1627 Rise of the South China Sea

Chapter 1116 Zhenjiang Fort

The Haihan army conducted a simple search of the remaining settlements near the Guanglu Island port, but did not find any living people left on the island. It can be seen that Shang Kexi's attitude was very decisive when he evacuated here, regardless of gender The old and the young were all packed and taken away.However, all kinds of living facilities on the island are quite complete, including various handicraft workshops, warehouses, private schools, clinics, government offices, and military camps. The salt farm has basically formed a complete social system that can be self-sufficient and has a clear division of labor.

Considering that this place has been the frontline of the battle between Daming and Hou Jin in recent years, even if it is measured by the standards of the island colony of the Haihan model, Tom Wang believes that the operating conditions of Guanglu Island are enough to get a relatively high evaluation.The slight disadvantage is probably that the port here lacks coastal fortifications. Wang Tom did not see facilities such as forts here, but in the future, Jin’s naval combat capabilities were negligible in the past. The Ming army who once stationed here probably did not think about it. Coastal fortifications need to be constructed to defend against possible attacks from the sea.

Of course, after getting the former Daming Navy that Kong Youde and Shang Kexi brought over one after another, and initially establishing his own navy, Hou Jin is no longer a weak chicken with no naval combat capabilities.Places like the Changshan Islands, which are extremely close to the mainland, will no longer be safe areas in the traditional sense in the future. It only takes half a day for the Hou Jinshui division, who is huddled in Jinzhou Bay, to kill Guanglu Island. If Han wants to occupy this place for secondary development, he must first resolve these potential threats.

The next day, the fleet sailed away from Guanglu Island, continued eastward, sailed out of the waterway between the big and small Changshan Islands, and then turned north.Now that Guanglu Island, where the Ming army was garrisoned, has been emptied, and the situation of other islands in the Changshan Islands is also known, Wang Tom does not intend to land and check one by one, but ordered people to check the location of the islands. The lack of detail on the map has been corrected.

In the afternoon, the fleet sailed past the west side of Shicheng Island and approached the coast near Hongyazi.This place used to be under the jurisdiction of Fuzhouwei, the capital of Liaodong, and was renamed Zhuanghe in later generations.There was no warning from the south here, so when the fleet sailed into the coastal waters, the fishermen working nearby were frightened and panicked, and quickly turned their bows and fled to the shore.

Speaking of which, the people in these places are also in a difficult situation. On the one hand, when the Ming army comes, they need to provide supplies to the Ming army, and on the other hand, the actual ruler here is already Houjin, so they have to pay Houjin Grain and Fu.However, neither the Later Jin Dynasty nor the Ming Dynasty could accept these people's behavior of "benefiting the enemy", which made it very difficult for the people caught in the cracks.Regardless of the post-Jin army or the Ming army, they are not good people for some people along the coast of Liaodong, so when they see a large number of armed fleets appearing near the coast, their first reaction is to return home as soon as possible, away from these soldiers. The farther the better.

However, Wang Tom did not intend to collect food from the people here. The main purpose of arranging this route was to investigate and check the differences between the coastline and the map data at hand, as well as the population distribution of the coastal areas.A settlement with a certain population size like Hongyazi will also be the focus of Haihan's recruitment of immigrants in the future.

From Hongyazi to the east for more than 60 nautical miles, you came to the mouth of the Yalu River. Jianzhou Jurchen, who established the post-Jin regime in Liaodong, lived on the banks of the Pozhu River, a tributary of the Yalu River, all year round.And between Daming and North Korea, this water vein is basically the natural border, and if you continue to the east, the land belongs to the border of North Korea.

On the west bank of the estuary of the Yalu River, Zhenjiang Fort, the most important military stronghold of the Ming Dynasty in this area, is located in the later Dandong City.During the reign of Tianqi, Jurchen captured Liaoyang, and Mao Wenlong led 200 people into the rear of Jurchen. It was in Zhenjiang Fort that the rebel general Tong Yangzhen and his son were captured, and hundreds of miles of land in Liaodong were conquered for the Ming Dynasty.Unfortunately, this stronghold has also fallen and is currently under the control of Houjin.

Now that he has arrived at this place, Tom Wang will certainly not miss the opportunity to find out the reality of the Houjin garrison. He left several supply ships near Xindao outside the mouth of the sea, and rushed into the mouth of the sea aggressively with a group of warships.

Although Zhenjiang Fort is named after a fort, the size of its stronghold is the standard of an acropolis, with a complete city defense system. The city wall is more than two feet high, and it is equipped with more than ten large and small iron cannons cast by the Ming Dynasty. A fortified city along the Yalu River.However, this fortified city was still unable to block Hou Jin's iron hoof in the end, and it had already been breached by Hou Jin with superior forces last year.

The strength of Houjin's troops stationed here is unknown, but one thing Wang Tom can be sure of is that there will definitely not be too many combat ships that Houjin can deploy here.Sure enough, the fleet sailed into the Yalu River without encountering any resistance. It wasn't until they were not far from Zhenjiang Fort that they saw two sailboats with a displacement of no more than fifty tons on the river.

Tom Wang called Pan Yan to him and asked, "Are any of your former colleagues assigned here?"

Pan Yan looked at the sailboats on the river, shook his head and said, "I don't know the distribution of personnel, but these two ships are definitely not the warships of our Daming Navy. Looking at the flags on the ships, they should be The gold thief belongs."

Since Pan Yan said that these were not naval warships, Tom Wang was not polite, and ordered to chase and destroy the two ships.The steam engine in the cabin quickly roared, and immediately there was a splash of water behind the ship, and the underwater propeller pushed the battleship to slowly accelerate towards the enemy ship.

The two ships panicked at the sight of these uninvited guests, and immediately turned their bows and sailed towards the river bank, but at a slightly slower speed, and one of the ships was quickly overtaken by the Haihan battleship from behind.The artillery on the side fired seven or eight shots unhurriedly at a distance of less than 20 meters. One of the chain bombs directly swept off the mast of the enemy ship, causing it to lose its forward momentum immediately.However, the other ship took advantage of this opportunity to speed up and escape, successfully escaping from the range of the Haihan battleship's firepower.

Wang Tom has already observed the condition of the river bank through a telescope. Although there are a few ships parked on the bank, there are no real warships. The distance between the Phi Islands makes it impossible not to take precautions against them, and not even a decent warship is deployed here.

There are still people alive on the enemy ship damaged by the artillery fire, but Wang Tom has no time to stop and interrogate them now. Naturally, he wants to take this opportunity to continue chasing and deal a greater blow to the enemy. The task of capturing the prisoners will be handed over to to the boat behind.

The sound of the Haihan battleship's firing obviously also alarmed the defenders of Zhenjiang Fort on the river bank, and it was faintly possible to see that many troops were quickly avoiding the fort.The terrain of the river bank where Zhenjiang Fort is located is very flat, and there are no buildings or hills that block the view for several miles around.Wang Tom took a closer look with his binoculars and made sure that there was no possibility of cavalry ambushing on the river bank, so he ordered the boat to dock.

Since the Yalu River ushers in the flood season in July and August every year, the location of Zhenjiang Fort was set aside nearly one mile from the river bank to avoid the tragedy of flooding the Seventh Army when the flood season came every summer.Haihan's naval guns are basically useless at this distance, so Wang Tom decided to go ashore to test how much the Jin army here is.

It took the Haihan fleet about half an hour to mobilize a company of infantry to land ashore without encountering any obstacles.The Hou Jin army seemed to be determined to defend the city, and had no intention of waiting for an opportunity to come out and fight halfway.

Seeing this situation, Wang Tom murmured a little bit. Given the distance from Jinzhou Wei to this side, it is reasonable to say that he should not have received a police call.Afterwards, Jin Mingming gained the upper hand in the battle for Liaodong, so why was his fighting style so conservative, it looked more like the weaker side.

The other party showed such weakness, but Wang Tom became more suspicious of fraud, and immediately ordered the captured prisoners of war to be escorted for interrogation.Wang Tom was not disappointed this time. At least two of the captured people were serious "banners".But these two guys were not very fluent in Chinese, so Tom Wang asked Sun Bing, a navigator from Liaodong, to act as an interpreter, and conducted an emergency interrogation of the two.

Wang Tom didn't want to spend too much time in this place, so he didn't show any affection to these two guys at the moment. He asked his subordinates to beat them up before asking questions. Don't give them the opportunity to think slowly and make up stories at all.This kind of torture method, which has been verified by the intelligence department many times, is quite effective. The two prisoners of war opened their mouths after holding it for too long, and told Wang Tom about the local Zhenjiang Fort.

It was after Shang Kexi's defection earlier this year that the Hou Jin army captured Zhenjiang Fort, and the Hou Jin elite who attacked here were attracted by Shang Kexi's subordinates.The location of Zhenjiang Fort guards the national border, and it can monitor the movement of Pidao nearby. The high-level officials of the Houjin Dynasty still attach great importance to this place. After the occupation, thousands of soldiers and horses were dispatched to guard the place.However, a major plague occurred in this place this summer, and more than half of the personnel stationed here died. Although there was nothing wrong with the leader of the army, he was so scared that he fled back to the inland Fengcheng.

Concerned about the risk of the spread of the disease, Hou Jin did not dare to send troops to supplement the garrison here immediately, so there are only two to 300 troops garrisoned here.The arrival of the Haihan Navy made them mistakenly think that Dongjiang Town's soldiers and horses were attacking from the direction of Phi Island. Naturally, the first choice was to retreat to the city and rely on the advantages of the city defense to carry out defensive warfare.

Wang Tom couldn't laugh or cry when he heard this, and immediately ordered the prisoners of war to be taken away. He didn't want to be infected with the disease by being too close to these guys.Wang Tom thought that the Jin army was playing tricks, but he didn't expect that they were just too small in strength, and they didn't dare to entrust them to go out of the city to fight.Wang Tom looked in the direction of Zhenjiang Fort, and there was no movement on the top of the city.

If the fleet is deployed to attack the city, Wang Tom believes that there is at least a [-]% to [-]% chance of winning Zhenjiang Fort. How to do.According to the prisoners of war, the epidemic in this place has lasted for several months. I am afraid that the city is full of germs, even if they are defeated, they dare not enter it casually.That being the case, the significance of fighting such a battle is extremely limited, but the risk will increase a lot because of it.

Tom Wang thought about it for a while, but decided not to take the risk for the time being. Even if he wanted to fight, he would wait until next time to bring more disinfectants and medical staff.As for the prisoners of war captured just now, staying in the fleet must be a hidden danger, and they can only be released now.

This is undoubtedly a very frustrating result. During this journey, the fleet chose to endure in Lushunkou and Jinzhou Bay, and did not launch attacks on land targets.Seeing that Tom Wang finally made up his mind to do something here, but there is such an uncontrollable risk.

"Walk, walk, out of sight, out of mind!" Tom Wang gave the order impatiently.A group of people landed in a hurry, and before the beachhead was set up, they hurriedly evacuated back to the ship.

"Direct flight to Phi Island!" Tom Wang revised the plan after returning to the ship, canceled the investigation plan for the upper reaches of the Yalu River, and changed it to Phi Island, the end point of the voyage southward.

The name Phi Island was originally named by Mao Wenlong, a Ming general. Because his surname was Mao, he took the meaning of "if there is no skin, there will be no hair." He named this deserted island Phi Island.The island is about four kilometers away from the mainland, covering an area of ​​nearly 340 square kilometers. There are many small harbors on the coastline for ships to shelter from the wind. The highest point on the island is [-] meters above sea level.However, this island is mostly made of rocks and sandstones, and there is hardly much land available for cultivation on the island, so more than half of the local food production comes from the sea, and the food can only rely on external supplies.

In 1623, the Ming court established Dongjiang Town on Phi Island. For more than ten years so far, the living conditions on Phi Island have been relatively difficult.And after Mao Wenlong's death, mutinies occurred on the island every now and then, making people panic. Even a general like Shang Kexi defected to Houjin because of this, and the combat effectiveness of the entire Dongjiang Town has long since disappeared.

However, for a small group of people, Phi Island is still a place where they can enjoy power safely. This place is small, but there are tens of thousands of people, and these people have to rely on them to survive.The pleasure of being in charge of life and death is difficult for outsiders to understand.

Shen Zhixiang is one of them. He is the nephew of Shen Shikui, who is currently in charge of Dongjiang Town. In the entire Dongjiang Town, he can be regarded as the third person. Only Shen Shikui and Lieutenant Jin Riguan are above him.Originally, there was Shang Kexi who was a generation younger than him, but this guy had already been expelled, and his position was naturally replaced by him.

(End of this chapter)