In the Governor's Palace in Manila City, a group of Spaniards were gathering around a large round table to discuss an important matter, which had a lot to do with the sea wolf.

The then Governor of the Philippines, Shi Erwa, was a man in his forties, very strong, in good spirits, with reddish skin and a beautiful beard on his lips, which was well trimmed.

But on this day, his mood was not as good as usual, because of a plan, at this time in front of him, the members of the Manila City Council in the Philippines handed him a plan, asking him to immediately send troops to occupy the island of Taiwan.

In fact, after the Spaniards came to the East, occupied the Philippines, and built the city of Manila, they quickly noticed the island of Taiwan.

The island of Taiwan is located off the coast of China, not far from Fujian, and it is also the only way to Japan, which is a good foothold.

A long time ago, the governor of the Philippines had a plan to occupy the island of Taiwan and make it a colony of their Spanish king.

However, this plan was never implemented for a variety of reasons, including the fact that the Spaniards had too few troops in Asia and because they were not familiar with the situation on the island of Taiwan.

But the most important reason is because of their inertia, they feel that after occupying Manila, although they have not been able to occupy a place along the coast of China as a port of trade with the Chinese, as the Portuguese did, Manila is already quite good.

Moreover, since ancient times, many Chinese merchants in Luzon have come here to do business, and many Chinese in Manila have come here to settle down and do business, and a large number of Chinese merchant ships come here every year to trade with them, and they have been able to obtain rich benefits from it.

As for China, a vast country, they did not care about the island of Taiwan, and even had a great appetite to think of sending troops to simply occupy China and make the whole of China their colony.

At that time, they planned to send more than 10,000 Spanish soldiers, some galleons, and a small number of craftsmen, and then recruit 5,000 Japanese samurai from Japan as their mercenaries to attack Chinese mainland, defeat the entire Chinese army, occupy the Ming Dynasty, and make it their colony.

Prior to this, they even sent people to the Ming Dynasty to do a careful reconnaissance and assessment, and learned in detail about the operation of the Ming Dynasty government and the training and equipment of the Ming Dynasty army, believing that this was in the hope of defeating the Ming Dynasty army and occupying China.

Even if they can't occupy the entire territory of the Ming Dynasty, but in their opinion, they can at least occupy Zhejiang, Fujian, Liangguang and other places in the Ming Dynasty, this area is the richest place in the Ming Dynasty, and it is also the production area of their favorite goods, such as tea, ceramics, raw silk, silk, lacquerware, etc., basically concentrated in these places, as long as they occupy these places, they can make a fortune.

In the future, they will not have to take out many useful things to sell to the Chinese as they do now, but they will continue to transport the silver they have collected from all over the world to the Ming Dynasty, and exchange them for those exquisite goods they need from the hands of Ming merchants.

The island of Taiwan is a barren land infested by pirates, and in the eyes of the Spaniards, whether or not to occupy it does not have a great impact on them.

Unfortunately, the plan was not implemented at that time, not because they were afraid that they would not win the war, but because the British in Europe began to rise and compete with the Spaniards on the sea.

But the result was very unsatisfactory, and in the end, the Spanish armada was unexpectedly defeated by the British navy, which immediately wiped out more than half of the Spaniards' strong maritime strength, and no longer had the strength to launch a war against China.

Over the years, they had met an even stronger adversary in the East, the rising Dutch, the pagans of the Dutch, who had more ships than they had sent and fled to the East, and these Dutch, who had more military power than they did, first seized the important Strait of Malacca, and then took Batavia, driving them out of Malacca.

These Dutchmen also stole their business in Japan, and reached out to the coast of China, and over the years they tossed around the coast of China, first trying to snatch Macao from the Portuguese, but they and their accomplices the British in front of the Portuguese who were waiting for them, hit their heads and broke their blood, and the British gunboat was sunk and could only withdraw from the battle with their tails between their legs.

Two years ago, the Dutch occupied the Penghu Islands, wanting to use Penghu as a port for their trade with China, but it was clear that the Ming court was not satisfied with them doing so, and sent a large number of troops and warships to the Penghu Islands, where they fought fiercely with the Dutch for several months, and finally forced the Dutch out of Penghu.

But unexpectedly, the Dutch ran to the island of Taiwan, occupied a place on the island of Taiwan, built a castle, and obtained the tacit approval of the Ming court, began to take root there, and started trading with the merchants of the Ming Dynasty.

Moreover, these Dutch were very unauthentic, since they occupied Penghu, they colluded with Chinese pirates, repeatedly intercepted the ships of Chinese merchants who were about to go to Manila, robbed their goods, and forced them to reroute to the Dutch-occupied places to trade with the Dutch.

At this time, the Dutch posed a very big threat to Manila, the Dutch snatched a large amount of trade from them, you must know that these Chinese specialties, as long as they are shipped to Europe, they can earn huge profits, in the past, the trade between here and the Ming Dynasty, mainly the Portuguese and the Spaniards to monopolize the operation, the two in this trade with the Ming, have obtained extremely rich profits.

Now Portugal and Spain are under the banner of a king, although they still have their own ghosts, but they are good buddies, but the Dutch are clearly an upstart, and suddenly inserting a lever in this trade suddenly makes the Spaniards feel very uneasy.

In the past, when the Dutch robbed Batavia, because Batavia is still a long way from China, far from Manila to Chinese mainland, and most maritime merchants are used to running the Manila route, and are not willing to take greater risks and go to Batavia to trade with the Dutch.

Therefore, the Spaniards did not have a strong sense of crisis at that time, but now the Dutch have built a castle in the south of Taiwan as a trading port for them to trade with the Ming Dynasty.

In addition, the Dutch also colluded with Chinese pirates to intercept Chinese merchant ships going to Manila for trade on the route to Manila, so that in the past year or so, the number of Chinese merchant ships going to Manila for trade has plummeted, and only a few Chinese merchant ships have entered the port of Manila this month, bringing some goods, and most Chinese merchant ships have not dared to come to Manila for trade again.

So this situation caused extreme panic and nervousness among the Spaniards in Manila, who repeatedly asked the current Philippine Governor-General, Shjeva, to find a solution to the problem immediately.

It was not until last year that Shi Erwa realized the importance of the island of Taiwan, and regretted and regretted that his predecessors did not strike first and occupied the island.

So last year, he sent two ships to the island of Taiwan in advance to conduct a reconnaissance, and circled around the island to check the situation there.

The news brought back by the captains of these two ships is not optimistic, and now the Dutch have built a strong castle and built a dock in the area of Dayuan on the island of Taiwan, and many merchant ships and pirate ships go to them to trade, and the Dutch have stationed a large number of troops in Taiwan, and it is estimated that the number of army troops is about more than 1,000 people, and the navy, the number of warships and armed merchant ships is also between 15 and 20, and the force is very strong.

Therefore, if you want to snatch back the island of Taiwan from the Dutch, with the strength of the Spanish army in Manila at present, it is simply impossible to complete such a task.

These two reconnaissance ships also brought back a piece of news to Shi Erwa, that is, when they were sailing around Taiwan Island to reconnoitre, they found that at the northern end of Taiwan Island, there is a very good deep-water harbor, which is said to be called Jilong Bay, and there are several harbors in northern Taiwan, which are more suitable for use as ports, and in the northeast of Taiwan, there is also a slender plain, which is more suitable for reclamation.

When they rounded the northern part of Taiwan, there was a fairly large freshwater estuary in the northwest part of the island, which was also more suitable for docking ships and fortifications.

The two reconnaissance ships also brought back a topographical sketch of the island of Taiwan drawn by their ship's painters, marking the coastline they passed along the way.

As a result of their reconnaissance, the Dutch now concentrated all their energies on the operation of the castles, docks, and ports in the vicinity of Dayuan in southern Taiwan, and did not occupy northern Taiwan.

If the Spaniards wanted to land on Taiwan, the southern part of Taiwan was obviously considered forbidden by the Dutch, and they would not easily agree to let the Spaniards step in again.