The Qing Dynasty

Chapter 483: Trouble Caused by Captives

Hezhang was originally a small mountain town. Although it was an important hub in and out of the mountains, it only had a few hundred households.

Because the Third Town encountered stubborn resistance from the Fifth Division of the Japanese Army when trying to capture Hezhang, it had to resort to a violent attack, which resulted in most of the buildings in Hezhang, a town with hundreds of years of history, being destroyed in the war.

Teng Yuzhao was also helpless about the devastation that the war had brought to this ancient town.

Not only Hezhang, but also Longhu Village, Gunao, Shipo Village and other places, and even the villages and towns around Luzhou Prefecture, and even from Tianjin to the capital, and then to the towns occupied by the coalition forces moving south, as well as the surrounding areas, have all suffered disasters to varying degrees.

The vanguard army will naturally not give up the opportunity to destroy the coalition forces for fear of damaging the people's property. Damage to property is naturally unavoidable. This has been the case in all dynasties, and no government will compensate the people.

Despite this, Teng Yuzhao still felt that he could not ignore the damage to civilians' houses caused by the vanguard troops fighting against the coalition forces in the local area.

He already had a plan in mind. The vanguard army would give fifty taels of silver to each household whose houses were damaged, and this would apply to every household regardless of the number of houses they had. This was all he could do.

Although the areas surrounding Luzhou Prefecture and Longhu Village are under the jurisdiction of Shanxi, he will not let the Shanxi government handle this matter. He will arrange it personally.

He even has to give an explanation for the city of Tianjin.

As for the outer city of the capital and the houses of the people destroyed by war outside the city, Teng Yuzhao was temporarily powerless to do anything, as the area was under the jurisdiction of Shuntian Prefecture, and it was the capital after all, so it was not easy for him to interfere.

After daybreak, the troops cleaning up the battlefield and the captured prisoners were transported and escorted to the outside of Hezhang Town one after another.

A great battle had just ended. Although the battle ended in just a few hours after the general offensive began, for Pan Jinshan, Hu Dianjia, Liu Bingyi, and even Wu Peifu's Third Regiment, they fought for not just a few hours but several days. The Fifth Regiment's Kuangkou blocking battle lasted only one day and one night, but its cruelty was self-evident.

All the troops were in urgent need of rest, but time was precious, so Teng Yuzhao had no choice but to give a cruel order that after cleaning the battlefield, the entire army would rest on the spot for five hours, eat, and then sleep for a few hours before setting off again.

As soon as the order was given, all the troops immediately set up tents around Hezhang Town, camped and cooked, and lit a large number of bonfires to keep warm.

Outside Hezhang Town, in a rare farmhouse that had not been damaged by artillery fire, Teng Yuzhao was convening a military meeting with several key generals while having a meal.

The meals for Teng Yuzhao and others were still the same as those for the soldiers.

Of course, there was no pork, mutton or other meat available. Even the captured canned food that the troops brought with them before setting off had been eaten up. The only things that were not lacking were rice, flour and pickles.

Fortunately, there was still some horse meat as many Japanese and Russian pack horses and war horses were killed or injured in the river valley. Even if the entire army had more than 100,000 people, there was enough horse meat for no one to eat too much.

Horse meat is a bit sour, and Chinese people don't like it very much. However, Teng Yuzhao knew how to remove the sour taste. It was only after he personally wrote down the method of cooking horse meat that the officers and soldiers were able to eat the delicious horse meat.

There was still a lot of leftover horse meat, which was made into braised horse meat by various troops without any instructions.

The most important technique to remove the sour taste is to add wine.

Now, there is a big pot of braised horse meat on the table of Teng Yuzhao and his friends.

Of course, salted radish is also indispensable.

After a quick meal, a short military meeting began before the food was cleared away.

First, Zuo Mingyang reported the results of the battle to the generals present. According to Zuo Mingyang, including the results of the Sixth Regiment of Pan Jinshan, a total of more than 85,000 Japanese and Russian troops were killed in the Qingzhang River Valley, and nearly 40,000 were captured.

Since the vast majority of the Allied casualties were caused by intensive artillery bombardment, many of the bodies of the Japanese and Russian Allied Forces were incomplete, and many could not even be recognized. In addition, time was tight, so all the battle statistics are not very accurate and are only an approximate number.

Moreover, the number of bodies washed away by the Qingzhang River is also impossible to count.

The weapons seized included more than 40,000 Russian Mosin-Nagants, more than 80,000 Japanese Golden Hook rifles, a total of 292 Maxim heavy machine guns and Hotchkiss heavy machine guns, more than 5,000 revolvers, and more than 1,000 sabers.

A total of 483 intact cannons were seized, with calibers ranging from 75mm to 120mm.

Due to the large number of guns, artillery and ammunition, no statistics have been compiled for the time being.

More than 6,000 war horses and pack horses were captured, including those that were slightly injured, most of which were the Japanese devils' ponies.

A large number of Japanese yen, rubles, and gold and silver jewelry were found while cleaning up the battlefield and searching the prisoners. There was no time to count them for the time being, but preliminary estimates showed that they would be worth one to two million taels of silver.

According to the order issued by Teng Yuzao before the war, all prisoners of war with gold, silver and jewelry on them were shot on the spot.

Because these gold and silver jewelry were obviously obtained by robbing the people, after killing these people, Teng Yuzhao was not worried that the foreign powers would cause trouble for him in the future.

Because of this, more than 20,000 Allied prisoners of war were killed. These people were not counted as prisoners, otherwise the number of prisoners would not be 40,000, but more than 60,000.

As for other supplies such as military kettles, not only was there no count of the seizures, Zuo Mingyang didn't even mention it.

It was not just because there were too many seized weapons and ammunition that made Zuo Mingyang too excited to talk about it. The main reason was that time was tight and there was no time to count the number of these supplies.

With so much spoils captured in the first battle, some generals were extremely excited, while others were gloomy and looked angry.

The most excited person was naturally Liu Changfa, the commander of the Artillery Town. With so many cannons seized, it was more than enough to expand the Artillery Town into four towns, let alone a second one.

Although he knew very well that Teng Yuzhao would not hand over all the captured cannons to him, he was still very happy because he had not lost his position as the artillery director.

The one who was most obviously unhappy was Liu Shijiu, who kept glaring at Li Jinyu. Hu Dianjia and Li Xianze also looked at him in an unfriendly manner. Li Jinyu knew very well why these people were unhappy, it was because he had captured too many prisoners. So, Li Jinyu could only smile bitterly.

Teng Yuzao noticed Li Jinyu's embarrassment and spoke quickly.

"You should not complain that Mingguang captured too many prisoners. Both the Russians and the Japanese were harassed by the Sixth and Eighth Regiments and could not sleep at night. They were also blocked by us in the Qingzhang River Valley and attacked by mortars from all directions. During the day, they had almost no safe place to hide."

"Especially when these foreign devils learned that their troops had already started to flee and their direct commander had abandoned them and fled first, how could the remaining foreign devils be willing to die?"

"When the Mingguang people rushed forward, they raised white flags everywhere. What do you want him to do? Do you really want him to refuse the surrender of tens of thousands of foreign devils, force those foreign devils to take up arms, and then destroy them!"

Liu Shijiu said with a grin, "That's true, but the Russians and Japanese won't pay us. Now that we've captured so many foreigners at once, how much food will we waste!"

(End of this chapter)