The Han culture is spreading strongly in Southeast Asia

Chapter 207 Thunder from the sky stirs fire from the earth
Southern Nguyen, Guangnan Kingdom.

After more than a hundred years of war and the corrupt rule of the Nguyen family in Quang Nam, the southern part of Annam ruled by the Nguyen family had actually become extremely weak.

Most of this land belonged to Champa a hundred or two hundred years ago, and the Kinh people occupied this place for a short time.

The level of development is far less than what later generations imagined, and it cannot be compared with the Red River Plain which has been developed for two thousand years.

This resulted in the national strength of the Nguyen family of Guangnan being far inferior to that of the Zheng family of Bac Hoa.

The reason why the Nguyen family of Guangnan, whose national strength was weak, was able to confront the Zheng family of Bac Ho for a long time.

One of them is due to the great talents and strategy of the second generation Nguyen Lord Nhan Quoc Duke Nguyen Phuc Nguyen and the third generation Nguyen Lord Trieu King Nguyen Phuc Lan, father and son.

This father and son not only defeated the strong with the weak in military, repeatedly defeating the Zheng Lord of Beihe who came south, but also built an 11-kilometer-long Great Wall south of the Ling River at the junction of the north and the south.

This section of the Great Wall is tall and wide, and carriages can pass on it. There is a cannon every ten feet, and a heavy cannon weighing more than a thousand pounds is installed every three to five feet. It was considered to have extremely strong firepower at the time.

In the later period of Nguyen Phuc Lan's reign, another long wall was built, and the defense was more complete. The army of the Lord of Bac Ha Zheng could not break through when it marched south.

The second was during the reign of Nguyen Phuc Yuan, when East-West trade began to flourish. Nguyen Phuc Yuan agreed to allow Portuguese merchants to build a port in Phuc to carry out transit trade.

This port called Feifu was later renamed by the Chinese and is now the famous city of the Minh Huong people, Hoi An.

Since Hoi An was opened as a port, Chinese merchants from the north, Japanese merchants from the east, and merchants from Portugal, France, the Netherlands and other countries in the west have all gathered here.

The arrival of these people provided strong support to the Nguyen Dynasty of Quang Nam.

The Dutch and Portuguese cast cannons for the Nguyen family and provided gunners, Japanese ronin served as musketeers and spearmen, and Chinese merchants and pirates provided warships as the navy.

In the subsequent Zheng-Nguyen wars, the Nguyen army was defeated by the Zheng army many times and was in danger.

But the Chinese fleet on the sea often achieved decisive victories, while Dutch gunners and Japanese musketeers helped the Nguyen Lords defend the Linh River Great Wall.

As a result, most of the time, Lord Zheng would win first and then lose. When he won, it was a big win, and when he lost, it was also a big loss.

Later in the fight, the Zheng and Ruan families suddenly realized that although they won every time, the strength of both sides became weaker and weaker.

The merchants in Hoi An made a fortune from the war, and their soldiers became stronger and stronger due to their long experience in battle. If the war continued like this, both sides might be defeated.

So the Zheng and Nguyen families hurried to ask Kang Mazi to come forward to uphold justice. Ma Ge was overjoyed and acted as a middleman as the leader to ensure that the Nguyen in the South and the Zheng in the North would no longer attack each other. This was the third guarantee for the existence of the Nguyen Kingdom of Guangnan.

As for now, not to mention the monarch who is the first level of protection, even the ninth generation King Nguyen Phuc Khoa only looks like a monarch.

The current tenth Prince Ding, Nguyen Phuc Chun, who is also the real brother-in-law of my King Mo, can't even look like a monarch.

He was a native of Nanjing, Guangdong. Whenever he heard this name, he would spit and curse the existence of the tyrant.

Without the strong protection of the king, the Linghe Great Wall has become useless. The cannons on it were secretly taken away by corrupt officials to be melted down for coins or sold for money. Now they are either vacant or fakes made of wood.

Hoi An, the second line of defense, had also declined and was no longer able to help the Nguyen Lords fight against the Zheng Lords.

What was even more frightening was that Hoi An was out of control. Apart from collecting taxes of 50,000 to 60,000 taels of silver each year, the Nguyen Lords had no control over Hoi An at all. It had become an autonomous city with its own armed forces and autonomous parliament.

Now the only thing that guarantees the status of the Nguyen Lords is the guarantee of the Qing Emperor.

But it is worth being happy that Lord Nguyen was not alone, his mortal enemy, Lord Zheng of the Northern River, also decayed with him.

In Northern Zheng, the ninth generation Zheng Zhu Ming Wang Zheng Ying, who was still in power when Mo Zibu defeated the Zheng army in Rongshi, was a little more respectable. He had died of illness three years ago, in 1767.

The tenth Zheng Sen, the King of Zheng, who has now succeeded to the throne, is really an insult to this name. He is more important than the tenth Nguyen Dinh, the King of Nguyen.

The two tenth-generation monarchs, one in the north and the other in the south, were like Crouching Dragon and Phoenix Chick, or like Rivals of the Times, all in quotation marks. Together, they ravaged Annan, which had been divided for two hundred years.

. . . .

Thirty kilometers west of Qui Nhon Prefecture, in the remnant of the Truong Son Mountains, there is a small plain carved out by a river, home to seven hundred households and about three to four thousand people.

This is a place with a large population in Guangnan, so the Nguyen Lord established a grassroots administrative unit, Xishan Village, here and appointed a village chief to manage it.

At this time in Annan, the lower-level administrative units were relatively chaotic, and the county system was strictly implemented only in the core area of the Red River Plain in Northern Zheng and around the city of Hue under the Nguyen Lords.

In other places, at the upper level, prefectures, circuits, and counties coexist, and the situation below is even more chaotic.

It is customary to appoint a county magistrate for a place that is called a county. If another place is called Tumubao, then a fort chief will be appointed.

There is also a village called Zhangjiazhuang, so the leader is the village head. This place is called Xishanzhai, so there is a village chief.

Therefore, in Guangnan, there are all kinds of official positions. Sometimes the territory and population under the jurisdiction of a county magistrate are less than those of a village head or even a village chief.

There is no necessary hierarchical relationship between them. The officials can only be determined by the place names left over from hundreds of years ago, and taxation is basically equivalent to tax farming.

This shows how weak the ruling foundation of the Nguyen Dynasty of Guangnan was.

The successive leaders of Xishan Village were all surnamed Hu, close relatives of Hu Jiqi, the founder of the Hu Dynasty, who was captured by Zhu Di and beheaded in Yingtian. The leader, Hu Pifu, who had died five years earlier, had three sons. The eldest, Hu Piyue, was tall and strong, with a leopard-like head and round eyes. He was powerful, cunning, and possessed a powerful and alluring tongue.

Before inheriting the position of village chief, Hu Piyue worked as a patrol officer of the Ruan family, an official position similar to the Chinese inspector, but of a lower status. He had few soldiers under his command and was mainly responsible for collecting taxes.

Therefore, Hu Pi Yue is also called Bian Yue.

Although Hu Piyue's second brother Hu Pilu has practiced martial arts for many years, he is a weak person with no ambition and is not worth mentioning.

But his third brother Hu Pihui, although only eighteen years old this year, is a well-known young hero.

Hu Pihui was five feet and five inches tall, with a face as beautiful as jade. He was a generous man who liked to stand up for the weak. He was good at using a spear, and was skilled in archery and horse riding. He could shoot arrows continuously from horseback. The young men nearby admired him very much.

What is rare is that although these three brothers are skilled in martial arts, they are not vulgar warriors. They have a family with a person who can be regarded as a great scholar in Annan.

This person used the pseudonym Jiao Xian, but his real name was Zhang Wenxian. His father Zhang Wenxing was the foreign right of Guangnan State, which was equivalent to the second assistant in the Ming Dynasty. He was defeated and killed in the political struggle with Zhang Fuluan.

Zhang Wenxian fled south under a pseudonym and settled in Xishan Village. He saw that the eldest son Yue and the third son Hui of Xishan Village leader Hu Pifu were extraordinary and talented, so he took the initiative to stay and help Hu Pifu raise the two children free of charge.

Zhang Wenxian deeply hated the Ruan family and Zhang Fuyue, but he was also well-versed in ancient and modern times, proficient in Confucian classics, and had seen the world at the center of a country, and learned the skills of being a king and a hegemon.

Under his guidance, the three Hu brothers had a clear goal since they were ten years old, which was to overthrow the Nguyen family's Guangnan Kingdom.

This combination of civil and military power brings enormous power.

At the age of fifteen, Hu Piyue dared to go deep into the Changshan Mountains to trade with the indigenous people in the mountains, and pretended to be a ghost to incite them to rebel.

In recent years, the Master often came down the mountain to attack, and it was Hu Piyue who led him, and he had become a major concern for the Governor of Guiren.

In addition, five years ago, Hu Piyue deliberately served as a patrol officer in Guangnan State. After forcibly collecting taxes, he deliberately cried and said that he could not help the tyrant to harm the people. So he led his men and his gang to kill all the patrol officers and then distributed the taxes to the poor people.

With this successful operation, Hu Piyue's reputation skyrocketed and he instantly became a well-known hero in the entire Guangnan.

After he retreated to Xishan Village, he immediately received the support of a large number of local tyrants, wanderers, and bandits who were determined to cause trouble. Xishan Village suddenly became the lair of rebels from the seat of Guangnan.

But at this time, Nguyen Ke Xuan, the governor of Qui Nhon in Guangnan State, was unable to come and suppress the rebellion.

Because of the heavy taxes and plunder by Prince Dinh Nguyen Phuc Thuan and Zhang Phuc Luan, the entire Qui Nhon region was in turmoil, with peasant uprisings of all sizes occurring every day.

Nguyen Ke Xuan only hoped that Hu Pi Yue’s banner would not be raised during his term of office, and that he would be allowed to land safely and return to Hue. He would never dare to take the initiative to provoke him.

What's more, just south of Qui Nhon City, there was a Chinese pirate named Li Cai who led five or six hundred people to control seven or eight fishing villages and became the king of the mountain.

Ruan Kexuan mobilized large armies to fight against Li Guangcai many times, but returned empty-handed. Instead, Li Guangcai became famous and formed a rebellion base similar to Hu Piyue's.

Up to now, the regular troops of Guiren Prefecture could only defend Guiren City and several nearby wealthy towns and villages, and were completely unable to go out and "suppress the bandits."

"Brother, that water monkey Li Acai refuses to come to Xishan Village. He also said that if we really want to unite our two families, we should go to his mud fishing village to discuss it."

Hu Pihui, who is 1.82 meters tall, was panting and reporting to his elder brother Hu Piyue while drinking a bowl of tea.

He was arranged by his eldest brother Hu Pi Yue to go to Niyu Village to contact Li Acai, because the Hu brothers felt that the time had come and were ready to raise the banner and cause trouble.

"No!" The second brother, Hu Pilu, heard this and immediately came out to stop him, "This Li Acai is a Cantonese among northerners, different from us southerners.

These Cantonese people are cunning and greedy. He is a client in Qui Nhon, so we have to be on guard against him accepting money from Nguyen Ke Xuan to lure Big Brother into captivity."

After listening to this, Hu Piyue looked at Zhang Wenxian, who was wearing a square scarf and a Taoist robe, dressed like a scholar, and asked, "Master, what do you think?"

"In my opinion, this is not a question of whether or not to go. If we want to win, we must go." Zhang Wenxian narrowed his eyes, twirled his beard, and said, "This Li Acai is different from Li Jiting in the north of the city.

Although he was a client, he offended the bigwigs of the Thirteen Hongs in Guangzhou in the north, followed the loyal and righteous prince consort in the south but betrayed him and ran away, and when he arrived in Qui Nhon, he snatched the concubine of Governor Nguyen Ke Xuan as his wife.

This person is now unable to return to the north, and cannot go south. Ruan Kexuan is narrow-minded, lustful, and concerned about reputation. After being humiliated by Li Acai, he has long hated him to the core.

I think even if Ruan Kexuan recruited him, Li Acai would not dare to come forward.

The reason he wanted the village chief to go to Niyu Village was precisely because he was in a foreign place, had nowhere else to go, and was afraid.

Moreover, this man was originally a wealthy seafarer and has many connections. If we want to start a rebellion, we must rely on his bravery and also purchase swords, spears and muskets through him. We must make friends with him."

Hu Pihui had finished his tea and caught his breath. When he heard what his master Zhang Wenxian said, he wiped the water from his mouth.

"Master has a plan for everything. If you say we should go, then we'll go." He pulled out his beloved pistol and wiped it. "Brother, let me lead three hundred Flying Tiger warriors to lead the way for you.

Li Acai only has four or five hundred men, and he might not be our match in a fight. But with three hundred Flying Tigers here, I don't think he would dare to use any tricks he has."

"Second brother, take twenty more brothers and mount fast horses to monitor Guiren. If there is any troop movement in the city, notify us immediately. That way, we won't have to worry about any fraud."

Hu Piyue nodded, "That's great! Once we convince Li Acai, we'll immediately send out invitations to heroes from all directions in Xishan Village and turn the world upside down!"

(End of this chapter)