1627 Rise of the South China Sea

Chapter 423 Practical Difficulties
After the Battle of Hue in March, the Ruan regime in South Vietnam was declared destroyed with the fall of Hue City, and the main purpose of Haihan's sending troops was also fulfilled.After the war, the North Vietnamese imperial court was no longer able to pay the military expenses needed by the Haihan militia to continue fighting, so the large Haihan militia troops, including the Heitugang Special Operations Battalion, withdrew to their respective stations, and did not participate in the next stage of clearing out the remaining armed forces in South Vietnam. action.

Although the Nguyen regime has fallen, it does not mean that the areas previously ruled by it will immediately change their names and follow the North Vietnamese court.For example, in a big city like Guangzhi, the defenders in the city still chose military resistance instead of raising their hands to surrender.However, the combat capabilities of the North Vietnamese army, especially the ability to attack large cities, are far from being comparable to the Haihan militia.

Before going south to attack Hue City, the North Vietnamese army had already surrounded Quang Tri. However, in order to prevent Hai Han from monopolizing Hue City, North Vietnam General Zheng Bai still chose to lead the main force to go south to attack Hue first, and then turn back to solve Quang Tri.However, although Hue fought relatively smoothly, after the war, a part of the army had to be separated to stay in Hue. First, to guard the tens of thousands of South Vietnamese prisoners of war, second, to maintain the local post-war social order, and third, to arrest them. Those Nanyue officials who are still hiding somewhere in the city.

When Zheng Bo arranged these tasks, it was already late April, and then Zheng Bo sent his troops northward and began to attack Guangzhi.However, the battle was not as smooth as he had expected. The guard in Guangzhi City was the son-in-law of Nguyen Phuc Yuan, who had no intention of surrendering. Several active attacks were launched. Although they failed to break through, they also caused heavy casualties to the North Vietnamese Army.When Zheng Bo returned to Guangzhi City with a large force, nearly a quarter of the North Vietnamese army who stayed here to surround the city had already lost nearly a quarter. The South Vietnamese Army broke out of the encirclement.

Compared with the Haihan militia, the biggest shortcoming of the North Vietnamese Army in terms of combat power is that there are too few artillery pieces, and this directly leads to the fact that the North Vietnamese Army has relatively few methods in siege warfare, and can only rely on relatively primitive siege methods. operate.On the other hand, the South Vietnamese army in the city, because there was no way to retreat, and the generals had the determination to fight to the death, their fighting will was no worse than that of the attackers outside the city.

After two days of confrontation in and out of the city, the North Vietnamese launched their offensive.However, due to the lack of long-range firepower attacks, this old-fashioned tactic of relying on soldiers to climb wooden ladders to attack the city did not achieve very good results. The offensive a few days ago cost thousands of lives in vain. There is no real gain at all.

Of course Zheng Bo was not interested in slowly grinding with the defenders under the city of Guangzhi, because at this time their food supply had to be transported from the sea by Haihan's ships, and every day the war dragged on, the North Vietnamese court had to hire these The ship paid nearly a thousand taels of freight, which is by no means good news for the North Vietnamese Army, which is currently struggling with military expenses.

Until this time, Zheng Bo didn't quite understand how the Haihan militia destroyed the two city walls inside and outside Hue, because he also focused on using artillery to bombard the city walls of Quang Tri, but the effect was obviously worse than the destruction of the city walls. far.In the end, he could only attribute this to the fact that the Haihan people still possessed certain secret tactics that had not been made public to the North Vietnamese. He still had to use the most traditional siege method to attack Guangzhi City.

Under Zheng Bai's strict supervision, after ten days, the North Vietnamese Army finally broke through the north gate of Guangzhi City, and then spent another four days to wipe out the remnants of South Vietnam in the city.After the city was broken, all the captured South Vietnamese generals were beheaded outside the north gate, and more than 3000 prisoners of war were also packed and gathered under Zheng Bai's order, ready to be exported to the Haihan people as a mortgage for war debts.

This battle took half a month for the North Vietnamese Army, with more than 200 casualties, which was several times greater than the loss of Hue City.And this kind of victory also made the generals of North Vietnam more deeply aware of the gap with the Haihan militia-thousands of people crossed the sea to attack Hue. Hue won in one fell swoop.

This disparity in combat effectiveness has further promoted the enthusiasm of the "Hai Han supremacy theory" in the North Vietnamese Army. Originally, this theory was only popular among some officers who had received direct training from Hai Han. They believed that the military theory and armed level of the Hai Han people had reached their peak. If An Nanguo wants to become strong, he cannot do without Haihan's support and help.After the two battles of Hue and Quangzhi, some military officers who originally held objections to this theory began to change their minds, believing that this was indeed the case. Instead of continuing to be hostile and wary of Hai Han, Why not take advantage of the good relationship between the two countries and the formation of various strategic alliances to learn more about military affairs from him, so as to strengthen Annan's military power.

Of course, this kind of effect is exactly what the Haihan Executive Committee expected. In the past two years, so much energy has been spent on supporting and training North Vietnamese military personnel, in order to one day be able to influence the direction of Annan's military development.If those in power in the military are inclined to rely on Haihan, then in the next few years, just arms exports and military training will be enough for Haihan to earn a lot of money from Annan.

The army led by Zheng Bai had no time to take a long-term rest after pacifying Guangzhi, and soon went south again, because there were still thousands of miles of territory south of Hue, and dozens of towns were waiting for the army to go to take them one by one.And there has been some news from the south that makes Zheng Bo very unhappy. It is said that the army of the Champa Kingdom has made some progress. After defeating the South Vietnamese army a few months ago, it is still continuing to expand its control area to the east, which is very promising. The posture of taking back all the territory of Champa a hundred years ago.

Of course, Zheng Bo also knew that Champa had also received some military assistance from the Haihan people, so he would not pin his hopes on the remnants of the South Vietnamese army being able to stop the armed Champa army.The only way to solve the problem is to lead the army south as soon as possible to block the Champa army from outside the country.

Zheng Bo was anxious to go south to control the situation, but many things could not be done if he wanted to. The logistics supply problem faced by this army was almost unsolvable, even if Haihan ships were hired to transport supplies by sea, It is also difficult to maintain the thousands of miles of supply lines from Hue to the southern border.Haihan's fleet is barely enough to maintain a team of three to four thousand people like the militia, but the supplies needed by the North Vietnam Army, which has ten times the strength of this force, have exceeded the fleet's operating capacity.

Under such circumstances, Zheng Bo had no better solution, so he could only use the most primitive method - on-the-spot supplies during the march.A relatively simple and easy-to-understand statement is to rush all the way.Those who are willing to donate food can still save their families and a small amount of food, but as long as they are unwilling to cooperate, almost all of them will be looted, and those who dare to resist may even lose their lives, anyway. During the war, human life was worthless, and if you were killed by the rebels, you would kill them. At most, you could report a crime of "Southern Vietnam's remnants" and get away with it.

This method directly caused the area south of Hue to fall into huge chaos. Wherever the North Vietnamese army went, it was almost like locusts swept across.Although Zheng Bo's original intention was to solicit supplies, it was difficult to carry out such orders as they were at the grassroots level.Moreover, for the North Vietnamese army, the north and the south have been separated for many years, and their families are all fighting for the north of the river. They don't have much pity and sympathy for the people in the South Vietnam area, and they don't have much psychological pressure to start robbing property. The operation to collect supplies turned into a feast of looting.

On the other side of the sea, when the Haihan Executive Committee sent a special task force to Shilu, Zheng Bai commanded the army to advance to the Guangyi area four hundred miles south of Hue.At this time, instead of reducing the accompanying items in the army due to constant consumption, there were tens of thousands of catties of extra luggage.

In addition to the military rations collected by various means along the way, there are more personal items looted by the soldiers.After the soldiers robbed the money, they had no place to store it, let alone spend it on the march, and there was no feasible way to transport it back to the north, so they had to gather it together for storage, and often a group of people robbed it. All the belongings are put together in several large boxes, and then taken away together when marching.Fortunately, they also robbed a lot of livestock such as mules and horses along the way southward, so there was no need to worry about robbing too many things that could not be transported away.

Zheng Bo is not blind, and he is not unaware of this kind of situation in the army, but under the current objective situation, if these soldiers are not given material stimulation, it is really unreasonable.Zheng Bai had heard that the Haihan militias were all rewarded after the war, and all the property seized during the battle had to be confiscated. Unfortunately, there was no such rule in the North Vietnamese Army, even those who had been in the Haihan Army Trained military officers would probably not agree to confiscate a piece of property that belonged to them.

The regime in South Vietnam has already disintegrated, so the army did not encounter the kind of resistance similar to Guangzhi City in the process of clearing out the remnants of South Vietnam.The frequent and intensive small-scale military conflicts Zheng Bo feared did not happen.But this way of marching with looting and killing all the way also caused another evil result, that is, a large number of bankrupt people appeared in the places they passed, and their only choice was probably to leave their homes and flee.As a result, there was the second wave of refugees in South Vietnam since 1627, and this time the location was no longer the north-south war zone near Zhengjiang, but moved to the southern coasts of Da Nang, Hoi An, Sanqi, Guangyi, and Anning regional towns.

Before the war, the Haihan Executive Committee asked the North Vietnamese court for the concession rights of Da Nang, Quy Nhon, Cam Ranh, and Vung Tau. The two places of Jen almost became white land, and the people abandoned their homes and fled under the looting of the North Vietnamese army.And this kind of situation undoubtedly added more difficulty to Haihan's development plan that he wanted to implement here.After all, the development and construction of the port requires a lot of labor. When planning, the executive committee directly planned to recruit the main labor force from the local area, and only sent management personnel from the base camp.But with the North Vietnamese army making such a fuss, I am afraid that the executive committee will have to reconsider the distribution of labor sources.

However, the Executive Committee really has no better way to solve the current problems for North Vietnam, because with the launch of the Shilu project, the Executive Committee needs to concentrate more sea transportation capacity on the Shengli Port-Changhua route. Therefore, it is impossible to send more ships to solve the transportation problem of supplies for the North Vietnamese army.The North Vietnamese Army made a mess in the local area, and the Executive Committee could only stare blankly at it. After all, the original agreement only involved the use and ownership of the local land, and did not say that the population of the surrounding areas should be reserved for Haihan. .

For this situation, the executive committee is also quite helpless.According to the development plan agreed by the executive committee members last year, it was expected to start construction at Shilu and Nanyue at the same time, but now it seems that it may be difficult to implement both.After weighing again and again, the executive committee decided to take care of Shilu Iron Mine, which is closer to Shengli Port and more important to the future development of Crossing Group.Although the construction time of the Shilu iron ore project may be far longer than the time required to develop the South Vietnamese port, the importance is not the same.

Regarding this decision, Yan Chujie expressed a point of view that was later widely discussed by the outside world at the executive committee: "With steel, there is combat power. With combat power, what else can we not grab? The port of South Vietnam is placed there. It won’t be lost, as long as our military strength is strong enough, it’s not impossible to take down the entire Indochina Peninsula, not to mention these few ports in the future!”

Although the executive committee members did not fully agree with Yan Chujie's slightly extreme views, they had to admit that his statement had some truth.Armed with muskets and cannons, the Haihan Militia can almost be regarded as the most powerful army of the same size in the Far East in this era, and the development of the Shilu Iron Mine is bound to bring about a further improvement in the overall strength of the military and even the entire crossing group. Ascension, where do you want to occupy at that time, in the end, it is not the gun that has the final say?

Therefore, after the executive committee members unified their understanding, the executive committee also made a decision to temporarily suspend the port construction plan in the South Vietnam area, and devote all resources to the development project of the Shilu Iron Mine, striving to shorten the scheduled construction period, so that The large project of Shilu Iron Mine has been put into actual operation as soon as possible.And the making of this decision also brought about the outbreak of a new wave of immigration in 1629.

(End of this chapter)