1627 Rise of the South China Sea

Chapter 3887

"Look at the newspaper! Breaking news! Our army has achieved a great victory in Jiangxi! The battle line has advanced to the outskirts of Nanchang, and the Ming Dynasty is about to surrender again!"

A teenage newsboy weaved through the crowd, loudly shouting out today's front-page headlines. He held aloft a copy of the newly published *Haihan Times*, the distinctive smell of newspaper ink filling the air as he waved his arm.

It must be said that such promotional slogans are very attractive, and passersby often take out their money to buy a copy, eager to see the latest battle reports from the front lines.

Meng Jinfeng sat on the second floor of a teahouse in the city, facing the street, and could clearly hear the newsboys' cries. He called over a waiter, paid him to go downstairs and buy a newspaper, and gave him extra money as a tip.

Seeing that Meng Jinfeng was generous, the waiter left happily and soon returned upstairs, presenting the newspaper with both hands.

This place was recommended by Yue Shizong. It is said that this teahouse gathers people from all walks of life in the city every day, allowing you to meet all sorts of people and conveniently collect various information.

Although this won't do much to the current peace talks, it will help Meng Jinfeng quickly understand the social situation and public opinion in Haihan. This is a method that Yue Shizong figured out on his own when he first came to Hangzhou.

Meng Jinfeng took the newspaper and quickly flipped through the reports on the battle situation in Jiangxi. Sure enough, no miracle had occurred in the local war; the situation continued to develop in a direction unfavorable to the Ming Dynasty, and the territory controlled by the local government had shrunk to only a few dozen miles from Nanchang City.

According to the reports, there were almost no organized Ming troops left in the vast area outside Nanchang. The current military strength in Jiangxi was less than one-fifth of what it was before the war, and it was mostly concentrated in the few remaining cities, including Nanchang.

The Haihan Army has now basically taken control of the situation in Jiangxi and has established new local management committees in several prefectures to replace the functions of the Ming government.

Places like Jiujiang Prefecture, which changed hands earlier, were not severely damaged by the war and are now gradually returning to pre-war normal order, with social production and life returning to normal.

The only piece of good news that Meng Jinfeng could look forward to was that Zhao Mingyu, the Left Provincial Governor, was negotiating with the Haihan Army that had invaded Jiangxi, and the fighting between the two sides had temporarily ceased. This bought the Ming Dynasty some buffer time for its next move.

However, after dealing with Hai Han, Meng Jinfeng understood that the peace talks in Jiangxi were not necessarily effective. At most, they were a self-rescue measure forced upon the local government. Whether Hai Han would really stop fighting depended on the attitude of the Executive Committee, which was precisely his main mission in Hangzhou.

Meng Jinfeng was quite helpless because the Haihan Executive Committee seemed to have little interest in peace talks, especially since the situation in Jiangxi was extremely favorable to Haihan. The bigwigs of the Executive Committee had clearly decided to take over the entire Jiangxi province, so how could they easily give up at this time?

He has been in Hangzhou for some time, but when you count it up, he has only had three formal meetings with the Haihan Executive Committee.

The fact that the three meetings he met with different high-ranking officials from Haihan each time shows that the other party did not attach much importance to the peace talks themselves, and it was more like whoever was available would step in to deal with it.

In such a negotiating atmosphere, it was naturally impossible to achieve any fruitful results. Every time Meng Jinfeng brought up the issue of a ceasefire, the other side would only say "we'll consider it," clearly indicating that they wanted the Ming side to offer more attractive terms in exchange. However, when Meng Jinfeng left the capital, the negotiating authority granted to him by the court did not include Hai Han's demands—whether it was demanding the ownership of the entire Jiangxi region or forbidding the Ming from further resisting Hai Han's military actions in any form, Meng Jinfeng clearly could not agree to such harsh ceasefire conditions.

His predetermined goal for the negotiations was actually similar to that of Zhao Mingyu, the Left Provincial Governor of Jiangxi, who was thousands of miles away: to preserve a place for the Ming Dynasty in Jiangxi as much as possible.

This was not for the purpose of organizing a counterattack to reclaim Jiangxi in the future, but to preserve the last bit of face for the Ming Dynasty. This way, at least internally, it could be claimed that Jiangxi would be jointly governed by the two countries, rather than that the Ming Dynasty had completely lost this territory.

While this might seem somewhat self-deceptive, Meng Jinfeng believed that under the current circumstances, this was perhaps the most ideal outcome that could be achieved through negotiations. It would be a satisfactory explanation to both the imperial court and the local officials in Jiangxi.

Even with such a compromise-laden goal, achieving it seems almost impossible at present. Judging from this newspaper report, Meng Jinfeng detected no indication that Haihan intended to cease hostilities; the entire article focused on Haihan's overwhelming advantages in the current situation.

Even newsboys with little education would use phrases like "The Ming Dynasty is about to surrender again" as propaganda slogans. It seemed that in the eyes of the common people, the Ming Dynasty's utter defeat was simply a normal outcome.

While reading the newspaper, Meng Jinfeng also listened to the tea drinkers in the teahouse discussing the current situation. The most popular topic was, of course, the situation in Jiangxi on today's front page.

Then a gruff voice said, "Gentlemen, in my opinion, this ceasefire negotiation is superfluous. General Shi, who is leading the army, should take Nanchang City in one fell swoop. Why waste words?"

The other replied, "Brother, you are mistaken. Nanchang City is well-defended, and it would be quite difficult to take it down. It might even cause our Haihan Army to suffer many casualties. If we can persuade the enemy to surrender the city, wouldn't that save us a lot of trouble?"

The gruff voice said, "You scholars only know how to persuade the enemy to surrender. Little do you know that in warfare, sometimes persuasion is not the best option. You must use force to make the enemy realize the might of my Haihan Army!"

"Think about it, if the so-called fortified city of Nanchang were to be captured by our army in one fell swoop, wouldn't the Ming army's confidence in defending the city be greatly diminished in the future?"

The scholar argued, "In that case, we should attack Nanchang first to make an example of others, instead of attacking other parts of Jiangxi first and then concentrating our forces to attack Nanchang."

The two disagreed, each sticking to their own opinion, and neither could convince the other. However, many of the tea drinkers here knew each other, so soon others overheard the discussion and joined in, offering their own perspectives.

Meng Jinfeng listened intently for a while, a bitter smile creeping onto his lips. Although these tea drinkers were debating, their focus was on whether or not to enter into ceasefire negotiations with the Ming Dynasty, not on the future course of the war.

Clearly, during the discussion on this topic, no one believed that the Ming Dynasty still had any hope of turning the tide. It was simply a matter of whether it would struggle and be conquered, or give up the struggle and obediently choose to submit.