1627 Rise of the South China Sea

Chapter 688 International Situation
Although Haihan has an absolute advantage in terms of force, it is still difficult to completely avoid casualties during the battle, but fortunately, the degree of casualties is acceptable.At present, only two soldiers have unfortunately died in the battle, and there are more than 140 wounded with varying degrees of injury.However, when evaluated in a combat environment with a scale of thousands of people, such a casualty rate is already quite low.It must be known that the casualty rate of the other side in the war was much higher than this figure. There were more than [-] corpses collected after the war, and there were more than [-] lightly and severely wounded.Due to limited medical conditions, it is basically impossible for those seriously injured to receive timely treatment like militia soldiers, and most of them will die in the following day or two.

In addition to these wounded numbers, the militia army will probably execute a group of fugitives from the hard labor camp and accomplices in Heishandong here, and then escort the remaining captives back to the Shilu mining area in batches.As for the village of Heishandong, after seeing the environment here, Qiao Zhiya does not intend to destroy it directly. He thinks that those Lidong Miao villages who are willing to attach themselves to Haihan can be moved here, and then the surrounding mountain plains can be farmed. develop.Of course, he does not need to handle these tasks. The Ministry of Civil Affairs and the Ministry of Agriculture will take over the follow-up matters.

After visiting the wounded, Qiao Zhiya returned to his tent and began to draft a battle report to be sent back to Sanya.

"...Lidong in the Qiongzhong area still has a large gap with our army in terms of combat effectiveness. If short-term combat supplies can be guaranteed, we can consider preemptive strikes and decisively launch military strikes against local forces that refuse to obey. Another Annan The Second Battalion has demonstrated excellent adaptability to the mountainous combat environment during the battle, and it is recommended to use it as the main force to quell the Qiongzhong area."

At the end of the message, Qiao Zhiya attached some of his views on this mission.As a member of the military, there is no doubt that he is also a staunch main fighter, so he is dissatisfied with the executive committee's delay in coming up with a feasible plan for the governance of the Qiongzhong area.In the past, every time the military proposed to use force to solve the problem that some areas in Qiongzhong did not want to be brought under the jurisdiction of Haihan, some people would stand up and oppose it for various reasons, and in the end it was too late.And the riots in the Shilu mining area this time, from a certain point of view, are actually one of the consequences of the executive committee's long-delayed decision on Qiongzhong's handling plan.

From the next day, the Annan Second Battalion led by Qiao Zhiya took Heishandong as its base and launched an attack on several Litongs in the surrounding area.These Lidongs usually followed Heishandong's lead, and they also contributed their efforts to participate in the Shilu riots, so naturally they could not escape the subsequent wave of liquidation.And the strength of these Li Tongs is relatively weaker, and the difficulty of attacking is not too great, so there will not be too much trouble in handling them.It took only two days for the militia army to break through the other three Lidongs one by one and captured a large number of people.

Qiao Zhiya calculated, counting the fugitives and Li people arrested in this operation, the number of prisoners in the hard labor camp should not decrease but increase.However, it is obviously not suitable for all the Li people arrested this time to be detained together, and some have to be separated out.

On October 10, the armed mopping up of Heishandong and surrounding areas was basically declared over, and the militia army plus a large team of more than 2 captives began to return to Shilu in a mighty manner.However, these captives were not the entire population of several Lidongs, and there were still some people who were lucky enough to escape this wave of raids.Qiao Zhiya ordered Li Miaolian, who was in this coordinated operation, to stay in the stockade in Heishandong for another month to avoid the resurgence of resistance forces.

The Li people's riot that broke out in Shilu did cause relatively large losses to the production of the mining area. Military means to strike against civilian hostile forces.To a certain extent, this riot can be said to have accelerated Haihan's process of unifying the entire territory of Hainan Island, and it also affected Haihan's future policy bias for resolving civil hostile forces.

Because the Qiongzhong area is located in the hinterland of Hainan Island and is mostly mountainous, the Ming government's rule over this area is more of a formality, and many places still belong to the situation of the cave masters and village masters as local emperors.Prior to this, the Executive Committee was not willing to use force to resolve the issue of jurisdiction in the Qiongzhong area. First, the use of military means would consume a lot of money and the short-term returns were limited. Second, the Executive Committee did not want to be in a good development situation. To intensify the conflict with the Li and Miao tribes, to make things difficult for oneself.

However, with the success of this troop crusade against Heishandong, resolving the Qiongzhong issue by force has become a feasible option, and the combat environment that high-level officials have been worried about does not seem to be an insurmountable problem.Especially for the Annan Militia, which is good at mountain combat, they don't even need much time to adapt to the environment, they can quickly enter the combat state, and they also showed satisfaction in the battle tactical skills.

Of course, the Ministry of Security is the most elated by this victory.After half a year of investigation and arrest, Zhao Ye's case can finally be successfully concluded.In the past six months, half of the field personnel of the Ministry of Security have been busy inside and outside Danzhou, trying to arrest Zhao Ye as soon as possible, but in the end it was the military that achieved this goal. The role of assistance and miscellaneous.But Lin Nan and Li Qingyang, who were handling the matter in Shilu, would not blame the military for stealing their limelight in this matter. On the contrary, they were very grateful that the military was finally willing to take action, otherwise Zhao Ye would have been hiding in the mountains and would not come out. This case will continue to drag on and there is no way to close it.Originally, the Ministry of Security was credited with handling the Danzhou assassination case in March, but it was unable to close the case because the principal culprit escaped, so this credit has been suspended.This time, when the two return to Sanya, most of what awaits them will be a commendation order issued by the executive committee.

At the same time, good news came back from Fujian. Under the continuous persuasion of Qian Tiandun and others, Xu Xinsu finally agreed to temporarily hand over part of Kinmen Island to Haihan as the resident of the military advisory group.Of course, this kind of right to use is not just to build a few rows of barracks and build a training ground, but an exclusive area where forts, coastal defense forts and military docks can be built, and the Haihan side will have extraterritorial rights in this area, which is basically It is consistent with Haihan's treatment in Annan.

The reason why Qian Tiandun insisted on enclosing a piece of land on Kinmen Island to set up camp is because the next strategy considered by the military is to attack the Penghu Islands, and Kinmen Island is the place with the shortest flight distance between Fujian and Penghu .

The Penghu Islands are still the home of Shibazhi. Although Shibazhi lost miserably in several successive matches, they can still gain certain benefits by controlling the waterway of the strait by virtue of Penghu's geographical location. , so as to continue to survive, and this is obviously a situation that Hai Han does not want to see.

So far, Shibazhi has not launched any retaliation against the Fujian army or Haihan, but has not attempted peace talks either.Qian Tiandun believes that Shibazhi is re-accumulating strength, and at the same time, he is waiting for the Dutch to come up with a clear attitude-since the Nanri Island naval battle, the Dutch have remained silent, and have neither disclosed it to Daming nor Haihan. He declared war, and did not explain his future attitude to Shibazhi.

Of course, the Dutch also have their own difficulties, but they can’t explain it to Shibazhi, because the instruction from Batavia is to keep them silent, not to take the initiative to provoke trouble, and wait for the results of the negotiations with the Haihan people.But the envoys sent by the East India Company to Sanya were still staying at the Guest House in Victory Harbor.Although the negotiations between the two sides have been going on for dozens of days, the progress achieved is still almost zero, and Van Longen and Van der Wegen, plus Su Keyi, are unwilling to return to Batavia empty-handed. , so it dragged down all the way.

Schneider had already let go of this mess, and Yu Xiaobao was still in charge of negotiating with the Dutch.However, after a long tug-of-war of negotiations, both sides are now not interested in arguing meaninglessly over some details. Meeting each other every day is more about talking about the past and the present. The situation is much more than a negotiation.

After constant conversations, the three East India Company envoys also found that the young man's knowledge definitely exceeded their expectations. No less than the few old sea dogs who have been running around in the sea all year round.Especially for those distant places, such as India, the Arabian Peninsula, and the continent of Europe, this young Haihan official seems to know something. Obviously, this is not a matter of cleaning up.

And when talking about the current state of war between the two sides today, Yu Xiaobao’s remarks once again surprised the Dutch envoys: “I can only express my incomprehension for your side’s constant threat of war. When all countries are in a pot of porridge, does your country still have enough energy to invest a large number of naval forces in the Far East? Your country's parliament should pay more attention to fighting the Spaniards at this time, rather than fighting for an unproductive island in the Far East. ?”

Of course, Yu Xiaobao didn't think of these words himself, but came from Schneider and Ning Qi's guidance.In history, the Netherlands has been ruled by Spain since the beginning of the 16th century. By 1568, the Netherlands broke out in the 80 Years War against Spain. When the United Netherlands was proclaimed in The Hague in 1581, the first article of the declaration was to abolish the king of Spain's right to rule the provinces of the Netherlands.

Of course, the independence of the Netherlands is not counted by a few people declaring it verbally. The Dutch War of Independence in history lasted from 1568 to 1648. It took 80 years to obtain the independence recognized by the Spanish royal family. The price paid during the period was really high. Not small.As one of the main powers on the European continent at that time, Spain was obviously stronger, and it had always been in an advantageous position in the war against the Netherlands.This situation did not begin to change until Spain was involved in the Thirty Years War in 1621.

From 1621 to 1648, it can be said that the Netherlands and Spain fought the most intensely. The battlefields of the two sides were not limited to Europe. In the American colonies and the Far East, the two sides were constantly fighting.A few years ago, the East India Company occupied Dayuan Port in southern Taiwan and blocked the shipping route for the Ming maritime merchants to Manila, which was one of the means.After that, the Spaniards also sent a fleet to occupy Taipei's Jilong Port in an attempt to cut off the shipping routes between the Netherlands and Ryukyu, Japan, North Korea and other places, which is also a countermeasure.

Compared with Spain, Haihan is weaker or weaker?There is basically no need to discuss this issue. Although Spain is facing many problems and is mired in the quagmire of war, it is still a powerful empire after all, far from being comparable to the power of a remote place like Haihan.Moreover, the war between Spain and the Netherlands can be said to be of a life-and-death nature, which is far from being comparable to the regional territorial dispute between the East India Company and Haihan.The Executive Committee sees this very clearly, and they believe that the top management of the East India Company also understands it very well.Fighting against Haihan, the East India Company is not 100% sure of winning, and it is very likely that the Spaniards will take advantage of it. The Executive Committee believes that this can be regarded as a weakness of the East India Company.

After talking for so many days, Schneider thought it was time to wake up the other party and let them realize who had the initiative. That's why he instructed Yu Xiaobao to make such a statement.

"The war between us and the Spaniards is another matter. You don't need to worry about it." After listening to Su Keyi's translation, Van Longen suppressed the surprise in his heart and said with a blank face on purpose.

Every time I return to Batavia, I can get the latest battle situation in Europe, but for these countries in the Far East, very few people know about the war that happened thousands of miles away, let alone understand it. origin and meaning.But Yu Xiaobao's few words seem to have broken through the reality that the Dutch least want to face at present.

"We have no intention of interfering in the war between your country and Spain, but..." Yu Xiaobao said while recalling Schneider's words, trying to imitate his tone: "...if the East India Company repeatedly uses war as a threat, Then we may unite other forces with the same interests when necessary, just like you united with Shibazhi."

"No, you won't cooperate with the Spaniards. They are a group of insatiable liars and thugs. They can do nothing but squeeze others." This time Su Keyi did not translate first, but directly responded to Yu Xiaobao .

(End of this chapter)