrived in France, the French expeditionary army was actually ready for everything. Even the French army’s expeditionary battalion was rehearsing in an abandoned old bastion. Attack tactics for a long time.

So as soon as the Dutch immigrants from southern Africa asked for help, the French dispatched a fleet at an astonishing speed. Of course, as the former sovereign state of Cape Town, the Netherlands also sent a company of army and leased a mixed cargo ship from the "Europa Shipping Union" to follow the French fleet to South Africa.

This fleet is all steamships and can maintain a speed of 14 knots throughout the voyage. But even so, it took 24 days for the fleet to arrive in the waters near South Africa. But compared to the sailing era, this is already windy speed.

Also on this day, the British two sailing cruise ships came to Saldanha Bay again. This is the key area for their investigation, because in terms of hydrological conditions alone, it is the most suitable area for building a harbor. The port that the Dutch rebels tried to build last time is in this area.

The British know very well what these Dutch people want to do. They definitely want to use such a port to transport some special large things, such as cannons.

And although there is no telegram, it is impossible to know the situation in Europe, but from the interrogation of the insurgents, the British in Cape Town knew at least one piece of news-France and the United Kingdom have a huge conflict, and war may go to war at any time, even war. It may have broken out.

Some things since then have aggravated the concerns of the British in Cape Town, that is, for a long period of time recently, no British ships have entered the port of Cape Town. This unusual sign seems to prove one point: Britain and France are already at war, and the British are at a disadvantage at sea.

If this speculation is true, then the follow-up will be easy to guess. The Dutch are likely to take the opportunity to send an army to Cape Town to try to recapture the port.

The British army doesn't really value the combat effectiveness of the Dutch army, but they also know that because of the equipment gap, they can't even beat the Dutch militia in the field. The only thing they can rely on is the fortress. Once the Dutch expeditionary force brought a new type of cannon, even if there were only one or two cannons, relying on the range and accuracy of the old iron cannons far exceeded the range and accuracy of the old iron cannons, it could bring them a huge threat.

So the two British sailing frigates, as well as some other small warships, have been very busy patrolling along the coast during this period, searching for ports that the Dutch may be building. The Saldanha Bay is the most important investigation area.

The two British frigates made a circle in the bay and found nothing unusual—the port facility cannot be hidden. So they turned to the exit of the bay, ready to leave the bay. At this moment, the lookout post saw several rows of smoke plumes from a distance.

"Spot a steamship, in the direction of one o'clock!" shouted the watchman on the mast.

The only problem with steam ships compared to sailing ships is that the signs are too obvious when sailing. So at least during the day, under normal circumstances, the sailing boat can always find the steamship first. Although it is definitely impossible to fight, but the sea is so big, if the sailboat wants to run, the steamboat may not be able to catch them.

But the situation today is a bit bad, because they are now in a narrow bay. If they are blocked by those steamships in the bay, it will be really hard to fly.

What's more troublesome is that the exit of this bay is towards the west, and the wind direction in this area has always been very stable-it is located in the westerly zone, and the wind is westerly all year round.

The sails of the sail frigate are mainly horizontal sails, which can provide very good propulsion when the wind is downwind, but when the wind is upwind, the horizontal sails are not easy to use, so at this time, only the bow can be used. The spinnaker on the sloping mast provides power. In this case, the speed will naturally not rise. For example, these two sailing frigates can run at a speed of about twelve knots in a tailwind, but they can only run at a speed of about three knots in a headwind situation ~lightnovelpub.net~. And this speed actually has to be discounted, because when sailing against the wind, one has to keep walking in a zigzag route instead of a straight line. So although it is only a little more than two nautical miles from the entrance of the bay, it is not certain whether it can escape the exit of the bay before entering the steamship's field of vision.

Both frigates retracted their main sails, opened their spinnakers, and sailed towards the entrance of the bay.

Because of the terrain in the bay, the wind is not too strong, which greatly slowed down the speed of the ship. In order to speed up the ship and escape the bay before the steamboat, the British had to run many things in. In the sea, in order to reduce the load of the ship, they even pushed the bow and stern guns into the sea. If it wasn't for the cannons in the closed gun deck that couldn't be pushed out, they might have thrown all these things away.

To say that this approach has a little effect, after dropping a lot of load, the speed of both ships has increased a little.

Very often, a little bit faster, even a little bit, is the difference between life and death. The two boats ran out of the bay before the steam fleet arrived, and when the French fleet entered the bay, they could still see some of the things that were thrown away by them that were still floating on the water.