The Dutch naval base at Anjer, on the western tip of Java, was no longer Dutch. The tricolor flag had been torn down, and now the Azure Dragon of the Great Qing Empire flew from the main yardarm, a stark, silken declaration of a new world order. The harbor, once home to the Dutch East Indies Squadron, was now the forward operating base for Admiral Meng Tian's victorious Southern Fleet. The active, bloody fighting of the Battle of the Sunda Strait was over, but for Meng Tian, a new and far more complex war had just begun. He was no longer just a naval commander. By the Emperor's decree, he was now the acting military governor of this new, conquered territory, and his mission had shifted from destruction to pacification.
The Emperor's directive, delivered by priority telegram, was clear: stabilize the region, pacify the local population, restore the flow of vital resources like rubber and tin back to the Empire, and do it all while avoiding any further provocative actions that could draw the open intervention of the British or the newly arrived American fleet. He was being asked to win the peace, a task he knew could be far more difficult than winning the war.
His approach to this new war was the polar opposite of the methods favored by his rival, Yuan Shikai. Where Yuan would have used mass executions, brutal reprisals, and an iron fist of terror, Meng Tian chose to use compassion, respect, and shrewd politics as his primary weapons.
His first act was to address the plight of the overseas Chinese merchants, the people who had suffered so grievously in the anti-Chinese pogroms. He met again with the delegation of Nanyang patriarchs, led by the respected elder, Mr. Tan. But this time, he met them not as refugees aboard his flagship, but as honored guests in the former Dutch governor's mansion.
He did not offer them empty words of sympathy. He offered them tangible, material support. "The Empire has done you a great disservice," he told them, his voice filled with a sincere gravity. "It is the Empire's duty to make amends. I have been authorized by the Imperial Treasury to establish a reconstruction fund. Any Nanyang merchant whose business was seized or destroyed by the Dutch authorities or by rioters will be eligible for low-interest loans to rebuild. We will help you restore what was taken from you."
Furthermore, he deployed his elite Imperial Marines not as an occupying army to lord over the local population, but as a professional police force. They were tasked with establishing security in the Chinese quarters of Batavia and other cities, protecting the people from any further mob violence. It was a masterful move. In a single stroke, he was transforming the most powerful and influential economic group in the entire region from alienated victims into his staunchest and most grateful allies.
His second act was even more surprising. It concerned the thousands of Dutch soldiers and civilians who were now his prisoners of war. Yuan Shikai would have put them to hard labor or executed them as examples. Meng Tian gave a different set of orders. The Dutch prisoners were to be treated with a level of respect and dignity that was almost unheard of in the brutal world of colonial warfare. They were housed in clean, secure camps. They received the same food rations as his own marines. Their wounded were treated in his field hospitals by Qing naval surgeons.
His own captains were baffled by this show of mercy to a defeated enemy. "Admiral," Captain Dai asked him in private, "why show such kindness to the men who murdered our people in the refugee launch?"
"Because the world is watching, Dai," Meng Tian explained patiently. "Every ship in the American Great White Fleet has a newspaper correspondent aboard. Every European power has its spies in Singapore and Batavia. They expect us to be barbarians. They want us to be barbarians. It would confirm their own sense of superiority and justify a future crusade against us." He looked out at the captured Dutch ships in the harbor. "We will not give them the satisfaction. We will show them that the Qing Empire can be a more civilized, more honorable conqueror than they ever were. We will fight a war of narratives as well as a war of ships. And in that war, compassion can be a sharper weapon than a cannon."
His final and most secret war was one of whispers and shadows. He knew the British, despite his naval victory, had not been defeated. They were still out there, their spymaster Abernathy still plotting, still trying to counter the Empire's advance. He could not fight their intelligence service directly; he lacked the resources and the expertise.
So, he improvised. He turned to his new allies, the Nanyang merchants. He held a secret meeting with Mr. Tan and the other patriarchs. "You have your own networks," Meng Tian said to them. "Your agents are in every port, your clerks hear every rumor in every trading house, your ship captains see every vessel that moves in these waters. Your intelligence network is, in many ways, older and deeper than any European one. I need you to be my eyes and my ears."
The merchants, eager to repay the Admiral for his protection and support, readily agreed. Meng Tian had just activated a civilian intelligence network of thousands, a web of sources that could penetrate places his own military intelligence could never reach. They were not looking for soldiers or warships. He gave them a different set of targets. He wanted them to look for suspicious Westerners posing as businessmen or academics. He wanted to know about any large, unusual financial transactions. He wanted reports of any private, deniable boats being chartered for trips to remote, uninhabited islands. He was hunting for the spies themselves.
Weeks later, the new network bore its first fruit. An agent of Mr. Tan's in Singapore, a man who owned a small ship chandlery, brought a piece of interesting information. A certain British "botanist," a man with the hard eyes and lean physique of a soldier, had been making quiet inquiries in the city's seedier districts. He was trying to hire a fast, deniable fishing junk for a private, multi-week charter to the remote Anambas Islands, a sparsely populated archipelago in the South China Sea.
Meng Tian looked at the report on his desk, and he saw the pattern instantly. This was not a botanist looking for rare orchids. This was a British intelligence officer setting up a new network, a new clandestine radio post, or a secret communication link outside of Dutch territory. This was Abernathy's next move.
A commander like Yuan Shikai would have ordered the "botanist" to have an unfortunate accident in a dark alley. But Meng Tian was learning a new kind of warfare. A direct assassination was crude. It would eliminate one agent but alert the British that their operation had been detected.
He summoned his own naval intelligence officer, a sharp young man he had been personally training. "I want you to find a local crew," Meng Tian commanded. "A fishing crew known for its greed and its discretion. A crew that is secretly on our payroll. Have them offer their services to this British botanist. I want him to have his boat."
The intelligence officer was confused. "Sir? We are to help him?"
"We are to control him," Meng Tian corrected. "I do not want this spy killed. I want him watched. I want his boat crewed by my men. I want to know where he goes, who he meets, what messages he sends. I want the British to build their new secret network, and I want every single part of it to be reporting directly to me." He smiled, a faint, cold, and deeply strategic smile. "We will turn their new web into our own private listening post."
He dismissed the officer and walked to the small weiqi board he kept in his cabin. He placed a single white stone on the board. He was no longer just a warrior, a noble sword. The complexities of this new war were forcing him to evolve. He was learning to think like a politician, to act like an administrator, and, most surprisingly of all, to plot like a spymaster. He was learning that to defeat a serpent, one must sometimes think like one.