Daming Yuanfu

Chapter 1570: The Boots Landed (Part [-])
Gao Wujian, the "fourth master" of Gao's sixth house, has been in charge of the Taiwan strategy for several years, and has sufficient experience in establishing, consolidating and expanding strongholds.

Regardless of the situation Gao Wujian faced when he was in Taiwan, in Gao Wushi's opinion, it is still much easier than going to Nanyang in the future.This is mainly because Taiwan is basically in a state of "no owner" at this time, and the level of civilization of the local aborigines is quite low. Simply put, they are still at the level of tribal civilization. There are not even cities, but there are some settlements and small villages.

Gao Wujian, the "fourth master", is Gao Yushi's direct younger brother, and also Gao Yushi's youngest direct younger brother. Of course, his status is very, very different, so he has a very high degree of freedom of movement in Taiwan.

It can be said that as long as there is no violation of Gao Pragmatic's instructions at the strategic level, the leaders of the Gao Family Ding assigned to him will not have any possibility of violating his orders.In other words, his expansion in Taiwan can be described as almost arbitrary.

A young man in his early twenties has mastered an elite force that can walk sideways among countless tribes in Taiwan. One can imagine his expansion style.

Fortunately, although this force is elite, its number is still limited, so Gao Wujian still used his brains.He did not simply choose to push all the way, but often stabilized one and hit one, either playing snipe and clam to fight for the fisherman's profit, or two peaches killing three warriors. In short, he crushed the local natives at the level of wisdom.

In the original history, the Spaniards and the Dutch also established brief colonial rule in Taiwan. Without highly pragmatic intervention, Taiwan would have been contested by Spain and the Netherlands about 30 years later.

In the early 17th century, the continuous rise of the Netherlands caused the trade of Southeast Asian countries centered on Spain to decline.In 1624, the Netherlands successfully occupied Taiwan, and Spain began to worry, because once the Dutch power was established in Taiwan, Spain's overseas trade, especially Asian trade, would be severely hit.

Therefore, Spain can no longer sit still. It not only needs to start looking for some new colonies, but also needs to expel the Dutch from Taiwan, so it also turned its attention to Taiwan.

In 1626, Spain assembled a large number of troops, set off from Manila, bypassed the back of Taiwan, discovered the city of Keelung, and successfully landed in Keelung.

Everything seems to be going very well, and they also found a natural island in Keelung, which is a good barrier.The Spaniards then built a fort on the island and stationed a small force there for defense.

In 1629, Spain began to sail northwest of Taiwan, continuously expanding its sphere of influence, and discovered a freshwater river.If all goes well, Spain will establish its own colonial territory centered on fresh water.The area of ​​Taiwan Island is large enough, so it is very convenient to engage in food production and cash crops. If fresh water is controlled, then there is no need to worry about the Dutch.

However, Spain's dream did not come true, and it soon discovered its mistake, that is: Taiwan is not a place where many forces compete for it, and there are not many developments on the island, and the development is very difficult and requires a lot of resources. Human, material and financial resources are enough, but the rewards you want will take a long period.

In addition, there is another problem: there are still some indigenous people in Taiwan. These indigenous populations are not particularly small, and they are not influenced by culture like Native Americans and have a mysterious fear of white people. Taiwanese natives' perception of white people is just two words: heterogeneous.

Being heterogeneous means that the two sides must go through a war to establish the relationship of victory and defeat, and the relationship of affiliation. Such a tough native force is very difficult for Spain to deal with.

Because these natives have not received the baptism of civilization, their cultural level is very low, and they cannot communicate with them at all, so conflicts cannot be avoided.Due to the existence of these problems, Spain has developed in Taiwan for more than ten years, but has not received any rewards, and has not achieved the achievements Spain imagined.Moreover, the upper echelons of Spain have never understood why they failed-why did they refuse to believe in God?Obviously Americans are very good at "persuading"!

They did not find the limitations of their own plans, but they wanted to control this place, which was obviously impossible to succeed.The Spanish royal family invested so much, but did not see a return, so they regarded this operation as a money-losing business.

As Spain's biggest opponent in Taiwan, the Netherlands has also occupied the south of Taiwan at this time, but they have not given up on the north of Taiwan. However, their situation was very tense at that time, and their troops were limited, so they needed to use limited troops to deal with it. battlefield.

But by 1640, Spain almost collapsed on its own in Taiwan. Many former military fortresses were dismantled, and some soldiers stationed here returned to the Philippines, leaving less than 400 people stationed in Taiwan.

In 1641, the Netherlands saw the decline of Spain, so it tentatively launched an attack on the army left by Spain.In order to better understand the true strength of Spain, the governor of the Netherlands in Taiwan also wrote a letter to Spain, telling Spain directly of his intention to attack the Spanish army.

Spain's reply made the Netherlands see hope, because the biggest counterattack hope the Netherlands saw from it was "arrogant tone" and "blind self-confidence."

In 1642, the Netherlands sent an expeditionary force to attack Keelung, and 369 soldiers successfully landed in Keelung.These more than 300 Dutch soldiers knew that their opponent was an army composed of 400 Spanish soldiers and countless Taiwanese natives. Although the Spanish defense measures were still in place, the Dutch occupied the commanding heights of the island in advance, and fired at them as soon as they fired. The Spanish stronghold was bombarded.Finally, after 6 days of fighting, the Spanish colonial army surrendered.

After that, they handed over the Spanish national flag and all their weapons, and these surrendered soldiers were sent back to Spain.Due to the hasty fighting time, the Philippines did not have time to assist. Although the Philippine governor was dismissed because of this battle, Spain did not have any plans to fight back.

After the Netherlands occupied Keelung, they found that Keelung was not as valuable as they thought, so they formed an army to defend here only symbolically.

The above historical facts show a key point: for Europeans, the cost of ruling Taiwan is very high. Both the West and the Netherlands think it is not cost-effective, so they have not seriously invested in large-scale investment for long-term rule.

This is a bit strange. Gao Pragmatism believes that Taiwan is of great ruling value (as mentioned in the previous article, so I won’t talk about it here). Why is there such a big difference in the understanding of the two sides?

The reason is very simple. The West and the Netherlands occupied Taiwan. They did not aim at Taiwan itself, which was not very civilized. The two countries occupied and competed for Taiwan, in fact, they were all aimed at Ming Dynasty and Japan.

and then?Through the presence of the Portuguese in Macau, the Spaniards indirectly obtained the qualification to trade with Ming Dynasty, while the Dutch have been unsuccessful in trying to trade with Ming Dynasty, but they succeeded in obtaining a certain trade license in Japan.

At this moment, it is meaningless for the Spaniards to occupy Taiwan, and of course they are too lazy to entangle with the Dutch in Taiwan.To put it bluntly, the matter is as simple as that. The economy not only determines the economy itself, but also determines the political direction and military actions.

But that is the original history, and the current situation is very different from the original history.

First of all, due to time constraints, the Dutch have not yet come, and Portugal is the European leader in East Asia and Southeast Asia.Portugal’s trade with Ming and Japan existed at the same time; Spain had just entered and had not yet obtained a permit for direct trade with Ming (but merchants from Ming could go to the Philippines for trade), and trade with Japan had just started and was basically negligible.

At this time, a change came. Gao Wu used a Luzon battle to tell the Europeans: What you call the Far East, I have the final say in Ming Dynasty, and I have the final say in Jinghua.

This war was originally initiated by taking advantage of the Spanish Armada's expedition to England. Considering Spain's losses in this battle, even if they were in the most arrogant era, they would not be able to consider counterattacking the Philippines-in fact, this is exactly what the Portuguese side In the absence of direct authorization from the king (because the king of Portugal is concurrently the king of Spain, Philip II), the governor of Goa will send a special envoy to Dingnan to discuss the reasons for the peaceful transfer of Malacca.

The Portuguese do things according to their own customary understanding, so they don’t know that high-level pragmatic actions do not represent the “Ming Empire”. They just think that this is the Ming Empire showing its suzerainty over the East Asian countries, so they collapsed thousands of miles in Spain Under such circumstances, the Portuguese directly lost the courage to resist.

According to the preliminary verbal agreement reached between Special Envoy Alfredo and "Her Lady Huang Zhiting", Portugal needs to completely abandon its colonial behavior in Nanyang.Based on his highly pragmatic understanding of Europeans, he believes that the Portuguese are very likely to be obedient and vicious, and through their secret intervention in the so-called "Spice Islands" trade power, they will hinder Jinghua's Nanyang strategy.

Of course, the Portuguese may regard Jinghua’s Nanyang strategy as “the actions of the Ming Empire to strengthen its suzerainty in Nanyang”, so in the eyes of Portugal and even Spain, these delaying actions are actually part of their colonial war with the “Da Ming Empire”.

In the Nanyang region, there are countries such as Aceh, Tammu, Banten, Sumatra, Johor, Borneo (Brunei), Sulu, etc. that have formed national organizations for a long time, and there are also many tribes or tribal alliance groups. In short, there are many small countries.

When Jinghua's "Southern Xinjiang Community" was unable to conduct a formal war against Nanyang due to the domestic situation in the Ming Dynasty, the only way to expand in these areas was to abandon military means as much as possible, and to resort to military, political, and economic threats or wooing means to respond flexibly , This is very skillful in Gao Yushi's view, he is a little worried whether Gao Wujian will mess up.

Everyone discussed for a long time, especially Gao Mo explained the current complicated situation in Nanyang to Gao Yushi and Liu Xin based on the latest Nanyang situation map based on the information from the Ministry of Internal Affairs. In the end, Gao Yushi decided to ask Gao Wujian to hand over Taiwan's tasks first. , came to Beijing to report to him, and after the report, he had to communicate with Gao Wujian in person—of course, it could also be understood as an opportunity for face-to-face instruction.

By the time these things are discussed, it will be too late.Not long after the four of them returned from the Nanyang issue and returned to the industrial layout arrangement in southern Xinjiang, news came from the servants of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, reporting the latest developments in the palace and the cabinet.

The inspector of ceremonies sent the emperor's latest edict to the cabinet, ordering him to be promoted to a high-ranking Pragmatic Zhuguo and senior minister; Mrs. Jin Huang Zhiting Yipin, "in her original position, she is in charge of Siam, Bago, Burma, Nanzhang, Cambodia and other countries. play".After receiving the order, the cabinet quickly signed and approved it, and sent it to six departments.The six subjects were also quickly passed, and the signature was attached to form a legal order.

The biggest difference between this edict and the previous edict is that almost all the content related to "Dingnan Protectorate" has been removed, but a little bit has been kept, that is, the sentence that Huang Zhiting "uses her original position to control Siam and Bagu." , Myanmar, Nanzhang, Cambodia and other countries Shuwen Bizuo".

"Original position" means that Huang Zhiting's official position is still "Deputy Commander of the Annan Metropolitan Commission", but "temporarily entrusted" the "Shuwen Bizuo" of Siam, Bago, Myanmar, Nanzhang, Cambodia and other countries. ".

What is "Shu Wen Bi Zuo"?That is, they originally needed to give a performance to the emperor symbolically, talk about the domestic situation, and ask the emperor what to do-of course, these are all superficial things, and the emperor will not even check whether what they said is true.And the emperor's replies are generally clichés, mostly just teaching them to govern the country with benevolence and righteousness, and the two sides are completely nonsense.

But nonsense is nonsense, this is still a form of "monarch and minister calling for a match", and it is an important evidence to determine who is the king and who is the minister.At this time, the emperor allowed Huang Zhiting to "take power"—that is, "temporarily manage" this matter, but it definitely did not mean that Huang Zhiting became a supervisor of ceremonies.

In fact, this means that in the future, in addition to the Annan Capital Commander, Mo Maoqia, the capital commander, will directly report to the emperor in southern Xinjiang, and the rest of the countries will become Huang Zhiting, and Huang Zhiting will be ordered to reply to them on behalf of the emperor.

The inspector of ceremonies can also carry out the approval on behalf of the emperor, but the approval of the inspector of ceremonies must be approved by the emperor. In fact, the inspector of rites said seriously that he only signed and stamped for the emperor, and he did not have the authority to reply—by other means such as deceiving the emperor. Or blurring the emperor's spoken words and other means to achieve it is not counted.

The power that Huang Zhiting enjoys now is different, she is "temporary management" - it doesn't matter if it is not for the time being, anyway, she is "management" now, since she is in charge, it means that she is only responsible to the emperor himself, how to answer these kings specifically, that is her business.

In theory, the emperor did have the right to "manage" these vassal states, but that was only a theory. The emperor did not station troops in these places, and he himself was far away. This kind of so-called management has never existed.

However, it is different if this power is given to Huang Zhiting.Several of her husband's garrison troops are the de facto regular armies of various countries in southern Xinjiang, and she herself represents her husband in Dingnan City. This control itself is a real control, only the name is missing, and now the emperor has given the name.

Southern Xinjiang has actually been handed over to Huang Zhiting's representative Gao Pragmatic Governance, only a unified administrative structure is missing.

However, this is only the emperor's first edict. In addition to this edict, there is another edict: after the selection and nomination of the Ministry of Officials, Chen Yubi, Chen Jingbang, and Xu Xuemo will be selected as the successors of the Ministry of Officials. After three days.

The second boot has basically landed at this point.
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(End of this chapter)