Dragon Sea Empire

At the beginning of September in the second year of Tianqi, on the banks of the Aceh River at the northwestern tip of Sumatra Island, on the fertile fields rich in rice, sweet potatoes, yams and beans, there was no scene of fruitful harvests, so the crops were not burned by a fire The light was snatched away by people. On both sides of the Aceh River, black smoke filled the air. It stretched for hundreds of miles along the river bank. There were field stalks trampled into mud and manors of large and small lords that were destroyed and bulldozed everywhere. Black smoke rose from villages and towns, and corpses were strewn all over the fields.

Starting from Riau on the other side of the Malacca Fortress, along the main traffic arteries of North Sumatra, such a scene can be seen everywhere. Under the "China" flag of different colors and shading, black (infantry), blue (navy) Marine Corps) and brown, white and other troops of various colors (Chinese militia), the torrent is like a big dye vat stirring paint, stirring human lives of various skin colors into a thick blood red.

Countless small Malay lords along the way, together with their family emblems and towns and villages, disappeared in the flames and smoke. Countless lives, no matter their status was noble or humble, their heads were chopped off, and the bloodthirsty Chinese militia happily inserted them into the ground. On the tree stumps along the way, countless cattle, sheep and even elephants originally belonging to the Malays were driven slowly on both sides of the army. They either dragged cannons, ammunition and ammunition, or turned into soldiers and officers in the camps along the way. food in their stomachs.

When the Chinese Army was first established, it fought life-and-death battles with Westerners, Taiwanese aborigines, and Ming Dynasty officials. It was used to this form of thorough civil war. , It's just a conflict between the lords competing for land, sometimes cloaked in a hypocritical veil of warmth and affection, generally they will not be chased and killed. The people under the other lord may be his own subjects immediately, so why kill them.

However, the form of warfare brought by the Chinese Army was completely destructive, and was called ethnic cleansing by later generations.

This is the second time that the Chinese army has attacked Aceh, and the scale is much larger than the previous Nanyang War. Yin Feng's order to Zhao Xuanming is very clear: Aceh must be beaten thoroughly, and it is best to beat Aceh into a whole. Puppet country.

Kota Racha is located on the south bank of the Aceh River Estuary. In the Middle Ages, it was a trading station for Arab merchants to buy gold, ivory, and camphor. After the Dutch came in the 1511th century, it became the pepper trade center in Southeast Asia. It was also the first place where Islam was introduced into the Malay world. A stronghold, called "the road to Mecca" by later generations of Malay Muslims. After the Portuguese occupied Malacca in [-], many Muslim merchants were forced to move to Aceh and other places. Merchant ships from various countries wanted to avoid the Portuguese monopoly , and enter the Indonesian archipelago along the west coast of Sumatra through the Sunda Strait. Therefore, Aceh, which is located at the northern end of this route, began to prosper.

After that, Aceh launched a series of "jihads" in an attempt to drive away the Portuguese colonists and control the pepper producing areas. In 1547, Aceh launched a powerful attack on the Portuguese and almost captured the city of Malacca. The war between Aceh and the Portuguese lasted until 1575. In 1564, Aceh once attacked the Kingdom of Johor, captured the Sultan, and destroyed the city of Johor.

The current Sultan Iskandar Mudar, the king of the Aceh Kingdom, the Chinese refer to him as Sultan Alatan according to the transliteration. He has taken the initiative to attack the Chinese company and the Chinese Army twice. Five years ago, the Chinese Army assisted the Portuguese After defending Malacca and defeating the Aceh army under the city of Malacca, Sultan Iskandar finally reached a peace agreement with the Chinese army, allowing Chinese companies to establish business offices in Aceh.

At the beginning of this Malay anti-Chinese war, the people of Aceh waited until the island of Java fell into chaos and the Chinese and Malays in Palembang became one, before sending troops to Malacca. At the same time, the Chinese business house in Kota Racha was captured. More than a dozen Chinese were killed, and dozens of Chinese were imprisoned. All the Chinese in Aceh who were not killed were arrested in the prison near the Sultan’s Palace in Kota Racha. During the five-month battle of Malacca, These Chinese who were imprisoned were tortured to death one after another.

This news was brought out from Aceh by a Dutch businessman who witnessed the fact with his own eyes, which angered Zhao Xuanming and other Chinese army generals. Observing military discipline is a waste of time. He controls his regular army in order to maintain discipline at all times in combat, not because he does not want to kill more people.

However, he couldn't strictly enforce the military discipline of the militia, and most of the time he could only let it go. The Chinese militia was formed by various big businessmen, and they didn't care how many natives they could leave to work for them. Tens of thousands of hungry people are waiting to become the labor force on this land. According to the new land development law, the land laid down by the pioneering regiment can be given priority. Therefore, on the two wings of the regular army of the Chinese army, the militia troops launched a long campaign The front line made the subsequent logistics troops and various merchant teams have to walk in the no-man's land full of thick smoke. After the news that the Chinese in Aceh were basically exterminated, the Chinese militia's brutal behavior along the way, Most of them are revengeful, so they are more ruthless and bloody.

The main force of the Sixth Division of the Chinese Army under the command of Zhao Xuanming was 8000 people, and went northward along the road from Riau to Aceh by land, 3000 reinforcements from a regiment of the Java Brigade, more than 3000 people from the joint troops of the Chinese militia from various countries in South Sumatra, and some Javanese native allies , under the command of Zu Guangxian, the commander of the Java brigade, went northward from Palembang, passed through Jambi to the west coast of Sumatra, the small town of Padang by the Indian Ocean, and then the Chinese Army on the west road went north along the west coast of Sumatra, preparing to fight in Kota Racha and the east. The sixth division of Zhao Xuanming on the road joined forces.

On the sea, the main force of the Nanyang Fleet headed by two battleships Feizi lined up more than 50 various warships and auxiliary ships, went northward from the Strait of Malacca, and went straight to the center of the Aceh Sultanate. Kota Racha (now Banda Aceh), the capital of Aceh.

Behind the large troops of the Chinese Army, countless Chinese businessmen, as well as businessmen and adventurers from Portugal, the Netherlands, and the United Kingdom, and even many new Chinese immigrants to Southeast Asia packed their bags and followed the troops. They came to North Sumatra to serve the Chinese Army. Deliver materials or sell various materials to the militia organization, and then take the silver notes or large sums of silver coins issued by the China Money Company, and exchange them for coins and spices looted along the way , precious stones, luxury goods, and even leftovers eliminated by the army, or cheap booty and Malay slaves, sold to various plantations on the return journey to make a profit.

After the failure of the Battle of Malacca, Sultan Iskandar left his army and fled across the sea with only a dozen guards. This move was actually very wise. It was impossible to retreat across the strait, and the final result was that only [-] of the [-] troops brought by Sultan Iskandar around Malacca fled back to North Sumatra, and the rest were either killed or captured by the Chinese army.

However, Iskandar's actions chilled the hearts of the feudal lords who followed him to fight. When he returned to North Sumatra and issued another summoning order, there were only a handful of lords from various states who led troops to obey the command.

After the [-]th Division of the Chinese Army landed in Sumatra, it went northward almost without a major battle. Most of the Malay lords in front of them chose to surrender. The army gasped under the prestige, and the territory directly under the royal family of Sultan Iskandar was completely looted by the Chinese army and Chinese militia without exception.

Zhao Xuanming's army encountered resistance in the valley of the middle reaches of the Aceh River. Tens of thousands of Aceh's troops with chaotic equipment and organization were arrayed in the fields on both sides of the valley. Afterwards, I learned from the captives that this is the territory of Sultan Iskandar's brother, Prince Iprasin, and that it is close to Kota Raza City in the north. At this time, the battleships of the Nanyang Fleet are already in Asia At the mouth of the Qihe River, the remnants of the Aceh fleet were named one by one, and the Aceh port with a history of hundreds of years was destroyed. Then, dozens of shallow-draft schooners entered the Aceh River and bombarded Kota on the river. Racha city.

At the end of September, the city of Kota Racha was tightly surrounded by the Chinese army from both land and sea.

The city of Kota Racha with its low walls is vulnerable to Chinese artillery, but there are more than [-] Aceh militants loyal to Sultan Iskandar gathered in the city, and Sultan Iskandar himself is also commanding the defense in the city. In the city, there are more than ten cannons robbed from the Portuguese earlier, as well as five or six new cannons bought from the Dutch, as well as some armed personnel from the North Sumatra states who insisted on resisting. This is North Sumatra, It is also the last center of resistance in Aceh. The rest of the place has been turned into a hell of blood and fire by the swarming Chinese militia. The Aceh people who failed to enter Kota Racha fled into the deep mountains and dense forests. went.

The West Route Chinese Army led by Zu Guangxian went northward along the west coast of Sumatra, and encountered little resistance, not because of anything else, but because his troops had too many militias, and their military discipline was very bad. Whether or not the Malay rulers raised their hands to surrender, they all spoke with fire and knives. Therefore, Zu Guangxian's troops did not reach the middle reaches of the Aceh River until Kota Racha was completely surrounded.

Zhao Xuanming didn't want to wait for the West Route Army to join forces before attacking Kota Racha. He couldn't wait any longer. The Aceh people kept attacking from the city. At first they tried to break out with a large group of troops, but later found that the Sixth Division had dug trenches everywhere and guarded them tightly. At each crossing, the Aceh Army of the brigade could not break through at all.

Unable to break through, the Aceh people began to attack in small groups, infiltrating and sneak attacking in the dark, and tricks emerged one after another, which made Zhao Xuanming startled all night and couldn't sleep well.

Sometimes, suddenly, a large group of Aceh people, led by Islamic clerics in robes, shouted "Allah Akbar" (Allah is great), brandished Balang knives and launched a suicide charge towards the Chinese army positions. They had no firearms For cover, without any armor, they went up against the rain of bullets from the Chinese army, fearless of death, and after lying down on the ground, a few people could still rush to the battlefield to fight the Chinese army hand-to-hand.

For this reason, the three manual continuous-fire rapid-fire guns brought by Zhao Xuanming were broken in the fierce battle due to the continuous shooting time. Because there were no maintenance personnel to follow, these manual machine guns were temporarily scrapped.

Zhao Xuanming was really annoyed. After the logistics team brought enough ammunition, he decided not to wait for the West Route Army. He contacted the Navy's Nanyang Fleet and decided to launch a general attack on Kota Racha with the two of them.