Although it is already the tenth month of the lunar calendar, the climate in Saigon is still warm and comfortable, and the rainy season that has just ended has made Saigon a little less humid.

Since the Chinese occupied the area, the former small town of Puliango has developed rapidly, and the arrival of thousands of Chinese pirates and thousands of Guangdong immigrants has made this small town quickly develop into a city of tens of thousands of people, not far from Hoi An, Guangnan, the most prosperous city in Annam.

Although due to climate and environmental reasons, it is relatively easy and convenient to build a house on the southeast peninsula. The stilted building built with bamboo and wood as raw materials can be completed in only ten days. However, in the vicinity of Saigon, which is surrounded by rivers, there is a large amount of marshland, and there are not many suitable places to build houses, and when the number of new Chinese immigrants gradually increased, Liu Xiang, the governor of Saigon, naturally did not hesitate to expel the Annam and Chenla people in the city to make room for the resettlement of Chinese immigrants.

In addition to encroaching on the homes of these locals, the land that Annam immigrants had carved out on the edge of the city was also sold by Liu Xiangqiang and distributed to his subordinates, while those who lost their land were arranged to develop the marshes near the city, digging canals to divert stagnant water, and opening up more land for Saigon.

This move by Liu Xiang and his subordinates not only made the Annan immigrants very dissatisfied, but also disappointed the Zhenla people who originally thought that they could rely on China to resist the invasion of the Annan immigrants and keep their land.

As a pirate and maritime leader, Liu Xiang did not give up the development of Saigon's ports and maritime trade, although he fell in love with Saigon's fertile and fertile fields.

Since Saigon is far from Haikou, the annual flooding of the lower Mekong River has little impact on the area. Before Liu Xiang arrived, this was already a relatively famous port and trade terminal in Zhenla Country.

Saigon could be connected to the country of Chenla, which had been renamed Cambodia, to the west and Laos, and to the northeast to Cham and Annam. When Liu Huong brought Chinese merchants to the area, Saigon became a new trading port between Pattani and Hoi An.

The Dutch East India Company had always wanted to penetrate this area, but since it had always been the sphere of influence of the Portuguese, the Dutch made several requests to establish a trading house in Hoi An in Quang Nam, but Nguyen Phuc Yuan, the Duke of Annam Nhon Nhon Nguyen Nh

Although Saigon was separated from Annam by a Champa state, under the continuous southern invasion of Nguyen Phuc Yuan and his father, the Champa state at this time, except for a small part of the land around the capital, was already under the rule of the Nguyen dynasty in Annam.

After Liu Huong occupied Saigon, he immediately interrupted Nguyen Phuc Yuan's plan to continue to encroach on Cambodia to the south, although Nguyen Phuc Yuan was very annoyed, but he did not dare to attack Liu Huong, who claimed to be a Ming official army. In the face of the pressure of the Northern Dynasty Zheng Zhu, he had no intention of erecting a strong enemy for himself.

For this reason, Nguyen Phuc Nguyen also sent an envoy to Liu Huong, saying that he was willing to recognize the Ming Dynasty's control over Saigon, but he hoped that Liu Huong would not drive out the immigrants who had been cultivated in this area, and that they would recognize their ownership of the reclaimed land.

However, Liu Xiang apparently did not take Nguyen Phuc Yuan's request seriously, and both the Annam envoy to Saigon and the Ming people who acted as interpreters recognized Liu Huong as the pirate leader in the Annam-Cantonese ocean. When they brought the news to Nguyen Phuc Yuan, the ministers of the Nguyen Dynasty believed that Liu Huong's Saigon envoy was nothing more than a false name and not a canonization by the Ming Dynasty.

Nguyen Phuc Yuan, who had just repelled the attack of Zheng Jie of the Northern Dynasty, was still considering whether to negotiate with this Chinese pirate who was pretending to be a Ming official again, when news came that the Dutch had built a merchant house in Saigon.

Compared with the well-developed northern part of Annam, the Southern Dynasty, which occupied Hue and Quang Nam, not only was the area narrow, but also the products were not very rich. Although under the management of the Nguyen family, the Nguyen dynasty in Annam annexed most of the Cham and finally increased a lot of population and taxes.

But in order to be able to compete with the Truong dynasty in the north, Nguyen Phuc Nguyen and his father built a large army, and learned to forge their own bronze cannons by befriending Portuguese missionaries. Most of this huge military expenditure comes from the tax revenue of Hoi An Port in Quang Nam.

By attracting Chinese merchants to establish a port in Saigon and carry out entrepot trade, Liu Huong was tantamount to diverting the merchant ships of Hoi An, that is, taking the money from Nguyen Phuc Yuan's pocket.

Although Nguyen Phuc Nguyen gave several warnings to Liu Huong through the king of the Cham kingdom, Liu Huong was obviously not interested in paying attention to the puppet king of the Cham and only took care of building Saigon on his own.

When the Dutch merchant house was established in Saigon, Nguyen Phuc Yuan felt that he could not go on like this, and that he should teach the Chinese pirate a lesson and take Saigon directly.

Liu Xiang's collusion with the Dutch also angered the Spaniards and Portuguese who were interested in Cambodia, Cham and Annam. Although under the orders of the Ming Emperor, Macao had ordered the recall of missionaries and other businessmen from the Annam region, some Portuguese missionaries were unwilling to obey this order, believing that they had made great progress in the Nguyen Dynasty under the inspiration of God, and that returning to Macao now would undoubtedly be tantamount to giving up what had been done.

The Portuguese missionaries then contacted the Spanish missionaries in the Philippines and decided to continue their missionary activities in the Nguyen Dynasty. Liu Xiang's decision to accept the construction of a merchant house by the Dutch in Saigon not only isolated the Portuguese missionaries from Cambodia and Annam, but also allowed the Dutch to find a foothold on the southeastern peninsula, which was a real threat to the interests of the Spanish and Portuguese.

As a result, the Portuguese missionaries petitioned Nguyen Phuc Nguyen, and the Spanish merchants told Nguyen Phuc Nguyen that they were willing to provide him with a batch of weapons. All of them had a single purpose, which was to destroy the Chinese rulers in Saigon and destroy the Dutch merchants.

After several investigations, Nguyen Phuc Yuan also found that although these Chinese pirates claimed to be Ming officials, they were only wearing civilian clothes, and for more than a year, no Chinese officials had come to Saigon to inspect them.

So late one night in mid-October, when most of the residents of Saigon were asleep, hundreds of Annam people took advantage of the night to touch the north gate, strangled more than a dozen drunken and sleepy pirates with cowhide ropes, and opened the clumsy gate made of logs.

An Annam man waved his torch three times on the wooden wall, and after more than a quarter of an hour, a long dragon with a light of stars swam through the darkness to the northeast towards the north gate.

When the dragon appeared in front of the brazier at the city gate, it was clear that they were soldiers with torches. Although these Annan soldiers looked short and thin, their lean bodies seemed to have amazing physical strength. Moreover, the discipline of this army that is only in sight is quite good, at least the night attack of thousands of people, but it does not make much noise.

At the behest of an Annan general who arrived, the Annamite who opened the city gates were divided into small groups to lead the way for the army, and the general prioritized the warehouse area in the city as the first target, followed by Liu Xiang's town guard in the center of the city, then the other city gates and barracks, and finally the ships in the dock area.

The dock area is near the south gate of the city, the warehouse area is mostly arranged along the river in the east, Liu Xiang's town guard office is located in the center of Saigon City, and the military camp is located in the southwest corner of the city.

Unlike these locals, Liu Xiang built the town guard mansion for himself not a long row of stilted buildings, but a Chinese-style brick and stone building. The town guard mansion covers an area of about 15 acres, and it was also the place that was vacated by the demolition of dozens of local families. Since there has always been no handicraft industry in the area, the raw materials used to build the mansion had to be brought in from Guangdong, even the bulky blue and red bricks.

The amount of work was so huge that when the Annam people attacked at night, the town guard was only 30% of the workload. And around the town guard mansion, it was either Liu Xiang's subordinates or the Guangdong merchants who were invited by him. Therefore, most of the people living near the town guard mansion are wealthy families.

When the Annam people struck around with torches, no one noticed it at first. However, when they rushed to the street not far from the town guard's house, they were finally bumped into by a Chinese groomer. The gentry was so nimble that he immediately threw off what he didn't need and fled into the alley with only a gong in his hand.

He hurriedly struck the gong and shouted, "There is a fire, there is a fire..."If he shouted something else, the inhabitants of the city would have hesitated for a moment, but when they heard that there was a fire in the city, everyone was immediately awakened.

The Annam people who had attacked were discovered and chose to attack, but the pirates who were awakened immediately began to resist in groups. Whether it was the Chinese pirates or the Annamite people, both sides were light infantry fighting without armor. Although the Annamites came prepared, the pirates relied on the familiarity of the Annamites with the terrain and constantly relied on the buildings to maneuver with the Annamites.

And those unarmed Chinese immigrants, although they did not dare to go out into the streets to assist the pirates in the battle, but they also knew that if this unknown army defeated the pirates, they would never have their good fruit to eat, so they took advantage of the location to start throwing objects at the Annam people on the street from the second floor.

In this environment of attacking up and down, the Annan people who were smashed and bleeding were once beaten back, but after I don't know who set fire to the bamboo and wooden houses near the town guard's mansion, the southern half of the city began to burn fire everywhere, and both pirates and Chinese immigrants suddenly lost the will to resist and began to flee outside the city.

Seeing that the general situation had turned, Liu Xiang finally withdrew from the town guard mansion with his cronies, and took advantage of the fact that the Annam people who attacked Saigon were also blocked by the fire, he rushed out of the south gate under the escort of several cronies, captured three ships in the chaotic crowd on the dock, and fled Saigon desperately.

Liu Xianghuo sat up from the kang and looked at the dark night outside the window, only then did he know that he had a nightmare again. The fires that swept through half of the city that night and the scene of his subordinates shouting for their lives were really unforgettable for him. He has always boasted that he had seen the wind and waves, and it was difficult for him to fall asleep when he remembered the situation that night.

He reached out and touched his underwear, and found that he was already soaked with sweat, and the fire pit in the north was really not suitable for him as a southerner, it was too hot and dry. He got up and changed into clean underwear before lying down again, and began to think quietly in the dark about how to persuade the emperor to support him and get justice after the emperor returned to Beijing.