Chapter 1123: Wait a Little Longer — We Can Still Wait a Little Longer (Please Subscribe)

The New America Prefecture fortress is the seat of both the New America Prefect's yamen and the New America Garrison Regional Commander's yamen, and is also the political and military center of New America Prefecture, governing eight colonial settlements including Peanut Village County, Three Forks Estuary County, Little River Mouth County, South Bay Mouth County, Big Mountain Island County, North Bay Village County, Middle Bay Village County, and South Bay Village County.

Among them, Peanut Village County was the earliest colony opened up, and is also the political, economic, and military center of New America Prefecture. Its location is roughly the area southwest of the later city of Seattle; that region has many flat islands and peninsulas, abundant rainfall, dense forests, and several rivers running through it, making water transport extremely convenient.

About twenty thousand immigrants, officials, soldiers, and others from the Great Ming and Japan live within the jurisdiction of Peanut Village County, mainly distributed in four places. Peanut Village is one of them; the other three are Peninsula City, Seven Li Village, and the New America Prefecture fortress.

Village and city are also the most basic administrative units in New America Prefecture, with county and prefecture as the two levels above them.

Among them, places named "village" are generally settlement and reclamation districts, while those named "city" are market and commercial towns.

The fortress, on the other hand, is a military unit, under the jurisdiction of the New America Garrison Regional Commander's yamen.

After three or four years of reclamation and construction, the Peanut Village settlement district now has quite a bit of scale. The number of residents settled here has already exceeded seven thousand, living in seven villages equipped with moats and earthen-wood walls. Around these villages are more than two hundred thousand mu of wheat fields and pastureland! These wheat fields and pasturelands belong to nearly 1,000 private farms, and can produce over two hundred thousand shi of wheat and large quantities of fodder every year. They are the granary and foundation of the entire New America Prefecture colony — the bottleneck for the Great Ming's projection of troops and immigrants to New America Prefecture is not transport capacity, but the local food supply capacity of New America Prefecture itself!

Don't think that just because New America Prefecture is extremely rich in natural resources — wild cattle here, seafood there — it seems to have no shortage of food. But how many people are there to feed!

Three or five thousand might be manageable, but with three years of continuous immigration and population growth, by the summer of the thirteenth year of Hongxing, the total population of New America Prefecture had already exceeded forty-three thousand, and was still growing by at least fifteen thousand every year.

So the food supply of New America Prefecture was not as ample as one might imagine.

Peninsula City is where the Xu-Liu-Liang Trading Company is located. It is still under large-scale construction; once fully completed, it will be the industrial, commercial, and financial center of New America Prefecture! The immigrants currently registered and settled in Peninsula County number around five thousand, most of them merchants, sailors, and craftsmen.

Seven Li Village is not called that because the village is seven li long, but because it guards an isthmus seven li wide — the area around America Bay has a great many peninsulas and islands, and the terrain is very fragmented, which is actually advantageous for defense. North of this Seven Li Village isthmus is another large peninsula, likewise flat in terrain and densely forested.

Flat terrain means large-scale reclamation is possible, while dense forests indicate the land is relatively fertile. As long as the trees are cut down, a large expanse of wheat fields and pastureland can be opened up — the peninsula north of Seven Li Village (called the Seven Li Village Peninsula) is the next phase of development priority for Peanut Village County.

However, the immigrants currently living in Seven Li Village are not many — fewer than three thousand. Most make their living by logging and hunting, though there are also some farming households who have opened up several thousand mu of wheat fields and pastureland.

The New America Prefecture fortress, meanwhile, is a rather massive stronghold, constructed from sandbags, timber, and rammed earth, with a wide and deep moat around the outside. The interior of the fortress, however, is very spacious. The garrison plus officials, along with the officials' families and some women accompanying the army, total no more than five thousand. The barracks, residences, and various government offices and storehouses they occupy take up only about one-third of the fortress's interior area, leaving as much as two-thirds of the space empty.

This empty space was not kept for land speculation, but so that in times of necessity, all the residents and garrison troops of Peanut Village County, as well as Little River Mouth County and Big River Mouth County to the south of Peanut Village County — about thirty thousand people in all — could be brought inside the fortress for protection!

Although over the past two or three years the New America Prefecture colony had not been attacked by the powerful Kingdom of New Spain, Prefect Wei Zhongcheng and Regional Commander Yu Daren were constantly on edge, hearts in their throats, terrified that tens of thousands of Spanish troops would come charging over.

So they had always been preparing for the worst!

And when the summer of the thirteenth year of Hongxing arrived, bad news that made their hearts pound violently came every few days. The reports from Liu Liang and Liang Youxin were among these pieces of bad news.

"The navy, really — why didn't they stop the Spanish ships?" After sending off the two 'righteous citizens' who had brought the message, Wei Zaode's son Wei Zhongcheng let his taut expression collapse.

He knew, of course, that the people the Spanish were shipping over from Japan could not possibly be ordinary civilians — they had to be veterans who had fought in the war to overthrow the Toyotomi shogunate!

The arrival of these Japanese veterans would greatly strengthen the military power of the Kingdom of New Spain!

"They can't be stopped!" Yu Daren shook his head. "The Pacific is enormous. Once they leave the coast of Japan, they're very hard to catch. Even if the navy worked itself to death, it couldn't intercept ten percent of the Spanish transport ships. Better to spend that effort shipping more people and goods over!"

"Then how many men do we have on hand?" Wei Zhongcheng asked. "How many who can fight?"

Yu Daren laughed. "On active duty, there's one cavalry regiment and the personnel of one naval squadron — under 3,000. As for the local militia, there are over ten thousand, but those men can only guard fortresses; they can't be taken out to fight."

This active-duty cavalry regiment was a black-gun mule regiment. Most of its officers at every level were academic underachievers from Laoshan-Pukou — that is, "minor shareholders" of the United Provinces, every one of them holding a noble title from the New Continent United Provinces. The soldiers below them were mostly selected from captured Qing troops or Ming cavalry who had violated military discipline. This composition determined that the regiment's combat effectiveness could not compare with the genuine black-gun mule troops back in the homeland.

But New America Prefecture's jurisdiction was too vast, and the demand for "odd-job cavalry" was far stronger than the demand for elite infantry. Moreover, these "odd-job cavalrymen" were all willing to settle down in New America Prefecture, so Yu Daren had chosen the latter between the "Nine Borders Youth Army" and the "odd-job cavalry."

The naval squadron, meanwhile, had been built by Zheng Xi, and its main personnel were the officers and men of the former Eastern Ning army who had followed him. Calling it a navy, it was really just a "bay force" — it could not leave America Bay.

Because what this squadron was equipped with were four oar-sail gunboats converted from big bird ships.

Like the "odd-job cavalrymen," the squadron's personnel were all professional soldiers settled in New America Prefecture.

Besides these 3,000 professional soldiers, every able-bodied man in New America Prefecture was in the local militia. Everyone had a gun, trained regularly, and the registered total was thirteen or fourteen thousand. But these men could not be taken out for field battles; they could only guard villages, towns, and fortresses, and maintain public order.

"Still so few!" Wei Zhongcheng's brows were nearly twisted into a ball. "Commander Yu, we must request reinforcements from the court at once. At the very least, two regiments of the Young Guards should be transferred to New America Prefecture!"

"How would two be enough?" Yu Daren shook his head. "Either we don't request any, or if we do, it should be at least a division!"

"Then — then hurry!" Wei Zhongcheng said. "There happens to be a navy fast ship at the dock. Send it to deliver the message!"

Yu Daren paused, then said, "Wait a little longer — we can still wait a little longer!"

"Still wait?" Wei Zhongcheng stared at Yu Daren. "The Spanish may already be marching troops toward us!"

"Not that fast." Yu Daren said. "No trace of the Spanish has been found yet over at Three Forks Estuary County. The Riverbank Fort south of Three Forks Estuary County is the southernmost outpost we've placed. If the Spanish reach there, then they'll be only 700 li away from us. By then it will still be in time to send a fast ship to ask for help!"

"By then?" Wei Zhongcheng thought to himself: This Commander Yu is really too unflappable, isn't he?

Yu Daren glanced at Wei Zhongcheng and said with a smile, "Your Excellency, don't be anxious. A division's worth of troops needs at least 200 large ships to transport. That would take up a whole year's transport ship quota. If those ships were used to carry immigrants instead, we'd gain another fifteen to twenty thousand people. How much land could those people open up? How much work could they do? How much would they increase our strength?"

(End of Chapter)