Fox of France

The Duke of Norfolk knew that in the coming battle, he would definitely have the upper hand in terms of absolute military strength. But in another aspect, he is at an absolute disadvantage - that is intelligence.

Because of a series of previous setbacks, fewer people in the non-public security area are willing to cooperate with the British, and the difficulty and cost of buying them have increased significantly.

What's more terrible is that the reliability of the information given by these people is also very problematic. These information often contradict each other, and sometimes, the information given by the same person is obviously contradictory. This kind of situation may occur because they are not professional intelligence personnel, so they cannot distinguish effectively; it may also be because these guys want to defraud more money, so they deliberately fabricated these nonsense Of course, there is another possibility that they are simply the guys from the rebels, deliberately helping the rebels to mislead the British.

Of course, considering that many of the things those guys sent were contradictory, the bullshit was too unreasonable, and it didn’t seem like what a real malicious rebel could do (the maliciousness of cheating money is not included), It is more likely that they have been discovered by the rebels, but the rebels saw that they were so stupid, so they deliberately kept them and used them to mislead the British.

In short, all information in non-public security areas is unreliable, even ridiculous. Among other things, take the portrait of the rebel leader as an example. There are more than ten kinds of portraits of the rebel leader Russell, each of which has the same appearance and even a different gender. In some portraits, Russell is even depicted as a tall warrior woman with slightly pointed ears, long chestnut hair, and green eyes.

The Duke of Norfolk naturally knew that most of these portraits were nonsense, and it was impossible for Russell to be some kind of mythical creature. Still, he had the soldiers bring copies of all the portraits (including the girl with the pointed ears)—what if one of them was real? What if Russell really was Joan of Arc in Ireland?

As for the quasi-law-and-order areas, the intelligence work there is equally poor, and compared to non-law-and-order areas, intelligence in quasi-law-and-order areas is even more troublesome. Many people in the "security force" are guys who have two feet on two boats. You can't believe all the news you get from them, and you can't not believe it.

But they are extraordinarily diligent in reporting all kinds of information. For example, there is a detective captain named Jarvis. The information about the rebels he sends up every month can be bound into a book. Of course, in this book, There may not be a single piece of paper that can guarantee authenticity and reliability; and among the true information that can be written on a single piece of paper, there may not be a single sentence that is really useful; The ones that get picked out of this pile of shit, and the ones that actually work are even fewer.

In short, the workload is too great to get effective information from them. Therefore, the intelligence department has been asking for an increase in the number of people to improve the ability to process various information.

"Just to deal with one Jarvis, I need to add two more documents. This idiot has reported that the master's male dog raped the west's bitch as intelligence!"

As for the security area, the current main job is to catch bandits and spies.

For a period of time, especially when the first big sweep was a great success, the work of catching bandits and spies in the public security area was quite successful, and at one point almost all the spies were cleared up. But after the failure of the second sweep, the situation changed dramatically. Many people, mainly the Irish, began to be less optimistic about the prospects of the British in the war. In order to "leave a way out", many guys began to step on two boats and turn a blind eye to the new infiltration of the rebels , close one eye. So bandits and spies in the public security area became a problem again.

"If we can't do a good job in intelligence work, we will become blind again. And a blind man, even if he is physically strong, everyone knows what will happen when he goes to the battlefield. Therefore, the first thing we want to arrange for this meeting is The first thing is intelligence work." At the preparatory meeting before the big sweep, the Duke of Norfolk said to his officers and other officials.

"Everyone knows that there is not much time until the next round of suppression operations, so we must pay close attention to intelligence work. In public security areas, all suspicious people must be arrested immediately. It is better to arrest a thousand people by mistake." , Never let one go. The entire security area must act immediately. Even if we cannot catch all the spies in a short time, we must first isolate them so that their news cannot be spread at all! Understand? "

"Understood!" Several officials stood up and replied.

"In addition, our collection of intelligence on the rebels is unlikely to change significantly in a short period of time, so the focus of our work now can only be on how to prevent the rebels from obtaining information about us. Gentlemen, Our opponents are very cunning and powerful. They have almost made us blind now. How can a blind man defeat a seeing man on the battlefield? The only way is to make them blind too, and then use us as a The rich experience brought by blind people for a longer time will crush them." The Duke of Norfolk continued, "So, how to make our opponents also blind? Do you have any ideas?"

"We have strengthened the secrecy and prevented all kinds of news about our transfer from spreading?" an official said.

"If our operations don't require the use of those 'Irish Security Forces', then there is still a possibility." Another officer shook his head and said, "Those 'Irish Security Forces' are full of people with two feet Bad things, let them know something in the morning, and by noon, those rebels will basically know everything."

"That is, unless all the guys from the 'Irish Security Force' are locked in the barracks, they are not allowed to run around."

"How is this possible? Our manpower is limited, otherwise we wouldn't need them. Now we have to send people to watch them, so why not..."

The Duke of Norfolk waited for everyone to talk for a while before he opened his mouth and said: "I found that everyone's thinking has entered a misunderstanding. Well, now I will ask everyone, if you want to make a person with good eyesight blind, what methods are there? ?”

"Blindfold him."

"Pull out his eyes."

The Duke of Norfolk shook his head: "You are so inexperienced. Think about how they blinded us? Besides blindfolding and digging out, what other means did they use?"

Everyone was silent.

The Duke of Norfolk looked at everyone, shook his head, and sighed again: "There is another way, which is to fill his eyes with stronger light! It's like mountaineering, who will be snow-blind in the snow-capped mountains. Not because the light is too weak to see, but because the light is too strong to see.

Let's see how our enemies can blind us, except to blindfold us - keep us from seeing things, goug our eyes - and kill some of our spies. What else did they do? They used our spies to give us a lot of useless information, deafened our ears with these noises, and blinded our eyes with these messy things.

Gentlemen, our enemies are vile, but formidable. Everyone should remember this. In them, there are many places worthy of our study. I don't know how gentlemen do it. But myself, I study their techniques every day until late at night. The more I research, the more I feel that there is a lot to learn. I hope that you can also take the initiative to learn, to learn from our enemies.

Now our enemies have infiltrated us to the point of pervasiveness. As I said just now, as long as the "Irish Security Force" knows the news in the morning, the rebels will definitely know it when they have lunch at noon. "

Speaking of this, the Duke of Norfolk stopped, looked around everyone, and said: "In this case, why don't we use this to fill their eyes with a lot of information mixed with truth and falsehood, so that they can get more and more information. Are they going to be blind like this?"

So everyone applauded together.

For a period of time thereafter, the United Irish Federation received a large amount of information about the movement and orders of the British army almost every day. For a while, the information even confused the people of the United Irish Federation. For example, there are at least seven or eight theories about the direction of the British army's attack. For example, there are many different and contradictory theories about the material preparation of the British and the deployment of troops at each military station. In order to find out the real and reliable news among these messy news, the people in charge of intelligence of the federation are all tired and sick, and some of the specific staff below are also very tired and sick.

"The enemy seems to want to use this rubbish to exhaust our comrades." President Russell urgently called a meeting of the intelligence department for this. "But comrades, we can't follow the enemy's rhythm. The enemy is releasing There are countless news. There are true and false. We can't read all of them in a foolish way, and we can't just ignore them in a foolish way. Doing so will be fooled by the enemy. We must come up with a way to efficiently Use those useless to interfere and filter out. Only in this way can we defeat the enemy. Let me first talk about an immature idea, we can give them a rating based on their previous performance, and then make a choice based on this rating... ..."