Late Ming sea owl

Chapter 248 Secret Recruitment
At the end of October in the seventh year of the Tianqi reign, a small boat crossed the strait and brought Lin Hai to Fuzhou. He brought only a few followers to pay a visit to Zhu Yifeng, the governor of Fujian.

Zhu Yifeng is 56 years old this year. He was a second-class Jinshi in the 26th year of the Wanli reign and took office as the governor of Fujian in October last year. He has been a Beijing official for 20 years. Since the end of the Wanli reign, he has served as the right assistant minister of the Fujian Provincial Administration, the governor of Funing Road, the right governor of Fujian, and the right governor of Shandong. He has a relatively good understanding of the affairs of the court and Fujian.

Although he was not a member of the Donglin Party, he obviously disliked the eunuch party. In the seventh year of the Tianqi reign, all parts of the country were repairing the ancestral temple of Wei Zhongxian, but Fujian, where Zhu Futai was in power, was the only one without a single rafter, which showed that he had a temper.

Since Zheng Zhilong attacked Xiamen again, two groups of lobbyists came to Zhu Yifeng. One group was the gentry from Zhangzhou and Quanzhou headed by the retired Grand Secretary Shi Jixie, and the other group was the famous scholars from central Fujian headed by Yupingzi Chi Xianfang.

Behind these two groups of people there is a big sea merchant, Huang Mingzuo from Yuegang and Xu Xinsu from Xiamen. The former persuaded Zhu Futai to recruit Zheng Zhilong to protect his hometown, while the latter persuaded him to recruit Lin Hai to deal with Zheng Zhilong.

Zhu Yifeng himself was inclined to recruit Lin Hai, but this matter undoubtedly had extremely high political risks. Because what Lin Hai did was to kidnap the emperor's senior servant, the eunuch of the Suzhou and Hangzhou weaving factory, which could basically be regarded as a slap in the face of the previous emperor.

In comparison, although Zheng Zhilong killed officials and abused civilians, those he killed were worthless military generals and ordinary people without any roots. In the eyes of many gentry, he could be called a righteous thief.

In view of this, Zhu Yifeng planned to delay the case for a while, at least until Emperor Chongzhen started to take action against Wei Zhongxian. As long as Chongzhen really intended to remove Wei Zhongxian, even if he was concerned about the face of the previous emperor and refused to rehabilitate Lin Hai in the future, he would at most dismiss Zhu Yifeng from office, which would not endanger his life and property.

However, he could delay, but the battle in the Min Sea could not be delayed. Zheng Zhilong captured the city of Xiamen in one fell swoop, and both Zhangzhou and Quanzhou prefectures trembled under the pirates' attack.

Xiamen is not like Tongshan after all. It controls the estuary of Jiulong River and is not far from the capitals of Zhangzhou and Quanzhou. What's more, it is only a few dozen miles away from Yuegang. That is the location of the Emperor's Southern Treasury. Although the customs duty is only tens of thousands of taels a year, the problem is that the capital is watching this money.

Zheng Zhilong now deployed his troops in Yuegang to threaten the Fujian authorities, but this in turn irritated Zhu Yifeng and he immediately decided to recruit Lin Hai to deal with the pirates.

"I'm Lin Hai, a commoner. Nice to meet you, Zhu Dutang!" Lin Hai met Zhu Yifeng at Chi Xianfang's private residence in Fuzhou. The Xu brothers and Chi Xianfang were also present.

"Are you Lin Hai?" Zhu Yifeng, who was wearing a Taoist robe, looked at Lin Hai and said, "You are really brave!"

Lin Hai knew that he was referring to his courage to come to Fuzhou. After all, there were too many anecdotes in the Ming Dynasty of using the name of appeasement to kill people, and Wang Zhi fell into this trap.

"The war situation is urgent and there is no time to hesitate. Now that I am here, I will leave everything to the governor. If the governor trusts me, I can entrust the suppression of the bandits to me."

"Very good, you are worthy of being the first person to destroy the ancestral temple of the rebel." Zhu Yifeng laughed when he heard it.

"If all the governors and governors-general in the world were like Du Tang, where would the shrine for the rebel come from?" Lin Hai also reciprocated, and the two of them had a very pleasant conversation.

Finally, everyone agreed that Lin Hai would send 400 soldiers to Pingtan Island, and go to Tongan County by land in the name of the commander of the Haitan mobile soldiers, and then join forces with the Hean township soldiers to march to Jiahe Island.

The Haitan guerrillas were still led by General Chen, who was the first to help Lin Hai recruit immigrants. He had a special relationship with the Xu family and should be reliable. As for the Tongan County Magistrate Cao Lutai, Zhu Yifeng thought that there was no big problem. Although he advocated the appeasement of Zheng Zhilong based on reality, he was a very upright person and official. Before Zhu Yifeng made the decision, he had been doing his best to organize militia to defend his hometown, and he had fought several battles with Zheng Zhilong.

Liu Silai, the magistrate of Haicheng, was similar to Cao Lutai, but Haicheng County was after all the location of Yuegang, which was Huang Mingzuo's base camp, and the county government was probably already infiltrated like a sieve. To be on the safe side, Haicheng's local soldiers were not considered for this operation.

The reason why Zhu Yifeng wanted to meet Lin Hai in Chi Xianfang's private residence was largely for the sake of confidentiality. After all, the clerk under his command was Huang Mingzuo's younger brother, who was the head of the clerks in the governor's office.

Chi Xianfang and the Xu brothers both said that Huang Mingzuo was behind Wang Mengxiong's escape from prison and the fall of Xiamen. Zhu Yifeng was half-believing and half-doubting. After all, these two incidents were just hearsay. It was also possible that Chi, Xu and others were making trouble and killing people with borrowed knives. The competitive relationship between Yuegang and Xiamen in overseas trade was well known in the Fujian officialdom.

To be on the safe side, Zhu Yifeng met Lin Hai in Chi Xianfang's private residence, fearing that there might be eavesdroppers.

However, everyone still underestimated the extent of Huang Mingzuo's infiltration into the governor's office. That night, his brother Huang Lingshi learned that Governor Zhu had secretly recruited Lin Hai, because Zhu Yifeng still had to send people to communicate with Chen Youji and County Magistrate Cao.

He did not send the clerks in the governor's office to handle the matter, but sent two trusted family members brought from his hometown in Jiangsu. However, Zhu Yifeng never expected that only one year after he took office as the governor of Fujian, one of these two trusted family members had already been bribed by Huang Mingzuo.

The next morning, two servants of Zhu Futai went to Haitan and Tongan respectively. At the same time, the steward of the Huang family also rode as fast as he could to Haicheng.

Fuzhou is six hundred miles away from Haicheng, but it only took the Huang family's steward two days to get there. It was already midnight when he arrived home, and he immediately had someone wake up Huang Mingzuo who had fallen asleep.

Huang Mingzuo got up, put on his clothes, frowned after listening to the steward's words, and paced back and forth anxiously in the study.

"Master, do you want to notify Zheng Zhilong?" the steward asked.

"Please be patient and let me think about it again..." Huang Mingzuo was really in a dilemma. He also had informants at Zheng Zhilong's place and knew very well that this man was quite afraid of Lin Hai. Once he learned about this, he would most likely choose to withdraw his troops.

To be fair, Huang Mingzuo did not want Zheng Zhilong to accept the amnesty. The reason why he was running around for this matter was mainly to rescue his only son who was kidnapped by the other side.

Now that Zhu Yifeng has decided to recruit Lin Hai, Huang Mingzuo is faced with a dilemma:
If Zheng Zhilong were informed, he would most likely flee, and there would be no hope of recruiting him in the future. Zheng Zhilong would most likely keep his son in his hands until his defeat, and his son would surely die by then.

If he didn't inform them, it would be fine if Zheng Zhilong won the battle, and the matter of recruiting him might turn around. But if he lost, his son was in Xiamen City, and he might die soon.

Huang Mingzuo didn't have much confidence in Zheng Zhilong. After all, the result of the Dongshan battle last year was there...

(End of this chapter)