Chapter 1001: Our Western Pacific, Part II (Please Subscribe)

In the tenth year of Hongxing of the Great Ming, on the eighth day of the third month, at Laoshan Palace.

Early in the morning, Zhu Cilang was having breakfast with Empress Wu Sanmei in the dining hall of the hot springs palace. He had stayed overnight at the hot springs palace the night before, "holding hands" with Wu Sanmei. He and Wu Sanmei had been together for thirteen years, but their affection was still as strong as ever, and he had not in the least neglected this principal wife of his. On the second day of the third month, a physician from the Imperial Academy of Medicine had even diagnosed Wu Sanmei with a pregnancy pulse — this was truly a cause for celebration!

Over these thirteen years, Wu Sanmei had borne the Zhu Emperor five children in all, but only one of them was a son — Zhu Hexing, born in the fifth year of Hongxing, now six years old and just enrolled at Laoshan Elementary School.

However, the child's health had never been good. Although he had grown quite big, he was somewhat frail, falling ill all day long, which made Wu Sanmei extremely worried that he might die young. So she had stopped Zhu Cilang from naming Zhu Hexing Crown Prince all this time — she feared that Zhu Hexing's fate was too thin to bear the exalted position of Crown Prince, and planned to wait until he was older and his health had improved before carrying out the investiture.

Of course, the position of the little fatty Zhu Hexing as the eldest son of the principal wife was unshakable!

Even though the three sons Zheng Chagu had borne the Zhu Emperor (she also had five children, three sons and two daughters) were all healthy and clever, and among them the little tycoon Zhu Hehao was even the top student at Laoshan Elementary School, none of that could shake Zhu Hexing's status as first heir.

But if this first heir were ever lost... Zhu Hehao, as the eldest son of a concubine, with his mother being the Imperial Noble Consort, would without question be the next in line!

So Wu Sanmei always had a knot in her heart. The only way to untie it was to bear Zhu Cilang another son.

Only with two sons in hand could Wu Sanmei feel at ease!

And Zhu Cilang knew her thoughts too, so he had been diligently "holding hands" with her, and recently they had finally achieved results again.

"Your Majesty, I hear the King of France sent you a peerlessly beautiful Frankish woman, even more beautiful than the Retired Emperor's Consort Hu — is that true?"

Wu Sanmei was savoring the oyster congee that Zheng Chagu had sent over, while discussing Marie Mancini with Zhu Cilang, and there was not a trace of jealousy in her words.

Zhu Cilang chuckled: "She is indeed beautiful — Western allure, a different kind of charm. But she is wild and hard to tame, and unwilling to enter the palace as a consort."

"Unwilling to enter the palace? Then what did she come for?" Wu Sanmei blinked, looking at Zhu Cilang a little strangely, thinking to herself: If she's unwilling, can't you just take her by force?

"She wants to be a royal mistress." As Zhu Cilang spoke, he scooped a little oyster congee into his mouth with a small spoon — not bad! That woman Zheng Chagu was quite good at pretending. She clearly did not want Wu Sanmei to have another son, yet she could feign sisterly affection, and upon hearing that Sanmei's appetite was a bit poor, she had her own cooks prepare all sorts of delicacies and send them over. If only Mancini had half her cunning.

"A royal... mistress?" Wu Sanmei was taken aback. "What does that mean?"

"It means... she doesn't want any formal status," Zhu Cilang said. "She's a Catholic, and can't become someone's concubine."

"She won't be a concubine, but she can be together with you without any status?" Wu Sanmei shook her head repeatedly, also finding it hard to understand.

Zhu Cilang shook his head along with her, thinking: She may not want status, but she certainly won't want for money! Fortunately, We are the richest man in the Great Ming. If this were back when Chongzhen was emperor, We truly couldn't have afforded to keep her!

Just as he was thinking this, Huang Xiaobao's voice, brimming with joy, came from outside: "Your Majesty! Your Majesty, a great victory! A great victory!"

Zhu Cilang looked up toward the dining hall doorway and saw the chief eunuch Huang Xiaobao, who had grown as round as a ball, running over huffing and puffing, shouting as he ran.

"Your Majesty, a great victory at Deer Island! A great victory at Deer Island!"

Deer Island? Zhu Cilang was briefly stunned, but then immediately thought of Kagoshima Bay!

He was in no mood for congee now. He stood up at once, and in three quick strides reached Huang Xiaobao, who immediately presented with both hands a memorial forwarded from the Marshal's Office.

Zhu Cilang took the memorial, opened it, first skimmed through it at a glance, then read it over carefully once more, before a look of wild joy appeared on his face.

This memorial was jointly signed by Zheng Jiangong and David Jones, reporting on the great naval battle of Kagoshima Bay fought over the four days of the eighteenth, nineteenth, twentieth, and twenty-first of the second month.

The great naval battle of Kagoshima Bay erupted at dusk on the eighteenth, and the outcome was decided that very night — within one hour after the "Ibusuki Turn," the Spanish Eastern Invincible Armada suffered catastrophic losses, with ten armed galleons of two hundred to six hundred tons destroyed or sunk. Another eight Spanish armed galleons, including the thousand-ton "Monster" New Spain, were driven into Sakurajima Strait, caught between the landing detachment commanded by Zheng Jiangong, which had earlier fought its way into the inner Kagoshima Bay, and the naval battle detachment commanded by David Jones.

And up to this point in the battle, the losses of the Eight-Nation Allied Fleet's warships remained zero!

But the battle did not end there, nor could it. Because the remnants of the Spanish fleet that had entered Sakurajima Strait blocked the exit route of Zheng Jiangong's forty-five bird boats, and the bloody battle between the Ming landing forces and the Satsuma samurai on Sakurajima was still raging!

Over the following three days — the nineteenth, twentieth, and twenty-first of the second month — the Eight-Nation Allied Fleet and the Satsuma-Spanish allied forces engaged in prolonged and intense fighting on Sakurajima and in Sakurajima Strait.

The Spanish fleet formed a line-ahead blocking formation in Sakurajima Strait, aiming the broadside guns of eight warships at both sides of the strait. Because the strait was too narrow for large formations to maneuver, David Jones's detachment attacking from the south of Sakurajima Strait found it very difficult to form a matching broadside-facing battle line.

As a result, several attacks launched from the southern side of the strait failed to succeed, while Zheng Jiangong's detachment to the north was unable to attack because of a shift in wind direction that began on the morning of the twentieth.

When the fighting at sea had temporarily reached a stalemate, Zheng Jiangong and Shi Lang directed the "Second Sakurajima Landing." This time the landing site was northwest of Sakurajima, where the terrain was flat, the beachhead suitable for landing stretched for thirteen or fourteen li, and there were many fishing harbors available for use.

Furthermore, the Satsuma Domain had never imagined that the allied fleet could charge into Sakurajima Strait under their cannon fire — Shimazu Mitsuhisa had clearly overestimated the power of the 6-pounder and 12-pounder cannon supplied by the Spanish!

So on the long beachhead northwest of Sakurajima, there were very few Satsuma samurai waiting for the thousands of fully armed Ming infantry — although these infantry were not equipped with flintlock muskets (an infantry division had only one flintlock regiment, and the First Division's flintlock regiment had been left behind in the Goto Islands and Nagasaki), every man among them had plate armor, and each infantry regiment also had a pike company (because Japanese cavalry posed no great threat, the number of pikemen had been reduced). Their close-combat capability was formidable!

They would not be like the unarmored marines who had earlier landed southwest of Sakurajima — who, despite gaining an overwhelming advantage in the firefight, were held off in the subsequent bayonet charge by Satsuma samurai far fewer in number than themselves. It was only later, with the reinforcement of the second wave of army infantry, that the Satsuma forces were completely driven back and the beachhead consolidated. But even then, they had only seized the beachhead and lacked the ability to advance toward the Sakurajima battery. Because the terrain southwest of Sakurajima was relatively rugged, with dense forest and mountains just beyond the Ming beachhead. At least two thousand Satsuma samurai were entrenched there, using the terrain to block the Ming advance.

But it was precisely because the Satsuma forces on Sakurajima had concentrated their main strength in the southwest that the northwest was left extremely thinly defended. After Li Yuanyin led two infantry regiments and one artillery company ashore, the Ming forces advanced like a hot knife through butter all the way to the vicinity of the Sakurajima battery, and the Satsuma forces at the Sakurajima battery had neglected their rear defenses. So the defenders had no choice but to fight a field battle with no hope of victory against the Ming forces in the open ground northwest of the battery, and in the end were almost completely annihilated!

While the Ming army was attacking the Sakurajima battery, Zheng Jiangong also detached eight ten-thousand-bushel great bird boats and launched a fireship attack against the Spanish warships, completely destroying the eight warships blocking the channel!

With the loss of these eight warships, the strength of the Spanish Eastern Invincible Armada was all but spent, and the Ming navy leapt to become the hegemon of the Western Pacific!

(End of Chapter)