1627 Rise of the South China Sea

Chapter 910 Ending Eighteen Zhi

For the Eighteen Zhiyu Party on the island, death is actually not the most terrible thing. They have been in the rivers and lakes for so many years, and they have seen a lot of life and death, but when the moment of destruction really came before them, among them Most people will inevitably think about their own affairs.After dying in battle on this island, will someone take away your bones? Will there be a chance to send the bones back to their homeland for burial? Will your family members become slaves or hard labor for life in the future? Will be troubled by the aftermath.As the leader, the decision made by Zheng Zhilong will undoubtedly have a great impact on their final fate.

Zheng Zhilong didn't know the seriousness of the current situation. The purpose of Haihan's pursuit to Miyako Island this time could not be more obvious, that is to drive out his group of people.Winner and loser, he didn't complain too much about it. After all, if he was in the position of winner, he probably wouldn't let his opponent Xu Xinsu go.Presumably, among the personnel who invaded the island with the Haihan army this time, there must be personnel sent by Xu Xinsu. If he survived, Xu Xinsu probably would not be at ease.It's just that he also has the same worries as his subordinates. It's not difficult to die, but the difficult thing is that you can't let go of things after death.

Zheng Zhilong is actually not a man of integrity. He has served countless masters in his life, and he will choose to join his camp when he sees someone who is powerful. This is the main reason why Haihan never thought of surrendering to him. One, because this guy is too unreliable.But he has never chosen to surrender during the years of dealing with Haihan. On the one hand, it is because Haihan has never given him a chance to communicate, and on the other hand, he is really a little unconvinced. When Haihan makes a move, he will lose again and again. After so many years of fighting, he has no wins. How can such a performance be used to negotiate terms with the Haihan people?Even if he is demoted, he can only be regarded as an incompetent wretch, and he will never have the chance to be reused by the Haihan people. This is not what Zheng Zhilong wants.

However, under the current situation, what needs to be considered is not what kind of treatment you can get after surrendering, but whether it is really necessary to resist to the end, and change the result that all the fish die and the net cannot be broken.Unwilling to surrender to his opponent, and unwilling to die on Miyako Island without knowing why, Zheng Zhilong felt that he had never been in such a dilemma in his life.

Zheng Zhilong hopes that his subordinates can come up with a feasible plan so that he can make up his mind to continue to fight the Haihan people to the end, but his capable generals have suffered a lot in previous fights with the Haihan people. Now there are only less than half of them left, and the rest are either foolhardy or good at management, and there is no one who can come up with ideas.Whether it's war or surrender, the fate of the thousands of subordinates on the island is in his mind.

Zheng Zhilong pondered for a long time before finally announcing an ambiguous decision: "Tomorrow, brothers, please give it a go, no matter whether you win or lose, but I hope you can play with the momentum of eighteen Zhi, and don't let the Haihan people treat us as weak and bully people! If we last one more day, there will be more chances of a turning point, everyone must do their best!"

As soon as the participants heard that there was a possibility of a turning point, they asked questions one after another, but Zheng Zhilong kept silent.In fact, of course there was no turning point, but until the last moment, he still had a little luck, hoping to repel the Haihan army fighting away on Miyako Island.Even if you can't beat the opponent, at least you have to show that you are not so easy to be surrendered. Even if you still have to surrender to the Haihan Army, maybe because of the resistance in the final stage, you can have a little more negotiation capital.

Of course, the consequences of doing so may cause his subordinates to suffer heavy casualties in tomorrow's battle, but Zheng Zhilong doesn't worry about this kind of thing, because even if these people's lives are saved, he will probably die in the future. There will be no chance to lead and command them again.Whether he stays or not, it will not help his future destiny, so it is better to fully play their role here.

After the meeting dismissed the group of subordinates, the personal guards came to report that his son Zheng Fusong wanted to see him. Zheng Zhilong closed his eyes and pondered for a while, then shook his head and said, "You give him a message for me, and I will command the battle for my father today. The tiredness has already rested, and we can talk about it another day."

Zheng Zhilong didn't see his son because he knew that Zheng Fusong was probably worried about his own safety and wanted to persuade himself to give up resistance.Although my son is not very old, the maturity of his thinking is far beyond his age. At this time, other children may still enjoy the blessings of being young masters, but his son has already started to read history books and military books, and study horseback riding and fighting .However, Zheng Zhilong has been going downhill since he brought him back from Japan, and he can't provide him with more stable living and learning conditions. In this regard, Zheng Zhilong still feels a little regretful.

Zheng Zhilong didn't want to see him at this time, because he was afraid that his heart would soften for a while, which would affect the decision he had already made.If defeat is still unavoidable tomorrow, then the two father and son may have to meet in the underworld.But Zheng Zhilong, as a generational hero, is quite decisive when he should be cruel, and will not shake the decision he just made because of the relationship between father and son.

September 1633, [-], the first day of August in the sixth year of Chongzhen in Ming Dynasty.On an isolated island in the sea thousands of miles away from the coastline of Daming, the Haihan militia fought the final battle with Shibazhi, the most powerful civilian armed force in the Far East in this era.

At dawn, the Haihan militia moved out of camp and marched inland. Due to the need to transport heavy artillery, various combat materials, and accompanying luggage, and at the same time to take into account the safety of the march, the main force moved extremely slowly.Considering that almost all of Shibazhi’s ships fell into Haihan’s control after the previous day’s battle, or fled into the open sea, and there were not many left around Miyako Island, the navy also sent some sailors ashore to cooperate with the army to fight.

If the battle is only measured by the amount of troops invested, the level of Haihan's military operations is not particularly outstanding. It is not as good as last year's attack on Penghu and this year's northward expedition to Zhejiang. The opponents are just a bunch of desperate pirates. From a military point of view, it is not very challenging, but the significance of this battle is no less than any major military operation in Haihan in the past few years.

Before Haihan crossed over, he had already regarded the Shibazhi, the strongest armed organization that controlled the southeast coast of Ming Dynasty in this era, as a competitor and a serious worry.In order to curb the development of Shibazhi, after crossing, he spared no effort to spend all kinds of resources to support Xu Xinsu, who is thousands of miles away, to fight against Shibazhi in Fujian.This kind of military assistance has lasted for five years, and its effect is also very remarkable. Instead of being washed ashore as in the original history, Shibazhi failed to become an official army of Ming Dynasty, but went down all the way, finally in 1632. He was expelled from Penghu, his hometown.This unlucky state even affected Portugal, Spain, and the Netherlands, which once supported Shibazhi, forcing these western colonial countries to make some compromises with Haihan.

Although he achieved a staged victory in expelling Shibazhi from Penghu and the Fujian Strait, Haihan did not mean to end there. The existence of Shibazhi was always a hidden danger that needed to be completely eliminated for Haihan, but the previous I have been busy settling in Taiwan for a year, and I can't spare a hand to kill the remnant party of the Eighteenth Zhi.Now that the dust has basically settled in Zhoushan and Taiwan, and the Fujian government has been urging Haihan to send troops to suppress the bandits for a whole year, even if it is for the purpose of reassuring Xu Xinsu, it is time to settle this matter .

The reconnaissance platoon belonging to the [-]st Battalion of the Haihan Army was the first to meet the fire. After they landed at the camp on the northwest coast and traveled about eight or nine miles to the southeast inland, they encountered a small fort built by Shibazhi. .

It is said to be a fortress, but it is actually a rebuilt courtyard of a brick and stone structure, with crenels built with bricks on the top of the wall for archers and musketeers to hide behind and attack.A large number of stones have been piled up at the gate, which has blocked the frontal access.

Due to the flat terrain of the island, it was difficult for the reconnaissance platoon to detect the deployment of personnel in the courtyard from the outside, and there were no heavy weapons such as artillery, so it was difficult to capture this fortress.The reconnaissance platoon can only deploy a skirmish line on the periphery, temporarily encircling it from a distance, and leaving it to the follow-up infantry units to take over.

For such scattered forts and strongholds on the island, the Haihan military has its own set of mature operating procedures.In principle, the reconnaissance unit will not undertake the task of attacking fortified areas, but is only responsible for collecting target information, and then handing it over to large units equipped with heavy weapons.And when the large troops with artillery arrived, it was only a matter of time before the defense line of this small fort was breached.

About an hour later, the artillery platoon carrying four six-pound guns and two three-pound guns arrived here under the escort of an infantry company, and according to the information reported by the reconnaissance unit, they quickly stopped at about 300 meters in front of the fort. Set up positions.

The officer in charge of commanding this force did not try to persuade the personnel in the fortress to surrender in any form. On the one hand, the military order above clearly required a quick victory. On the other hand, there was also a little bit of selfishness. If he was directly persuaded to surrender, then his military achievements would be greatly reduced.Regardless of Sanqi 21, first set up the guns and fire a shot, even if the people inside can't stand the fight and choose to surrender, that is a real battle achievement.

Sure enough, when the pirates in the fortress were still in doubt, the artillery outside had already sounded, and the shells roared towards the gate, causing the bricks and stones piled up inside and outside the gate to splash everywhere.Several cannons fired at the same time, and after only two or three rounds of shooting, the gate of the fortress and the beams on it were knocked down, and a gap about two feet wide was exposed on the front.

However, the shelling didn't stop there, and the sound of the cannons was still rumbling. This time Haihan went to Miyako Island, and the ammunition was very sufficient, so there was no need to save deliberately.The high level of the Military Commission intends to regard this sure-fire operation as a tactical exercise with real troops and live ammunition, especially advanced tactics such as infantry coordination and field combined attack, which are the items that the military has always focused on practicing.Under such a premise, the military provided ammunition for this operation very loosely, and also gave grassroots officers greater command authority tactically, allowing them to use fire suppression to attack the enemy when encountering resistance. .

It was not until nearly two-thirds of the front wall of the fortress was blown down that the officer ordered the shelling to stop and let the infantry cover the past.At this time, the inside of the fortress had already been bombarded into a mess by the bombardment just now, and it was impossible to organize a decent resistance.Occasionally, a few people tried to pick up their weapons and struggle again, but only quickly drew a volley of gunfire.

After knocking down the front wall, it took only about 10 minutes for the infantry to settle the battle.More than a dozen corpses were cleared out of the rubble, and more than [-] people were captured alive.Although the weapons used by these people are still mainly cold weapons, they also found seven or eight matchlock guns, and two of them were even the models that Haihan exported for export in the early years.However, this kind of sporadic musket equipment is difficult to compete with the established professional army. At best, it is just a facade for these pirates, and its effectiveness in actual combat is very limited.

But as the Haihan Militia Army went deep into the inland, they found that there were actually a lot of small forts like this, and almost all the houses and courtyards they encountered were transformed into similar fort structures. It seems that Shibazhi is hiding in Miyako Island It's not that nothing has been done in the past year, at least the defense measures on the shore have been strengthened a lot.

I have to say that Shibazhi's coping strategy is still highly targeted, because in last year's match, they were sure that they were definitely not the opponent of the Haihan Fleet at sea, and they insisted on sending warships to fight against the opponent. Fighting recklessly at sea is actually no different from charging barebacked.So Shibazhi learned the previous lessons and invested the main resources in the construction of coastal defense facilities.Almost all of the relatively sturdy houses on the island had been transformed into large and small armed strongholds, distributed in layers from north to south, with a total of at least fifty or sixty places.

Shibazhi didn't expect to be able to defeat the opponent with this kind of fortress formation, but only hoped to slow down the speed of the opponent's advance on the island, and it would take a few more days until the opponent's ammunition and supplies were exhausted. Then look for an opportunity to launch a counterattack.After all, Miyako Island is isolated in the sea, no matter which direction the opponent comes from, supply will become a huge problem, and Shibazhi's way to win only exists in this theoretical possibility.

"Lock these people up and hand them over to the troops behind." The officer who had just finished breaking the fort did not order the troops to stop and rest, but urged the soldiers to quickly gather the prisoners together and lock them with chains, and hurry up Go to the next target.

(End of this chapter)