Chapter 1338 – Lushun and Zhenjiang
"I'll squeeze out some more from this batch of immigrants for you."
"What good are porters? I need people who understand technology and management!"
"That's..." Yang Yun looked pained. Skilled workers and managers were in short supply everywhere.
"Then I'll figure something out myself. We'll leave it there for now—I'll go back and make arrangements to solve this as soon as possible. You should put in some effort too. Didn't you want to be Li Ka-shing? You've only just started."
"Get lost!"
Zhang Xingpei waved a dismissive hand, too weary to trade barbs. With any luck, no new disasters would erupt tonight. Damn it all—every time he'd just gotten properly engaged with his secretary, his apprentice would shout through the door and ruin the mood entirely.
A shift train had just pulled into Ma'niao Station. Inside were many temporary workers arriving for the night shift, looking suitably energetic.
Yang Yun had no way of knowing that Dai Dehou was also rushing to the construction site, spurred on by Mrs. Dai's exhortations. Though several bouts of diarrhea since returning home had left him somewhat drained, his enthusiasm for work remained undimmed: life in Lingao kept getting better, day by day.
Though March of 1633 by the Gregorian calendar had arrived, cold still bit through the air. In the first half of the seventeenth century, Liaodong's frost-free season was so short that upland rice could barely grow at all. Winter began in October, and by March, spring had yet to make an appearance.
Xue Ziliang stood on the deck of the Haitian, wrapped in a cotton coat, and raised his telescope to scan the horizon. The ship's mission on this voyage was to survey the sea conditions along the route from Shandong to Lushun and the mouth of the Yalu River—weather patterns, port conditions, and the extent of ice coverage around the Bohai Sea.
Operation Engine had largely concluded; in Shandong, the effort had entered its aftermath stage. The pace of large-scale refugee export had slowed—handling local aftermath work required considerable manpower as well. The Three Prefectures of Eastern Shandong had never been poor; it was the Ming Dynasty's sea-ban policy that had artificially strangled the local economy. Now, after the turmoil wrought by the rebels, those same prefectures had been swept clean from top to bottom as if by a great flood. Government, gentry, local clans—all had suffered devastating blows. Though the land lay devastated, it had become a fresh canvas of vast potential. The Zhaoyuan area under the Qimu Island Detachment's control already showed the faint outlines of a future Shandong base.
Yet the Forward Command of Operation Engine had not finished its work. The battle lines deployed across the Ming Dynasty, Japan, and Korea stretched long, the dispatched detachments in need of coordination scattered wide. A command headquarters capable of overseeing the entire theater and making timely decisions was indispensable. Accordingly, the original Forward Command had been reorganized into the Northeast Asia Expeditionary Army Command, now stationed in Kaohsiung, Taiwan. It bore full responsibility for coordinating and commanding all detachments and working groups in the Northeast Asia region north of Taiwan.
The new command's first task: opening trade and intelligence channels to Liaodong and Korea.
Thanks to Operation Engine, a vast population had been extracted from Shandong, significantly narrowing the labor gap. The urgency of obtaining people from Liaodong had diminished accordingly. Even so, the hundreds of thousands residing across Dongjiang Town remained a prize the Senate had no intention of ignoring.
Beyond that, a grander purpose loomed: establishing a strategic footprint across all of East Asia from the perspective of sea power.
Currently, the Senate's vision for Shandong—the Dengzhou region in particular—was as a forward base for future operations on the Northeast Asian continent. Jeju Island, given that operations against Japan and Korea still lay in the next phase, held only the strategic role of a transit point, supplemented by auxiliary functions such as shipbuilding and animal husbandry.
As part of this Northeast Asian continental strategy, the Senate had long fixed its gaze on Lushun and Zhenjiang Fort.
Lushun Port was an excellent military anchorage, its landward approaches easy to defend and hard to attack. A very small force could hold it securely. With Dengzhou now under de facto Senate control, seizing Lushun would mean commanding the entire Bohai Bay. Trade and military maneuver throughout the Bohai Rim would become child's play. Not only could the Senate more effectively dominate eastern Shandong, but it could also threaten Tianjin and Beijing itself. Their power to interfere with the Ming Dynasty's central hub would undergo a qualitative leap.
As a trading post, however, Lushun had limitations. It lay far from Fuzhou, the Manchus' direct seat of power, and the roads connecting them were atrocious. The Manchus lacked ships; thus Lushun's value as a commercial port was modest. The most ideal entrepĂ´t remained Zhenjiang Fort, directly across the river from Korea.
From Zhenjiang Fort, they could trade directly with the Later Jin—or, when necessary, use the fortress to sever the trade link between the Yi Dynasty and the Manchus at any moment. This would deal a crippling blow to a regime chronically starved of supplies.
Controlling both Lushun and Zhenjiang Fort would also allow the gradual establishment of intelligence links with the Manchus. At present, the Senate operated largely in the dark regarding events on the Manchu side. Apart from old papers in the Great Library, their intelligence came only through merchants traveling to Liaodong—primarily via Li Luoyou's channel—and was typically half a year out of date. For the Foreign Intelligence Bureau, which placed a premium on timeliness, this was wholly unsatisfactory.
There was also the matter of the Dongjiang Army. That force was isolated overseas, its logistical lifeline running entirely by sea from Denglai. By substantially controlling Dengzhou after suppressing the rebellion, the Senate had effectively seized Dongjiang's supply route, making future command over Dongjiang's armed forces a real possibility.
Dongjiang Town's current state was dire. Though Kong Youde's troops had not defected to the Manchus as they had in the original history, the garrison's decline was irreversible. Even when Mao Wenlong still lived, Dongjiang had never posed a serious threat to the Manchus. After his death, the generals had turned on one another, killing each other with gleeful abandon. Internal vitality had long since been sapped, leaving them still less formidable to the enemy.
According to historical records in the Great Library, the Manchus would not need to expend much effort pulling this thorn from their side—no great troop commitment required. Forget the Dongjiang soldiers' beggar-like state; even in raw numbers, Lushun boasted only a few hundred soldiers plus a handful of military-settler households.
What truly restrained the Manchus from acting was not the Dongjiang troops and civilians, but the logistical burden of a distant campaign across the depopulated Liaodong Peninsula. Between Fuzhou, held by the Later Jin, and Lushun, no forts or settlements existed. An army marching through would find no grain to requisition, and the roads were execrable. The ideal mode of maneuver was naval—and naval forces were precisely what the Later Jin lacked. Dongjiang had persisted behind enemy lines for so many years in large part because it used the sea as a barrier and ships for mobility.
Even if the Manchus took Lushun overland at ruinous cost, without a fleet for maritime support, the Dongjiang forces scattered across the Liaodong Sea's islands could organize endless raids, thanks to their control of the water. Defense would become a nightmare.
In the original timeline, after the Three Shun Princes defected and brought their naval forces to the Manchu cause, the enemy had immediately taken Lushun in 1633 and annihilated Dongjiang Town. Now, thanks to the Senate's intervention, the Three Shun Princes had been eliminated. The Manchus had no usable navy; hence their assault on Lushun had yet to begin.
But Huang Taiji would certainly pull this thorn from beside his bed. He could not enter the passes to raid with full confidence otherwise. For this primitive tribal regime built on plunder, an inability to raid meant starvation on Liaodong's bitter cold soil.
The intelligence department predicted that though the Denglai rebels had failed to surrender to the Manchus, the Dongjiang Army's deep involvement in the rebellion would leave its survivors in a state of terror once the dust settled. Large-scale defections in the near future were highly likely—and Huang Taiji would surely exploit any such opportunity to resolve the Dongjiang problem once and for all.
The Senate had no intention of letting these hundreds of thousands of people fall into Manchu hands for nothing. Though Dongjiang Town's combat record against the Manchus was hardly glittering, the military-household soldiers who had endured on those barren, frozen islands had been tempered by the harshest trials. Whether as laborers or soldiers, they were excellent raw material.
Thus, the primary purpose of this reconnaissance: to survey the sea conditions of several key ports and landing points on the Bohai's north shore, including freezing patterns. In addition to Lushun and Zhenjiang Fort at the Yalu's mouth, the Haitian was tasked with a comprehensive survey of garrison strength, settlements, forces, and living conditions across Dongjiang's islands—data that would inform future plans for annexing Dongjiang.
"Still frozen in March—this must be rare..." Xue Ziliang lowered the telescope. A gust of frigid wind cut through his padded cold-weather suit and set him shivering. Noon was approaching, yet the thermometer on his watch showed the deck temperature still below zero; the ship's sails and cables had iced over.
Mao Shisan was just one more child of an ordinary military household in Dongjiang Town. His home lay in Zhenjiang Fort. Hunger drove him out—truly, he was starving. Taking advantage of the faintly warmer afternoon sun, he crept down to the shore, hoping to dig out a few clams from the ice-capped sand. Failing that, even a crab or snail would do. Since winter set in, he hadn't eaten proper grain for over two months. Though Zhenjiang Fort neighbored the Yalu and fish and shrimp could sometimes be caught, resources were tight even there. Worse, fishing in the Yalu occasionally meant clashing with Koreans. The Dongjiang Army had never been welcome across the river. The wild vegetables around home had long been picked clean. Fortunately a stretch of forest grew inland not far off, so at least firewood for warmth wasn't a problem. Without that, Zhenjiang Fort's situation would scarcely differ from the refugees heading to Qimu Island.
Days ago, word had spread that former Vice Commander Li had raised troops in rebellion at Dengzhou alongside old Dongjiang subordinates. He was calling on the Dongjiang Army to sail across and join him, promising that all who came would find food and silver aplenty. Many young men among the military households were tempted; a good number had already boarded boats for the islands, waiting for a chance to cross to Shandong. The local officers didn't care—Dongjiang had entered a state of "father dead, mother remarried," every man for himself. Heaven knew when the court's provisions and pay would arrive—and even if they did, who could say whether the grain would actually reach one's own hands. If some people ran off, well, at least there were fewer mouths to feed.