On February 22, 1703, several days have passed since the battle on February 18. In these days, the Spaniards were like a poor man who was hit on the chin and fell to the ground in a boxing match, and had no major moves. On the contrary, the East Coast people have been actively repairing fortifications, building new warehouses and military camps. For this reason, they also transported more than 5,000 Moroccan workers from the other side of the sea to work day and night to ensure that all projects are completed as scheduled.

Today, the East Coast control area is only more than ten square kilometers, but there is already a decent military camp, a large material warehouse, an arsenal, a field hospital, a water filtration system (filtering the collected rainwater and fresh water from the port of Dangi), a small gun repair office, a transformed military dock, etc. The price paid is that more than 100 local residents and Moroccan workers died of illness and exhaustion, and the face of the town was completely different. However, in the eyes of the East Coast people, the original planning of the Gibraltar town was very problematic, and they wanted to demolish and rebuild them all. Now that this opportunity is the best.

As for the local Spanish residents, the East Coast people have already made plans. After the situation stabilizes, they will ship these people to Alexandria in Egypt, then cross the famous Mara rail transportation line and enter the Red Sea. Then they will take a boat to the colonies of Diu, Sudao, Bahrain, Rabaul, Brunei, Dili, etc. controlled by the East Coast. The average number of people is placed in each place, and it will be almost allocated.

Moroccans on the other side of the strait also deal with the same way. Of course, these people have to be troubled by some of the main reasons for religious belief. As we all know, the laws on the east coast are different from those on overseas colonies. The locals have barely recognized the Green Church as a legal religion (but the social level is still very large, and the Green Church does not form a community and the number of people is very small), but almost none of the overseas colonies recognize it as a legal religion. Not only the Green Church, but even the Orthodox Church, Shintoism, Hinduism and other foreign religions have not been recognized. Think about it, Diwu and Asashima do not recognize Green Church and Hinduism. What a grass lie for the locals, although their number is already very small.

In this way, how to resettle tens of thousands of Moroccans in Dangi and Ceuta has become a real problem facing the Straits Management Committee. In fact, according to their original intention, they wished to keep all these people, build various infrastructure for the local area, and slowly "consuming" them in high-intensity labor. But this is obviously unrealistic, because the East Coast is a civilized country and cannot act so savagely. These people still have to be slowly digested through various tasks.

The most important one is naturally the work of converting believers. To put it bluntly, they are required to convert to believe. The National Taoist Association has been doing this and has made some progress. According to their latest report, among the tens of thousands of Moroccans in Danji and Ceuta, more than 2,000 people have converted to East Coast Taoism so far, which is gratifying. The Taoist Association has also promoted this as one of their great achievements and has won the recognition of relevant leaders of the East Coast Religious Affairs Bureau.

It is reported that the Taoist Association has planned to send a real person to take charge of the transformation of the beliefs of pagans and strive to achieve greater results. The Taoist Association adopted the strategy is nothing more than positive and negative, and it cannot be separated from the cooperation of the Straits Management Committee and the government. The positive aspect is interest induction, that is, those who are willing to convert to the trust can be exempted from corvee service, or engage in easier corvee service work, and the service period is shorter. In addition, the tax rates of various taxes they pay will also be reduced, and it will be more convenient, quicker and more comfortable when applying for various licenses.

The opposite is punishment. Those who refuse to convert to the trust will definitely pay more taxes. Many commercial licenses will be far away from the future. The government will never say that they cannot be handled, but they will even be often discriminated against by police and garrison soldiers, such as various interrogations.

Of course, we cannot forget the corvee service that made these Moroccan pagans shy about it! The endless construction work in the county of Danji and Ceuta has already made them crazy. Every day, a large number of Moroccans fled south, hoping to return to their motherland in the south to live. At the beginning, the East Coast government was laissez-faire about this, but it was absent from the trial on the charge of illegal abscondance and confiscated the land of these people to the new Far East immigrants. But recently, to be honest, the Straits Management Committee is reluctant to give up these labor. After all, there are tens of thousands of men, women, young and old, how much can they do! Therefore, they flatly changed their policies and sent cavalry from the garrison regiments of Danji and Ceuta to chase the fugitives everywhere. Every time they caught one, they extended their service period and confiscated the land. The methods were so cruel than before.

What’s interesting is that after implementing such a cruel policy, the number of people who converted to Taoism in the East Coast has increased significantly, with more than 1,500 more people in just a few months, making the Taoist Association’s real people smiled. They were determined to spend several years to transform at least 15% of the remaining faiths of more than 50,000 Moroccans. Especially the struggle for the next generation of faith is the top priority. Considering that the religious organizations among the Moroccans have been destroyed, this goal is still possible.

On February 23, 1703, just as the Spaniards took a breath and were preparing to reorganize an offensive, another group of warships of the East Coast Navy arrived at Gibraltar Bay. Leading the leader was still an iron-armored warship, namely the second "Luoyang" class of "Bianliang" class. They were also accompanied by two "Star" class light cruisers, two "Soul" class guard gunboats, one coal ship, one troop transport ship and one repair ship.

The displacement of the "Luoyang" ironclad ship is slightly heavier than that of the "Bianliang", exceeding 4,000 tons. The ship also has a turret layout in the middle of the hull, but a 75mm caliber naval gun was added to the bow and stern of the ship, making the total number of artillery on the ship reach ten. This type of artillery is targeted at the 18-pound naval gun in the continental form when firing pointed solid bullets. However, due to the relationship between the rear-mounted cannon and rifle, the gun has a longer range, higher accuracy, and greater destructive power to the hull.

In fact, the Navy did not want to equip these two guns. They believed that the improvement of the Luoyang should focus on the redesign of the new generation of armor, power systems and coal-fired silo. The artillery at the bow and stern of the ship was of little significance to them, because they could always easily catch up with enemy ships and use side guns to kill the opponent. The design of these two guns and corresponding turrets, armor, and ammunition depots will squeeze out space in other cabins, and at the same time it will complicate the logistics management of the shells, which is not worth it.

But no matter what, the "Luoyang" was finally designed like this. Two hundred officers and soldiers on the ship happily received the warship. After some hard training, they finally crossed the ocean to Europe and joined the shelling mission of Spanish coastal towns.

"Bianliang" and "Luoyang" two armored warships formed a formation to operate alone, and eight sail warships formed another formation, completely controlling the sea control in the Strait of Gibraltar. However, they were still restrained. In addition to continuously shelling Spanish coastal towns and villages near the bay, they did not expand the scope of attack, and all neutral ships that passed the strait to trade to Spain were also released. Overall, they were relatively "civilized". Of course, the Spanish people who had their homes destroyed by the East Coast Navy would definitely not think so.

At midnight on February 23, the Spaniards organized a massive offensive. They dispatched more than 5,000 people, commanded by General Morales, and launched a large-scale offensive against the East Coast controlled area under the cover of the night. It should be said that the Spaniards' attack was still very smart and knew that they had sneak attacks using the night Coast. They were once very successful. They were only discovered by patrolling military dogs when they approached the trench dug by the East Coast.

At such a distance, their muskets were already at range, and the cannons were more powerful, causing certain damage to the East Coast people. However, the East Coast people had relatively strong fortifications and had stronger firepower projection capabilities, so the counterattack was particularly fierce and tragic.

After receiving the news, the naval warships also joined the counterattack. They approached the coastline and used long-range cannons to launch artillery at the Spanish army. Although some shells inevitably fell into the east coast position in the night and accidentally attacked friendly forces, they still severely damaged the Spanish army, causing the enemy to fail this night attack.

During this field battle that lasted for several hours, a 150mm heavy shell unfortunately exploded beside General Morales, directly removing their entire command system. The Spaniards insisted that this was the reason for their final retreat, rather than being afraid of the dense bullets and cannons of the East Coast people. They were just unlucky and if they came again next time, they would definitely break the defenses of the East Coast people and drive them all into the sea.

But is it really the case? After paying more than 1,500 casualties, they didn't even find the enemy's fortifications, which frustrated the Spanish army. They had already discovered that simply attacking the tough is to use their own shortcomings and attack the enemy's strengths. The best way is to attract the East Coast people, use their own advantages in geography and intelligence to ambush them in the movement and defeat them. This is the most reasonable tactic and the best way to defeat the strong with the weak. Unfortunately, the East Coast people did not have the idea of ​​getting out of the "turtle shell". They were content with the status quo and wanted to guard the occupied territory until the enemy could not be consumed, which made the Spanish completely blind.

Considering that the East Coast people now have control over the sea in the Strait of Gibraltar, the Spaniards are even more lacking in the means, because they can't even blockade at sea and siege the East Coast troops that have landed! The Spanish Navy no longer has the courage to fight a decisive battle with the enemy. Their strength is too weak and they need to rest urgently. Besides, are you really sure that they can collide face to face with the two East Coast armored warships that are showing off their power in the bay? No! That's not a battle, but a crime, a shameless murder of the Spanish Navy officers and soldiers!

This perception really hurts the Spaniards' self-esteem. They thought that the landing East Coast army had only a thousand people, and they were alone, and they could take it down with their efforts. But who would have thought that the East Coast people would have increased their troops to more than 4,000 in a short period of time, and at the same time, they mobilized a large amount of manpower to build a fortification. At the same time, the artillery firepower was so fierce that the army used heavy naval guns in large quantities. This was still the humans who firmly grasped the sea control power at sea, and there was no shortage of various supplies, which made the Spanish fall into blood.

Now, the battle has been going on for several days. The shells of the East Coast people fell on their heads every day, and more than 5,000 casualties were killed and injured (nearly half of them were shot dead and injured by artillery that lasted for several days). General Morales, who had fought with the French Army many times, was even more heroic and died. The morale of the army has dropped to the bottom, and this battle is basically impossible to fight!

Continue to carry out humiliating negotiations and negotiations? The Spaniards may not be able to hold this face down. Then, it seems that they can only drag it down first. There is no war on the front line, but in fact, they are out of contact, so let’s take a look at the situation first.
Chapter completed!