Chapter 2098
But such thoughts flashed through Shi Diwen's mind, and he immediately thought of another possibility, that is, Sun Feizhou's status in the Eighteen Zhiyu Party may be much higher than expected, although his public identity in Ningbo is The owner of a dry goods store, but the actual operations he is in charge of are not necessarily limited to Ningbo. This person kept a potent poison for suicide and took it decisively before being arrested. This shows that he should be fully prepared for the risk of being arrested. From a certain perspective, this kind of decisiveness is even more serious. Regarding the leaders who resisted during the arrest operation in the south.
However, whether Sun Feizhou's specific functions in the Eighteen Zhiyu Party are as he guessed will probably have to wait until the Military Intelligence Agency interrogates the prisoners before they can confirm it. Shi Diwen is not in a hurry. Now Wang Tom has sent people to Japan for preliminary reconnaissance, and the executive committee has also set the tone to take action against the Hirado clan. Even if there are still some powerful figures in the Eighteen Shiyu Party lurking in the Ming Dynasty Along the coast, no matter how hard they try, they will be unable to reverse the trend.
No matter how many ways you came, I only went one way. As long as Haihan sends troops to pacify households and eradicate the hiding places of the Eighteen Zhizhi Party members, then the deployments made by the other side along the coast of the Ming Dynasty will become rootless trees and it will be difficult to form a climate again. The absolute power means that Shi Diwen does not need to be particularly worried about whether there will be one or two capable people with outstanding vision in the opponent's camp.
But out of caution, after listening to Duan Tiancheng's report on the arrests, Shi Diwen summoned the head of the Military Intelligence Bureau and asked him to carefully check the identities of the captured people, especially the dead Sun Feizhou. , be sure to try to identify its functions.
In fact, while Duan Tiancheng was waiting for Shi Diwen to get up early, the military intelligence department stationed in Zhoushan had already begun investigating the few survivors captured alive. However, the two seriously injured ones lost too much blood from their wounds after traveling all night, and died before they could provide any valuable information.
By noon, the preliminary interrogation of the few survivors had come to an end, and Shi Diwen received a verbal report from the Military Intelligence Bureau before lunch.
Sun Feizhou's death undoubtedly had a great impact on his subordinates. In addition, they were captured by the Ming army without forming any decent resistance during their arrest. Therefore, it was relatively easy to defeat the psychological defenses of these people. Under the influence of the interrogators, Under coercion and inducement, one after another opened their mouths. After cross-comparison and verification of their confessions, it was found that most of the confessions were consistent and should have relatively high credibility.
According to the confessions of these people, among them were indeed members of the Eighteen Zhi Party members who escaped from Ishigaki Island and other places, as well as locals from Jiangsu and Zhejiang who were later employed by Sun Feizhou. This dry goods store was opened by Sun Feizhou about three years ago, a little later than that year when the Zhoushan authorities caused a fire outside Hangzhou, and then used it to send troops to force the Hangzhou government to submit and obtain the right to trade in Zhejiang. action.
These people were not sure why Sun Feizhou chose Ningbo City to set up this secret intelligence base. However, in addition to daily operations, the dry goods store was also tasked with collecting local military and political intelligence. The objects of this collection are not only targeted at the Zhoushan authorities, but also include the Ming Dynasty.
Of course, in addition to the function of collecting intelligence, the dry goods store also has an important mission to obtain profits through trade. Some of the money and goods will be shipped to Hirado, Japan, and the rest will be kept locally for daily operations. funding. According to insiders, the total value of all kinds of property shipped from here to Hirado every year is at least 100,000 taels of silver. This seems to once again prove from the side that the capital circulation of this dry goods store is insufficient. Ordinary.
In Shi Diwen's opinion, this kind of performance pays more attention to the outstanding ability of the operator. As far as he knew, the businessmen in Ningbo who could earn more than 100,000 taels of silver a year basically had a close trading relationship with Haihan, such as the He brothers who worked as white gloves for the prefect Qu Yutong, and others. Some big businessmen who also have official backgrounds. But Feizhou's dry goods store is obviously not one of them. It can actually operate such a profit level quietly, which shows his strong ability to manage business.
Most of the strongholds seized in Fukuang and other places before this also have the practice of regularly or irregularly transporting property to Hirado, Japan, but the known number is not as high as the dry goods store just seized. It is still difficult to have a specific statistics on how many such benefits the Hirado Domain can receive from overseas every year, but according to estimates by the Military Intelligence Bureau and the Ministry of Security, the number should not be less than 300,000 taels of silver.
By comparison, the profits the Zhoushan authorities earn from trade each year, after deducting the portion turned over to the national treasury, can be retained locally for military and other expenses, which is only about 400,000 taels of silver.
With relatively abundant funds, the Eighteen Zhiyu Party has room to operate if it wants to rebuild an armed fleet, and this has been verified in the recent actions of the reconnaissance fleet. This method of realizing cross-ocean blood transfusion through the operation of many small commercial organizations is considered a new thing for Haihan. If these commercial institutions lurking in Ming Dynasty had not been successively discovered, I am afraid that this profit transmission channel would continue to operate for a long time.
And now have the channels for the Hirado clan and the Eighteen Shiba Party to obtain profits from the Ming Dynasty completely eliminated? Shi Diwen thinks the answer should be no. He does not think that this dry goods store in Ningbo City is the last secret stronghold deployed by the opponent in Ming Dynasty. It is very likely that there are still undiscovered institutions in other places that are still operating. .
Shi Diwen's view was also confirmed by the confessions of the captives. They said that people from other secret strongholds would visit regularly to exchange some information with Feizhou. Less than two hours after the last liaison officer who visited Sun Feizhou left the dry goods store, the Ming army came to visit.
The interrogators certainly noticed this information and asked more questions about it, but the information they received was still relatively limited. It is said that this liaison officer's surname is Zheng and his name is unknown. He has been in Ningbo for more than a month, but he does not live and eat with the people in the dry goods shop. Instead, he rents a place on his own. During his stay in Ningbo, this man named Zheng was responsible for collecting various bulk buying and selling information on the market. He would come to the dry goods store to meet with Sun Feizhou every few days, and every time he came, he would pretend to be a merchant to hide his identity.
It is precisely for this reason that the relevant personnel did not record the dry goods store as an arrest target at all during the early reconnaissance of the dry goods store. After the operation, Duan Tiancheng verified that the number of arrest targets was correct and withdrew his troops. Camp. It was not until the Military Intelligence Bureau conducted an interrogation for several hours that they found out that there was another non-staff member who had narrowly escaped the arrest.
For now, we can only think of ways to remedy the situation. After confirming the general information of this person, the Military Intelligence Bureau has sent people to Ningbo Mansion to arrange for police officers to arrest him in Ningbo City. It's just that the time delayed by this round and round has already passed. A day and a night have passed. Yesterday's arrest operation in the city may have alerted the snake, and there is a high probability that this person will not be found. Although the capture plan went smoothly, some fish slipped through the net in the end, which is a small regret. But Shi Diwen did not take this matter too seriously. After all, the leader of this stronghold was not allowed to escape, but a non-staff person escaped. The completion rate of this operation can still be at least 80%. What he really felt a little regretful was that he could not capture Sun Feizhou alive, otherwise he could have personally interrogated this leader who seemed to have quite good personal abilities and vision.
In addition to this, preliminary identification of the seized weapons has also been completed. From some technical details, the Military Intelligence Bureau determined that the muskets hidden in the dry goods shop were of the same type as the muskets found along the coast of the Ming Dynasty so far. This was a result that was not surprising to anyone.
But the more guns found in various places, the more Heihan worries that the owners did not purchase these weapons through the Spanish colonial authorities in the Philippine Islands. According to the information Heihan has, such a supply is probably far away. Far beyond the capabilities of the Spanish - unless the Spanish colonial authorities sold all the weapons they used, and this extreme situation is obviously unlikely to occur.
Previously, the Haihan reconnaissance fleet had discovered a local ordnance workshop for casting artillery in Hirado, which shows that the Spanish may have passed on the skills of manufacturing advanced weapons to the Hirado clan and achieved mass production locally. It would not be surprising if there was a musket-making workshop hidden in a ravine somewhere in Hirado.
If you include the two musketeers killed in Liaodong and Yangzhou, the current number of such standard muskets has exceeded two hundred, and this is just the sum of the scattered numbers that Haihan seized from various places. There is no doubt that the number of muskets owned by the Hirado clan must be far above this number, otherwise the other party would not be so generous in deploying such advanced weapons to secret overseas strongholds where they have a rare chance of being used.
This discovery also greatly increased the urgency for Kaihan to take action against the Hirado Domain, because once the Hirado Domain mastered the ability to mass-produce muskets, it would be difficult to eliminate the possibility of musketeers reappearing in certain areas and form an organized system. The trouble the Musketeers can cause to Haihan is nothing compared to a secret stronghold that hides a few guns as a treasure.
The Haihan Army is ahead of all opponents in this era in terms of the performance of weapons and equipment, but this does not mean that the Haihan Army is not afraid of encountering opponents who also use muskets and artillery on the battlefield. Even if the opponent's weapons are inferior in performance, troops equipped with thermal weapons can already pose a considerable threat to the Haihan Army. Especially in the north, there is an old rival, the Qing army. If such weapons flow into the Qing Dynasty in large quantities, Haihan will have to invest more troops in Liaodong to maintain the stability of the situation, and the possible war conflicts during the period will also make the situation more stable. The number of casualties of the Haihan Army increased significantly.
The operation against the target in Ningbo City has come to an end, and Shi Diwen's attention has returned to preparations for war. Thanks to the assistance of the local government and some large merchants, the procurement of war preparation materials went smoothly, especially grain. Under the operation of the He brothers, half of the quantity has been shipped to Zhoushan Island today.
However, for the Haihan soldiers stationed in overseas colonies, there is actually another very important thing recently, and that is celebrating this year's National Day.
The National Day on April 1 every year has become a customary festival for the people of Haihan. In principle, celebrations will be held on this day everywhere, even in overseas colonies. For the military, National Day actually has another meaning.
Counting from the official founding of the People's Republic of China in Haihan in 1634, almost every year after the founding celebrations, the military would conduct relatively large-scale military operations overseas. After the grand military parade in Sanya was completed that year, the task force set off for Taiwan, cleared out the indigenous people there, and established the Chusuangkeng oil exploration base.
After the National Day in 1635, the Haihan army went to war with the Johor coalition forces at Sing Tao in the Strait of Malacca. After successfully defeating their opponents, they signed the Sing Tao Treaty with the State of Johor, establishing Hai Han's local rule.
On National Day in 1636, there was peace in the south, and the only war took place on the Liaodong Peninsula. The Haihan Army launched a spring offensive in March and captured the Jinzhou Isthmus from the Qing Army, and the war lasted until May before entering a stalemate stage. Although celebrations were held as usual in various places in Haihan during this period, the progress of the Liaodong War made the Executive Committee quite concerned, and the victory of this war also laid a good foundation for the subsequent signing of an alliance with North Korea.
As for last year's National Day, there were even more big moves. North Korean envoy Ri Xi asked Haihan senior officials for help at that time. Shortly after the celebrations, the coalition forces organized by Haihan marched north to North Korea to help in the war. This battle dealt a particularly heavy blow to the Qing army than the Jinzhou victory the previous year. The four-month war caused the Qing army to lose many troops and generals on the Korean battlefield, and its vitality was severely damaged. It would be difficult to recover in the short term.
This year, at this time, a new military operation is in the preparation stage. According to the plan of the Ministry of National Defense, this operation will dispatch troops from Zhoushan, Zhejiang and Datongjiang base in North Korea at the same time. The number of troops used is estimated to be more than 5,000, which is considered a large-scale operation for the Haihan Kingdom.
Taking into account the limited returns from establishing local occupation zones after the war, this operation is likely to be withdrawn after fighting, so the expected combat cycle will not last for several months like last year on the Korean battlefield. According to Shi Diwen's estimation, if the action begins in April and May, the war should be over before summer arrives.
(End of chapter)