1627 Rise of the South China Sea

Chapter 2207
For these pampered salt merchants, no matter how fierce the battle with their peers is, it is just a change in the income and expenditure figures reflected in the accounts. Even if there are occasional casualties, it is just that they may not even be named The subordinates who came up just need to pay more pension money to settle the matter, and they don't have much sense of crisis.

But the execution of more than a dozen captives in this way outside Daijiazhuang today touched the salt merchants who were watching. They also really realized that this battle is not just a battle of victory or defeat in business. It's a life-and-death struggle between you and me.If they hadn't invited the Golden Shield troops from Haihan Kingdom to act as guards, they might have died in the opponent's attack.

Some people were secretly glad that they followed Dai Yingda's advice and moved their family to Daijiazhuang for a temporary stay. If they stayed at their own home, they might not be able to withstand such a big ordeal last night.If the money is gone, you can make more money, but if you lose your life, you will lose everything. Dang even decided to stay in Daijiazhuang until the situation subsides.

Yuan Tao has stayed up all night, and after finishing all this work, he has to take the time to rest.Although it was his side who took advantage last night, he also knew that the other party's vitality was not damaged and might make a comeback at any time, so he had to keep his spirits up and continue preparing for the battle.There are at least three months before the return of the salt merchants' children from their studies. If there is no accident, the people he leads will have to shoulder the responsibility of guarding the Huizhou salt merchants during this period. This task is not easy.

Dai Yingda did not ignore Yuan Tao's contribution. As soon as Yuan Tao returned to his room, a servant of the Dai family brought a pot of ginseng tea and some exquisite pastries. Tao counted the amount, and it turned out to be as much as 1000 yuan, which was obviously a personal extra reward from Dai Yingda. At the moment, he couldn't help but sigh that the salt merchant's move was really generous.

To Dai Yingda, this amount of money was not a big sum. If he wanted to hire a high-ranking official in the Yangzhou Yamen to do something, the cost of a thousand taels of silver was often just the starting price.Dai Yingda had already realized Yuan Tao's ability through last night's battle, so establishing a personal relationship with him was a very necessary measure for him. Even if the children of the seven major surnames return from school in the future, there is no need to let Jindun's people stay in Yangzhou He has been stationed for a long time, but there may be times when Haihan is needed to help, and Yuan Tao's identity is obviously much easier to deal with than Haihan officials, and some things may no longer need to be communicated through official channels.

Yuan Tao drew up a short battle report and handed it to the team's signal soldiers to send it back to Zhoushan by telegram, and then he settled down to rest.He had been so exhausted that night that he lay down and slept all day long, and did not wake up until supper time.

The first thing Yuan Tao did when he woke up was to call his attendants to ask if Zhoushan had called back. After getting a positive answer, Yuan Tao immediately asked someone to fetch the message.

The sent message was packed in an envelope, and there was a wax seal on the outside of the signal soldier to show that the content of the message had not been read by others.The contents of such military-related telegrams are all top-secret and can only be opened and read by Yuan Tao himself.

The content of the call back is actually nothing special, the main idea is that the Zhoushan Command has been informed of the battle situation, so Yuan Tao must be cautious in Yangzhou and not to advance rashly.However, the telegram mentioned that the battle situation had been reported to Shi Diwen, which still made Yuan Tao a little happy. He knew that Shi Diwen had always attached great importance to the actual combat record of his subordinates, and his performance in Yangzhou might also get Shi Diwen's attention.

Although Yuan Tao is no longer in the army, he knows that Shi Diwen's status in Haihan's senior management is enough to affect his future promotion within Jindun.The Golden Shield organization is originally an extension department of the military, and it is inextricably linked with the military. Almost all those who can go up are retired soldiers of the Haihan Army, and the promotion mechanism is almost the same as that of the military. It relies on the accumulation of record and qualifications as the capital to go up.

Yuan Tao is the big shopkeeper of the Golden Shield Zhoushan branch, his head is already on the ceiling, there is no higher position in the Zhoushan colonial area for him to be promoted, and if he wants to climb up, he must enter the top management of the Golden Shield headquarters.But to complete this crucial step, it is no longer enough to accumulate qualifications. It is necessary to make outstanding achievements in the current position. This is one of the reasons why he took the risk to personally lead the team to Yangzhou.

If Jindun can successfully complete its tasks in Yangzhou, it will be equivalent to opening up the market for Haihan, the center of the Ming Dynasty's salt industry, in Yangzhou.

But Yangzhou is not just a salt business for Haihan. It is one of the wealth centers of Ming Dynasty. Opening the door of Yangzhou is equivalent to finding a new export market for Haihan's many industrial products, and this market The consumption power of the company is quite considerable, and the areas that can be radiated are almost all affluent areas. The executive committee is also very concerned about the long-term benefits that this direction can bring to Haihan.

Yuan Tao may not know the plan of the executive committee, but he knows that completing this task will greatly help his future future, so the salary paid by the salt merchant is still second. Even if it is for the sake of the future, he will do his best to complete this mission.

Yuan Tao came together, and after a while, hot meals and dishes were delivered to his room, obviously they had been prepared for him long ago.After Yuan Tao finished eating, he sent someone to invite Dai Yingfan to discuss matters.

Jin Dun is mainly responsible for the defense of Daijiazhuang, while Dai Yingfan's subordinates are responsible for the reconnaissance and collection of external intelligence information.After all, some jobs can only be done by local snakes, and no matter how professional Jin Dun is, he cannot contract them all.

The information Yuan Tao needs to grasp now is whether the other party has reacted to it after the fight last night.

"Last night, I led people to chase to the side of the canal, and saw the other party leaving in five boats to the north. Although I also adjusted the boat to chase afterward, I still lost track of the other party. Today I sent a few people into the city to inquire The news just came back, and it is reported that what happened last night has not spread in the city yet, and there is no movement from the government."

The news brought by Dai Yingfan was calm, which is also reasonable.However, this did not reassure Yuan Tao, he asked: "If the government knows what happened last night, will they intervene in the investigation?"

Dai Yingfan replied: "Last night there was such a big commotion, the other party should have gone to the government in advance. If we really want to investigate, no one has a clean ass. Lu Kangtai is not a fool, and he will definitely not do such a troublesome thing. .”

Yuan Tao smiled and said: "Of course it's the best way, and it can save you a lot of trouble. However, Lu Kangtai must not be in a good mood after suffering such a bad loss last night. You try to keep an eye on each other's movements and say Maybe they will expose other flaws in a hurry."

At this time, Lu Kangtai was not only in a bad mood, but his lungs were about to explode.As early as one or two months ago, he began to plan the attack on Daijiazhuang, tried to draw the floor plan of Daijiazhuang, used the sand table to deduce the details of the operation, arranged for his men to rehearse the operation, and did a lot of preparatory work.It is no exaggeration to say that this is probably the thing that he has devoted the most to the past few decades since he was born. He also hopes that he will be able to complete his efforts in one battle, take down Daijiazhuang, and then defeat the resistance of Huizhou salt merchants .

But so much preparation work, all his ambitions, all came to naught after the Haihan people intervened.The hundreds of people who were sent to attack Daijiazhuang didn't even see what their opponents looked like, but they were beaten to pieces by a burst of musketry. Withdrew.

In addition to the dozens of people who were trapped in Dai's Village, they fought against the Dai's Village militia who were chasing them on the way to retreat, and lost several more people.In the end, because they were too flustered when they boarded the boat and evacuated in the dark, several people fell into the water and their whereabouts are still unknown.When they came back and counted the number of people, there were more than [-] missing persons.

It doesn't matter if so many people are lost, Lu Kangtai was originally prepared to lose hundreds of people in the operation, but the problem is that after paying such a price, they didn't achieve the expected results at all, and they didn't create a threat for the other party. Any trouble, just a pure failure.

It is not that Lu Kangtai has not imagined the result of failure, but he cannot accept such a one-sided failure.The musketeers were re-established and prepared for such a long time, hoping to win the opponent in one fell swoop, but the gap in the final result was too great.

Lu Kangtai even regretted that he should not have been too cautious yesterday, and should have personally crossed the river to direct the operation, perhaps the result would have been different.He had carefully questioned Xie Liang and Xun Fen, who were in charge of the operation last night, and confirmed that there were no organized musketeers among the militiamen who went out to pursue them during their retreat.

He thinks this detail shows that the armed men who came out of the village to pursue at that time were not the troops sent by Haihan to Yangzhou. If Xie Liang and Xun Fen hadn't panicked, they could have built a defense line by relying on the sailboats by the canal and let the Musketeers play their part. Some effect.Even if you want to withdraw, you should seize the opportunity to give the opponent a little bit of trouble, and then withdraw to the north bank of the canal.

The explanation given by the two leaders under him was that the opponent used extremely intensive firepower during the confrontation in Daijiazhuang. They judged that if they used the musketeers to fight the opponent, they might suffer extremely heavy casualties, so they decided to give up. The original action plan was to voluntarily evacuate Daijiazhuang.As for why they didn't engage in battle with the pursuing enemy, it was because they believed that the opponent's purpose was to hold them back, and then send a boat to cut off their retreat across the river, so they chose to retreat as quickly as possible without any resistance.

Although there is some truth to such a statement, Lu Kangtai still couldn't let go of the result of the operation, thinking that the on-the-spot command and response of the two leaders did not reach the level he expected.The only thing that made him feel a little lucky was that the firearms team, which invested huge resources to rebuild, basically did not directly participate in the battle, so there was no loss of personnel, and it was completely withdrawn, which can be regarded as saving a breath of vitality.

He Huan and Wang Yu, who rushed to Lu Kangtai's house early in the morning to listen to the battle report, couldn't help being disappointed by the result.Moreover, among the lost personnel last night, many of them were selected by them from their own children and guards, but now they can't see anyone alive or dead, and they can't even report to the officials to find them. hard to accept.

"In my opinion, why don't we send some money to General Gao Shen, and let him find a reason to go to Daijiazhuang to beg for someone?" Wang Yu has a nephew who is among the missing persons, and in a hurry, he also proposed a Very bold idea.

But this proposal was immediately rejected by Lu Kangtai with a gloomy face: "This method is impossible. Not to mention that General Gao Shen didn't want to intervene in the battle between us and the seven surnames, even if he took the money and was willing to help. , go to Daijiazhuang to beg for someone, if the other party refuses to cooperate, do you think General Candidate Gao can still be strong?"

Gao Yongshou is a wait-and-see group who will not end easily, they all know about this matter, Lu Kangtai went to get a lot of money beforehand, and he just turned a blind eye to the other party, and didn't even say a word of support for them Pass.Now it is not difficult to imagine how difficult it would be for Gao Yongshou to come forward to please people for them, let alone let Gao Yongshou offend the seven surnames.

Wang Yu still refused to give up this life-saving straw: "As the saying goes, money can turn ghosts, if we offer a higher price, the high-ranking general will not be tempted..."

"Brother Wang, General Gao is not as stupid as you think!" Lu Kangtai shook his head and said, "When I talked to him before, he made it clear that he didn't want to fight against Hai Han. Dai Yingda hired Hai Han to guard him. It’s no secret in Yangzhou, General Gao must have heard about it long ago, I think he’s probably just trying to avoid it, so how could he do it for us!”

Wang Yu said anxiously: "So, are we giving up on those who were trapped in Daijiazhuang? They are all the elites of our families!"

Lu Kangtai said: "Brother Wang, if you come to ask for someone, you will be convincing yourself, and you will be passive. Do you think Mr. Dai will return the person to us unconditionally? No matter what conditions the other party asks, it will definitely be harsh. Incomparably, what capital do we have to bargain with the other party? If you are asked to quit Yangzhou, will you agree?"

Wang Yu was silent. He had to admit that what Lu Kangtai said was indeed reasonable. After losing the battle, he went to ask for someone, which was actually tantamount to sticking his face in front of the other party and allowing him to deal with him.The struggle between the Shanxi-Shanxi salt merchants and the Anhui salt merchants was at its most intense. Doing so would not only frustrate one's own spirit, but also allow the other party to take the moral initiative.If, as Lu Kangtai said, the other party offered a bunch of unattainable conditions, should he agree or not?

He Huan, who had been silent all this time, finally spoke out: "You don't have to argue about this matter anymore. In my opinion, Dai Yingda won't let him go even if he comes to ask for it. If it was before, maybe there is still talk, but now He is backed by the Haihan people, do you think he can still make peace with us?"

(End of this chapter)