Chapter 547: The Ming-Portuguese War (I)

On April 11, 1631, the eighth morning after the Ming side issued its ultimatum, open battle formally began between the Ming and the Portuguese.

Standing before the Gate Barrier and seeing the strict, vigilant scene, Andrade, Secretary of the Macau Municipal Council, could not help but let out a long sigh.

He had come as the final envoy, to receive the declaration-of-war document before the two armies.

At this moment, the once-bustling Lotus Stem Pass Gate had become heavily guarded, everywhere Ming soldiers in short coats and trousers carrying guns. Iron wire traps, abatis, and circular strongpoints stacked from sandbags had been set up all around the Gate Barrier.

The originally lush vegetation nearby had also been cleared away, revealing flat, bare earth, a dark greenish-black expanse, as if foretelling approaching calamity.

As the final envoy, this time Andrade did not get to see any Ming official at all — neither a traditional bureaucrat in long robes nor some short-haired official under an Earl.

And the one who handed the document to Andrade was merely a cold-faced, low-ranking officer wearing a Great Peaked Cap.

After bowing his head slightly to maintain the courtesy befitting nobility, Andrade took the document, turned around with his attendants, and walked toward the direction of the carriage they had come in.

Getting on, reaching out to pull shut the carved carriage door with its beautiful glass window, Andrade said to his two attendants: "Gentlemen, a long and arduous war is unavoidable, if you ask me. Take back what you have seen; the Governor-General is waiting for you."

Apart from carrying out the formalities of opening hostilities, Andrade's visit also inherently included gathering military intelligence.

In this era, as well as for thousands of years before and hundreds of years after, the side possessing strong fortifications held a strategic advantage that was very difficult to shake.

In ancient siege warfare, over thousands of years, there are many, many battle examples of the attacking side spending ten times the resources and twenty times the soldiers, and requiring months and years of time, to assault a strong city. People may think war is all about "attacking cities and seizing territory," yet throughout long history, there are even more instances of various turtle-shell tactics causing the enemy to return defeated.

In medieval Europe, lords, relying on castles passed down through their families, could control their subjects from the time of the Roman Empire all the way until the Industrial Revolution.

Even in later generations when firearms had already begun to spread, the Siege of Sevastopol in the Crimean War and the Brest Fortress in World War II still attest to the indispensable influence of strong cities on warfare: a so-called siege, as long as it drags on, will inevitably produce all kinds of cholera, dysentery, syphilis, and plague among the attacker's army — this is the great killer of all city defenders.

And in this 17th-century age of colonization, strong strongpoints or fortresses were the core essence of guaranteeing colonial activities.

One only needed to build a fortress anywhere at all, set up matchlocks, add a few cannons, and then one could confidently do business with the natives... The fortress was a trading center, and also a sanctuary that could effectively guard against the covetous attacks of natives and the rogues of various nations who were fellow colonizers.

Fortresses built by colonizers all over the world facing sieges by large numbers of natives was practically routine; the natives would be embarrassed to set out if they didn't outnumber the defenders ten to one. Without looking far, right before their eyes was the Dutch being besieged by a native empire in Batavia. Historically, Governor Coen died of dysentery during the siege, yet the natives, facing a strong city, ultimately still returned defeated.

The most important reason Comrade Zheng Damu was able to leave his name in history and become a national hero was that he captured Zeelandia, the fortress the Dutch had built in Taiwan. However, what most people in later generations do not know is that Zheng Damu, leading a massive army with an overwhelming numerical advantage (30,000+), besieged Zeelandia for a full year, until the Dutchmen inside the city (1,000+) ran out of ammunition and supplies, and only then did they come out and peacefully sign a surrender treaty.

In other words, if the Dutchmen had sufficient supplies, facing more than twenty times their number of Zheng troops, they could have absolutely continued to hold out — that was the very purpose of a fortress's existence.

One must know that in regions outside the Ming, colonizers of various nations were constantly slaughtering one another, and among these conflicts, the campaigns where one side could truly take the other's strongpoint by force were very few. In comparison, situations where colonizers had to voluntarily abandon a certain strongpoint due to various infectious diseases and native blockades were far more numerous than head-on wars.

In fact, it was the accumulated defensive experience of fortresses along the African coast, in North and South America, India, and other regions that formed the real basis for the Macau Portuguese to ultimately decide to tough it out.

In the view of the Portuguese high command in Macau, relying on the several forts around the city and the city defenses of Macau City itself, it was entirely possible to hold off the enemy for a considerable period of time. This period would be very long, long enough to cause epidemic diseases to break out among the opponent's army and make them lose combat effectiveness... The hot and humid south of the Ming would certainly produce such a situation.

When that time came, everyone could sit down and sign a dignified "trade" agreement.

Based on this strategic thinking, the two attendants who accompanied Andrade today to receive the declaration of war were actually regular Portuguese military officers specially sent by the Governor-General. Both of these officers had previously served at different Portuguese colonial outposts and possessed extensive war experience.

Their main objective of observation today was the Ming Army's combat readiness, but the outcome clearly would not please the Portuguese.

From what they saw along this journey, apart from the expected large numbers of soldiers, another symptom also indirectly revealed the signs of a protracted war that the Portuguese feared most: construction sites.

Right beside the road they had come on, large numbers of laborers had been working since early morning. Although by the time Andrade and his party left, it was still impossible to tell what kind of project it was, no matter what it was, it signified that the Ming Dynasty Government had mobilized far more resources than imagined.

In Andrade's view, those laborers were laying foundations for military camps or military warehouses. In this way, the likelihood of the Portuguese facing a protracted war greatly increased.

"Gentlemen, a long and arduous war is unavoidable, according to my observation. Now, take back what you have seen; the Governor-General is waiting for you."

After hearing Andrade's assessment, the other two attendants nodded. The next moment the carriage started moving, and half an hour later, Andrade returned to Saint Paul's Fort, commonly known as the Fortaleza do Monte.

At this critical moment of the outbreak of war, as the overall commander of the campaign, Governor Sir Silveira from Lisbon was certain to be in full military attire at the fort to receive firsthand information.

Thus, on the northern parapet of the Fortaleza do Monte facing the Ming direction, Silveira obtained the declaration-of-war document at the first moment. Although there was no booming cannon fire, the very instant the Governor-General took the document, open war formally began between the Ming and the Portuguese.

"He took it! The bandit chieftain took the document!"

What the Portuguese could not imagine was that at the very moment the Governor-General took the document, far away on the Lotus Stem Gate Barrier five li distant, an excited voice loudly shouted out this action that signified the start of war.

At this moment atop the Gate Barrier, great flags fluttered, heads swarmed, armor stood densely, and bigwigs gathered — the military heavyweights of the Ming's Guangdong side were all present.

The great banner planted right in the center of the Gate Barrier tower was, naturally... not that of the wildly domineering and dazzlingly cool Cao Zong. This great banner bore a huge character "He," and naturally... it was the command flag of He Ruzhen, He Zhentai, the Ming Regional Commander of Guangdong.

Planted beside Lord He's command flag was Cao Zhongchen's command flag as Regional Commander of Zhangchao.

Extending left and right along from the two bigwigs' command flags was a row of Guangdong local commanders' designation flags. Among these were not only the garrison Assistant Regional Commander flags of Chaozhou, Lei Lian, Nanxiong, and other places, but even the flags of the East and West Mountain Fang Yao Assistant Regional Commander, who rarely deployed lightly, as well as the Fang Yao garrison flags of Lianshan, Luoding, and other areas that held heavy troops, all now occupied a place on the tower.

As introduced earlier, this war against the Portuguese was an excellent propaganda opportunity.

In the 17th century, when information exchange was extremely underdeveloped, often when it was time to get serious, what gave the transmigrator the biggest headache was the opponent becoming "ignorant of their own doom" due to poor information.

And this war propaganda was a good opportunity for the transmigrators, based on long-term vision, to solve this problem: to show off their strength to the high-ranking officers and soldiers of Guangdong, intimidate the other side, so that in some future inevitable "confrontation" state, they could lower the opponent's will to resist, shake their resolve, and create conditions for peace negotiations.

Thus, for this war against the Portuguese, Cao Jiangjun widely sent out hero invitations, using the name of Guangdong Military District Deputy Commander, to invite as many powerful military officers from various parts of the province as possible to come as guests and observe the battlefield... food and lodging provided, group activities, expenses reimbursed, and exquisite gifts given after the event.

This led to the scene just now of someone shouting loudly from atop the tower.

The one shouting excitedly was a tall, dark-skinned, broad-faced Ming military officer with a full beard — Ma Lianzuo, the Assistant Regional Commander of Qianshan.

During the Wanli Era, the Ming court established the office of the Guangzhou Coastal Defense Vice Prefect at Yongmo, just one day's journey from Macau, transferred a thousand troops to form a garrison, and established the post of Assistant Regional Commander. In the first year of the Tianqi reign (1621), they further moved the Assistant Regional Commander's headquarters to Qianshan Fortress, several li west of Lotus Stem, and greatly increased the garrisoned officers and soldiers.

Yes, the so-called Qianshan Assistant Regional Commander was precisely the Ming military commander specifically responsible for the defense of Macau. That is to say, in theory, all defense matters of Lotus Stem and even the surrounding Macau area originally fell under the responsibility of this big-bearded Assistant Commander Ma. It was just that Assistant Commander Ma, the Delegation Leader, had now run into Commander Cao, who had gathered heavy troops to stir things up, and his defense duties had been taken over.

However, none of this affected Assistant Commander Ma's excitement today. At this moment, Assistant Commander Ma was sticking out his rear, planting himself in a horse stance, lowering his head, and fixing one eye onto a Zeiss 150mm 66x digital auto-zoom monocular telescope mounted on a cast-iron tripod set up on the parapet, greedily staring at every move within the lens.

Assistant Commander Ma not only watched himself, but his mouth also constantly provided a live broadcast of the Portuguese Governor-General's every move: "The enemy chieftain took the document. The enemy chieftain is interrogating those three envoys... Ha! The enemy chieftain threw down the document. He is now observing our army's formation from afar!"