Rise of the 1630s South America

Chapter 1641

Standing on the poop of the large three-masted sailing ship "Groningen", Hugo Roll carefully watched the sea not far ahead with a monocular.

They and several other ships belonging to the Dutch East India Company set off a month ago from Fort Gracie on Little Java (now Madura Island), where they loaded as many cows and chickens as they could— —About 90 cows and more than 1600 chickens—then sailed all the way through the strait next to Celebes Island (now Sulawesi Island), intending to go to Japan and China.

There are a total of 8 ships traveling together, but only the "Groningen", "Berg", "Dolphin" and "New Zealand" are large ships (the "Groningen" is particularly large in tonnage). , more than 600 tons), the remaining four are small ships with a tonnage of around 200 tons—of course, even a 200-ton ship is undoubtedly a large ship in front of the Chinese and Japanese, although Fujian Wang Zheng In the past two years, I don't know where I got some ships in the style of Western galleons.

But speaking of Fujian Wang Zheng's fleet, it is indeed a headache for the East India Company now, because their strength is growing rapidly, and their regularization is getting better and better, and they are no longer an opponent that can be ignored.To be honest, decades ago, although the Zheng family's fleet dominated the southeast coast of China, the Dutch East India Company really didn't pay much attention to it.Even though the naval battle of Luowan failed, after all, there were only a few Dutch ships participating in the battle, and there were only 8-10 artillery pieces, and it was inconvenient to move in shallow water areas. A large number of small boats of the Zheng family used fire attacks and ants to bite elephants. , The East India Company executives believed that this did not explain anything.

But the situation is different now. This family, known for its maritime trade, has developed relatively rapidly after acquiring Fujian Province for many years, and the regularization of the system and the army has also done well.Especially their principal Zheng Chenggong, whose prestige reached its peak after successfully occupying the whole province of Fujian, and then began to clear out his father's old subordinates-mostly old men with deep pirate habits-this process took a long time. A long time, a full 20 years.

After clearing the old man, Zheng Chenggong greatly denied the magic weapon that his father relied on to defeat the Dutch East India Company, that is, fire attack and small boat tactics, because he believed that this could only allow them to rule the roost in shallow water, but could not rule the deep sea. .It is reported that in the past ten years, Zheng Chenggong has become more and more "superstitious" about the big boat and cannon tactics of the people on the east coast, and has waited for an opportunity to form a professional navy, unlike his father's men who were usually fishermen, who drove small boats to help in wartime.

There is no doubt that this kind of professional navy will devour a lot of resources. Even the United Provinces did not intend to maintain a large-scale professional navy before the fiasco of the first Anglo-Dutch war.Zheng Chenggong was able to think of forming a "standing army at sea", and he was indeed on the right path. Although Hugo Roll doubted how large a fleet they could maintain with their economic strength, they had to maintain it on land. A standing army.

Forget it, the Zheng family's affairs are the company's 17-member committee to worry about. As long as the Zheng family doesn't go crazy enough to garrison the Pescaldo Islands (that is, the Penghu Islands) and block the straits, then it's none of his business.Hugo Roll shook his head, threw these thoughts out of his brain, and continued to observe several merchant ships flying the flag of the Eastern China Republic in front of him.

Those were four huge ships, nearly twice the tonnage of the "Groningen", and they should be ships that came to the East Indies to buy rice—well, to be precise, they were customers of the Dutch East India Company—one of them just now A certain ship in the city has already fired a salute, and the Dutch also returned the salute, but it seems that these people on the east coast did not intend to come to exchange gifts, so the two sides kept a certain distance in this way, and continued to sail one after the other. with.

At this time, the routes of the two sides were almost the same, that is, from the island of Laur (the island of Laur (now Aur Island, Aur I.)) to the north, along the coastline, passing through the island of Laur (now Tiemen Island) , the Mekong Estuary, Pole Cecirde Mer (Pole Cecirde Mer, which is the autumn island off the coast of Fanqie in south-central Vietnam), Malay Bay (in the Phan Rang area in south-central Vietnam today), Macao, and finally arrived in Nagasaki—perhaps just The last paragraph is different.

"Keep a distance from the people on the east coast to show that we have no intention of attacking them. Of course, if possible, you can send a boat to contact them and try to buy some grain. After all, there is not much grain on the boat to feed livestock. "Hugo Rolle gave instructions to the people below, and the business representative on the ship, Jan Kohler (the business representative is on every ship, is a special envoy sent by the East India Company, and can be understood as the "supervisor" on a ship) No objection was expressed.

"The people on the east coast should be in a lot of trouble recently, right?" Business representative Jan Kohler lit a pipe for himself, looked at the blue sea water, and said in a teasing tone: "The envoy of the Emperor of Manchuria told me last year that they are very Soon to unify the entire continent and behead all opponents. Although I doubt it, they must have launched an offensive of a very unusual scale, and the East Coast people are light participants in this game , should have also suffered a lot of shocks."

"This may be our chance." Hugo Rolle is now the 13th governor of the Formosa colony appointed by the East India Company, so he is very concerned about the situation in the mainland and Japan. This will only listen to him: "The people on the east coast hold this country too much, and they don't allow others to stretch their hands in. But what about these years? Have they held on to this commercial hot spot? No, they haven't! Their sea power is insufficient, and the mainland There are Manchurian emperors who oppose them, and there are many ambitious governors. This is our opportunity. In fact, the people on the east bank themselves understand this, and they are also aware of the foreign businessmen's participation in mainland trade over the years. I know that they just can't let go of their faces, but the facts will teach them to recognize all of this."

Commercial representative Jan Kohler was very happy to hear Hugo Rolle, a descendant of the French Huguenots, say this, because as a commercial representative, the better the future development of the East India Company, the better his personal interests will be. The bigger it is, the more obvious it is.

……

And while the Dutch on the "Groningen" were chewing the tongues of the people on the east coast behind their backs, the captain and sailors on the leading one of the four immigration transport ships (temporarily requisitioned as a grain ship) were also talking about The right and wrong of the Dutch.

"After sailing past the 'Dimen' Island in front, we set up all the sails, and the output of the steam engine was at its maximum, and headed towards Kunlun Island at full speed, trying to get there within three days. In order to load more food, the supplies on board The goods are quite insufficient, so we have to go there as soon as possible to buy fruits and vegetables, livestock, and draw fresh water.” The captain frowned, and kept gesticulating on the chart with his right hand, only to hear him say again: “Then we will go along the coast of Champa. Sail all the way north and return to Ningbo. If there are no special circumstances in the middle, we will no longer stop for supplies; if there are circumstances, we will try our best to go ashore for supplies in places that allow our ships to stop, such as Kimberland Bay and Macau. In other places, Unless it is absolutely necessary, they are not allowed to dock, especially Bendlang Port, which once had a bad relationship with us."

From the words of the captain, we can know that the routes of the four grain ships of the East Coasters are indeed highly consistent with those of the Dutch.The "Dimen Island" he mentioned is actually Diaomen Island. "Dimen Island" was recorded in Zhao Rushi's "Zhufan Zhi" in the Song Dynasty; Kunlun Island is located in the sea near the mouth of the Mekong River, and it was recorded as "Tianzhu Mountain" in the Song Dynasty , and the "Zheng He Navigation Map" of the Ming Dynasty described it as "Kunlun Mountain", and the people on the east coast obviously took the latter as the name; the Bay of Canberine (Bay of Canberine) is easy to understand, and it was named Jinlan Bay in later generations. It is famous, but At this time, the nautical charts of the people on the east coast were still marked as "Cimberland Bay", which was the name at that time; as for the Bendao, which had conflicts with the people on the east coast, it has always been an important place for maritime traffic, and later generations generally found it in Vietnam. The area around Phan Rang in the south-central region is the "Gulf of Malay" marked on the Dutch charts - there is also a small island in the southwest that is used to draw water. high island.

Perhaps the captain is a veteran navigator, so his order was quickly carried out without any objection, and it was also conveyed to the four ships following behind through signal semaphore.Sailing north in this season (March), the wind direction is actually very unfavorable, most of the time it is the north wind, logically they should not go to Nanyang to buy rice at this time.

But who made the current situation in the mainland change, and the people on the east coast also encountered a lot of trouble?Today, within the jurisdiction of the Ningbo, Denglai, and Heishui Sange pioneering teams, there is almost no one that is not in the middle of a war, although their scales vary in size.But no matter what, with this war together, food production is doomed to decline, because agricultural production will inevitably be severely affected.Even in the Liaodong and Heishui areas where the defense line is not strong enough, it would not be an exaggeration to say that most of the agricultural production has stagnated, because the people on the east coast are indeed exposed to the enemy's blade.

Therefore, Liao Xiaoyao, the captain of the Denglai pioneering team, who has the highest status among the three major feudal towns, discussed with Liu Jianguo and Jiang Zhiqing, and decided to take out the gold and silver in stock, and at the same time use part of the Bank of Taiwan and the Northwest Reclamation Bank. Deposits, to buy grain in Japan and the East Indies, as a strategic reserve, in case of emergencies.

To be honest, Liao Xiaoyao's decision was absolutely correct, and it also fully considered the current situation among all parties on the mainland and prepared for the future.It is precisely because of this that he sent some ships in better condition to go south to the East Indies to buy food in December last year, even if he sacrificed some immigration capacity for this.You must know that every year from late October to early and mid-April of the following year is always a precious time for immigration transportation. People on the east coast will use a lot of capacity to buy food overseas. If there is no good reason, the local executive committee The gentlemen want to ask you for it!

On April 4, nine merchant ships, including those from the Dutch, arrived in Macau at the mouth of the Pearl River one after the other. The people on the east coast did not dock, but sent some people to buy some food and spare canvas from the Portuguese. , skins and water pumps, and then continue northward towards the final destination, Ningbo Fuding Seaport; while the merchant ships of the Dutch East India Company were separated from the "Rooster", "De Garrias" and "Loyalty" ” to Macau, where they will berth for some time, as for the other six merchant ships, they will divert to Nagasaki, Japan. Supplies.

On April 4, four east coast grain transport ships arrived at Fuding Harbor in Ningbo, delivering thousands of tons of grain ashore.These Nanyang rice will be stored in the warehouse after drying, and will be used as the strategic grain reserve of Ningbo Prefecture.Before that, they had sent more than 29 tons of locally harvested grain to Shandong to make up for the possible gap there.

Jiang Zhiqing, the leader of the Southern Exploration Team, was very happy with the arrival of the grain transport ship, and also praised their luck.Because in this season in Nanyang, the weather changes drastically, and the sea is rough, and there is a risk of shipwreck if you are not careful.These four ships were able to return safely. It is really good luck. I hope that the other four ships that also went to Nanyang to buy food can also return safely. Laiyantai Port.

And on the second day after these grain transport ships arrived at Dinghai Port, Yin County received a piece of news that suddenly made the situation in the entire Ningbo Prefecture tense: the Qing Army Hangzhou Daying gathered heavy troops and began The southward invasion aimed directly at the Jinhua Mansion, which had just been lucky enough to be swallowed by King Lu's troops; at the same time, Tong Guogang, who was in charge of military and political affairs in Hangzhou, also strengthened the military defense of some prefectures and counties bordering the East Bank control area to prevent the East Bank army from Launch a fierce attack on it from the flanks, affecting the overall situation of the Southern Expedition.

Of course, King Lu's envoy also arrived in Yin County immediately, and asked the east bank to send troops to restrain him. Jiang Zhiqing did not immediately agree to King Lu's request, but was ready to investigate the situation.The situation in the direction of Denglai is extremely tense now, and Liaodong and Heishui have already been fighting in full swing. The Qing army is now starting to make troubles in the southern Jiangsu and Zhejiang areas. Does he have so much energy?Jiang Zhiqing was deeply suspicious of this, so he needed to find out the situation now.

Of course, before the Qing army's intentions were specifically clarified, the Second Division of the Liaodong New Army moved in the direction of Xinchang County to help King Lu share the pressure.

(End of this chapter)