Chapter 1079 The Problem of Qishan Institute
The two provinces of Fuzhou and Guangzhou in the south of the Ming Dynasty were areas where piracy was rampant before the arrival of Haihan. The coastal defenses of Fujian were even in a state of desolation under the constant attack of Shibazhi. Not only was the navy weak, but many coastal areas The defense posts were all in name only. They lacked sufficient troops and a unified command linkage system. They were basically unable to respond to threats from the sea. They were unable to achieve the Ming Dynasty's original defense system of "setting up guards across prefectures and setting up posts in even counties". design requirements. However, the coastal defense situation on the Dengzhou Prefecture side of the Jiaodong Peninsula is somewhat different from that in the southern coastal areas.
Although the Denglai Rebellion that occurred two years ago greatly damaged the strength of the garrison troops in this area, and the garrison strength in many places is far from being restored to the level it should be, the entire coastline of the Jiaodong Peninsula is densely populated. However, most of the scattered guard cities and strongholds have been relatively complete. The Denglai Rebellion has been over for more than a year. Now, the density of coastal patrols in these places has actually returned to 60-70% of the normal state, although there is not much combat effectiveness. It can be said that the joint response after discovering suspicious enemy situations is still very fast.
After the Haihan main fleet was discovered by a Ming army patrol ship near Liugong Island off the coast of Weihaiwei the day before, the other party did not dare to follow, but immediately returned to the coast to report the astonishing discovery to the Weihai commander. Although this place has not encountered an enemy attack from the sea for a long time, the Wei Commander immediately ordered the entire army to prepare for war. While continuing to send ships out to sea to inquire about the situation, he also sent troops to Ninghai Wei Jinshan Zuoqian to the east of Weihai Wei. Tosho sent a warning and asked him to send a ship out to sea to assist in the investigation - it is said that the unidentified huge fleet was heading west.
However, Weihaiwei received the warning, responded, and sent people to the Jinshan Zuo Institute, sixty miles away, to inform their colleagues. The delay had been too long, and when the Jinshan Zuo Institute received the notice, they hurriedly organized When people went out to sea for reconnaissance, Haihan's main fleet had actually sailed through this sea area, so the Ming army's sea search was in vain.
The failure to find this huge disappearing fleet not only failed to reassure the Ming armies of Weihaiwei and Ninghaiwei, but made them even more worried that something might happen, because this sea area continues two hundred miles to the west to Dengzhou, where the capital of Dengzhou is located. The city was destroyed, but the local city defenses and the nearby water city were still being rebuilt. It would be difficult to deal with the threat from the sea. From the incident area to Dengzhou City, there is also a defense area of Qishan Qianhu Station. The top priority is naturally to get Qishan Station to join the joint investigation. So after Jinshan Station reported to Ninghai Prefecture City, the Ninghai Guard Commander immediately sent people to Qishan Station to report the news.
When the messenger who reported the news arrived at Qishan Suo City, it was already after the city had been closed at night. The messenger shouted at the bottom of the city for a long time, and then a lantern came out from the top of the city. Then someone shouted from the top of the city: "Who is under the city?"
The envoy responded: "I am the messenger from Jinshan, conveying urgent military information, and open the city gate quickly!"
After a while, a hanging basket was lowered on the top of the city, and the messenger below the city put the identity certificate into it, and then put it up for verification. Then the city gate was opened a crack, allowing the messenger to lead his horse into the city.
Feng Fei, a Qianhu householder in Qishansuo, was already lying on the bed when it got dark. This was not because he was greedy for bed pleasure, but because he injured his waist during the battle with Kong Youde's rebels two years ago and it hurts after sitting for a long time. Only lying down can provide some relief, so whenever he has free time during the day, he will try to lie down on the bed as much as possible.
Such a physical condition will undoubtedly greatly affect the future career of a military attache. In fact, Feng Fei submitted his resignation to the Shandong Dusi after the Denglai Rebellion and wanted to return home to recuperate as soon as possible. However, the Jiaodong Peninsula was in dire straits after the war, and local officers suffered a lot in the civil war. Now even grassroots soldiers cannot be recruited to the establishment, and there are even more vacancies for officers.
For example, the Qishan Thousand Household Office originally had a population of 1,120, divided into ten hundred-household offices, but now the actual number of people on the roster is only a little over 50%, and there are still several hundred-household offices. There is a vacancy, and the entire command system is currently in a state of incompleteness. Moreover, the deputy position of Qishan Institute of Examining Thousand Households is vacant. If Feng Fei loses his responsibility, Shandong Dusi will really not be able to find a suitable person to take over Qishan Institute in a short time. After all, the Dengzhou Guard was the defense area where officers suffered the most serious losses during the civil war, and they were never replenished after the war. Therefore, after Feng Fei's retirement application was submitted, he was sent back by Shandong Dusi without any delay.
Since there is no way to apply for retirement in advance, all Feng Fei can do is to make himself as comfortable as possible within his ability. Anyway, there is no war in Dengzhou Prefecture now, and there is no need for him to continue to lead troops to fight. Although there are still many armed bandits operating in the inland mountainous areas, there are more or less garrison troops in Qishansuo City, which can act as a deterrent, so the area is relatively calm. At present, there is not enough military expenditure and food to support the garrison and recruit new people to join the army, so Feng Fei staying in Qishansuo and continuing to work as a thousand households is not much different from being an idler.
The last time there was such a situation of receiving urgent military information from other guards in the middle of the night, it had to be traced back to the Denglai Rebellion. Feng Fei had slept peacefully for more than a year, and it was finally broken today. He put on his clothes and came to the study. Soon someone brought the messenger and presented his identity certificate and the commander of Ninghaiwei, Zhang Chao. Handwritten letters.
Feng Fei opened it and browsed it quickly, then shook his head and said: "Go back tomorrow and reply to Mr. Zhang. No abnormal conditions were found at Qishan Institute today. If there is really an enemy situation as mentioned in Mr. Zhang's letter, the piers on the north coast will Taiwan should have issued a firework warning a long time ago. I will write a letter tomorrow and report this information to Dengzhou Fucheng.”
In Feng Fei's opinion, if the unidentified fleet mentioned in this letter was not a false alarm from Weihaiwei, it should have bypassed the coast near Qishansuo from the sea and continued to Dengzhou Prefecture. The direction went. Qishan Institute doesn’t even have a few sea-going ships with hulls made of hundreds of materials, and now it can’t even get the sailors needed to go to sea. It simply doesn’t have the ability to prevent and control nearby sea areas. For this kind of assistance investigation task, it is indeed He has more ambition but lacks strength, so he can only act like a showman and do his best to obey fate.
Of course, another reason why Feng Fei pays limited attention to this is the word "unidentified" in military intelligence. If it is the Japanese pirates' Hachiman ship, or the naval warship that defected to Liaodong before, the hull shape is very easy to recognize, and it is impossible for the maritime patrol officers at Weihaiwei not to recognize these two ships. In addition to these two sources, Feng Fei could not think of any other maritime armed forces near the Jiaodong Peninsula that could organize a large-scale fleet and allow Weihaiwei to pay such attention to it and pass the warning message all the way west. .
Compared with the threat theory, Feng Fei thinks that this is more likely to be a fleet organized by a wealthy businessman from somewhere in Jiangsu and Zhejiang to go to Shuntian Mansion, making the arrogant Weihaiwei misunderstood as an unidentified hostile force. This kind of thing happened once last year. At that time, a large-scale merchant fleet from Zhejiang passed through the coastline of Dengzhou Prefecture and went to Shuntian Prefecture. The coastal defenders mistakenly thought it was a pirate invasion and ordered them to attack. The flames of war caused a great deal of turmoil in the coastal defense stations, and 800 miles hastily mobilized naval forces from Lingshan Guard and other places. As a result, after the incident was over, the thousand households in the guard station where the incident occurred were punished, demoted to one level and fined ten months' salary. With lessons learned from the past, if a situation like this occurs again, the response of each health center will actually be more subtle. Even if there is a large fleet whose identity cannot be confirmed, the Coast Guard's handling method is no longer as radical as before. It must first try to verify the identity before taking follow-up actions. Of course, this is also closely related to the lack of maritime patrol force in the entire Jiaodong Peninsula after the Dengzhou Navy was kidnapped and defected. Most of the guards did not have enough combat ships to put into the waters under their jurisdiction, so it was difficult to deal with such large ships transiting the border. The team responds in time, waits for the news to be received on land, and then passes the news on from station to station. However, timeliness often changes due to the passage of time.
Feng Fei decided to follow the standard handling procedures for this situation and go through the process safely. Although Zheng Laoqi, who is on duty at the Yantai Mountain pier on the seaside, is a veteran, he is also someone who has been on the battlefield. If there is a real situation, he should know how to deal with it. Since there is no news from there today, then he should Peaceful and safe. After daybreak, just send someone over to say hello to Zheng Laoqi.
After Feng Fei dealt with the matter in a few moments, he asked his soldiers to take the messenger down to rest, and he went back to his room and slept peacefully. Unexpectedly, he was anchored on the sea of Zhifu Bay, which was only a few miles away from Qishan Suo. Focusing on the huge fleet mentioned in the emergency military information. The Yantai Mountain pier that originally had a chance to send out a warning has been disrupted by uninvited guests from the sea. The severity of this unexpected incident far exceeded his expectations at this time. If he knew what the uninvited Haihan people were planning, he would probably not even be able to close his eyes that night.
So on this night in early August 1634, the Haihan people who had just arrived at Zhifu Bay and the Ming army who were only a few miles away from them were lucky enough to spend a very peaceful night.
Of course, not everyone was so relaxed. After Zheng Laoqi and his men were shackled for a whole night, their whole bodies began to ache. Zheng Laoqi drank too much at noon the day before. He went out to enjoy the sea breeze in the afternoon and was greatly frightened. Then his hands and feet were shackled and imprisoned. He fell ill at night. The soldiers guarding the prisoners thought that the guy was pretending to be unwell and ignored him. In the morning, they found that the guy had vomited a large puddle in the night, there was foam at the corners of his mouth, and his breathing was very weak. Then he hurriedly reported it to Gao Qiaonan.
Although Takahashi Minami didn't care about the life or death of individual prisoners of war, keeping these people was still useful, so he immediately brought a military doctor over to check. The military doctor here was still preparing to give Zheng Laoqi an injection, and someone came to Gao Qiaonan to report that someone was coming from the south.
A three-foot-wide dirt road was built from the Yantai Mountain pier to Qishansuo City in the south. In normal times, the pier's replenishment of supplies and personnel changes were completed through this road. After Gao Qiaonan took over this place, although the news he got from Zheng Laoqi's confession was that there would be no visitors from the direction of Qishan Suocheng in the near future, he still arranged for someone to keep an eye on the south just to be on the safe side. Business has come early.
Gao Qiaonan handed Zheng Laoqi to the military doctor and went out to a high place to confirm the situation with a telescope. He found that there were only two visitors, both dressed as soldiers of the Ming army. They came on foot from the direction of Qishansuo City. Judging from the possible posture, Are you here to convey some instructions? However, Gao Qiaonan really didn't expect that the order these two people were coming to Yantai Mountain to convey was actually related to the Haihan Fleet.
"This is really troublesome!" Takahashi Nan couldn't help but sighed helplessly. In order to ensure that the news would not be leaked, and to allow the fleet in Zhifu Bay enough time to complete the landing and preliminary infrastructure construction, the only thing he could do was to detain all the people from Qishan, and he would have to wait one more day.
Although the Qishansuo in the south cannot prevent Haihan from landing on Zhifu Island, if they raise troops to attack, Haihan will have to divide his troops to block it. This will inevitably affect Haihan's early construction plan on Zhifu Island. implementation. Moreover, Haihan does not want a large-scale armed conflict to break out with the local Ming army. The purpose of building a stronghold here is not to expand into the inland areas at present, but to use it as a transit station at the intersection of the Yellow Sea and the Bohai Sea to prepare for the next step. March towards the Liaodong Peninsula and prepare to achieve complete control of Haihan over the Bohai Sea.
For the follow-up plan, Haihan should try his best to avoid hostility with the local garrison in this area, but yesterday Gao Qiaonan captured a group of Ming soldiers as soon as he arrived here, and it seems that this method will continue to be used. , until the situation can no longer be concealed. But at this time, Takahashi Minami didn't have a good idea on how to wipe his butt clean.
The two people who came from Qishansuo City were both Feng Fei's personal soldiers. They climbed all the way to Yantai. The situation here was a bit strange. Although there were not many troops stationed on this pier, it was not so quiet, not even a little bit. There were no human voices.
One of them impatiently shouted Zheng Laoqi several times at the top of his voice, but there was no response. The two looked at each other, both of them had a warning sign. They took out their swords and slowly touched the door of the barracks. When they pushed the door open, the situation inside the room was revealed. But it shocked the two of them.
All the garrison troops, including Zheng Laoqi, had their hands locked behind their backs, their feet were shackled, and their mouths were gagged with cloth. The two of them were so shocked that they did not choose to go into the house to rescue their colleagues. Instead, they turned around and planned to escape. However, when they turned around, they found that dozens of gray-clothed people had quietly appeared around them. The men, each holding a foul-mouthed firecracker in their hands, surrounded the two of them.
(End of chapter)