In March of the sixth year of Chongzhen, with the support of Chinese maritime merchants, the Sultan of Aceh Iskanda. Muda again sent 20,000 troops across the Strait of Malacca to attack the city of Malacca in revenge for the defeat of the Portuguese a few years earlier.

In order to be able to raise the cost and weapons of this expedition, especially the 38 artillery pieces for the siege, the Sultan of Aceh not only signed a treaty with the Chinese, recognizing the Kingdom of Johor's right to rule the islands of Pahang, Perak, Kedah, Johor and Riau, but also mortgaged the oil exploration rights of Sumatra to the Four Seas Trading Company.

Sultan Abdul of Johor. Jalil. In order to thank China for helping Johor gain independence, King Shah III ceded the Kedah area and the islands near Temasek Island to China, and borrowed a large sum of money from the Four Seas Trading Company to build a guard to protect himself, using the country's tin mining rights as collateral.

At the suggestion of Su Yue, the representative of the Sihai Trading Company in Nanyang and the Ming ambassador to Thailand, Johor and Aceh, the guard recruited two-thirds of the Chinese immigrants and adopted the Ming army's training methods.

At the same time that the Sultan of Aceh was besieging the city of Malacca, taking advantage of the fact that the Acehnese had no time to take care of it, Chen Zhenji led a fleet to break into the mouth of the Hamkrang River and expel the few Portuguese guarding the city, thus taking the Selangor area into his hands. Selangor's land is rich in tin mines, but it has been under competition from countries such as Aceh, Johor and Portugal, so the region has been barren in recent decades.

In this way, the Ming Dynasty not only has Singapore Island at the eastern exit of the Strait of Malacca, but also has a piece of land in the middle of the strait. Borneo to the east of the strait and Kedah to the west of the strait are sufficient to provide sufficient human and material resources for these two lands.

Borneo is a large island with mountains in the middle and plains all around, except for the Bo Ni Kingdom in the north, the Sukardana Kingdom in the west and the Machen Kingdom in the south, the rest of the island is basically covered by primeval forests, and you can only rely on river transportation to go deep into the island.

However, the southern part of Borneo is mostly lowland swamps, and the areas suitable for development are also in the west and north. Having established a Batavia foothold on the island of Java, the Dutch naturally did not remain indifferent to this huge neighboring island. It's just that the population of the Netherlands is too small, and there are too many areas to control, so it has only just achieved a dominant position in the Kingdom of Mazen, and there is no time to take care of the west and north of Borneo.

But for the Ming Dynasty, population is not a problem at all. Even before the sea ban was opened, there were more than 100,000 Ming immigrants who spontaneously went to various parts of Southeast Asia. When the sea ban was opened, the landless poor along the coast began to move to Borneo in large numbers.

The Bo Ni Kingdom has always been deferential to the Ming Dynasty, so Yang Tiansheng and Chen Xinji's immigration and colonization undertakings in northern Borneo are actually relatively mild. However, the Sukardana kingdom in the west of Borneo was extremely wary of Ming immigrants, and the sultan who ruled the country had been eye-browling with Aceh in Sumatra under religious factors, and seemed to want to merge with Aceh to form a great sultanate.

So last year, Chen Zhenji and the Chinese immigrants from the Bo Ni Kingdom and the Sukardana Kingdom conquered the Sukardana Kingdom, abolished the sultanate system, and established the West Borneo Special Region here, which was under the jurisdiction of the Ambuna Town Governorate, and the capital of the country was renamed Pontianak.

After Chen Xinji captured the kingdom of Sukardana, it immediately aroused the alarm of the Dutch, and the Dutch merchant ships once sailed to the sea off Pontianak, which seemed to be a threatening move. However, the Dutch's spread was too large, especially the Japanese conquest of Sado Island, which dispersed the power of Batavia.

In the end, Batavia sent representatives to negotiate with the Ambuna town guard to take Palembang-Belitung Island-Kedah State as the dividing line, and the force of the two sides could not cross this line without the permission of the other side.

Although Batavia gave up the rights and interests north of the line in exchange for the security of the Spice Islands and Batavia, the Dutch became wary of Chinese immigrants. Although Batavia still needs Chinese immigrants to develop the nearby swamps, they are no longer as unscrupulous as before.

As for Chinese immigrants outside Batavia, the Dutch resorted to restrictive, exclusionary, and non-public deportations. As a result, at the end of Chongzhen's year, nearly 3,000 Chinese immigrants were forced to migrate from Machen, Semarang, Surabaya, Makassar and other places to the Pontianak area.

The Anbuna town guard did not stop the small moves of the Dutch, because even though a large number of immigrants were brought in from the country and many serfs were purchased from Annam, the Chinese population was still insufficient to develop the northern and western parts of Borneo and the regions of Singapore, Kedah and Songkhla.

There are nearly 400,000 hectares of land waiting to be developed in northern Borneo alone, not to mention the discovery of gold mining in West Borneo. Last year alone, the Four Seas Trading Company transported 30 ships and more than 10,000 workers from the country to Borneo.

The Chinese immigrants driven out by the Dutch not only filled Borneo's labor force, but also brought pepper cultivation technology, which made Borneo a new industry in addition to logging, mining, coconut picking, and farming.

As for the Kedah region on the west coast of the Mara Peninsula, it is still a barren swampland, but it is adjacent to the Songkhla region on the east coast. After the Four Seas Trading Company took over the land on behalf of the Ming Dynasty, it did not rush ashore to develop it, but first occupied Penang Island in the south and another unnamed island in the north.

Penang is a turtle-shaped island across the sea from the Kedah region of the Malay Peninsula, and the whole island is full of greenery and greenery, like an emerald. The climate here is pleasant, and it is more suitable for living than the marshy area of the mainland opposite. Su Yue and Yang Tiansheng visited this island for the first time and fell in love with it, and since it was the best transit place for the north to Burma and mainland India, they decided to build a fortress in the northeast of the island to prevent enemy troops coming from the Indian Ocean.

The rapid expansion of the Ming forces in the Malay Peninsula and Borneo naturally attracted the attention of the Portuguese and the British, but before the former could move, he had already encountered the attack of the Kingdom of Aceh again. The latter's power in Asia is weak, and he can only watch with envy as Daming actively expands his power and tries to get a piece of the pie.

The British's efforts were not in vain, not only did they acquire some oil exploration rights in South Sumatra, but they also acquired Pangkor Island with the support of the Ming Dynasty, infiltrating the Perak region. Perak, which borders Kedah, has its own sultan, and although it submits to the Sultan of Aceh, it remains semi-independent because of its relatively strong military force.

However, this kind of power is still too weak for Da Ming. However, the Ming did not want to cause a revolt in the entire Malay Peninsula, so after obtaining the Kedah area, he used the power of the British to contain the Sultanate of Perak. Faced with the British East India Company supported by the Ming people, the Sultan of Perak had no choice but to compromise and not only surrender Pangkor Island, but also allow the Ming and British merchants to enter Perak to operate the tin mining trade.

The city of Malacca is divided into two parts, one is a common residential area and the other is Famosa Castle, where the Portuguese lived. Located at the mouth of the Malacca River, the city of Malacca is actually a city formed around a hill. Famosha Castle is built on the hill of St. Paul, which is high in the city center, and once the castle gates are closed, it becomes a fortress that is difficult to defend.

Although the Aceh army had learned from the defeat two years earlier, when they captured the docks, they still encountered the problem of siege. Just attacking an outer city almost used up what they bought from the Chinese*.

Under the persuasion of the Chinese envoys, the inhabitants of the outer city finally gave up their resistance and left the city, giving up the outer city, which was about to be reduced to ruins, to the Aceh army. Aceh Sultan's nephew Iskanda. When Tani and his cronies Malemuda and Japak entered the deserted outer city with their armies, they realized that the battle would be even more brutal.

Compared with the artillery that showed its skills in the attack on the outer city before, after advancing into the city, it faced the condescending artillery fire of the Portuguese, and had no power to fight back, and had to withdraw from the battlefield, which made the Aceh army attacking the castle suddenly fall into a disadvantage.

The general in command of the Aceh army could only suspend the attack and instead order the troops to besiege the city. Fortunately, St. Paul's Hill is not very big, and it is much easier to surround the castle than the entire city of Malacca.

Su Yue, Yang Tiansheng, Wang Jiayin and others standing on the warship outside the port were watching the siege with great interest. After looking at the changes in the Aceh army, Wang Jiayin finally couldn't help but say emotionally: "What's the point of these natives fighting and stopping like this, don't they know that if they fight in one go, the number of dead and injured will be even lower in the end?" ”

Yang Tiansheng glanced at him and said, "If you know, you know, but who would risk their lives to open the way for others." When these natives die, they die, and there is no such thing as a pension in Aceh. If they live to win the victory, they will be able to plunder a piece of wealth from the loser, and before they die, they will receive nothing. ”

Su Yue also smiled and said, "It's okay to stop, if you really want them to fight in one go, we will be difficult." ”

Wang Jiayin looked at others with some surprise and asked, "Didn't we come here to seize Malacca City?" If these natives can defeat them themselves, won't it save us a lot of effort for our people? ”

Yang Tiansheng said disapprovingly: "The city originally had about 17,000 people, and the Catholics that the Portuguese could trust were about 7,400, but there were only 300 professional sergeants stationed in the castle fortress.

If our statistics are correct, the number of people in the castle is probably less than five thousand, and everyone else has already evacuated the outer city. Although with the reserves in the castle, they can still hold out for more than half a year.

However, we have already sent people to contact the Portuguese soldiers, who will open the gates and surrender to us whenever our army appears on the battlefield. The condition was to guarantee their safety and take away a third of the city's wealth. So, why did we let the natives take the city? ”

Wang Jiayin was even more puzzled, "In that case, why don't we transfer the troops up now to end this war?" ”

Su Yue coughed lightly and said: "The time has not yet come to capture Malacca City, and now there are not enough Aceh people killed or wounded, and the King of Aceh has not personally come here to obtain the honor of capturing Malacca City...

For the Ming Dynasty, the city of Malacca should not only be in our hands, but also in our hands..."