New Han Dynasty 1834

Chapter 115 Panic and Cleanup

The special envoys of Britain, the United States, and France to Mexico watched helplessly as Li Anbang forced the Mexican president and speaker of parliament to sign the surrender document, and they were all filled with despair.

Once this document is signed and the big man holds it, even if the Mexicans and Western countries don't recognize it later, it will still have a significant impact.

After a brief silence and consideration, the three men spoke to the soldiers beside them, requesting to leave Mexico and return to their home country to report on the situation there.

The soldiers couldn't understand their language, but seeing how seriously they were speaking, they called over the interpreter to ask him a question.

The interpreter then reported to Li Anbang, who gave a few simple instructions: "The Han army's expedition was sudden, and European and American countries were not prepared to intervene."

"We should make the most of this situation and integrate the local warlords in Mexico as soon as possible."

"It is certainly impossible to keep such an operation secret, but it is good to control it for a longer period of time, and it is also good to delay the news from reaching the courts of European and American countries."

"So we arranged for people to keep a close watch on them, including their clerks, so that none of them could escape."

"Tell them that the Mexican central government has surrendered and that we will now begin to take over the local government offices in Mexico."

"The representatives from the three countries happened to stay in our army and go with us to the local area to witness this."

"Warn them that anyone found trying to escape will be killed on sight."

Li Anbang's military advisor and interpreter immediately made the arrangements.

Upon receiving the notification, the special envoys from the three countries were all shocked, angry, and fearful.

They knew that the Han were trying to block the news and seize more Mexican territory as soon as possible.

However, they were powerless against the muskets of the Han Imperial Guards.

After resolving the issue of the surrender document, Li Anbang detained the Mexican conquest leaders and envoys from other countries separately and began to deal with the practical matters at hand.

Select one thousand infantrymen who can ride horses, take two thousand horses from the cavalry camp in Mexico City, and take them with them weapons and their own letters to Guadalajara.

They joined forces with Wu Kang's troops, exchanged the intelligence they had gathered, and coordinated subsequent operational plans.

Wu Kang's troops were ordered to begin attacking the silver mining areas in places like Sacatecas.

Leave another thousand imperial guards outside the city to keep watch, and the majority of the remaining imperial guards will enter the city to maintain order.

First, destroy the white and black people who are gathering to resist.

Then, the indigenous young men were forbidden from setting fires at will, and they were forbidden from looting the government treasury.

At the same time, there is no need to stop the natives who are chasing and killing white people that we encounter on the scene.

But after they killed the white men who were chasing them, they stepped forward and stopped them from running around any longer.

They were to remain with the Imperial Guard to assist them in maintaining order in the city.

Each time, they would gather a few people, or even just one or two, to slowly regain control over the indigenous people.

This continued until the afternoon of the following day, when the Imperial Guard finally managed to regroup most of the local able-bodied men.

Mexico City has returned to basic calm, but it has also become a ghost town.

The city streets and squares were littered with corpses.

Li Anbang ordered the Imperial Guards to lead the local strongmen to clean up the city, remove the corpses from the city, and find a place outside the city to bury them.

After three days of continuous transport, more than 80,000 bodies were cleared out.

According to Bustamante and other Mexican officials, the city's population should have been just over 100,000.

Besides the 80,000 corpses, some people must have escaped the city, while others are still hiding within it.

Li Anbang then began to reorganize the indigenous young men and take stock of the indigenous population in the villages outside the city and nearby areas.

The Han imperial guards led these natives to clear out the white people in the city, and a higher level of trust was established between the two sides, which made it possible for this statistical work to be carried out in practice.

Due to the significant language barrier, and because we don't know what the indigenous people's names are, we will temporarily use numerical codes to represent them.

Each family has a unique number, and under that number is a sub-number that corresponds to an individual within the family.

Families with assigned numbers can move directly into the city and be allocated a house to live in.

Have them clean up the bloodstains and trash in the house, and also find any hidden enemies.

Write a number on a strip of cloth and have the native tie it to their arm.

At the same time, they wrote their family numbers on wooden boards and nailed them to the door of the houses assigned to them.

After a thorough inventory, more than 24,000 indigenous families and more than 135,000 people were identified.

This also confirms that the previous simplistic, recruitment-based mobilization was insufficient.

Men between their teens and fifties, with at least two in each household, totaling at least 50,000.

Li Anbang organized these natives into three militia guards.

Those households consisting only of teenagers and middle-aged people over forty years old are assigned to the Third Guard of Mexico City.

He followed a thousand Han imperial guards to stay in Mexico City to maintain order and lead other residents to resume agricultural production.

Other families were organized into the Second Guard and the First Guard, with each family sending one able-bodied man to serve in the military, while the other family members stayed in the local area to participate in agricultural production.

The Second Guard was responsible for maintaining the mountain roads between Mexico City and Acapulco, and for transporting more military supplies from Acapulco to Mexico City.

The First Guard, carrying weapons stockpiled in Mexico City, followed Li Anbang's main imperial guard on a campaign to subdue the forces in various states of Mexico.

For major cities in the region, the first step was to send local councilors into the city to persuade them to surrender.

Tell the governor, judges, congressmen, and other local white leaders that the Mexican central government has surrendered to the Han.

Their resistance was futile.

The key was to warn them that if they did not surrender, the Han army would kill everyone after breaching the city.

If the white leaders in these areas were willing to surrender, then militia would be sent into the city to take over, and then a thorough count of the white and native population inside and outside the city would be conducted.

A small number of Imperial Guards were left to serve as generals, leading native veterans from Mexico City to control these surrendered cities.

Then, a group of able-bodied men were selected from the local inhabitants to fill the ranks of the local militia accompanying the army, restoring the number of soldiers in these militias, and then they continued to the next city.

If they refuse to surrender, then prepare for the siege in the same manner as the attack on Mexico City.

They first captured the small towns and villages surrounding the city, gathering a group of white and black prisoners.

The situation in the individual states of Mexico is similar to that in California, and also similar to that throughout Mexico.

The interests and conflicts among various forces are intertwined, and they are constantly vying for power and profit. They also like to launch coups to seize power and then massively seize local assets.

Few heads of state take office normally, and just as few leave office normally.

The Han imperial guards were not large enough, while Mexico had a large local population, so once the war began, the Han army was almost unable to completely block the news.

When the Han army, with its two armies from the north and south, captured Guadalajara and Mexico City, a large number of the city's residents fled to other surrounding cities, telling the residents of other places about the Han army's actions.

While panic was brewing elsewhere, hatred and anger were also brewing, so many places began to mobilize militias to prepare to fight against the possible arrival of the Han army, and even planned to retake Mexico City.

Therefore, when the Han army first began its conquest of the local areas, most of the local forces it encountered attempted to resist the Han army.

However, these local forces could not even resist the equally chaotic central government of Mexico, let alone the more powerful Han imperial army.

The result was obvious: their militia was defeated in open battle, and their city was quickly captured by the Imperial Guard and the local militia.

Then the Han imperial guards entered the city and took over important assets, and the natives began a frenzied "cleanup".

Apart from major cities like Mexico City and Guadalajara, other cities in Mexico have a population of only tens of thousands at most.

The Han imperial guards allowed tens of thousands of indigenous militiamen to enter the city to "cleanse" it, and the end result was basically the complete eviction of all the black and white residents in the city.

In the eyes of Li Anbang and other Han soldiers, they were forcing the local natives to rebel.

Let them rebel and follow the Han Imperial Guard to kill the original rulers, which can be considered as a pledge of allegiance to the Han Imperial Guard.

In this way, everyone is considered one of our own, and a basic level of trust is established.

The indigenous people who rebel can gain status and benefits, and they will also support and maintain the outcome of such a rebellion.

Due to language barriers and the lack of a well-developed political ideology, this support was naturally not very solid.

Once the Han imperial guards are defeated by the enemy, the rebellious local tribes may turn against them.

But as long as the Han Imperial Guards remain undefeated, their morale will rise higher and higher, and their combat effectiveness will increase. In the later stages of the battle, the Han Imperial Guards will no longer need to take direct action.

Moreover, even if one wanted to convey a new political ideology, the current cultural level of Mexican indigenous peoples would not allow them to understand and accept it.

Using the simplest form of revenge—sacrificing blood to the gods, coupled with seizing wealth and status—can actually produce surprisingly good results.

The special envoys of Britain, France, and the United States to Mexico, as well as high-ranking officials and members of the Mexican central government, were all brought to the military by Li Anbang.

In the eyes of these people, the big man was carrying out a social revolution in Mexico in the simplest and most brutal way.

The Imperial Guards of the Han Dynasty, which were clearly the emperor's army, took the initiative to lead the common people in a social revolution, which was difficult for many envoys and representatives to understand.

The Han army conquered various regions in this way, bringing the "Mexico City Plan" to other places and using it again in one city after another.

The news spread rapidly, and panic quickly escalated in the remaining areas, eventually overshadowing the original anger and hatred.

Foreign immigrants from other cities were the first to flee Mexico.

Then large numbers of white Mexican residents also began to flee, at least to the east coast to see which way the wind was blowing.

Or they could simply flee to the United States, or to Spanish colonies like Cuba.

Even the remaining white executives no longer have the courage to confront them head-on.

Fewer and fewer cities dared to resist, while more and more cities surrendered directly to the Han Dynasty.

The population of cities is decreasing, and in some small and medium-sized towns, the white population has even disappeared entirely.

As resistance decreased, the Han army advanced at an increasingly faster pace.

The two armies advanced with almost no substantial hindrance, quickly capturing major cities and strongholds in the heart of the central Mexican plateau.

In early May of the fifth year of the Han Chang era, the Han imperial guards, totaling over 10,000 men from the north and south, and the indigenous militia, totaling over 40,000 men, met in Guanajuato, central Mexico.

Guanajuato City, the capital of Guanajuato state, was the wealthiest place in inland Mexico at the time, as it was home to Mexico's largest concentration of silver mines.

Although the individual silver mines here are not very large, their output is not very high either.

However, there are a great many silver mines here.

In the vast highlands surrounding Guanajuato, there are nearly two thousand silver mines of varying sizes that have been developed over the past two centuries.

If this valley were considered a large silver mine, its silver production would be the highest in the world.

When the two armies of the Han Dynasty arrived in Guanajuato, most of the white and black population had already fled, and the Han Dynasty easily took over this largest silver mining area in the world.

After the Han army took over Guanajuato, it also gained complete control of the core area of ​​the central highlands of Mexico.