The Han culture is spreading strongly in Southeast Asia

Chapter 554: Koxinga, that’s my idol
"This is the Crane Special Forces. They look quite respectable." Zheng Huaide, a Hanlin Sheren from the Imperial Academy who came with the army to broaden his horizons, sighed softly.

Zheng Huaide's father, Zheng Qing, came to seek refuge with the emperor when he entered Jiading. At that time, Zheng Huaide, who was only six years old, and his beautiful mother were used to seize the pontoon bridge of the Jiading defenders. People at that time jokingly said that he had already made great achievements even though he was still illiterate.

In addition, Zheng Huaide's family is from Mingxiang, and he claims to be a descendant of Guoxingye, so his family background is as pure as it can be.

Over the past decade, his father Zheng Qing has gone from being a mere businessman to being granted the title of Marquis of Yanping, and has been given the title of Minister of Personnel and is now serving as the Governor-General of the Two Southern Regions (Guangnan and Rinnan).

After the Emperor steps down as the Prime Minister of Nanyang, he will most likely become the next Prime Minister of Nanyang.

Zheng Huaide also had a good start. He entered the inner court civil service office as an intern at the age of twelve. Now he has almost six years of work experience. In the future, he will at least be a provincial governor, or even have a future as a cabinet minister.

Hearing what Zheng Huaide said, Deng Tingjia, the general of Yanqing Town of Beihe Town Army, said with a smile: "It looks like it should be the matchlock musket formation of the Tethys, but there are fewer cannons.

A hundred years ago, they might have been elite, but now they are far behind."

The main force of the Yanqing Town Army was composed of Huang Gongzhi's former volunteer army in the Dien Bien Phu area and a part of Nguyen Van Hue's Tây Sơn rebel army.

After Mo Zibu recruited these people, he organized them into Yanqing Town. Wu Wenchu was the first general and Deng Tingjia was his successor.

"If we follow the customs of our Middle-earth, this so-called Crane Special Forces should be more appropriately called the Crane Control Army."

Hearing someone say this, Wu Wenhui curled his lips in disdain. "If you can't even figure out how to use a musket formation like this, don't insult the Crane Control Army. They are, after all, the Imperial Guards that emerged from the blood and fire of the Five Dynasties."

A group of people were joking here, not taking the Crane Special Forces, who had already assembled and were backed by the Kagoshima Castle, seriously.

This made Arimuraemon, the commander of the 700 elite soldiers, very angry. Each of his 700 elite soldiers was a samurai. How could the Tang invaders look down on them like this?

"Gentlemen, today we must fight with all our might to defend the Satsuma Domain and Kagoshima Castle. Let those Tang invaders see the bravery of the Satsuma samurai!"

Arimuraemon yelled, and the others responded by shouting "Hayi, Hayi".

But before he could finish his words, Arimuraemon saw hundreds of Tang soldiers coming out from the opposite side, holding long-barreled flintlock rifles that looked completely different from matchlock rifles.

Arimuraemon snorted coldly. A flintlock rifle is just easier to ignite, as if everyone has seen it. The bravery and skilled fighting skills of my Satsuma samurai can completely make up for this shortcoming.

Then there was a burst of gunfire, and in the faint blue smoke, Arimuraemon trembled as if he had been electrocuted. He felt as if something had drilled into his head, and then a warm feeling spread across his forehead.

Arimuraemon didn't feel much pain, but his rich experience in village battles and fighting made him know that he was likely to be in big trouble, or even be shot.

Just when he felt a little unstable, a disciple of the Kuroda clan beside him quickly supported the staggering Arimuraemon.

Arimuraemon was just about to ask himself if he was shot, but before he could make a sound when he opened his mouth, a large stream of blood spurted out from his forehead with a "puff".

Kuroda Touji's face was covered with blood spots. He looked at Arimuraemon, whose head was like a candied haws, and finally couldn't help but scream.

At this moment, more Minié bullets came like a storm from a distance, and the high-ranking warriors in the crowd who were wearing colorful armor that looked more imposing than practical were killed in the battle.

On the contrary, a large number of ordinary warriors wearing Japanese-style conical hats and holding matchlock guns, bamboo spears, and samurai swords did not suffer much damage.

"Charge! We can't just stand there and take a beating! Charge forward!" Kuroda threw the commander Arimuraemon, who could only twitch slowly, to the ground with a thud. Then he picked up his own bamboo spear and rushed forward first, howling.

"Charge! Charge!" Under his encouragement, a large number of warriors from the Crane Special Forces also howled and launched a pig-like charge.

At this time, the most famous slogan of Japanese samurai in later generations had not yet appeared, because the Tokugawa Shogun could not use "Long live the emperor", and the emperor was not worthy of using "Long live the emperor". Instead, shouting "Long live the emperor" and launching a hand-to-hand charge was the tradition of the Oyu Guards.

"You can't go, idiots, you can't go!" Saigo Kichibei's head was about to explode when he saw this scene.

The Crane Raid Team mainly relies on iron cannons. If they go up like this now, they will completely abandon their strengths. What's the difference between them and a beehive of foot soldiers?

Besides, the Tang invaders have so many warships, how could their army be spared from collapse?
However, despite the scolding, Saigo Yoshibei still led the charge with his son Saigo Takamitsu, but he was cautious and did not go to the front.

Sure enough, when the Crane Special Forces rushed to about 100 meters away from the light infantry, the Minié bullet sharpshooters specially drawn from the navy retreated, and the four three-pound field guns of Yanqing Town were pushed up.

When the Crane Special Forces rushed to more than 200 meters away from the artillery formation, four three-pound field guns fired deadly shotgun shells.

With a loud bang, all the more than 40 people in front of the Crane Special Forces were knocked to the ground. Many of them did not even make a sound before they turned into a honeycomb shape.

Then, four hundred line infantrymen moved forward and fired two rounds of volleys like a storm.

Kuroda was the first to rush forward, but he was also the luckiest. He was not killed by the shotgun and lead bullets, but Kuroda also stopped charging.

Death was only a part of the factors that prevented him from continuing to charge. The other big part was that Kuroda suddenly thought that if he died like this, he might not even be able to afford a decent funeral.

Because Kuroda's salary as a samurai reached an astonishing four stones, a full four stones!
The total amount is as high as 880 kilograms of brown rice per year. Even after paying for five public and five private contributions, the total amount is only 440 kilograms, which is one kilogram and two ounces per day.

This amount of food is not enough for Kuroda to eat alone, but his identity as a samurai makes it difficult for him to give up his dignity and engage in other industries.

Therefore, he could only rely on his two younger brothers who were unable to inherit the samurai status for support, because his younger brothers could find some work in the castle town and they were a little more well-off.

Even so, there was still a gap in food rations because he had a wife and son to support, so he had to exchange the brown rice for sweet potatoes. The family basically relied on sweet potatoes and sweet potato leaves to survive all year round.

Therefore, these warriors are also called sweet potato warriors.

This seems like a lot of thought, but in fact it only takes a few seconds.

When Kuroda came to his senses, a tall soldier from Yanqing Town, wearing a black eight-petal iron helmet, was pointing a flintlock rifle with a long bayonet at him.

"Kneel down!" the Tang soldier roared loudly.

The short Kuroda looked up, and suddenly remembered a line from the Joruri play "The Battle of Koxinga": "We are the heavenly soldiers of the upper kingdom, how dare you resist!"

Then, his knees gave way and he fell to the ground. On Kagoshima Castle, Shimazu Shigehiro finally collapsed. He watched his warriors, unable to even injure a hair on their heads, being decimated in an instant. Tears streamed down his face.

Forget about the Bushido spirit. Now is not the time when the Bushido spirit is at its most fanatical. Even at its most fanatical, that thing cannot make up for such a terrifying generation gap.

"We can't fight any more, we can't fight any more, if we continue, all the Satsuma samurai will die.

The shogunate hasn't given us much, and instead oppresses us every year. This world isn't worth sacrificing everyone's life for."

The head of the Kajiki family, Shimazu Hisayoshi, screamed loudly and miserably. It was originally agreed that he was just pretending, but this time Shimazu Hisayoshi's screams were extremely realistic, because this was not a pretense, he was really scared and distressed.

"Yes, it is indeed our fault to invade Ryukyu. We should accept the punishment from the Great Emperor. As warriors, we must bravely accept this."

"The master of these people is the Great Emperor of Middle-earth. Begging for mercy from His Majesty is as normal as a son begging for mercy from his father. There is nothing shameful about it. Surrender, Major General."

Upon hearing that everyone below agreed to surrender, the Crane Special Forces under the city were defeated by the equally skilled Celestial Empire soldiers in just two quarters of an hour, suffering heavy casualties, with more than half of them killed, wounded or captured.

Then, Shimazu Shigehiro nodded heavily and said, "For the sake of Satsuma Domain, and for the sake of Satsuma Domain's samurai being able to avoid unnecessary casualties with dignity, I am willing to surrender!"

After that, on the mountain castle of the Shimazu family, golden drums were struck and a high banner prohibiting war was hung.

This is the good thing about Japan. Even if we don’t speak the same language, we can basically communicate as long as we can write.

Seeing this, Deng Tingjia immediately ordered the soldiers to stop pursuing, and even just now, he had restrained his efforts.

Otherwise, if they waited until the Satsuma Crane Special Forces rushed to within a hundred meters, and then used shotgun shells and three-stage attacks from the line infantry, even if they charged like pigs, they would not have suffered so few casualties.

After a while, Shimazu Shigehiro came with a large family of Shimazu clan members and a large number of branches and tributaries, all with their upper bodies bare. The feudal lord Shimazu Shigehiro was also leading a goat, and they slowly walked towards Ye Mingyue and others.

"The foreign sinner Shimazu clan bows before the angels of the kingdom above. Our small clan has committed great crimes and is willing to be punished."

"Hahahaha." Ye Mingyue laughed a few times and looked greedily at the large group of kneeling Japanese. There were tens of thousands of them in Kagoshima City alone. This was all pure silver.

From now on, the land in Southeast Asia will be valuable because there will be cheap Japanese serfs to cultivate it, and the Han people can finally be masters with peace of mind.

There will no longer be a situation where a wounded soldier is given 500 acres of land but no one wants it, while a soldier who is given 50 silver dollars will happily return home and shout "Long live the country".

. . . .

Nagasaki, Fuqing Guild Hall.

This is not the Fujian Guild Hall in history. The construction of the Fujian Guild Hall would not begin until almost sixty years later.

In fact, according to the current Chinese circle, the guild hall built by Fuqing people in Nagasaki is not even willing to be called the Fuzhou Guild Hall, let alone the Fujian Guild Hall.

Therefore, there are three Chinese associations in Nagasaki.

The Fuqing Gang, headed by Wei Zhiyan from Fuqing, mainly engaged in trade from Japan to Southeast Asia. After the death of Yamada Nagamasa in Siam, these people even took on part of the task of the shogunate dealing with Southeast Asian states.

The Minnan Gang, headed by people from Quanzhou, was the most powerful gang in the past, but has declined rapidly in recent decades.

Li Dan and Zheng Zhilong, who were powerful figures in the past, were representatives of the Minnan Gang. Guo Xingcheng was born in Nagasaki.

The last one is the official-business gang with a history of only about 50 years.

This so-called official-merchant gang was actually the twelve merchants set up by the Qing Dynasty to purchase Japanese copper to suppress domestic copper prices.

These twelve merchants were originally quite prosperous. Unfortunately, in recent years, the Qing court forced down the price of copper in order to make a killing, making it a huge loss for them to transport copper to Japan.

Even the famous Fan family of Fan Yongdou, an old-fashioned traitor and Qing Dynasty imperial merchant who provided a lot of support in the early days of the rise of the Qing Dynasty, went bankrupt.

Similarly, since the Twelve Merchants represented the Qing Dynasty, they had been rampant in Nagasaki in recent years, often bullying other merchants and having conflicts with the Fuqing Gang and the Minnan Gang.

"Lord Zheng, Lord Wei, I heard that the Great Emperor's ancestors were also subordinates of Koxinga, is that correct?"

In Nagasaki Tangcheng, a city where Chinese merchants live exclusively, a group of guys with hairstyles that only high-level samurai can wear and holding samurai swords of almost the same height as them were kneeling and questioning Zheng Duan, the younger brother of Zheng Qing, the Marquis of Yanping and the Governor of Liangnan, and Wei Yonghe, who had just arrived from the shogunate.

"Yes!" Zheng Duan straightened his back and answered loudly and proudly:

"The emperor's great-grandfather and grandfather were both subordinates of our country's surname, and the emperor also inherited the ideal of the country's surname to drive out the Tartars and restore the country.

Therefore, after the founding of the country, they posthumously conferred the title of King Zhongwu of Min on Guoxingye and the title of Marquis of Yanping on my brother."

Zheng Duan was very proud. Although his identity as a descendant of Koxinga had been questioned, the emperor acknowledged it, and he himself was 100% convinced that it was true.

"Yoshi!" A group of moons led the way in exclaiming in delight. "Our ancestors also greatly supported Koxinga. Today, by supporting the Great Emperor, we are following their example and living up to their expectations."

This is true. In addition to the Chinese in Nagasaki, there were indeed many Japanese who supported the success of the national surname, because at that time China was the true beacon of the Eastern world.

In the eyes of the Japanese in Nagasaki, a person who was born in Nagasaki, had Japanese blood, and left when he was almost an adult, became a hero of the Tang people on the mainland. This is simply the supreme honor for the people of Nagasaki.

What is this like? It is just like in the 1990s, when China looked up to the United States the most, an American president appeared who was half Chinese and had lived in his grandfather's home in China for more than ten years.

That's simply unbelievable. He could probably become a saint instantly. I can't even imagine how outrageous the exaggeration could be.

This is the case in Nagasaki today. The emperor and the Tokugawa Shogun are all forgotten. Koxinga is the biggest idol of the people of Nagasaki.

"Then let's act. We'll send two hundred men, and you'll send two hundred. Go directly to attack the Nagasaki Magistrate's Office. As for the Qing officials and merchants in Tang City, you'll handle them yourselves."

(End of this chapter)