Chapter Seventy-Eight: The Consequences of the Fall of Coconut Harbour Without the protection of the shore defense artillery, the entire Coconut Harbor has become a stripped-naked flower girl, allowing the enemy to abuse wantonly - although Coconut Harbor still has a large army stationed, but first of all, the army was purged by Li Zhen, and most of the middle and low-level officers were sent to Prison Island by him, resulting in an urgent shortage of grassroots officers here, let alone command the battle, and it is very good to be able to maintain the current situation without chaos.
Originally, these positions were very important, which is why Fang Yiai has been allowed to be rampant in the army over the years and can only watch, after all, without these officers, Luzon will really have a big chaos.
It's just that it is the time for the change of guard recently, and once the change of guard is over, these officers will be transferred elsewhere, then their actions in Luzon will be wiped out, which Li Zhen does not allow.
Moreover, in Li Zhen's plan, once the change of guard is over, a large number of officers will flood Luzon, and it will naturally be able to return to normal.
However, before the end of the change of defense, the ability to organize and fight here in Coconut Harbor was very weak, but at this time there was a problem, once the enemy's target was really Luzon, then in the face of the murderous enemy, even if they had powerful gunpowder weapons in their hands, they might not be able to withstand the lack of command with military certificates.
What's more, there is a purge of Coconut Harbor, including Li Zhen and Fang Yiai, which has not been cleaned until now, let alone the people, even within the army, there are still a certain number of spies planted by the enemy.
These spies may not be useful in normal times, but now is the weakest time for Coconut Harbor, if the enemy attacks Coconut Harbor at this time, and their spies should sabotage behind their backs, burn a grain and grass, blow up an arsenal, or light two fires to create chaos or something, or even simply assassinate one or two generals and lieutenants to spread some rumors and the like, so that a few times will definitely make the entire Coconut Harbor defenders mess up.
If the enemy chooses to attack at this time, it will definitely be invincible, and Coconut Harbor may not be able to defend it.
And what will happen after the attack on Coconut Harbour?
First of all, the enemy will definitely make a lot of money, Coconut Port is a very famous big city overseas in Datang, and the taxes paid every year are millions - and this is just taxes, the amount of private assets is definitely more amazing, as long as the enemy dares to be ruthless, after the capture of Coconut Port, there will be a complete ransack, and the money collected must be at least hundreds of millions......
Secondly, the main reason for the ransacking of Coconut Harbor was the lack of garrison strength caused by Li Zhen's previous purge, and once someone blames Li Zhen for this incident, it will definitely bring huge reputational losses to Li Zhen.
And don't forget, since the enemy ransacked Coconut Harbor, the people living there will definitely be unwilling, and once they resist, they will usher in the ruthless slaughter of the enemy, and maybe even Coconut Harbor will be slaughtered, which will also be placed on Li Zhen's head - the death of so many people is not a trivial matter, think about the end of Hou Junji after the Rili Massacre, although the Coconut Harbor Massacre was not done by Li Zhen, but it has something to do with him after all, if this matter is not handled well, It may even have an impact on his future succession to the throne.
What's worse is that once the enemy captures Coconut Harbor, then the arsenal and ship repair yard located inside Coconut Harbor are likely to fall into the hands of the enemy, and the arsenal is just that, after all, the arms in it are limited, as long as they are used up, guns and cannons will naturally become waste, the problem is the shipyard, once the shipyard is captured, then the technology will fall into the hands of the enemy.
After yesterday's battle, Li Zhen has also discovered that the number of enemy cannons is very small, not because their cannon production is very low, in fact, their output is still very good, at least it has initially reached the capacity of mass production - although the fleet did not capture the enemy ship, did not capture their cannons, but collected a lot of squibs (there was a battleship whose keel was hit by duds before), and then from the process of cannonballs, the performance of cannons can be seen, after all, compared with cannonballs, The process of making the cannon is still very simple.
The reason why the enemy is not equipped with a large number of cannons is purely because the quality of the ships is not good, and they are obviously inferior to their own warships, which is most likely due to their technical substandard.
And this is also the most fatal place, because although the Coconut Harbor Shipyard is only a shipbuilding yard in name, but in fact it has the ability to build shipbuilding, although it can only build cruisers and destroyers, and cannot build battleships above the third level, but that is only the equipment is not up to standard and the restrictions of the imperial court, in fact, the workers inside it are also very skilled, and for the convenience of maintenance, there are still some battleship data and rough design drawings in the shipyard......
If this information falls into the hands of the enemy, they may be able to reverse engineer the drawings and deduce the design of the battleship - and once the enemy has the ability to build a battleship, then it will be all over.
They can load larger caliber cannons onto ships, and then build battleships with exactly the same performance as Datang, coupled with the huge profits they make in Coconut Harbor, they can spend a lot of money to build small warships in batches or even simply battleships, and then compete with Datang for hegemony at sea - this is equivalent to Datang personally creating an opponent for himself, and then everything will be regretted too late......
Even if they don't compete with Datang for hegemony, it is enough for Datang to make trouble at sea, not to mention that the appearance of a large number of warships will inevitably disrupt the original order on the sea, in order to protect the interests of maritime merchants, Datang will either publish the design drawings of the battleships, or increase the number of escort warships, and which of these two choices will have an impact on Datang.
If you choose the first one, then not only will the current enemy continue to quarrel with Datang, but with enough weapons of war, those careerists who have been hiding within Datang will definitely expose their ambitions - what is the meaning of being a courtier for Datang?
No matter how great a courtier is, he is just a dog.
How can you have the pleasure of being an emperor yourself?
Anyway, so many islands on the sea have not yet been occupied by the imperial court, let's find a good place to be the king and the king of the mountain, wouldn't it be more enjoyable than being a dog in the Tang Dynasty, right?
Not to mention those big families, I'm afraid some powerful businessmen will think this way - isn't that what the later generations of Lan Fang Gong and Guo did?
It just failed in the end.
In short, once such a thing happens, Datang will definitely be anxious, God knows how many things will be delayed?