Chapter 701: Those Damned Spaniards!

While the Great Qing Imperial Ama was dispatching the Great Qing's number one Cossack, Oboi, north to fight the Russians, more than six thousand li away, a group of Ming profiteering merchants, landlords, and rich peasants who had gone south to farm had just barely escaped death!

"Land! Land, land!"

The cheering suddenly reached the ears of Yao Daqiao, who was already at his last gasp.

Before this, the Hankou "Half-Street Yao," who had still been a fat man when he left Shanghai, was now skin and bones, lying on the stinking deck, breathing out more than he breathed in, muttering his last wishes to Ye Jiaxin beside him.

"I never thought that after half a lifetime of glory, I, Yao Daqiao, would end up dying in a foreign land! Old Ye, you're better off than me — you can still get a bit of food down on this broken ship. I reckon you can hold out until we reach the Tranquil Sea Army, and maybe someday you'll make it back to Hankou alive. Be sure to take a few words back to my family."

At this point, Yao Daqiao, seasick nearly to death, could not hold back his tears — he couldn't bear to die! He still had half a street in Hankou! He had several hundred taels of rent to collect every year, and in the jewelry boxes of his one wife and three concubines there were still more than twenty jin of ornaments, all gold, not a bit of silver. With such a great estate, eating and drinking for a lifetime, and three little wives as beautiful as fox spirits to keep him company — what wasn't good about that? He just had to be greedy, wanting to make a fortune, wanting to win back his family fortune.

And now look — he was going to die at sea!

Speaking of this journey, it truly was one disaster after another!

The Anhui guild boatmaster Yao Daqiao had hired turned out to be a half-baked amateur, no match at all for those Fujian men. They had just passed the Taiwan Strait when they ran into a storm that blew for a day and a night, driving the bird boat Yao Daqiao was on away from the coastline — and that was extremely dangerous!

Because most Chinese boatmasters of this era did not know how to use navigational instruments like the "cross-staff," the "backstaff," or the "quadrant" — these tools for fixing a ship's position by observing the stars and the sun all had something to do with celestial phenomena!

In China, observing celestial phenomena was linked with plotting rebellion. Apart from the Imperial Observatory, ordinary people were forbidden to study the heavens.

So the technique of using the stars and sun to fix a ship's position was very hard to develop, and easily lost — which is to say, it was only the openly rebellious Zheng pirate gang that learned from Westerners the skill of reading the stars and the sun, and that was why they could roam the Southern Seas and come and go freely to Japan.

But the boatmasters of the southeastern coast of the Great Ming had no such ability. They usually only sailed inshore waters, hugging the coastline. Once they got far from the coast, they easily lost their way.

Fortunately, this sea vessel piloted by Anhui men still had a compass, and the Anhui men also knew that the sun rose in the east, so they could still tell north, south, east, and west.

So after losing their way, the ship steeled itself and sailed west.

But they sailed for a good ten-plus days without sighting land!

This was clearly wrong!

How could the journey to the Tranquil Sea Army take so many days? Where in the world had that damned storm blown this ship?

Fortunately, the supplies and fresh water on board were still enough to get by — the water buffalo Yao Daqiao had brought along could be slaughtered for beef!

But for Yao Daqiao, no meat smelled good anymore. He was seasick by nature; he had been seasick back when he sold rice on the Yangtze. He had thought that once he got used to riverboats, he would adapt when he went to sea. But once he got out to sea he learned how bad it could be. The tossing on the Yangtze was nothing at all — the sea was the real terror!

And so Boss Yao was in a wretched state. He was seasick from the moment they put to sea, threw up everything he ate, and for a whole month or so had barely been able to keep anything down.

Seasick to the point that he was now at his last gasp. A few more days of it and he would be dead.

Just as Yao Daqiao was in utter despair and beginning to give his last instructions, he suddenly heard someone shouting "Land" or something of the sort!

Then he saw one of the hired hands Yao Daqiao had employed come tumbling and crawling down from the upper deck, still yelling: "Boss Yao, land, land, we're saved!"

Saved?

When Yao Daqiao heard this, strength came from somewhere. The man who had been at death's door was suddenly full of spirit. He braced himself against the deck and staggered to his feet. "Have we reached the Tranquil Sea Army? Quick, quick, help me up to take a look!"

Reaching the Tranquil Sea Army was impossible! They had been blown completely off course — how could they possibly get there? But they were indeed saved. Land lay ahead. Their ship had come to the coast of the Nakhon Si Thammarat region under the rule of the Ayutthaya Kingdom of Siam, where some overseas Chinese had already settled. Its Chinese name was Luokun Prefecture.

"Russian devils! Russian devils! The Russian devils are coming!"

"Run, run! Commander Oboi, the Russian devils are fierce — get on your horse, quickly!"

"Quick, quick, quick! Protect Commander Oboi!"

The Great Qing's number one Baturu, number one Cossack, number one warrior Oboi was now completely stunned — stunned silly by the 200 Cossack cavalry led by Yerofei Pavlovich Khabarov. He could hardly believe what was happening before his eyes was real.

His 600 men had actually been routed by 200 Cossacks — and in a head-on clash at that!

He had brought 300 musketeer Bayara soldiers with him, and he was accompanied by more than 300 riders led by Bardaqi Efu, the great chief of the Daur people along the Zeya River, who was registered under the Plain White Banner. Together they had been patrolling along the frozen Amur and Zeya Rivers.

The Zeya River region was the ancestral home of the Daur people, with a great many Daur stockaded towns. Oboi, newly appointed to his post, naturally had to make a tour to steady the hearts of the Daur tribes — and by the way, collect some furs, ginseng, and Eastern pearls.

Those things would fetch a fortune at the Lüshun market — enough to buy a great many foreign rifles made in London from their "English friends"!

That's right — made in London! The foreign rifles and cannon that Bruce sold to the Qing all bore the Chinese inscription "Made in London, England," so they were undoubtedly English goods — this was ironclad proof of England's interference in China's civil war! No denying it now.

But just as Oboi and his party reached the vicinity of the Saharcha stockaded town on the Zeya River, they suddenly received a report that about 200 Russian devil cavalry were coming down from the upper reaches of the Zeya.

What was there to fear from 200 Russian soldiers?

Oboi had 600 cavalry at hand, and moreover 150 flintlock muskets made in London, England. English muskets were far superior to anything Russia had.

So Oboi made a snap decision and resolved to fight a great battle with the Russian devils.

And so, north of Saharcha, he deployed his forces on the ice of the Zeya River — 300 Daurs as the death squad, 300 musketeer Bayara as the shock troops — to face 200 Cossack cavalry.

It should have been a certain victory, but the result gave Oboi a tremendous shock.

Efu Bardaqi's 300 Daur cavalry tried to use mounted archery against the 100 Cossack cavalry that came out to meet them, but those 100 Cossacks launched a couched-lance charge! Their warhorses were faster, and every man was armored, so they did not fear the Daur mounted archery at all. One charge routed the Daurs — the Daurs lost more than 50 men killed or wounded in a single clash, and Efu Bardaqi himself nearly lost his life.

Seeing the situation turning bad, Oboi had no choice but to order his musketeer Bayara to charge and relieve the Daurs.

But no sooner had the 150 Bayara with muskets charged out than the remaining 100 Cossack cavalry came straight for Oboi's main body.

Oboi still had 150 Manchu warriors at hand. Surely they could handle 100 Cossacks?

So Oboi did not hesitate. He immediately led his 150 riders in a charge against the 100 Cossack cavalry.

But in the head-on clash, Oboi discovered that his Manchu warriors were not much stronger than the Daurs — they were simply no match for the Cossack cavalry. The Cossacks, after all, had fought on European battlefields, and they lived right next to the Poles, the best mounted chargers in the world, so their skill at mounted charges was more than a notch above the Eight Banners!

The Eight Banners could also charge on horseback, but they rarely had the chance to clash head-on with enemy cavalry. Their opponents — the Ming army, the Mongols, Joseon — had no cavalry that dared to meet the Eight Banners head-on, so the Eight Banners' skill in this area simply could not compare with the Cossacks'.

In the head-on clash, it was immediately a disastrous defeat!

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