prosperous age

Chapter 992 1083 Chinese Maritime Merchants (Pirates)

"We have also found out where Lin Feng is."

Just as Li Jin finished speaking, Deng Zilong, who was still looking down at the Manila City Defense Map in his hand, suddenly looked up at him and asked uncertainly, "What did you say?"

"General Deng, we have found out Lin Feng's whereabouts in Manila."

Li Jin had no choice but to repeat himself.

"Where?"

After hearing it clearly this time, Deng Zilong immediately asked.

“Pengaslan Bay.”

As per custom, Li Jin simply transliterated the place name given by the Spanish and told it to Deng Zilong, which naturally left Deng Zilong confused.

Seeing the other party's expression, Li Jin knew that he couldn't explain it clearly, so he asked Chen Zhenlong to speak.

"It is about a hundred miles south of here in a bay where a river flows into the sea.

I heard from the barbarians that Lin Feng led people to build a city here, called something like Tortoise Shell City."

Chen Zhenlong told Deng Zilong the news he had heard from Manila, and then Deng Zilong's face became gloomy.

This information is very important.

At this time, in Chen Zhenlong's heart, he had already confirmed the importance of the news brought by Li Jin.

Lin Feng occupied a piece of land on the island of Luzon. As long as the Ming army can occupy it, can it be considered that it is the territory of the Ming Dynasty?

If he had not understood the significance of his trip at first, he certainly did not understand it now.

Wei Guangde had made it clear in his letter that he wanted to expand his territory in Luzon and seize an enclave belonging to the Ming Dynasty, just like the old port.

This place will definitely be handed over to the South China Sea Navy for operation in the end and become an important port for the Navy in Southeast Asia.

"Turtle City, haha, not bad."

Deng Zilong couldn't help but laugh heartily.

But then he immediately put away his smile.

He had already realized that something was wrong. The fact that Li Jin was able to get the news from Manila meant that the barbarians already knew Lin Feng's whereabouts.

"What are the barbarians planning?"

So, Deng Zilong asked immediately.

"The barbarians have already gathered 500 soldiers and trained more than 2,000 local people. They are ready to send troops to encircle and suppress Lin Feng after the training is completed."

Li Jin answered immediately.

“Is there a specific time?”

Although this question was a bit difficult, Deng Zilong still asked.

“The barbarian didn’t reveal anything, he told me it would take several more months of training.

However, on our way back, we saw the vassal soldiers trained by the barbarians, and they were already quite capable.

I think it won’t take long for the barbarians to take action.”

Li Jin said immediately.

“They gathered so many people?”

Hearing about the army of nearly three thousand people, Deng Zilong couldn't help but frown.

"General Deng, there is no need to worry.

As far as I know, they only have 500 people in Manila. It is impossible to bring all of them to attack Lin Feng. The army should be composed of more than 2,000 vassal soldiers and 200 to 300 foreigners.

After all, Manila is more important to them.”

Li Jin spoke up.

Deng Zilong nodded in approval when he heard this.

He now needs to do two things. The first is to pass the news back to Ming Dynasty as soon as possible to let the admiral know.

The second is to find a way to prevent the barbarians from occupying Daimao City. At the very least, the Ming army must occupy it.

Although he only brought ten warships and not many soldiers, he could not be vague on this matter and had to show the fighting power of the Ming Dynasty.

Otherwise, once the barbarians broke through Daimao City, the Luzon attack planned by Wei Ge Lao would be a complete failure.

He didn't know that at this time, in order to gain the support of the cabinet and the six ministries in the capital, Wei Guangde had already done a lot of work in private in order to get them to support this military operation.

For Wei Guangde, all he had to do was to grasp the general direction and allow his generals to play their roles freely, so that he could achieve the results he wanted in the end.

Just as Deng Zilong was thinking about countermeasures, Li Jin came over again and said flatteringly: "There is another good news for the general. We have obtained sweet potato vines from the barbarians. It is said that this thing can survive if it is planted.

But we don’t know if it can survive if we take it back, after all, we have never grown it before.”

"good very good."

If this news had come in the past, Deng Zilong would have been very happy, but now he needed to think about how to deal with the possible attack of the barbarians on Daimao City, so naturally he had to put this matter behind him for the time being.

"Take the sweet potato vine back first and find someone to plant it. If it survives, you will have made a great contribution. I will also report this to the court."

Deng Zilong just said it perfunctorily, still thinking about the matters of Daimao City.

However, Li Jin heard something different. He just thought that General Deng in front of him was trying to satisfy his appetite, but after hearing what he said, it seemed that was not the case.

However, he also realized that Deng Zilong had no intention of saying anything else to him at this moment.

Okay, he could understand.

"Are you planning to continue your return voyage or what?"

After a while, Deng Zilong seemed to remember their existence and asked.

"We passed the message over, so naturally we have to leave."

Li Jin had no choice but to say.

"Go back and plant the sweet potato vines well. Someone from the imperial court will come to look for you later."

Deng Zilong just said something and quickly sent someone to take them off the boat and let them return.

"Boss, it seems that General Deng is more interested in Lin Feng."

After returning to his own ship, Chen Zhenlong whispered that before leaving, he had already told the Ming army the location of Pengaslan Bay in detail. According to his method, they should be able to find the place quickly.

"Forget it, never mind all that. Let's get back to Yuegang as soon as possible."

Li Jin looked back at the navy warship that was gradually moving away and said.

Soon, the two large Fu ships hoisted their sails and sailed towards the Ming Dynasty with the help of the wind.

At this time, Deng Zilong was on the boat, and he had summoned his generals to discuss what actions to take.

After all, if they acted on their own, they would have to send it back along with the intelligence so that Admiral Yu Dayou could be informed.

"It's too late to go back to Ming to get troops. It's better to contact the tribal leaders on Luzon Island directly and ask them to gather troops to fight with us."

A general said: "I remember that we can use our seal to mobilize some troops from the tributary states."

Hearing his words, Deng Zilong lowered his head, thought for a moment, and then shook his head slightly.

At this time, the Ming Dynasty had great influence within the traditional tributary scope. If conditions permitted, even a low-level military officer such as a sentry officer could hold a seal and mobilize troops in the tributary state.

However, this seal does not refer to the things that prove their identity as military officers, such as tokens and seals, but the military command flag. In other words, to mobilize the army, one needs a military order and a token for mobilizing troops, which was called the tiger talisman in the past.

The tiger talisman was a military talisman used in ancient my country to convey orders and mobilize troops. It was named because of its shape which resembles a tiger.

The tiger talisman consists of two halves, with exactly the same inscription on each. The right half is kept by the imperial court, while the left half is issued to the general commanding the army. When the army is mobilized, an envoy sent by the monarch or emperor must put the two halves of the talisman together before the troops can be mobilized.

However, by the Ming Dynasty, tiger tokens were no longer used. Instead, troops were mobilized based on documents from the Ministry of War and tokens from generals.

If troops are to be mobilized in a border town, an official document from the Ministry of War and the token of the commander-in-chief are required, while in inland provinces, only the mobilization order from the commander-in-chief is needed.

In fact, Yu Dayou also had such a troop mobilization order. His position was equal to that of the commander-in-chief, and he was not under the jurisdiction of the commander-in-chief's office of the southeastern provinces.

It’s a pity that they didn’t expect something like this to happen when they came out, so they naturally wouldn’t give him the troop mobilization token.

  "Sir, how about trying our seal?

This so-called king of Luzon has not been to Ming Dynasty for many years. I think he only knows the rules set by Ming Dynasty for them, but not the reasons behind them.

Although our actions were beyond the rules, there was nothing we could do about it.

Otherwise, it would be impossible for us to wipe out the Lin Feng Group and capture Daimao City with just these few ships."

Another general spoke up.

Previously, Deng Zilong had told his generals his intentions, and they also knew that the Ming Dynasty needed to capture Daimao City.

Although I didn't know there was some manipulation from the capital city behind this, I just thought it was Yu Dayou's idea. After all, the credit for destroying the Lin Feng pirate group was not small.

As soldiers, they naturally want to achieve merit and be rewarded, so they naturally have to find ways to complete their mission.

Although they have ten warships here, one of the centipede ships is used as a messaging tool to communicate information.

Once the plan is finalized here, the Centipede Ship will immediately set sail back to Ming Dynasty to report what happened here to Yu Dayou.

So, in fact, they could only keep nine warships.

As for why we didn't consider requisitioning Li Jin's two merchant ships, forget it. There were almost no weapons on their ships, and there were only a hundred sailors. There was no point in keeping them for the war.

In order to be on guard, we even have to assign people to keep an eye on them.

The Ming Navy was always vigilant towards maritime merchants, especially sailors.

You know, most of the boat people had actually participated in the Japanese pirate gangs to some extent. Who knows which of them are connected with the Lin Feng pirate group.

It would be even more dangerous if someone stabbed you in the back.

Moreover, Deng Zilong had actually received news that there was still some contact with pirates on the sea. After all, they had to sail and it was inevitable that they would encounter pirates.

If pirates keep paying bribes to others, considering the long-term benefits, they generally won't rob merchants who pay them.

After all, once you start fighting, people will die.

Who would be willing to risk their life and property for a chance to get supplies and money for free?

This also became an unspoken rule among all maritime merchants in the Ming Dynasty, that is, to make friends with the pirates and pay the toll on time, so that business can be done well and wealth can be increased.

And this unspoken rule continued until the end of the Ming Dynasty.

It should be said that although the pirates, or Japanese pirates, of the Jiajing Dynasty were rampant, their strength was ultimately no match for the great pirate Zheng Zhilong of the late Ming Dynasty.

In September of the first year of Chongzhen, after feeling the sincerity of the Ming court, Zheng Zhilong expressed his responsibility to "eliminate the barbarians and suppress the bandits", surrendered to the Ming central government, and was appointed as one of the "Five Tiger Guerrilla Generals" under the Fujian Governor Xiong Wencan.

Therefore, Zheng Zhilong was stationed in Minhai, guarding the coast for the Ming court to prevent attacks by pirates, Japanese pirates and the Dutch. He led an army of more than 30,000 people and more than a thousand warships of various types.

Don't think that the powerful Japanese pirates like Wang Zhi and Xu Hai are stronger than Zheng Zhilong, and they all have tens of thousands of people. This number is actually false.

Because, the number of 100,000 people included many Japanese pirate gangs that were under their protection. They obeyed orders in name, but most of the time they acted on their own.

The most powerful Japanese pirate among them was Wang Zhi, who had only 30,000 real subordinates under his command, and was comparable to Zheng Zhilong in strength.

However, Zheng Zhilong's fleet was more powerful.

Everyone knows that the Japanese pirates are good at land battles but not at naval battles. When Wang Zhi and Xu Hai were plundering, the coastal defenses in the southeast were weak.

If Yu Dayou had been able to reorganize the Zhejiang garrison navy and resist the Japanese pirates at sea at that time, the Japanese invasion would not have spread to the entire Ming coast.

By the time of Zheng Zhilong, his subordinates had completely transformed into a pirate group. They were strong in naval battles, and their combat effectiveness on land against the weak garrison troops was also decent, but that was all.

Therefore, Zheng Chenggong, with tens of thousands of troops at that time, was still easily defeated by the Eight Banners of Manchu and Han.

It was only because of the sharp firepower of the warships that the Zheng family was able to survive in a corner and barely hold on to Taiwan.

As for recovering Taiwan, well, that was because they had no way out and had to burn their boats. Second, there were too few Dutch people on the island, and in that era of slow information transmission and traffic restrictions, they were slowly worn down.

The Zheng family was able to create such a pirate group not only by making money through smuggling and business, but also by receiving bribes from other sea merchants.

You have to know that at that time Zheng Zhilong charged a protection fee of up to three thousand taels of silver for each sea ship. As long as you paid the silver, you could get his flag.

With the command flag, merchant ships can roam the waters of East Asia without worrying about being robbed by pirates.

Even the Netherlands, the "coachman of the sea" at the time, had to pay money to buy a flag from Zheng Zhilong in order to ensure the safety of merchant ships on the waters of East Asia.

With a large amount of income, the Zheng family became the undisputed first family on the southeast coast in the late Ming Dynasty. This was not due to the official positions bestowed by the Ming court, but to the navy fleet that had expanded to a size of 100,000.

The root of all this was the Liaoluo Bay naval battle, which is rarely recorded in history books.

In this battle, Zheng Zhilong commanded almost all of his heavy artillery warships and the Fujian Navy of the Ming court to participate in the battle, while his opponents were the Dutch fleet, whose national strength was growing rapidly, and Liu Xiang's pirate group.

The Battle of Liaoluo Bay was a self-defense counterattack war launched by the Ming Dynasty against the Dutch colonists. Zheng Zhilong absorbed extensively the advanced experience and technology of the Western navy, formed a powerful navy, and set a precedent for an Eastern country to defeat a Western colonial country in a naval battle.

Compared with the history of Western colonial expansion, Zheng Zhilong and his Zheng family, who commanded the Battle of Liaoluo Bay, were the representatives of China's maritime merchant forces. Coming from pirate backgrounds, they had independent armies and independent spheres of influence, and could even confront Western colonial forces directly on the ocean.

The history of their rise is exactly a replica of the history of the rise of countless Western maritime merchant forces in China. In a sense, the growth of Zheng's fleet and the attack on Western colonial forces marked the beginning of the Chinese people's breaking away from continental thinking and opening up thousands of miles of sea territory.