Mader had been to the port of Suez for the past two days, for the most important political task, yes, to place more than 3,000 able-bodied male laborers, and then to wait for the right time (after May) to load them on ships and send them to the island of New China. These people will wait for distribution there, some will stay on New China Island to enrich the population of the various colonies, some will go to Australia to reclaim, some will go to the Far East Blackwater region to serve as cannon fodder, and finally some of the people who are not good at discipline (noble backgrounds or soldiers, thorns, etc.) will be sent to Patagonia to build railways.

These 3,000 people are only the first batch, and there will be a second and third batches to follow. You must know that throughout last year, the Ukrainian Cossacks continued to launch offensives, and the Polish army was besieged by tens of thousands of Cossacks and their allies, the Crimean Tatars, and suffered heavy losses.

Encouraged by this, the local population of Ukraine rose up and unleashed their anger on the oppressive Polish lords and their lackeys (stewards and usury merchants, both of whom were almost entirely Jewish). They conquered large swathes of the countryside around Kyiv and then targeted all the Poles, Jews, German mercenaries, and Catholics they met, mostly Polish immigrants and a few Ukrainians. Kyiv, Poltava, Podolia, Chernihiv and other places fell into great chaos one after another, and the ruling order of the Kingdom of Poland for many years suddenly collapsed, and Ukraine began to drift away from them.

In this confusion - especially with the participation of the Crimean Tatars - large numbers of the population were reduced to slavery and then uniformly driven to the port of Kafa. It was then loaded onto a ship and shipped to the big market in Smyrna. Sold to East Coasters. As a result of the captivity, there is little cost to these people. Therefore, the price is very low, only 40-50 yuan per person - of course, this refers to people who are in good health, and the East Coast is more comfortable to eat. In fact, most of these Polish landlords and yeoman farmers who have immigrated to Ukraine in the past two hundred years have been killed, and a small part have been driven back to Poland. But then again, the Cossacks and Tatar allies exchanged the population for military money. This combat effectiveness is getting stronger and stronger, and the ability to fight continuously is also getting stronger and stronger, and Poland is afraid that it will lose more blood than in history.

In order to buy these prisoners of war or slave girls, almost all of the surplus money from the 1648 trade between the Eastern Republic and the Ottoman Empire was smashed, which led to the embarrassing situation of having no money to pay for some copper, wool, lead, camels, horses, and other goods that were originally scheduled to be purchased. In desperation, Mo San still relied on his old face to go to Genoa to ask for a low-interest loan of 3 million bank lira (about 492,000 yuan) from the St. George's Commercial Bank, which was fooled.

A considerable number of these men were German mercenaries, mostly soldiers who had been captured in two battles in the spring and summer of '48. Among them, the first after the crushing defeat in the Battle of Korsun, commanded by Pototsky. The Poles captured 80 local administrative officers, 127 officers, 8500 soldiers and 41 artillery pieces. It is worth mentioning that after the end of this campaign. While the Cossack leader Khmelnitsky was haggling with the Kingdom of Poland (he himself did not want independence and asked the government to "appease" him), their allies the Tatars plundered Ukraine and took more than 200,000 slaves captive, which was why the Cossacks temporarily broke with them - the Tatars did not distinguish between Ukrainian and Polish slaves.

The second time in Piriavtsy, this time the Cossacks were forced to bring back the Tatar cavalry, and the two sides worked together to once again defeat the Polish army, which numbered as many as 40,000 men, which shocked the whole of Poland. In this battle, the Polish soldiers were almost wiped out (many of them recruited Poles living in the Ukrainian regions, who had deep contradictions with the Cossacks), 8,000 German mercenaries were captured by more than 5,000, in addition to about 100 artillery pieces and a large amount of baggage that became the trophies of the Cossacks and Tatars.

These two campaigns wiped out almost all Polish forces in Ukraine and the eastern regions, and the door to Warsaw was even opened to Khmelnytsky, but for various reasons, he himself insisted on negotiating peace with Poland, and the war between the two sides temporarily subsided. However, in this year (49), Khmelnitsky was shaken again by the discontent of the lower Cossacks (who had already participated in the uprising, but now would probably continue to return to the village as Polish serfs) and the instigation of the Tatars, who publicly declared that Ukraine must become independent from Polish rule. This infuriated the new Polish king, who had just ascended the throne, and the Polish nobility felt the pressure of the bitter lips and began to support the king's crusade to the east again, in order to completely eliminate the Ukrainian rebels and the Crimean Tatars, the evil wolves from the steppe.

Once again, dense war clouds are hanging over Ukraine! Khmelnitsky, the Cossack chief and "Grand Duke", began to send envoys to the neighboring Muscovy and the Crimean Khanate, two unreliable allies, to secretly discuss the possibility of mutual assistance. However, the Russians still had a slight fear of Poland at this time, and the shadow of the defeat in the Smolensk war still existed, so they had not yet made up their minds about whether to intervene in the war. The Crimean Tatars, by contrast, were much more cheerful, and their Great Khan said that he would personally lead more than 40,000 cavalry to support the Cossacks if needed. This is due to the consistent national policy of Crimea, which is to help the weak Ukrainian side against their common enemy, Poland; And if the Crimean Khanate were to war with their long-time enemy, Muscovy, they were counting on the support of the Ukrainian Cossacks.

Recently, Nasukhpasha of the Azov Chamber of Commerce sent a messenger to inform Mader that a large amount of military supplies (including fine equipment such as muskets, spears, and armor, as well as military supplies such as hemostatic bandages and medicines) should be transported to the port of Suez by the end of May, and then transported to Alexandria by the local caravans, and finally the ships of the newly established Black Sea Liner Company (with four flutes built on the east coast) to transport the scarce supplies to Kaffa or Odessa in anticipation of the start of the war. And once that time comes, the Azov Chamber of Commerce will be able to hoard in the meantime and make huge profits.

Mader didn't care about this kind of "strict diplomatic incident" (the language of the Polish diplomatic envoy) of selling military funds to the Tatars and Cossacks, anyway, the people on the east coast had already offended the Kingdom of Poland because of the slave girls, so it was better to offend them to death. What can you do with me if I sell weapons and military money to your enemies, and at the same time buy their booty (captives, slave girls) so that they can continue to fight? Bite me?

The first batch of 3,000 able-bodied male laborers transported by the Azov Chamber of Commerce to the port of Suez were all captured by German mercenaries. They were purchased from the Ukrainian Cossacks by the Azov Chamber of Commerce, and the price was 50 yuan per person, all of whom were mercenaries with rich combat experience, familiar with the use of muskets and cold weapons, and could put up a large Spanish formation, and their combat effectiveness could not be underestimated. The main reason for their defeat at the hands of the Cossacks and Tatar cavalry was the sudden rebellion of the Cossacks of their peers, which caught the Polish army by surprise and was completely defeated, which is the so-called non-war crime.

The strength of these people, as far as Ma De is concerned, if they train well and successfully stimulate their morale, it is still quite good. On a Spanish liaison ship bound for Port Vostochny in mid-December, Mosan's envoy had already gone to the mainland to ask for advice on what to do with the purchased prisoners of war, and if nothing else, to arrange the same arrangements as described at the beginning of this chapter. Those who were skilled in combat and endured hardships (the poor German countryside of the day were hard-working) would have the honor of being sent to the Far East to fight against the Manchus. They were even promised that whoever would kill a "true Manchurian" would be granted the status of a freeman and allocated houses, land, livestock, and daughters-in-law; If it is to kill the green camp of the Qing court, well, the standard has not yet been introduced, but it should not be very low.

These bitter German mercenaries were now guarded by the Egyptian Mamluks (at the expense of the Easterners), and had been informed of their fate, so it was not too much trouble to guard them. In those days, there weren't too many German countrymen who followed the Dutch to the Far East -- of course, most of them were deceived, and if the destination was indicated at the beginning, most of them would not want to go to the Far East, but the people on the East Coast were prisoners of war slaves, and their psychological expectations were already very low, so they were announced that they would go to the Far East to fight for the East Coast, and most of them were able to accept this fact very calmly.

Of course, not everyone can get the opportunity to go to the Far East, and some mercenaries with bad habits can only be arranged to Xinhuaxia Island to enrich the local population, and at the same time, they can also capture the Malay slaves on the island and send them back to the mainland to build railways, killing two birds with one stone; In addition, some emaciated mercenaries will be sent to Australia to cultivate land in order to develop the local virgin land and face possible invasion by the aborigines. Eventually, some die-hards, such as officers and aristocrats, would be sent to the Gobi Desert in Southern Patagonia to build railways for the people on the East Coast with their own hands.

Mo San had previously explained to Ma De that it was a political task to transport 15,000 female slaves back to his homeland; Buying prisoners of war from Crimeans and Cossacks was also a political task, as it was also important to bring them back because the construction companies on the east coast and the overseas colonies needed a large number of people who had been cleared (which often meant a very high mortality rate).

That's what Mader came to the port of Suez for. It was already March, and the two flute ships of the East African Transport Company had already returned to New Huaxia Island with a group of Polish prisoners, bringing back the news of the Azov Chamber of Commerce's order for military supplies. When the winds change in mid-to-late April, ships from the east coast of New China bound for Suez will depart, and then bring the Germans back to New China Island. (To be continued......)