prosperous age

Chapter 980 1069 Lin Feng's News

In a blink of an eye, it was October of the second year of the Longqing reign, and more than a month had passed since the Emperor Wanli's birthday.

Military preparations against Burma have been carried out in an orderly manner under the personal leadership of Li Chengliang. He has personally brought 100,000 taels of silver and has already arrived in Huguang, and will arrive in Sichuan soon.

Thousands of miles away from the Ming Dynasty, in the north of Luzon Island, at the mouth of the Ang River in Fengayen Bay, a Han Chinese group of nearly 5,000 people lived here and built a small town called Daimao Port.

Their leader was naturally the Lin Feng pirate group that was driven out of Dongfan Island by Yu Dayou and headed south to attack Manila.

However, perhaps due to bad luck, the Lin Feng pirate group failed to capture Manila, which had a weak military force. Instead, they lost hundreds of people. Finally, after seeing the Spanish reinforcements rushing back to Manila, they chose to withdraw from the battlefield, returned to the north of Luzon Island along the coastline, and chose a harbor to settle down.

At that time, Lin Feng led more than 60 warships, nearly 6,000 people, and carried a large number of agricultural tools and seeds, and marched towards the Philippines in a mighty manner.

Lin Feng went on this expedition with almost all his men, and all the soldiers brought their families with them. He planned to capture Manila and move his maritime base there, and it might even be possible for him to establish his own maritime kingdom in Manila in the future.

This might be the first organized and large-scale military operation for maritime territorial expansion in Chinese history, but it was impossible for Lin Feng to get support from the Ming court.

For the Ming court, completely eliminating Lin Feng's pirate group was their biggest task, and they would never support Lin Feng's attack on the Philippines.

When the fleet led by Lin Feng entered Manila Bay in the early morning, it immediately dispatched a vanguard assault force of 300 people to land and attack the city of Manila.

When the commando team passed by the village of Bagong Layang on the way to attack Manila, they learned that the Spanish garrison commander Goyante lived there, so they changed their plan, attacked the village of Bagong Layang and killed Goyante.

After several guards were killed by pirates, the others in the house immediately used the terrain advantage to defend and delay time, hoping to get support from the guards in Manila city.

In fact, up to this time, the Spaniards were unaware of the arrival of the Lin Feng pirate group.

The residences of Spanish nobles were generally built like small castles, not the villas seen in later generations, so they were well defended. The pirate advance team had no way to deal with them for a while, and finally chose to use fire attack to drive the people out of the house and finally kill them.

Although Goyante was killed, Lin Feng's army also exposed their whereabouts, allowing the defenders of Manila to learn the news in advance.

The Spanish Governor Lavezares immediately ordered the emergency construction of fortifications and set up an ambush on the route that Lin Feng's commandos had to take, and finally repelled the commandos' attack.

But the situation is still favorable to Lin Feng. After all, Lin Feng's pirate group has an obvious advantage in military strength. If Lin Feng increases his troops at this time, it would be natural to take Manila in one go.

At that time, there were only more than 50 defenders in Manila, and the Spanish governor and many high-ranking officials were in the city. As long as Manila was captured, Spain's colonial rule in the Philippines would collapse.

Unfortunately, Lin Feng made mistakes at the critical moment. Perhaps he was too confident in his own military advantage. After all, many prisoners said that there were not many people in Manila. Or maybe he underestimated the strength of the Spanish defenders. Lin Feng chose to rest for a day in the suburbs of Manila.

Perhaps, in Lin Feng's view, Manila can no longer stop him from entering the city, and his men have traveled across the ocean to come here and they also need to rest.

But it was this crucial day that completely changed the outcome of the war.

After gunshots were heard in Manila, Salcido, the Spanish garrison commander on Ilugo Island near Manila Bay, led 54 soldiers to urgently rescue Manila.

The Spanish troops scattered in other parts of the Philippines also rushed back to Manila after receiving the news, which immediately boosted the morale of the Manila defenders.

Although Manila, which received assistance, still had only more than a hundred soldiers, the Spanish colonial army at that time was well-equipped and well-trained, and had already built extremely strong defensive facilities such as city walls and fortresses, and its strength should not be underestimated.

You know, they were originally fighting for territory, so naturally they had to build their own castle first after landing to avoid being ambushed and driven out by the locals.

As for the combat effectiveness of the Spanish soldiers that Lin Feng ignored, well, as early as forty years ago, the Spanish colonist Pizarro led less than two hundred soldiers and actually destroyed the South American Inca Empire with tens of thousands of troops and plundered a huge amount of wealth.

But Lin Feng didn't seem to care. He still believed in his numerical advantage.

After all, he had captured a number of Spaniards and thought he was familiar with their fighting capabilities through fighting.

After a day's rest, Lin Feng once again organized more than 600 soldiers and attacked Manila in three directions. Although Lin Feng's pirate army was very powerful and launched a fierce attack on the city of Manila with muskets and artillery, there was a huge gap in weapons between them and the Spanish army.

The fortifications built by Spain were extremely strong and difficult to conquer. After a day of fierce fighting, Lin Feng's army suffered heavy losses, with more than 200 casualties, and had to stop the attack.

This attack made Lin Feng truly realize the strength of the Spanish soldiers and the Manila Castle. Having lost the advantage of surprise attack, he thought it would be difficult to capture this place with his own men.

Although, they do have many more people than the Spanish.

The next day, when the Spanish Governor Lavezares was anxiously waiting for Lin Feng's army to attack again, he discovered that Lin Feng's army had retreated quietly overnight and disappeared.

Afterwards, the Spaniards carefully sent people to scout the surrounding area, looking for traces of the incoming enemy.

However, they searched the area within a hundred miles around and found no trace of the enemy.

However, having suffered a loss once, they naturally would not be easily reassured and think that they can rest easy here.

On the one hand, they realized that they were short of manpower, so they recruited obedient people from the natives and organized them into a vassal army to assist them in fighting.

On the other hand, people were sent to search for the whereabouts of the enemy.

From the corpses of the enemies left behind, the Spaniards had already made a preliminary judgment that the people who came included both Ming people and Japanese.

Yes, there are quite a few Japanese in Lin Feng’s pirate group, otherwise they would not be called Japanese pirates.

After searching outward for more than a month, the small town built by Lin Feng more than 200 miles away from Manila was also discovered by the Spaniards.

Since no trace of the enemy was found for such a long time, the Spaniards thought that Lin Feng had left the Philippines.

But in the end they received such shocking news: Lin Feng did not leave the Philippines at all, but settled down in Haomao, more than 200 kilometers north of Manila.

It turned out that after the second attack on Manila failed, Lin Feng made his own choice again.

He thought he had no chance of capturing Manila, so he led his fleet north and arrived at a place called Daimao Port.

After arriving here, Lin Feng led his men to establish a settlement. These Chinese people built houses, cultivated land, recruited refugees, and even local Filipinos who were unwilling to be enslaved by the Spaniards began to join Lin Feng.

Seeing this, Lin Feng immediately declared himself king and began to rule this land.

Originally, this was the reason why he chose to come here.

Compared with the Spanish colonial policy of burning, killing and looting in the Philippines, Lin Feng was more tolerant towards the local Filipinos, did not discriminate against ethnic groups, and even taught them Ming Dynasty farming techniques, winning the respect of the locals. The area around Daimao Port began to prosper.

The Spaniards naturally could not tolerate Lin Feng openly claiming to be king under their noses, so the Spaniards decided to kill Lin Feng. You know, from the 15th to the 17th century, explorers from various European countries began to drive ships to explore the oceans of various continents, and the Age of Exploration officially began.

With the beginning of the Age of Exploration, European countries began to colonize other newly discovered continents and frantically plundered local resources and materials.

Spain, with its advanced shipbuilding technology, was one of the earliest countries in Europe to engage in seafaring. Shortly after Columbus discovered the New World, Spain began to colonize Mexico.

After Magellan's voyage around the world, Spanish colonists began to turn their attention to Asia, and the Philippines became their new target.

Magellan came to the Philippines in 1521, and the Spaniards came here again twenty years later.

One major characteristic of the colonial period was that Western colonizers did not regard the local indigenous people as a group with whom they could have equal dialogue.

Once they set their eyes on a piece of land, they would just put up a sign there and give it a random name. If there were no competitors from the West, they would legally consider it their colony.

In fact, when Magellan came here, he tried to turn the Philippines into a Spanish colony. However, he was killed here because of the resistance of the locals and was unable to complete the round-the-world voyage he led.

However, the Spaniards did not give up. After gaining a foothold in the Americas, they always had the desire to cross the Pacific Ocean and come to the Philippines again to turn it into their colony.

In 1543, the Spanish navigator Lopez de Villalobos finally crossed the Pacific Ocean and came here, and named these islands after the Spanish Crown Prince Philip. This is the origin of the name of the Philippine Islands.

Initially they hoped to use a good seaport in the Philippine Islands as a base to conduct maritime trade with China. To their great delight, Chinese merchant ships were indeed discovered near the Philippine Islands.

The Spaniards chose Cebu Island as a trading place, but the local location advantage was not obvious. The island is located in the southern half of the Philippine Islands, surrounded by numerous reefs and shoals, and transportation is very inconvenient.

After investigation, the Spaniards decided to occupy Manila Bay, located on the east coast of Luzon Island. It is an excellent natural seaport. Facing northwest is the East Asian continent, which is very conducive to commercial activities.

After occupying Manila, the Spaniards launched a large-scale expedition. On the one hand, they continued to go out to sea to trade and collect geographical information about the surrounding areas. On the other hand, they enslaved the indigenous people on the island on a large scale to build a city for them.

Therefore, the Spaniards were very hostile to the locals.

Of course, Lin Feng’s raid on Manila did scare the Spaniards.

However, they were short of troops at that time, so they did not launch an attack on Daimao for the time being. Instead, they quietly accumulated strength and trained and recruited more than 2,000 vassal troops, preparing to occupy this place in one fell swoop and kill Lin Feng.

The news of the Lin Feng pirate group's attack on Manila was finally transmitted back to Yuegang in October through a Ming merchant ship trading there.

Yuegang was the only port for Ming Dynasty to trade with foreign countries at that time. Although the three Maritime Customs Offices could also conduct tribute trade, merchants had to hold a permit to do so.

The first thing the Maritime Customs did for incoming foreigners was to verify the authenticity of the permit, and then to receive them and do business with them.

Well, they were nominally envoys from various vassal states, not merchants.

Because of Yuegang's advantage, both Yu Dayou and Jinyiwei arranged people here to collect overseas intelligence, using these merchant ships to bring back information.

Even the spies they wanted to send abroad were mostly arranged to go out to sea on these merchant ships.

A few days later, the news reached Yu Dayou. He could hardly believe that Lin Feng would actually bring people to Luzon to grab territory, and failed despite having an absolute advantage.

As a military general, Yu Dayou could not believe that Lin Feng was defeated in Manila City, because he was thinking from the perspective of a general.

As the admiral of the navy, he certainly knew the current situation in Manila. With such a small number of people blocking the attack of thousands of people, he couldn't imagine how Lin Feng fought.

But now that he knew Lin Feng's whereabouts, he had to respond.

Because he did not receive any follow-up news at this time, he naturally did not know that Lin Feng was still lingering in Luzon.

After learning about Lin Feng's failed expedition, an alert was immediately sent to the coastal prefectures of the Ming Dynasty, asking them to guard against Lin Feng's returning pirate group.

With their backs against the wall, they were worried that they would take risks and attack the coastal prefectures and counties again.

On the other hand, of course, the matter had to be reported to the capital as soon as possible.

Hunting down the Lin Feng pirate group has always been his mission.

However, before his urgent report reached the capital, the Embroidered Uniform Guard had already passed the message to Wei Guangde.

"Luzon? You said the Japanese pirates went to Luzon to attack Manila?"

In the cabinet duty room, Wei Guangde received an urgent report from Liu Shouyou and had an expression of complete disbelief.

"Is the news reliable?"

Although he saw Liu Shou nodded, Wei Guangde couldn't help but ask.

"According to the news brought back by the merchant, Lin Feng and his group stayed in Manila for four or five days. After failing to capture the city, they chose to leave. Their whereabouts are currently unknown."

Liu Shouyou stood up and answered.

Wei Guangde stretched out his hand and pressed down, motioning him to sit down, then he lowered his head and carefully looked at the urgent report in his hand.

Just now, I was listening to Liu Shouyou speaking and hadn’t watched it yet.

But soon, Wei Guangde frowned and said unhappily: "This Lin Feng is really shameful. Thousands of people attacked a city defended by hundreds of people, but he actually ran away in the end."

"I heard that the cities built by the barbarians are different from those of our Ming Dynasty. They are mainly castles, and the city walls are also different from those of our Ming Dynasty."

Liu Shouyou said immediately.

"Siyun, do you think that after Lin Feng's attack on Manila failed, he would return to Ming or find another place to settle overseas, just like Zhang Lian did?"

"Lord Wei, this is hard to say. I will order them to track down Lin Feng's whereabouts."

"We have to investigate Lin Feng's whereabouts, but since Japanese pirates have appeared in Luzon..."

(End of this chapter)