Chapter 414: Northward

After bombarding the Xu Residence, Regional Commander Cao had no choice but to stay at Zhangsu Port for a full ten days to tie up all loose ends.

The main pressure during this period came from Nanjing. After all, Nanjing governs South Zhili, and its civil and military officials bear the duty of defending the territory. When something this big happens, they have to get to the bottom of it.

At this point, Regional Commander Cao could only do his best to handle things, steering the incident toward being seen as a "personal grudge."

As for the results, they were just so-so. The Transmigrators had no intention of trying to win over offices like the Nanjing Embroidered Uniform Guard, where public duty and private hatred were mixed together and whose agents they had killed.

Other parties, like Garrison Eunuch Jiang Tian, were easier to deal with. Eunuchs love nothing more than wealth and goods, and the Transmigrators had no shortage of money and cargo. Besides, after the shelling of a gentry residence, Eunuch Jiang was actually cheering inside, disgusted as he was by the civil officials, so everyone ended up becoming friends over the matter.

As for the office that should have reacted most strongly, the Ying Grand Coordinator, since the boss Cao Wenheng had gone to Beijing for the King's Rescue, and given the shady aspects of that troop-transfer document, the Yingfu Office's investigation was actually the weakest.

And so, it took Regional Commander Cao ten days to finally smooth things over on all sides. Of course, impeachment memorials from every office had certainly already been sent to Beijing; this was a mandatory procedure no one could avoid.

Yet this was of no use whatsoever. All attacks would ultimately be shattered to pieces in the face of military achievements.

From the year the wild boar skin rose in revolt, the Ming Dynasty was pushed out of the lands beyond the passes step by step, then pushed back inside the passes. Year after year things worsened, the elite troops and fine generals were mostly annihilated, and now even Beijing was besieged by the Eight Banner troops.

In this situation, whoever could bring Chongzhen the heads of "real Tartars" would become Chongzhen's father — this is no exaggeration at all.

Do not think that the heads of "real Tartars" are so easy to obtain.

By the Tianqi and Chongzhen eras, after a series of military defeats, the Ming Army had already lost the capability and resolve to fight the Eight Banner Army head-on in open field battles. The clearest example is that during this Manchu Qing incursion, the Guanning Army preferred to let the Banner troops reach the very walls of Beijing, then "fight relying on the city."

In this situation, the Eight Banner troops, who held the advantage in battlefield mobility, would never leave their opponents time to take heads, even if they suffered zero casualties in defeat. Moreover, from start to finish, the Eight Banner troops were beating down on the Ming Army; the Ming Army had no chance to clean up the battlefield. The ones truly responsible for cleaning the battlefield were always the bondservants.

As for the wildly exaggerated battle reports from Ming commanders, those were purely laughable. If the numbers in those reports were to be believed, the entire Manchu Qing people would have been wiped out hundreds of times over.

The historical reality is this: if a Colonel could obtain three real Tartar heads, he could be promoted one rank. If a general could obtain ten real Tartar heads, he too could be promoted one rank.

So, this primitive method of recording battle merits by counting heads was still quite effective in certain periods, for a very simple reason: the heads were verified and counted by civil officials.

This single rule punctured countless inflated and fraudulent battle reports — real Tartar heads were easily distinguishable from those of bondservants.

That is why those later Ming commanders, the likes of Zuo Liangyu, could kill civilians and pass them off as enemy soldiers when suppressing refugees, but the moment they had to fight the Tartars, their tricks became useless.

And this time, Regional Commander Cao was heading to Beijing, holding his breath and determined to launch a satellite for Brother Chongzhen!

In real history, after the Manchu Qing's first incursion, once they had looted enough and retreated, the Ming Army's battle reports trailing behind them followed the usual style: great victory, recaptured, recovered... in short, victories existed, but heads did not.

The reason is simple: the garrison troops the Manchu Qing left behind in rear-area cities were inevitably Mongol Eight Banner and Manchu Eight Banner elites who could mount up and leave at any moment. How could such troops possibly be surrounded and annihilated by Ming Army formations and have their heads chopped off?

So now a variable has appeared: when Brother Chongzhen, accustomed to battle reports of single-digit or double-digit heads, suddenly sees the hundreds, even thousands of "real Tartar" heads brought by Regional Commander Cao, what will be the reaction — not just of Chongzhen, but of the entire civil and military court?

Therefore, before absolute power, everything else is but a fleeting cloud. By then, the petty matter of fighting over land with the Jiangnan gentry would not even be worth bringing to the table. Chongzhen would absolutely not blame Cao Zhongchen for it; he would still be counting on Cao Zhongchen to kill more Tartars in the future.

This was also the fundamental reason Regional Commander Cao could so casually brush off Nanjing: with a trump card in hand, he had no fear of petty tricks.

After settling matters with all parties one by one, Regional Commander Cao was ready to leave. By this time, besides the 200 soldiers who had departed earlier on transport ships, the three engine-sail warships carrying 50 special operations team members and equipment were ready and waiting, only for Regional Commander Cao to board and set sail.

Before leaving, the last thing Regional Commander Cao did was to make peace with the Land Deed Alliance.

The Land Deed Alliance, a chess piece that had delivered itself to his door seeking death, was later forcibly driven by Master Xiong like a duck onto a perch, and ultimately used by Regional Commander Cao to assert his authority.

By now, these masters had become medicinal dregs, of no further use. So after receiving a retired Prefect from the alliance, Regional Commander Cao immediately declared: let us all value peace. Forget about reparations; bring that box of land deeds, I will give you some silver for them as I see fit, and this matter will be settled.

Thus, the Land Deed Alliance could only nod bitterly — what else could they do? That residence in Shanghai's county seat had become a tourist hotspot these days, the 3.5-ton iron balls having laid bare the hard power of the Regional Commander.

So no matter how unwilling the Land Deed Alliance was, they could only swallow their broken teeth along with the blood and bury the hatred deep in their hearts for now.

As for the future... after this incident, both sides knew the enmity could not be resolved. They would read the songbook while riding the donkey — wait and see.

Regional Commander Cao's visit this time had gifted the masters some cannonballs and resolved the land deed issue, a perfect conclusion to his mission.

After this, Shanghai Port, its shackles forcibly smashed open, would undoubtedly welcome a wave of major development. No blind fool would dare come to Master Xiong's turf to stir up trouble anymore.

And not long after, a new wave of transport fleets laden with industrial goods sailed in from the south, officially proclaiming the reopening of Shanghai Port.

At the same time, Xiong Dao, having obtained the land deeds for the surrounding estates, also began consolidation efforts. With 300 regular troops from the Guard Battalion now in hand, his approach could be slightly more forceful: the newly acquired tenant farmers were all categorized and screened one by one, and those who needed to be sent off were all sent off, with absolutely no room for bargaining.

And so, ten days after arriving at Shanghai Port, Regional Commander Cao, who had stirred up so many waves, finally set off northward on December 24, 1629, to rescue the Emperor.

The fleet parted ways outside the Yangtze River Estuary. Since the Zhenman did not need to go north, after putting out to sea it turned south, and escorted by one Youguang-class gunboat, headed directly back to Taijiang for rest and reorganization.

The remaining two Youguang-class ships and one small escort ship began to beat against the biting winter north wind, tracing the northern coastline of the continent upward.

Although they had hydrological data sent back by the advance scout ships, this was still the fleet's first time on the northern route, so Commander Wang Bo dared not be careless.

He not only ordered a reduction in speed but also sent the escort ship ahead to scout the way. The entire fleet constantly changed course on the sea surface, sometimes even dispersing to separately survey and chart different routes, making preparations in advance for future large-scale maritime transport.

Since the winter wind direction was unfavorable, Chinese-style merchant ships relying solely on sails normally would not head north at this time of year, so the sea was very empty now, allowing them to maneuver freely.

The engine-sail fleet, powered by coal, after five days of arduous sailing, finally rendezvoused with the transport fleet that had departed earlier in the Lianyungang sea area.

After this, the main force spent the New Year at sea, and then on January 4, 1630, the tenth day since departure, arrived at the easternmost tip of the Shandong Peninsula, sighting that series of landmark islands and reefs.

The fleet's route these days was very comprehensive; they not only took the direct routes that Ming merchant ships dared not take, but also surveyed and charted the coastal commercial shipping lanes.

In terms of speed alone, the Fleet of the North's journey this time certainly could not compare to summer. It must be known that even Ming Chinese-style ships, in the early period before the sea ban, setting out from Suzhou Taicang Liujia Port to transport goods to Tianjin, could "arrive within ten days" with a favorable wind.

That is to say, when everything went smoothly, even old-style seagoing ships needed only ten days to cover the 1000-kilometer sea route and reach Tianjin. This most efficient mode of transport had been persistently maintained for a time during the Yuan Dynasty and the early Ming.

Unfortunately, the Ming court ultimately failed to properly manage the relationship between sea transport and canal transport. After Zhu Baba came to power, he began the sea ban, and during the Yongle era, sea transport was temporarily restored. However, after the Huitong River was dredged in the thirteenth year of the Zhengtong reign, sea transport was banned again purely on the grounds of high risk.

This ban meant that all official goods transport was shifted to canal transport, leaving sea transport only to a relatively small number of private merchant ships. This ban bred a massive, blood-sucking canal transport interest group.

In fact, by the mid-to-late Ming, under the joint corruption of officials, gentry, and canal troops along the route, the cost of canal transport had long since far exceeded the losses from sea transport. Throughout the entire Ming Dynasty, proposals to restore sea transport never succeeded again.

For the Transmigrators, this kind of bullshit canal transport philosophy was simply unacceptable. A certain power base, to put it bluntly, currently relied on the sea to survive; without a massive number of seagoing ships, the whole operation would grind to a halt.

Therefore, a very important task for the Fleet of the North this time was to plan routes for future large-scale maritime transport.

And Shandong, as a crucial transfer station, troop recruitment ground, and goods distribution center along the route, held an extremely high status. So after reaching the Shandong Peninsula, the Fleet of the North even deliberately sailed a full circle around the entire peninsula, observing and recording the coastal cities, guard posts, and even outposts like Dun Tai one by one... They had no choice; after spotting the Fleet of the North, people lit the wolf smoke from far away, thick black columns shooting into the sky, making it impossible for the fleet not to take note!