New Shun 1730

"You're a donkey, damn it, you can't move when you pull it, and you're going backwards when you fight it. What's the point of this? Gunpowder is expensive."

Looking at the Dutchmen in the distance with white flags heading this way, Du Feng couldn't help but curse.

The staff and adjutants around him were all laughing, because up to now, no one on the Dashun side had died, except for the hardest-working combat engineers who had been digging holes for half a day.

And the holes they dug were not used, and they had to be buried again after the handover to improve the castle's defense system.

After complaining about the Dutch, Du Feng couldn't help but slap his head and said regretfully: "What a pity. If the war had started a month earlier, we could have gotten a lot of spices and silver. When the Whale Marquis led us to fight the Russians, we caught up with the Russian rhubarb dealers who brought silver. Now the Dutch ships have left with cinnamon, and I guess there's not much silver left..."

Shaking his head in annoyance, the officer next to him was also quite distressed. If the war had really started a month earlier, the cinnamon purchased in Ceylon would probably be piled up here. Everyone would share it. How could everyone not get a hundred or ten taels of silver?

Adding these troubles out of thin air, there was a little more resentment towards the Dutch who came to surrender. Fortunately, military discipline could still be maintained. Du Feng restrained the officers and led them to accept the surrender of the Dutch.

The tone was still relatively gentle, but Du Feng was not so gentle on the actual surrender conditions.

"We said at the beginning that we would let you surrender directly and give you the dignity of an honorable defeat. But you insisted on fighting. If you had fought to the end and fought to the last man, that would have been fine. But since you didn't surrender at the beginning, and you didn't fight to the end, this is a good explanation."

"We will turn around and attack Jaffna. In addition to the castle in Jaffna, you should have five castles on Ceylon."

"Take your men and bring all the troops in the castle to surrender. We can also give you the dignity of an honorable defeat and keep your personal belongings and personal property. If you can't do that, we won't accept your surrender."

"The significance of surrender may be beneficial to the attacker, which will reduce the casualties of the attacker and achieve the purpose of the war. But... you also saw that we had no casualties at all, so there is no room for bargaining for your surrender, it is just a gift from the Celestial Empire."

After truly seeing the siege capabilities of the Dashun side and the pit digging technology of those elite combat engineers, the mentality of the Ceylon governor has undergone a huge change.

Indeed, the castle in Jaffna cannot be defended. And it may be easier to attack than this. Once Jaffna and Colombo are lost, the remaining castles are all inland, all guarding against the Sinhalese, and there is nowhere to escape.

If we escape to the Sinhalese, won’t we be caught and killed by the Sinhalese for revenge?

"Yes, Commander, we will follow your advice, and the Dutch army in Ceylon will choose to surrender. You are right, these bastions cannot hinder your army at all. However, please issue a written statement to ensure that our personal property is protected, as well as a deadline for when we will return to the Netherlands."

"I am afraid that the whole of Southeast Asia will fall into your hands, and we have nowhere else to go except returning to the Netherlands."

As the governor of the colony, he still has some political sense and a bit of overall view. Since Dashun has conquered Ceylon, Southeast Asia is definitely no longer in the hands of the East India Company. Otherwise, what is the use of having a Ceylon with a blocked throat?

Du Feng smiled at this speculation, thinking that Nanyang was much worse than here. The Whale Marquis wanted to kill a chicken to scare the monkeys, so he would not persuade them to surrender, but would attack all the fortresses.

Otherwise, if the people there surrendered directly, the local chiefs would not know whether Dashun could fight or not, and they would not be able to see it clearly. I am afraid they would not know how high the sky is and how deep the earth is.

For the sake of performance, they might even use some completely unnecessary siege methods, such as digging tunnels to bury gunpowder and blow it up directly. Maybe they would even invite the local chiefs to visit. But you know, as long as you dig pits to bury gunpowder and blow up the wall, the collapsed part of the wall will be left without a single hole.

"You guessed right. Nanyang has been a tributary state of the Celestial Empire since ancient times, so the Celestial Empire will certainly take it back. However, I can only promise not to touch your personal belongings. As for when you will return to the Netherlands, you should know that the purpose of the war is for politics, and you captives will become bargaining chips."

"You'd better look forward to the company's board of directors being willing to pay enough for you. For example, ransom?"

Having said that, Du Feng knew in his heart that Dashun would never ask for things like ransom. They would definitely ask for something more important than ransom, and they might even release them directly to express their goodwill for cooperation.

But when the governor of Ceylon heard the word ransom, his face suddenly turned ugly.

The company pays the ransom?

The board of directors will not pay this money. It is very likely that the captives will raise money from their own families. When the company hired them, the contract signed did not include the payment of ransom after being captured.

Moreover, if the entire Southeast Asia was lost, what would the company have left? Once the news reached Amsterdam, I'm afraid the company's stock would collapse, triggering a selling frenzy.

Thinking of this, the Governor of Ceylon's face became even darker. He had finally made it to the upper-middle level of the company - the Governor of Ceylon, and had a good chance of becoming a candidate for the Governor-General of Batavia - but now he was afraid that he would have nothing.

Almost all of his property is in the company's stocks, and he relies on the company's annual dividends. Now, the company is about to collapse, and those previously enviable stocks may be worthless, right?

Originally, every Dutchman who owned East India Company stocks was convinced that there was no difference between this stuff and gold and silver. The dividend payment of more than 18% has continued for a century and has never been interrupted, thus establishing the Dutch people's awareness that paper is money.

But now, if I had known this, I might as well have exchanged all my stocks for gold and silver.

Gold and silver will still be gold and silver after ten thousand years, but the shares of the East India Company will probably be a piece of waste paper from now on.

"Why!"

Thinking of this, the Ceylon Governor couldn't help but sigh. He didn't lament the company's failure, he just lamented his own fate. After struggling for most of his life, he finally got to this point and suddenly had nothing.

Even if he is released in the future, the company may collapse and his stocks will become useless paper.

In the Netherlands, without money, there is no status.

Even if the Orange family has great martial arts skills and established the orange national color of the Netherlands, shouldn't they still be driven out by the consortium?

Du Feng saw him sighing there, not knowing that the other person was thinking about the stocks he held, and thought he was depressed because of losing Ceylon, so he comforted him and said: "Don't worry, there is a saying, If the sky falls, there is someone high up to support you. In terms of status, you are not a director of the company, nor are you the governor of Batavia. What are you worried about? Just surrender. I think the governor of Batavia may be better. You are miserable."

This kind of comfort is worse than no comfort at all. The Governor of Ceylon said helplessly: "Your country will even capture Batavia, so what is there to talk about with the company? I'm afraid the company will no longer exist. Your country will keep us." These prisoners are of no use."

"We are corporate employees, not the government's military. Your country may not understand the difference, and I hope your diplomats will understand that."

Du Feng smiled and said: "Don't worry, if the company really collapses and there is no longer a negotiating party, we will not keep you. There is no use keeping you, right? The Junggar people picked up a few Swedish prisoners of war. "

Dashun's current army has basically formed a system. Once a system is formed, it can reproduce and expand itself.

Whether it is the army, navy, or the Academy of Sciences that is about to be built, Dashun follows this system.

Find people from outside, teach the first group of people, and then use the first group of people to teach the second group of people. Once the system is completed, it can run on its own. The most difficult thing is the first group of people.

Just like Lenat, who is regarded as a treasure by the Junggar tribe, if he was in Dashun twenty years ago and if Dashun wanted to reform the military, he could still be the founder of the new artillery, but if he is now, he can only be a founder of the new artillery. Artillery commander.

The reason why Du Feng mentioned this was that before he came to Ceylon, Liu Yu told them another similar story when he was talking to them and discussing the situation.

This story is closely related to Ceylon and the relationship between Dashun and Ceylon.

This time Dashun wanted to gain a foothold in Ceylon, so he would naturally attack the Dutch hard, but for the Kandy dynasty, he would mainly focus on wooing him.

Ceylon is mountainous and the inland areas are difficult to control. Dashun is temporarily unable to completely conquer Ceylon. Therefore, it is necessary to establish a good relationship with the Kandy Dynasty as much as possible to ensure peaceful coexistence between the two parties and obtain the exclusive rights to cinnamon and betel nut.

If Dashun wants to engage in diplomacy with the Kandy Dynasty, it needs a special group to close relations, that is, monks.

Ceylon is a Buddhist holy land where the tooth of Gautama Buddha is enshrined. The new king was a branch from India according to the feudal inheritance law. He originally believed in Hinduism, but in order to maintain rule, he had to convert to Buddhism. And because of this, he has to appear more fanatical than others, because when he comes from India, he will definitely bring a bunch of relatives and cronies with him, which will inevitably lead to dissatisfaction among the nobles; and the nobles are already dissatisfied, and if the monks are still dissatisfied, then this throne will also It's not stable.

Therefore, this king will definitely promote Buddhism to win over the monks. Although Buddhism in Dashun is not the same as Buddhism in South and Southeast Asia, they are all insiders anyway, and sending monks to visit makes it easier to build closer relationships.

At the very least, it is easier to build closer relationships than missionaries who believe in God.

Liu Yu didn't understand Buddhism, but there were so many temples in Dashun, and there were a few groups that could interpret Sanskrit. The imperial court recruited monks to engage in religious diplomacy, and great monks would come forward.

Of course these monks also know about Ceylon, or the Lion Kingdom. Because this involves an important historical event in Chinese Buddhism, the bhikshuni issue.

This bhikshuni problem is the same as the system problem mentioned by Du Feng.

According to the precepts, to be a formal nun, a woman must first find ten bhikkhunis to receive ordination, and then receive full ordination from a bhikkhu, which is the so-called two-part monkhood ordination.

There must have been no bhikkhunis in China before, so we fell into a strange circle:

Want to be a nun? First find ten nuns to be ordained.

However, if you don’t have ten nuns, how can you become a nun? If you can’t become a nun, how can you save ten nuns?

If you want to save ten nuns, then start from scratch, one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, ninety.

But there were not ten nuns at the beginning, so how could we break through from zero to one?

The first ten have the highest value, even priceless. Once the threshold is exceeded, crazy depreciation begins.

So, according to the "teachings" of Buddhism, those nuns were illegal. It was not until the Southern and Northern Dynasties that Thesaro of Ceylon came to Jiankang and solved this vicious circle problem, which made Chinese nuns meet the definition of teachings.

Because as long as the identities of 10 bhikkhunis are solved, they can go from 10 to 10,000 or 100,000. And if the identities of 10 bhikkhunis cannot be solved, they will never be able to break through from zero to one.

Not many people in the officialdom of Dashun knew about this. But in the Buddhist circle, everyone must know it. After all, this is a big deal. Without this, the nuns of all dynasties in China are fake.

So this time Dashun found several monks, and took this as an opportunity to fulfill their dream of worshiping the real Buddha tooth and to get closer to the Kandyan dynasty.

Of course, it is best to take the opportunity to interfere in the internal affairs of Kandyan. You are a king from South India, with an unstable foundation and opposition from the nobles. Don't you need to find a backer? Come to pay tribute to the Celestial Empire, and the Celestial Empire will protect you.