Chapter 368: Batavia Shall Never Fall

Lin Qian put on a mask and walked out of the captain's cabin. Crew members were sweeping volcanic ash off the deck with brooms, though the ash on the masts and sails had already been cleaned away.

The sky was still orange and hazy, but the snowflake-like volcanic ash had stopped falling.

Lin Qian climbed to the quarterdeck of the Candle Dragon and gazed out to sea. Seven or eight medium-sized yachts lay tilted on the shoals, like a pod of beached whales.

Beside the stranded ships, eagle ships and sea wolf ships were anchored, with men sent aboard to inspect the hulls.

Refloating a ship is skilled work — you can't just haul and yank.

First you must jettison cargo to lighten the load, shift cargo to trim the vessel, and wait for the tide. Depending on the seabed composition, the depth of the grounding, and the state of damage control, a bespoke solution must be devised. You could say every refloating is a small engineering project.

Getting all seven or eight yachts off the shoals would probably take the better part of a month.

Beyond the main channel sat four or five Dutch warships — these had surrendered voluntarily, and every one of them looked utterly miserable.

The largest of them was the Enkhuizen, one of the Dutchmen's six large galleons and the only one still afloat.

Of the remaining five large galleons, two had flooded and sunk, two had suffered powder magazine explosions, and one had been deliberately scuttled.

On the quarterdeck, Lu Ruoteng was tallying the spoils. This was normally the duty of the fleet staff officer, but since he, the naval chief of staff, had nothing else to do, he had taken it upon himself.

Lin Qian stepped forward and asked, "How did we fare in this battle's captures?"

Lu Ruoteng set down his brush and said, "Counting the stranded ones, we captured twelve vessels of various sizes in this battle — one large galleon, six large yachts, and five small yachts. Here is the ship inventory."

Lin Qian took it and saw neatly hand-drawn tables listing ship names, length, beam, gun configuration, damage status, and so on.

These twelve ships were rated for two hundred and sixty-seven guns, but only a hundred and fifty-odd remained; the rest had been destroyed in battle. Besides the severe gun damage, most hulls were badly battered, with many frames broken — repairs would cost no small sum.

Additionally, the Great Xia fleet had suffered losses of its own: the Spice Road, the Cargo Voucher, and the Banker had been sunk.

Compared to the annihilation of the Dutch fleet, the loss of three twenty-gun yachts was almost negligible.

And those three ships had originally been captured from the Dutch anyway — at most, they'd simply been given back to the sea.

Lin Qian noticed that in the ship name column, Lu Ruoteng had written both Chinese and Dutch, and asked curiously, "You know Dutch?"

Lu Ruoteng laughed. "I just copied the shapes like a cat drawing a tiger — I had the interpreters supply the Chinese names."

Bai Qing stared at the table and said, "En... Enkhuiz... Dutch ship names are so strange!"

Lin Qian said, "Enkhuizen — that's a major city in the Netherlands and one of the six principal chambers of the Dutch East India Company." "They have six chambers?" Bai Qing's face filled with astonishment.

Lin Qian smiled and explained, "Don't worry — those are just commercial chambers. As for city-scale strongholds like Batavia, there's only this one." Bai Qing sighed in relief. "That's good to hear."

Lu Ruoteng added, "But when it comes to small trading posts like Ambon, Pulicat, and Nagasaki, the Dutch have quite a few." Ambon was a small island northwest of the Banda Islands, where the Dutch had established a post to control the spice trade.

Pulicat lay on the southeast coast of India, under Mughal rule, near the island of Ceylon; the Dutch used it to trade cotton cloth, indigo, and cinnamon between India and Persia.

The Dutch, after all, were known as the waggoners of the sea — they had countless such small trading posts and factories.

And unlike Great Xia's cautious trading model, Dutch merchants were bolder and more aggressive, caring far less about their employees' lives, which let their power expand with terrifying speed.

Lin Qian said, "Come on — let's go take a look at the Enkhuizen."

A moment later, the group rowed a small boat up to the Dutchmen's large galleon.

Though the Enkhuizen had been battered into a sorry, battered state, approaching it in the small boat still made clear it was a leviathan. According to Lu Ruoteng's capture inventory, the Enkhuizen measured nearly fifteen zhang in overall length, three zhang five chi in beam, displaced roughly eight hundred to a thousand tons, and carried forty-six guns.

By gun count, the ship rated as a Great Xia fifth-rate; by tonnage, it exceeded a fourth-rate; and by length, it was nearly on par with the Candle Dragon.

This combination of high defense and low offense seemed illogical, but it actually reflected a different philosophy of ship design.

A ship of the line was designed purely for naval combat, with cargo spaces drastically reduced, whereas a galleon served both military and civilian purposes — when not fighting, it had to carry cargo, hence the large tonnage and few guns.

Its slender hull was also built for ocean voyages.

Lin Qian boarded via the gangway and was immediately hit by an overpowering stench of blood. The deck was covered everywhere with dried, grayed bloodstains and shreds of flesh — the smell was nauseating.

A dozen or so Dutch prisoners knelt on the deck scrubbing with whetstones dipped in seawater, watched over by seven or eight marines holding flintlock muskets with fixed bayonets.

Lu Ruoteng said, "According to the Western barbarians' custom, those who surrender their ships are to be treated well, so the men scrubbing here were all brought over from other ships." "Then let's follow their rules."

With that, Lin Qian walked around the deck, patting the railings. The ship was built entirely of oak, extremely durable — he could even see lead shot embedded in the mast.

Descending to the gun deck, there was even more dried flesh and blood inside, though both sides of the hull had been shot to pieces, giving the gun deck good ventilation — the smell of blood wasn't too overpowering.

Lin Qian walked up to a cannon to inspect it. The barrel was a uniform reddish-brown — the result of surface oxidation from long use of a bronze gun.

Judging by its size, this was a twelve-pounder, and it had been excellently maintained — not a trace of verdigris on the barrel.

In the dim yellow light, Lin Qian peered into the bore. It was smooth and even — not as fine as Foye's bored guns, but it held its own against the cannons from the Bocarro foundry.

Lu Ruoteng said, "The ship's rated battery was ten eighteen-pounders, twenty-six twelve-pounders, eight six-pounders, and two three-pounders. Half the guns are still serviceable, all finely crafted bronze pieces."

This was a textbook case of a big ship carrying small guns.

Through the broken hull planking, Lin Qian examined the frame layout and could tell the ship was solidly built.

The reason for this small-gun, big-ship design was the Dutch merchants' mindset and their outdated naval doctrine.

The sturdy hull was for enduring storms on long ocean voyages.

The small-caliber guns were to save costs and devote more carrying capacity to cargo.

Dutch tactics also favored massed charges and boarding actions rather than reliance on heavy artillery.

If the Batavia fleet had been even slightly more heavily armed, Lin Qian's victory might not have come so easily.

Bai Qing sneered at the sight, "Those Dutch masters and the pearl-farm eunuchs really are cut from the same cloth — filthy rich, and still too stingy to fit proper heavy guns!"

Lu Ruoteng said disdainfully, "At the end of the day, they're just a pack of black-hearted merchants — how could they ever match Great Xia?"

Lin Qian said nothing, because he knew that in history, the Dutch had suffered a crushing defeat in the First Anglo-Dutch War, also due to insufficient firepower. Their homeland was deeply shaken; before the war even ended, they began their ship-of-the-line reforms, and in just ten years surpassed England in both per-ship and total firepower, avenging their shame in the Second Anglo-Dutch War.

This Dutch commercial republic had amassed enormous wealth through trade, and with a formidable domestic shipbuilding industry, its war potential was immense — and its policies were flexible and adaptive, quick to learn.

At the Battle of Batavia, the Dutch were still padding their fleet with yachts, but a few years from now, they might well sail ships of the line out here.

This was no alarmist talk. From the Enkhuizen's hull construction, Lin Qian could see the Dutch clearly possessed the shipbuilding capability — and once you have the hull, hoisting heavy guns aboard is something anyone can do.

In history, the Dutchman's famous warship De Zeven Provinciën was a leviathan of sixteen hundred tons full displacement, carrying twenty-eight thirty-six-pounders and eighty guns in total — and that ship went from keel-laying to launching in just nine short months.

That shows the Dutch shipbuilding capability.

And the Great Xia fleet, having just fought a major battle, was in dire need of rest and repair. At this moment, the Dutch didn't even need to build new ships — simply sailing the Christmas fleet back would be enough to defeat the Great Xia fleet.

So Lin Qian had to take Batavia as quickly as possible. With that stronghold on Java, he could uproot the Dutch presence in East and Southeast Asia — he might not be able to destroy the Dutch East India Company, but at least he could drive them out.

While Lin Qian was deep in thought, a crew member called out from the hatchway: "Your Majesty, the Dutch have sent an envoy to discuss peace."

They're certainly eager.

Lin Qian smiled slightly. "Go to the Zhulong... no, have the envoy come to the captain's cabin of the Enkhuizen."

"Yes!" The crew member acknowledged and withdrew.

Lin Qian then walked toward the stern and entered the captain's cabin. The Dutch galleon was not as extreme as the Great Xia battleships—the captain's cabin was not cleared out to become a gun deck during battle.

But the cannon fire had taken its toll, and most of the furniture was destroyed, as if the room had been through an earthquake.

Lin Qian picked out a chair that was still in decent shape, sat down, and waited quietly for the envoy.

The man the Dutch sent to negotiate was none other than the Company's Minister of Justice, Wild. He had hurried over in a small tender boat, and along the way, seeing the several ships run aground and the enormous shell holes in their hulls, he was already shaken to the core.

After Wild boarded the Enkhuizen, he smelled the stench of blood and saw flesh stuck to the deck that could not be scraped off, and he began retching uncontrollably. By the time he reached the door of the captain's cabin, his face had gone white with fear.

After a careful search of his person, Wild entered the captain's cabin, removed his hat and bowed, and the two exchanged introductions.

Wild's expression shifted slightly after hearing it. There were rumors in Batavia that this King of Xia practiced witchcraft and was an incarnation of the devil. Wild had not believed it before, but after witnessing the volcanic eruption and the disastrous defeat of the fleet, he could not help but half-believe it now.

After sizing Lin Qian up with a mixture of fear and uncertainty for a moment, Wild tentatively inquired about the situation of the Company's fleet and the prisoners.

Lin Qian shot Lu Ruoteng a glance, and Lu Ruoteng stepped forward and said: "Fifteen of your warships have sunk, we have captured twelve, and the rest are unaccounted for."

Wild's heart sank. None of those unaccounted-for ships had returned to port—they had most likely sunk somewhere in the open sea, merely not counted by the Great Xia.

He thought of how, ever since the Dutch had arrived in East Asia, they had won every battle. Even Governor-General Coen's failed expedition had only cost eight jacht ships.

And now, in the battle at Batavia, the entire fleet of the Dutch East India Company—more than thirty ships—had been utterly annihilated!

Perhaps since the founding of the Netherlands, there had never been such a shameful defeat.

Wild took a deep breath, struggling to maintain his composure, and asked again: "And what of the prisoners?"

"Four hundred and seventy-three crewmen captured, fifty-six officers."

Wild's breathing began to tremble: "And His Excellency the Governor-General?"

"Your Governor-General Lucasson drowned when the Hercules went down with him." Lu Ruoteng said coldly.

Wild then asked about several more men in succession—all senior naval officers of the Dutch East India Company—and the answer was the same each time: shot dead, or drowned. Very few had survived.

Not only had the Company's fleet been completely wiped out, but there was now a gap in the naval officer corps as well. Wild felt a wave of despair wash over him.

And what was even more despairing was that the Great Xia held nearly five hundred Dutch prisoners, while Batavia held not a single Great Xia prisoner—there was simply no way to exchange captives. Wild had no bargaining chips at all, so he could only steel himself and ask: "What conditions would you require to withdraw your troops?"

Lin Qian said: "Cede Batavia and the Spice Islands, and dismantle the trading posts at Ambon and Nagasaki."

The Spice Islands was a broad trade concept, geographically encompassing the Moluccas, the Banda Islands, Ambon Island, and other locations.

"This is a dream!" Wild jumped up from his chair as if stabbed by those words, interrupting, "Batavia has not fallen yet!" To the Company, the Spice Islands and the Banda Islands were their very lifeline—ceding them would be tantamount to treason.

Wild had expected Lin Qian to make outrageous demands, but he had not expected the bite to be this savage.

Lin Qian rose slowly and walked toward him.

Wild said in a panic: "You... what are you trying to do?"

Lin Qian walked to the door, opened it, and said: "Come here."

Wild, both fearful and curious, followed behind Lin Qian all the way up to the quarterdeck.

Lin Qian pointed toward the Ancol mudflats east of Batavia and said: "Look over there."

Wild pulled out a telescope and looked where Lin Qian was pointing, and saw five whaleboats ferrying troops to the beach.

The sea was covered with Great Xia marines rowing centipede boats, and some men were already building siege camps in the sugarcane fields outside the city walls.

Judging from the shadow cast by the crowd, the landed Great Xia soldiers numbered a full one to two thousand.

With the Batavia fleet completely annihilated and insufficient army strength, they could only watch helplessly as the Great Xia army came ashore.

Lin Qian said flatly: "What did you just say?"

Wild, inwardly anxious, answered without thinking: "What are you trying to do?"

"No, the sentence before that."

"Batavia has not fallen yet?"

Lin Qian mocked: "Correct, not yet. But in a month's time, that may no longer be the case."

Wild said angrily: "You are not the first to attack Batavia. Before you, Sultan Agung of Mataram had already attacked Batavia twice.

The last time was in 1629, when Sultan Agung sent a hundred thousand troops, and they were still routed by our cannons and star forts. The wisest choice for your country now is to withdraw your troops and sign a favorable agreement before the Company's fleet returns to reinforce us.

We are willing to close the Nagasaki trading post, how about that? We are also willing to recognize Great Xia as the suzerain state..."

Wild had started with fierce threats, but seeing that Lin Qian was unmoved and kept looking at him with a mocking expression, his confidence drained with every word, until at the end his tone had become almost a plea.

After Wild finished speaking, Lin Qian said only two words: "Show him out."

For the senior leadership of the Dutch East India Company, even if they voluntarily gave up the Spice Islands, they would still be sentenced upon returning home—possibly even hanged.

For Lin Qian, if he did not take Batavia, the Spice Islands, and other territories, this expedition would be utterly meaningless, and financially he would never recoup his costs. The two sides' bottom lines were too far apart—there was no possibility of reaching an agreement. It could only be fought to the end.

Fortunately, the Dutch fleet had been completely annihilated, and with the Great Xia army protected by command of the sea, their safety was greatly increased. Taking Batavia was only a matter of time. Wild returned dejectedly to Batavia.

At that moment, the councilors were still on the walls of the star fort. From up there, on one side lay the stranded, captured Company fleet, and on the other side was the Great Xia army building its siege camp.

Seeing this scene, the councilors could do nothing but sigh deeply.

Councilor van der Meer saw the envoy returning, and hope appeared on his face. Before Wild had even climbed up the wall, van der Meer hurriedly asked: "How did it go? What conditions did those Hokkien people put forward?"

Wild opened his mouth, sighed first, and then said: "They want Batavia, the Moluccas, the Banda Islands..."

"What... what do you mean?" Van der Meer did not understand at first. "They want to share the profits?"

Wild shook his head and said in a low voice: "Ownership. They want ownership." Then he recounted what he had seen aboard the Enkhuizen. "Ownership? All of it? They want to drive us back to Europe?" Van der Meer's voice grew louder and louder, his face turning from pale to flushed. "A pack of greedy, cunning Judases! Wishful thinking!"

The Treasurer said: "If we hand over the Spice Islands, we will all be hanged!"

Ruys roared: "With the star fort here, these savages will never set foot inside Batavia! Batavia will never fall!"

After all the councilors and senior Company officers had cursed loudly for a long while, they all turned to look at van der Meer.

According to the Company charter, when the Governor-General dies unexpectedly, the most senior full councilor in the Council takes over as interim Governor-General.

Vandermeer came from a merchant family in Amsterdam; generations of his family had cooperated with the East India Company, and he had connections even in the States-General of the Dutch Republic. In both seniority and ability, he was the most suitable successor.

Seeing everyone's gaze fall on him, Vandermeer pondered for a long while, then said firmly, "By my reckoning, the Christmas fleet has already entered the westerlies. At most two months from now, it will arrive in Batavia."

From Europe to Batavia, and then back from Batavia, a one-way voyage takes a full year. That is why the Christmas fleet actually consists of two batches of ships sailing in staggered rotation. Those that departed before the end of February belong to the 1631 fleet; the one arriving two months from now is the 1632 fleet.

If we hold out for a few more months, by the end of this year the Easter fleet will also arrive. Once Batavia has both great fleets assembled, Great Xia's defeat is certain—time is on the Dutch side.

Therefore Vandermeer said in a low voice, "Two months! We only need to hold out for two months! During these two months, I ask each of you to do your duty—we must not let Huo Jianren destroy what we have built over many years!"

At these words, even the councilors who had little confidence before regained their faith.

Vandermeer then instructed the Minister of Justice to recruit volunteer militiamen from among the citizens, and had Reus go recruit mercenaries.

Due to the influence of the cargo certificates, Batavia had seen an influx of Japanese ronin in recent years, and mercenary services in the city were cheap and good.

Reus patted his chest and said, "No problem—I know exactly where to find those barbarian warriors."

Vandermeer then said to the Chinese captain, "Soe, can I trust you and your countrymen?"

Soe Minggang immediately answered in a clear voice, "Rest assured, Your Honor! I will go at once to recruit local braves to help defend this city."

Vandermeer clasped his hands in the Chinese manner and said, "The Company will remember your contribution."

Soe Minggang's face flushed with pride as he solemnly returned the clasped-hand salute. "This is my honor, Councilor. I will give my utmost!" Once everything was arranged, everyone went about their business. The Minister of Justice, Weerd, was just about to leave when Vandermeer called him back.

"Please wait—I still need you to go on a diplomatic mission."

Weerd made a bitter face. "That Huo Jianren is utterly greedy and brutal—he has no understanding of civilized trade. I fear further negotiations would be useless."

Vandermeer smiled. "Not to Great Xia—to the Sultanate of Mataram, to meet Sultan Agung, our potential ally." Several days later, at the capital of the Sultanate of Mataram, in the council pavilion.

Noon sunlight streamed through the flying eaves, golden light shimmering on the beams and pillars.

Sultan Agung sat alone upon the high throne, his fingertips stroking the ivory hilt of his kris.

Below, the Grand Vizier knelt in formal posture, reporting on the situation of the war in Batavia and the terms offered by the envoy of Great Xia, Jiang Wei.

"... In short, the envoy of Great Xia to the north requests that the mighty Sultanate of Mataram refrain from intervening in the conflict."

"When the war is concluded, Great Xia will hold the inner city and the harbor, while the lands of the outer city shall all revert to Java—"

Before the Grand Vizier could finish, Sultan Agung's eldest son, Raden Mas Saiduddin, knelt forward with hands pressed together in protest: "If I may be so bold—does the Grand Vizier truly believe that without the Lord of Java's armies, Great Xia could take Batavia?"

To openly interrupt the Grand Vizier during a council session was already a grave breach of decorum in the strictly hierarchical Mataram court.

Yet the Sultan did not rebuke him—clearly he too was dissatisfied with the Grand Vizier's words.

Sultan Agung had won every battle in his life, save for two defeats beneath the walls of Batavia—matters he regarded as the shame of his lifetime.

Now the Han Chinese were attacking Batavia and running rampant across the island of Java, refusing to let the Lord of Java intervene, and instead, as if dispensing charity, offering the Sultan lands that rightfully belonged to Mataram in the first place.

What arrogance this was!

The Grand Vizier pondered for a moment, then explained to the Sultan the situation of Batavia and Great Xia.

Travel across Java was difficult, and news of the Company fleet's total annihilation had not yet reached the palace; moreover, Surabaya, where Jiang Wei was stationed, lay over four hundred li from the palace.

The Grand Vizier could only relay what he knew: "... In my humble view, it would be better to tentatively agree to the Great Xia envoy's request. After all, our elite forces have suffered heavy losses, and it would be unwise to—" Saiduddin gave a cold snort: "If all the ministers were as timid as the Grand Vizier, would Batavia never be retaken?"

"Slap!" Sultan Agung tapped the high dais lightly with his scabbard, producing a sharp sound. Saiduddin immediately knelt back down and fell silent.

Then Sultan Agung spoke: "Tell that Great Xia envoy that the Lord of Java graciously accepts his request."

"Father!" Saiduddin cried out in alarm.

Sultan Agung said, "Mataram needs to recuperate. Besides, the Han Chinese are no match for the Dutch either—let those two stray dogs fight over it." Just then, a guard hurried in from outside the pavilion.

"Your Majesty, a secret letter from Batavia."

Sultan Agung waved for the Grand Vizier to open it, and asked confidently, "Has Great Xia been defeated?"

The Grand Vizier opened the letter, glanced at it—then his eyes flew wide open, as if he had seen a ghost.

Seeing this, Saiduddin laughed. "Great Xia's defeat was only to be expected—why is the Grand Vizier so shocked? To be honest, the Han Chinese lasting over a month is already quite impressive."

The Grand Vizier gave Saiduddin a long, deep look, then addressed the throne: "Your Majesty, our spies have sent word—the Dutch fleet... has been utterly annihilated..."

Yahei

Fenyuan

Pen