Chapter 115, in Zhoushan

In the era of sailing ships and smoothbore guns, it was a very risky thing for military commanders to cross the sea to launch a large-scale landing battle.

This is because, on the premise of lack of reconnaissance and intelligence, if we rashly land on a distant and unfamiliar enemy coast, then the end result is very likely to run headlong into an iron wall or get stuck in a quagmire. But it's also dangerous to let the captain spend time wandering inshore and slowly surveying the shore – often a storm without warning can send tens of thousands of elite troops armed to the teeth to feed the fish.

And on a long-distance voyage, the almost inevitable miscarriage and separation are also enough to give the commander a headache.

Therefore, in such a situation, the most secure specific tactic that the commander can choose is to find a small island near the theater of operations that is small in population and weak in defense, and can be easily captured at little cost before attacking the main target city or fortress head-on, and occupy it as a springboard, relay station, and fleet anchorage for landing operations. Then, while scouting the enemy's troop deployment and mobilization, launch small-scale tentative attacks, and finally find a weak point, kill with a single blow, or even if you find that you really can't start, you can calmly retreat.

Therefore, when the Allies were planning the Jiangnan Raid, they naturally selected Zhoushan Island as the springboard and troop gathering place for this landing battle.

The Zhoushan Islands are located in the east of Hangzhou Bay and southeast of the Yangtze River estuary. The islands are generally rocky and rugged, and there are many deep-water sheltered harbors. However, for the same reason, most of the small islands have limited water sources, making it difficult to provide fresh water for large populations...... As a result, although there are many islands in the Zhoushan archipelago, the options for serving as temporary staging sites are limited.

——From the very beginning, the springboard target delineated by the Jiangnan Raiders of the Huameng was very clear, that is, the main island of Zhoushan, which is the largest in area.

For Captain Zhenhuan, who commanded the Li Mountain Infantry Battalion, the landing on Zhoushan Island was not in the slightest challenge - for the sake of safety, the fleet did not go straight to the county town of Dinghai in the south-central part of the island, but went ashore at a beach at the eastern end of the island, in Zhujiajian, Putuo District.

In the eyes of Captain Jinhuan, who hails from the mountains of Hainan Island, the seaside scenery here is much worse than the tropical beaches of his hometown, with unsightly gravel and mudflats as far as the eye can see, and the low hills behind are dark pine forests. However, there was some snow in the clearing at the edge of the forest—for him and his men, it was the first time they had seen real snow, so they were all very excited to see it, and they wanted to step on it a few times.

There was originally a water camp of the Ming army in the local area, which was the legacy of Qi Jiguang's pacification of the Japanese invaders in the past, but with the pacification of the Japanese invaders for a long time, the coastal defense has been gradually abandoned, and now it has degraded to only a beacon tower. What is even more strange is that until the huge fleet approached the shore, no beacon fire was lit...... So, Captain Li Huamei ordered a few people with good water qualities, each of whom was rewarded with a bowl of cold spirits, and then jumped into the icy water, swam ashore to investigate, and the result was very laughable - the beacon tower was empty, and it was estimated that he had already gone home for the New Year.

So, without encountering any resistance, the Huameng army began to land. A battalion of Li soldiers carrying heavy bags on their backs, under the command of Captain Jinhuan, climbed down one by one the rope nets hanging from the side of the boat and jumped onto the undulating sampan. Then, facing the slightly salty sea breeze, they shook the oars vigorously together, paddling a small sampan and slowly approaching the deserted beach...... There is a decaying wooden trestle over there, and I don't know when it was built. Everyone first tied the sampan with a cable, and then jumped to the trestle one by one with agility.

It's a pity that this trestle bridge is too old and in disrepair, and the unsuspecting Li soldiers didn't walk a few steps before they heard a "poof", and someone stepped through the rotten trestle and fell into the sea...... Fortunately, such a thing happened in every landing exercise, and everyone has long been surprised. Soon someone used a long bamboo pole to scoop up the unlucky eggs that had fallen into the sea, and the people of the cooking class were already lighting a bonfire on the shore to cook ginger soup.

After all the people went ashore, the Li mountain infantry first roasted a bonfire for a while, and then curiously rubbed a few snowballs, fought the first snowball fight in their lives, and finally each drank a bowl of hot brown sugar ginger soup, and then the whole team set off to carry out fire reconnaissance around the landing site.

Zhoushan was known as Changguo in ancient times, although the county seat was established in the Tang Dynasty, and the population was quite prosperous in the Song Dynasty, but in the Ming Dynasty, due to the ban on the sea and the troubles, the population of Zhoushan began to decline sharply. During the Hongwu period, the imperial court even destroyed Zhoushan and moved it inward, forcibly moving the people of the whole island to the interior, turning Zhoushan into a barren uninhabited island. After that, although the policy slowed down slightly, people returned to live on the island one after another. However, various Japanese bandits also set up strongholds and plundered the Zhoushan Islands, making the island always unable to develop. It was not until the Longqing and Wanli years that the situation in Zhoushan was basically stabilized, but it had already been damaged - until the end of the Ming Dynasty, the whole island had only about 30,000 people, so it was particularly desolate. The Li mountain infantry led by Jin Huan searched almost half of the island east of Dinghai County, but only found two military villages and two villages.

Next, like the previous landing operation, which was completely fighting against the air, the combat operation of attacking the Ming army's stockade was still not worth mentioning at all.

In the eyes of Captain Jinhuan, the tenacity of these so-called imperial court officers and soldiers is far worse than that of the natives in Taiwan - after his Li soldiers set up two light field guns and bombarded them for two rounds, the Ming Dynasty military households in one of the stockades all came out and surrendered, although the four shells fired by the landing force actually did not even hit the stockade...... And the defenders of the Ming Dynasty in the other stockade, even more rushed to the street, the attacking troops just appeared near the village, and before they had time to sort out the formation, the people in the stockade had already frightened themselves first, and then they shouted, leaving the only little tattered belongings in the cottage, and rushed out of the gate to escape, even the hot rice that had just been burned on the stove was cheaper than the Li soldiers who had traveled over the mountains and mountains for a day, so that Captain Zhan Huan, who was still gearing up, was stunned for a while.

As for the two small fishing villages found on the island, they did not dare to resist in the face of the "sea giants" that they had never seen in their lives. Before the advance detachment that had been ordered to carry out reconnaissance had reached the entrance of the village, the local villagers had already pushed out a few elders and carried a few baskets of stinky salted fish and sour radishes to the "labor army." The people of the village were busy closing their doors, the men were trying their best to hide what little food and possessions they had in the burrows or haystacks, and the women were plastering their faces or hiding in the mountains...... Obviously, he is already very experienced with the scourge of pirates crossing the border.

So, in this atmosphere of "military-civilian harmony", Captain Jinhuan pinched his nose and accepted these stinky salted fish and sour radish, and then gave the villagers a small bag of candy as a return gift, and raised a red star ring flag at the entrance of the village, announcing the initial occupation of the island.

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When Major General Sun Yang finally stepped off the flagship and set foot on the land of Zhoushan Island, a temporary wharf had already taken shape under the hasty efforts of the engineering troops, and the landing force had already completed the encirclement of Dinghai County, and as long as they had a short rest, they could launch an attack.

In the previous sweeping operations, the Allies had captured more than 100 Ming prisoners, but ...... These guys who don't even have the most basic uniforms and weapons, and all of them look like beggars with yellow faces and thin muscles, whether they can be regarded as soldiers is really a rather tangled question.

Moreover, this number is completely incorrect-"...... Why are you so human? Zhoushan is also a guard house, and according to the regulations, there should be five or six thousand military households! Did the rest of the people flee into Dinghai County? Sun Yang asked with some dissatisfaction.

“…… There weren't many people in the city. It is said that since the plague subsided, the higher authorities gradually stopped allocating food and salaries to the coastal guards, so they could no longer support so many people. Moreover, there has been little rain in recent years, and the harvest of cultivated land on the island is not good, so many military households have fled. His adjutant explained.

“…… Even if you can't farm the land, won't you still rely on the sea to eat the sea? Isn't it said that the Zhoushan Islands are China's largest fishing grounds? ”

“…… The rest of these military households mainly rely on fishing for a living, but the fishermen's life is also sad these days! Wooden fishing boats are small and broken, and they sink easily offshore. Fishing nets made of natural fibers are not durable and can break if you are not careful. Even if you finally catch a fish, there is no refrigeration technology in ancient times, and it is almost impossible to sell it in the big city for a high price...... In addition, they have to compete with other fishermen on the island, and there is a group of so-called 'officers' who are enjoying their success, and life is really miserable, and it is good to survive. ”

“…… Sounds really pitiful! Major General Sun Yang sighed and shook his head, "...... They probably won't be able to survive in this place, and we don't need these people, so let's let them go to North America. The land on the shores of the Great Lakes is more than one. If you want to continue fishing, you can also catch river fish and sea fish...... Shave their heads first, and then if the quarantine is okay, you can organize immigrants! ”

After dealing with the issue of prisoners, Major General Sun Yang, surrounded by a group of officers and guards, inspected the occupied area.

- Although he has been leading the fleet to the East for more than a year, he has either stayed in Western-colonized ports such as Batavia, or in Lingao, Sanya, Penghu and Kaohsiung, which have been managed and developed by future travelers. Therefore, this is the first time he has really set foot on the land under the rule of the Ming Empire, and the first time he has seen the "original Ming style" with his own eyes, so he is somewhat curious.

Then, this traverser, who has a slight literary and artistic youthful temperament, fully feels an indescribable, extreme poverty, dilapidation and numbness.

The two small fishing villages on Zhoushan Island were all built directly on the gentle coastal slopes, surrounded by small valleys and terraces, which were reclaimed into rice and vegetable fields according to their distance from streams and springs. And on the beach below, seaweed, kelp and dried fish are basking in it. Although these fishermen worked so hard to develop a variety of industries, farming and fishing, they were so poor that they could not even afford to build wooden houses, and at most they could only live in mud houses with mud walls and thatched roofs, which leaked both wind and rain. In order to prevent the roof from being blown away by the strong winds, many stones had to be pressed on the thatch. The house is also damp and muddy, and sleeping in such a place for a long time will be prone to skin moss and rheumatism.

From a modern point of view, both fishing villages are crowded like concentration camps, only more unhygienic – the dirty roads are simply trodden, littered with all sorts of garbage, the stream that serves as a source of drinking water flows directly through the village, and adults and children often defecate in the water as if nothing happened. The houses of the villagers were also filthy, and the families often had only two or three decent clothes, which only men who had come out to farm and fish, while women and children had to hide in their houses with their bare buttocks, watching in horror through the cracks in the doors.

Even the sturdy young men who walked the ridges and beaches, busy planting rice and harvesting rice and collecting fishing nets, looked sloppy – everyone's hair was crawling with annoying lice and fleas, and their clothes were ragged and patched like old rags covered with holes.

In the village, men and women, young and old, are almost all thin, gray-complexed, showing severe signs of malnutrition, and covered with pustules and scars. Although their hands and feet are thick and their muscles are strong because of their long years of manual work, this kind of robustness is actually an illusion - long years of heavy labor have indeed forced them to have a well-developed muscle. However, in the case of insufficient nutrition and poor living environment, the practice of over-squeezing physical strength like this is actually overdrawing one's own life.

As a result, the muscles on their arms are bruised, and their skin is dull and lacklustre, and they appear very dry. When you are young, you don't think so, but once you reach the age of thirty, you have to start to "pay off the debt" of the past years - these people often start to become hunched over, frail and sickly by the time they are thirty or forty years old, and they are plagued by rheumatism, arthritis and other chronic diseases. If anyone lives to be over 50 years old before dying, it is generally considered to be the end of life. If you successfully live to be over 60 years old, you are already fully qualified to be called an old birthday star!

Even the few so-called "landlords" in the village lived in tiled houses at best, with slightly ruddy faces and patches and holes in their clothes. And the ladies in their family are also plain-faced and can't afford any of the cheapest cosmetics.

In short, when Major General Sun Yang and his entourage, wearing a shiny and dazzling gorgeous military uniform and a clean and tidy face, strode through the dilapidated village, they received countless eyes of awe and envy for a while, and were considered by the villagers to be like a god descending from heaven.

However, according to the few soldiers from the northwest in the army, compared with northern Shaanxi and Henan, which were thousands of miles away from the bare land and gnawed tree bark and ate human flesh everywhere, these poor fishing villages on Zhoushan Island in front of them were actually regarded as "good places" where ordinary people lived a relatively "comfortable" life!

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After inspecting the dilapidated villages and impoverished inhabitants, and casually throwing a few pieces of candy to the dirty and sloppy children with snot, Major General Sun Yang, who was in great spirits, had no intention of staying in this place for long, but left the stench village as if it were a quagmire or a pit as fast as he could, returned to his flagship, and then ordered the fire to be raised and the anchor sailed to the besieged county town of Dinghai, ready to personally supervise the battle.

- Like the attack on the military fortress on the island, the strategic battle in Dinghai County can be called uneventful. About 2,000 Li mountain infantry, Japanese security forces, and black mercenaries, after a long trek through mountains and rivers, arrived at their predetermined positions outside the city one after another. The commanders met for a short meeting, and while arranging for the soldiers to eat and rest, they searched for high ground near the city walls and with solid soil, and prepared to carry out the artillery bombardment according to the order.

On the other side, the three steam warships that assisted in the battle at sea also arrived in the waters of Xiaowukuishan Island, which was facing Dinghai Port. Looking at this so-called "county seat" from the telescope, Rear Admiral Sun Yang, who was holding the side of the ship, suddenly let out a long sigh - this place is said to be a county seat, but he feels more like a village or town or something, the wall of the earthen fortress is less than three meters high, and the bricks wrapped around it have almost fallen, and its defense capability is simply an insult to the traditional Chinese city building technology. He had thought of a lot of siege tactics, but it seemed that he would not be able to use them this time.

A moment later, the artillery on land and sea fired in unison, and the Dinghai city wall, which had been in disrepair for a long time, immediately collapsed. In order to achieve the greatest intimidation goal, Sun Yang ordered the black troops to serve as the siege vanguard, and also instructed them to paint more colorful oil paint on their faces according to traditional customs, so as to make them look like hellish demons...... After that, things became very simple, in the face of so many black "warriors" who were like yakshas, the few people in the city who were already weak in their legs and stomachs immediately scattered in fright, hiding in their respective homes and shivering. When Captain Jinhuan led the follow-up troops into the city, the entire Dinghai County was closed, and the tapping sound of military boots was extremely lonely on the empty streets.

In less than half an hour, the siege battle was successfully declared, and the Dinghai County Commander seized the last time as usual and hanged himself in the yamen. However, the staff members he hired, Qing Ke, and a small official below the history of the canon, all became prisoners spinelessly, were tied up with five flowers, and then escorted to the dock outside the city for interrogation - Major General Sun Yang is currently desperate for the living conditions of the Ming Dynasty, and even if he conquers the county seat, he has no intention of moving to the county office, but continues to set up the headquarters on the flagship.

At the same time, the detachment that went north to Daishan Island, Qushan Island, and Shengsi Islands to search for traces of Ming Dynasty sailors or pirates sent a telegram to the flagship. It is said that in Daishan Island and Qushan Island, except for a small number of frightened fishermen, no armed forces at sea were found. As for the Shengsi Islands, it is even more inhabited, except for the remains of buildings that have long been abandoned, not even a single pirate hair can be found, and it is simply a string of uninhabited islands.

Then, after unloading the Li Mountain Infantry Battalion, Captain Li Huamei, who went to the south to patrol around, brought a few small broken ships and a group of so-called "pirates" who looked like beggars...... However, after some interrogation, Major General Sun Yang was disappointed to find that these gang would only row around the sampan near their own island, relying on blackmailing fishermen or fishing themselves to make a living, and they were not even qualified to be guides, and a considerable number of them had not even been to the nearest Ningbo Prefecture......

In general, the Zhoushan Islands at the end of the Ming Dynasty were really desolate enough, so many dotted islands were all put together, and the total population may not have reached 100,000. Many famous fishing port towns in later generations were simply uninhabited islands in these years. Even Liuheng Island in the south of Zhoushan, that is, the famous nest of Japanese robbers and the private trading port "Shuangyu" during the Jiajing period, is now only a ruined wall, and there are few households found on the whole island.

This situation was both good and bad for the Allies - the downside was that, like the American forces during the Pacific War, they could not raise any supplies from the frontline islands on the spot; The advantage is that, like the U.S. military during the Pacific War, there is no need to worry about the resistance of the local island.

In the entire Zhoushan archipelago, in addition to Zhoushan, where Dinghai County is located, the most populous place is Putuo Mountain...... Moreover, between Putuo Mountain and the anchorage of Zhujiajian, which was selected by Sun Yang as the assembly place of the fleet, it can be said that it is close at hand. Therefore, the next thing after the county seat of Dinghai was conquered was obviously to send troops to attack these monks on Putuo Mountain and eliminate all potential destabilizing factors in the surrounding area.

However, which force should be used to attack Putuo Mountain?

Taking stock of these fragmented and miscellaneous troops under his command, Major General Sun Yang once again hesitated.

When I brought the Li mountain infantry before, I took into account their prestige on the battlefields of Taiwan and Hainan Island, but I forgot that although these tropical mountain people are accustomed to trekking through mountains and rivers, they are very bad at winter warfare - just the winter in the southern region of Zhoushan Island has caused this unit to suffer serious non-combat attrition, colds and fevers, and countless frostbitten hands and feet...... At least not for a short time.

The Japanese mercenaries, who had just been withdrawn from the battlefield in, were not too afraid of the cold. But many of them are devout Christians, and in Japan they are accustomed to burning temples and killing monks, so if they were to attack Putuo Mountain, the "land of the Buddha of the Sea and Sky," the consequences would be predictable...... Although Major General Sun Yang does not believe in Buddhism, it still feels a little strange if he personally led a group of Japanese devils to slaughter Putuo Mountain.

However, Major General Sun Yang also knew that those big temples in the Ming Dynasty basically did not have a few good things, and it would not be unjust if they were really slaughtered...... In the past, Oda Nobunaga burned Hiei Mountain, and after the people's ** valve burned Shaolin Temple, do you want to make a parody show and make a fire to burn Putuo Mountain to have fun?

Standing on the beach of Zhujiajian, looking at Putuo Mountain, the "Haitian Buddha Country" looming on the horizon in the distance, Major General Sun Yang, who was thinking about how to be famous, held his chin and thought - if you really burn this mountain, it will be as beautiful as the sunset!

Fortunately, just when Major General Sun Yang thought about it for a long time, and finally couldn't help but turn the terrifying idea in his mind into reality, he suddenly saw a small light yellow door, slowly emerging on the beach, and then a familiar figure walked out of the door......