On July 23, 1630, June 14 of the third year of Chongzhen of the Ming Dynasty, the lunar summer.

At the seaside wharf, 20 miles west of Danzhou City, a group of migrant workers are working together under the command of several Haihan foremen to lift thigh-thick timber to the seashore and prepare to build a trestle bridge on the coastline. They had just received the job two days before, and it was said that the Haihan people were going to build their own wharf in Baimajing to dock those huge cargo sailing ships.

Although the supervisors of the Haihan people are very strict, and there is almost no chance of laziness in the process of doing things, the corresponding remuneration is also relatively high, and one laborer working on the construction site is enough to feed four or five people. Moreover, in order to save project time, Haihan people also take care of food on the construction site, which attracts many people from the vicinity to apply for labor here.

In addition to building the wharf, the Haihan people also hired about 300 people to start renovating the road leading from the Baimajing Wharf in Danzhou Bay to Danzhou City. The original official road was a loess road, which had long been dilapidated after years of disrepair, and almost completely lost its ability to pass during the rainy season. However, the Danzhou government was not interested in spending money to build this road, so it couldn't stand it, so it summoned the local gentry to engage in fundraising, tinkering, and mixing for a few years, as long as the term of office was mixed.

With the increasing number of exchanges between Sanya and Danzhou, the Haihan people, who control the largest share of this shipping route, seem to be unable to sit still, and finally took the money out this year to expand the wharf and renovate the road. Naturally, the Danzhou government was happy to see this happen, and gave the Haihan side who was in charge of the project the green light, not only allowing them to employ a large number of people in the local area, but also allowing the Haihan people's carriages to enter and leave Danzhou City freely during the road construction period, so as to facilitate their transportation of various materials.

Of course, even if they knocked out their heads, they would never have imagined that the real purpose of Haihan's money for these infrastructure projects was actually to quickly complete the landing and attack when the army came to the city of Danzhou a few months later.

"Look, the boat coming into port!" suddenly shouted someone on the dock.

A lucky boat slowly sailed into Danzhou Bay, but the situation seemed to be a little wrong, there was a large mark of fire on the lower edge of the sail, there were several broken places on the right side of the ship, and there were even a few arrows stuck in the mast and side side, which seemed to have been attacked at sea.

Without much speculation, as the ship approached the dock, the situation quickly spread through the crowd. This is a cargo ship belonging to Zhanjia Shipping Company, and the route is from Sanya to Danzhou. The Zhan family boat company is no stranger to the local people, this boat company entered Danzhou almost at the same time as the Haihan people, and several ships would arrive in Danzhou Bay every month for trade. And the ship that entered the port today seems to be very unlucky, because on the sea just over 20 miles away from Danzhou Bay, it actually encountered pirates around Qiongzhou Island that have been extinct for a long time.

Since the launch of the warships of the Haihan militia, the pirates around Qiongzhou Island have been unlucky, and regardless of the size of the force, they have all become the targets of the Haihan militia's training. Between 1628 and the beginning of 1630, the Haihan militia made more than 20 sorties, defeating more than 10 pirate gangs on the coast of Qiongzhou Island and the surrounding areas. Of course, these pirate gangs have basically not yet formed a climate, at most they are at the level of the group of pirates on Dangan Island, and it didn't take much effort for the militia to clean up. By the beginning of this year, there had been little more news of pirates in the waters near Qiongzhou Island.

However, after half a year, this calm seems to have been broken again. The pirates encountered by the cargo ship at sea were even armed with earth cannons, and if it were not for the captain's early order to flee and throw away some of the cheap cargo in the ship's ballast, the ship probably would not have had a chance to escape to the shore of Danzhou Bay. It is said that several crew members on the ship were injured, but fortunately, there was a doctor arranged by Haihan on the dock construction site, and after rushing to the ship to rescue them, everyone saw several crew members who had bandaged their wounds and were carried down on stretchers.

Then the tired and sweaty doctor appeared on the dock and announced the results to the people waiting for news: "Several of the wounded are in good condition, but two crew members died of their injuries before arriving at Danzhou Port and cannot be saved." ”

The pirates reappeared in the waters of Danzhou, and hijacked ships and killed people, this news spread to the city of Danzhou on the same day, and the steward of the Zhan family's ship company also went to the state government to report the case, asking the Danzhou government to send officers and soldiers to kill these lawless pirates.

The Danzhou government does not have a very good way to deal with this kind of thing, send troops to fight, Danzhou does not have an independent naval division garrison, and has to ask for help from the Fucheng side. However, reinforcements are not so easy to ask, and the first fee will be paid, and then the other side will start to gather troops. Moreover, the expenses incurred during the period of coming to fight pirates have to be borne by the Danzhou locality, and who will pay for this money? Even if this fee can be raised, the pirates will come and go without a trace on the sea, where will the sailors go to kill them? If there is no whereabouts for 10 days and half a month, will they continue to search on the sea or will they go home? If there is no result, then the money spent on inviting reinforcements in front will not be in vain?

So the only thing the Danzhou government could do was to appease the victims, saying that they would definitely track down the whereabouts of the pirates and then exterminate them. As for how to deal with it in the future, it can only be delayed for one day, unless the pirates go ashore, otherwise the Danzhou government is indeed in a rut.

However, as the business partners of the Zhan family's shipping company, the Haihan people took the initiative to jump out at this juncture, claiming that they could assist the government in exterminating pirates. But there was a premise, that is, Haihan's warships were allowed to enter Danzhou Bay.

The people of the Danzhou government are not stupid, so naturally they will not agree to this kind of non-trivial request - whatever you Haihan people are doing in the south, it is all the people of Yazhou who are behind it, and we can't control it and don't want to take care of it, but we don't want to copy that set of games to Danzhou's side.

Although the garrison office hit the nail, it did not express any dissatisfaction, but only claimed to follow the opinions of the government, but if the government deems it necessary to ask the Haihan militia to help, then the Haihan side can send troops at any time, and it does not cost the government a tael of silver, and all the consumption is borne by itself. In addition, the Dan Office also generously stated that it would not ask for any form of compensation from the Zhan family shipping company for the goods that had suffered losses due to the piracy incident, but would pay 200 taels of silver to give bereavement to the crew members who were injured and killed in the incident. This kind of public statement has also won unanimous praise from all walks of life in Danzhou, believing that the Haihan Executive Committee really understands the overall situation and deserves to be a model for the local gentry.

Of course, there will be no pirates off the coast of Danzhou, and in Changhua Port, which is only 40 nautical miles away from Danzhou Bay, there are two "exploration-class" warships stationed in charge of security affairs in the waters north and south of Changhua. If there were still pirates along the coastline here, they would probably have already been used by the militia to brush up their experience, so how could there be a chance to go to sea to rob.

The so-called pirate looting is naturally a good drama directed by the relevant departments. As one of Haihan's major trading partners, it was a trivial matter for the Executive Committee to borrow a cargo ship from the Zhan family. As for the various traces of battle on the ship, the dead and wounded crew, they are all just disguises. But this kind of trick is hardly doubted by anyone - being robbed by pirates is not a good thing, and what good can be done by concocting such a deception?

But unconsciously, the government and the people of Danzhou unconsciously received an important information, that is, there were pirates near Danzhou who were carrying out semi-public activities, and even approached Danzhou Bay. And many people have noticed that the Danzhou government has not paid enough attention to this matter, or that their attention to this matter is not even comparable to that of Haihan, an irrelevant outsider.

After all, Danzhou is not a place rich in oil and water, and in the past two years, even the two pillar industries of salt and coal have ceased production, and if it were not for the arrival of the Haihan people to re-stimulate local trade activities, the decline of this place would almost only be a matter of time.

However, the pirate looting incident off the coast of Danzhou was not accidental, and within a few days, two cargo ships sailing from Guangzhou also encountered pirates at sea near Lingao and Chengmai east of Danzhou. This time, the cargo ship was not lucky enough to escape, and the valuable goods on board were looted, and when it arrived in Danzhou, there were only some less valuable ores left to use as ballast. Fortunately, no one put up strong resistance when the two ships were ransacked, so only a few crew members were slightly injured and no one was killed.

The owner and crew of the ship who were robbed provided more detailed information about the pirates, who were said to be not Han Chinese, but from the area where the Ming Dynasty and Annam met. There is also news that the old nest of this group of pirates is on Weizhou Island in the bay north of Danzhou and west of Leizhou, and the number of people is as high as thousands, most of them are deserters and refugees during the civil war in Annam, with hundreds of large and small ships, and quite a lot of standard weapons, which can be regarded as a new pirate force in the Beibu Gulf.

This news undoubtedly caused a great shock to the maritime merchants who often operate in this sea area, and in order to avoid being sacked by pirates at sea, the maritime merchants have joined the regular armed escort fleet organized by the Haihan.

Since the beginning of August, there have been more and more news of this mysterious pirate gang, and the activities have become more and more frequent, and in early August alone, there have been at least five or more pirate robberies near the coastline in Danzhou. Although there were no major casualties, it has made the people of Danzhou angry, and the fishermen of Lingao County did not even dare to go too far to the sea, although there was nothing of value on their small fishing boats, but the fishermen were more worried about being taken away at sea and then forced to join the gang to become pirates.

In mid-August, the scope of the pirates' activities finally expanded from Danzhou to the vicinity of the capital city of Qiongzhou, and two merchant ships sailing from Guangzhou to the capital city of Qiongzhou encountered the pirate ship less than 20 nautical miles from the mouth of the Nandu River. The remaining boats fled into the Nandu River in panic, and the people on board were given the opportunity to spread the news.

After receiving the victim's report, Fucheng Shuizhai still sent a warship to the Qiongzhou Strait to cruise, but no trace of the pirate ship and the captured civilian ship was found.

Of course, this did not end there, and for the rest of August, pirate ships frequently appeared near the northern coastline of Qiongzhou Island, and many immigrants witnessed the black flag of pirate ships sailing past the nearby sea at dawn. Almost every two or three days, someone would go to the government office to report that they had been ransacked by pirates at sea. However, Fucheng could not come up with an effective solution, so it could only keep the ships of the sailors patrolling the Qiongzhou Strait as dense as possible in order to curb the rampant activities of this gang of pirates.

At this time, there was gradually a voice among the people, that is, the government was unable to exterminate this group of pirates, and the only Haihan militia with this ability was deliberately suppressed by the government and prevented from fighting. Most of those who advocate such remarks will cite the example of the Haihan militia's earlier defeat of the rebels in Panyu and the defeat of the Liu Xiang pirate gang at Wanshan Harbor to prove that the Haihan militia's combat effectiveness is completely sufficient to exterminate the current gang of pirates around Qiongzhou Island. And the officials in the government suppressed Haihan, just because they didn't want to make themselves appear too incompetent, and they were worried that they would be robbed of the limelight by the Haihan militia.

This kind of voice undoubtedly has a considerable market among the people, and there are many rumors among the people about the achievements of the Haihan militia in the vicinity of the Pearl River Estuary in the first two years, and the credibility is quite high, and it is said that thanks to the naval protection of the Haihan militia, there are no pirates near Sanya at all, which is far more peaceful than these places in the north.

However, the people living in the vicinity of big cities such as Danzhou and Fucheng would not be particularly alarmed by the appearance of pirates, because no matter how much these pirates tossed, they were still active at sea and did not go ashore? Even if they went ashore, could they still attack the fortified city?

However, the deterioration of the shape shì was faster than all could have been imagined, and at the end of August, there were reports of pirate gangs landing in Chengmai County to loot fishing villages, and it was said that hundreds of pirates had landed and acted in an orderly manner, not a rabble. However, it seems that the pirates only went ashore to find supplies, and did not go on a killing spree in the fishing villages, but simply looted the villagers' food and left in a hurry.

But after the first landing, the follow-up soon followed. On September 5, a certain Zhuangzi 30 miles west of the capital city of Qiongzhou was sacked by a pirate gang in the early hours of the morning, and the owner of the village, Huang, and his two sons were executed on the spot. It's a pity that when the government received this news, the pirates had already completed the looting and retreated to the sea.