After Zhao Xin heard the news, he asked the quartermaster of the Third Regiment to take several hundred kilograms of grain for these women and children. As a result, the villagers of Xiaogenzhan were very surprised by this move of the Bei Haijun, and they went outside the Bei Haijun camp together. Bow and say thanks.
When the Beihai Navy set out again two days later, there were more than twenty women holding children behind the team, and they could not be persuaded to leave no matter how hard they tried. After sending someone to inquire, they found out that the husbands of these women had been killed in previous battles, and their homes were now destroyed. Even if they stayed, they would not be able to survive the winter. Although those few hundred kilograms of food can solve a temporary emergency, what will happen after that?
The women felt that since the Beihai Navy was kind enough to give them food, they might have a way to survive by following them. As for hatred? Maybe there is resentment, but it would be great to be able to survive and raise the children these days. It’s all fate!
In this era, rural women in island countries were very able to endure hardships. Their thin bodies could even carry a sixty-pound rice bag for two miles at a time, just to earn a penny per trip.
(If you are interested, you can watch the movie "Rice Riot", a group of tough women...)
The officers of the Beihai navy felt that these women were pitiful, so they asked Zhao Xin for instructions. Zhao Xin said that since they are willing to follow, they should just follow. Isn't it just a matter of ordering food? I can help with the logistics and do some chores every day, so I can always have enough to eat.
Two days later, the Thunderbolt, heading north, arrived at the sea outside Dagenzhan. This is the largest outpost of Osumi Castle. It consists of three villages and is guarded by the Toyama clan. There are more than 300 local villagers, and the strength gathered is as high as 1,000.
After the leading troops of the Northern Navy landed, after a day of reconnaissance, they launched an artillery bombardment the next day. The high-spirited Satsuma warriors were so weak under the continuous artillery fire that they were quickly blown away and fled.
The Fourth Regiment dispatched two battalions, and after entering the village, they conducted house-to-house raids. The stone wall that could resist matchlock bullets and bows and arrows was like window paper under the attack of grenades and explosives. The Satsuma warriors who were hiding in the courtyard to resist were hit by grenades and dense rain of bullets and had nowhere to escape.
The local Toyama clan saw that the passive defense could only be beaten, so he had to organize his troops again for a decisive battle.
Facing hundreds of samurai and warriors who launched a charge, the machine guns of the Northern Navy appeared. And the street where horses could gallop in order to resist foreign enemies suddenly turned into a Shura field. The Satsuma troops who launched attacks one after another fell to the gunpoint one after another. In the end, even the machine gunners of the North Navy couldn't bear to fight anymore and shouted loudly. Shouting to the other party to surrender and stop attacking.
The surviving samurai and local warriors were covered in blood, and they sat helplessly among the dead and wounded on the ground. They had been killed and lost their souls. When the soldiers of the Northern Navy came to collect the weapons, these survivors were like puppets, expressionless and allowed to be tied up.
Under the powerful offensive of the Northern Navy, the three villages in Onekan fell in one day. Knowing that they were outmatched, the Toyama clan had no choice but to surrender to the Northern Navy in order to save local women and children from being massacred.
Deng Fei is a very rational person, but he has no way to vent the century-old hatred accumulated in another time and space in this time and space. This emotion was very complicated. He felt that if he ordered the massacre of these prisoners, what would be the difference between himself and those who hated him so deeply?
It has been almost five years since he arrived in the eighteenth century. Whether he stays here or goes back in a few years, at least in this time and space, he cannot let himself become an executioner; and this is also determined by the education he received since childhood. .
So Deng Fei just ordered these people to put down their weapons, and then imprisoned them in several courtyards near the port. He also sent military medical staff to treat the prisoners and injured villagers, and made a decision after Zhao Xin and the others arrived.
Five days later, the coalition forces starting from Dagenzhan arrived in Tashiro Township. The local warriors who had already learned about the fall of Dagenzhan had nowhere to escape. Behind them was the Kyushu Mountains with high mountains and deep valleys. After letting women, children and the elderly hide in the mountains, the samurai and warriors of Tashiro Township launched a desperate resistance.
Facing the Northern Navy's artillery fire and the Sendai Domain's ferocious attacks, the remaining Satsuma warriors retreated to the local shrine to continue their resistance. Date Murasaki had no intention of keeping these people alive, so he ordered the fire to be set. One day later, Tashiro Township was captured.
At this point, all the North Korean Navy's combat missions in the first phase have been completed.
As for Beihai Town, thousands of miles away, after two consecutive months of rescue operations, Beihai Town suddenly had an increase of nearly 100,000 hungry people. The Civil Affairs Bureau relocated 30,000 people to Whale Bay alone. In addition to transporting 50,000 people to Fuldan City, the rest were scattered and resettled in a dozen residential areas thirty miles north of Beihai Town.
In the past two months, except for those who were busy with the construction of several industrial projects, Chen Qingsong had captured other members of the community. He took a group of half-year-old children from the administrative school and primary school as assistants and was busy resettling the refugees, building residences, and receiving donations. Tools, winter food and clothing were distributed.
Seeing a group of poorly clothed refugees finding a place to live with his help, Fan Tong, who had lost twice as much weight through hard work, felt that he had finally done something meaningful.
Where there is development, there will be obstacles. As the refugees who came to Beihai Town earlier had no worries about food and clothing, the clan consciousness of the ancient farmers began to rise, and the old social customs gradually came into conflict with the laws and regulations of Beihai Town.
The reason why all this was noticed by Chen Qingsong and others was because someone threw an anonymous report into the Beihai Town Police Headquarters through the courtyard wall in the middle of the night.
The Police Headquarters was manned all day long, so as soon as the stone-wrapped report letter landed, the two security policemen who heard the commotion went out to check. After they discovered the foreign object on the ground, they immediately ran outside the police station to look for it, but no one could be seen on the dim street.
The police officer on duty returned to the house and opened the paper wrapped around the stone. It turned out to be a letter with crooked handwriting and many typos. But when they saw what was written, they were shocked.
The letter writer reported that Li He from the No. 7 Resident Group of the No. 5 Residential Community in Beihai Town intended to kill her husband and parents-in-law by poisoning, but the murder attempt failed. If this alone was just an attempted murder case, what follows is a bit sensational.
The family named Li came from a village in Zhangde Prefecture, Henan. Li He's father-in-law and husband felt that this was so embarrassing, so they did not call the police. Instead, they strangled Li to death and then transported her to a village outside the town. It was secretly buried in the wild. When someone asked about Li He in the next few days, the Li family said that she was weak and was recuperating at home.
The most important thing is that the director of the police station in the fifth residential area is also from Zhangde Prefecture, Henan Province. After learning about this situation, he actually concealed the matter as if nothing was wrong.
A police officer is suspected of knowingly breaking the law. This is a serious matter! The two security policemen didn't dare to make up their minds, so they could only wait until they went to work in the morning and the director arrived.
At present, the boss of the police system in Beihai Town is Katayama from Matsushima Town. This upright police chief has no gray area in his eyes and cannot tolerate any illegal behavior. public trust.
Early the next morning, after seeing the report letter, Katayama's face suddenly darkened like a dark cloud after listening to the reports of the two people on duty. He immediately sent several of his men to put on makeup and go to the fifth residential area to inquire about the news.
In the afternoon, several plainclothes men came back to report that something was indeed wrong with the Li family. The plainclothesmen first inquired about what happened to the Li family with several neighboring households, but those households remained silent. After that, the two plainclothes men went to the shop in the fifth district. After some questioning, the shop owner said that he had not seen the Li family's daughter-in-law for several days; usually the Li family bought oil, salt, sauce and vinegar from the Li family. , but these days it is her mother-in-law who comes here.
Katayama listened to the report, and then called the security police chief of the fifth district to the police station during dinner on the pretext of holding an important meeting. The head of the public security police was once a "veteran". During the Battle of Fuldan City, an arm was shot off by a Qing army's artillery shell. After recovering from the injury, he was assigned to the public security police system.
Faced with Katayama's severe interrogation, the director finally revealed the truth. It turned out that the Li family came from the same village as him. After the incident, the old man from the Li family came to him and asked for help, but he hid it for the sake of his fellow villagers.
After hearing this, Katayama slammed the table angrily and said angrily: "I think you have lost your mind! Why didn't you report what you knew? Do you know what this behavior is?!"
"Director, in my hometown, this kind of thing used to be a matter that the people did not bring to justice. Women who did not abide by women's conduct would be dragged directly to the ancestral hall and locked up to starve to death."
"How can you be sure that Li He intended to murder his husband and his parents-in-law?"
"Everyone in the neighborhood knew about this. After Li He was found poisoning that day, he chased his family with a kitchen knife like crazy and couldn't stop him. Later, her son came back from school crying and calling his mother. , then he stopped."
"What kind of poison did she give?!"
"Rat poison."
Katayama thought for a while and felt that this fact was strange. Then why did Li He have such a hatred for his family? You can just live a good life, but why do you want to kill your father-in-law and mother-in-law?
"What's the conflict in the Li family?"
"I don't know about this matter. Director, Old Man Li saved my father's life, so when I was confused..." The head of the institute lowered his head before he finished speaking.
Katayama was livid with anger at this time. He ordered the director to be taken down and imprisoned, and then ordered people to immediately arrest all four members of the Li family and several surrounding neighbors.
After a night of tossing and interrogation, the truth of the matter was finally found out, and the cause of all this surprised the security police responsible for the interrogation!
"What?! Baby drowning!!" Katayama felt like his scalp was about to explode.
"Yes, Director. This is the interrogation transcript. Take a look at it. That woman is so pitiful!"
The security police officer in charge of the interrogation placed the interrogation transcript on Katayama's table. At this moment, his eyes were red, and he didn't know whether it was because he had not slept all night, or because he felt deep sympathy after knowing what happened to the victim.
In Chinese history, infanticide, especially female infanticide, has been popular for a long time. The cruelty of his methods seriously violates human ethics. Even those defenders of Neo-Confucianism in the Song and Ming dynasties have denounced this behavior numerous times.
However, in the society of the Qing Dynasty, due to various reasons, many people showed mental insensitivity towards the cruel act of drowning newborn baby girls. Instead of condemning it, they imitated it, leading to the phenomenon of drowning girls. It is getting worse and worse, causing people's behavior and spirit to become increasingly erratic.
In the Chinese folk of this era, it is not only the families of the poor who are prevalent in doting on their daughters, but also the families of the wealthy. For example, it is recorded in the notes of the Qing Dynasty that "if a husband comes from a wealthy family, he may worry that if he has many daughters, it will be difficult to marry, or he may worry that having a daughter will make it difficult for him to have a son. If the mediocre husband and the foolish woman do it without knowing it, there are many celebrities in this period." Lin, you don’t know what’s wrong and you do it again.”
In the history of another time and space, this social phenomenon has continued to flourish with the substantial increase in China's social population and the increasing general impoverishment of society, leading to a serious imbalance in population proportions. It has led to many problems such as marital disputes, abduction of women, child brides, destruction of traditional clan relations and marriage system, sexual assault, prostitution and even instability of social order.
During the Qing Dynasty, the practice of infanticide continued for more than two hundred years, and even continued into the Republic of China.
"The victim, Li He, was twenty-seven years old at the time of death. According to our investigation, Li He married into the Li family when she was thirteen years old. When she was fifteen, she gave birth to her first child, who is the current boy of the Li family. . After that, she gave birth to two more children in a row, but she did not keep the second child. The third child was a baby girl who was drowned by her husband.
In the fiftieth year of Qianlong's reign, there was a great disaster in Henan. The Li family fled all the way from Zhangde Mansion to Northern Jiangsu, and arrived in Beihai Town in October of that year. In November last year, Li He gave birth to a baby girl at home. Father Li and Li Youcai felt that the baby girl was useless and would only waste food. When she was older, she would have to pay a dowry, so they drank water in the house. The child was drowned in a vat. And as mother-in-law, Mrs. Li Zheng did not stop her..."
As Katayama told Chen Qingsong and others about the case, several time travelers in the conference room all had gloomy faces, especially Director Liu Siting and Liu Da, with tears streaming down their faces.
"Ever since Li Youcai and Old Man Li drowned the child and secretly buried it in the wild, Li He's mental state has become abnormal. According to the interrogation results of several neighboring households, Li He has become mentally disturbed since then. Sometimes, she would go to the fields alone to call her children. Every time, her mother-in-law or Li Youcai would take them home.
On August 27, Li He went to a shop in a residential area and bought half a catty of rat poison. She told the shop clerk that there was a nest of rats in her home. There are indeed a lot of rats here, and people often buy rat poison, so no one cares.
On September 3, Mrs. Li He took advantage of her son to go to school and cooked a pot of porridge for her family at noon. As a result, her mother-in-law saw her pouring rat poison into the porridge, so she told Li Youcai. Li Youcai knew that his woman was mentally abnormal, but he still beat Li He and tied her up. Afterwards, Li He broke free from his bonds, picked up a kitchen knife, and shouted that he wanted to chop all the Li family members to death. Fortunately, her son came back from school to stop her, so she dropped the kitchen knife.
On the afternoon of September 5th, Li He made trouble again, so Li Youcai strangled Li He to death in a rage. Afterwards, the father and son discussed it and carried Li He to the wild and buried her overnight..."
"Pah!" Chen Qingsong slammed the table and shouted angrily: "Stop reading!"
Hong Tao raised his head and asked Katayama, "Have you found out who wrote the report letter?"
Katayama said sadly: "It's Li Wang, the son of Li He. When he came home from school, he found that his mother was missing. Li Youcai lied to him and said she had sent him to the hospital. Li Wang quietly went to the hospital the next day and found no one, so he returned The family asked his grandmother. No one in the family told the child, so the child became suspicious. A few days later, the child accidentally overheard Old Man Li discussing with his wife at night, and that's when he found out what happened."
Chen Qingsong stood up abruptly, lifted the chair under him, walked a few steps at a loss, and said sadly: "If you don't lift the drowned girl, the old habits will not change! It's just that you didn't have enough to eat during the famine years, why are you full now?" Even though you’re dressed warmly, you’re still like this?”
After saying that, he took out a cigarette from the cigarette case in front of Wu Ping'an, lit it and took a few deep puffs, trying to calm down his terrible mood.
After a long time, Hong Tao said: "Speaking of which, our medical system is also responsible for this. Now some residents are afraid of spending money and dare not go to the hospital, so they give birth at home. It seems that in the future, residential areas and the medical system must jointly prevent and control everything. Pregnant women must be registered, and medical personnel must be present during delivery.”
Lao You, the principal of the primary school, said: "The fact that Li Wang can write a letter to report shows that our education is still effective."
Chen Qingsong put out the half-smoked cigarette and said to everyone present: "It's far from enough! In fact, like everyone else, I didn't realize how difficult it is to transform an old era! Everyone, our enemies are not just full of people. The Qing Dynasty, these ugly and bad habits that have lasted for hundreds or even thousands of years are our biggest enemy. Even if the Northern Navy sends troops into the pass and defeats the Qing Dynasty, if these ugly and bad habits are not overthrown, this country will still have no future!"
A few days later, when Zhao Xin, who returned to the Thunderbolt, learned of the incident from a telegram, he thought hard for a long time and sent a twenty-five-word telegram to Chen Qingsong:
The imperial power does not extend to the county, but only to the clan. The clans are all autonomous. Self-governance depends on ethics, and ethics creates country gentry!
