Chapter 236: The Treaty of Manila

It had been about half a month since coming aboard the ship.

Zheng Hongkui had lost count of how many laps he had made through the ship's hold, having long since memorized every detail of the vessel's construction.

Starting from the lower gun deck, there was almost no light at all — one had to grope forward in the dark by the light of a single candle.

Under normal sailing conditions, this was no problem.

But now, in the midst of a naval bombardment, the Candle Dragon rolled violently from side to side, its sails catching the wind one moment and running with it the next.

The entire hold was filled with hazy dust and smoke, the air thick with the stench of gunpowder and blood.

Underfoot, one moment he stepped on sand, the next on blood.

His ears rang with cannon fire and the splintering of timber, punctuated by hoarse shouts of command and screams of agony.

Standing there was like having all five senses sealed off — even a tumbler doll couldn't have stood upright in such a hold.

Zheng Hongkui pressed forward almost purely on instinct, and somehow he made it all the way down to the lowest deck, laying the wounded man on the operating table.

The ship's surgeon, seeing him standing there motionless after setting down the patient, cursed at him: "What are you standing around for? Get back up top!"

"Yes, sir!" Zheng Hongkui answered loudly.

As he reached the lower deck, a violent roll sent him briefly airborne, and his head slammed hard against a deck beam. His ears rang, and a warm trickle ran down from his scalp.

In the lulls between cannon fire, he heard the carpenter bellowing at his apprentice: "Bring planks! Bring planks!"

Zheng Hongkui rushed into the storeroom almost on reflex, grabbed an armful of planks, and dashed out to hand them to the carpenter.

The carpenter then sent him for ship nails, tung oil, hemp rope, and the like.

Zheng Hongkui fetched them all in short order.

After patching the hull planking, the carpenter wiped the sweat from his brow and, by the dim lamplight, saw that the one beside him was not his own apprentice but a trainee soldier with a face covered in blood.

The carpenter laughed and praised him: "Good lad!"

With that, he pressed his ear against the hull.

Zheng Hongkui had no idea what he was doing, with rumbling sounds all around. The carpenter listened for a moment, then suddenly rose and said: "The sail locker's hull has been hit!" That spot was on the port bow near the waterline — in the pitch-black lower deck, it was impossible to see. That this carpenter could pinpoint the strike location by ear alone truly astounded Zheng Hongkui.

Zheng Hongkui was about to follow him when a man came running down the companionway: "Upper gun deck — haul powder!"

Without turning his head, the carpenter said to Zheng Hongkui: "Lad, go haul the powder."

"Yes, sir!" Zheng Hongkui ran forward down the pitch-black corridor.

This dark corridor, running between the hull and the compartments on the lower deck, had been set aside specially for carpenters to repair leaks, and was thus called the carpenter's walk.

Amidships on the lower deck lay the cable locker, and within it was tucked a small powder magazine. Four rows of camphorwood shelves held neatly arranged powder cartridges, wrapped in oiled paper and shaped like bamboo tubes.

The cartridges came in two types: those for 12-pounder guns and those for 18-pounders.

Since the sailor had said the upper gun deck needed powder, Zheng Hongkui hoisted ten 12-pounder cartridges onto his shoulder and raced up to the upper gun deck. When he arrived, he discovered that the gun captain who had been bellowing orders moments before was dead, half his head gone. Another gun captain had taken over his command.

The port hull plating was riddled with honeycomb-like holes.

Through the breaches, he could dimly make out a great fire burning on the sea in the distance.

The acting gun captain said: "These cartridges aren't enough. Don't stop until I tell you to — keep hauling!"

Zheng Hongkui lost count of how many trips he made between the three decks, the stores in the small powder magazine steadily dwindling.

When the powder was done, he moved on to hauling cannonballs, until his limbs went weak and trembled beneath him on the companionway.

Several others were hauling powder alongside him, forming an almost unbroken line up the companionway, an endless supply.

The Candle Dragon had ample ammunition, and the angry flames at her gun muzzles never ceased.

The two battle lines gradually closed to within a hundred paces, and the Candle Dragon began firing chain shot and grapeshot.

The Nan'ao gunners' loading speed was pushed to its absolute limit.

At a hundred paces, the Spanish flagship Fury was struck by over a hundred and twenty cannonballs, and chain shot shredded large sections of its rigging.

A sympathetic detonation ignited the powder on its gun deck, setting the midsection of the hull ablaze. The fire grew ever larger, soon threatening to spiral out of control, and the ship was forced to retreat toward Manila.

The Rose of the Holy Mother, following close behind, had taken multiple hits at the waterline at the very start of the battle and withdrew from the fight early on.

The two medium galleons Saint John and Holy Justice had their rigging cut by close-range chain shot, losing all mobility.

Rather than risk capture, the two captains ordered their ships scuttled — the crews boarded the launches and ignited the powder.

With two thunderous roars, both ships turned into towering fireballs one after the other.

The two caravels Golden Lion and Silver Wolf, being small and nimble, escaped largely unscathed and fled in disorder with the flagship toward Manila.

By the time the powder hauling was finished and Zheng Hongkui returned to the upper deck, this was the scene that greeted him.

Two Spanish warships were engulfed in flames, the fire leaping as high as their masts, timber cracking and popping ceaselessly as the blaze roared. Further off, the Spanish flagship was also burning as it fled toward the harbor, followed by its battered consorts, and along their course empty barrels, planks, and severed limbs were cast overboard from time to time.

The crew of the Candle Dragon were all cheering their victory.

The boatswain found the instructor and reported that several trainees had performed admirably — some had dared to climb the rigging under fire to free fouled sail locks, and others had braved enemy chain shot to repair the shrouds.

Only then did Zheng Hongkui realize that he had not been the only one to distinguish himself in that great battle — indeed, none who had earned a place aboard the Candle Dragon were ordinary men. Amid the victory celebrations, Bailangzai ordered the crew of the Zhangzhou to land and cut off the Spanish army's line of retreat.

Leon, leading a little over two hundred Mexican remnant troops, had just left Hook Point and was heading north back toward Manila when he ran headlong into the Nan'ao forces coming ashore.

By all rights, the sailors of the Zhangzhou had little training in land warfare and were no match for regular infantry.

But the Nan'ao forces, triumphant on both sea and land, were riding a wave of soaring morale.

The Spanish army, utterly routed, fled in panic like stray dogs.

Behind the sailors, the Zhangzhou provided fire support.

And Leon's Mexican soldiers were mostly convicts or forcibly pressed conscripts — at best a semi-regular force.

The two sides met, and just as Leon was about to order an attack, his men scattered and fled in every direction.

Leon's warhorse was shot out from under him, and he hit the ground. The sailors swarmed over him, and he was taken prisoner on the spot.

As for the Mexicans, only a little over twenty were captured — the rest simply ran too fast.

By the time the battle settled, dusk had fallen.

Aboard the Candle Dragon, everyone was in high spirits, and Bailangzai ordered the galley to prepare a grand feast to reward the crew.

A squad of soldiers was sent to the Parian market to buy wine and meat.

The Spaniards blockading the place didn't dare stop them at all, and slunk back to the walled city district in disgrace.

The Chinese in the Parian market had been terrified all day, fearing that the massacre of more than twenty years ago was about to repeat itself.

Everyone was packing up their valuables, preparing to flee; when they found they couldn't escape, they hid in cellars, praying only that the gods and Buddhas would leave their families a way out. In the space of a single day, the Parian market was in complete chaos, with all order lost—some took the opportunity to loot homes and rape women, while others set fire to houses.

The Spanish soldiers only maintained the blockade, turning a blind eye to the outrages of the mob, which only made these people bolder.

Yet around dusk, when they saw the Spanish fleet retreating from the front, everyone was stunned.

The Chinese had lived here their whole lives and had never seen the Spanish navy suffer such a heavy loss.

Could it be... that the Ming army had won?

Many of the elders, seeing this, remembered their kin who had died miserably under the colonizers' blades twenty years ago, and tears streamed down their aged faces.

After waiting more than twenty years, the imperial army had finally come!

When the purchasing party sent out by the Candle Dragon was landing, they were startled by the scene at the wharf.

The wharf was packed with a dense crowd of people, filling the streets as far as the eye could see—people even covered the surrounding rooftops and trees. The crowd was utterly silent, all eyes wide open as they stared; when they saw that the newcomers had yellow skin, black hair, and wore Chinese clothing, someone shouted: "They really are Ming imperial troops!"

The old man at the front threw down his cane and, trembling, knelt, kowtowing without cease.

The kneeling spread like a wave, and in a short while, the entire crowd had fallen to their knees.

Some cried out "Your Honor, the clear sky above!", some called them heavenly soldiers and the imperial army, and others offered to devise strategies to help breach the walls of the walled city. One person saying such a thing seemed comical.

Around the wharf, no fewer than ten thousand people had gathered; kneeling together, they babbled their thanks and accusations. Even the lowliest laborers in the purchasing party could feel the mighty force of popular support.

The leader of the purchasing party was the Candle Dragon's assistant cook. Before coming ashore, all he had been thinking about was how many hundred catties of pork, mutton, and chicken to buy—preferably a few hundred catties of beef as well—what fresh vegetables to get, and whether the honey wine on board would be enough to drink.

Commander Bai had also sent people to sternly instruct him that this trip ashore was not to disturb the people, not to make a big show, and not to bully the market vendors or force sales. He had followed orders and come ashore quietly, never expecting the people of Luzon to pull something like this; the assistant cook was frozen in place, cold sweat streaming down, thinking to himself that he didn't know whether this counted as violating military orders—if it did, with disturbance of the people to this degree, the Commander would surely have him beheaded.

As for the people's questions, he couldn't answer a single one.

Fortunately, Zheng Hongkui was curious about local customs in Luzon and had come ashore with them; seeing that the assistant cook wasn't speaking—

—he took over the conversation, first declaring their identity: "Fellow countrymen and elders, we come from Fujian and Guangdong, under the command of the Helmsman, called the Nan'ao Army." Most of the people of Luzon knew nothing of Lin Qian's uprising, so what Zheng Hongkui said was deliberately vague.

But the Helmsman's great name had spread widely among the maritime merchants of the South Seas.

Hearing that the Helmsman had sent people to rescue them, the people were even more overjoyed.

Then Zheng Hongkui went on to reiterate the Nan'ao Army's military discipline, the founding goals of the Nan'ao navy, and so on.

Essentially, he repeated Lin Qian's "naval lance theory" in full.

These words fired up the people of Luzon, and not a few were wiping tears as they listened.

Twenty years—the imperial court had finally remembered them, these abandoned people overseas!

Afterwards, Zheng Hongkui further clarified his identity and the purpose of this trip, saying he could not make any promises to the people.

But the matter was not over; the Governor-General's office would surely negotiate a result with Commander Bai.

These words were reasonable and sensible, and besides, the Nan'ao fleet was anchored out at the horizon for all to see.

The old man at the front rose and said to the crowd behind him: "Did you hear that? The imperial army wants wine and meat to reward the troops—everyone hurry home and get some!"

"Hey!" Zheng Hongkui panicked and quickly called out loudly: "Not get—buy! We brought silver; we're going to pay."

No one paid him any mind. The news that the imperial army wanted wine and meat spread through the Parian market from one to ten, from ten to a hundred; the people rose and rushed toward their homes. Before long, people came carrying food boxes and baskets.

Some brought live chickens, ducks, and fish; some brought chicken eggs and duck eggs; others brought all sorts of other foodstuffs—soon the area before the wharf was piled up like a small mountain. The longer it went on, the more outlandish the things the people brought became.

Live chickens, ducks, pigs, and sheep were all normal; some people even led over live cattle, live monkeys, and live peacocks.

When offered silver, not a single person would take it—they set down their goods and ran.

The purchasing party had no choice but to carry the various provisions aboard the ship, then set three full chests of silver on the wharf for the people to take as they pleased.

The people had given so much that a single Fujian junk couldn't carry it all; two more ships and more hands had to be called before everything was loaded away.

After the Fujian junk departed, the old man who led the people emerged from the shadows, looked at the three chests of silver on the wharf, and said excitedly: "No mistake—this is truly our Ming imperial army! Haha... the Emperor has remembered us! Quick! Bring me paper and brush—this old man will compose an inscription and erect a stele for the imperial army!"

Because there was simply too much food, there was still a surplus after distributing it to every ship, so Bailangzai also sent a great deal to the army besieging Fort San Felipe.

In the latter half of the night, the scent of wine and meat drifted ten li from the siege camp.

The surviving soldiers in the bastion gnawed black bread and drank cold water, hiding in the darkness like rats nibbling breadcrumbs in a sewer.

For hours, not a single person spoke; the atmosphere was so oppressive it was suffocating.

The next morning, just after dawn, the captain of Fort San Felipe raised a white flag and announced surrender.

He simply couldn't hold out any longer. The night before, he had clutched his rapier and not slept a wink, terrified that his own men would cut off his head while he slept. Ge Hong and the squad leaders of the six banners of the army led a squad of soldiers into the bastion to tally the spoils.

Of the cannons on the bastion's landward side, half had been damaged; those facing the sea were all intact.

In total, they captured fifteen twenty-four-pounder cannons, eight thirty-six-pounder cannons, two hundred barrels of gunpowder, and two thousand cannonballs.

The bastion also held large stores of fresh water and dried provisions.

Given these reserves divided among the very few soldiers within, if it had been a simple siege, this bastion could have held out for at least a year or two.

For Ge Hong, the bastion itself was an even more valuable discovery.

He held paper and brush, with a protractor and measuring tape at his waist, carefully measuring between each of its angles, wishing he could directly make a rubbing of the entire bastion. At the same time, Wang Ruzhong led men into the Cavite shipyard.

The shipyard had more than six hundred workers; all the skilled craftsmen were taken prisoner and loaded aboard ship, along with the shipyard's tools, charts, star plates, logs, and a whole series of navigation-related instruments—everything was loaded aboard.

The shipyard had three dry docks, with no vessels inside.

In the warehouses, they found large quantities of local hardwood timber, along with a small amount of oak planking.

Some time earlier, Lin Qian had established a distillery on Dongning Island, brewing wine from the waste of sugar production—that is, molasses.

This kind of liquor is called rum in Latin America.

In the Ming it had a new name: honey wine.

These oak planks weren't enough for shipbuilding, but they were just right for making oak barrels; honey wine aged in oak barrels gains an entirely new flavor.

The Nan'ao navy had started out as sea bandits—moving other people's goods onto their own ships was their original trade.

In just one day, the Cavite shipyard was stripped clean.

Its core shipbuilding function was completely lost, leaving only basic repair capabilities.

At the same time, Wang Ruzhong ordered the trenches outside the city filled in and more cannons brought into the bastion. From now on, this place, along with the shipyard, would also fall under the Helmsman's rule.

The trading post was built right beneath the bastion, greatly increasing its safety factor.

Additionally, the large number of native and ronin corpses left over from the earlier land battle needed no separate burial pits—they could simply be buried directly in the trenches, saving effort and fertilizing the soil. Three days later, after a brief rest, the Nan'ao forces prepared to march on Manila.

This was a bluff, but the Governor-General's office didn't know that, and Governor Pablo immediately grew restless.

He boarded the San Gabriel, the warship that had suffered the least damage after the great battle, and sailed under half canvas toward the Zhulong.

Approaching Hook Cape, from far off one could see the Nan'ao army's war flags flying over the shipyard, the bastion, and every warship.

The war flag was dark red throughout, with a pitch-black vertical stripe down the center, and at its heart a golden shield-shaped emblem, with two sword-bladed halberds crossed behind the shield. The flag was rectangular, made of Chaozhou silk with exquisite craftsmanship, bearing only three colors—red, black, and gold—in stark contrast, perfectly symmetrical left and right, instantly conveying a powerful sense of order and oppression.

The Zhulong, Tianyuan, and Zheng He lay anchored not far from the shipyard, their towering masts and fluttering triangular wind pennants adding to the sense of oppression. Pablo climbed aboard the Zhulong with trepidation and walked into the sterncastle.

Unlike the Tianyuan, the Zhulong had only a single deck of sterncastle.

Though the hull was larger, the cabin space was smaller—the officers' mess and the captain's office were combined onto one deck, placed in separate compartments. Pablo noticed that all the furniture in the sterncastle used lightweight, collapsible designs, with no redundant decoration whatsoever, and all the partition walls were movable.

This meant that once battle commenced, everything inside the sterncastle could be quickly cleared out and removed, joining with the upper deck to form a continuous gun deck.

In fact, even the captain's bedroom had gun ports—when the captain slept, two nine-pounder cannons lay above his head and at his feet.

Compared to the luxurious stern cabins of the Manila galleons, this design was naturally shabby to the extreme.

But it was precisely this approach of compressing space to the limit that gave the Zhulong its formidable firepower, allowing it to defeat Spain's outdated ship types with ease.

Pablo walked into the officers' mess and saw a cold-faced young man seated at the center of the long table.

Pablo performed an elegant aristocratic salute, stated his identity, and then said, "I take it you must be the Helmsman?"

Constrained by the channels of information transmission, the Spanish had very limited knowledge of the southeast of the Great Ming.

Before the Tianyuan had attacked Manila in the Helmsman's name, the Governor-General's office had still been arguing over whether Lin Qian and the Helmsman were the same person. Bailang said, "I am the captain of the Zhulong and commander of the fleet. My surname is Bai."

Pablo offered compliments while secretly growing alarmed—such a powerful fleet was not even personally led by the Helmsman, which clearly meant his military strength far exceeded what was visible here.

Both sides had come for peace negotiations, so there was no wasted talk.

Pablo spoke first: "Respected Commander, we are willing to accept the five conditions you previously proposed."

Bailangzai shook his head: "If we still use the old price now, then wouldn't our men have died for nothing?"

He had his subordinates search through the alternative plans, selected one suited to the current situation, and pushed it in front of Pablo.

Pablo only glanced at it, then as if his eyes had been burned, shouted loudly: "This is impossible! Damn it, you shengliren are truly a pack of greedy devils!"

"Slap!" Without a word, Bailangzai laid his great miao saber on the negotiation table.

Pablo stared at that four-foot great blade, swallowed hard, suddenly remembered his situation, and put on a fawning smile.

The fleet staff officer beside him extended two fingers and tapped the paper: "Frankish barbarian, those words you just spoke have already violated Article One of the treaty." Article One of the treaty prohibited the continued use of the discriminatory epithet shengliren.

"I apologize, respected gentlemen."

Pablo barely maintained his aristocratic dignity—the Governor-General's office had lost on both sea and land, and had lost the Cavite shipyard as well.

Now he, the Governor-General, held no cards left in his hand.

To be sure, given the Nan'ao forces' numbers and cannons, taking Manila city would be difficult, but a blockade by sea and land was well within their means.

After a blockade, the city's fall was merely a matter of time.

The nearest Spanish stronghold to Manila was Mexico City, and sending troops from there meant crossing the entire Pacific—distant water could not quench a nearby fire. And Manila was the empire's core interest; the galleon trade absolutely could not be severed.

Therefore, surrender and peace negotiations were already the Governor's only rational choice.

He picked up the terms, studied them carefully, then said: "Gentlemen, the Governor-General's office promises not to pursue the matter of the Santa Ana's theft—how about some reductions in the terms in exchange?"

"Pen." Bailangzai extended his hand, and his secretary presented a wolf-hair brush already dipped in ink with both hands.

Bailangzai took the paper bearing the terms and added a line to it in Chinese characters.

Pablo took it with a furrowed brow and showed it to the interpreter beside him.

The interpreter's body trembled, and he said cautiously: "Six: the Manila Governor-General's office shall additionally compensate the Nan'ao forces with six hundred thousand taels of silver, offsetting the purchase price of the galleon—" "Damn it! The total indemnity is one hundred thousand, and with one stroke of his pen he adds six hundred thousand—what kind of joke is this?"

The interpreter said pitifully: "Your Excellency, this sentence... shall I translate it?"

Pablo cursed: "Idiot!"

Then he let out a long sigh, took a quill pen from his subordinate, and signed his lengthy florid signature.

He had signed his name countless times in his life, but never had it been so difficult to write—every stroke felt as heavy as a thousand jun.

Three days later, this treaty signed by the Manila Governor-General was carved into printing blocks, printed, and posted in the Parián market.

The treaty stipulated that the Manila Governor-General's office formally apologized to the Great Ming subjects who had perished in the massacre of 1603, and promulgated a series of detailed, stringent laws to protect the rights of Chinese subjects on Luzon Island.

These included banning discriminatory language, abolishing the unequal treatment of Chinese and Spaniards under law and taxation, prohibiting preaching in the Parián market, equal pay for equal work, and allowing Chinese to freely enter and leave the walled city, among other provisions.

On sovereignty matters, it recognized the rights of the Nan'ao forces, the Great Ming, and its successor dynasties over Dongning Island and a series of islands and reefs in the East China Sea and South China Sea. On war matters, the Governor-General's office was to pay one hundred thousand taels of silver in compensation as military funds for the Nan'ao forces.

It also ceded Hook Cape as a concession zone, with all man-made installations upon it—including Fort San Felipe, the Cavite shipyard, and others—henceforth belonging to the Nan'ao forces. Within the concession, the Nan'ao forces held the right to station troops, administrative autonomy, extraterritorial jurisdiction, and tariff autonomy.

The Chinese of the Parián market initially could not believe the treaty was real—until they saw the formerly arrogant and domineering Spanish soldiers now taking detours to avoid Chinese people.

Only then did they confirm it was not a dream.

The old man who had just erected the "Three Silver Stele" saw this scene and wept with excitement, shouting for people to make rubbings of the treaty and erect another stele. That day, the Parián market was decked with lanterns and bunting; every household brought out fine wine and delicious food to celebrate, more lively than New Year.

Some commoners drove carts and horses, sailed Fujian junks, and crossed twenty or thirty li to deliver wine, meat, and provisions to the Nan'ao forces.

As early as the end of the Song and beginning of the Yuan dynasties, Chinese immigrants had already settled on Luzon Island.

And the Spanish had established the Manila Governor-General's office in the fifth year of Longqing—from that time on, the Chinese had been swallowing their anger under the rule of the barbarians. To this day, they had been bullied for a full fifty-six years!

Today, the Chinese of Luzon could finally stand tall.

The Chinese commoners celebrated with abandon, as if trying to vent all fifty-six years of grievance in one go.

Firecrackers in the Parián market rang out unceasingly for days.

The sound of firecrackers rolled over Mount Arayat, adding festive cheer to the funeral of the chiefdom of Pampanga.

The gongs and drums of dragon and lion dances crossed the Pasig River, drowning out the ringing of church bells, making the glass of the Governor-General's palace tremble and the Spanish soldiers shiver.

Yahei

Pink Round

Pen