The north wind was blowing, cold as a knife, mixed with goose feathers and heavy snow swept across the sky, hitting people's faces painfully.

A cold winter has arrived.

Last year's winter was warmer, but this year's winter is terribly cold, the temperature in Shandong has dropped to at least more than ten degrees below zero, and everyone is wrapped in thick cotton clothes.

In the South Seas, it is still very warm.

Since its departure, the First Fleet has gone all the way south and directly to the Nanyang area, because after autumn, both the Dutch and the Fujian merchant ships have gone south, and it is difficult to intercept many merchant ships on this route.

In just three months, the First Fleet intercepted eleven Fujian merchant ships on the route to the Philippines and eight Dutch merchant ships on the route to Batavia (Jakarta), plus three Dutch frigates.

Su Buheng divided the fleet into three parts, and the marines remained in Manila and established a merchant house in Manila. The other six warships were divided into two parts, one plundering Fujian ships on the Philippine route and the other plundering Dutch ships on the Jakarta route.

The Governor General of the Philippines was not very enthusiastic about the alliance between the two sides, but he had to comply with the orders of his superiors.

The Marines were stationed outside the Manila waterway and did not really enter Manila.

Immediately after the establishment of the Merchant House, they submitted a declaration to the Governor of the Philippines, in which they declared their duty to protect the Filipino Chinese.

According to the Far Eastern Cooperation Agreement, the merchant house stationed 300 men in Manila to protect the personal safety of the local Chinese, which was difficult for the Spanish governor to accept.

The Chinese in the Philippines have always been regarded by the Spaniards as something like cows.

Suddenly a group of people came out claiming that they had a duty to protect them and that they were also going to station troops in Manila, which was unacceptable to the Philippine governor-general.

The Governor of the Philippines didn't think about it, so he directly sent this statement back and directly rejected the request of the Denglai Commercial Hall.

Wen Bangliang sat in the Manila Merchant House, and seeing that the Spaniards did not agree to the garrison of the Merchant House, a plan to seize the Philippines came to Wen Bangliang's mind, so he immediately wrote a letter and asked the clipper to send it to Su Buheng.

Wen Bangliang proposed that the fleet could surprise Manila, which had only 2,000 garrisons and only eight warships, and with the response of the local Chinese, it could be completely attacked.

After receiving Wen Bangliang's letter, Su Buheng did not agree to attack Manila immediately, he felt that the time was not ripe, and Deng Lai would first face Zheng Zhilong and the Dutch, and it was not appropriate to go to war with the Spaniards.

At the end of November, Su Buheng gathered his fleet and sailed to Manila with a mighty fleet. They hijacked twenty-one ships.

Most of them were Fujian ships, and the crews of these ships were temporarily detained, and the First Fleet treated these Chinese merchant ships with great courtesy, and as long as they did not resist, they would not behave out of the ordinary. Many of these merchant ships were not owned by Zheng Zhilong, but they had to pay high taxes to Zheng Zhilong when they went to sea.

For the crew members of these merchant ships, Su Buheng recruited them in the capacity of the commander of the First Fleet of the Shandong Navy, and as long as they could go to Denglai to work, their monthly wages would not be less than four taels.

Going to sea is hard work, and it is easy to have accidents, so the wages are often higher, but Fujian is not like Denglai, and the wages of these sailors are only two, three, two or two months.

Since many of the sailors of the First Fleet were from Fujian and Guangdong, it was very easy to instigate, and did not make the captured sailors feel a sense of distance.

Most of the sailors agreed to contribute to the First Fleet, and most of them agreed to work in Shandong, only some were unwilling to leave their hometowns, and Su Buheng promised to send them back to Fujian after the mission was over, and he would also send them a sum of silver.

With the help of these sailors, the piloting of those captured ships was not a problem.

After Su Buheng arrived in Manila at the end of the year with the fleet, the fleet was displayed outside the port, and merchant ships sailed into Manila for trade and supplies.

This practice made the Spaniards feel reassured, and Su Buheng did this because he didn't trust the Spaniards very much, and he was afraid that the fleet would be attacked by the Spaniards.

Everything is possible in this world, and this has to be guarded against, and supplies can be shipped out by merchant ships and then carried to warships.

After three months of raiding at sea, the First Fleet had run out of supplies except for the abundant ammunition.

The Spanish governor was thrilled by the arrival of a large trading fleet of nineteen merchant ships, which brought with them a large amount of Chinese goods.

Due to the raids of the First Fleet, few merchant ships arrived in Manila for three months. The influx of goods did not make Manila's money difficult, and every year the Spaniards had at least two galleons laden with silver from Central and South America to Manila.

This silver was used for trade with China, and sometimes the Spaniards had to transport tens of millions of taels of silver to the Far East a year, and sometimes only a few million taels a year, depending on the trade situation.

The trade lasted almost a week before the two sides settled the payment. Of the forty-one merchant ships, all the Chinese goods were sold directly in Manila, with a total value of 6.5 million taels, which was the largest purchase of Chinese goods by the Spaniards, which was equivalent to handing over most of the Dutch part to them.

Pepper, cotton, mahogany, sumac, ivory, rhino horn and other goods can be bought from the Philippines, some of which are produced in the Philippines and some are exchanged for Indochina and India.

This was the time when Luzon cotton was produced, and in previous years, Fujian merchants would buy large quantities of cotton from here, but this year no one bought it, because the merchant ships were intercepted by the First Fleet with eleven ships.

There is cotton to be used, whether it is seeded or not. Wen Bangliang filled nineteen merchant ships to the brim, and he loaded them with profitable goods anyway.

Wen Bangliang was very proficient in the sea trade market, and he had already prepared goods in Manila, and the two sides completed the trade in seven days, and the fleet purchased about 2 million goods in Manila, and the fleet was also replenished with fresh water and food.

After everything was ready, Su Buheng was ready to return to Qingdao. This time, he led the fleet out to plunder, and did not go to the ports of Fujian and Taiwan to find trouble, but chose to plunder merchant ships, because he did not want to be too reckless to confront Zheng Zhilong and the Dutch, attacking the port meant a big risk, and it was easy to have accidents.

And raiding on the shipping route can hijack not only merchant ships, but also warships.

But the problem came, Su Buheng divided the fleet into two halves and squatted at sea for three months, but only three frigates were plundered, and none of the warships were encountered, and these three frigates were more than 500 tons.

In the South Seas, the Dutch did not need to send warships to escort merchant ships, because there was no need to worry about being intercepted by Zheng Zhilong's forces.

The First Fleet plundered the sea for three months, and never missed, and none of the plundered ships escaped.

Therefore, Su Buheng decided to return from the east of Taiwan Island and not take the Taiwan Strait. If you go through the Taiwan Strait, it is easy to encounter interception, and if you are not afraid of it in normal times, but the fleet with 32 plundered ships is not very easy to take care of, and it is safer to return to Qingdao on the east coast of Taiwan.

"What about the comptoir's side?" Wen Bangliang asked Su Buheng, "Francois won't let us garrison. ”

"We are going to return to Qingdao before the beginning of spring, and the commercial houses in Manila should be withdrawn first!" Su Buheng decided, "Since the Francois do not abide by the agreement, we will first let the American fleet submit a protest to their king, if they still do not comply with the agreement, then it can give us an excuse to go to war." ”

"Okay!" To be honest, he didn't like to stay in Manila, first of all, he didn't feel safe in Manila, and secondly, there was nothing to do in Manila, after all, Denglai had not yet achieved hegemony on the southeast coast, and trade to Luzon might only be concentrated once or twice a year.

Two days later, the merchant hall withdrew from Manila and returned to Qingdao with the fleet. This made the Governor of the Philippines very proud, and those Ming people were forced away by him.

Su Buheng led the fleet and returned from the waters east of Taiwan.

At this time, a major war broke out in the Taiwan Strait due to his plunder.

The Zheng Group and the Dutch, seeing that their merchant ships did not arrive at the location and return as scheduled, and that many of them did, both targeted each other.

The two sides are also old enemies, and last year they had just finished the war, and the Dutch fled in disarray. This year, the Dutch sent a fleet to retaliate against Zhao Yan, only to be completely wiped out, but they still had naval forces in Batavia, and the mainland supported them with eleven more warships.

This made the Dutch ambitious again, but when it came to attacking Shandong, the Dutch did not dare to attack for a while, because they could not afford to lose, and they had to keep the warship to guard against Zheng Zhilong.

Due to the hijacking of a number of merchant ships, both Zheng Zhilong and the Dutch were angry, but the result was a misunderstanding, and the two sides started a major war in the Taiwan Strait during the Chinese New Year.

Zheng Zhilong sent more than 100 warships, of which 50 were extraordinarily large warships. The Dutch, for their part, sent sixteen warships and five speedboats.

The Dutch, looking at the huge fleet and with some scalp tingling, went around behind the Fujian sailors and tried to set fire to the ships, but without success.

The Fujian sailors swarmed up, and the Dutch fleet ran while fighting. However, they did not have an advantage in speed, and their navy was very similar to that of the Spaniards, with close range of their cannons, and they also used the tactic of paralyzing their opponents first and then taking them forward.

During the chase, a Dutch warship was caught by a hook cable, and two sub-ships rushed towards the Dutch warship under artillery fire, one of which was overturned on the spot, and the other sub-ship successfully anchored the Dutch warship.

The fire is starting to spread! At this time, several more ships rushed up, and in a short time the Dutch warship was already in flames.

When the Dutch fleet saw this, they fled again in disarray.

The Dutch lacked the means to quickly sink the other party, which made Zheng Zhilong's numerical advantage useful, more than a hundred warships, if the Dutch were in close combat, they would soon be annihilated, and if it was an artillery battle, they didn't know how long they would fight!

The Zheng Group once again defeated the Dutch and once again showed the hegemonic strength of the Southeast Seas!

However, Zheng Zhilong's mood this New Year is very bad! It's all because of Zhao Yan.

(To be continued)