[Because of the loss of data and documents, I waited so long to update, and finally recovered everything, or a big chapter, thank you for the support of book friends, and ask for votes by the way]

When they came out of the residence of Changchang Zhicang next to St. Augustine's Cathedral, Li Siya and He Yi breathed a sigh of relief, and finally found out some useful information from each other.

Naturally, the Senate would not put the source of information on just such a person, and around Manila, the senators' spies spread out in various forms, and the Chinese, Christians, Visayans, and even Tagalogs all helped the Great Song Dynasty collect information without their knowledge. The patriarchs have always pursued that more than 90% of the information must come from daily public information, and this method of collection is undoubtedly extremely safe, which is one of the reasons why Li Siya is willing to accept the senate's encirclement.

The most doted daughter of a wealthy merchant and sea lord in the Hirado family, after returning to Japan last year, boasted of the great power of the Great Song Dynasty in front of Li Dan, and after the beginning of the spring, she connected with the Canton Station, and later claimed to have learned of the possible military action of the Fubo army against the Spaniards through personal connections.

Li Dan naturally hated the Spaniards because of his early experience, and he was happy to see Manila being targeted by a powerful force that had just emerged in this sea. Although the identity and temperament of the maritime merchant made him not desperate for the original abuse, he might as well take his fleet to Dagou (note: in the area of present-day Kaohsiung) in the name of buying deer skins and timber before the rainy season came.

Li Siya privately made a promise to the Senate on behalf of her father that if the Fubo army really wanted to attack Manila, the Li family was willing to help and contact the Chinese merchants in Manila, on the condition that the Li family fleet would account for at least three to forty percent of the smuggling trade from China's coastal areas to Manila in the future. For such conditions, Gu Ziming's side is naturally indispensable, after all, this kind of thing has always relied on strength to speak, and the promise may not be fulfilled, for these forces that take the initiative to come closer, we must listen to their words and watch their deeds, as for Li Siya's cooperation later, presumably the Li family also understands this truth.

It's just that Zhicang has a special identity, as a person who has the blessing of Philip III and Paul V, his legend may not even be able to have Governor Alonso, and it is even envied by everyone in Manila, so his value is naturally bullish. Due to his special status and His Excellency the Governor's great interest in the Land of the Rising Sun, which had not yet been lost, there was great expectation of Shikura as the representative of Kiritan, which was also a political continuation of the empire's unrealistic illusions about the influence of the Mutsu lords in the shogunate.

But there is no doubt that Zhikura had some privileges, which during his days of travel between Manila and Cavite apparently included privileges of access and abode to the fortress of Cavite and the fortress of Cavite, for which the tax collector of Manila may have received special attention from the governor, for the governor and his warriors did not seem to have paid even half a riyal for it. As it turned out, the fort of San Tiago to the north of the royal city had been visited more than once, and these were all privileges that the colonists usually had.

This is a kind of show of power by the Spaniards to the Eastern believers, but it is also what Zhikura is happy to see, everything that Luzon has experienced will be his capital after returning to Japan, perhaps the strength of Spain can move the seventeenth master of the Date family, and the attitude of the shogunate is not very clear, but this information will be his reliance, and it is the most important wealth of his seafaring career in these years.

…………

A dilapidated horse-drawn carriage exited the north gate of the royal city and headed east along the muddy road outside the cliff wall of Fort Saint-Gabriel on the south bank of the Bashi River, and both the driver and the passengers seemed indifferent to the indigenous maidens picking the rhizomes of the pink neela grass by the river, the source of the dye from which the city got its name because of the flood of Chinese textiles in the market, and only the indigenous people were slightly interested in these things because of their traditions and beliefs.

On the left side of the road, 100 meters away from the north bank of the Bashi River, there is a Chinese community called Jiannei (note: Parian, the Chinese community in Manila, the natives call it 'Balian'), after more than ten years of restoration, although it has not yet reached the original scale, it is also a place where hundreds of shops and thousands of people are located, and most of the Fujian people who have not returned to their hometown on the mainland during the typhoon season will choose to spend the winter here, and some have settled here for several generations.

Officials in Manila charged the Chinese who stayed in the area a residence permit or license fee of 64 riyals or 8 pesos per person per year, in addition to a tribute of 5 riyals and a house tax of 12 riyals per year, which were discounted in half by the natives and Chezhitan, while the Spaniards were exempted from paying a quarter or even all of them. This alone can squeeze a lot of income from the hands of the Chinese, not counting the private extortion and extortion of some villains, so it is no wonder that even the bishop of Manila could not stand it, and complained to Philip III in a letter that the local officials treated the Chinese "too harshly".

It's just that more than ten years have passed, and in addition to the fixed life of sunrise and sunset, the Chinese who settled here seem to have gradually forgotten the cruel memory of the rulers of this place, and I am afraid that the only thing that still reminds them is the dark cannon muzzles of the few fortresses on the north wall of the royal city on the south bank.

Sixteen years later, these powerful guns were still faithfully aimed at the unarmed but unsettling Chinese on the north shore, and their growth was so rapid that the Spaniards were suspicious. Even though Manila relies on the Chinese in the stream for half of its tax revenue every year, and new houses have already been built on the houses that were destroyed by artillery on that night 16 years ago, the Spaniards still need to tell the Han Chinese and the natives in this way who is the real owner of the Philippines.

On the one hand, they were obsessed with their own authority, and on the other hand, they had to admit that Luzon's prosperity was due to the Chinese diaspora, and the Spaniards maintained Manila's deformed rule in the midst of this kind of gain and loss, or they were a little too weak-minded.

After rounding the four bastions on the east side of the royal city, the carriage turned south, walked a stone-paved road between the moat and the breastwork, and passed through many neighborhoods of indigenous and foreign merchants, before finally throwing the 'city of eternal loyalty and nobility' (Ciudad Insigne y Siempre Leal in Spanish) of the eastern part of the empire, with its 22-foot-high stone walls and the huge coat of arms on its gates, far below the horizon.

Coconut groves and palm trees began to appear in the window from time to time, and this is the daily routine of Luzon most of the time, and the crosses that hurriedly passed and erected in the countryside with their heads bowed were nothing more than foreign objects. Replacing the houses with the Tagalog and Bonbanja villages, where crowds of onlookers can occasionally be seen on tall wooden stakes under the eaves, the usual entertainment is the place, and the fighting birds of prey make the spectators more enthusiastic on the rare sunny day of the rainy season, and this change of atmosphere makes the passengers in the carriages begin to relax.

The carriage traveled for nearly two hours, and then came to a halt in front of a col, a Tagalog-style compound with a wooden roof built on a two-story platform through the wooden walls, which was obviously not an ordinary home.

Li Siya and He Yi left the groom and their entourage to wait outside, and they walked into the courtyard.

From their expressions, it was clear that they knew the owner of the place, and the reaction of the janitor confirmed this.

Xie Ming was already waiting in the house, to be honest, these days are much more leisurely than when he was in Borneo, there is no obsession with a seat, there is more freedom in this life, in addition to the weather and worries about the environment, the work is also going smoothly.

He only needs to live in seclusion in this other business arranged by Mu Xing, relying on the radio and eyeline, and can send enough information back to Brunei every day.

As the target of the Spaniards in this area, the treatment of the natives was obviously much higher than that of the Chinese, which is why Xie Ming was unwilling to put himself within the range of the Spaniards' artillery.

Li Siya reported to him what Zhicang knew, and after combining it with several other sources, Xie Ming had a clear enough idea of Manila's military power, and this outline was enough to support the operation when it was displayed on a precisely drawn map, and the only thing to worry about at the moment was the bad weather during the typhoon season. This is also the reason why he chose this place to live, although the seaside is convenient, but after all, it is also accompanied by the risk of typhoons, this is not the kind of wind under the wind in Brunei, the cruelty of nature is once a year, and traces can be seen everywhere.

"Miss Li, the old man in the stream, has already met?"

"I met yesterday, and although the uncle didn't agree immediately, he didn't mean to refuse." Li Siya's words were relaxed, and she didn't feel uneasy about the other party's hesitation.

"It's good to have that attitude." Xie Ming nodded with satisfaction, if the other party agreed to this kind of thing, it would make people suspicious.

Nowadays, there are still five or six thousand Chinese who have settled in the Jiannei, except for a few wealthy businessmen, most of them are engaged in some small businesses, and they have formed a city in the Jiannei, and all kinds of urban services in Manila, whether it is agriculture, industry, commerce, and medicine, are inseparable from these ordinary people from the Ming Dynasty. Whether Manila's raw silk market or all kinds of restaurants and restaurants are there, the city gate of Henan is wide open during the day, except for the Chinese merchants who carry their burdens into the city to sell vegetables and food, the most seen are the Spaniards and natives who take a boat to the market in Hebei Jiannei to buy drunk. After the last massacre, some Westerners felt that not only were the mainland merchants not able to arrive, but even a shaver could not be found, which also shows the fierce inwardness of these colonists.

Li Dan was also doing business in Manila that year, and he was one of the Chinese businessmen who rebelled because they could not bear the exploitation and abuse of the Westerners.

He did make some friends in the time of tribulation, and now there are still those who are still doing business in the stream, and they have always had business contacts, because although Xie Ming did not attach much importance to the military strength of the Li family, he also needed his influence among the Chinese merchants. After all, the transportation across the Bashi River is inconvenient, and under the deterrence of Spanish artillery fire, the patriarchs are not familiar with the place of life, so it is not easy to go deep into the process to plan and mobilize, you need to know that the Chinese uprising failed, and many of them were because there were people in the middle of the head and rat at both ends, so it is best to mobilize the Chinese errand to the Li family to do, and it is just right to see if this Li gang is really as good as his baby daughter said.

He Yi has also privately contacted some Portuguese and Macao businessmen these days, and although he did not say it explicitly, his attitude towards the Portuguese is still very clear. Ostensibly, the two countries are now co-hosts, but the Portuguese have always been wary of their monopoly on entrepot trade with China, and even the Spaniards cannot easily get their hands on it. Over the years, the Spaniards repeatedly wanted to participate directly in the trade of the mainland, but the Portuguese used the upper channels of Madrid and the influence of the Jesuit priests on the Chinese government to stifle their efforts in the cradle, and in the early years, the greedy Portuguese merchants even sent more than 600 tons of smuggling merchant ships to Acapulco to trade alone, so the relationship between Manila and Macao was not very harmonious in private.

Regarding the Senate's targeting of Manila, He Yi does not have too many entanglements in his heart, he is now doing a business that is universal, and he has interests in it, and it is not too much to do some superficial intelligence gathering, and the Portuguese and Macao authorities and the Jesuits have been doing the same thing, but they are not as meticulous as the leaders.

And for him, the Jesuits who usually rely on their knowledge to 'show the glory of the Lord' (Note: Ad Majorem dei Gloriam' in Macao are more lovely and respectable than the Dominican monks in Manila, who are full of 'non-believers are punished', and from this point of view alone, the Jesuit priests are more like the omniscient leaders, and it is no wonder that Father Lu Ruohan and many Jesuit monks can get along with the leaders on Qiongzhou Island very well.

Moreover, he has never been to Brunei, nor has he experienced the battle of Yuzhou that day, at most he has only heard sporadically about the deeds of some chiefs in Sanya, and he has not seen it in person, and he lacks a real understanding of the force of the Senate. In his opinion, Manila's royal city of Spain can be described as impregnable, and it is not easy to capture it, and he even reminded Xie Ming out of kindness, but the other party looks indifferent, and the leaders he has contacted are always so confident, so he will not say more, anyway, Chief Xie also said that as long as Manila is occupied, he and the Senate of the Jesuits will protect their commercial interests here in an appropriate way.

After sending off the outsiders, Xie Ming came to the back of the security room alone, where there were several veterans who came to Manila together, all of whom were military personnel responsible for ensuring the safety of the trip.

"Tell me what you think, Lao Bei, militarily speaking, you are the most vocal among us."

Beiwei has never been out on a mission as the head of security of the Labuan headquarters before, and this time he specially followed because of the significance of the Luzon strategy, which is his first 'local' outside operation.

He was not polite, "I have added the information of the past few days, and if you calculate more, there are about 5,000 troops in the entire Manila area, of which there are no more than 600 real Spanish musketeers, 1,000 Che Chi Tan warriors, 400 black infantry, and the rest are all local natives, mainly the Bangbanjas, as well as Tagalog warriors and archers from Visayas, if I want to say that we can handle this force." ”

"I heard that this time the Fubo Army is preparing to use six Tiangang-class warships and three Xuanwu-class troop carriers, the six Tiangang-class battleships can carry more than 600 Fubo soldiers, and sixty percent of them can go ashore to fight. Three troop transports can transport nearly 800 people of the back army without sailors, and it is enough to deal with these enemies in the field with our army's ability, after all, those indigenous servants are also used to fighting with the wind. ”

Another patriarch said that he had a reason for this reasoning, according to what he had learned before, the Spanish musketeers in the suppression of the overseas Chinese uprising sixteen years ago were only three or four hundred, and in addition to the eight hundred Japanese mercenaries, the indigenous servant army was effective, and the Spaniards themselves admitted that the more than 2,000 samurai of Tagalog and Bangbana were very important in the battle against the Chinese. However, once the rebels were defeated, the tribes that had been watching the style also joined in, and the number of native soldiers who chased the Chinese into the mountains quickly increased to six or seven thousand, including hundreds of Moro Hui, who were regarded as pagans by the Spaniards.

And among these indigenous servants, the Bonbanja people are the most hardworking, and this part is naturally more valued by the Spaniards after the war, but if the rebels can defeat the Western thieves at the beginning, those tribes will not dare to tear their faces and end up one after another.

Xie Ming said: "Since we are not afraid of field battles, we must seriously consider the issue of landing, as long as we can establish a camp, then the rest will be easy." ”

"By visiting the witnesses of the last Manila massacre, it is certain that the 12 cannons of the fortress of San Tiago and Fort San Avrier are sufficient to cover the four core streets of the entire stream, so we have every reason to believe that Manila is capable of blockading the entire Bashi estuary, and landing in the stream poses a great threat to the Fubo fleet." Moreover, Manila's stone walls are more than two meters thick, coupled with the fortress structure and auxiliary defense system, it may be difficult to rely on the naval guns we currently use to directly destroy the gun emplacements. ”

"What do you mean?" Xie Ming naturally understood that the view of the northern latitude would probably end up being the main choice of the Senate.

The tall man in front of him, who had served in the army for several years, looked at the map several times, and suddenly knocked his index knuckle on the map as if he had made a decision, but when Xie Ming looked at it, it was a port southeast of Manila.

"I propose landing in Cavite."

[References]

1、《Southeast Asia in the Age of Commerce 1450-1680》Anthony Reid

2, "Sea Language" Huang Zhen

3. "Nanyang Yearbook"

4. Maritime Trade between China and Manila in the Late Sixteenth and Early Seventeenth Centuries, by Li Jinming

5. "Macao-Manila Trade in the First Half of the 17th Century" by Zhao Wenhong and Wu Yingquan

6. "Zhucheng Weekly Consultation" is strict and simple

7、《The Rise of Ayudhya》Charnvit Kasetsiri

8, "History of Overseas Chinese in Nanyang" Chen Bisheng

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11. The Influence of Chinese Immigrants on Southeast Asian Languages and Daily Life in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries by Zheng Fuhong

12、《Statistics for Ship Arrivalsand Departures 1565-1815（by Year and by Decade）》

13、《Alphabetized List of Galleonsand Other Ships(with voyagedates)》

14、《Summary In form ation of Galleon Arrivalsand Departures 1565 through 1815》

15、《The Manila Galleon》Jason Schoonover

16, "Date Jijia Record"

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24、《Recit de l'entree solemnelle et remarquable faite a Rome,par Dom Philippe Francois Faxicura》Abraham Savgrain

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