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The Haihan military did not mind that the Allies sent a military observation group composed of high-ranking officers to observe the militia army during wartime, in fact, this practice was first initiated by Haihan. ∈↗, at the beginning, of course, the main purpose was to sell their own weapons, and by the way, to promote force. With the increasingly close exchanges with the Fujian military, there are more and more opportunities for cooperation between the two sides in combat operations, and the Haihan militia does need the Ming army to be able to better cooperate with itself on the battlefield to carry out coordinated operations, so it is more necessary to enhance mutual understanding in the form of a military observation group.

The troops transferred from Hainan Island arrived at the base on Kinmen Island with the Ming army's military observation group, a total of 25 people. All of these officers of the Ming Army had the experience of receiving training at the Shengli Port Military Academy, and they can be regarded as a group of people in the Fujian Ming Army who had a relatively deep understanding of the Haihan military system. And there are ten people surnamed Xu, and the rest are all people from Xu Xinsu's camp, which can be said to be the elite of Xu Xinsu's private army. Xu Xinsu's fourth son Xu Yuzhuo and his nephew's Xu Jiaqi are among them, which also shows that Xu Xinsu attaches great importance to this matter.

On the afternoon of 7 February, the first joint operational preparatory meeting between the Fujian Ming Army and the Haihan People's Regiment was held at the Haihan camp on Kinmen Island.

"The purpose of gathering everyone here for today's meeting should be very clear to all of you, that we will launch an operation against the Penghu Islands by the middle of the year at the latest, and the content of today's meeting is to make specific arrangements for the first phase of the operation. Qian Tiandun personally attended and presided over the meeting, and behind him was a huge map of the Taiwan Strait, which accurately marked the location of Kinmen Island and the Penghu Islands.

Qian Tiandun continued: "According to the information we have now, the subordinate forces of Eighteen Zhi have basically been driven out of the coastal areas of Fujian, and their scope of activity has also been compressed to the waters around the Penghu Islands, but Eighteen Zhi probably will not just sit idly by, so we need to know what kind of reaction they have now and what measures they have taken to confront us." ”

Xu Yuzhuo replied: "General Qian, since the second half of last year, according to your request, we have tightened the trade of grain, medicine, pig iron, and other trades in the coastal states and counties of the province, and strive to prevent these things from flowing into the hands of Shibazhi through guò trade again. However, Shibazhi is still trying to buy the materials they need from Jiangsu and Zhejiang, and the ships of the water division in our province are limited, so it is difficult to block the shipping channel between Penghu and Jiangsu and Zhejiang, and there is no more effective way at present. ”

Qian Tiandun said: "As long as Eighteen Zhi still has silver in his hand, there will always be people who are willing to sell things to them, even if they can ban Fujian, they can't ban places outside Fujian." But by blocking Fujian's channels, we can increase the cost and time for them to purchase materials from Daming. Eighteen Zhi now has no stable income, and he still has to feed tens of thousands of mouths, if we are in Zheng Zhilong's position, the pressure will be very great. What's more, their channels for purchasing supplies from Jiangsu and Zhejiang should not be so stable, and if we get accurate information, we may intercept the ships transporting their goods at sea at any time. ”

Xu Yuzhuo nodded in agreement: "General Qian is extremely right, just let Eighteen Zhi know that we can cut off their way at any time, it is enough to make these thieves worry all day long." ”

Qian Tiandun continued: "Although we don't care about how the merchants in Jiangsu and Zhejiang do business, it shouldn't be too difficult to inquire about what they bought, right?"

Xu Yu said clumsily: "After you proposed this plan two months ago, the adults also expected that Shibazhi would bypass Fujian to buy materials from other places, so they had already sent people to several major prefectures and counties in Jiangsu and Zhejiang to lurk, and there was some news back recently. ”

Xu Yuzhuo said as he took out the prepared materials and introduced them to the people present: "This is the list of materials purchased by Shibazhi in Ningbo last month, including 2,600 quintals of rice, 380 horses of four kinds of cloth, 7,200 catties of pig iron, and more than 400 catties of 51 medicinal materials. In addition, seven bird boats, two fortune boats, and a number of live livestock were purchased. According to the news that came back, the people of Shibazhi were extremely generous in the local market, and as long as it was the goods they needed, most of them would not bargain and simply buy and ship them away. We still have six or seven reports like this, and the content purchased by Eighteen Zhi is roughly the same, but the location is different. ”

Qian Tiandun nodded and said, "What is the situation on Dayuan Island?"

"The red-haired people have probably received the results of the negotiations in Sanya, and expelled the envoy of Eighteen Zhi in Dayuangang. Judging from what was learned, it seems that the red-haired man has no intention of continuing to interfere. Xu Yu replied.

"Count them as clever!" Qian Tiandun was even a little disappointed when he heard the news. He was not worried that the Dutch would continue to provide military assistance to the Dutch, and the main reason why he wanted to pay attention to this aspect of intelligence was to hope that he could catch some tricks of the Dutch, so that he could have a high-sounding reason for making trouble with the Dutch in the future. But the Dutch probably didn't want to give the Haihan a reason to go to war for the sake of the Eighteen Zhi, after all, the prospect of war depicted by the Haihan in the negotiations was too terrible, and the Dutch did not want a situation in which all the forces in the South China Sea region united to expel themselves.

Without the Dutch as a backup, the supply of weapons and equipment of Shibazhi was basically cut off, and for the Ming army and the Haihan militia, it could reduce some troubles and risks in the process of fighting. And the Dutch no longer participate in the war, and the armament of the Eighteen Zhi at sea really has no advantage at all. Although the ships of the Eighteen Zhi were probably several times larger than the coalition forces here, the gap in combat effectiveness between the warships and the merchant ships and civilian ships was still very large, and it was not simply relied on numerical superiority to make up for it, which had been fully proved in the two naval battles of Nanri Island.

Qian Tiandun quickly adjusted his situation and returned to the topic: "Next month, our warships will arrive in the local garrison one after another, and we hope that the Fujian Navy Division can also transfer some elite and strong generals, and then form a mixed fleet with our warships to conduct patrol training in the waters east of Kinmen Island, on the one hand, to practice maritime tactics, and on the other hand, to isolate the Eighteen Zhi's snooping on the waters near Zhangquan and further compress their activity space." ”

Xu Yuzhuo agreed almost without any hesitation. He himself served as a staff general in the Fujian Naval Division, and he not only received naval training in Sanya, but also visited the warship slipway of the Shengli Port Shipyard, and personally participated in the two naval battles of Nanri Island led by Haihan, so he has a deep understanding of the strength of the Haihan Navy.

Although in the first two naval battles, the Haihan Navy did not take the Fujian Navy Division to play together, but almost all of them fought separately, and there was not much part of the coordinated operation, and the Fujian Navy Division even had to play the role of a decoy on the battlefield to show a weak image to attract the enemy's attention, which was not a job that an officer of the Navy Division like Xu Yuzhuo was willing to do.

With the gradual liberalization of Haihan's military procurement, the Fujian Navy Division finally had the opportunity to start equipping combat ships with the same specifications as the Haihan Navy, which means that they can finally mix fleets with the Haihan Navy without worrying about the gap in the navigation performance of the ships dragging the other side back. In the previous naval battle of Nanri Island, only two "exploration-class" warships belonging to the Fujian Navy Division enjoyed such treatment, but after more than half a year, the number of new warships of the Fujian Navy Division has increased from two to six, and they are fully qualified to be incorporated into the Haihan fleet to undertake a certain number of combat missions.

Only officers with personal experience like Xu Yuzhuo understand that if you want to learn real skills from the Haihan people, you must eat, live and train with them. This kind of mixed cruise, as Qian Tiandun said, is exactly the opportunity that Fujian sailors are currently demanding.

As for how much silver it costs to go out on this kind of cruise, Xu Yuzhuo is not worried, after all, his old man Xu Xinsu has already said that as long as he can destroy Eighteen Zhi within the year, then even if he spends gold and silver, he will have to survive this year. After all, for maritime interests, the control of Fujian's waters is far more than the value of the military spending currently paid to Haihan. The money that has been spent now will soon be able to be retrieved in other ways after the eighteen zhi are destroyed and the sea control is recovered.

According to the cooperation agreement reached between the two sides during the visit of the Haihan delegation to Fujian last year, Haihan ships will have the right of free navigation and trade in Fujian's waters in the future, and this freedom of authority will be granted not only to civilian ships but also to the Haihan navy. This is almost a tacit acquiescence to the Haihan people's supreme control over the Fujian waters, because the strength of the Fujian Navy is not enough to be on an equal footing with the Haihan Navy. But at the same time, the Haihan side also promised not to intervene in the management of the maritime trade by the Fujian government, so that most of the oil and water of the maritime trade still remained in the hands of the Fujian government, or interest groups like Xu Xinsu.

Such an agreement can be regarded as a win-win situation for both parties. And the premise of realizing this situation is to first remove the stumbling block of Eighteen Zhi. Under the condition that the interests of both sides are the same, whether it is a military observer mission or a joint operation, it seems very logical.

Five days after the end of this meeting, Xu Yuzhuo returned to Kinmen Island with six Haihan-made warships belonging to the Fujian Navy. Although Qian Tiandun said at the meeting that he would wait for the arrival of the navy ships next month before starting the patrol mission, at Xu Yuzhuo's strong request, these six ships were mixed with the two "Expedition-class" and two "Exploration-class" naval warships stationed in the local area in advance, and began daily training with naval personnel with the same content.

On 3 March, the Combined Fleet, which was on patrol duty in the Fujian Strait for the first time, relied on accurate intelligence to successfully intercept a convoy of merchant ships bound for Penghu from Zhejiang about 40 nautical miles east of Nanri Island.

This group of merchant ships has a total of seven, all of which are all kinds of materials purchased by Shibazhi in Jiangsu and Zhejiang, and the shipowners are all businessmen from Jiangsu and Zhejiang, in addition to two armed merchant ships belonging to Shibazhi as escorts.

This time, when the people of Eighteen Zhi were buying in Jiangsu and Zhejiang, they had already been targeted by the spies sent by Fujian, and after a lot of work, they finally bought the ship boss on one of the ships, and knew their approximate route and departure date. So the spies immediately sent the news back to Fujian, and then Xu Xinsu got the news and hurriedly informed the Haihan people on Kinmen Island. Just as the combined fleet was completed, Qian Tiandun handed over the task of intercepting this fleet to them.

The officer led by Haihan was Xie Li, a naturalized civilian officer, who was one of the first batch of officers appointed as first mate in the navy, and his qualifications were already considered old men. At present, the commander of the traverser of several major fleets of the Haihan has not yet arrived in Fujian, and he is currently the supreme commander of the navy's troops stationed in Fujian, and he is also responsible for planning and commanding all the tasks of going to sea to fight.

During his training at the Shengli Port Military Academy, he also had a brief friendship with Xie Li, and he could be regarded as brothers in the same school, and he led the team to fight at sea together to reduce a lot of unnecessary estrangement.

The flotilla, consisting of twelve warships and five logistical supply ships, circled the waters east of Nanri Island for two days before waiting for the appearance of prey. After the flags were raised and the warning shelling was carried out, several ships of the Jiangsu-Zhejiang maritime merchants lowered their sails and slowed down with great interest, waiting for inspection. However, the two armed merchant ships of Eighteen Zhi reversed course and tried to escape.

Although the two sides were separated by some distance at the time of the encounter, the combined fleet's ships quickly made up for the distance by their superiority in speed, and after half an hour they caught up with the two armed merchant ships and launched a direct artillery attack on both ships at close range. Although the pirates on the armed merchant ships also tried to counterattack with weapons such as earth cannons, muskets, bows and arrows, the range and accuracy of their equipment were too poor to pose any threat to the ships that caught up, but they were harvested by several rounds of grapeshotfire fired from the ships.

It took just over two hours for the combined fleet to complete the capture of this smuggling fleet. According to preliminary statistics, the materials that this fleet tried to transport to Penghu were mainly grain, and there were as many as 4,000 quintals of rice alone. In addition, the attention of the officers was also the Ming Dynasty firearms purchased by Shibazhi from the guards in Jiangsu and Zhejiang, including more than 170 bird guns, more than 30 Lu Mi guns, 17 Franc machine guns, and more than 40 barrels of gunpowder, as well as more than 80 sets of standard armor and more than 500 swords and bows. Relying on these weapons, it is possible to arm a small-scale elite army - of course, this elite is only for the level of the Ming army of Shibazhi and the ordinary guard, and there is still a certain gap from the current equipment of the Fujian Ming army.