In June last year, Tsarist officials in Okhotsk discovered that the two three-masted sailing ships that went to Sakhalin Island to haul coal had not returned, so in early July they sent two ships south to find out the reason.
The reason for the search is that sailing on the Sea of Okhotsk at the turn of summer and autumn is very dangerous. When the wind speed is strong, it can reach 20 to 30 meters per second, and the waves are more than ten meters high. If those two ships were caught in a storm and sank, they would have to know where they sank.
As expected, the two boats sent to look for the boat also capsized in the wind and waves.
Before the ocean froze in winter, a whaling ship returning to Okhotsk brought back news that the northern camp on Sakhalin Island had been occupied by a group of Tatars of unknown origin.
The Russians immediately became anxious! It was so hard to find a coal mine that could be mined all year round and grow some potatoes, but someone took away my butt before I could even sit down. Neither my uncle nor my aunt could bear it! It must be taken back.
So the Tsarist Russian officials in Okhotsk sent a letter to Irkutsk, requesting the transfer of a regiment of Cossack musketeers. Ivan Jacobi was also extremely shocked after receiving the letter. The first thing he suspected was the Qing Dynasty, but according to past practice, the Qing Dynasty people would always say hello first.
Are they from the island country? Not quite. No matter who it is, Sakhalin's coal mines are extremely important to supporting the development of Okhotsk and must not be abandoned. So Ivan Jacobi signed the transfer order before leaving for Petersburg. He felt that a regiment of 1,200 Cossacks was too much, so he transferred four companies.
Advancing eastward and southward to occupy more land has been Tsarist Russia's established national policy since Peter I. Since Kangxi defeated Tsarist Russia, the Cossack expedition could only expand eastward. They soon reached the Pacific coast and the Kamchatka Peninsula, and crossed the Bering Strait to occupy Alaska. The Russians established two strongholds on the northern coast of the Pacific, one in Okhotsk and one in Kamchatka.
But the problem is that the climate in both Okhotsk and Kamchatka is extremely harsh, and crops cannot survive at all, and all farming experiments have failed. No matter how delicious whale meat is, if you eat it for three days in a row, you will probably vomit.
Every year, the grain required by Kamchatka is transported by water from the upper reaches of the Lena River to Irkutsk, and then transported by horseback to Okhotsk through rough and difficult roads. It costs fifteen rubles to transport one pood (16.38 kilograms) of grain to Kamchatka, and the transportation cost is extremely high; while a load of flour sells for as high as thirty-six rubles in Kamchatka.
Before the 19th century, the Russian ruble was not linked to gold, so the ruble was just a pile of silver. One ruble contains 28 grams of silver. Of course, there are also gold rubles and copper rubles, and their purchasing power is still very high. So you can imagine how expensive food is in Kamchatka. Eating food is like chewing silver.
The tactics of the coal mine security team are not complicated. It would be crazy to engage in close combat with a weapon with an effective range of 400 meters. Therefore, keeping a distance and taking advantage of weapons is the first priority.
Mergua and others did not think so. They believed that only those who dared to fight hand-to-hand were heroes. However, the security captain Yu Yilang did not pay attention to the suggestions of these scumbags.
So the Cossacks who entered the forest were met with a hail of bullets, and were immediately stunned. In a panic, the Cossacks fired randomly at the surrounding woods, leaving dozens of corpses behind and retreated to the ship.
The security team is the size of a reinforced company, with eleven squads. It is inconspicuous when scattered in the dense forest. The intensive firepower made the Cossacks think that the opponent had at least a thousand people.
Although there were a lot of people in the previous battles in Beihai Town, the actual execution of tactics was based on squad units. Because the ability of the early refugees to lead troops was limited to this, even Sheng Haizhou and the others were rushing to the top. This is why Zhao Xin organized a rapid training course for officers.
However, after the security team launched a tentative attack on the port, they never attacked the port again. The reason is that the four sailing warships are equipped with hundreds of artillery pieces, and when they fire together, the sound is overwhelming. The dozens of Hezhefeyaka people who rushed at the front were hit by hundreds of iron balls of different sizes, killing more than ten people on the spot. This made Mergua heartbroken.
So the Cossack musketeers took advantage of the situation and attacked again, trying to attack the coal mine. However, the quick guns in the hands of the security team once again made them appreciate what it meant to hit the iron plate head first.
After two consecutive defeats, the Cossacks retreated to the port. The security team was unable to attack the port because they had no artillery, and the Cossack musketeers did not dare to go deep into the interior. The two sides remained in a stalemate for several days.
Zhang Bo had never been on the battlefield. He was quite anxious at first, fearing that the Russians would attack Oha's oil "industrial zone" and cause damage after landing. But when he saw that hundreds of Cossacks couldn't even defeat the security team, he finally felt at ease. However, he was worried that the Russians would come around to the Oha River to attack, so the garrison camp never moved.
In fact, the Cossacks were even more miserable. They were like rats in a bellows, unable to advance and unwilling to retreat. But with the arrival of the Thor a few days later, the end of the Cossacks came.
After getting in touch with the Thor, the Oha garrison battalion, except for one company left behind to take charge of security, marched quickly to the coal mine to cooperate with the security team in launching a counterattack.
When the Cossacks saw this big white ship that suddenly appeared, they were shocked and frightened, knowing that the other party was definitely not a kind person. Just as he was about to go over and negotiate, the Thor directly responded with cannonballs, which immediately stunned the Cossacks.
It is said that after several months of intensive training, the gunners on the Thor have soared in skill points. After the war started, three guns sank a three-masted sailboat. Ding Guofeng was so angry that he cursed him as a prodigal. Why don't you take it back and modify it? You have to send someone to salvage it.
Amidst the roar of machine guns and artillery from the north and the hail of bullets from machine guns and rifles from the south, the Cossacks who were surrounded were killed and their bodies fell on their backs. There were corpses everywhere on the port and in the sea. In the end, only more than 80 Cossacks were left out of more than 300 Cossacks, and they had no choice but to surrender with a white flag.
After the battle, Ding Guofeng sent a telegram to Beihai Town asking what to do with the prisoners. What he personally means is to send them all to the coal mines to dig for coal.
A few days later, Zhao Xin's telegram arrived. Zhao Xin told Ding Guofeng that these Cossacks were all extremely vicious people in the past, and each of them had blood debts on their hands. They were fed to unfamiliar wolf cubs, and there were great hidden dangers if they stayed.
It is said that after the failure of the Pugachev uprising more than ten years ago, except for a few principal criminals who were executed, most of the other Cossacks who participated in the uprising were exiled to Siberia. In the process of following Pugachev's uprising, these people burned, killed, looted and committed all kinds of evil. After arriving in the Far East, they successively joined the Kamchatka expedition team, and the corpses of the Kamchatka people they killed were littered everywhere.
There is a very funny thing, that is, the process of Tsarist Russia's conquest of the entire Kamchatka was completed during the process of these Cossacks rebelling, surrendering, rebelling again, and surrendering again. As long as they find that the commander sent from above is weak and can be bullied, these Cossacks will rebel, kill your whole family, and divide the property; when the new commander arrives and kills a few leaders, everyone will continue to look for opportunities to brew the next wave of rebellion.
Originally, Tsarist Russia was preparing to conduct an expedition and survey of Kamchatka. However, when the Cossacks rebelled, the rebels fled south. The counter-rebellion troops followed and chased, killing the Kamchatka people by the way. Only after the rebellion was finally eliminated did they realize that the entire The map of the peninsula has been surveyed.
For modern people like Ding Guofeng, it is easy to talk, but it is really difficult for him to kill prisoners. However, a dogleg from the Sendai clan came to Ding Guofeng and said that adults don't need to do anything, we will do it.
The speaker's name is Chai Chu, whose original name is Shibata Shigeji. Yes, he is related to Shibata Kakuzo.
This person was the third son of Shibata Kakuzo's uncle's family. He had been running errands with Shibata Kakuzo before. Since he was not the eldest son, there was no hope of inheriting the family business, so he was sent to Beihai Town by Shibata Kakuzo.
Shibata Kakuzo made it very clear to his cousin that when you go to Beihai Town, you must follow the steps of Zhao Wangdian and fight wherever you are told. Maybe your future future will be much better than that of my brother and me.
"What if Prince Zhao asks me to attack the shogunate?"
"Then you try to be the first!"
Shibata had a good relationship with this cousin since he was a child and obeyed his words. So not long after arriving in Beihai Town, he became the first naturalized warrior among the six hundred warriors, and was given the Han name Chai Zhong. So after the recruit training was completed, Chai Zhong was naturally promoted by Zhao Xin to become the first company commander of Qingye Battalion.
The island nation warriors of Qingye Camp showed great respect to Beihai Town, firstly because they couldn't beat them, and secondly because Zhao Wangdian was Zhu Ming's "descendant of the emperor". In this sense, there is no shame in being defeated; anyway, we have been unable to defeat since the Tang Dynasty, and we still failed to win in the Momoyama period.
But the samurai were not merciful at all towards the surrendered Cossacks - the red-haired Ezo.
It is said that the older generation of Sendai people have actually seen the Cossacks a long time ago. At the end of June 1739, a Tsarist Russian expedition consisting of four sailing ships visited Sendai. During this period, the Sendai clan sent officials and Buddhist monks to visit the ship and exchange gifts. However, due to language barriers, the Tsarist Russian expedition quickly returned to Okhotsk.
The tied-up Cossacks were divided into teams of twenty and taken to the coal mine for disposal by the Qingye Camp. Ding Guofeng looked at the island warriors who were only about 1.4 meters tall in front of him, and then looked at the pale-faced Cossacks who were only about 1.6 meters tall. He felt that the scene was really strange.
That's right, the average height of Russian soldiers in this era was a little over 1.6 meters, not even 1.65 meters. Some well-nourished officers were only 1.65 meters tall; those were tall and tall in the 20th century. That’s a matter for the future.
Of course, not all the prisoners were disposed of. The two captured sailboats and the sailors and crew members who escaped and were rescued from another sunken ship survived. This was mainly because Ding Guofeng discovered that many of the captured sailors were ten How old are the children. After a stumbling exchange in English with a captured captain, he learned that these children were students of the Okhotsk Navigation School.
"Forget it, take everyone on board." Ding Guofeng ordered his men. There is no use keeping these children, they cannot do any heavy work as coolies.
The next step is to take a trip to Okhotsk. So the Thor first turned to the mouth of the Oha River, filled up with half a tank of oil, and then headed northwest.
The straight-line distance between Okhotsk and Oha Camp is more than 700 kilometers, which is more than 370 nautical miles. If the journey goes smoothly, it will only take more than two days. This town was Tsarist Russia's first coastal stronghold in the Far East. It had a wooden fortress around 1649.
In 1732, under the initiative of the famous navigator Bering, a navigation school was established, mainly to train young Cossack sailors for the sea routes of Okhotsk and Kamchatka Peninsula.
The city's further development was closely related to the fur trade, and the Qing-Russian trade was very important to Okhotsk. Beginning in 1740, a Russian expedition discovered sea otters in eastern Kamchatka, and fur hunters began hunting eastward along the Aleutian Islands. The furs obtained were brought back to Okhotsk and transported to Kyakhta's market for trade.
Sea otters are not found in China and are called "sea dragons". Although a "Sea Otter Catcher" was set up in Ninggu Tower during the Kangxi period, sea otter fur in the Qing Dynasty was purchased from Tsarist Russian merchants and was very precious.
By 1783, although Okhotsk had become the capital of the Okhotsk District under the jurisdiction of the Governor-General of Irkutsk, it was only the size of a town with a population of only 2,000 people.
When the Thor arrived at the sea off Okhotsk, just two days had passed, and the journey was uneventful. When we arrived at the ocean here, we could already see many whaling ships coming and going, so Ding Guofeng and the sailors on the ship were lucky enough to see the scene of cutting up whales and boiling whale oil.
After the whaling ships of this era hunted whales, they were usually towed next to the whaling ship. The crew stood directly on the floating whale carcasses, cut off the blubber with sharp knives, cut it into pieces, and loaded them directly into the whale carcass. In the barrel.
If you are close to the port, you will be able to return with a full load quickly. However, if they are unable to return home for a long time, the blubber in the barrels is likely to deteriorate and become smelly. So some whalers built a large furnace with bricks in the middle of the main deck, and prepared several large pots to boil whale oil at the same time.
In these years, the price of whale oil was higher than that of gold, and the biggest buyers were the British. So when the Thor approached the whaling ships that were boiling oil, although the people on board felt threatened, they still did not escape.
Of course, some of them were curious and wanted to know the origin of the Thor. But after shouting for a long time, no one on the Thunder God paid any attention to him.
A few hours later, as several fishing boats hurriedly returned to the port, the chief executive of Okhotsk knew that a strange large ship had arrived in the outer sea. At this time, the Thor was getting closer and closer to the port. Because it was unclear about the hydrological conditions of the port, it had to anchor two kilometers outside the port.
The current chief executive of Okhotsk is Kaslov Ogren, a Dane. This situation is not surprising in the Far East. The first administrator of Okhotsk was a Portuguese.
In order to find out whether it was an enemy or a friend, Kaslov Ogren first ordered the army to be on alert, and then sent a small sailing ship carrying a priest, an administrative official, and ten soldiers to find out.
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