Chapter 370: Zheng Chenggong's surprise

Just when Lin Xiao led the fleet into the port, Zheng Chenggong, the king of Yanping County of the Ming Dynasty, who was twenty-eight years old at the time, was waiting for the arrival of the guests in the internal signing room of the Anping Mansion.

The handwritten letter of Lord Qu Shiyun had been delivered the day before yesterday, and Zheng Chenggong learned that Lord Qu, who had been in Haojing for many days, would go north with the Marquis of Qinchuan to visit in person by sea, and it was a matter of these two days.

The army under the command of the Marquis of Qinchuan, after launching the Eastern Expedition from Guangdong to Fujian, attacked the city all the way, and quickly recovered the Zhangzhou Mansion, just a few days ago, broke through the Nanjing defense line of the Tartars and entered the Quanzhou Mansion.

After they bypassed Tong'an, Jinjiang, Nan'an and other places, the forward battalion had already reached Dehua County, and a letter from Master Qu was sent by a special person.

Regarding this born Qinchuan Marquis, as well as his invincible army, Zheng Chenggong had heard many rumors as early as a few years ago.

Although it is rumored to be miraculous, there are many strange things, such as a huge iron ship...... However, because these rumors are full of adjectives such as "huge", "magical", "incredible", and "too many to count", Zheng Chenggong can only be skeptical.

Indeed, at his level of cognition, the rumors about the captives are a bit too absurd.

To this end, he also specially sent his subordinates to collect news from the ocean of Guangdong.

From this, he has learned that the achievements of the captive army in Guangxi and other places are probably true.

At least, the extremely fierce Kong Youde was indeed killed by this group of people near Nanning.

What surprised Zheng Chenggong even more was that just over a month ago, they had arrived at Haojing, and captured Guangzhou in one fell swoop, and then recovered the provinces of Guangdong.

What made Zheng Chenggong even more shocked was that, according to a detailed report, this Qinchuan Marquis actually boiled the Franc machine man of Hao Jing, announced the recovery of the sovereignty of Hao Jing, and sank several gunboats of the Franc machine man.

At this time, Zheng Chenggong couldn't sit still.

You must know that the Franc machine man has been entrenched in the mirror for hundreds of years, and if the news is transmitted back to Manila or the West, and the Franc machine man sends a powerful fleet to retaliate, it will be another bloody storm.

It's just that compared with the news from the front line the day before yesterday, Zheng Chenggong's previous shock was pale.

Because, more than one subordinate sent someone to report that the army that swept through thousands of troops was actually only a few thousand, and in fact, the forward battalion that killed Dehua was only a few hundred.

You must know that although Chen Jin, the governor of Zhejiang and Fujian in Tartar, has already fled back to Zhejiang, the first line of Dehua and Yongchun is personally in charge of Zhao Guozuo, the governor of Fujian.

This Zhao Guozuo is his old opponent of Zheng Chenggong, and he has been pressing the border with a large army before, firmly suppressing him in Nan'an, Jinjiang and Tong'an, if it were not for the Jinxia Sailor as the backing, I am afraid that even this bit of territory would not be able to be kept.

I want to work hard for many years, and my generals are like clouds, in addition to the water division, there are more than 10,000 troops on land and light, but people only rely on a few hundred people, and they will kill the heavy Tartar soldiers.

At this point, the panic in Zheng Chenggong's heart was beyond measure.

He found that when this Qinchuan Marquis really showed his fangs, he was shocked to realize that the information he had before was too little, and at best it was only some sporadic rumors.

In addition, he received information that the huge iron ship had passed through the waters of southern Fujian all the way east just after the New Year, apparently to Japan, and that there had been a small naval battle with the Dutch people at that time.

This news made Zheng Chenggong full of doubts, why did the people of Qinchuan Marquis suddenly go to Japan?

Could it be that they also take a fancy to the fat piece of trade with Japan, and they also want to get a foot in it?

……

However, at this moment, Zheng Chenggong couldn't think about it so much.

Because, in his hand, he had a secret letter in his hand.

This secret letter was brought by a smuggling ship that had just returned from Dayuan, and the person who wrote the letter was named Guo Huaiyi.

This Guo Huaiyi, originally a native of Tong'an, Quanzhou Prefecture, is now the leader of the Han immigrants in the Tainan area, and at the same time, he used to be Zheng Zhilong's subordinate and the agent of their Zheng family in Taiwan.

On the surface, Guo Huaiyi was just the head of the local immigrant village, Youchexing Village, but in fact, the leaders of many nearby villages listened to him and enjoyed a high reputation among the local Han immigrants.

Speaking of which, the development of Zheng Chenggong's father, Zheng Zhilong, has a lot to do with inheriting the legacy of the great pirate Yan Siqi, and the power of the big man is also one of the legacies left by Yan Siqi.

At the beginning, Yan Siqi was the lord of the sea rampant in the Sino-Japanese seas, engaged in maritime trade and plunder, and at that time, the young Zheng Zhilong was one of the ten leaders under him.

Yan Siqi, like many famous sea lords at the time, initially used Hirado, Japan as his main base.

Japan at this time was in the early days of the Edo shogunate.

Due to the ban on religion, the shogun began to implement a policy of seclusion and seclusion, stipulating that Japanese were not allowed to go abroad, and that Japanese who were abroad were not allowed to return to China, and expelled all Franco-machine merchants and missionaries from the country.

The Netherlands were a Protestant country, and they were approved by the shogunate for their strategy of trading only and not proselytizing, and Dutch merchants had supported the shogunate's suppression of peasant uprisings, so the shogunate granted permission to trade with the Dutch.

In addition, Japan's traditional foreign trading countries, the Ming Dynasty and Korea, can still trade with Japan.

However, trade with Japan, whether it was the Netherlands, the Ming Dynasty, or Korea, was strictly regulated, and trade could only be carried out in Nagasaki.

However, at that time, some daimyo (i.e., lords) on the western coast of Japan still privately traded with Western merchants in order to increase their economic power and obtain advanced weapons, and Nagasaki and Hirado were still a paradise for maritime merchants for a time.

Later, as the authority of the shogunate continued to increase and the ban became more severe, Yan Siqi took precautions and considered going elsewhere to establish his own base.

There were many options to gain a foothold on the islands off the coast of China, but at that time, the remnants of the Ming Dynasty still existed, and the military power did not decline to the point of being as vulnerable as it was later.

The islands along the coast of Fujian and Zhejiang cannot be touched, even like the Penghu Islands, where the Dutch have built fortifications several times, but they have been expelled by the Ming army.

Therefore, they can only choose overseas islands, and the "Outer Land" members have entered their sight in this way.

In this way, in August of the fourth year of the Apocalypse (1624), Yan Siqi led his subordinates and a large number of immigrants to Dayuan Bengang (now Beigang Town) to land.

Yan Siqi was very excited to see that the island was fertile and beautiful, and a large area of wilderness had not been cleared, and he was determined to expand his territory here and do a career.

Therefore, he led the crowd to cut down wood and build a squatter village, and then continued to recruit immigrants from the mainland to pioneer and cultivate here, mainly planting rice, hemp, and cane sugar and other crops.

In September of the following year, when Yan Siqi was hunting in Zhuluo Mountain, it is said that he died of a cold in the local area, and Zheng Zhilong, who was only twenty-one years old, inherited Yan Siqi's position as the leader and received most of Yan Siqi's inheritance.

However, after Zheng Zhilong inherited the position of leader, he did not put much effort into the expansion and reclamation of the Dayuan, so that the Dutch expanded their power in Dayuan rapidly, and the Spaniards also intervened, which made the situation of the Dayuan complicated.

At that time, Zheng Zhilong was busy fighting with various maritime forces and competing for maritime supremacy, and he was unwilling to wade into troubled waters, so he once decided to abandon his immigration stronghold in Dayuan and withdraw to Fujian.

Later, because of one thing, he gave up this idea and continued to run the big business.