Harald is not a martyr, he is just an employee, he is not guilty of torture for the sake of the owner, basically because he is honest after being beaten for his mouth, what others ask, what he says.

This started from Xie Qinggao in India recruiting him, to Zhou Lang's formation of the China (East India) Company, to Taiwan's looting by the Qing army, and finally the counterattack on Zuoying, and then to the Tiandihui uprising.

The officials of the interrogated Cantonese Customs, the translator was a merchant from the Thirteen Lines, and everything was the Manchu government's own people, and of course they believed this result. What's more, when they went to arrest people, it was because they got a secret letter, and all the contents of the interrogation were consistent with the contents of the secret letter, and there was no reason to doubt it at all. As for who leaked the news, the customs superintendent did not want to delve into it, it was nothing more than some other people who were not accustomed to the good business of the British in recent years made it bad, as long as the news was true, in any case, the Guangdong customs superintendent had made a great contribution, and the emperor had to give him a good evaluation.

And this matter is very bizarre, a Chinese ran to India, where he set up an organization like the foreigner's public class, and then hired a foreigner as a thug and ran to Taiwan to occupy a place. The more bizarre the better, and the more bizarre the more people are interested, the greater the attention that Guangdong Customs will receive, and the greater the credit will be.

For example, Harald said that they had to anchor in the left camp because of the storm, but they were attacked by the Qing army in the left camp, which is absolutely slander, slandering my Qing soldiers, so I only wrote that it was a Han man named Zhou Lang, who had ill intentions and bad intentions, colluded with the people, and caused chaos in the sea and frontier.

In order to make this matter more significant, and thus to bring out the sensitivity of the Guangdong Customs to maritime affairs, the customs superintendent also repeatedly compared Zhou Lang's collusion with the English and the late Ming Dynasty Wang Zhi and other maritime merchants who colluded with the Japanese people, which eventually led to chaos in the southeast for decades.

Coincidentally, before the Cantonese customs superintendent went up, three more British merchant ships were heard in Canton, and they were ships of the British East India Company.

According to Harald's confession, Zhou Lang had recently brought five more large ships from India, and the Guangdong Customs superintendent had doubts in his heart and immediately asked people to send the information of these three ships over for inspection.

Of course, these management, compared with modern gate management, is a little rougher, but the process is still relatively rigorous, and it is a process formed by decades of exploration in Guangzhou.

First of all, after the merchant ships arrived in Guangdong, they could not directly enter Guangzhou, but had to recruit pilots in Macao, and these systems were formulated by an official named Yin Guangren, who took office in Macao in the ninth year of Qianlong, and the purpose was to prevent the confusion of the previous water diversion system, which led to many foreigners privately hiring local fishermen to guide the way, and it was impossible to supervise the entry and exit of Guangzhou, not only the smuggling situation was rampant, but even the coastal defense had great hidden dangers.

According to the system formulated by Yin Guangren, "foreign ships must be imported by inland people to bring the waterway," and they cannot enter or leave Guangzhou at will. The water pilot is not everyone can be a person, must "ask the county to be able to fill the water diversion people to screen in detail, if the good people, take the form of a neighbor to protect the first person, the county Cheng plus the knot to send, the inspection is no different, to issue a waist license to charge, still listed and reported for inspection." ”

This kind of regulation requires foreign ships to go to Macao and hire the good citizens of the Macao customs to act as pilots before they can enter the Pearl River.

These licensed good people pilots, "to the deadline to exit waiting, limited to two per ship to the pilot, one on the ship to introduce, one star to report to the county, declare the coastal defense yamen, according to the report, and move to the Humen Association and the South China Sea, Panyu integrated inspection and prevention." Those who have private solicitors are to be punished severely according to the law of private crossing. ”

After the pilots wait for the foreign ships, each boat must have two drinking waters, one on board to divert the water, and the other will run as fast as possible to report the documents of the foreign ships to the county of Macao, and the county will check and transfer them to the Yamen of Haiphong, the Sailors of Humen, and the Yamen of Nanhai and Panyu County. If a pilot dares to bring a foreign boat into the Pearl River without permission, he will be punished for a serious crime.

These pilots could not stop in Macao, but stayed in the Wanshan Islands or Dangan Island outside the mouth of the Pearl River to wait, and over time, in order to let foreigners distinguish between fishing boats and pilot boats, the pilots even developed a special type of boat. Compared to fishing boats, pilotage boats are long and short, have short masts that stick diagonally into the stern, and often carry flags that make foreigners stand out.

They can have the financial resources to build a special ship, in fact, because the business of water diversion has a huge profit, because it is a monopoly business in cooperation with the government, so the fee is quite expensive, a person often has to get 30 silver dollars, and the foreigners have no choice, and even after the Opium War, the British even regarded the right to divert water as a privilege, written into the treaty, since then foreigners can freely hire the pilots they want, without being subject to the government issuing licenses, often blackmailing those pilots of foreigners.

According to the local government of Macao, these pilots were all well-appointed citizens selected by Xiangshan County Cheng and issued waist licenses, saying that they were simple well-wishers who made a living from fishing after the pilotage. But in fact, because of the profits, there are a lot of loopholes in the government's procedures, so there are many people who actually don't know anything about hydrology, but have connections with the government, and can get licenses, monopolize these businesses, and then hire fishermen to complete the tasks for them.

Even if these pilots have licenses, they can't directly bring boats into Guangzhou, because they belong to the foreign pilots. According to the regulations of the government, ships from various countries come to Guangdong to trade, and now the approval of each country (the list of goods out of the customs) is handed over to the water pilot, and the face to face verification is clear, and even after the name of the captain and sailor is enthroned together, they will go to the Yamen of Macao County to register, and after registration, they will be led to Humen for inspection.

When we arrive in Humen, Macao's water diversion is considered to have completed its task, and the inland waterway from Humen to Huangpu Port in Guangzhou is under the management of inland water diversion.

Because it has been like this for decades, so that the journey from Humen to Huangpu has a proper noun, called Shangxing, which means to go to the provincial capital, and those who leave Guangzhou to go to Macao are called Xiaao.

The foreigner's ship is in Humen, and after the inspection of the Humen sailor, the official documents and goods are correct, the provincial license will be issued, and then the water diversion duty will end, sometimes it is the Xu officials sent by the Guangdong Customs to take over, leading the foreign ship to Guangzhou, and sometimes there are licensed pilots in Guangzhou who are responsible, in short, the management is full of loopholes. For example, as long as you are willing to give money, the inspection gate is often not so harsh, and you will turn a blind eye to the goods that are secretly reported and omitted, if you are not willing to spend more money, even if all the processes meet the regulations, it will be difficult for you, and even detain you for a few days without a reason.

Therefore, the general foreign ships will not only pay money in accordance with various unspoken rules, but also honestly accept inspections in accordance with the requirements of the government, unless it is those smuggling ships, who come to Guangzhou to trade seriously, they will leave a complete set of official documents for the record.

Under normal circumstances, no one will read these documents, but the customs superintendent is not now worried about the emperor, and his eyes are wide open to grasp the credit, so he checked these official documents, and the results were really found out.

According to the regulations, Wang Shaomin and three other Macao pilots inspected the three ships and reported that there was no cargo on board, and that each of them contained "30 merchants, 16 cannons, 20 shotguns, 20 swords, 200 catties of gunpowder, and 100 bullets." The name of the ship, the name of the captain, the number of people, the place of departure and the country are also registered. ”

The information was compared with Harald's previous confession, and the customs superintendent was pleasantly surprised to find that these three ships were actually three of the five ships that Harald confessed.

There was nothing to say, all three boats were detained, and all the people were caught.

But these three ships are all serious East India Company ships, they have strong armed forces on board, and they do have a handle in hand, plus the customs have already arrested people in the East India Company yesterday, from the captain to the Taipan dare not let the captains and sailors of the three ships be arrested by the government.

Historically, the East India Company has not had conflicts with the local government, and even confrontations have not been unprecedented. For example, Guangzhou has always set up various discriminatory policies against foreigners, such as not harboring women and arms, not hiring Chinese servants, not learning Chinese, not allowing sedan chairs, not allowing entering the city, not allowing family members, and so on.

Merchants could live in the Thirteen Merchant Houses outside the city at most, but even here, women and weapons were not allowed to enter. The local government juxtaposes foreign women with cannons and swords, although merchants from all over the world are very incomprehensible, but everyone feels that the degree of prohibition between women and weapons is different, and those merchants from various countries who have been lonely for a long time will occasionally violate this prohibition.

The earliest was in the sixteenth year of Qianlong, a Dutch Taipan took his wife to live in Ruifeng Xing of the Thirteen Lines, and even alarmed the governor of Guangdong, who was personally expelled by the governor.

In fact, they did not know that the entry of scantily clad foreign women into the streets of Guangzhou would cause the people to watch one after another, which in the eyes of the officials who paid attention to etiquette and law, and the bad effects were simply more terrifying than cannons.

Because the Qing court has always been in a strong position, the foreigners have always been honest all these years, and although they are very dissatisfied, few people have challenged these prohibitions. They can only laugh at themselves, "We poor foreigners in Guangzhou are all monks who can't help themselves, and even a woman's voice is a luxury, and the officials in Guangzhou do not allow their foreign people of the same sex to enjoy it." ”

The British themselves had resisted, and the East India Company had written a letter of protest to the Governor of Liangguang, stating that "all the Taipan (the merchants stationed in Canton) were gentlemen of their own country, and some were members of the British National Assembly." Company personnel are required to stay in the merchant house for more than six months a year, and they are not allowed to enter with their wives in sedan chairs, making them feel insulted by being degraded to a lowly race. ”

But these were useless, the arrogant Chinese officials simply ignored these unreasonable troubles, in this era, the foreigners living in Guangzhou were called fan ghosts, and the women who could not appear were called fan women, and the governor of Liangguang only allowed fan women to live in Macao, which was already considered extraordinarily generous.

Since conflicts with the government in Canton often did not benefit anything, Henry Browne, as the chairman of the "East India Company Commission", also known as the public office and the general class, was reluctant to clash with the local government whenever possible, but this time the government really could not let the government arrest people, let alone arrest so many people.

Once arrested, Smith knew that the Taiwan affair might involve the East India Company, but there was still a Chinese company formed by Zhou Lang as a buffer, but once these people entered the official prison, it would be difficult for them to get out alive, and Smith was really full of fear of the Manchu law, because he had experienced something similar, and that incident still made him feel deeply guilty.