The Prosperous Era of Longwan

"We also found out where Lin Feng is."

Just as Li Jin finished speaking, Deng Zilong, who was still looking down at the Manila defense map in his hand, suddenly looked up at him and asked uncertainly: "What did you say?"

"General Deng, we found out where Lin Feng is in Manila."

Li Jin had to repeat it.

"Where is it?"

Deng Zilong immediately asked after hearing it clearly this time.

"Pengasilan Bay."

Li Jin followed his habit and simply transliterated the place name given by the Spanish, which naturally made Deng Zilong confused.

Seeing the other party's expression, Li Jin also knew that he couldn't explain it clearly, so he asked Chen Zhenlong to say it.

"It is a bay about a hundred miles south of here, where a river flows into the sea.

I heard from the barbarians that Lin Feng led people to build a city here, called Tortoise City."

Chen Zhenlong told Deng Zilong the news he had heard from Manila, and then Deng Zilong's face became uncertain.

This information is very important.

At this time, in Chen Zhenlong's heart, he had already confirmed the importance of the news brought by Li Jin.

Lin Feng occupied a piece of land on Luzon Island. As long as the Ming army can occupy it, can it be considered that it belongs to the territory of the Ming Dynasty?

If he didn't understand the significance of this trip at the beginning, it certainly doesn't happen now.

Wei Guangde has made it clear in the letter that he wants to expand the territory in Luzon and seize a piece of enclave belonging to the Ming Dynasty, just like the old port.

This place will definitely be handed over to the South China Sea Navy in the end and become an important port of the Navy in the South China Sea.

"Tortoise City, haha, not bad."

Deng Zilong couldn't help but laugh heartily.

But then, he immediately put away his smile.

He had realized that something was wrong. Li Jin could get the news from Manila, which meant that the barbarians already knew the whereabouts of Lin Feng.

"What are the barbarians planning?"

So, Deng Zilong asked immediately.

"The barbarians have already gathered 500 soldiers and trained more than 2,000 local people. They are ready to send troops to encircle and suppress Lin Feng after the training is completed."

Li Jin answered immediately.

"Is there a specific time?"

Although this question was a bit difficult, Deng Zilong still asked.

"The barbarians did not reveal it. He told me that it would take several months of training.

However, on our way back, I saw the vassal soldiers trained by the barbarians, and they were already in good shape.

I thought it would not take too long for the barbarians to take action."

Li Jin said immediately.

"They gathered so many people?"

Hearing that there were nearly 3,000 troops, Deng Zilong couldn't help but frowned.

"General Deng, there is no need to worry.

As far as I know, they only have these 500 people in Manila. It is impossible to bring all of them to attack Lin Feng. It should be an army of more than 2,000 vassal soldiers and 200 to 300 barbarians.

After all, Manila is more important to them."

Li Jin said.

Deng Zilong nodded and agreed.

He now needs to do two things. One is to pass the news back to Ming Dynasty as soon as possible to let the admiral know.

The second is to find a way to prevent the barbarians from occupying Daimao City. At least the Ming army must occupy it.

Although he only brought ten warships and not many soldiers, he really couldn't be vague about this matter. He must show the fighting power of Ming Dynasty.

Otherwise, once the barbarians broke through Daimao City, the Luzon attack planned by Wei Ge Lao would fail completely.

He didn't know that at this time, in order to get the support of the cabinet and the six ministries in the capital, Wei Guangde had done a lot of work in private, just to get them to support this military action.

For Wei Guangde, he just needed to grasp the general direction and let his generals play freely, and finally achieve the results he wanted.

Just when Deng Zilong was thinking about countermeasures, Li Jin came over again and said flatteringly: "There is another good news for the general. We have obtained sweet potato vines from the barbarians. It is said that this thing can survive if it is planted.

It's just that we don't know if we can plant it after taking it back, after all, this thing has never been planted before."

"Good, very good."

If this news came in the past, Deng Zilong would definitely be very happy, but now he needs to think about how to deal with the possible attack of the barbarians on Daimao City, so naturally he can only put this matter behind his mind.

"Take the sweet potato vines back first and find someone to plant them. If they can survive, you will have made a great contribution. I will also report this to the court."

Deng Zilong just perfunctorily said this, still thinking about the matter of Daimao City.

But the words fell into Li Jin's ears, which was different. He just thought that General Deng in front of him was just trying to satisfy his appetite, but after listening to his words, it seemed that this was not the case.

But he also saw that Deng Zilong had no intention of saying anything else to him at this time.

Okay, he could understand.

"Are you going to continue to return or what?"

After a while, Deng Zilong seemed to remember their existence and asked.

"We have passed the message here, so we naturally have to leave."

Li Jin had to say.

"Go back and plant the sweet potato vines well. Someone from the court will come to you later."

Deng Zilong just said this, and soon sent someone to send them off the ship and let them return.

"Boss, it seems that General Deng is more interested in Lin Feng."

After returning to his own ship, Chen Zhenlong whispered.

Before leaving, he had told the Ming army the location of Pengaslan Bay in detail. According to his method, they should be able to find the place quickly.

"Forget it, don't worry about it. Let's go back to Yuegang as soon as possible."

Li Jin looked back at the navy warships that were gradually going away and said.

Soon, the two big Fu ships hoisted the sails and sailed towards the Ming Dynasty with the wind.

At this time, Deng Zilong was on the ship, and he had summoned his generals to study what actions to take.

After all, if they acted on their own, they must send it back with the intelligence to let the navy admiral Yu Dayou know.

"It's too late to go back to the Ming Dynasty to move troops. It's better to contact the tribal leaders on Luzon Island directly and let them gather troops to fight with us."

A general said: 'I remember that with our seal, we can mobilize some troops from the tributary country. '

Hearing his words, Deng Zilong lowered his head and thought for a while before shaking his head gently.

At this time, the Ming Dynasty had great influence within the traditional tributary scope. If conditions allowed, even a low-level military officer such as a sentry officer could hold a seal and mobilize troops in the tributary country.

However, this seal does not refer to the things that prove their military officer status, such as tokens and seals, but military flags, that is, to mobilize the army, you need a military order and a token for mobilizing troops, which is what was called a tiger token in the past.

The tiger token is a military token used in ancient my country to convey orders and mobilize troops. It is named because it looks like a tiger.

The tiger token consists of two halves, left and right, with exactly the same inscriptions. The right half is kept by the court, and the left half is issued to the general who commands the army. When mobilizing the army, the envoy sent by the monarch or emperor will match the two halves of the token before the troops can be mobilized.

However, in the Ming Dynasty, tiger tokens were no longer used, but troops were mobilized by the documents of the Ministry of War and the tokens of generals.

If troops were mobilized in border towns, official documents from the Ministry of War and the tokens of the generals were required, while in the inland provinces, only the mobilization order of the commander-in-chief was required.

Yu Dayou actually had such a troop mobilization token in his hand. His position was equal to that of the commander-in-chief, and he was not under the jurisdiction of the commander-in-chief of the southeastern provinces.

It was a pity that they did not expect such a thing to happen when they came out, so they naturally would not give him the troop mobilization token.

"Sir, how about trying with our seal?

This so-called king of Luzon has not been to the Ming Dynasty for many years. I think he knows the rules set by the Ming Dynasty for them but not the reasons.

Although we acted in an overstepping manner, there was nothing we could do.

Otherwise, it would be impossible to wipe out the Lin Feng Group and capture the Daimao City with just these few ships."

Another general said.

Earlier, Deng Zilong had told his generals what he meant, and they also knew that the Ming Dynasty needed to capture the Daimao City.

Although they did not know that there was an operation from the capital behind this, they only thought it was Yu Dayou's intention. After all, the credit for destroying the Lin Feng pirate group was not small.

As soldiers, they naturally want to be rewarded for their merits, so they naturally have to find ways to complete the mission.

Although they have ten warships here, one of the centipede ships is used as a messenger to communicate information.

Once the plan is decided here, the centipede ship will set sail and return to Daming immediately to report what happened here to Yu Dayou.

Therefore, in fact, they can only leave nine warships.

As for why they did not consider requisitioning Li Jin's two merchant ships, forget it. There are almost no weapons on their ships, and there are only a hundred sailors. There is no point in keeping them for the war.

In fact, for defense, people have to be assigned to keep an eye on them.

For sea merchants, especially those sailors, the Daming Navy is always vigilant.

You know, most of the boat people actually participated in the Japanese pirate gangs to a greater or lesser extent. Who knows which of them have connections with the Lin Feng Pirate Group.

If they stab them in the back at that time, it seems more dangerous.

Moreover, Deng Zilong actually received news that there were still some connections with pirates on the sea. After all, they had to sail and inevitably encountered pirates.

If they kept paying bribes, pirates would generally not rob merchants who paid them for the sake of a long-term relationship.

After all, once they started, people would die.

Who would be willing to risk their lives to get supplies and silver for free?

This also became an unspoken rule among all the merchants in the Ming Dynasty, that is, to make friends with those pirates and pay bribes on time, so that business could be done well and money could flow in.

And such unspoken rules continued until the end of the Ming Dynasty.

It should be said that although the pirates of the Jiajing Dynasty, or the Japanese pirates, were rampant, their strength was ultimately not as strong as that of the great pirate Zheng Zhilong in the late Ming Dynasty.

In September of the first year of Chongzhen, after feeling the sincerity of the Ming court, Zheng Zhilong expressed his responsibility to "eliminate the barbarians and suppress the bandits", surrendered to the central government of the Ming Dynasty, and was appointed as the "Five Tiger Guerrilla General" under the Fujian Governor Xiong Wencan.

So, when Zheng Zhilong was stationed in Minhai, guarding the coast for the Ming court to prevent pirates, Japanese pirates and Dutch attacks, he led more than 30,000 troops and more than 1,000 warships of various types.

Don't think that the strength of big Japanese pirates such as Wang Zhi and Xu Hai is stronger than Zheng Zhilong, and they all have tens of thousands of people. This number is actually false.

Because the number of 100,000 includes many Japanese pirate gangs under their wings. They obey orders in name, but more often they act independently.

Among them, the most powerful Japanese pirate was Wang Zhi, who had only 30,000 true followers, and was on par with Zheng Zhilong.

However, Zheng Zhilong's fleet was more powerful.

Everyone knows that Japanese pirates are good at land battles but not at sea battles. When Wang Zhi and Xu Hai were plundering, the southeastern coastal defense was empty.

If Yu Dayou could have reorganized the Zhejiang Weisuo Navy and resisted the Japanese pirates at sea, the Japanese chaos might not have spread to the entire Ming coastal area.

In Zheng Zhilong's era, his subordinates had completely transformed into a pirate group, which was strong in sea battles. Their land battles against the weak Weisuo soldiers were also good, but that was all.

Therefore, Zheng Chenggong, with tens of thousands of troops, was still easily defeated by the Manchu and Han Eight Banners.

It was only by relying on the sharp firepower of warships that the Zheng family could stay in a corner and barely hold Taiwan.

As for recovering Taiwan, well, that was because there was no way out, and secondly, there were too few Dutch on the island, and in that era of slow information transmission and traffic restrictions, they were slowly worn down.

The Zheng family was able to create such a pirate group, not by making money through smuggling and business, but also by the bribes from other sea merchants.

You should know that at that time, Zheng Zhilong offered a protection fee of up to 3,000 taels of silver to each sea ship, and as long as he paid the silver, he could get his flag.

With the flag, merchant ships could roam the East Asian waters without worrying about being robbed by pirates.

Even the "sea coachman" of the time, the Netherlands, had to pay money to buy the flag from Zheng Zhilong for the safety of merchant ships on the East Asian seas.

With a large amount of silver and money, the Zheng family became the well-deserved first family on the southeast coast in the late Ming Dynasty, not by the official positions conferred by the Ming court, but by the navy fleet that had expanded to a scale of 100,000.

The root of all this was the Liaoluo Bay Battle, which was rarely recorded in history books.

In this battle, Zheng Zhilong commanded almost all of his heavy artillery warships and the Fujian Navy of the Ming Dynasty to participate in the battle, while the opponents were the Dutch fleet and Liu Xiang's pirate group, whose national strength was growing rapidly.

The Liaoluo Bay Battle was a self-defense counterattack war against the Dutch colonists by the Ming Dynasty. Zheng Zhilong widely absorbed the advanced experience and technology of the Western Navy, formed a powerful navy, and set a precedent for Eastern countries to defeat Western colonial countries in naval battles.

Compared with the history of Western colonial expansion, Zheng Zhilong and his Zheng family, who commanded the Liaoluo Bay Battle, were the representatives of China's maritime merchant forces. They were pirates with independent armies and independent spheres of influence, and could even directly confront Western colonial forces on the ocean.

Their history of prosperity is exactly a replica of the history of prosperity of countless Western maritime merchant forces in China. In a sense, the growth of the Zheng family fleet and the attack on Western colonial forces were the beginning of the Chinese people's thinking beyond the mainland and the opening up of thousands of miles of sea borders.