Chapter 2016
Haihan is very familiar with using military means to occupy areas that were originally ruled by another country. Over the years, foreign territorial expansion has mostly been carried out in this way, and the effect is very significant. Compared with other areas that Haihan conquered by force overseas, the process of Manila being included in Haihan's territory was not special. After finding sufficient reasons for using force, he assembled heavy troops to attack the local area and drive away the original ruler. Then a new governing body affiliated with Haihan was built locally.
Of course, it was difficult for the defeated to accept such an ending. After all, it took the Spaniards more than half a century to build this city in Manila Bay and regarded it as the empire's bridgehead and trade center in the far east, but such an important However, the area was taken away by the rising star of the South China Sea by force. The Spaniards were naturally unwilling to fail, and after the war, they continued to try the possibility of recapturing the city of Manila from Haihan.
However, the offensive and defensive battle around Manila City at the beginning of the year severely damaged the Spanish authorities, losing more than half of their armed forces. They also realized that if they continued to fight the Haihan Army on the frontal battlefield, they would only suffer the loss. On the one hand, sending a fleet to attack Manila Bay is considered an unrealistic idea. After all, in the history of naval battles between the two sides, Spain has almost never taken advantage. Just achievements.
Therefore, the Spanish authorities improved their strategies and stopped trying to solve the problem directly by force. Instead, they started to have other ideas. The enemy of my enemy is my friend, and establishing relationships with other anti-Haihan forces has become one of the Spanish authorities' counterattack methods at this stage.
But this is easy to say, but not easy to implement. After losing the bridgehead of Manila, the Spanish authorities had no choice but to move their headquarters southward, initially to the Batangas area at the southern tip of Luzon Island. However, this place was too close to Manila Bay, and the Haihan Fleet stationed in Manila Port was at risk at any time. It was extremely unsafe to raid this place, so we could only continue to move south.
At this time, Spain had actually established a large number of colonies in the East Indies, but there were only a handful of places that could reach the scale of operations in Manila. After all, Spain had been operating in this area for more than half a century, and its main resources were Placed in Manila. But this approach of putting eggs in one basket has now tasted the bitter fruit. Once you encounter a strong enemy like Haihan, defeating Manila is equivalent to defeating Spain.
Not leaving much room for choice, the Spanish authorities quickly confirmed the move of the seat south to Cebu in the Visayas. Cebu actually has a longer history than Manila. Even before the Spanish came here, there was already a very prosperous tribe there. In April 1521, the Spanish navigator Magellan arrived in Cebu. From 1565 to 1571, Cebu was the capital of Spain in the East Indies. The Spanish landed in Manila in 1571, half a century later than Magellan.
However, the harbor conditions in Cebu were not as good as those in Manila, which has a natural bay. Therefore, after building a castle in Manila, the Spanish authorities quickly moved the seat to Manila in the north. In fact, the shortest flight between the two places is only more than 400 nautical miles, but Manila's location is closer to the Ming Dynasty, the trade target that the Spaniards cherish. This not only facilitates their cross-border trade, but is also an important springboard for northward development.
In 1626, the Spanish built two fortresses, Santo Domingo City and San Salvador City, in the northern part of Taiwan Island in an attempt to establish a colony there. If this process was not interrupted by the Haihan people descending from the sky, then at least in the next few years, they would still have hope to extend their trade routes and control range further north.
Of course, after Haihan sent troops to seize the two ports of Tamsui and Jilong in 1633, the Spanish colonial authorities could no longer continue their wishful thinking. They suddenly discovered that their main opponent in the East was not the Dutch, who were fiercely fighting around the world, but a small country that had just been established a few years ago and had never heard of it before.
In the subsequent years of fighting with Haihan, it can be said that Spain did not gain much advantage. Instead, it gave Haihan an excuse to raise troops and attack. After losing Manila, the Spanish authorities finally realized their decision-making mistakes in the past few years and began to adjust their response strategies.
In the battle against Manila, the Haihan Army used a joint force composed of the Ming Dynasty, Annan, Portugal and other countries. This also made the Spaniards begin to reflect on their own weak strength in this area, except for the East Indies. Apart from the indigenous soldiers, there was not even a single reinforcement from the outside. Although Aragones, the Governor of the Philippines, did not understand what "the wise man will help more", he also knew that if he continued to fight Haihan on his own strength, the effect would definitely not be ideal.
The royal family will definitely be held accountable for the sin of abandoning Manila, but Aragones does not know when domestic sanctions will arrive in the Philippines. Since he has not yet left office, he also wants to try his best to do more things until the time is right. At that time, they counterattacked Manila and made the Haihan people understand that the Kingdom of Spain was not a soft persimmon.
In fact, in the past two or three years, it is not that no one has come to join forces with the Spaniards, but Aragones has not relented and agreed due to various considerations. However, the Spaniards now have little capital to be picky. If they want to curb Haihan's development momentum in East Asia and the South China Sea, they will have to attract more forces to join them. So the arrogant Governor-General of the Philippines finally lowered his head, began to contact some people he did not approve of before, and followed the other party's suggestions to seek like-minded allies on a larger scale.
The cooperation process did not go as smoothly as Aragones expected. Because the geographical scope spanned was too large and the time required for information transmission was also very long. In the end, Aragones had to choose to compromise to a certain extent and reach a rough agreement. After expressing the intention to cooperate, they began to invest resources unilaterally in accordance with the requirements of the other party and left it to the other party for implementation.
There is no other reason. The potential cooperation partners are all in the northern coastal areas of the mainland, and if the Spaniards show up there, it will be too ostentatious, and it is easy to attract unnecessary attention, or even get burned more seriously. They can only send a small number of manpower to sneak into these areas with the help of partners to participate in and supervise the implementation process of the plan. In this way, Spain will not be able to dominate the direction of the action, and the early investment will easily end up in vain.
Of course, this is not all bad for Spain. In addition to reducing the risk of exposure for those involved in the operation, it will also save a lot of personnel expenses. This method does not require Spain to send a large number of personnel overseas. It only needs to provide military assistance. Moreover, this is not a free investment. The partner will also provide corresponding economic remuneration. However, because the destination is far away, the repayment period is long. It might just be longer. If the operation goes well, the Spaniards can even make a lot of money from the arms trade brought about by this partnership. But for these overseas cooperation objects and related plans, not many people in the Spanish authorities actually know the inside story. Only a few direct participants sent overseas and senior officials responsible for plan formulation have key information. Therefore, within Aragon, Si actually didn't think much about the issue of confidentiality, and he didn't think Haihan would be aware of his ongoing plan in the short term.
However, things are unpredictable. Who would have thought that the Spanish partners would not keep a low profile. When they learned that the crown prince of Joseon was going to Haehan as an envoy and might study in Haehan for a long time, they immediately formulated an assassination plan in an attempt to To affect the diplomatic relations between North Korea and Haihan.
But in fact, Cebu did not receive timely notification from its partners. The few Luzon people sent to participate in the operation were only personnel sent by the Spanish authorities to act as mobile forces in the early stage. The subsequent exposure of a series of weapons-related incidents in various places finally allowed Haihan to return his attention to the South China Sea and focus on the Spanish side. However, at this time, Aragones still did not know what was happening in the outside world, and he did not expect that Haihan was using various means to trace the source and whereabouts of these weapons, as well as the third-party forces that provided channels for the Spaniards.
After receiving the telegram instructions from Sanya, the heads of the local Security Department and the Military Intelligence Bureau in Manila immediately met to discuss the matter. The fact that the heads of these two organizations can sit together for a meeting is a unique scene that only occurs in Manila, because Ran Tianlu and Fang Peng had previously used their identities as the boss of Chaosheng Store and the head of the security guard. They became partners and experienced the most dangerous moments together during the Battle of Manila, which can be regarded as a life-long friendship. Therefore, between the two of them, the competitive relationship between the Ministry of Security and the Military Intelligence Bureau is not as obvious as elsewhere. Many security and intelligence matters are discussed and handled together.
In the instruction sent from Sanya this time, the Executive Committee also clearly requested that the two departments work together to ensure that the relevant investigations can proceed smoothly. This is exactly what they want, and they no longer have to think about how to avoid friends. .
Inquiring into the situation in Spanish-controlled areas, in fact, this work never stopped whether before or after the Battle of Manila. However, considering security issues, neither department has rashly tried to send people deep into enemy-controlled areas to gather intelligence. As for establishing an intelligence network in enemy-controlled areas, it has always remained a paper plan and has not been implemented.
This is not because they do not strive for progress and work half-heartedly, but because it is difficult for a clever woman to make a meal without straw. After the war, the two intelligence agencies had less than fifty personnel stationed in Manila in total, and half of them were civilian personnel responsible for intelligence compilation, statistics, and analysis. Taking into account the field operations personnel who specialize in special tasks, There are only about ten people with real experience in lurking espionage, including themselves. And these people are almost all Han Chinese. If you want to go to the port of Cebu under Spanish rule, they will be a very eye-catching presence.
Therefore, in order to more covertly monitor the Spanish-controlled areas, the two intelligence agencies successively recruited a group of young Hispanics and Luzon natives after the war. Although these people can't be said to be loyal to Haihan, for them, serving Haihan Intelligence Agency can not only get better development opportunities and more generous rewards, but also obtain the very in-demand Haihan nationality. , it’s hard to find a better outlet in Manila.
However, due to cultural differences, in order to train these foreign young people into intelligence personnel who can carry out independent missions, the training required is not as simple as that of Han employees. Although the intelligence collection and transmission process can be completed in the language they master, and professionals will be responsible for translating and organizing the information later, because these newcomers do not understand Chinese at all, a lot of time has been spent in the training process, and The training effect is also far from the ideal level.
According to the assessment standards of these two intelligence agencies for newcomers, no newcomer has yet reached the passing mark. A wiser approach would be to let the newcomers continue to lurk locally as civilians, and practice basic espionage skills while receiving professional training. After a year or two, they have learned almost all the skills they need to learn, and then send them to the Spanish-controlled areas in the south. Lurking.
But the instructions from Fort Victory advanced this time point by at least a year. The above request asked them to send a group of foreign intelligence personnel to the areas around Cebu as soon as possible to investigate who was conducting the Spanish military output. If It would be best to find out what forces are in this system.
"This is really difficult!" Ran Tianlu smiled bitterly and shook his head: "With the newcomers we have on hand, if we send them to Cebu, our identities will be exposed soon. If they are incited to become double agents again, we will be in trouble. It’s so big!”
Fang Peng said solemnly: "But this is an order from the Executive Committee. You and I are not allowed to argue. No matter how difficult it is, we can only follow it. For the current plan, we can only think about how to arrange it to minimize the risk. As for the Executive Committee Regarding the request for investigation, I'm afraid it won't be easy to find out the truth, unless we can get in touch with senior Spanish officials. However, the newcomers we recruited before are all from civilian backgrounds. It is difficult to have access to high-ranking people.”
After some discussion, the two felt that this move was very difficult. The most difficult thing was that they did not have the right people to carry out the task. Even if they could formulate an action plan, these people might not be able to complete it.
(End of chapter)