The Duke of Norfolk knew that in the upcoming battle, he had the upper hand in terms of military strength. However, on the other hand, he was at an absolute disadvantage - intelligence.
A series of setbacks had reduced the number of willing collaborators in the non-pacified areas, and the difficulty and cost of buying their cooperation had greatly increased.
What was even more troublesome was the unreliability of the information provided by these individuals. Often, these reports contradicted each other, and sometimes, the same person provided information that was clearly contradictory. This could be because they were not professional intelligence agents and couldn't effectively discern the truth. Or perhaps they were fabricating nonsense to extract more money, intentionally misleading the British. There was also the possibility that some of them were working for the rebels and deliberately misleading the British.
Considering that much of the information received was often contradictory and nonsensical, it was unlikely that genuine rebels could concoct such absurdities (leaving aside the malicious intent to extract money). More likely, they had been discovered by the rebels, who, upon realizing how foolish these collaborators were, deliberately kept them alive to deceive the British.
In any case, all intelligence from the non-pacified areas was unreliable and even laughable. Take, for example, the portraits of the rebel leader, Lazarus. There were over a dozen different depictions, each portraying the same figure, with some even changing his gender. In some portraits, Lazarus was even depicted as a tall, slightly pointed-eared, chestnut-haired warrior with green eyes.
The Duke of Norfolk knew that the majority of these portraits were nonsense, as Lazarus couldn't possibly be some mythical creature. But still, he had the soldiers bring copies of all the portraits, including the one with the pointy-eared girl - what if one of them was genuine? What if Lazarus really was Ireland's Joan of Arc?
As for the semi-pacified areas, the intelligence work was equally frustrating, if not more so. Many members of the "security forces" there were double-dealers, making it difficult to trust the information they provided. Some were diligent in reporting all kinds of information, like Jarvis, the chief of the detective team, who submitted enough information about the rebels every month to fill a book. However, in this entire book, you could hardly find a single piece of reliable information. Among this sea of garbage, the information that was genuinely useful was even scarcer.
In summary, getting effective intelligence from them was an overwhelming task. So, the intelligence department had been requesting an increase in personnel to enhance their information processing capabilities.
"Just dealing with someone like Jarvis would require us to hire two more clerks. This idiot reports everything, even incidents where one household's male dog violated another household's female dog as intelligence!" the Duke of Norfolk exclaimed.
As for the pacified areas, the main focus of their work was capturing rebel spies.
For a period, especially after the first successful major crackdown, the work of capturing rebel spies had been quite successful, almost wiping them out entirely. However, after the failure of the second major crackdown, the situation changed dramatically. Many people, especially the Irish, became skeptical of the British's prospects in the war. In order to "leave a way out," many began double-dealing, turning a blind eye to the rebels' new infiltrations. As a result, rebel spies became a problem again in the pacified areas.
"If we can't get our intelligence work in order, we'll be blinded once again. And we all know that a blind man, no matter how strong, won't achieve much on the battlefield. So, the first item on the agenda for this meeting is intelligence work," the Duke of Norfolk said during the preparatory meeting for the upcoming major crackdown.
"Everyone knows that there's not much time left until the next round of operations, so we must focus on intelligence. In the pacified areas, anyone suspicious must be immediately taken into preventive custody. We'd rather make a thousand mistakes than let one go. The entire pacified area needs to take immediate action. Even if we can't capture all the rebel spies in a short time, we must isolate them so that their information cannot leak out. Understand?"
"Understood!" Several officials stood up and replied.
"Furthermore, improving our collection of rebel intelligence in the short term is unlikely, so our current focus should be on how to prevent the rebels from obtaining information about us. Gentlemen, our opponents are cunning and formidable. They have almost made us blind. How can a blind man defeat someone with clear vision? The only way is to blind them too and then use the extensive experience we gain from being blind for a longer time to crush them," the Duke of Norfolk continued. "So, how can we make our opponents blind? Do any of you have any ideas?"
"We can enhance secrecy, preventing any information about our operations from leaking," one official suggested.
"If our operations don't require the use of the 'Irish Security Forces,' then there's a better chance," another officer shook his head. "Those 'Irish Security Forces' are filled with double-dealers. Tell them something in the morning, and by noon, the rebels probably already know."
"How is that even possible? Our manpower is limited, and that's why we needed them in the first place. Now we have to assign people to watch them specifically; it's not very efficient," the Duke of Norfolk said after everyone had spoken for a while.
The Duke of Norfolk finally spoke up, "I think we've all been on the wrong track. Now, let me ask you all, what methods would you use to make someone with good eyesight unable to see things?"
"Blindfold them."
"Gouge out their eyes."
The Duke of Norfolk shook his head, "You all lack experience. Think about how they blinded our eyes. Besides blindfolding and gouging out eyes, what other methods did they use?"
Silence fell over the group.
The Duke of Norfolk looked at them, sighed, and said, "There's another way: overwhelm their eyes with even stronger light! Just like how mountaineers can suffer snow blindness in the mountains, it's not because the light is too weak to see; it's because the light is too strong to see.
Let's consider how our enemies have blinded us. Besides blindfolding us, preventing us from seeing certain things, and gouging out our eyes, what else have they done?"
Everyone remained silent.
The Duke of Norfolk continued, "They've used our spies to flood us with a mass of useless information, using this noise to deafen our ears and blind us with this chaos. Gentlemen, our enemies may be despicable, but they are incredibly skilled. Remember that. There's much to learn from them. I don't know about you gentlemen, but I study their techniques every day, often late into the night. The more I study, the more I see there's much worth learning. I hope you can actively learn from our opponents too.
Our enemies have infiltrated us to the point where there's virtually no limit. As I mentioned earlier, as long as the 'Irish Security Forces' receive information in the morning, the rebels probably know by lunchtime."
At this point, the Duke of Norfolk paused, looked around, and said, "So, why don't we use this to our advantage? Let's use a large volume of mixed, genuine and false intelligence to overwhelm their eyes, blinding them temporarily."
With that, everyone began to applaud.
In the following period, the United Irishmen would receive a daily influx of information about British troop movements, orders, and other intelligence. The quantity of this information was enormous, but its contents were often contradictory, leaving the members of the United Irishmen somewhat baffled. For instance, there were at least seven or eight different claims about the direction of the British offensive and various conflicting reports about the British's logistical preparations and troop deployments at different stations. The personnel responsible for intelligence within the United Irishmen, including their leader, felt overwhelmed.
"It seems the enemy wants to wear out our comrades with this junk," Chairman Russell called an emergency meeting of the Intelligence Department. "But comrades, we can't dance to the enemy's tune. They've put out countless messages. Some are true, some are false. We can't just blindly look at them all, and we can't ignore them all either. That would be playing into the enemy's hands. We need to come up with a way to efficiently filter out the useless information meant to disrupt us. Only then can we defeat the enemy. Let me propose an immature idea: we can rank these information sources based on their previous reliability and then decide based on that ranking..."