Chapter 273: The Holy Light Shines

After the negotiations over the nominal ownership of the two most important castles were finished, the real main event came next: the slave trade talks.

Considering that this was the first time since the Spanish arrived in East Asia years ago that they had a "self-produced flagship commodity" besides silver, the policy side still needed a slight boost: in the 1628–1629 slave trade agreement, Cai Feiming granted the Spanish a 5% purchase price discount.

After signing the agreement, Baron Juan could not help but secretly let out a long breath: only God knew how difficult the situation in East Asia was for the Philippines, which had to import even pots, pans, bowls, and ladles from the Great Ming.

As expected, when the agreement was made public among the merchants, the Dutch, having gotten wind of it, immediately ran to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to express their strongest protest and grave concern — everyone was selling Malay goods, so why should the Protestants suffer a 5% disadvantage? This was blatant racial discrimination; unacceptable, even if the preferential period was only one year.

In the end, the Dutch, who received only a look of helpless sympathy from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, could only turn their grief and indignation into motivation: in the year that followed, the Dutch not only increased the frequency of joint Malay pirate raids on Spanish colonies, but also launched sustained suppression against the big flatbread faces on multiple fronts — but these are later matters, not to be mentioned for now.

Once the trade agreement between the Spanish and the Transmigrators was signed, the Spanish merchants, now turned into "debt-lords," hurriedly set sail with two merchant ships fully loaded with industrial goods and Great Ming sundries.

How the industrial nations of later generations conducted business with colonies, the Transmigration Nation did exactly the same. All comers were guests, relying entirely on exclusive goods: no matter how many silver coins and slaves the pitiful merchants brought, the Transmigrators could always balance out the difference with even more expensive industrial products, then send the visitors home "fully laden with debt."

Thus, when the two ships returned to Manila in late June, every Spanish merchant was saddled with varying amounts of debt. The expensive bleaching powder, raw silk, the scarce kerosene lamps, and all manner of colorful industrial daily necessities had swept away every silver coin they had brought.

In order to purchase these highly sought-after goods to the maximum extent, the merchants had no choice but to band together and mortgage Baron Juan, along with the soldiers and cannons of Taipei Castle, to Dayuan in exchange for a certain amount of export credit.

Of course, this debt was short-lived: soon after the ships returned to Manila, every item on board was sold out, and all the merchants who came back with the ships made a huge profit.

And after Governor-General Juan finished reading the trade agreement documents and the Special Envoy's private letter, he finally made up his mind and began comprehensively adjusting Manila's internal and external policies.

First, the Municipal Hall raised the tax rate on the Mishan people villages outside the city; anyone who failed to pay enough taxes or resisted taxation would be seized and sold by the tax officers, and women and children were not exempt either.

Second, on several plots of land suitable for growing rice, the natives were all "relocated" at gunpoint by large numbers of soldiers to some mysterious location: the land was contracted out to Great Ming people skilled in farming, who were required to provide large quantities of rice in the future to meet the quotas set by Dayuan.

Next came the main event: a fleet jointly funded by all the nobility, merchants, and the Church intending to get a slice of the slave trade pie attacked a large native tribe on Mindoro Island half a month later.

This tribe was located in the central part of Mindoro Island and was a powerful tribe composed of Moro people. The Moro people of the Philippines were a great Islamic hodgepodge encompassing many scattered ethnic groups; "Moro" was a Spanish transliteration, meaning the Moors who believed in Islam.

From this name alone, one could see just how much the big flatbread faces despised the Moro people: the Spanish had spent several centuries driving the Moors from their homeland in North Africa, a history steeped in deep-seated hatred.

And the so-called Moro people lived up to this name: these natives, essentially still a branch of the Malay people, harbored extreme hostility toward the White-Skins. The tribesmen here had not only repeatedly served as outposts and gathering points for Malay pirates, but had also joined in sorties to plunder and attack Spanish ships and outposts.

The Manila regime, which had always faced enormous strategic pressure from the lowland pirates, in fact had no way to deal with these countless pirates and hostile tribes — the municipal tax revenue was barely enough to support the officials and strengthen Manila's city defenses, let alone dispatch troops across the Thousand Island Country on punitive expeditions.

This time, however, was different.

When the wealthiest department of the 17th century — the Church — stepped in, everything changed.

Adventurers, nobility, and merchants quickly mobilized under the Catholic Bishop's cohesive efforts. The rich men who complained daily that Manila's greedy tax system had bled them all dry soon pulled out large sums of silver coins.

This included not only funds from the Church's holy treasury, but also the personal savings of the tax officers themselves; additionally, the Governor-General and the Mayor were believed to have bought shares as well, though invested through trusted proxies.

Once the most critical funding problem was solved, the rest was easy.

A fleet with the armed merchant ship "Sister Rose" as its flagship was promptly assembled. As the main force, the Sister Rose had a displacement of 500 tons; after being temporarily fitted with multiple long-barreled cannons, this ship would be responsible for dealing with all enemies on the sea surface in the future.

Two other slightly smaller armed merchant ships were mainly responsible for transporting supplies and "cargo." But the most crucial elements of the fleet were actually the 10 medium-sized boats and 20 rowboats — the target tribe only had a dock for dugout canoes, so the armed merchant ships were of little direct use and could only transfer personnel and supplies via boats in the open sea.

The taverns in Manila were swept clean overnight; large numbers of crewmen, drunkards, vagrants, thugs, and scum, after receiving a few silver coins, were all conscripted into the boat landing force.

Meanwhile, 100 regular soldiers under the command of Ensign Red Seguo Sandoval also boarded the deck of the Sister Rose — this time, Manila's Municipal Hall had finally put the tax revenue to proper use.

With everything ready, after the Catholic Bishop personally conducted the pre-battle mass and shouted the sacred slogan "Those who spread glory for the Lord shall bathe in the Holy Light," the slave-catching fleet, with Morale +3 and Negative Status Check +2, set out.

Mindoro Island lay just south of Manila; the 200-kilometer sea journey would not take much time, and the Moro tribe was located near the later-generations tourist town of Sablayan.

A large native tribe of over ten thousand people, if quality was not a consideration, could at least muster 2,000 warriors.

Thus, the Spanish, having deliberately circled around to the downstream river mouth, crossed the most dangerous landing phase on the first day, then began advancing upstream the next day — and promptly ran head-on into the natives' main force.

Engaging in battle on land at this point, the fate of the defenders who had lost their only chance to stop the enemy at the beachhead was self-evident: nearly 1,000 native warriors quickly collapsed under the assault of 100 regular soldiers + 300 scum + cannon fire.

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