1627 Rise of the South China Sea

Chapter 621
If it was a face-to-face fight with real swords and guns, the pirates would not be afraid of the Haihan militia, but the problem is that the pirates have no chance to confront their opponents directly. Their courage has been completely wiped out.If the pirates had some fantasies about fighting Haihan before the war, then after the war, they understood why Haihan was so courageous that he only sent a few hundred people to land on the island to attack Nanri Village—the difference in strength between the two sides was huge. Too big, so big that the opponent can directly ignore the number of troops and the disadvantages of away games.

The pirates had already tried desperately, rushing out to harass the [-] brothers in Haihan's position, and in the end only about half of them retreated back to the stronghold. After paying such a high price, they didn't even touch a hair of their opponents. There is no way to fight a battle.Only at this time did the pirates understand why Xu Xinsu relied so heavily on the Haihan people on Qiongzhou Island in the South China Sea, and they also knew that the defeat of the big boss Liu Xiang at the Pearl River Estuary two years ago was not because of his ineffectiveness in fighting, but because of the gap in strength between him and his opponent too big.

Duan San's relatives died under the gunfire of Haihan. Of course he wanted to fight with the Haihan people to avenge his relatives, but the others did not plan to fight to the death on this deserted island for the leaders of Shibazhi.The people of Haihan have already issued an ultimatum, and Duan San still wants to encourage the people in Nanri Village to go out and do their best. If he is allowed to go, everyone will die.In this case, it is naturally better to let him die alone and save everyone's life.The other bosses reached a tacit understanding in an instant, and directly attacked Duan San when he was off guard.

As for whether doing so would lead to being liquidated by Zheng Zhihu afterwards, these people can't care so much anymore, saving their lives is more important right now.Get rid of the unstable factor of Duan San, so that everyone can have a chance to continue to live.

Before the time limit set by Shi Diwen came, finally the pirates walked up to the wall of the village in groups, lined up and threw their weapons out of the wall in despondency.The reason why they didn't go out of the village directly was because the gate of the village had been built up with stones by the pirates the day before, and the passage could not be cleared for a while.

"Ready to take prisoners!" Seeing that the pirates in the village chose to surrender, Shi Diwen was also greatly relieved.Even if Haihan's strength is superior, if the opponent resists to the end, they will inevitably suffer some casualties if they want to take down Nanri Village.For the limited troops visiting Fujian this time, any casualties are situations that the commander must avoid as much as possible.

"Uh, by the way, tell your father to send someone to take over the defense of Nanri Village." Shi Diwen said to Xu Yuzhuo.Haihan's troops are limited, and even if Nanri Village is captured, it is impossible to send troops to garrison here, so this job can only be handed over to the Ming army.The main purpose of this battle is to show the Ming army the powerful combat power of Haihan, and this goal has been achieved. As for whether the army can hold Nanri Island, that is not something Shi Diwen has to worry about right now.

Xu Yuzhuo whispered next to him: "My father's troops are at sea right now, why don't the militia troops go into the village first to wipe out the remaining pirates?"

Shi Diwen was taken aback for a moment, thinking that this battle was fought by me, Haihan, why should we do the dirty work of cleaning the battlefield?He was about to ask a question, when he suddenly came to his senses - this is the benefit of the Ming army fortress!
This Nanri Island is located on the golden waterway in the sea area of ​​Fujian. Most of the passing ships have to pay a large amount of protection fees to Shibazhi in order to pass safely. Nanri Village is one of the most important strongholds of Shibazhi on the coastline of Fujian. , and the gold and silver treasures stored in it will probably not be a small amount.

Of course, the Ming army could openly take over the task of cleaning up the battlefield immediately after the war, and swallowed the property in the village by the way.But Xu Xinsu thinks that this time the Haihan people sent money to send troops and came all the way to take down Nanri Island. If the Fujian side didn't show anything, it would be cold to Haihan's heart, so yesterday he specially told Xu Yuzhuo, who was fighting with the Haihan militia, to Let him not rush to let the Ming army enter the village after the war, but let the Haihan militia advance to the village to reap some practical benefits.

Xu Xinsu was not worried about whether this approach would work. He had heard of the "bad deeds" of the Haihan militia in Annan.After Haihan conquered Hoi An city, almost all the things that could be moved in Hoi An city were shipped back to Sanya, even the population was not spared. It has been implemented once, and it is said that it has gained a lot.

Although Xu Xinsu only heard about it and did not witness what the Haihan militia did at the scene, but as the saying goes, "thieves pass like a comb, soldiers pass like a grate", he can roughly imagine how the Haihan militia searched for loot locally get.Since the Haihan people love money so much, giving them some belongings can be regarded as what they like.Besides, all the things in Nanri Village are Shibazhi's property, so Xu Xinsu borrowed flowers to offer Buddha, and he didn't need to pay for it, and he could sell Haihan people, which is a way to kill two birds with one stone.

"Have someone clear out the door opening quickly, and send two platoons into the village to search. Search carefully for me, and don't let the remnants of the pirates go!" After Shi Diwen came back to his senses, naturally he would not reject Xu Yuzhuo's kindness, and immediately An order was issued.

If it hadn't been for the consideration that the Ming army would send troops to garrison Nanri Village, Shi Diwen would probably order someone to blow up the gate of the village that was blocked by stones.Fortunately, there is a small iron gate on both sides of Nanri Village, which is the passage used by the pirates to come out of the village to harass them.The pirates in the village were ordered to walk out of Nanri Village by themselves from these two places. When one came out, the militiamen tied his arms with ropes, and every ten people were put in a string and escorted to the side of the road to squat.Then the militia army entered the village and began to clean up the battlefield.

The cleanup of Nanri Village took about three hours, and during this period Xu Yuzhuo tacitly made all the Ming troops who landed on the island retreat to the periphery, calling it a friendly guard.And just as the Xu family's father and son expected, Nanri Village did indeed hide a lot of gold and silver property. The soldiers found more than 12 taels of gold and [-] taels of silver in three cellars. Pearls, corals, jade, emeralds and other jewelry.In addition, there are raw silk, flour, rice, medicinal materials, porcelain and other commodities. It can be seen that Shibazhi uses this place as a cargo transfer station.

There are indeed many good things, but there is a problem in front of Shi Diwen-the Haihan warship participating in the battle this time does not have enough capacity to transport all the property in Nanri Village.

"It seems that only part of it can be left for Xu Xinsu." Shi Diwen looked at the spoils that had been packed like a hill, and said with some regret.

Although this is the case, in fact, the high-value gold, silver and jewelry have basically been loaded onto the flatbed carts originally used to transport shells, and they are covered with military tarpaulins, so they can't be seen at all.As for those that could not be transported away, most of them were relatively heavy and low-value goods, such as grain, oil, rice and noodles, which happened to be reserved for the Ming army stationed here as consumables.

As for the situation of the captives, after counting, a total of 790 pirates were captured on the island, and a total of 130 pirate corpses were found.In addition, according to the accounts of several small pirate bosses, Zheng Zhihu, the big boss who was originally on Nanri Island, had slipped out of the back door of Nanri Village after the war started. As Shi Diwen expected, he brought more than 20 pirates with him. The subordinates went to the beach in the south and escaped by boat.When the Haihan militia learned the news, Zheng Zhihu had been out to sea for about two hours.

If you know the course, in fact, the two-hour voyage difference can completely send a boat to chase immediately, but the problem is that no one here knows where Zheng Zhihu will go after going out to sea.Maybe he will return to Penghu immediately, maybe he will go to the nearest mainland fishing village to avoid the limelight, maybe he will find a place on the nearby sea to gather his men to make another plan, in short, there is no definite direction, and the Haihan militia can't follow it even if they have fast boats.

"Zheng Zhihu!" Morgan was very disappointed when he heard the news. He also roughly knew the position of the pirate leader in Shibazhi. It was extremely frustrating for a veteran who claimed to be a battlefield hunter to miss such a goal. Big loss.

"If you had asked me to take someone around Nanri Village to intercept it in the south, maybe we would have caught this big fish!" Of course Morgan also knew that it was too late now, so he could only vent his grievances to stop himself on Shi Diwen.

"That's only a theoretical possibility, but I guarantee your personal safety [-]% in fact." Shi Diwen was naturally not convinced by Morgan's accusation, and immediately refuted him.

Morgan shook his head in disappointment and said, "Dear Steven, I'm afraid it won't be so easy for us to catch him next time."

"Next time we will not only arrest him, but also his elder brother and his partner." Shi Diwen disagreed with Morgan's pessimism: "We still have many opportunities to make military achievements, but the premise is to ensure that our own safety."

There is no clear winner or loser in this kind of debate, but Morgan also knows that after this matter is reported to the Military Commission and the Executive Committee, Shi Diwen's approach of striving for safety will still be recognized by the high-level.Even though the military wants to expand rapidly, it has always been conservative when it comes to the personal safety of the traverser officers.A more risky approach like Morgan's will not get much support from the top.

It wasn't until the Haihan militia transported the gold, silver and jewelry found in Nanrizhai to the wharf and started loading the ship that Xu Xinsu's ship came into the port tacitly.After meeting Shi Diwen, Xu Xinsu didn't even say a word about cleaning the battlefield, but first thanked Shi Diwen: "With the help of the Haihan militia in this battle, I won it easily! On behalf of the soldiers and civilians of Fujian, thank you!" Pass Haihan, officers and soldiers!"

Xu Xinsu's attitude made Shi Diwen very satisfied. Obviously, the other party has been able to face up to the existence of Haihan's military power with a relatively peaceful attitude, and the words also revealed the willingness to continue to cooperate with Haihan. This is one of the main purposes of the Haihan Mission's visit to Fujian.The battle to conquer Nanri Island should have made the senior officials of the Ming army in Fujian realize the true combat effectiveness of the Haihan militia. For them, cooperation is definitely a more reasonable choice than confrontation.

When it was getting dark, the ships on guard in the nearby waters sent back news that the several pirate ships that had been watching from a distance had all evacuated. It seemed that they roughly guessed the result of the fall of Nanri Island.That night, all the coalition fleets were stationed on Nanri Island, and Xu Xinsu sent [-] Ming troops into Nanri Village to live there.Originally, Xu Xinsu wanted to invite the Haihan militia to station in Nanri Village, but Shi Diwen felt that the environment in the village was too bad, and he was not worried that the three Haihan warships were parked by the sea without sufficient defenses, so he insisted on sending the militia The station is arranged near the pier.

The dinner that day was extraordinarily sumptuous. Xu Xinsu ordered people to purchase all kinds of poultry from nearby villages on the mainland, transport them to the island for slaughter, and reward the armed forces.Although not many members of the Ming army directly participated in this attack on the island, fortunately they have Haihan as a partner who is not greedy for money, and most of the Ming army will get their own rewards from this victory. A military exploit, this is indeed something worth celebrating for them.

However, Shi Diwen thought it was too early to celebrate at this time. After half of the dinner, he invited Xu Xinsu and Xu Yuzhuo and his son to his tent and told them that the pirates had sent a boat back to Penghu the day before. News of the rescue.

"Shibazhi may not come back again." Xu Yuzhuo first expressed his opinion after hearing this: "Zheng Zhihu also ran away, and he has time to intercept the pirate fleet on the way."

"But he may not be able to swallow his breath, and will try to use reinforcements to take Nanri Island back. After all, if they really send reinforcements, it shouldn't be a small amount, right?" Shi Diwen proposed another possibility .

"The old man estimates that they will send at least 2000 ships, roughly a team of [-] people." Xu Xinsu continued: "The scale of armed forces that Zheng Zhilong can mobilize in a short period of time is probably at this level. If more people are to be mobilized , he must convene a meeting of the leaders of Shibazhi to discuss, let each family send people and ships, and send troops together. It will take at least seven or eight days for this to happen. When everything is ready to send troops, at least Half a month later."

"But if Shibazhi's rescuers encounter Zheng Zhihu on the way, will they come over and fight again?" Shi Diwen thought Xu Xinsu's argument was more credible, so he asked him his question again.

Xu Xinsu replied: "Although Zheng Zhihu is a little reckless, he is not stupid. He chose to escape instead of defending Nanri Village. This shows that he is still a person who can judge the situation. So the old man thinks that Zheng Zhihu led It is unlikely that the reinforcements from Penghu will return to Nanri Island. Even if there is a war, it will not happen in the next few days."

(End of this chapter)