Starting in Saarhu, it is a bit difficult to make a comeback.

Chapter 174: The Ming army fought a bloody battle in Penghu, and the Netherlands occupied Taiwan (please subscribe for monthly tickets)

The biggest hidden danger for Liaodong is food. Starting in the 48th year of Wanli, Liaodong was either suffering from drought or severe cold, making it completely impossible to grow winter wheat.

Originally, if people missed the planting of summer wheat (sown in early April and harvested in late September) or corn, they could still replant a round of winter wheat (sowed in early October and harvested in late May of the following year).

Today's weather conditions make it impossible for winter wheat or millet to grow at all. Basically, no crops can be planted during the five long months from late October to early March of the following year.

Fortunately, the growth cycle of sweet potatoes and potatoes only takes 100 days (potatoes are shorter), which is much shorter than wheat and corn.

Therefore, the current period from late March to early October can barely maintain the harvest of two seasons of sweet potatoes and potatoes.

But summer wheat or corn can only be harvested for one season, and the yield per mu is only about 1 stone.

Although under the guidance of Song Yingxing, people in the Kaiyuan area collected dung from cattle, sheep and horses in pastures and boiled animal bone soup (original potash fertilizer) for irrigation, which could ensure continuous cultivation of the land and no longer needed to abandon wasteland for land cultivation.

However, it is still difficult to significantly increase the yield per mu, and there is only a small amount of fertile land that can reach 1 stone and 3 buckets.

However, in order to ensure the long-term storage of military rations, half of the land in Liaodong is still planted with wheat and millet.

Potatoes and sweet potatoes can be stored for a few months at most. Although the Liaodong region has made dried sweet potatoes and vermicelli to extend the storage time, these things cannot be used as staple food for a long time.

The climate conditions in northern North Korea are not much better than those in Liaodong.

Although Ryukyu has a good climate, due to its small territory, and the fact that Ryukyu needs to grow sugar cane to ensure the civilian and military needs of white sugar, the food produced there is only a slight surplus, which cannot solve the food problem of Liaodong.

Therefore, Li Xianzhong now purchases a large amount of rice from Jiangnan every year to enrich his food reserves.

It was precisely in order to completely solve the food problem that after occupying Hetuala in June of the second year of Tianqi, Li Xianzhong ordered Sun Chuanting to develop Taiwan.

In August, Sun Chuanting led two thousand soldiers to Keelung Port in northern Taiwan.

Keelung Port is surrounded by mountains on three sides and is a rare deep-water port.

Moreover, it is not far from Ryukyu and can be used as a base for the East Ryukyu Company.

But what surprised Sun Chuanting was that there was already an owner here.

After the Ming Dynasty banned the sea, a large number of merchants were still smuggling, but these people could not return to the Ming Dynasty, so they eventually became pirates and looked for a foothold overseas.

At this time, Taiwan, which was not controlled by the Ming Dynasty and the Westerners, became their best choice for settling.

So the pirates headed by Li Dan occupied Keelung Port.

Not only is there a dock here, they also developed some fertile fields around Keelung to supply food.

These pirates not only had to avoid robberies by the Dutch at sea, but also resisted the invasion of local indigenous people in Taiwan. Naturally, they were not good people.

Not only did they own warships, they also had hundreds of pirates armed with them, and even installed several Franco machine guns in Keelung Port.

But this time the fleet led by Sun Chuanting was not small.

In particular, two light Galenic sailing ships with a displacement of 2 tons were equipped with 800 88-pound Hongyi cannons.

The largest warship of the pirates was just a fuchuan equipped with a triangular sail, with a displacement of only more than 200 tons.

As soon as they fought, they were blocked by the East Ryukyu Company's fleet in Keelung Port and were quickly sunk.

The Pinglu Guards defeated the main force of the pirates in a short time after landing.

Although a small number of pirates hid in the forest far away from the shore.

However, they could not survive in the environment there for a long time, and the local indigenous people still had hatred. After persisting for nearly a month, the pirate leaders finally surrendered to Sun Chuanting.

Seeing that these civilian guards were dressed as authentic Ming Dynasty officers and soldiers, they thought that the Ming court sent people to arrest them, so they resisted desperately.

Once they found out that they were from the East Ryukyu Company, they surrendered.

After all, Li Xianzhong was still the Duke of Liao in the Ming Dynasty, and it was impossible to occupy territory everywhere under his own banner, so Sun Chuanting also used the banner of Dongliuqiu Company.

Li Dan is also a famous representative of Fujian maritime merchants. He has his own armed fleet, which mainly runs the route between Manila and Japan.

Although both sides ran routes to Japan, the conflict was not too big. Li Dan had a very good relationship with the shogunate. It is said that he once funded the Tokugawa shogunate, so he followed the official trade of the shogunate.

Although Zheng Zhilong's East Ryukyu Company also had trade with Nagasaki under the control of the shogunate, Li Xianzhong, out of consideration for supporting the anti-shogunate forces, conducted more private trade with the Shimazu family of Satsuma Domain.

Although Li Dan was very dissatisfied with the East Ryukyu Company's seizure of Keelung Port, and Li Dan also had several Spanish Galenic warships, he was obviously timid when faced with the 800-ton light Galenic sailing ship.

In the end, he voluntarily gave up his industry in Taiwan in exchange for the East Ryukyu Company not to rob his Japanese merchant fleet.

Although Zheng Zhilong's East Ryukyu Company has the latest warships, after all, the number of ships is too small and it is still unable to control the entire East Asia route.

Moreover, their current relationship with the Dutch was very poor, and the two sides often robbed each other. In order not to make too many enemies, Li Xianzhong finally agreed to this plan.

Soon Sun Chuanting not only captured Keelung Port, but also occupied Tamsui Port to the west of Keelung Port.

Thanks to the early development of pirates such as Li Dan, Sun Chuanting's initial living conditions were not so difficult.

At least in the residential areas, drinking water is readily available, and they have developed a lot of fertile farmland around Tongshui, Keelung.

The fishery resources around the port are also quite developed.

Moreover, Li Xianzhong invested a huge amount of manpower. In addition to the [-] civilian guards and the East Ryukyu Company's fleet, he also brought [-] Korean laborers and [-] civilians recruited from the Fujian coast.

The expansion of Keelung Port was completed just a few months later.

However, the two ports were relatively close to each other. In the end, Sun Chuanting decided to focus on building Keelung Port with better port conditions.

The wharf of Tamsui Port was only slightly expanded and used as a supply port.

However, they still built bastions and forts in Keelung and Tamsui respectively as their two bases in northern Taiwan.

Moreover, Taiwan has many virgin forests, shipbuilding wood is readily available, and the Keelung Shipyard is also under construction.

Li Xianzhong's official investment is naturally different from the development efforts of the people and pirates along the coast of Fujian.

As shiploads of cement were shipped from Liaodong to Taiwan, just over a year later, Taiwan not only had two ports, Keelung and Tamsui, but also two forts composed of permanent fortifications.

It also owns the Keelung Shipyard with 8 docks.

Moreover, Sun Chuanting also built a Taipei City with a circumference of 70 miles about 8 miles southwest of Keelung Port and used it as the administrative seat of Taiwan.

As Taiwan's reputation for land reclamation grows, many people from Fujian have already voluntarily moved to Taiwan.

Today, Taiwan has a total of 10 citizens and 3 North Korean workers.

Due to the emergence of ports, forts, bastions and Taipei City, Taiwan's garrison also increased to 4 people.

Currently, there are 15 acres of official land in Taiwan, cultivated by North Korean workers; the private land has reached 60 acres.

Taiwan uses the best Champa rice, so the yield per mu can reach 2 shi.

However, northern Taiwan still has a subtropical monsoon climate, so there is currently no way to achieve three crops a year.

However, two crops per mu per year can produce 4 shi of high-quality rice.

The current tax rate in Taiwan is 1 stone and 2 buckets of grain per mu.

In the entire third year of Tianqi, the official fields received 3 shi of grain, and the civilian fields received 60 shi, for a total of 72 million shi.

Excluding the 28 shi consumed by the Taiwan garrison and Korean laborers, and the 24 shi stored in granaries, a total of 80 shi was transported to Liaodong.

It can be said that the food gap in Liaodong has been greatly alleviated.

However, Taiwan currently has its own problems.

Both the Pingluwei in Liaodong and the Koreans are somewhat uncomfortable with Taiwan's hot and humid climate, and many people are acclimated.

Fortunately, Li Xianzhong prepared a large amount of medicinal materials such as Artemisia annua in advance.

Later studies showed that artemisinin, like cinchona, was also miraculous in treating malaria.

Obviously, it was impossible for Li Xianzhong to obtain a large amount of cinchona produced in South America at present, so he had people prepare a large amount of artemisia annua and other medicinal materials in advance.

In addition, Sun Chuanting was told to pay attention to drinking water and not to drink raw water, and a large amount of mugwort was prepared to repel mosquitoes.

The soldiers ordered Pingluwei's workshop to produce a large number of mosquito nets for physical mosquito protection.

Even though the Duke of Liao was so well prepared, many soldiers and Korean laborers fell ill, and in the end 400 people died of the disease.

But this is already very good. If it weren't for these measures, it would be possible for the 2 North Korean workers to die, or even 8000 to [-].

Relatively speaking, the southern Hokkien people in Fujian are much more adaptable than the northerners. After all, they are used to such a climate.

Although there are some who don't adapt, they are all exceptions.

In the end, Li Xianzhong gave up the idea of ​​immigrating a large number of northern people to Taiwan, at least for the time being.

Let’s wait until Taiwan’s development level is high before we consider it.

Otherwise, as long as hundreds of thousands of people from Liaodong are immigrated, the land near Taiwan's coastline can be quickly developed and millions of acres of fertile farmland can be completely solved.

However, Taiwan's subsequent development has also encountered a bottleneck, because the northeastern part of Taiwan Island is hilly and mountainous, and only the northwest has a lot of flat land.

Over the past year or so, almost all the land in the northern region that is easier to develop has been developed by them.

The next land will either require clearing out patches of forest or swamps, or competing for territory with the natives to the south.

Because Taiwan is currently mainly developing the northwest coast, Taipei City is already the innermost area they have penetrated.

As the development teams continue to advance toward Taichung, they have more and more contact with these indigenous people.

At first, the natives tried to drive away the Pinglu Guards by force, but after a confrontation, they found that these natives, who only had primitive bows and arrows and wooden spears, were no match for the Pinglu Guards.

Originally, Sun Chuanting thought that these natives were just primitive tribes. They even captured some slaves to work on the farm.

However, after in-depth understanding, I found that they actually have a kingdom.

A "quasi-kingdom" was established by the Babula people, the Maowu people, the Bazehai people and some Hongya people on the island of Taiwan. The co-leader of the tribe was called the Dadufan King.

So he called this kingdom the "Big Belly Kingdom", and its core territory was in today's Taichung area.

Although they are still some distance away from Taichung, the collisions between the two sides are becoming more and more frequent.

Originally, Sun Chuanting planned to use a warship to land near Taichung, capture the "Big Belly King", and conduct a beheading operation.But he heard bad news.

A group of red-haired vassals appeared in the south of the Big Belly Kingdom. These red-haired vassals should be the Dutch.

Originally, they planned to establish a foothold in northern Taiwan and then quickly establish strongholds in central and southern Taiwan to control the entire island.

However, Taiwan’s level of development is really too low.

Coupled with the problem of epidemics, immigrants from Liaodong were unable to go south, and the plan was eventually abandoned.

A year and a half later, Sun Chuanting only occupied the northern part of Taiwan and focused his development on the northwest.

This gave the Dutch the opportunity to land in Taiwan.

Moreover, Zheng Zhilong also received news that the Penghu Islands have now been occupied by the Dutch. At this time, the Dutch are fighting against the Ming Dynasty.

Originally, Penghu was the territory of the Ming Dynasty and belonged to Fujian Province.

Li Xianzhong gave up occupying Penghu in order to have a head-on conflict with the Ming Dynasty.

Unexpectedly, this made the Dutch cheaper.

Now in order to deal with the Dutch, Sun Chuanting had to temporarily reconcile with the big-bellied kingdom.

Otherwise, it would be easy to occupy the Dadu Kingdom, but it would take a lot of time for him to conquer these natives, and he would not be able to deal with the Dutch anymore.In the end, the two sides agreed to use the Da'an River north of Taichung as the boundary to coexist peacefully and jointly deal with the Dutch.

Since the East Ryukyu Company began to aggressively purchase silk from Chongming in the south of the Yangtze River, it almost monopolized Japan's silk trade.

As a result, the Dutch, a second-tier dealer, almost lost the Japanese market. They could only transport some Southeast Asian spices to Nagasaki Port.

Therefore, the warships and merchant ships of the Dutch and the East Ryukyu Company often fought with each other in the waters between Taiwan and Japan.

The Dutch's base is as far away as Batavia in Southeast Asia, while the East Ryukyu Company's supply ports are all over Ryukyu, Taiwan, Korea, and Liaodong.

Although the Dutch also own a Spanish galleon with a displacement of 800 tons, there is no supply port and it is difficult to cruise in Japanese waters for a long time.

而此时的东琉球公司已经拥有了2艘800吨级的轻型盖伦帆船以及8艘640吨级的西班牙盖伦帆船，此外还有24艘500吨以上的商用盖伦帆船。

Therefore, the East Ryukyu Company soon occupied the control of this sea area.

The Dutch once attempted to occupy Macau and Manila, and were in a state of hostility with Spain and Portugal, so it was naturally impossible to rent these two ports.

Therefore, they continued to search for a supply port in East Asia.

Finally, they set their sights on the Penghu Islands of the Ming Dynasty.

In fact, as early as the 32nd year of Wanli, the Dutch East India Company invaded Penghu.

However, the Ming army soon organized 50 warships and more than 2000 men to recover. When the Dutch saw the disparity in strength between the two sides, they got cold feet and fled quickly.

In the third year of the Apocalypse, Guen of the Dutch East India Company ordered Rael to lead an elite fleet consisting of 15 large and small warships and more than 1000 elite soldiers to occupy Penghu again.

In fact, strictly speaking, it should be considered a combined fleet, because this fleet also included two British warships that had just emerged at that time and were bent on pleasing the Netherlands.

Such a large formation is still rare in European colonial history.

Because whether in Java or Malacca, as soon as such a large fleet arrives, the locals will surrender obediently, so how can there be any resistance?

Their estimate was quite right. As soon as the war started, they really defeated the Ming army who came after hearing the news.

At the same time, the Netherlands sent a fleet to the sea of ​​Zhangzhou to block the gateway to Zhangzhou, in an attempt to threaten the Ming Dynasty with force to trade with the Netherlands.

Not only did they burn a large number of Chinese fishing boats, they even landed and burned several villages.

The Dutch also captured the people of the Ming Dynasty as prisoners, gathered them first on Penghu Island, and forced them to build a city.

A total of 1150 prisoners were taken, 571 were killed in slavery, and the remaining 579 were sent to Batavia and then sold to other areas as slaves.

After the Dutch built a fortress in Penghu, they felt confident in speaking.

When Chen Shiying, the Qianzong of the Ming Dynasty, came to negotiate, the Dutch side made three demands:

First, allow the Dutch to trade with each other along the Chinese coast;
Second, cede Penghu to the Dutch;
Third, trade between China and Portugal and Spain is prohibited.

This condition directly angered Emperor Tianqi.

In the first month of the fourth year of the Apocalypse, Nan Juyi, the governor of Fujian, personally sailed to Kinmen and ordered the Ming fleet to cross the sea and recapture Penghu by force. This expedition involved 200 warships and more than [-] men.

Fujian General Yu Zigao and garrison Wang Mengxiong led the warships to Penghu, landed on Baisha Island, and first engaged the Dutch army.

However, the Ming army was all small boats, and the Dutch army relied on strong fortifications to resist the warships, and Penghu could not be captured for a long time.

The East Ryukyu Company and the Dutch were also mortal enemies.

So Zheng Zhilong took action, and the East Ryukyu Company used a Galen merchant ship to successfully lure five Dutch battleships out of Penghu.

In the waters west of Tamsui, the ten main battleships of the East Ryukyu Company were dispatched together.

When the Dutch discovered the East Ryukyu Company's main fleet, they discovered that they had been fooled.

They only have one main Spanish Galen ship of 800 tons, and the remaining four are Galen ships of about 500 tons.

On Zheng Zhilong's side, there are two 800-ton and eight 8-ton warships.

More than just their tonnage advantage, English light galleons were more suitable for naval battles than the old Spanish galleons.

Due to the more reasonable design of the hull, there are more cannons on the ship.

Therefore, although the tonnage is the same, Zheng Zhilong's ship has much more powerful firepower than the Dutch.

Moreover, Zheng Zhilong's gunpowder also added sugar, so it had a longer range and greater power.

For a while, there was constant sound of artillery on the sea, and both sides began to test-fire. The shells fell on the sea near the battleship and caused huge waves.

Soon after, the Dutch 800-ton Rotterdam was hit by Ming army artillery.

Unfortunately, one of the Rotterdam's masts was directly blown off by the Ming army's artillery, which caused its speed to drop instantly.

Once a warship loses speed in a naval battle, it will soon become the target of enemy ships.

Although a warship with a displacement of 800 tons is extremely strong, under the siege of ten Ming army warships, the Rotterdam eventually sank to the bottom of the sea!

Of the remaining four Dutch warships, two were sunk and two escaped.

For fear of being directly blocked by Zheng Zhilong in Penghu, the two ships did not return to Penghu, but chose to run directly back to Batavia.

The Dutch, who lost their warships, could not stop the Ming army's advance in Penghu.

After more than a month, the Dutch were forced to reach an agreement with the Ming army and withdraw from Penghu.

On March 3, the fourth year of Tianqi, the Ming army officially recovered the Penghu Islands.

Of course, the Dutch did not evacuate East Asia. They chose to evacuate to Taiwan.

The cunning Dutch first landed in Tainan, and then they said to the local indigenous people: "We will just buy a piece of land the size of a cowhide from you."

The natives thought that a piece of cowhide was only as big as a piece of cowhide, so they simply gave the land of a cowhide to the Dutch.

As a result, the Dutch cut a piece of cowhide into small strips and surrounded a large area of ​​land directly in front of the natives.

The natives wanted to rebel, but they were no match for the Dutch soldiers wearing iron armor and holding spears and muskets.

Soon they built a bastion on this land and named it Relanja City.

However, the Dutch did not have cement, and because they were short of manpower, the efficiency of construction was naturally not comparable to that of Sun Chuanting.

At this time, their city of Relanja was only an empty shell, not a bastion with a complete defense system at all.

Soon the warships of the East Ryukyu Company surrounded the place.

Although the Dutch also built forts, the small number of 12-pound red cannons could hardly pose a threat to Zheng Zhilong's main battleships.

After a fierce battle for most of the day, the Dutch finally gave up the fort. The Ming army's explosive shells caused too much damage to their personnel.

Considering that the Netherlands still had thousands of people near the city of Geranje at this time.

If they forcefully attack the Pinglu Guards, the casualties will definitely be huge.

So they temporarily adopted siege tactics against these Dutch people.

However, the Dutch did not sit still and wait for death. Although Batavia was far away from Tainan, Manila was within easy reach.

The Dutch Governor Songk finally decided to use their enemy the Spanish to deal with the Eastern Ryukyu Company.

Soon a Dutch ship sailed into Manila.

Franco, the Spanish Governor of Manila, said excitedly: "Is Governor Songk really willing to give up their stronghold in Tainan, Jelanja City, to Spain?"

The Dutch envoy said: "As long as your Excellency the Governor can ensure the safe retreat of our East India Company personnel, the Netherlands will definitely give up the city of Geranje to Spain."

In fact, the original target of the Dutch was Manila. However, although the Kingdom of Spain was already in decline, after all, a skinny camel was bigger than a horse.

Manila has a 1200-ton displacement "Santiago".

Soon the Spanish fleet moved north from Manila, and in just one day they arrived near the city of Jelanja.

Although the Santiago has an advantage due to its displacement of 1200 tons, it is after all an old Spanish Galenic sailing ship.

The Eastern Ryukyu Fleet is still capable of fighting due to its numerical advantage.

But who would have expected that the San Diego was actually equipped with an 18-pound Hongyi cannon, which exceeded Zheng Zhilong in both range and power.

Moreover, the 800-ton Shanhaiguan was also damaged by it.

What's even more annoying is that the remnants of the Dutch fleet actually took advantage of the war to go north to sneak attack on Keelung Port.

Zheng Zhilong had no choice but to order the fleet to retreat!

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(End of this chapter)