"The gap in military strength between the Ming Dynasty and Haihan may be as much as that of Spain!" Liu Shang couldn't help but have such a strange thought in his mind. Although he also doesn't want to admit the existence of this gap, the objective facts are in front of his eyes, and he, Liu Shang, is not a person who will choose to escape from reality.

If when he first arrived in Sanya, he still had the idea of stealing Haihan's key military technology in order to narrow the military gap between the two countries, then at this moment, in the face of vivid examples, he has basically given up such an idea, after all, the gap between the two countries is so big that it can no longer be changed by personal strength. And Liu Shang has been thinking about a very realistic question recently, what he has seen and heard in Haihan for more than two months, if all of it is written into a secret report and sent back, will the boss think that he is crazy?

In the case of himself not long ago, Liu Shang really would not believe that there is a more advanced and powerful island country than the Ming Dynasty on the coast of the South China Sea, there are too many new things that have not yet appeared in the Ming Dynasty, and many of them can even be described as unbelievable. Beings like steam engines and ironclad ships, Liu Shang didn't think that his boss, and his boss's boss, would be convinced of the power of these things through written descriptions. If you tell your superiors that you have made a judgment like "I'm sorry we can't beat Haihan", I'm afraid you will be punished, right?

Liu Shang suddenly understood a little why there were always a lot of vague words in the reports sent back by the intelligence officers who had previously entered Haihan's lurk. In particular, when it comes to the more subjective opinions on the comparison of the strength of the two sides, they will generally be brought over in a few words, presumably because the predecessors also felt that some situations were not suitable for telling the truth, and saying it truthfully would cause trouble. Now I seem to be in such a situation, should I tell the truth, or learn from my predecessors to report good news and not bad news?

However, Liu Shang soon had no time to worry about this problem, and a new order had been sent from above, asking him to report to the Youth League immediately and participate in the development of a follow-up propaganda plan for the "Sanya Victory" with the personnel of the Propaganda Department. Haihan officials have carried out great publicity on the Battle of Xingdao, which is thousands of miles away, and now this great victory completed under the noses of the Haihan people is naturally a special article with thick ink and color. And the reason why Liu Shang was selected is also very simple, he once compiled a storytelling joke about the Battle of Xingdao that was well received by the people, and then he was temporarily recruited to serve in the propaganda department during his performance was also very decent, so Yu Xiaobao named Liu Shang again and asked him to join this time-bound task.

This propaganda campaign is also different from the newspaper platform, and the pen of the newspapers has already taken action at the first time, striving to rush out a "special issue" to report on the battle within a day or two. What Liu Shang and others have to do is to cooperate with the publication to promote a wave of publicity, this time not only for the domestic people, but also for external propaganda, so that all countries that have established diplomatic relations with Haihan know that Spain has planted a big heel at Haihan's doorstep this time.

The people set off the cannons, added two more dishes to their dinner, and went to bed with a happy mood, which can be regarded as a simple celebration. However, on the night after the war, there were still many people who had no time to rest in order to complete the follow-up sweeping work.

The Ministry of Security is one of those departments that really starts to get busy after the fighting, and all the prisoners of war that the military collects from the battlefield have to go through a preliminary identification and registration session by the intelligence agencies. Depending on the individual circumstances of the prisoners of war, the vast majority of them were sent to hard labor in a hard labor camp, and their performance in re-education was determined by their chance of regaining their lives. A small number of prisoners of war with special status or certain skills, such as officers, craftsmen, navigators, etc., will be held separately and disposed of.

Of course, before the prisoners of war are disposed of separately, the relevant authorities will definitely arrange a grand victory parade in Sanya, and these unlucky ghosts will be escorted to the streets to show the people the direct results of the battle.

At present, there are more than 700 prisoners of war who are interned in the Shengli Port Naval Base, which is not a particularly large number in the wars of Haihan over the years, but this is the first war to "resist the invasion of foreign enemies" after the founding of Haihan, and its significance is different from the previous battles to expand the territory overseas.

Of the more than 700 prisoners of war, not all of them were Spaniards, about half of them were a ragtag army of native Luzon, Chinese descendants, Malays, blacks, and sailors from other European countries, and the other half were real Spaniards. The prisoners were divided into groups of ten and chained to their ankles with shackles to prevent them from escaping. There were many wounded among the prisoners of war, but the more seriously injured were left to fate, and the interns sent by Haihan to treat them were all interns from the medical department, and it was inevitable that they would be careless when dealing with their wounds—of course, perhaps because these students did not want to treat the enemy's wounded soldiers properly, and took the opportunity to vent their dissatisfaction.

The Ministry of Security temporarily borrowed a warehouse at the naval base as a venue for the preliminary examination of prisoners of war. Dozens of tables lined up in the warehouse, each with two people sitting behind each desk, belonging to the Ministry of Security and the military. There were a few tables with an extra person seated, a Spanish translator who had been temporarily drawn from various departments and private sectors. Due to the extremely limited number of interpreters, the interrogation of Spanish prisoners of war had to be concentrated, and the key figures in the prisoners of war were basically Spaniards, and it was not particularly important how much the confessions of the other prisoners of war could understand.

The Ministry of Security and the military already had relatively mature experience in this kind of interrogation of large numbers of prisoners of war, first of all, the prisoners of war were asked to identify each other, and several Spanish officers or captains were identified, and then they were assigned special occupations such as craftsmen and navigators designated by the Haihan. After it has been basically determined that the persons with special identities have been singled out, targeted interrogation and identity registration work can be carried out to achieve twice the result with half the effort.

Among the Spanish captured this time, there were only about ten officers and captains, and the flagships of the two Spanish fleets managed to escape, so the rank of these commanders was not particularly high. The information that can be extracted from their mouths is actually of relatively limited reference value to Haihan. After a night of hard work, the confession reports of these people were finally sorted out before dawn and sent to the desk of He Xi, the minister of security.

Although He Xi was the leader of the intelligence department, he didn't sleep all night like everyone else in the department. All the gains of the intelligence department had to be summarized by him, and although the people below had already helped him filter out a lot of useless or low-value information, there was still a lot that he needed to review personally.

The immediate task of Haihan was naturally to figure out the root cause of the Spaniards' surprise attack on him at this point in time. Although the two sides have formed a lot of bonds before, the Spaniards have also died down in the past two years, and although there are some small actions under the table, they have not openly caused too much trouble to Haihan with a hostile attitude. The previous report sent back by the intelligence officers who were lurking in Manila said that this was a unilateral organization of the Manila authorities, and if it was just that, it would be fine, the Philippine colony alone was not enough to really threaten the safety of Haihan, but He Xi still had to rule out other hidden dangers that might exist.

He Xi was worried that the operation was personally instructed by Spain, so that the Spaniards might not be deterred by this defeat, and might even launch a larger follow-up offensive. With Spain's strength, as long as they prepare for a period of time, it is not a problem to launch a cross-sea operation in the Far East at the level of 10,000 people, and after learning the lesson this time, I am afraid that they will not be so reckless when they do it again next time. Although the strength of the Haihan Navy was strong, it was ultimately limited by the number of combat ships, and if Spain really settled down and organized a large-scale attack, the navy could protect Sanya, but it might not be able to protect the entire Hainan Island.

Of course, there are other possibilities, maybe the Spanish secretly have other means not used, such as after the fleet invades Sanya, the armed men lurking in the local area will launch an attack, creating a situation of internal and external cooperation, or acting as a leading party, leading the landing Spanish army to attack various key areas in the local area. However, in the end, the Spaniards did not even get the opportunity to land, and even if they had any other deployments in the urban area of Sanya, it was too late to launch at that time. And the responsibility of the Ministry of Security is to rule out these possibilities, and if the Spaniards really arrange these means locally, then they must be uprooted as soon as possible, leaving no future trouble.

He Xi quickly skimmed the confessions of several Spanish officers, in fact, he had personally participated in the trial of two of them just now, but to be honest, the information that these low-ranking officers had was limited, and it did not have much reference value. They were only participating in the military operation as arranged by the Manila authorities, and all they knew was how much they would gain by capturing Sanya and some of the tactics that had been developed around the capture of the port, and they knew very little about the higher-level strategic considerations.

He Xi did not have much doubt about the authenticity of these confessions, and he confirmed with his own eyes at the interrogation scene that most of these so-called officers and captains were actually of poor quality, not the standard Royal Navy soldiers, but armed maritime merchants, privateer owners, retired veterans, etc. And these people don't seem to have much scheming at all, and their little abacus is just the level of pediatrics in He Xi's eyes.

Many even immediately demanded redemption from their interrogators, as it was a common practice in European warfare, and prisoners of war could be freed if a reasonable number could be negotiated between the two sides. He Xi personally is not disgusted by this, anyway, it is not of much value to keep these wealthy prisoners of war, and it is a good thing to be able to knock out a little oil and water. In addition, this kind of redemption was not uncommon in the past wars of Haihan, and many British prisoners of war captured in the previous Battle of Star Island had already been clearly marked with a price and asked the British East India Company for ransom money.

However, this time the Spaniards came to the door and directly attacked Sanya, the capital of Haihan, and the severity of this matter was not comparable to previous foreign wars. He Xi would not be in charge of negotiating ransom with the prisoners of war, but he could imagine Schneider gearing up at this time, and it was strange that he didn't squeeze the oil and water out of the Spaniards' bones when he seized this rare opportunity.

He Xi's mind returned to the confession report in front of him, if he was a high-ranking official who planned this operation, he probably wouldn't have informed this group of low-quality commanders of the detailed strategic plan. Most of these people are not trained in secrecy and do not have a clear idea of what to say and what not to say. They don't even need to be interrogated by any means, and most of the information they need can be obtained through clichés.

Although there was no valuable information, through the confessions of these people, He Xi could basically determine that the offensive launched by the Manila authorities was a wave, and the Manila authorities did not prepare for a follow-up offensive except for the invading Spanish fleet. It may be that the size of the fleet at its disposal is limited to this, or it may be that it has miscalculated Haihan's defensive strength and means of response. However, in He Xi's opinion, the former is more likely, because about half of the warships in the invading fleet are subordinate to the American fleet.

These galleons belonging to the American colonies only visited Luzon once a year during the right season, and did not stay in Manila Port for long periods of time. From this detail, it seems that the Manila authorities launched the operation at the same time as the schedule of the American Fleet - after collecting a ticket in Sanya, they returned to Manila for a few days to rest, just in time for the season to return to the American colonies.

If this inference is true, it is relatively clear why He Xi believes that the Manila authorities chose this time to plan this war. The Spaniards probably did not think much about the situation on the Haihan side, but mainly based on their own conditions for the build-up of troops, as long as the time was right to gather enough troops, then launched a wave of sneak attacks, and if the effect was ideal, they tried to occupy Sanya, and if they were not ideal, they withdrew to Manila to avoid the limelight.

Of course, in the eyes of the Manila authorities, the chances of a successful sneak attack are quite high, so they are obviously unprepared and even a little overwhelmed when facing Haihan's response. If it weren't for the decisive order of the fleet commander to retreat, and the delay for a while and a half, until Tao Donglai's fleet rushed back, it would really be impossible to leave.

(End of chapter)