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Chapter 1076 Enemies meet
If the Kingdom of Kandy really had a secret alliance with the Ming Empire, it would not take long for the Kandy army to march north to attack their old enemy, the Tamils. Without the containment of Colombo, the Kingdom of Jaffna was no match for the Kingdom of Kandy.

At that time, the Portuguese occupation forces will face a dilemma: should they personally send troops to help the Jaffna Kingdom fight?

If they helped, they might end up in a protracted war of attrition. The kingdoms of Kandy and Jaffna had large populations and could afford to consume them completely, but the Portuguese could not. Every death was a loss.

If they didn't help, they would have to watch the Kandy army march northwards and eventually reach the city of Jaffna. It would be too late to fight by then. Without the assistance of the vassal army, not to mention the small city of Jaffna, even if all the Portuguese and mercenaries in Asia were called in, they would not be enough.

The most troublesome thing is not the Kingdom of Kandy, but the Ming Empire that may be hidden behind it. The Portuguese have a lot of experience in dealing with indigenous people. If they can beat them, they will fight. If they can't beat them, they can negotiate. For ethnic groups like the Kingdom of Kandy that don't pay much attention to the ocean, they can usually avoid aggression if they give a little benefit.

When they have accumulated enough strength, they will tear up the agreement and launch a massive attack to catch the enemy off guard. Spain, Portugal, England, the Netherlands and other countries have done this in Asia, Africa and America, and it has worked every time.

But once the Ming Empire got involved, this trick of deceiving fools would fail. Even if the King of Kandy wanted to agree to the conditions, the Ming Empire would not agree. There is no need to calculate too carefully. As long as you simply compare the size and strength of the two countries, you should be able to guess the result. The Ming Empire will definitely occupy a dominant position.

What can we do? No way! Overseas territories and colonies are actually the product of the spillover of national power. When national power rises, the spillover will increase. But as national power declines, the spillover power will decrease, or even not overflow at all.

Portugal and Spain today belong to the latter. With the advent of the Age of Navigation, the two countries relied on advanced navigation technology and adventurous spirit to occupy large tracts of territory overseas, acquire a lot of wealth, and spread their influence across the globe.

But everything has its limits. More than a hundred years have passed, and Spain is still Spain and Portugal is still Portugal. There has been no qualitative change due to the increase in wealth.

As the saying goes, if you don't advance, you will retreat. When the nobles of the two countries used their huge wealth for extravagant life and fearless wars, and when other countries also mastered the same or even more advanced navigation technology, decline was inevitable.

At first, it encountered all-out competition from the Dutch and lost control of the Spice Islands; then it encountered the suddenly rising Ming Empire, and not only lost the Philippines and Malacca, but also the entire market in East Asia and Southeast Asia.

In just twenty years, less than twenty years, the Ming Empire completely digested and absorbed East Asia and Southeast Asia and controlled a large amount of wealth.

Then the emperor and nobles of this country did not indulge in extravagance and waste their wealth. Instead, they used it for production and research and development, creating more and more advanced products and further acquiring more wealth through trade.

Now the Ming Empire has begun to move further west to the Indian Ocean. Can it be stopped? The Governor of Goa asked himself if he had the ability to do so, even with the aging Spain.

Originally, they hoped that England, a rising star, could enter Asia to play a balancing role, so they agreed to share some of the ports occupied by Portugal with English merchant ships. However, it turned out that they had been thinking too simply. After the Anglo-Spanish fleet was defeated by the Ming Empire Navy at the Cape of Good Hope, the King of England changed his national strategy and no longer regarded Asia as the development focus, but instead set his sights on America again.

It is said that Charles I was secretly building ocean-going warships and armed cargo ships in large numbers, but his target was not Asia, but America. In other words, England was destined to become a strong competitor to Spain and Portugal in the future.

"Inform our captain that if they encounter a ship flying the Sun and Moon flag on the route, it is best not to provoke it, unless they do not want to be sunk. The reason is simple. The Ming Empire's naval base is in Colombo, and they have always acted in this way."

The only thing the Governor of Goa could do was to inform the Portuguese captains in advance that the good days of being a merchant and a pirate at the same time were gone, at least not in the northern Indian Ocean.

As for how to safeguard Portugal's rights in East India, even the king did not care, so what could the governor do? In view of this situation, the position of governor had lost its appeal, and it was time to think about how to withdraw and replace it with a more courageous successor.

At this moment, there was another European who shared the same idea with the Portuguese Governor of Goa, John Vidor, the director of the English East India Company in the Port of Hormuz.

A week ago, this port controlled by the British East India Company was suddenly attacked by more than a dozen armed ships flying the Danish flag. As there was no prior information or signs, the ships flying the East India Company flag anchored in the port suffered heavy losses.

If the shore artillery on the fort had not happened to hit the gunpowder magazine of an enemy ship, causing a huge explosion, this stronghold that was snatched from the Portuguese with great difficulty would most likely have been lost.

But the crisis was not far away. The Danes temporarily withdrew from the port, but still cruised outside the port, prohibiting any ships from entering or leaving. If this continued, the port would run out of food in less than two months, and by then it would still be inevitable to fail.

Why did the Danes suddenly attack the port of Hormuz? Where did they come from? Vidor had no idea. But he knew that this war was inevitable. The two countries had been eyeing each other in the North Sea for many years. Today's situation is simply a continuation of the dispute over national interests, which is difficult to resolve with small favors.

In fact, even if Vidor could negotiate, he couldn't. He was just the director of an overseas trading station and had no right to make major decisions on behalf of the company. And if he wanted to inform the company's top management, it would take at least half a year to go back and forth, and the Danes probably didn't have that much patience.

The only thing we can count on now is the help of the Persians. Unfortunately, a week has passed and there is no movement in the port of Abbas across the strait. Do you know that there is a battle here? It is basically impossible. The two ports are only 10 miles apart. You can't hear the sound of artillery during the day, but you can see the fire at night.

Moreover, after the port of Hormuz was blockaded, the Danes allowed all the Persian merchant ships in the port to leave, and the Persian merchants on them would immediately run back to the port of Abbas to report the news.

(End of this chapter)