Hugo Roll stood on the stern of the large three-masted sailboat "Groningen" and carefully looked at the sea not far ahead with a monocular telescope.

They and several other ships affiliated with the Dutch East India Company, set out a month ago from the Grace Fortress on Little Java (i.e. Imamadura) and loaded as many cattle and chickens as possible on the ship, about 90 cattle and more than 1,600 chickens, and then sailed all the way through the strait next to Cyribes (i.e., Ima Sulawesi) and planned to travel to Japan and China.

There were 8 ships traveling with them, but only the Groningen, Berge, Dolphin and Nezealand were large ships (the tonnage of the Groningen was particularly large, exceeding 600 tons). The other four were small ships with tonnage of about 200 tons. Of course, even 200 tons were ships, in front of the Chinese and Japanese, they were undoubtedly large ships. Although the Wang Zheng of Fujian had obtained some Western sailing ships from the past two years.

However, when it comes to the fleet of Wang Zheng in Fujian, it is indeed quite a headache for the East India Company, because their strength is growing rapidly and regularization is getting better and better, and it is no longer a negligible opponent. To be honest, decades ago, although the Zheng family's fleet covered the sky on the southeast coast of China, the Dutch East India Company did not pay much attention to it. Even though the Battle of Luowan was defeated that year, the Dutch ships participating in the battle were only a few, with only 8-10 artillery pieces, and they were unable to move in shallow water areas. The Zheng family's large number of small boats attacked and ants bitten elephants. The senior executives of the East India Company believed that this did not mean anything.

But now the situation is different. After many years of gaining the maritime trade, this family developed rapidly, and the system and army were formalized well. Especially, their head Zheng Chenggong, after successfully occupying the entire province of Fujian, his prestige reached its peak, and then began to clear away the old men who were mostly pirates. This process took a long time, a full twenty years.

After eliminating the old man, Zheng Chenggong greatly denied the magic weapon his father relied on to defeat the Dutch East India Company, namely fire attack and small boat tactics, because he believed that this could only make them dominate shallow water and unable to rule the deep sea. It is reported that Zheng Chenggong has become increasingly "supervised" in the past ten years of the East Coast people's large ship cannon tactics, and is waiting for an opportunity to form a professional navy, and no longer like his father's subordinates were mostly fishermen at that time, and rushed small boats to assist in the war.

There is no doubt that such a professional navy would swallow a large amount of resources. Even the United Provinces did not intend to maintain a professional navy of size before the First Anglo-Dutch War. Zheng Chenggong was indeed on the right path to establishing a "maritime standing army". Although Hugo Roll doubted how large a fleet they could maintain with their economic strength, they should know that they had to maintain a standing army on land.

Forget it, the Zheng family's affairs are something that the company's seventeen-member committee is going to worry about. As long as the Zheng family has not gone crazy to the Pescaldo Islands (i.e. Penghu Islands) and blocked the strait, it is not his business. Hugo Roll shook his head, threw these thoughts out of his mind, and continued to observe several merchant ships in front of him with the flag of the Republic of China's East Coast.

Those were four huge ships, with a tonnage of nearly twice that of the "Groningen". They should be ships that came to the East Indies to buy rice. Well, to be precise, customers of the Dutch East Indies had just fired a salute and greeted them. The Dutch also gave a gift. However, it seemed that these East Coast people did not mean to come to exchange gifts, so the two sides kept a certain distance, and continued sailing one after another.

The routes of the two sides were almost the same at this time, that is, from the waters near the present island of Raul (now theislandolaur, auri.), heading north along the coastline, passing through Taimen Island (now Diaomen Island), the Mekong River estuary, Celsius Demer Island (now the Aki Island off the sea of ​​Fanche in southern central and southern Vietnam), Malay Bay (now the Fanlang area in southern central and southern Vietnam), Macau, and finally arrive in Nagasaki, maybe it is just the last part.

"Keep a distance from the East Coast people to show that we have no intention of attacking them. Of course, if possible, you can send a ship to contact him and try to buy some grain. After all, there is not much food for feeding livestock on the ship." Hugo Roll ordered the people below, and the business representative on the ship, Jan Kohler (the business representatives are on each ship and are the special envoy of the East India Company, which can be understood as the "military supervisor" on a ship) did not express any objection.

"The East Coast people should be in a state of turmoil lately, right?" Business representative Jan Kohler lit a pipe for himself, and while looking at the blue sea, he said in a teasing tone: "The envoy of the Manchu emperor told me last year that they would soon be able to unify the entire continent and behead all opponents. Although I doubt this, they must have launched an offensive of extraordinary scale. The East Coast people, as a minor participant in this game, should have also suffered a lot of impact."

"This may be our chance." Hugo Roll is now the 13th Governor of the Formosa Colony appointed by the East India Company, so he is extremely concerned about the situation in the mainland and Japan. He will only hear him say: "The East Coast people have taken too much control over this country and never allow others to reach in. But what happened over the years? Have they defended this hot land of business? No, they have not! Their maritime power is insufficient, there are Manchurian emperors on the mainland who oppose them, and there are many ambitious governors. This is our opportunity. In fact, the East Coast people themselves understand this. Over the years, they are also aware of the situation of foreign merchants participating in mainland trade. They are just unable to let go of their faces, but the facts will teach them to recognize all this."

Business representative Jan Kohler was very happy to hear Hugo Roll, a descendant of the French Huguenots, say this, because as a business representative, the better the future development of the East India Company, the greater the personal interests he will have. This is something very clear.

...

Just as the Dutch on the Groningen was chewing the tongues of the East Coast people behind their backs, the captain and sailors were also talking about the right and wrong of the Dutch people on the one leading the four immigrant transport ships (temporarily recruited as grain transport ships).

"After passing the 'bottom' island in front, I hung up all the sails, and the output power of the steam engine reached the maximum. We headed to Kunlun Island at full speed and tried to get there within three days. In order to load more food, the supplies on our ship were quite insufficient. We had to hurry there as soon as possible to buy fruits, vegetables, livestock, and draw fresh water." The captain frowned and kept placing on the chart with his right hand. He only heard him say: "Then he sailed along the Chameng coast, heading north and returning to Ningbo. If there were no special circumstances in the middle, we would no longer dock and recharge. If there were any situations, we would try to land in places where our ships were allowed to dock, such as Kimberland Bay and Macau, where our ships were allowed to dock. In other places, we would not be allowed to dock unless they had to, especially the Port of Benyang, which had been in trouble with us."

From the captain's words, we can see that the routes of the four grain transport ships of the east coast are indeed highly consistent with those of the Dutch. The "Dimen Island" he mentioned is actually Diaomen Island. The "Dimen Kingdom" was recorded in the "Zhu Fan Zhi" by Zhao Rushi in the Song Dynasty; Kunlun Island is located near the estuary of the Mekong River, and the Song Dynasty recorded it as "Tianzhu Mountain", while the "Zheng He Navigation Chart" in the Ming Dynasty described it as "Kunlun Mountain", and the people in the east coast obviously took the latter name; the latter (bayoanber) (bayoanber).

ine) It is easy to understand. Later generations were called Cam Ran Bay, which was famous. However, at this time, the charts of the East Coast people were still marked as "Kimberland Bay", which was used to use the name at this time. As for the Benyang, which had conflicts with the East Coast people, it has always been a key place for maritime transportation. Later generations were roughly in the Fanlang area of ​​Vietnam in southern central and southern Vietnam, that is, the "Malay Bay" marked on the Dutch charts, and there is also a small island that is used to fetch water in the southwest of the Dutch. The Dutch name was Cecilt Terre, which is the Gao Island near the coast of Fanlang today.

Perhaps the captain was an old-fashioned navigator, so his order was quickly implemented, no one raised any objections, and it was also transmitted to the four ships following closely behind through the signal flag. In this season (March), the wind direction was actually very unfavorable, and most of the time it was north wind. Logically, they should not go to Nanyang to buy rice.

But who has caused the situation on the mainland to change now, and the people of the East Coast themselves have encountered considerable trouble? Now, almost none of them are not in the war in Ningbo, Denglai and Hei Shui San Ge Development Team. Although their scale is large or small, no matter what, the war is doomed to decline in grain production, because agricultural production will inevitably be seriously affected. Even in the defense line, the defense line is not stable enough, and the improvement of the Liaodong and Hei Shui areas, it is not too exaggerated to say that most agricultural production has stagnated, because the military farms of the East Coast people are indeed exposed to the enemy's blade.

Therefore, Liao Xiaoyao, the captain of the Denglai Development Team, who is slim among the three major vassal states, discussed it with Liu Jianguo and Jiang Zhiqing, and decided to take out the inventories of gold and silver. At the same time, they used some of the deposits of Taiwan Bank and Northwest Reclamation Bank to buy grain in Japan and the East Indies as a strategic reserve in case of emergency needs.

To be honest, Liao Xiaoyao's decision is absolutely correct, and it fully takes into account the current situation between all parties on the mainland and the future. It is precisely because of this that he sent some ships in good condition to go south to the East Indies to buy grain in December last year, even if he sacrifices some immigration capacity. You should know that from late October to early and mid-April of the following year, it has always been a precious time for immigration transportation. People on the east coast will use a large amount of transportation capacity to buy grain overseas. If there is no reason to pass, the local executive committee will ask you!

On April 22, nine merchant ships, including Dutch ships, arrived in Macau, located at the mouth of the Pearl River. The people on the east coast did not dock, but sent some personnel to buy some food and spare canvas, skins and pumps from the Portuguese, and then continued northward toward the final destination of Dinghai Port in Ningbo Prefecture; and the Dutch East India Company's merchant ships were divided into the "Rock", the "Degarias" and the "Loyal" went to Macau. They will be docked here for some time. As for the other six merchant ships, they will divert to Nagasaki, Japan. Of course, they will also send a batch of supplies to the merchant station of the Jelanzha Castle in the middle and purchase some supplies.

On April 29, four east-shore grain transport ships arrived at Dinghai Port on Ningbo Prefecture and delivered thousands of tons of grain to ashore. These Nanyang rice will be returned to the warehouse after drying, as Ningbo Prefecture's strategic reserve grain. Before that, they had sent more than 3,000 tons of locally collected grain to Shandong to make up for the possible gap there.

Jiang Zhiqing, the captain of the Southern Development Team, was very happy with the arrival of the grain ship, and also praised their luck. Because of the severe weather in Nanyang in this season, the sea storms are very strong, and there will be a risk of shipwreck if you accidentally get a shipwreck. These four ships can return safely, and they are indeed lucky. I hope that the other four ships who also go to Nanyang to buy grain can also return safely. These four ships are also 1,150-ton machine-sail transport ships, and the final destination is Denglai Yantai Port.

Just the day after these grain transport ships arrived at Dinghai Port, a news received by Yin County also made the situation in the entire Ningbo Prefecture suddenly tense: the Qing army gathered heavy troops and began an invasion of the south, targeting the Jinhua Prefecture, which had just been swallowed by the King of Lu's troops before. At the same time, Tong Guogang, who was in charge of military and political affairs in Hangzhou, also strengthened the military defense of some prefectures and counties bordering the East Coast Control Area, in order to prevent the East Coast Army from launching a fierce attack on it from the flanks and affecting the overall situation of the South Conquest.

Of course, the envoy of the King of Lu also arrived in Yin County as soon as possible, requesting the east coast to send troops to restrain him. Jiang Zhiqing did not immediately agree to the King of Lu's request, but was preparing to investigate the situation clearly. Now the situation in the direction of Denglai is extremely tense, and Liaodong and Heishui have been fighting in full swing. The Qing army is now starting to cause trouble in the Jiangsu and Zhejiang areas in the south. Does he have such energy? Jiang Zhiqing is deeply suspicious of this, so he needs to find out the situation now before talking about it.
Chapter completed!