Late Ming sea owl

Chapter 175: Attacking Yilan

"The negotiations went smoothly, and the church's power in the Philippines is even stronger than I thought." Miguel said to Lin Hai. During his trip to Manila this time, he came into contact with many local upper-class people, so he had a clear understanding of the situation of the colonial authorities in West Philippines. Know more than you did in the past.

"Oh? You can talk about it." Lin Hai is very interested in this topic. After all, the treaty is only on paper. If possible, he hopes to exert more influence on the Manila authorities in the future. The Dominican Republic This is the trump card he holds in his hand.

“First of all, local affairs in various provinces in the Philippines are almost entirely controlled by the church. At first, they mainly controlled the field of education. Nowadays, almost all local affairs are stewards or servants of priests, including budget review, land allocation, expropriation, etc. Taxes, elections, policing, health, etc. are all decided by the clergy.”

Miguel continued: "Secondly, the church controls a large number of farms in the Philippines. At the same time, they also have charitable institutions like Haojing Mercy Church, which lend hundreds of thousands of pesos to maritime merchants every year, and the interest rates are even more terrifying. , actually reached 50%.”

"In other words, the church controls the economic lifeline of the Philippines." Lin Hai interjected after hearing this. Maritime trade is highly dependent on finance, both in the East and the West.

Many small maritime merchants in the East raise funds to go overseas, while large merchants act as white gloves for the powerful. In fact, this can also be regarded as a financing method. For example, there are many Fujian gentry behind Xu Xinsu. To a certain extent, these people are all his shareholders.

In the West, VOC and EIC are joint ventures organized by the government, and there were many investors in the early stages of their establishment. In Catholic countries like Spain and Portugal, their churches actually function as financial institutions, but the church in Spanish colonies is more powerful than Portugal.

This is also one of Lin Hai's original intentions for setting up a bank under the Finance Department. In the future, Huiyou Company does not intend to operate all routes personally. When conditions permit, he will encourage the people under his rule to carry out private trade.

"You are right. In addition to loans, there are many religious orders and priests directly involved in overseas trade. In addition, the church has also requested a large amount of financial support from the Spanish royal family, and has also provided as many as half a million natives across the Philippines. Catholics levy a church tax of three riels per year, so the financial resources of the church are much stronger than those of the Doge.”

Miguel continued, "Finally, there is a key point. There is a Holy Court of Inquiry in Mexico, which is responsible for punishing all heretics and Spaniards who rebel against the church. This court is conducted in secret from arrest to trial, and there is a team of A commissioner is stationed in Manila and reports directly to the Archbishop of Manila. Apart from the out-of-office review, this is what the Governor-General of the Philippines fears most."

"It seems that we really have a good card in our hands." Lin Hai heard this and called him a good guy in his heart. Isn't this the Spanish version of the factory guard? Miguel said before that the Archbishop of Manila could rival the Governor-General of the Philippines, which seems to be true at all.

The Governor-General of the Philippines also serves as the chief judge, but his court is to some extent similar to the Ministry of Punishment or the Dali Temple, but the church also has a Jinyiwei Beizhen Fusi.

What he didn't know was that this situation would intensify in the future, and in a few decades, the Archbishop of Manila would overwhelm the Governor-General and become the de facto head of the Philippine colonial authorities. By the end of the Spanish colonial period, the Governor-General of the Philippines was reduced to a rubber stamp for the Archbishop. When the Governor-General became vacant, the Archbishop could even take over the powers of the Governor-General without even needing the seal.

The search for Christians was one of the main motivations for Spain and Portugal's overseas expansion, but at the same time it put heavy shackles on the colonial undertakings of these two countries. It was not unfair at all that they eventually lost to Protestant countries like the Netherlands and Britain.

Lin Hai signed the treaty and then announced the release of four Dominican priests and all Spanish prisoners except Valdez, a total of more than 200 people.

As for the more than a thousand Filipino natives, although they all joined the Catholic Church, it was obvious that no one cared about their life or death. More than 200 sailors from the Immaculate Virgin have joined the company, and the remaining 800 people will continue to build the fortress in Keelung.

The design work of the fortress has been completed by He Liangtao. Currently, a bastion and a round fort are planned, with the round fort on the mountain and the bastion at the bottom of the mountain. Basically, according to Miguel's original idea, the bastion at the foot of the mountain was used to station troops, and the round fort on the mountain was actually a fort, used to block the channel into Keelung Port.

Both fortresses are built with stone. In fact, in terms of anti-cannon effect, the rammed earth city walls that have been popular for seven thousand years in ancient China are better at absorbing kinetic energy. This is why medieval Europe developed artillery siege tactics. They even developed things like the Urban Cannon. During the Yuan and Ming Dynasties, Chinese artillery was mainly used in field battles.

The stone city walls in Europe are too fragile in the face of artillery and are still very thin. The Byzantine city wall is only three meters thick, which is already the thickest city wall in Europe. Later bastions were mostly built with rammed earth, and also had artillery-proof earth slopes, which made it much more difficult to conquer with artillery.

However, Keelung is a famous rain port, so Lin Hai could only choose to use stones to build the city. Fortunately, Sheliao Island itself is a rocky island, and stones are everywhere.

At present, the first phase of the mountain fortress is almost completed. The foundation has been laid by the Spaniards. It has a circumference of 400 meters, is wide at the bottom and narrow at the top. There are barracks built inside.

There is a triangular bastion at each of the four corners of the fortress. It is planned to install an 18-pound cannon, a 12-pound long gun, two 8-pound cannon and two 4-pound cannon on each bastion. At present, these are still on paper and have not been actually deployed.

The second phase of the project is the three triangular forts outside the main fort. The distance from the main fort is between 500 and 600 steps. Construction of these and the round forts on the mountain has not yet begun.

Lin Hai personally came to the construction site, summoned more than 200 Spanish prisoners, and announced that they would be released. Manila sent a large galley to take them home.

It was as if the prisoners had been granted amnesty. These days, they had experienced the harsh rule that the Filipino natives suffered in their hometown. In just one month, several Spaniards had died under the whip.

However, unlike these Spanish soldiers, the four priests headed by Martinez were not willing to return to Manila. They strongly demanded to stay in Keelung.

"Father Martinez, I haven't discussed the church construction in Fujian yet. The four of you might as well go back to Manila first." Lin Hai was still thinking about the master craftsmen at the Cavite Shipyard and wanted to send them back as soon as possible.

"Dear General, we are all willing to stay here and wait for your good news." Martinez replied with a smile. "Besides, you don't need to worry about the master craftsman of the Cavite Shipyard. I sent him back to Manila." Father Mauriel has already found several suitable people, and as long as the church matters are finalized, they will be able to come to San Salvador soon."

"You should say Keelung, not San Salvador. In addition, you can stay here, but you must be under the supervision of my people." Lin Hai saw that Martinez had said this, so he didn't say anything more. Even if he had to do it, he wouldn't be short of these few bowls of rice.

The next day, Lin Hai received news from the patrol ship that the Balanggai ship sank soon after leaving Keelung Port.

Now he understood why Martinez and others were unwilling to return to Manila. At the same time, he couldn't help but lament that politics was indeed too dirty. In order to eliminate future troubles, these Spanish soldiers were tricked by their governor and the church. They could obviously choose not to ransom the prisoners, but it would obviously be under huge pressure from public opinion. At the same time, Governor Tavola needed to drag the Dominicans into the water to ensure that he would not be involved in the fall of Keelung after he left office. Roll over.

After this incident, Lin Hai understood that he was not yet a qualified politician. He reminded himself again that in this era, you must do everything you can to get ahead. If there is no Shura means, how can we talk about the heart of a Bodhisattva?

This incident also inadvertently affected Lin Hai's policy towards the Kavalan people. He originally planned to let Wu Lang establish rule in Yilan, just as he had done in Taipei.

But now he has decided to move all the Kavalan villages to the hilly areas of Taipei. Villages that refuse to obey will be confiscated to the end, and all prisoners of war will be used as slave labor.

The advantage of this is that you can get more fields in Yilan, and you can also capture a large number of slave laborers. It is too slow to buy slave laborers from overseas. A large ship with a load of 300 tons can only transport 300 people. After all, these Slave workers also consumed food on the road.

Huiyou Company currently has more than 2,000 slave workers, which is far from enough. The Engineering Bureau alone has exhausted its manpower, and several other departments of the Construction Department have no chance at all. Large-scale mining of Taipei area Minerals are even further out of reach.

Of course, the new policy will also come at a cost. The settlement of the Kavalan people will be protracted. Lin Hai plans to use this to train new recruits so that they can see blood without causing major casualties.

Furthermore, it is inevitable that fish will slip through the net, and there will always be some hostile villages that survive in secret, which will pose a threat to the personal safety of subsequent immigrants who settle in Yilan.

The Kavalan people are more ferocious in temperament than the Ketagalan people in Taipei. Historically, they have had large-scale conflicts with Western colonists.

However, thanks to the strong trade network of Jinbaoli Society and Dajilong Society, many of them can speak Basai, which is a common trade language on the east coast of Baodao, and there are many natives in the Hualien area. can speak.

Lin Hai sent the third and fourth bureaus of the Army Department to Yilan to cooperate with the indigenous troops in Wulang to carry out operations. Both bureaus were established in Tamsui. The chief executives were Ruan Jin and Scarface respectively. The soldiers were all early immigrants from Wanhua, and the officers came from the original Zhoushan Battalion or the Security Department.

A month later, Wu Lang led his army like a storm to visit more than twenty Kavalan village communities along the coast. About half of the village communities were willing to move to the Taipei area and accept the rule of the Iron King, and the rest The lower half was confiscated by the War Department, and more than a thousand people became slave laborers in the Huiyou Company.

Many of them were old, weak, women and children. Lin Hai assigned the old men and women to the Ship Bureau and War Bureau to be responsible for making cables and attaching armor. These jobs did not require high physical strength.

Children were assigned to the Admiralty and served as powder monkeys on ships. Only children could do this job, responsible for transporting gunpowder from the ammunition depot to the cannons.

At the end of September, the northwest monsoon had completely dominated the East China Sea. The first batch of immigrants from Chongming and Zhoushan arrived in Dongfan, and Lin Hai also returned to Tamsui from Keelung.

There were a total of fifteen large sand boats coming this time, with a total of more than a thousand households, and a total of more than 5,000 men, women, old and children. From Chongming to Tamsui, it only takes five or six days with favorable winds, so there are basically no deaths on the road.

Zhang Daniu, a close confidant of Shibi, was responsible for leading the immigration fleet. The answer he received was that more than a hundred households applied for recruitment every day in Chongming, and about forty or fifty households in Zhoushan.

At this rate, the 10,000 households Shen Tingyang said could be filled in about three months, but obviously this is impossible. There will definitely be more families signing up early, and fewer and fewer families will be willing to immigrate later. .

It is now impossible to sow seeds in Taipei. With the arrival of this group of immigrants, the construction of water conservancy projects has officially begun. Due to a shortage of slave labor, the Engineering Bureau employed hired workers to carry out the work.

Most of the new immigrants borrowed money from Sihai Bank, which is affiliated with the Finance Department. They are all impoverished landless farmers, so this can be regarded as giving them an opportunity to pay off their loans as soon as possible.

In addition, several other departments of the Construction Department are also recruiting craftsmen, especially the Firearms Bureau and the Warfare Bureau to forge armor plates, gun barrels, gun barrels, and drill bores for blunderbuss and artillery. They are all big consumers of manpower.

The Firearms Bureau's first hydraulic boring machine has also been built. This is already a mature technology in Europe. With the input of talents from Haojing, it is not a difficult task.

However, the failure rate of hydraulic machinery in this era was relatively high, and the initial construction was more labor-intensive. Therefore, Huiyou Company still uses human and animal power as its main power source.

"There is still a shortage of people everywhere." Zhu Niang often lamented to Lin Hai. Her position in the company was the vice president of the Tamsui Civil Affairs Council. For the time being, Lin Hai was still the president. The reason why he was not called the Governor was because the Civil Affairs Council did not care about the military. , calling him the Governor is a bit unworthy of his name.

In fact, the Ming Dynasty also had the title of president, but it was used to refer to the examiner of the examination, or the editor-in-chief of some official books.

"There is no way, the company is developing too fast." Lin Hai smiled at Zhu Niang, "But if there are more people, we can't feed it. The amount of imported grain from Fujian has almost reached its limit. Fortunately, Wan China’s late rice will mature soon, and the busy farming season is coming again.”

In October, the autumn harvest season arrived in Taipei, but news came from Fujian that Zheng Zhilong had captured Tongshan Station.

　Thanks to the book friend Set Sail for the reward of 1500 taels!

　　

　

(End of this chapter)