Forty-eight years of Qianlong

Chapter 306 Ice Sea
Last June, Tsarist Russian officials in Okhotsk discovered that the two three-masted sailing ships that had gone to Sakhalin to pull coal had not returned, so they sent two ships south to find out the reason in early July.

The reason for the search is that sailing in the Okhotsk Sea at the turn of summer and autumn is very dangerous. When the wind speed is fierce, it can reach 30 meters per second, and the wave height is more than ten meters.In case the two boats were sunk in a storm, they had to know where they sank.

As a result, the two boats sent out to find the boat also capsized in the wind and waves.

Before the winter sea froze, a whaling ship returning to Okhotsk brought back news that the northern camp on Sakhalin Island had been occupied by a group of Tatars of unknown origin.

The Tsarist Russians are in a hurry!It's so hard to find a coal mine that can be mined all year round, and can grow some potatoes, but the buttocks are taken away before they can sit still. Neither uncle nor aunt can bear it!It must be taken back.

So the Tsarist Russian officials in Okhotsk wrote to Irkutsk, asking for a regiment of Cossack Musketeers to come over.And Ivan Jacobi was also extremely shocked when he received the letter. The first thing he suspected was the Qing Dynasty, but according to the past practice, the people of the Qing Dynasty would always say hello first.

Is it an islander?Not quite.No matter who it is, the coal mines in Sakhalin are extremely important to supporting the development of Okhotsk and must not be given up.So Ivan Jacobi signed the transfer order before leaving for Petersburg.He felt that a regiment of 200 Cossacks was too much, so he transferred four companies.

Moving east and south to occupy more land has been the established national policy of Tsarist Russia since Peter I.Since Kangxi repelled Tsarist Russia, the Cossack expedition could only expand eastward.They soon reached the Pacific coast and the Kamchatka Peninsula, and crossed the Bering Strait to occupy Alaska.The Russians established two strongholds on the northern coast of the Pacific Ocean, one in Okhotsk and one in Kamchatka.

But the problem is that both Okhotsk and Kamchatka have extremely harsh climates, and the crops cannot be kept alive, and all farming experiments have failed.No matter how delicious the whale meat is, you will vomit after eating it for three days.

Every year, the grain needed by Kamchatka is transported by water from the upper reaches of the Lena River to Irkutsk, and then transported by horses to Okhotsk through rough and difficult roads.It costs fifteen rubles to transport one pood (16.38 kilograms) of grain to Kamchatka, and the transportation cost is extremely high; while the price of a load of flour in Kamchatka is as high as 36 rubles.

Before the nineteenth century, the Russian ruble was not pegged to gold, so the ruble was a pile of silver.The silver content of one ruble is 28 grams. Of course, there are also gold rubles and copper rubles, and the purchasing power is still very high.So you can imagine how expensive grain is in Kamchatka. Eating grain is like chewing silver.

The tactics of the coal mine security team are not complicated. It is crazy to use a weapon with an effective range of 400 meters to fight close to the body.Therefore, keeping a distance and giving full play to the advantages of weapons is the first priority.

Meiergua and the others didn't think so, they thought that those who dared to fight in close quarters were heroes, but the security captain Yu Yilang didn't pay any attention to the suggestions of these scumbags.

As a result, the Cossacks who entered the forest were bombarded with bullets, and they were stunned.In a panic, the Cossack soldiers fired aimlessly at the surrounding woods, leaving behind dozens of corpses before retreating to the ship.

The security team is the size of a strengthened company, with eleven squads, scattered in the dense forest, it is inconspicuous at all.The intensive firepower made the Cossacks think that the opponent had at least 1000 people.

Although there were a lot of people in Beihai Town's previous battles, the actual tactical execution was based on squads.Because the ability of the early refugees to lead troops was just like this, even Sheng Haizhou and the others belonged to rushing ducks to the shelves, which is why Zhao Xin organized the rapid training class for officers.

However, after the security team launched a tentative attack on the port, they never attacked the port again.The reason was that the four sailing warships were equipped with hundreds of cannons, and when they fired together, the sound was overwhelming.Hundreds of iron balls of different sizes hit the dozens of Hezhefeyaka people who rushed to the front, killing more than a dozen people on the spot.This made Mergua heartbroken.

So the Cossack Musketeers took advantage of the situation to attack again, trying to go straight to the coal mine, but the quick guns in the hands of the security team let them once again appreciate what it means to hit the iron plate head-on.

After losing two consecutive battles, the Cossacks withdrew to the port.The security team was unable to attack the port because they had no artillery, and the Cossack musketeers did not dare to go deep into the inland. The two sides remained in a stalemate for several days.

Zhang Bo had never been on a battlefield, and he was quite anxious at first, for fear that the Russians would attack the oil "industrial area" of Oha and cause damage after they landed.But when he saw that hundreds of Cossacks couldn't even beat the security team, he finally felt at ease.However, he was worried that the Tsarist Russians would go around the Ohha River to attack, so the garrison camp remained motionless.

In fact, the Cossacks were even more uncomfortable. They were like mice in a bellows, unable to enter and unable to retreat, but unwilling to retreat.But a few days later, with the arrival of the Thor, the end of the Cossacks came.

After getting in touch with the Thor, the Oha Garrison Battalion left a company in charge of guarding, and all the rest rushed to the coal mine to cooperate with the security team to launch a counterattack.

When the Cossacks saw the sudden appearance of the big white boat, they were startled and frightened, knowing that the other party was definitely not a kind person.Just thinking about negotiating in the past, Thor directly responded with shells, which stunned the Cossacks.

It is said that the gunners on the Thor have undergone intensive training for several months, and their skill points have soared.After the war started, the Sanpao sank a three-masted sailboat, and Ding Guofeng was so angry that he scolded the prodigal son.What's wrong with pulling it back and modifying it for a while, it has to be salvaged.

With the roar of machine guns and cannons in the north, and the rain of bullets from machine guns and rifles in the south, the surrounded Cossacks were killed and turned on their backs, and corpses were everywhere on the port and in the sea. Of the more than 300 Cossacks, there were only more than 80 left in the end, so they had to wave the white flag to surrender.

After the battle, Ding Guofeng sent a telegram to Beihai Town asking how to deal with these prisoners.He personally meant to send them all to the coal mines to dig coal.

A few days later, a telegram from Zhao Xin arrived.Zhao Xin told Ding Guofeng that these Cossacks used to be extremely vicious, and each of them had a bloody debt in their hands.

It is said that after the failure of Pugachev's uprising more than ten years ago, except for a few main criminals who were executed, most of the other Cossacks who participated in the uprising were exiled to Siberia.In the process of following Pugachev's uprising, these people burned, killed, looted, and committed all kinds of crimes.After arriving in the Far East, he joined the Kamchatka expedition team one after another, and the Kamchatka people who were killed were also littered with corpses.

There is a very funny thing, that is, the process of Tsarist Russia's conquest of Kamchatka was completed during the process of these Cossacks' rebellion, submission, rebellion, and submission again.As long as the commanders sent by the above are found to be weak and deceitful, these Cossacks will rebel, kill your whole family, and divide up the property; when the new chief arrives and kill a few leaders, everyone will continue to look for opportunities to brew the next wave of rebellion.

Originally, Tsarist Russia was planning to conduct an expedition to lower Kamchatka. As a result, the Cossacks rebelled, and the rebels fled south. The map of the peninsula has been surveyed.

For a modern person like Ding Guofeng, it's easy to talk about it, but it's really hard for him to kill the prisoners.However, a dogleg from the Sendai clan found Ding Guofeng and said that there is no need for adults to do it, let's do it.

The speaker was called Chai Zhong, formerly known as Shibata Shigeji.Yes, he is related to Shibata Kyakuzo.

This person is the third son of Shibata Juezang's uncle's family, and he has been running errands with Shibata Juezang before.Since he is not the eldest son, there is no hope of inheriting the family business, so he was sent to Beihai Town by Shibata Juezang.

Chai Tian Juezang and this cousin made it very clear that when you go to Beihai Town, you must follow the pace of Zhao Wangdian, and you will fight wherever you are told. Maybe you will have a better future than my brother and me.

"What if King Zhao asked me to attack the shogunate?"

"Then you should strive to be the first!"

Shibata had a good relationship with this cousin since he was a child, and he obeyed his words.So not long after he arrived in Beihai Town, he became the first of the six hundred warriors to be naturalized, and named him Chai Zhong, a Han Chinese.So after the recruit training was over, Chai Zhong was naturally promoted by Zhao Xin to be the first company commander of the Qingye Battalion.

The island warriors in the Green Leaf Battalion showed great respect to Beihai Town, firstly because they couldn't defeat them, and secondly because Zhao Wangdian was Zhu Ming's "descendant of the Son of Heaven".In this sense, there is nothing shameful about not being able to win; anyway, since the Tang Dynasty, they have not been able to win, and even in the Taoshan era, they have not won.

But for the Cossacks who surrendered—that is, the red-haired Ezo, the warriors were not merciful at all.

It is said that the older generation of Sendai people have actually seen the Cossacks a long time ago. At the end of June 1739, a Tsarist Russian expedition team composed of four sailing ships visited Sendai Taiwan. During this period, the Sendai Domain sent officials and Buddhist monks to visit and exchange items.However, due to the language barrier, the Tsarist Russian expedition returned to Okhotsk soon.

The bound Cossacks were divided into teams of 20, and were taken by Qingye Ying to the coal mine for disposal.Ding Guofeng looked at the island warriors who were no more than 1.4 meters tall, and then looked at the pale-faced Cossacks who were only about 1.6 meters tall. He felt that the scene was really strange.

That's right, the average height of Russian soldiers in this era is a little more than 1.6 meters, not even 1.6 meters 1.6, and some well-nourished officers look like [-] meters [-]; people are tall and big, it is all after the [-]th century up.

Of course, not all the captives were disposed of. The two captured sailing ships and the rescued sailors and crew members on the other sunken ship survived. This was mainly because Ding Guofeng found that many of the captured sailors were dead How old are the children.After stumbled in English with a captured captain, he learned that these children were all students of the Okhotsk Nautical School.

"Forget it, take them all on board." Ding Guofeng ordered his men like this.These children are useless to keep, and they can't do any heavy work as coolies.

The next step is to go to Okhotsk for a walk.So the Thor first turned to the vicinity of the mouth of the Oha River, filled up half full of oil, and then headed northwest all the way.

Okhotsk is more than 700 kilometers away from the Oha camp in a straight line, which is more than 370 nautical miles. If the journey goes well, it will take more than two days.This town was the first coastal stronghold of Tsarist Russia in the Far East, and it probably had a wooden fortress in 1649.

In 1732, under the initiative of the famous navigator Bering, a nautical school was established, mainly to train young Cossack sailors for the sea routes of Okhotsk and Kamchatka Peninsula.

The further development of this city is closely related to the fur business, and the Qing-Russian trade is very important to Okhotsk.Beginning in 1740, Russian expeditions discovered sea otters in eastern Kamchatka, and fur hunters began hunting eastward along the Aleutian Islands.The furs obtained were brought back to Okhotsk, where they were transported to the market in Kyakhta to be traded.

Sea otters do not exist in China and are called "sea dragons".Although a "sea otter catcher" was set up in Ningguta during the Kangxi period, the sea otter fur in the Qing Dynasty was purchased from Tsarist Russian merchants, which was very precious.

By 1783, although Okhotsk had become the capital of the Okhotsk District under the jurisdiction of the Governor of Irkutsk, it was only the size of a town with a population of only 2000 people.

When the Thor arrived in the sea off Okhotsk, just two days had passed, and the journey was uneventful.When we arrived at the ocean here, we could already see quite a few whaling ships, so Ding Guofeng and the sailors on board were lucky enough to witness the scene of splitting up the whale and boiling the whale oil.

After the whaling ships of this era hunted and killed whales, they were usually dragged to the side of the whaling ship. The crew stood directly on the floating whale carcass, cut off the blubber with sharp knives, cut it into pieces, and put them directly into the carcass. in the barrel.

If you are close to the port, you will be able to return with a full load soon.However, once it is impossible to return to the voyage for a long time, the whale blubber packed in wooden barrels is likely to deteriorate and stink.So some whaling ships built a large furnace with bricks in the middle of the main deck, and prepared several large pots to boil whale oil at the same time.

This year, the price of whale oil is higher than that of gold, and the biggest buyers are the British.So when the Thor approached the whaling ships that were boiling oil, even though the people on board were facing an enemy, they still did not escape.

Of course, some of them greeted curiously, wanting to find out the origin of the Thor.But after shouting for a long time, no one on the Thunder God paid any attention to him.

A few hours later, as several fishing boats hurried back to the port, the chief executive of Okhotsk knew that a strange big ship was coming from the open sea.At this time, the Raytheon was getting closer and closer to the port, and because it was unclear about the hydrological conditions of the port, it had to anchor one kilometer outside the port.

The current chief executive of Okhotsk is Kaslov Olgren, a Dane.This situation is not surprising in the Far East. The first chief executive of Okhotsk was a Portuguese.

In order to find out whether it was an enemy or a friend, Kaslov Olgren first ordered the army to be on alert, and then sent a small sailboat carrying a priest, an administrative official, and ten soldiers, ready to find out.

　In the Qing Dynasty, sea otter skin was called "sea dragon skin", which belonged to the imperial leather clothing and was strictly prohibited for ordinary people to use.The royal family, princes and nobles are allowed to use sea dragon skin, but the occasions are only limited to ceremonial occasions such as auspicious celebrations and sacrifices.Because of the closure of the Kyakhta market, the unit price of the first-class sea dragon skins in Qianlong's 51 years was as high as 50 taels of silver, while the third-class sea dragon skins that were infested by insects also sold for 30 taels.In contrast, the unit price of each piece of mink is only one tael.In "Dream of Red Mansions", Jia's house was ransacked, "I found the imperial dress and many prohibited things", which included 38 kinds of clothing materials including sea dragon skin, which were all expensive clothing materials that were banned and restricted by the royal family in the Qing Dynasty , so it has become an ironclad evidence of the Jia's overreach and arrogance.

　　
　
(End of this chapter)