Chapter 1116 Zhenjiang Fort
The Haihan Army conducted a simple search of the remaining settlement area near the port of Guanglu Island, but did not find any living people left on the island. It can be seen that Shang Kexi's attitude was very decisive when he evacuated this place, regardless of gender. All the young and old were packed up and taken away. However, the various living facilities on the island are quite complete, including various handicraft workshops, warehouses, private schools, clinics, government offices, and military camps. The areas where the people live are also well planned like the camps. There is even a small The salt farm has basically formed a complete social system that is self-sufficient and has a clear division of labor.
Considering that it has been the frontline of the battle between the Ming Dynasty and Hou Jin Dynasty in recent years, even if measured by the standards of the Haihan model island colony, Wang Tom believes that the operating conditions of Guanglu Island are enough to receive a relatively high evaluation. The slight drawback is probably that the port here lacks shore defenses. Wang Tom did not see facilities such as forts here. However, in the future, the Jin Dynasty had negligible naval combat capabilities. The Ming army that once stationed here probably did not think of it. Shore defenses needed to be constructed to defend against possible attacks from the sea.
Of course, after successively acquiring the former Daming Navy brought by Monk Kong Youde and initially establishing his own naval force, Houjin is no longer a weakling with no naval warfare ability at all. Places like the Changshan Islands, which are very close to the mainland, will no longer be safe areas in the traditional sense. It only takes half a day for the Houjin Navy, huddled in Jinzhou Bay, to reach Guanglu Island. If the sea If the Han Dynasty wants to occupy this place for secondary development, it must first solve these potential threats.
The next day, the fleet sailed away from Guanglu Island, continued to move eastward, sailed out of the waterway between the big and small Changshan Islands, and then turned north. Now that Guanglu Island, where the Ming army was garrisoned, has been cleared, and the status of other islands in the Changshan Islands is unknown, Wang Tom does not plan to land and investigate one by one. He just ordered people to check the location of the islands. Insufficient details on the map have been corrected.
That afternoon, the fleet sailed from the west side of Shicheng Island and arrived at the coast near Hongyazi. This place used to be under the jurisdiction of Fuzhou Wei, the capital of Liaodong, and was renamed Zhuanghe in later generations. The people here did not receive the warning signal from the south, so when the fleet sailed into the coastal waters, the fishermen working nearby were frightened and panicked, and they quickly turned the bow and fled to the shore.
Speaking of which, the people in these places are also in a difficult situation. On the one hand, when the Ming army comes over, they need to provide supplies to the Ming army. On the other hand, the actual ruler here is Hou Jin, so they also have to provide supplies to Hou Jin. Grain payment. However, neither the Later Jin Dynasty nor the Ming Dynasty could accept the "enemies" behavior of these people, which made the people caught in the cracks very difficult. Regardless of the Jin army or the Ming army, they are not good people to some people along the coast of Liaodong. Therefore, when they see a large number of armed fleets appearing near the coast, their first reaction is to return home as soon as possible and get away from these soldiers. The further away the better.
However, Wang Tom had no intention of collecting food from the private sector here. The main purpose of arranging this route was to examine and verify the differences between the coastline and the map information at hand, as well as the population distribution in the coastal areas. Settlement areas with a certain population size like Hongyazi will also be Haihan's key targets for recruiting immigrants in the future.
About sixty nautical miles further east from Hongyazi, we arrived at the mouth of the Yalu River. The Jianzhou Jurchens who established the post-Jin regime in Liaodong lived on the banks of the Pozhu River, a tributary of the Yalu River. The Ming Dynasty and Korea basically use this water vein as the natural boundary. Going further east, the land boundary belongs to Korea.
On the west bank of the Yalu River estuary is the location of Zhenjiang Fort, the most important military stronghold of the Ming Dynasty in this area. It is located in Dandong City in later generations. During the Tianqi period, the Jurchens captured Liaoyang. Mao Wenlong led his 200 men directly into the Jurchen rear areas. It was at Zhenjiang Fort that he captured the rebel general Tong Yangzhen and his son, and conquered hundreds of miles of land in Liaodong for the Ming Dynasty. Unfortunately, this stronghold has also fallen and is currently under the control of Houjin.
Now that he has arrived at this place, Wang Tom will certainly not miss the opportunity to find out the strength of Houjin's garrison. He left several supply ships near Xindao outside the estuary, and led a group of warships into the estuary aggressively.
Although Zhenjiang Fort is named after a fort, the scale of its stronghold is that of an acropolis. It has a complete city defense system. The city wall is more than two feet high and is equipped with more than ten large and small iron cannons cast by the Ming Dynasty. It can be regarded as a A fortified city along the Yalu River. However, this fortified city was ultimately unable to block Hou Jin's iron hoof, and was already breached by Hou Jin with superior force last year.
The number of troops stationed by Hou Jin here is unknown, but one thing Wang Tom is sure of is that there will definitely not be too many combat ships that Hou Jin can deploy here. Sure enough, the fleet sailed into the Yalu River without encountering any resistance. It was not until they were not far from Zhenjiang Fort that they saw two sailing ships with a displacement of no more than fifty tons on the river.
Wang Tom called Pan Yan to him and asked, "Have any of your former colleagues been assigned here?"
Pan Yan looked at the sailboats on the river, shook his head and said: "I am not very clear about the personnel distribution arrangements, but these two ships are definitely not warships of our Ming Navy. Looking at the flags on the ships, they should be The golden thief belongs to.”
Since Pan Yan said that these were not naval warships, Wang Tom was not polite and ordered to chase them and destroy the two ships. The steam engine in the cabin soon roared, and immediately there was a huge splash of water behind the ship. The underwater propeller pushed the battleship to slowly accelerate towards the enemy ship.
The two ships were a little panicked when they first saw the arrival of these uninvited guests. They immediately turned their heads and sailed towards the river bank, but the speed was slightly slower. One of the ships was quickly overtaken by the Haihan battleship from behind. The artillery on the side fired seven or eight shots leisurely at a distance of less than twenty meters. One of the chain rounds directly broke the mast of the enemy ship, causing it to immediately lose its forward momentum. The other ship took advantage of this opportunity to speed away and successfully escaped the firepower of the Haihan battleship.
Wang Tom had already observed the situation on the river bank through the telescope. Although there were a few ships parked on the bank, there were no warships in the true sense. It seemed that Hou Jin had not had time to fully digest this place, otherwise it would be different from here. The distance between the islands makes it impossible not to take precautions against them. Not even a decent warship is deployed here.
There are still people alive on the enemy ship that was damaged by the gunfire, but Wang Tom has no time to stop and interrogate them now. Naturally, he will take this opportunity to continue the pursuit and deal a greater blow to the enemy. The task of capturing the prisoners will be handed over to him. Give it to the boat behind.
The sound of the Haihan battleship's firing obviously also alerted the Zhenjiang Fort defenders on the river bank, and many men and horses could be faintly seen quickly escaping into the fort. The riverbank terrain where Zhenjiang Fort is located is very flat, and there are no buildings or hills that block the view for several miles around. Wang Tom observed carefully with his binoculars and made sure that there was no possibility of a cavalry ambush on the river bank, and then ordered the ship to dock. Since the Yalu River will have flood season in July and August every year, the location of Zhenjiang Fort is nearly one mile away from the river bank to avoid the tragic situation of flooding the Seventh Army when the flood season comes every summer. Haihan's naval guns had basically no power at this distance, so Wang Tom decided to land ashore to test the strength of the Hou Jin army here.
It took the Haihan fleet about half an hour to mobilize a company of infantry to land ashore without encountering any obstacles during the process. The Hou Jin army seemed determined to defend the city and had no intention of waiting for an opportunity to come out and attack halfway across the city.
Seeing this situation, Wang Tom also muttered a little. Considering the distance between Jinzhou Guard and this place, it stands to reason that the police should not have received the warning yet. After that, Jin clearly had the upper hand in the battle for Liaodong, but why was his fighting style so conservative? He looked more like the weaker side.
The other party showed such weakness, but Wang Tom became more suspicious of fraud, and immediately had the prisoner captured just escorted over for interrogation. This time, Wang Tom was not disappointed. At least two of the captured people were serious "banners." However, these two guys were not very fluent in Chinese, so Wang Tom asked Sun Bing, a navigator from Liaodong, to act as an interpreter and conducted an emergency interrogation of the two men.
Wang Tom didn't want to spend too much time in this place, so he didn't show any mercy to these two guys at the moment. He first asked his men to beat them up before he started asking questions. After a slight hesitation, he started to fight with fists and kicks. They are not given a chance to slowly think about making up a story. This kind of torture method that has been verified many times by the intelligence department is quite effective. The two prisoners of war did not hold it for too long before they spoke and told Wang Tom the information about the local Zhenjiang Fort.
The Hou Jin army captured Zhenjiang Fort only after Shang Kexi defected at the beginning of this year. The elite Hou Jin troops who attacked here were attracted by Shang Kexi's men. Zhenjiang Fort was positioned to guard the national border and could closely monitor the movements of Pi Island. The senior officials of the Hou Jin Dynasty still attached great importance to this place. After occupying it, they mobilized thousands of troops to guard the place. However, a major plague broke out in this place this summer. More than half of the personnel stationed here died. Although the commander leading the troops did not have anything wrong with him, he was so frightened that he fled back to Fengcheng inland.
Concerned about the risk of the disease spreading, Hou Jin did not dare to send troops immediately to supplement the garrison here, so there are currently only two to three hundred troops garrisoned here. The arrival of the Haihan Navy made them mistakenly believe that Dongjiang Town's troops were attacking from the direction of Pidao. Naturally, their first choice was to retreat to the city and rely on the advantages of city defense to conduct defensive battles.
Wang Tom was dumbfounded when he heard this, and immediately ordered the prisoners of war to be taken away. He didn't want to get too close to these guys and get infected with the disease. Wang Tom originally thought that the Hou Jin Army was playing some tricks, but he did not expect that they just had too few troops and did not dare to lead them out of the city to fight. Wang Tom looked in the direction of Zhenjiang Fort. There were no banners or drums on the top of the city, and there was no movement at all.
If the fleet is mobilized to attack the city, Wang Tom believes that he is at least 70% certain to capture Zhenjiang Fort. However, the issue he needs to consider now is not the difficulty of siege or the possible casualties in the battle, but what to do after capturing this place. what to do. According to the prisoners of war, the epidemic in this place has been going on for several months. The city is afraid of germs everywhere, and even if it is defeated, they will not dare to move in casually. In this case, the significance of fighting such a battle is extremely limited, and the risks will increase a lot.
Wang Tom thought about it for a long time and decided not to take the risk for the time being. Even if he had to take a shot, he would wait until he brought more disinfectants and medical staff next time to think about it. As for the prisoners of war captured just now, staying in the fleet is definitely a hidden danger, so they can only be released at the moment.
This is undoubtedly a very frustrating result. Along the way, the fleet chose to be patient at Lushunkou and Jinzhou Bay and did not launch attacks on land targets. Seeing that Wang Tom had finally made up his mind to do something here, there was such an uncontrollable risk.
"Let's go, out of sight, out of mind!" Wang Tom gave the order impatiently. The group of people landed in a hurry, and before the beachhead was even set up, they hurriedly evacuated and returned to the ship.
"Sail directly to Phi Island!" After Wang Tom returned to the ship, he revised the plan, canceled the reconnaissance plan for the upper reaches of the Yalu River, and changed it to Phi Island, the end point of the voyage south.
The name Pidao was given by Mao Wenlong, the Ming Dynasty general. Because his surname was Mao, he took the meaning of "if the skin is not preserved, how can the hair be attached", so he named this desert island Pidao. This island is about four kilometers away from the mainland and covers an area of nearly 20 square kilometers. There are many small harbors on the coastline where ships can shelter from the wind. The highest point on the island is 345 meters above sea level. However, this island is almost entirely made of rocks and sand, and there is little land available for farming. Therefore, more than half of the local food output comes from the sea, and the food can only rely on external supplies.
In 1623, the Ming Dynasty established Dongjiang Town on Pi Island. In the past ten years, the living conditions on Pi Island have been relatively difficult. After Mao Wenlong's death, mutinies broke out on the island from time to time, causing people to panic. Even generals like Shang Kexi defected to Houjin because of this. The combat effectiveness of the entire Dongjiang Town was no longer what it was before.
However, for a small group of people, Phi Island is still a place where they can enjoy power safely. It is a small place, but it has a population of tens of thousands, and these people have to rely on them to survive. The pleasure of taking charge of life and death is difficult for outsiders to understand.
Shen Zhixiang is one of them. He is the nephew of Shen Shikui, the current leader of Dongjiang Town. In the entire Dongjiang Town, he can currently be regarded as the third highest ranking person. Only Shen Shikui and Deputy General Jin Riguan are above him. Originally, there was Shang Kexi, a generation younger than him, who was weighing on him, but this guy has been expelled, and his position has naturally been replaced by him.
(End of chapter)