1627 Rise of the South China Sea

Chapter 3883

Time quickly passed to mid-June. With the fall of Linjiang Prefecture and Fuzhou Prefecture, which bordered Nanchang Prefecture to the south, under the powerful offensive of the Haihan Army, only Nanchang Prefecture, Ruizhou Prefecture, and Yuanzhou Prefecture remained under the control of the Ming Dynasty in the entire Jiangxi province. Caught between the north, east, and south, these remaining territories barely maintained contact with the Huguang region to the west.

By this point in the war, the successive defeats at the front could no longer be concealed, and Nanchang, the core city of Jiangxi, had completely fallen into wartime chaos.

Inside and outside the city, in the streets and alleys, there were groups of homeless people. Some were refugees who had fled from other prefectures and cities to Nanchang, hoping to temporarily escape the war, while others were people with their families, preparing to leave Nanchang and flee elsewhere.

However, for the government, the movement of these ordinary people was a minor matter; the real trouble was the fleeing troops from various places who were heading to Nanchang.

Since many of the defeated troops had already lost their organization before arriving in Nanchang, it was quite difficult to reorganize them. Even though the Regional Military Commission sent special personnel to gather the defeated soldiers and reorganize them into an army, the results were not ideal because the generals did not know their soldiers and the soldiers did not know their generals.

After more than a month of reorganization, only three or four thousand defeated soldiers were gathered, which was less than one-third of the number of local defeated soldiers estimated by the government.

This resulted in a large number of defeated soldiers still operating outside the government's supervision. Moreover, these people were mostly young and strong soldiers carrying weapons, and even fully equipped with armor and mounts. They also had some combat experience, and the damage they could cause was enormous, far beyond what ordinary mountain bandits and thieves could do.

Worse still, because the waterway transportation between Nanchang Prefecture and the outside world was cut off by Haihan, it was almost impossible to make use of the transport capacity of the Poyang Lake water system. This led to a severe shortage of local supplies, and the government could not provide enough food and fodder to settle the defeated soldiers.

As a result, some scattered soldiers were forced to find their own way out, using force to plunder towns and villages around Nanchang. Inevitably, they also dragged more people into the fray, quickly forming several groups of rebelling soldiers and bandits.

These situations were quickly reported to Nanchang City, but the city's three administrative offices did not have a good solution.

With the Haihan army already pressing in, the government has no time to spare to send troops to suppress the bandits. Nanchang can only turn a blind eye to this; as long as the rebels don't enter the city, they can let them cause trouble outside, and perhaps they can even hold off the Haihan army when they arrive.

When Shi Chengwu's troops were traveling upstream along the Gan River, they encountered a bandit group of soldiers in Zhaojiazhuang, about fifty miles northeast of Nanchang.

Zhao Family Village is a village on the banks of the Gan River where farming is the main occupation, and there is also a small wharf on the riverbank.

When the Haihan army passed by, they spotted Ming soldiers escorting many civilians to the dock, seemingly preparing to transfer them by boat. However, there were only about a dozen fishing boats on the shore, which obviously couldn't transport everyone. Just as chaos erupted, someone spotted the Haihan fleet on the river, causing even more uproar.

The Ming soldiers clearly had no intention of resisting and immediately abandoned the people on the dock and fled inland.

Upon seeing this, Shi Chengwu arranged for two troop transport ships to dock and inquired about the situation from the local people.

Upon inquiry, it was learned that the Ming army they had just seen were fleeing soldiers from Raozhou Prefecture. They had entered Zhao Family Village under the pretext of needing provisions, demanding 20,000 catties of grain and 3,000 taels of silver for mobilization expenses before they would leave. However, since the outbreak of war in Jiangxi, Zhao Family Village had already been subject to several rounds of temporary taxes by the government, and many able-bodied men had been conscripted to Nanchang to repair the city's defenses. The households in the village had very little surplus grain and simply could not afford the mobilization expenses required by this Ming army.

So the Ming army planned to gather all the people in the village and transport them away, and the purpose of this plan left Shi Chengwu both amused and exasperated.

They weren't planning a scorched-earth policy to move all the people to Nanchang City; instead, they wanted to find a way to sell these people to Haihan—Haihan was said to accept all incoming people and even offer them compensation.

Of course, they dared not directly approach the Haihan Army, which had already entered Nanchang Prefecture, to conduct these transactions. Therefore, they planned to transport the people to the vicinity of Nanchang City and then find another intermediary to complete the deal.

As for middlemen who engage in the buying and selling of people, there are far too many of them. As the saying goes, every shrimp has its own way and every crab has its own path; there are always some underground channels that allow people to move from the Ming Dynasty to the Han Dynasty.

Even when Yue Shizong brought his family to Hangzhou, it was done through similar means, except that it was handled by the Haihan Military Intelligence Department, which was definitely much safer than civilian channels.

When these people learned that they would be sold as livestock to a foreign land, they naturally refused to cooperate. However, most of those left in the village were the elderly, women, and children, who had little power to resist. If the Haihan Army had not appeared, they would have been loaded onto ships and sent away sooner or later.

During this period, some conflicts inevitably occurred. Seven or eight people were killed by the fleeing soldiers in the village, and several young women were raped. As for the money and grain that were stolen by the fleeing soldiers, it was too much to count at the time.

The people were somewhat afraid of the sudden arrival of the Haihan army, but more than that, they were numb. They clearly couldn't understand why, as citizens of the Ming Dynasty, they should be protected by the Ming army, but instead became the targets of the Ming army's looting.

These Haihan soldiers, who should have been the enemy, were clearly Han Chinese just like us, except for their uniforms, flags, and weapons, which were different from those of the Ming army. So why was their attitude so much more amiable, and why did they not treat us as prisoners of war?

After hearing the stories of these people, Shi Chengwu couldn't help but feel a little sad.

This was not the first time he had seen such a thing. Several years ago, when he attacked Yingtianfu, he encountered many similar atrocities of defeated soldiers looting the local area. Moreover, this was not unique to the Ming army, but a common practice since ancient times.

Whenever war breaks out, regardless of whether one side is victorious or defeated, there will inevitably be some troops that lose control and engage in looting and plundering. The Haihan Army has always maintained strict military discipline, so it is naturally much better in this regard, but it has not completely eliminated such incidents.

As for the Ming army, under the current circumstances, the defeated soldiers who have lost their organization are unlikely to adhere to any military discipline. Without supervision, they will do whatever they want without restraint, including all kinds of inhumane atrocities.

Shi Chengwu naturally wouldn't apologize to these people, but he could at least provide them with temporary safety. He told them that once the defeated soldiers saw the Haihan fleet appear on the Gan River, they should no longer approach Zhao Family Village on the riverbank.

If you want to leave here and go to a safe place, you can take Haihan's ship to the area on the north or east bank of Poyang Lake. That area has been incorporated into Haihan's jurisdiction, there are no Ming army deserters, and the security situation is much better than in Nanchang Prefecture.