Lu Ming

Chapter 278 Raiders to Macau
The layman roars lively, the expert listens to the way.

When Alonso heard the other party's threat to close the gate, he felt as if he had been pinched, and he could no longer be arrogant.

Alonso knows: General Cao's fleet cannot enter Guangdong in large numbers now. This will violate the taboo of the empire.But it shouldn't be difficult if the opponent manipulates several gate operations through the bureaucratic system of the Ming Empire.

This is what the Portuguese are afraid of.

Since the Portuguese occupied Macau, the food problem has not been resolved.Because Macau is a small place, and the white skins didn't come here to farm, so all the food and daily necessities in Macau were purchased from Daming.

In 1574, the imperial court set up a gate in the lotus stem of Xiangshan County, and when it was closed, a general in charge of Xiangshan Village was set up to guard it to remotely control Macau.

In the beginning, the gate was closed every 5 days.Portuguese people who received tickets from Xiangshan County could go through the gate to buy food and daily necessities from Ming merchants in the market.

However, with the increasing number of Portuguese people and the accumulation of conflicts between Ming and Portuguese, the gate became 20 days after that. The enlightened government began to use food supply to control Macau.

For the Portuguese, this trick is still very effective. According to Milo Castro’s record: “There is food in Cochin China, but it is 100 leagues away in the southwest of Macau. There are people living on the surrounding islands, and they can Provide food, but only for cows, pigs, chickens, ducks."

"The market was once every 5 days, and then once every 2 weeks. As a result, some poor people in Macau starved to death"

At that time, Cambodia, which was closer to Macau, could also provide food, but under the instigation of the British and the Dutch, the King of Cambodia not only refused the stay of the Macau priest, but also did not allow the Macau special envoy who came on the same boat to stay.
Therefore, during this time period, although the Portuguese have been entrenched in Macau for decades, they still have weaknesses.

The Guangzhou officialdom also made full use of the weakness of food to deal with the Portuguese.

Just 3 years ago, in 1625, He Shijin, the governor of Guangdong and Guangxi, ordered his old friend, Comrade Cai Shanji, who was then a member of the Lingxi Taoist priest, to go to Macau to convey the governor's order: demolish earth walls, bunkers and forts.

But the governor Ma Shijia Luye, who was born in the royal family, not only refused to obey the order, but also prepared to disobey the order by force. Then the gate was closed.

Overnight, the price of grain on the black market rose three or four times. Under the complaints of the Portuguese residents, Mascarino finally had to send someone to contact the customs and expressed his willingness to demolish the fort.

In general, from the mid-Ming Dynasty to the colonial invasion during the Republic of China, the government's response became more and more difficult: no matter whether the government was the Ming court, the Qing court, or the Republic of China.

With the growing power of the colonists, the official circles in Guangzhou can no longer do whatever they want in Macau: in order to catch some Portuguese criminals and demolish the fort, the governor of a province had to order many times to "go to war" to close the gates of a tiny place out of food.
Strength is strength, and it cannot be stopped by some small means for a long time: the biggest action the Ming court finally made was nothing more than banning the Portuguese from trading in Guangzhou in 1640.At this time, the government was already powerless to drive away the Portuguese with strong ships and guns.

Cutting off food and business, which seems clever but actually passive and weak, was inherited by the Qing court in one continuous line. There are countless examples of the braided court treating Britain, France and other big powers in this way, until the weak were completely smashed by the strong , to establish a concession, at that time naturally no one dared to cut off the food and grass of the foreign adults.

And in the plane of crossing the public, as the beginning of a series of intimidation and threats against the Portuguese, the stalk of closing the gate and cutting off food is still somewhat useful.

In fact, this stalk is impossible to achieve - it is impossible for the cross-travelers to command the governor of Guangdong and Guangxi to close the gates of Macau. Doing so will cost too much political resources, and it will not have a substantial effect: Guangdong officials do not have the guts to block Portugal for a long time people.

However, the Portuguese don't know this, so Alonso now habitually believes that the crossing crowd is capable of causing trouble to Macau remotely.

In this situation, whether it is the statement of the cross-border public that they want to snatch Macau's right to collect taxes, or the threat to close the gates and cut off food, Alonso found that these are not things that can be decided by his small envoy.

This is completely different from the information he received when he set off.This force entrenched in the senior officials seems to have a special dislike for the Portuguese.

So, after a preliminary understanding of the terrifying industrial strength and sinister political intentions of the crossing country, Alonso decided to leave—leaving everything to Governor Mascarino and the Macau City Council. Narrow shoulders, can't bear it anymore.

As for the time-travelers, no one took Alonso's departure seriously.Just like a bulldozer on a construction site, no matter how the Portuguese respond, the stronger side just needs to push it over.

It's still the same sentence: long distance and close attack.Crossing the country has a detailed timetable for solving the Portuguese.

First of all: Regarding the issue of entering Guangdong on a large scale, the people who travel through the world are not worried, because history has clearly given the answer.

In real history, due to a complete rift with Zheng Zhilong after he was recruited, the Liuxiang Group began to aggressively invade the coast of Fujian.

And Zheng Zhilong also mobilized all his forces, and with the help of the Ming Dynasty's official army, fought the Liuxiang Group in six battles.Between 1632 and 1633, the two sides launched a series of battles on the sea of ​​Fujian: "One was broken at Shiwei, then at Dinghai, three at Guanghe, four at Baigemen, and five at Baigemen. Yu Da Dan, Liu Po ​​is about Qian Ao."

And Liu Xiang fled back to the waters of Guangzhou after the defeat-at this time, please note that Zheng Zhilong's army chased and killed them to the Guangzhou ocean in a reasonable and legal manner.And Liuxiang Group wanted to recover quickly, so during this period of hide-and-seek, it began to plunder the merchants and people in Guangzhou. The so-called last madness was nothing more than that.

Then Liu Xiang had a tragedy: Fujian Fuyuan quickly reached an agreement with the furious Guangdong and Guangxi Ministry and Press Academy.

Then Zheng Zhilong was hit on the head by the official hat from heaven: Nan'ao Deputy Chief Soldier.

You know, Nan'ao Island is the territory of Guangdong. In order to support Liu Xiang, the Guangdong officials did not hesitate to give Lao Zheng the hat of deputy commander.

The morale was boosted by Zheng Zhilong, so he gathered the best of the whole division, and launched a decisive battle with Liu Xiang in Tianweiyang on April 1635, 4; after he caught up with Zheng Zhihu, a fierce general, he finally wiped out Liu Xiang completely.

Therefore, the traveler can clearly judge the next action strategy from the above historical facts: just stick to the front line of Xiamen, so that Liu Xiang can't go north, and force Lao Liu to plunder on the border of Guangdong.

In history, Zheng Zhilong eliminated Liu Xiang only in the seventh year after the recruitment, and it didn't take that long for the crossing crowd: no large-scale pirates could escape Xiamen's destroyers, radars and drones.

So Liu Xiang is now a wolf in captivity, and the people who travel through the world just need to wait for him to do things in Guangdong. At that time, Guangdong officials will naturally have a memorial to "lead the wolf into the house".

(End of this chapter)