Emperor Zhengde

Chapter 210: Colonization of Malacca and the voyage of the Minister of War to the West

Like Andra, Alfonso was also unfamiliar when he saw the Ming sailing warships. He had seen the Ming's Cantonese merchant ships, but he did not expect that the Ming warships would be so different from the Cantonese ships. But in any case, Alfonso decided to send his own Portuguese warships to meet the Ming warships.

The Portuguese warship is also known as the centipede ship. The biggest feature of this ship is that there are multiple rows of rowing sailors on both sides of the ship's hull, making it shaped like a centipede. The ship is not only light and fast, but also equipped with Portuguese cannons, which can quickly attack enemy ships and break out and escape quickly.

Alfonso sent ten Portuguese warships. He had a total of fifteen warships. He believed that with the strength of his ten warships, he could defeat the five sailing ships of the Ming Dynasty.

The Ming Dynasty's sailing warships were improved from the hull to the sails. Both the ship speed and the artillery firing rate, range and accuracy were far superior to the Portuguese warships and machine guns.

When Alfonso's ten Portuguese warships arrived, the Ming Dynasty's five sailing ships had already formed a battle line and opened fire.

boom!
The fierce shells quickly flew over the blue sea and hit directly the bow, sail or plank of the Portuguese warship.

Some Portuguese warships began to spin in place.

Some Portuguese warships were hit so hard that wood chips flew all over the bows and they began to shake violently.

However, several of these Portuguese warships still rushed towards the Ming warships under the command of Alfonso, while the Ming warships, led by Wang Hong, turned around in advance and directly attacked the sides of the Portuguese warships under Alfonso's command. Dozens of cannons fired at the same time, and the shrapnel shells directly blew these Portuguese warships and Portuguese into pieces.

In less than half an hour, all ten warships under Alfonso's command had been blown up, and his own flagship also fled back in panic.

Alfonso looked at the Ming warships with lingering fear. He did not expect that the Ming warships would be so powerful. Looking at his nine damaged warships, he no longer had any will to resist and hurriedly fled with the remaining six warships.

However, at this time, the rest of the Ming warships also surrounded them. The entire sea area near the port was filled with Ming war flags, and the ship-borne cannons with their black metallic color poked out from the ship windows, waiting for a Portuguese warship to leave the port.

Suddenly, countless huge cannons spewed flames and fired shells at the Portuguese warships.

"what!"

In an instant, there were heard the screams of countless Portuguese people being bombarded.

Countless huge white waves stirred up the sea, and the Portuguese warships that were broken into pieces also rose and fell like pieces of wood.

Fu Gui, the Minister of Rites and the Prime Minister of Malacca, had no idea about military affairs, but he could see that the artillery of the Ming Dynasty was far superior to that of the Portuguese, and the five sailing ships that served as the vanguard were far larger than the Portuguese warships. When he saw the sea full of Ming Dynasty artillery bombarding the Portuguese warships, he knew that the Ming Dynasty navy was sure to win.

"Your Majesty is right. Civilization will surely defeat barbarism. Prince Bintang, see clearly, this is the teacher of our Great Ming! This is the effect of establishing a country with Confucianism! You took the Western Persia as your model and were willing to fall behind. That's why you were invaded by the small Western barbarians. Fifteen warships of theirs were enough to destroy your country. This shows that your laws are not popular among the people!"

Fu Gui stroked his beard and stood calmly on the Ming treasure ship behind which was raging artillery fire. The powerful artillery of the Ming Dynasty in front of him gave him great confidence and courage, making him, a famous minister of Neo-Confucianism, feel very proud. He even directly attributed all this to Confucianism in front of the prince of Malacca Bintang.

However, Prince Bintang was still somewhat stubborn and unwilling to believe that it was Confucianism that created everything in the Ming Dynasty, so he had to ask in a very polite tone:

"My Lord Prime Minister, I have heard that Confucianism does not value the skills of all kinds of craftsmen. The fact that the Celestial Empire's artillery is so sharp and its warships are so magnificent should be attributed to Mohism. I have also heard that the Confucian scholars do not have a very good opinion of your current emperor, saying that he only values ​​miscellaneous studies and not the classics and philosophy. So, shouldn't this be the result of your king's willful behavior rather than the Confucian teachings?"

Fu Gui was a little embarrassed by the question from Prince Bintang, and snorted: "You are just hearsay. Establishing a country with Confucianism does not mean abandoning all schools of thought. Confucianism is the way to establish a country. If the Ming Dynasty does not establish a country with Confucianism, how can the people be safe? How can the people manage all kinds of crafts? In any case, it is the decree of His Majesty to let you, the Malacca, establish a country with Confucianism. After the Portuguese are driven out, you must immediately return to the Imperial Academy to study!"

Fu Gui relied on the powerful Ming Dynasty behind him to teach Malacca's Prince Bintang a lesson, and Prince Bintang had no choice but to obey. At the same time, he began to feel confused. Could it be that a country founded on Confucianism could really make it so powerful, or was there something more that people needed to learn from the Ming Dynasty?

In any case, Prince Bintang felt that it was necessary for him to meet the current Ming Emperor Zhu Houzhao in the future.

Although Fu Gui used his status as an official of the Celestial Empire to intimidate Prince Bintang, his questioning also shook him. He could not help but start to think: "Confucianism is good at human relations, but it has never touched upon the way of studying things and hundreds of crafts. Governing a country is not about studying. If we really want the Ming Dynasty to be long-lasting, prosperous and powerful, shouldn't the true way to govern the country be Confucianism? What kind of knowledge should it be? Shouldn't it be the legal system that covers everything related to the national economy and people's livelihood?"

Fu Gui fell into deep thought. The endless artillery fire made this famous Neo-Confucian official realize that the teachings of a generation of sages seemed to be less beneficial to the empire than the invention of an ordinary technician. He couldn't help but mutter to himself again: "No, it's not like that. Maybe we just haven't comprehended the real knowledge. The real knowledge should let more people create new things, rather than let more people stick to the old things. What is the real knowledge!"

Fu Gui fell into a trance.

……

"How could this happen? What kind of empire are we facing? Their warships and artillery are so powerful! My God, we Portuguese have encountered the most terrible opponent!"

Alfonso, the famous Portuguese naval commander, chose to surrender and raised the white flag.

The commander of the Ming Dynasty, Wang Hong, also ordered the Ming warships to stop the bombardment, and ordered the prisoners Alfonso and others to be taken to his warships, and ordered a landing. After Wang Hong led the Ming navy to land on Batam Island, the prime minister of the Ming Dynasty stationed in Malacca and the exiled Malacca nobleman Bintang Prince also landed on Batam Island.

In the ninth year of Zhengde, Malacca was recovered by the Ming Dynasty from the Portuguese, but it also marked that Malacca entered an era of joint rule by the Ming Dynasty and the local nobles of Malacca. The Ming Dynasty was more like the emperor emeritus, the actual ruler of Malacca, while the royal family of Malacca was more like a puppet.

After the Ming Dynasty helped Malacca to restore its country, in accordance with Zhu Houzhao's request, Fu Gui established the Ming Dynasty Zongli Yamen in the capital of Malacca and set up officials at all levels. At the same time, Fu Gui also served as the Chief Clerk of Malacca, and led officials at all levels to allow Prince Bintang to ascend the throne according to Confucian etiquette. The important ceremony at the time of the enthronement was to read out the will of the Ming Emperor to appoint Prince Bintang as the head of Malacca and the Prime Minister as the highest military and political chief of Malacca.

Fu Gui was determined to help Malacca establish a Confucian order, and he never thought that the emperor Zhu Houzhao's decree gave him, a minister of the Ming Dynasty, the power to control the entire Malacca. But it was also because of this that he, a famous minister of Neo-Confucianism, had the full power to play in Malacca. He directly ordered Malacca to remove all Persian cultural symbols and demolish all Persian buildings. At the same time, he required Malacca to implement the prefecture-county system, unify the use of Chinese, and force the establishment of community schools in each county and create an imperial examination system.

Because after the Malacca head Bintang graduated from the Imperial Academy of the Ming Dynasty, he was forced by Fu Gui to attend imperial lectures every day. At that time, there were many great Confucian scholars in Malacca. These great Confucian scholars were even more old-fashioned and stubborn than Fu Gui, and they forced the king of Malacca to be a wise king in accordance with Confucian etiquette.

Fu Gui originally just wanted to establish a Confucian nation in Malacca, but unknowingly, he also made Malacca become sinicized. In addition, even the currency of Malacca was the same as that of the Ming Dynasty. All of them used silver dollars uniformly produced by the Royal Bank of the Ming Dynasty. The silver dollars had the portrait of Emperor Taizu Zhu Yuanzhang, so that Zhu Yuanzhang's popularity in Malacca overshadowed the king many years later.

Of course, Fu Gui's series of measures did not cause much resistance from the natives of Malacca. Firstly, the Portuguese had massacred them first. Secondly, the remaining Malacca nobles had no intention of opposing the Ming Dynasty because the Ming Dynasty still recognized their status as rulers. After all, they knew that the Portuguese could make them lose the opportunity to exploit the natives of Malacca, let alone the Ming Dynasty. In order to no longer be a noble exiled on the isolated islands, these Malacca nobles accepted the Ming Dynasty's status as the emperor in Malacca.

Just as the Manchu nobles could accept foreigners riding on the heads of the Chinese people.

The Ming Empire began to frantically mine ores in Malacca, and even directly smelted heavily polluting products, so that later on it even directly seized the rubber resources here. However, all of this was done through the hands of the local rulers of Malacca. Therefore, some local common people in Malacca who could not bear the exploitation only hated the local rulers of Malacca.

On the contrary, because the Ming government and capitalists not only utilized these cheap Malacca laborers but also gave them a small amount of compensation, these Malacca common people were grateful to the Ming Dynasty and even yearned to become citizens of the Ming Dynasty.

In the tenth year of Zhengde, Zhu Houzhao officially issued an edict to rename the world's troops as the army and navy. Among them, the Guangdong and Guangxi navy of the Ming Dynasty was reorganized into the South China Sea Fleet, and part of the South China Sea Fleet was stationed in the coastal city of Malacca, which is today's Singapore.

Because, at the instruction of Zhu Houzhao, Malacca had formally agreed to lease Haicheng to the Ming Dynasty as a military base for a period of ninety-nine years and the rent was one silver dollar per year.

Therefore, the Ming Dynasty’s navy can now be stationed here legally. Of course, Ming Dynasty will not admit that some people say that Ming Dynasty is colonizing the area several years later, because several years later, even the local residents of Haicheng are grateful to Ming Dynasty, believing that it is Ming Dynasty that gave them human rights, advanced systems and ideas, and made them prosperous.

In the eleventh year of Zhengde, Zhu Houzhao issued another decree, abolishing the road permit system and allowing the people to transfer their household registration because it was difficult to prohibit the people from migrating and prohibiting it would not be conducive to their livelihood. At the same time, he encouraged the people to reclaim wasteland and go north and out to sea, so that as far north of the desert and south of Qiongzhou, the number of Ming people and the number of Han people increased.

Malacca's Prime Minister Fu Gui also followed Zhu Houzhao's instructions and issued an imperial decree on behalf of Malacca King Bintang, granting permanent residency to the Han people of the Ming Dynasty and stating that the criminal punishment of the Han people of the Ming Dynasty would be the responsibility of their country of residence. This means that the Han people of the Ming Dynasty have the privilege of breaking the law in Malacca without being punished, and Malacca has no extraterritoriality over the people of the Ming Dynasty.

Because of this, more and more Han people from the Ming Dynasty came to live in Malacca, and even many Confucian scholars who were dissatisfied with the politics in their country came here to settle down, regarding this place as a paradise, and enjoying the privileges brought to them by the Malacca government.

The local nobles and gentry of Malacca also tried their best to become Han people, or even to become registered residents of the Ming Dynasty, in order to gain more privileges in Malacca.

The ones who suffered were the common people of Malacca, but because they had the blood-sucking factories of the Ming Dynasty sucking their blood and feeding them at the same time, these common people of Malacca did not fall into a survival crisis due to the loss of land and business opportunities. Even one or two of these common people were blessed by God and relied on the imperial examination system of Malacca to become nobles. After becoming Malacca nobles, their families would become citizens of the Ming Dynasty and then return to Malacca to live a privileged life.

Just as during World War II, the Japanese emperor was not punished by the then world hegemon the United States for invading China, the Ming emperor at this time did not execute the Portuguese prisoner of war Alfonso, but castrated him and ordered him to serve the Ming for life.

Pires couldn't be happy when he saw Malacca which had been controlled by the Ming Dynasty, but he knew that he had to be happy now because he was now an official of this empire, and he would also enjoy the benefits brought by the colonial world as an official of this empire.

Pires was very glad that he did not become a slave without human rights like Andra under the command of Zhang Yanling, Marquis of Jianchang, because of his invasion of the Ming Dynasty, and plundered Portuguese merchant ships in the waters between Malacca and Sumatra. He was also not castrated like Alfonso for slaughtering humans, and had to dig coal in the cold north for the rest of his life.

Pires was even more fortunate that a senior official of the Ming Empire, Xia Yan, the right assistant minister of the Ministry of War, was willing to personally go on a tour of the West, so that he could go with him and was valued by this senior official. Because of his erudition, he had the opportunity to teach this senior official the languages ​​of Western countries and became a guest of this senior official. As a result, he was finally valued by other scholars in the empire and was called "a great scholar in the West."

"Brother Dongshan, do you know Leonardo da Vinci, Raphael, Michelangelo and Botticelli?"

Although Pires had been teaching Xia Yan the languages ​​and cultures of Western countries on the sea voyage to the West, Xia Yan also worked part-time as Pires's sinology teacher. The two even intended to co-translate some Chinese and Western works. At this time, Xia Yan remembered the instructions given by His Majesty Zhu Houzhao to himself and the accompanying Jinyiwei Qianhu Tian Chao before his departure, so he couldn't help but ask Pires about the four people that His Majesty the Emperor specifically asked to be brought back to the Ming Dynasty.

"They are from Florence, and Leonardo da Vinci is the most famous among them. He is considered to be a saint and a great scholar in the empire. He is also good at painting!"

After Pires said that, Xia Yan was a little confused. He wondered how someone who was good at painting could be called a saint or a great scholar. He shouldn't be just Gu Kaizhi or Yan Liben? Or Tang Bohu of our time? Why did His Majesty attach so much importance to it? Could it be that His Majesty liked Western paintings?

"Of course, these people are not only good at painting..." Pires continued. The more Xia Yan listened, the more he realized that these people His Majesty wanted were extraordinary. He instructed Tian Chao, a captain of the Imperial Guard, "Captain Tian, ​​when the time comes, these people must go to the Ming Dynasty. If they refuse, please arrest them. If you really can't, please kill them!"

Thanks to the book friend 20170325152534678 for the 100 starting coins reward. Thank you to the book friend Chaoxuexuechi for the 100 starting coins reward.

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(End of this chapter)