The biggest hidden danger for Liaodong is grain, and since the beginning of Wanli 48, Liaodong has either been dry or cold, making winter wheat completely impossible to grow.

Originally, if you missed the planting of summer wheat (sown in early April and harvested in late September) or corn, people could still replant a round of winter wheat (sown in early October and harvested at the end of May of the following year).

In today's weather, winter wheat or corn is completely ungrowable, and no crops can be planted for more than five months from late October to early March of the following year.

Fortunately, the growth cycle of sweet potatoes and potatoes only takes 100 days (potatoes are shorter), which is much shorter than wheat and corn.

So far, from late March to early October, we can barely maintain two seasons of sweet potatoes and potatoes.

However, summer wheat or corn can only be harvested for one season, and the yield per mu is only about 1 stone.

Although under the guidance of Song Yingxing, the people in the Kaiyuan area used the collection of pasture cattle, sheep and horse manure and boiled animal bone broth (primitive potassium fertilizer) for irrigation to ensure that the land was continuously cultivated, and there was no need to abandon the land for cultivation.

However, it is still difficult to have a big increase in the yield per mu, and only a small amount of fertile land can reach 1 stone and 3 buckets.

However, in order to ensure the long-term storage of military rations, half of the land in eastern Liaoning is still grown with wheat and corn.

Potatoes and sweet potatoes can be stored for a few months at most, and although dried sweet potatoes and vermicelli are made in eastern Liaodong to extend the storage time, these things cannot be used as staple foods for a long time.

The climatic conditions in northern Korea are not much better than in Liaodong.

Although the climate of the Ryukyus is good, due to the small size of the Ryukyus, and the need to grow sugar cane to ensure the civilian and military supplies of sugar, the grain produced there is only a slight surplus, which cannot solve the food problem in Liaodong.

Therefore, Li Xianzhong now has to purchase a large amount of rice from Jiangnan every year to replenish his grain reserves.

It was precisely in order to completely solve the grain problem that after occupying Hetuara in June of the second year of the Apocalypse, Li Xianzhong ordered Sun Chuanting to develop Taiwan.

In August, Sun Chuanting led 2,000 Pingyu guards to Keelung Harbor in northern Taiwan.

Keelung Port is surrounded by mountains on three sides and is a rare deep-water port.

It is also not far from the Ryukyus, so it can be used as a base for the East Ryukyu Company.

However, to Sun Chuanting's surprise, there was already an owner here.

After the Ming Dynasty banned the sea, a large number of merchants were still smuggling, but these people could not return to the Ming Dynasty, so they eventually became pirates and looked for a foothold overseas.

At this time, Taiwan, which was not controlled by the Ming Dynasty and Westerners, became their best choice to settle down.

Therefore, the pirates led by Li Dan occupied Keelung Port.

Not only is there a wharf here, but they have also developed some fertile land around Keelung to supply food.

These pirates had to avoid the raids of the Dutch at sea and defend against the invasion of the local natives in Taiwan, so they were naturally not good people.

Not only did they have warships, they also had hundreds of pirate troops, and they even installed a few Franc cannons in Keelung Harbor.

However, this time the fleet led by Sun Chuanting was not small.

In particular, 2 light galleons with a displacement of 800 tons, armed with 88 12-pounder Hongyi cannons.

The largest ships of the pirates were nothing more than fukuships equipped with spinnakers, with a displacement of just over 200 tons.

As soon as they fought, they were blocked in the port of Keelung by the fleet of the East Ryukyu Company and were quickly sunk.

And the Pingyuwei defeated the main force of the pirates in a short time after landing.

Although a small number of pirates hid in the forests far from the shore.

However, the environment there was simply not enough for them to survive for long, and their local natives still had grudges, and after holding out for nearly a month, the pirate leaders finally surrendered to Sun Chuanting.

Seeing that these Pingyu guards were dressed as authentic Ming officials, they thought that the Ming court had sent someone to arrest them, so they resisted desperately.

As soon as they inquired about the people who turned out to be the East Ryukyu Company, they surrendered.

After all, Li Xianzhong is still the Liao Guogong of the Ming Dynasty, and it is impossible to occupy territory everywhere under his own banner, so Sun Chuanting also used the banner of the East Ryukyu Company.

Li Dan was also a well-known representative of Fujian maritime merchants, and had his own armed fleet, which mainly ran the route between Manila and Japan.

Although both sides ran the Japanese route, but the conflict was not too big, Li Dan had a very strong relationship with the shogunate, and it is said that he once funded the Tokugawa shogunate, so he took the official trade of the shogunate.

Although Zheng Zhilong's Eastern Ryukyu Company also traded with Nagasaki, which was under the control of the shogunate, Li Xianzhong was more likely to trade privately with the Shimazu family of the Satsuma Domain out of consideration for supporting the anti-shogunate forces.

Although Li Dan was very dissatisfied with the East Ryukyu Company's forcible occupation of Keelung Port, and Li Dan also had several Spanish Galen warships in his hands, he was obviously instigated in the face of the 800-ton light Galen sailing ship.

In the end, he voluntarily gave up his industry in Taiwan in exchange for the East Ryukyus Company not to rob his own Japanese merchant fleet.

Although Zheng Zhilong's East Ryukyu Company had the latest warships, the number of ships was too small to control the routes of the whole of East Asia.

And at present, their relationship with the Dutch is very poor, and the two sides often rob each other, in order not to make too many enemies, Li Xianzhong finally agreed to this plan.

Soon Sun Chuanting not only took Keelung Port, but also occupied the Tamsui Port to the west of Jilong Port.

Thanks to the early development of pirates such as Li Dan, Sun Chuanting's living conditions at the beginning were not so difficult.

At least in the settlements, drinking water is readily available, and they have developed a lot of fertile land around Keelung and Tamsui.

The fishery resources around the port are also quite developed.

Moreover, Li Xianzhong invested a huge amount of manpower, in addition to the 2,000 soldiers of the Pingyu Guard and the fleet of the East Ryukyu Company, he also brought 5,000 Korean laborers and 50,000 civilians recruited from the coastal areas of Fujian.

The expansion of Keelung Port was completed just a few months later.

However, the two ports are relatively close to each other, and in the end, Sun Chuanting decided to concentrate on building Keelung Port, which has better port conditions.

The docks at Tamsui Port were only slightly expanded to be used as a supply port.

However, he still built forts and forts in Keelung and Tamsui as his two bases in northern Taiwan.

Moreover, Taiwan has a lot of primeval forests, and the wood for shipbuilding is also readily available, and the Keelung Shipyard is also under construction.

Li Xianzhong's official investment is naturally not the same as the development efforts of the people and pirates along the coast of Fujian.

With the shipload of cement shipped from Liaodong to Taiwan, just over a year later, Taiwan not only had two ports in Keelung and Tamsui, but also two fortifications composed of fortifications.

It also owns the Keelung Shipyard with 8 docks.

Moreover, Sun Chuanting also built a Taipei City with a circumference of 8 miles about 70 miles southwest of Keelung Port, and used it as the seat of Taiwan.

Due to the growing reputation of Taiwan's land reclamation, many people from Fujian have taken the initiative to migrate to Taiwan.

Today, there are 103,000 people in Taiwan, and there are 20,000 North Korean laborers.

Due to the appearance of ports, forts, fortresses, and Taipei City, Taiwan's garrison also became 4,000 people.

At present, there are 150,000 acres of government land in Taiwan, which are cultivated by North Korean laborers. The scale of private land has reached 600,000 mu.

Taiwan uses the best Champa rice, so the yield per mu can reach 2 stones.

However, the northern part of Taiwan still belongs to the subtropical monsoon climate, so there is no way to achieve three crops a year for the time being.

However, two crops a year can also contribute 4 stone of high-quality rice per mu.

At present, Taiwan's tax rate is 1 stone and 2 buckets per mu of grain.

In the whole 3rd year of the Apocalypse, 600,000 stone of grain was obtained from the official field, and 720,000 stone of grain was collected from the private field, totaling 1.32 million stone.

Excluding the 280,000 stone consumed by the Taiwan garrison and Korean laborers, as well as the 240,000 stone stored in the granary, a total of 800,000 stone of grain was sent to Liaodong.

It can be said that it has greatly alleviated the food shortage in eastern Liaodong.

However, Taiwan currently has its own problems.

Both the Pingyuwei in Liaodong and the Koreans are not accustomed to Taiwan's hot and humid climate, and many people are not accustomed to the water and soil.

Fortunately, Li Xianzhong prepared a large number of medicinal materials such as Artemisia annua in advance.

Later studies have shown that artemisinin, like cinchona cream, is also effective in treating malaria.

Obviously, it is impossible for Li Xianzhong to obtain a large number of cinchona creams produced in South America at present, so he prepared a large number of medicinal materials such as Artemisia annua in advance.

In addition, Sun Chuanting was told to pay attention to drinking water, not to drink raw water, and prepared a large amount of wormwood to repel mosquitoes.

The soldiers ordered the workshop of the Pingyuwei to produce a large number of mosquito nets for physical mosquito control.

Rao was so well prepared that many soldiers still fell ill with the Korean laborers, and finally three or four hundred people died of illness.

But this is already very good, if it were not for these measures, it would have been possible for 20,000 North Korean laborers to die even seven or eight thousand.

Relatively speaking, those Hokkien people in Fujian are much more adaptable than their northerners, after all, they are used to such a climate.

Although there are some discomforts, they are all exceptions.

In the end, Li Xianzhong still gave up the idea of immigrating a large number of northern people to Taiwan, at least not for the time being.

Let's wait until Taiwan's development degree is high.

Otherwise, as long as hundreds of thousands of Liaodong people are immigrated to the past, the land near Taiwan's coastline can be rapidly developed, and millions of acres of fertile land can be completely solved.

However, Taiwan's subsequent development also encountered a bottleneck, because the northeast of the island of Taiwan is hilly and mountainous, and only the northwest has a lot of flat land.

For more than a year, the relatively easy to develop land in the northern region has almost been exploited by them.

The rest of the land was either to clear out patches of forest or swamp, or to compete with the natives to the south for territory.

Because Taiwan is currently mainly developing the northwest coast, Taipei City is already the innermost area where they have penetrated into it.

As the development team continued to advance to the vicinity of Taichung, there was more and more contact with these indigenous people.

At first, the natives tried to expel the Pingyuwei by force, but after the confrontation, these natives who only had primitive bows and arrows and wooden spears were no match for the Pingyuwei.

Originally, Sun Chuanting thought that these natives were just some primitive tribes, and they even captured some slaves and worked in the grange.

However, after a deeper understanding, it was discovered that they actually have a kingdom.

A "quasi-kingdom" established by the Babra people on the island of Taiwan, the Maowu people, the Ba Zehai people and some Hongya people, the tribal co-owner is called the big-bellied king.

Therefore, he called this kingdom the "Potbelly Kingdom", and its core territory was in the area of today's Taichung.

Although they are still some distance away from Taichung, the collisions between the two sides are becoming more and more frequent.

Originally, Sun Chuanting was going to land directly near Taichung with a warship, arrest this "potbelly king", and decapitate him.

But he heard bad news.

To the south of this potbelly kingdom, a group of red-haired clans appeared, and this group of red-haired clans should be the Dutch.

Originally, they were planning to quickly establish a foothold in the central and southern parts of Taiwan and control the entire island of Taiwan after gaining a firm foothold in northern Taiwan.

However, the level of development in Taiwan is too low.

Coupled with the problem of epidemics, the immigrants from Liaodong could not go south, and finally abandoned this plan.

A year and a half later, Sun Chuanting only occupied the northern part of Taiwan and focused his development on the northwest.

This gave the Dutch the opportunity to land on Taiwan.

And Zheng Zhilong also came with the news that now the Penghu Islands have also been occupied by the Dutch, and the Dutch are fighting against the Ming Dynasty at this time.

Originally, Penghu was the territory of the Ming Dynasty and belonged to Fujian Province.

Li Xianzhong gave up the occupation of Penghu in order to have a head-on conflict with the Ming Dynasty.

I didn't expect the Dutch to be cheaper now.

Now in order to deal with the Dutch, Sun Chuanting has to temporarily reconcile with this pot-bellied kingdom.

Otherwise, it would be easy to occupy the Potbelly Kingdom, but it would take him a lot of time to subdue these natives, and he would no longer be able to deal with the Dutch. In the end, the two sides agreed to take Da'an Creek north of Taichung as the boundary, coexist peacefully, and jointly deal with the Dutch.

Since the East Ryukyu Company began to buy silk from Jiangnan in Chongming, it almost monopolized the silk trade in Japan.

As a result, the Dutch second-hand dealers almost lost the Japanese market, and they could only ship some Southeast Asian spices to the port of Nagasaki.

As a result, the Dutch and the warships of the East Ryukyu Company often fought each other in the waters between Taiwan and Japan.

The base of the Dutch was as far away as Batavia in the South Seas, and the supply ports of the Eastern Ryukyu Company were located throughout the Ryukyus, Taiwan, Korea, and Liaodong.

Although the Dutch also had Spanish galleons with a displacement of 800 tons, they did not have a supply port and could not cruise the waters of Japan for long periods of time.

At this time, the East Ryukyu Company already owned two 800-ton light galleons and eight 640-ton Spanish galleons, as well as 24 commercial galleons of more than 500 tons.

So soon the East Ryukyu Company occupied the sea control of this sea area.

The Dutch, who had tried to occupy Macau and Manila, and were in hostility with Spain and Portugal, could not have rented these two ports.

As a result, they continued to search for a supply port in East Asia.

In the end, they set their sights on the Penghu Islands of the Ming Dynasty.

In fact, as early as the 32nd year of Wanli, the Dutch East India Company once invaded Penghu.

However, soon the Ming army organized 50 warships and more than 2,000 people to recover, and the Dutch saw the disparity in strength between the two sides, so they hurriedly slipped away.

In the third year of the Apocalypse, Guen of the Dutch East India Company ordered Rael to lead an elite fleet of 15 large and small warships and more than 1,000 elite soldiers to occupy Penghu again.

In fact, strictly speaking, it should be regarded as a combined fleet, because in this fleet, it also included two British warships that had just emerged at that time and were bent on currying favor with the Netherlands.

Such a large formation is still rare in the history of European colonization.

Because whether it is in Java or Malacca, as soon as such a large fleet arrives, the locals will obediently surrender, so how can there be resistance?

They estimated that at the beginning of the war, the Ming army that rushed to hear the news was defeated.

At the same time, the Netherlands sent a fleet to the sea of Zhangzhou to block the gate of Zhangzhou, in an attempt to threaten the Ming Dynasty with force to trade with the Netherlands.

Not only did they burn a large number of Chinese fishing boats, but they even landed and burned several villages.

The Dutch also captured the Ming people as prisoners, gathered them on Penghu Island first, and forced them to build a city.

A total of 1,150 prisoners, 571 were killed in enslavement, and the remaining 579 were sent to Batavia and then sold into slavery in other regions.

After the Dutch built a fortress in Penghu, they had enough confidence to speak.

When Chen Shiying, the general manager of the Ming Dynasty, came to negotiate, the Dutch side put forward three demands:

First, the Dutch were allowed to trade with each other along the coast of China;

second, to cede Penghu to the Dutch;

Third, China is prohibited from trading with Portugal and Spain.

This condition directly angered the Emperor of the Apocalypse.

In the first month of the fourth year of the Apocalypse, the governor of Fujian, Nan Juyi, personally took a boat to Kinmen and ordered the Ming army fleet to cross the sea to recover Penghu by force, and this time it was 200 warships and more than 10,000 people.

Fujian General Yu Zhigao and garrison Wang Mengxiong led the ships to Penghu, landed on Baisha Island, and first engaged the Dutch army.

However, the Ming army was all small boats, and the Dutch army relied on strong fortifications and warships to resist stubbornly, and Penghu could not be attacked for a long time.

The East Ryukyu Company and the Dutch were also mortal enemies.

So Zheng Zhilong made a move, and the East Ryukyu Company used 1 Galen merchant ship to successfully lure 5 Dutch capital ships out of Penghu.

In the waters west of Tamsui, the ten main ships of the East Ryukyu Company were dispatched at once.

It was only when the Dutch discovered the main fleet of the East Ryukyu Company that they realized that they had been fooled.

They only had one 800-ton main Spanish galleon, and the other four were 500-ton Galen.

On Zheng Zhilong's side, there are two 800-ton and eight 640-ton warships.

More than just the tonnage advantage, the English light Galen galleons were better suited for naval combat than the older Spanish Galen steamers.

Due to the more rational design of the hull, there were more guns on board.

So although the tonnage is the same, Zheng Zhilong's ship is much more ferocious than the Dutch.

Moreover, Zheng Zhilong's gunpowder also added sugar, so the range is longer and the power is greater.

For a while, the sound of artillery on the sea continued, and the two sides began to test firing, and the shells fell on the sea near the battleship and rolled up huge waves.

Soon after, the Dutch's 800-ton Rotterdam was hit by Ming artillery.

Unfortunately, the mast of the Rotterdam was directly blown off by the Ming artillery, which caused its speed to drop instantly.

In naval battles, once a ship loses speed, it will soon become a target for enemy attacks.

Although a warship with a displacement of 800 tons was extremely strong, under the siege of ten warships of the Ming army, the Rotterdam finally sank to the bottom of the sea!

Of the remaining four Dutch ships, two were sunk and two escaped.

Because of the fear of being blocked by Zheng Zhilong directly in Penghu, in the end, the two boats did not return to Penghu, but chose to run back to Batavia directly.

And the Dutch, having lost their warships, could not stop the advance of the Ming army in Penghu.

A little more than a month later, the Dutch were forced to reach an agreement with the Ming army and withdraw from Penghu.

On March 18, the fourth year of the Apocalypse, the Ming army officially recovered the Penghu Islands.

Of course, the Dutch did not evacuate East Asia, they chose to withdraw to Taiwan.

The cunning Dutch first landed in the Tainan area, and then they said to the local natives: "We will buy you a piece of land the size of a cowhide." ”

The natives thought to themselves how big a cowhide was, and what money was needed for this little land, so they simply gave a piece of cowhide land to the Dutch.

As a result, the Dutch cut a cowhide into small strips and circled a large piece of land directly in front of the natives.

The natives wanted to turn their faces and deny their debts, but they were no match for Dutch soldiers in iron armor and armed with spears and muskets.

Soon they built a fortress on the land, which they named the city of Geranza.

However, the Dutch did not have cement, and their manpower was insufficient, so the efficiency of construction was naturally not comparable to that of Sun Chuanting.

At this time, their city of Geranza was only an empty shell, and it was not a fortress with a complete defense system at all.

Soon the warships of the East Ryukyu Company surrounded the area.

Although the Dutch also repaired the forts, the small number of 12-pounder red-coated cannons could hardly pose a threat to Zheng Zhilong's main battleship.

After a fierce battle for most of the day, the Dutch finally abandoned the fort, and the Ming army's flowering shells were too damaging to their men.

Considering that the Netherlands at this time still had thousands of people near the city of Geranza.

If they forcibly attacked, the casualties of the Pingyuwei would definitely be very large.

So for the time being, the tactics of besieging these Dutch were adopted.

The Dutch didn't sit still, though, and while Batavia was a long way from Tainan, Manila was a stone's throw away.

The Dutch governor Songk finally decided to use their enemies, the Spaniards, against this Eastern Ryukyu Company.

Soon a Dutch ship sailed into Manila.

Franco, the Spanish governor of Manila, said excitedly: "Is the governor of Songke really willing to give up their stronghold in Tainan, the city of Geranza, to Spain?" ”

The Dutch envoy said: "As long as Your Excellency the Governor can ensure the safe withdrawal of the personnel of our East India Company, the Dutch will cede the city of Geranza to Spain." ”

In fact, the original target that the Dutch wanted to seize was Manila, but although the Kingdom of Spain was already twilight, after all, the emaciated camel was bigger than the horse.

Manila has a 1,200-ton USS Santiago.

Soon the Spanish fleet headed north from Manila, and in just one day they reached the vicinity of the city of Geranza.

Although the Santiago has the advantage of a displacement of 1,200 tons, it is an old Spanish galleon.

The Eastern Ryukyu Fleet still had the strength to fight a war by virtue of its numerical superiority.

However, who would have expected that the San Diego was actually equipped with an 18-pound Hongyi cannon, which surpassed Zheng Zhilong in terms of range and power.

Moreover, the 800-ton Shanhaiguan was also damaged by it.

What's even more infuriating is that the remnants of the Dutch fleet actually took advantage of the big war to go north and attack Keelung Harbor.

Zheng Zhilong could only reluctantly order the fleet to retreat!

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(End of chapter)