The warning document issued from Fengshan County was transmitted from the south of the island of Taiwan all the way to the north along with the galloping military horses on the post station, and the news that Fengshan County was attacked by giant bandits spread far and wide, and only the official knew at first, but where was there any secret in the Manchu government in these years, and the vast number of people with magical powers could always know more things from the government, and only the ordinary people would know nothing.

Zhou Lang also didn't know anything about this, so he was still performing evolution according to his own ideas.

Zhou Lang speculated that after they occupied the left camp, there would be a high probability that two things would happen, one was that the enemy would attack, and no government would remain silent after the cities in their own land were captured; One thing is that the enemy comes to negotiate and will not remain silent, either attack or negotiate, it's as simple as that. The most likely thing to happen is that the other party will attack first, and then negotiate after the attack is fruitless, which is Zhou Lang's most reasonable judgment of the local government.

But neither of the things he speculated had happened, at least not for the time being.

Ten days have passed, and not a single Qing soldier has appeared, but some sneaky people have often appeared near the left camp.

Even if they don't have military common sense, they know that these people are secret agents of the government and the like, so it is impossible to let them enter and leave the left camp at will. Colin was in charge of military operations and set up burners at key crossings. There were not enough troops, only two or three mercenaries, and a few armed sailors. Fortunately, due to the geographical characteristics of the left battalion, there are only two ways to enter and exit here, one south and one north, and the fort defense on the mountain is enough to cut off the possibility of the enemy entering and leaving.

Even so, there were twenty people, and the manpower was extremely tight. Forty mercenaries were the undisputed main force at the moment, and Colin gathered them as much as he could, but he could only keep thirty mercenaries in formation, and ten were selected as officers to lead and train the sailors.

Gunpowder was still sufficient, their ship was an armed merchant ship, armed with twenty-five cannons, and there was naturally a lot of gunpowder for the cannons, but they did not encounter many opportunities to open their guns, and if they used these gunpowder to supply the rifle consumption, it was more than enough. But lead bullet is a little insufficient, so at present, the sailors are not trained by live ammunition, gunpowder can be loaded, but often can only be empty, but it is also crackling and quite lively, and it can always attract some onlookers.

The character of the Chinese is far more complex than that of any nation, to say that the Chinese are bold, but the adventurous spirit is relatively lacking, those Chinese who like to take risks are completely "dead" in the eyes of their compatriots, Chinese culture is very particular about seeking stability, what peace is a blessing, small wealth is peace, contentment and happiness and other ideas are deeply imprinted in the mentality of the Chinese people. At the same time, the Chinese also lack curiosity about the outside world, and the driving force of Western adventurers in the Age of Discovery is two, one is the incomparable desire for money, and the other is a strong curiosity about the unknown. The reason why the Chinese have always guarded their own acres and three points of land, has never colonized abroad in history, is by no means a lack of technical ability, Zheng He's technical strength in the West, but far stronger than Columbus's discovery of the New World, the reason why they did not go out is mainly because of the lack of adventurous spirit and lack of curiosity and interest in the outside world.

But to say that the Chinese are timid and lack curiosity about the outside world, the Chinese people's hobby of watching excitement is too strong. Obviously, these Yi people who occupied the left camp were all foreign invaders, and they were full of danger no matter how they looked at it, but after the residents of the left camp found out that they did not harass the civilians, they slowly walked out of the house, and soon around the mercenaries guarding the city gate, there were people watching from afar, and pointing fingers, but at first they were only limited to onlookers, and the distance was relatively far, and they even pretended to do other things, which made some vendors find business opportunities and set up stalls near the city gate, which could attract some people who came to see the excitement and pretend to be customersAt the urging of the hawkers, these pretended customers will buy something more or less.

Slowly onlookers no longer pretend, because they found that these Yi people didn't care about them at all, plus there were more people with a herd mentality, so they slowly and naturally gathered together to point fingers at the Yi people, at this time, occasionally one or two bold people walked up to say a few words to the Yi people, and they could also win the applause of the crowd.

Soon everyone found a better place to watch the show, which was the fixed musket drill, which was simply free juggling. Watching the people go through the tedious loading procedure, and finally pull the trigger, the muzzle of the gun spews flames, making a crisp sound, and the cheers around it come and go, making people feel like they have arrived at the overpass in Beiya.

As a British officer serving the East India Company, in a foreign country, Colin could not be cautious in his heart, he could despise the combat effectiveness of the Qing army, but he could not ignore the potential danger of the locals, so he asked to disperse these onlookers at first. As a Chinese, Zhou Lang's worldview, even if he is separated by hundreds of years, does not affect his recognition that these people are his compatriots. Zhou Lang knew that these people who were watching the excitement were actually not dangerous, but he was worried about the military discipline of the mercenaries and worried that they would harass the people, which might cause trouble. In China in the era of the patriarchal system, the people at the bottom were organized, and when a person encounters danger, he can attract a clan to stand up for him. During the Opium War, when the British army fought with the Qing army, the people followed to watch the excitement, and no one cared about the war between their government and the foreigners, but the British army bullied the local widows in Sanyuan, which could lead the villagers of ten miles and eight towns to besiege them.

Therefore, Zhou Lang resolutely did not allow the masses to be dispersed, but believed that this kind of close dissolution could dispel the misunderstanding of the two sides about the other side, and many contradictions and conflicts were often due to misunderstandings. At the same time, Zhou Lang asked to restrain the military discipline of the mercenaries, personally talked to the officers among the mercenaries, asked them to restrain their subordinates, and promised in public that if there was no harassment of the locals, when everyone returned to India, he would give each soldier a reward of 100 pounds, and a reward ranging from 300 to 1,000 to the officers.

Encouraged by such high rewards, and cautious in an unfamiliar environment, the mercenaries have maintained good military discipline for now.

Under Zhou Lang's friendly handling, the relationship between the mercenaries and the local people is relatively harmonious, at least for now, there have been no conflicts. Even better, the locals showed a keen interest in selling mercenaries to them, and after ten days, no one was going to applaud the mercenaries for a few words, and a large number of vendors rushed to wait for the mercenaries to come out every day, and then sell them their carefully prepared early in exchange for the mercenaries' colorful silver coins.

Benefiting from this good atmosphere, Zhou Lang established a stable supply channel for the army, and he contacted several large local shops to purchase grain and fresh vegetables from them, and even bought some consumables such as cloth, and even gunpowder, but the quality of local gunpowder was not up to standard, and Colin thought that it had no practical value.

For ten days, the social order in Zuoying was miraculously stable, as if nothing had happened, the locals were still living their old lives, most of them continued to stay in the city, only some big families and wealthy merchants quietly left, but the departure of the merchants did not affect the operation of the business, because most of the owners of the shops left, and the shopkeepers and men more or less stayed.

Zhou Lang is glad that he did not have a confrontation with the locals, but was able to take advantage of the local business system, which he attributed to his friendliness to the locals, but in fact, he thought too much. Historically, in the Opium Wars and every subsequent war with Westerners, the Chinese people were actually neutral. According to British records, most of their supplies during the two Opium Wars were procured directly locally. From Guangzhou to Beijing, there has always been a phenomenon of hawkers carrying goods and following their troops, always ready to supply them with goods. Even when they landed in Tianjin, local women put their eggs in baskets and sold them to their barracks.

This seems incredible, but we cannot use the concept of the state and the concept of the nation of later generations to demand that the Chinese people in the dynastic era have not been a nation-state since Qin Shi Huang ruled the world, but an empire. The common people no longer have a strong national key in their hearts, and they are no longer the Zhao people and Qin people before reunification, and they will only realize that they are the people of the Son of Heaven. As for who the Son of Heaven is, it is too far away from their lives to feel it at all. Anyway, whoever is the son of heaven needs them to pay food and pay taxes. So the people don't care who fights for the world, as long as it doesn't hurt them, they don't care.

However, Zhou Lang's practice in Zuoying in the past ten days was not all ineffective. The notices he wrote were somewhat effective, and the soldiers patrolling the streets every day also kept the social order out of control, otherwise who knows how many ghosts, snakes, and gods would come out to destroy it.

And his behavior obviously caused misunderstanding among the local elite, and someone actually came to the door to help.

Zhou Lang has already met three self-proclaimed scholars, they are all personally submitted to the door, after meeting Zhou Lang, they are full of words such as "the world" and "benevolence", and they are all a sage of the city, another common point is that these three people did not use their real names, Zhou Lang only knew their surnames, and the name post was "Wang, Liu" and the like.

This is a very frustrating thing, I didn't expect that I only brought dozens of people to occupy such a small city as Zuoying, and there was a leading party to the door, which really made people not know what to say. If the British had studied China thoroughly earlier, they would have had a real chance of dominating India and occupying China at the same time, because they could really find a large number of Belt and Road parties in China, and they were quite capable of leading the way.

Zhou Lang despised these people, and he didn't tear his face with them, he met with the people who submitted the book to the door, and listened to their words with a pleasant face, and thanked them, but he never said anything to ask them to help him, these people also held a shelf, Zhou Lang didn't open his mouth, and they would never bow their heads. So Zhou Lang neither recruited them nor provoked them, but hoped that the well water with these people would not interfere with the river water. I'd rather offend a gentleman than a villain.

In addition to these elites, there are characters from three religions and nine ranks. Zhou Lang, the local ruffian hooligan leader, also saw that he also smiled at the two hundred taels of silver sent by the gang leaders who operated casinos and prostitutes in the city, and promised not to harass them, but also asked them not to take advantage of the chaos to do evil, and the other party only said that he did not dare.

The local unambitious scholars, the ninth-rate hooligan leaders, these people Zhou Lang can stay away, not begging them to be used by me, but begging them not to sabotage, but there are some forces, which make Zhou Lang feel a little contradictory.

That is the local Huidang force that really rebels against the government, that is, the Heaven and Earth Society.

On the third day of his entry, there was a person who claimed to be the master of the Heaven and Earth Hall to visit, they did not come to serve, but to the alliance, they hoped that Zhou Lang would send troops to Fengshan County, saying that their hundreds of brothers could be used as internal responses.

The Manchu Qing Dynasty at the end of the Qianlong Dynasty was not the prosperous Kangqian era described in textbooks, but rather complex and contradictory.

Taiwan, as a frontier land, is more complicated, so it is also the most chaotic place. There is basically only one theme of social contradiction in ancient China, that is, the contradiction between man and land, that is, the land in an agricultural society cannot feed more and more people, and the economic manifestation is that agriculture cannot provide enough employment for the labor force. Underemployment means that there is a large idle population, which constitutes the greatest instability.

This situation also existed in Taiwan, where after more than 200 years of development by the Manchu Qing Dynasty, the plains of Taiwan were basically reclaimed as arable land. And because it is a colonial development, it often has a characteristic, that is, the land is too concentrated. The proportion of land owned by landlords in Taiwan is much higher than that in the mainland. The Qing government's policy of encouraging Taiwan's reclamation contributed to this land monopoly. For example, the Shi Lang family seized as much as half of the reclaimed land in southern Taiwan as early as the Kangxi period, called "Shihou Rent Garden", and leased these lands to tenants, and the rent collected was called "Shihou Rent".

After Kangxi, the local government adopted the method of encouraging land reclamation to increase taxes. Clearing land is not an easy task, and the investment of manpower and material resources is very staggering, and private individuals are often unable to afford it. Successive dynasties were often organized and cultivated by the government. However, the Qing government's attitude toward Taiwan has always been very unimportant, and as a result, the local government has mainly adopted the method of encouraging private reclamation. Capable rich people were recruited from Fujian, Chaoshan and other places to come to reclaim the land, and they were allowed to occupy a large number of raw land for reclamation. These tenants recruited tenant farmers themselves, who undertook the initial investment in land reclamation and eventually became landlords, and tenant farmers became their tenants. Therefore, a large amount of land developed in the later period was concentrated in the hands of these reclamation households.

With the completion of Taiwan's development, the proportion of tenants in Taiwan's society is higher than that of the mainland, and these tenants who do not have their own permanent property are easily divided into unemployed vagrants.

In the process of developing arable land, many areas that were originally inhabited by local indigenous people were also contracted by those who rented or bought these lands from local tribes and then reclaimed them. The aborigines who lost their land would rebel after making a living, and the government would often end up favoring these landlords, and after suppressing the aborigines again and again, most of the aborigines in Taiwan ended up living in the mountainous areas. However, national contradictions have accumulated, and this is also a major factor of instability.

Another problem is that Taiwan is the last region to be unified into the country, so there has always been a gene of resistance, and the Tiandihui is the banner of this culture of resistance.

The large number of unemployed vagrants, the restless social atmosphere, the fierce ethnic contradictions, and the old culture of resistance have all combined to make Taiwan's society particularly turbulent.

Therefore, in the 51st to 53rd year of Qianlong (1786 to 1788), the Lin Shuangwen Uprising occurred, and from the south to the north, the whole of Taiwan was affected. Lin Shuangwen is the leader of the Heaven and Earth Society.

Lin Shuangwen's uprising was only something that ended five years ago, and it can be said that his influence has not ended. The remnants of the Tiandihui Party, which spread throughout Taiwan, have gone underground, but they have been gathering strength and are planning to make a comeback.

Zhou Lang's contradiction is that the manpower of these Heaven and Earth Guilds may help him in the conflict with the local government, but it may also cause greater chaos. Zhou Lang has no intention of establishing a base in Taiwan now, and Taiwan is not an option to establish a base in Zhou Lang's plan, because there is no trade base here that he needs. He needed to accumulate power through commercial trade, and the two tea producing bases of Guangdong and Fujian were the best choices.

However, if it really formed an alliance with the Heaven and Earth Society, it might cause a wide-ranging uprising, but it would spread too widely and cause too many casualties.

Zhou Lang's moral standard is not a virgin, but the basic morality is still there, if he plans to establish a foundation in Taiwan, then he may consider the matter of making Taiwan chaotic. But he doesn't intend to develop here, so there's no point in creating complete chaos in the area.

And he doesn't have enough ability to take advantage of the fire now, he is a bare-bones commander, and the military forces under his command are now in the hands of Colin, and Colin is an officer who obeys the orders of the East India Company, Zhou Lang can really take advantage of the fire, and that is also to make a wedding dress for the East India Company.

Therefore, of course, he can't cooperate with the Heaven and Earth Society at present, unless he has hundreds of his own descendants in his hands, and then uses this as the core to recruit troops and horses, it is really possible to confront the local government. Even if he has his own people in his hands, Zhou Lang is not willing to use Taiwan as his base, not to mention that he does not have these resources.

Therefore, his current plan is still to give priority to repairing the ship, and if something happens, he hopes that Xie Qinggao can arrive in time to pick everyone up.

Calculate the time, if everything goes well, the boat that departed for Macau should have arrived now, I don't know if they have contacted Xie Qinggao.

I don't know if Xie Qinggao will come to Taiwan as soon as Zhou Lang wishes after receiving the letter.