Chapter 369 Zheng Family Fleet

After struggling for two days and two nights in the bitter wind and rain, on the morning of 25 May, the fleet finally arrived at Nanao Island off the coast of Chaozhou.

From there, if you continue to go north, you will enter the southern Fujian sea, and the Taiwan Strait will be in front of you.

Although the wind and waves had weakened a lot, Lin Xiao still decided that the fleet would enter the port for a while.

After battling the wind and waves for so long, the soldiers were exhausted, and after entering the Taiwan Strait, they might encounter the Dutch warships at any time.

As early as more than a month ago, Xia Bomin's men had recovered Nanao Island, and now, more than 300 Ming troops under Wang Xing's command were stationed here, and as soon as the fleet entered the harbor, there were soldiers at the dock to greet them.

On the island, Lin Xiao learned that at the beginning of the year, Zheng Chenggong's fleet had tried to capture here, but was stubbornly resisted by the Qing army and retreated to Jinxia.

Zheng Chenggong's move shows that he has some understanding of the current situation and has made efforts to cooperate.

……

The next morning, the weather finally cleared, and after restarting, the speed of the ship really increased a lot.

In the early morning of 27 May, when the east was just showing the whiteness of the fish's belly, the fleet successfully arrived off Kinmen Island.

After the ships slowed down and approached and lined up neatly, Lin Xiao ordered the fleet to slowly sail along the eastern waterway to Jintouao Harbor.

Standing on the stern of the "Qinzhou", Lin Xiao saw at a glance that there were many ship masts in the harbor, flags fluttering, and hundreds of ships of all sizes parked all over the ocean.

The wharf was crowded with people, and the shore was full of barracks with flags and soldiers wearing Ming army uniforms.

When he saw that there were at least seven or eight large gunboats among them, Lin Xiao secretly admired that the Zheng family's First Fleet in East Asia really lived up to its reputation.

At the beginning, Zheng Chenggong's father, Zheng Zhilong, was born as a pirate and maritime merchant, entrenched in Fujian for decades, almost monopolized the maritime trade of the Ming Dynasty, and the wealth he amassed was extremely amazing.

At the peak of foreign trade, the Zheng family had a monthly income of nearly 400,000 taels of silver, of which at least half of the net profits, and all their family property could be as huge as 30 or 40 million.

As a result, Zheng Zhilong also built a huge fleet of more than 1,000 large and small ships to protect his ocean-going caravans from the attacks of his old rival Liu Xiang and other pirates.

It's just that naval warships are definitely gold-swallowing monsters, and the construction cycle is particularly long, so there were not many large warships in this fleet at the beginning, and most of them were "junk ships" of two or three hundred tons.

Later, the "red-haired" Dutch stole the big man, rampant along the coast of Fujian, not only smuggling, intercepting Chinese merchant ships, and even shelling China's coastal prefectures and counties, Zheng Zhilong, who accepted Zhao'an and returned to the imperial court, lost a lot of money in the battle with the Dutch, because of the ship's snacks, and could only rely on the ship's multiple group fights and fire attacks to win, so he did not hesitate to build a large Galen gunboat of 1,000 tons.

These warships made a lot of reference to the shipbuilding technology of the Francophone man, which was definitely the most advanced in China at that time, and its combat effectiveness was only slightly inferior to that of Western gunboats because of its poor artillery technology, but it was much higher than the warships of Chen Qice's sailors.

Lin Xiao knew that among Chen Qice's sailors, there were many small fast boats with more than 100 tons, and there was not even a single cannon on board, so they could only rely on the traditional gang-jumping tactics, allowing the soldiers to brave the artillery fire to get close to the enemy ships and forcibly jump gangs to fight hand-to-hand, which was difficult to compete with such advanced gunboats.

It is a pity that when Zheng Zhilong surrendered to the Qing Dynasty five years ago, he took away hundreds of advanced warships, so that the Qing army, which was originally the most bad at water warfare, trained a large naval division in a very short period of time.

Zheng Chenggong failed to dissuade his father, so he had to leave Kinmen with some soldiers, and then continued to incorporate Zheng Zhilong's old department, began to recruit troops and horses in various coastal areas, built warships, and raised thousands of troops in Nanao.

In the second year, Zheng Chenggong swore to oppose the Qing Dynasty in the name of "loyalty and filial piety to the general's criminal and ministers' surnames" in Xiaojinmen, and officially raised a decent team of sailors.

Therefore, in just a few years, Zheng Cheng's function has rebuilt a fleet of this scale, which shows that this person is not only loyal and courageous, but also has an extraordinary ability to lead the army.

……

After entering Wai Tau Bay, the fleet anchored in the depths of the bay under the command of the pilot boat.

Soon, several Zheng family's small boats quickly approached, and a small leader quickly boarded the deck of the "Qinzhou".

After a few brief conversations with the people on deck, he hurriedly climbed down the rope ladder on the side of the ship, and the dinghy hurriedly turned the bow of the boat and rowed towards Anping City.

About two hours later, Lin Xiao and Qu Shiyun had already sat on the filial piety hall of Zheng Chenggong's private house......

Zheng Chenggong is a native of Nan'an County, Quanzhou Prefecture, Fujian, and his ancestral home is Gushi, Henan, but at this time, his Shuai Mansion is not in Nan'an, nor in Kinmen, but in Anping City, which is not far from the harbor.

At the beginning, the great pirate Zheng Zhilong was not satisfied with the geographical location of Nan'an City.

As a sea tycoon, he valued a good port, so he finally chose to build a walled city in Anping Town, Jinjiang County, as his main stronghold.

Anping Town also belongs to Quanzhou Prefecture, but its location is not in Quanzhou Bay, where the Jinjiang River flows, but in Weitou Bay, which faces Kinmen Island.

Anping Town, called Anhai in the Song Dynasty, was renamed Anping in the Ming Dynasty, and it was not enough to have a "An" word, and the word "Ping" was added, probably because this place was often harassed by pirates.

In the 37th year of Jiajing, this place was attacked by the Japanese and suffered so much that although it was more than 100 years ago, this place is still talking about the change of the Japanese color.

Before accepting Zhao'an, Zheng Zhilong continued to attack the traditional foreign trade port of Yuegang in Fujian (the mouth of the Jiulong River in present-day Zhangzhou), completely destroying the foreign trade of Yuegang, thus realizing his attempt to transfer the foreign trade port to Anping and Zhongzuo (now Xiamen Island) under his control.

Zheng Zhilong overhauled the city wall of Anping and almost rebuilt a new city, because his choice of Anping as his base was deliberate.

The town of Anping, together with the Zhongzuo Institute and the large and small Kinmen Islands under his control, formed a tightly controlled Weitou Bay, and the enemy had to take great risks if he wanted to attack here.

Since then, Anping has become a military base for Zheng Zhilong's self-defense, as well as a base for maritime trade, where merchant ships from Japan, Manila and other places came to trade.

Of course, in addition to building the city wall and dredging the wharf, his own enjoyment has not been left behind, since the spring of the third year of Chongzhen, Zheng Zhilong has built his own mansion on a large scale in Anping.

At the beginning, this large-scale luxury mansion, it took more than three years to complete, according to the relevant historical records, "Zheng Mansion is located in the north of Anping Bridge, west from Xidai to Xigang, north to Xi'antou, south of Anping Bridge, straight to the five ports, covering an area of 138 acres...... The main structure is thirteen five-bay rooms of the mountain type, the three-way gate double fire lane and the five-entry courtyard, the wing halls, pavilions, pavilions and pavilions on both sides are opposite each other, and the ring is listed as a barrier...... There is "Dunren Pavilion" in the east, "Taiyun Building" in the west, the front hall is the "Catholic Church", and the middle hall is the "Filial Piety Hall...... The circumference is protected by walls, and the hills, pavilions, fine houses, ponds, small bridges, winding paths, beautiful trees, and exotic flowers and grasses are sparse ......"

When the Qing army invaded Fujian, the old house of the Zheng family in Nan'an was destroyed, and even Zheng Chenggong's biological mother died in Nan'an, but Anping and Jinxia were not conquered, and they have always been the base of Zheng Chenggong and others.

……

Thank you for the reward of "Red Boom Trance"! Thank you dear!

(End of chapter)