Chapter 1021: The Chinese Are Coming! (Please Subscribe)

September 1657 by the Western calendar, Mexico City.

This city, named after Mexicali, the war god of the Aztecs, and built upon the ruins of Tenochtitlan, capital of the Aztec Empire, was now a magnificent and opulent European-style metropolis, with European-style palaces, churches, and monasteries everywhere to be seen. The city's streets were straight and broad, clean and tidy, and the buildings on either side were either Spanish-style dwellings with yellow or red stucco walls, or halls and towers covered in carvings and ornament. But no matter the type of residence, all were kept in excellent repair, without the slightest trace of dilapidation.

In fact, most European cities of this era, including Madrid, capital of the Spanish world empire, could not compare with Mexico City in splendor, cleanliness, and order.

Because the wealth they possessed could not compare with Mexico City's! Nor did the territory attached to any European city come close to the vastness of the Viceroyalty of New Spain, which Mexico City controlled — all of Spain's possessions in the New World were nominally under the rule of the Governor-General of New Spain stationed in Mexico City!

Although as early as 1542 the Kingdom of Spain had established the Viceroyalty of Peru, governing Spanish South America, under the Governor-General of New Spain (with its governor stationed in Lima), Lima, whether economically or politically, was merely an appendage of Mexico City.

The Mexico City of this era was the undisputed star of the Americas, and the gathering place of all the Americas' wealth, resources, and manpower.

The whole city was like a magnet, drawing in the gold and silver produced across the New World, drawing in goods from East and West, drawing in the grandees of the Spanish Empire, drawing in European immigrants struggling to survive under Spanish rule in New Spain, and also drawing in the mestizos and ladinos (both of mixed Spanish and Indian blood) and creole whites from all over Spanish America. By sheer force it had created, on a New World continent where humans were still a rare species, a clamorous, prosperous, and wealthy metropolis.

By the autumn of 1657, more than one hundred fifty thousand European whites, creole whites, and mixed-bloods were living in this Mexico City, which they called the "City of Palaces."

To them, Mexico City was the Rome of the New World, and they were the Romans of the New World!

And the current Governor-General of New Spain, the noble Marquis of Spinola, Juan González de Filippo-Spinola, was the Caesar of the New World — at least, so he believed.

Although his "Augustus," Philip IV, was having a wretched time of it in Europe, in the New World (excluding the islands of the Caribbean), New Spain's dominance remained unshakable!

Because the total number of whites and mixed-bloods under New Spain's rule who spoke Spanish, believed in the Catholic faith, and swore loyalty to the King of Spain exceeded five hundred thousand. In addition, more than ten million Indians and blacks lived under the rule of the Governor-General of New Spain.

In New Spain, where food, gold, and silver were all extraordinarily abundant, the number of able-bodied young and middle-aged men among the whites and mixed-bloods equaled New Spain's military mobilization potential.

Among the five hundred thousand whites and mixed-bloods, the able-bodied young and middle-aged men who could take up a musket and fight for God and Spain could not possibly number fewer than one hundred thousand!

If His Excellency the Marquis of Spinola could graciously permit a portion of the devout Catholic Indian men to enlist, then an army of two hundred thousand could also be scraped together.

In Europe, the army possessed by the King of Spain was no more than that number!

Therefore, setting aside those weakly defended islands hanging in the Caribbean, the wild lands far off in the northeastern corner of the New World, and those territories so carelessly assigned to the Portuguese by Pope Alexander VI — in the New World of today, there existed no power capable of challenging the authority of the Governor-General of New Spain.

And in the foreseeable future, it was likewise unlikely that any enemy capable of challenging New Spain's hegemony could appear.

Even if the French, the English, and the Dutch were to colonize the east coast of North America on a large scale, given the population base of those three countries' homelands, even if they were given a hundred years to immigrate slowly, they probably would not pose any threat to New Spain.

Because New Spain already had five hundred thousand whites and mixed-bloods — a number accumulated through more than a century of effort in immigration and childbirth!

In New Spain, with its abundant food, vast territory, and large numbers of Indians available for enslavement, the birth rate among whites and mixed-bloods was very high. The number of people France, England, and Holland sent to the New World each year probably could not even keep up with the number of whites and mixed-bloods born in New Spain.

So until September 10, 1657, the Marquis of Spinola would never have believed that New Spain's hegemony in the New World could possibly come to an end within his own generation!

"What? Admiral, what did you say? Your fleet was — was defeated by the Chinese? How is that possible?"

Within the magnificent and solemn palace of the Governor-General of New Spain, the Marquis of Spinola had just heard a piece of disastrous news he found impossible to believe.

The mighty Spanish Armada of the East had, in Kagoshima Bay in the country of Japan, suffered the kind of crushing defeat that "invincible armadas" so often met: eighteen of twenty-three armed galleons sunk or captured, crew losses exceeding two thousand, and more than twenty-five hundred more forced to abandon ship and flee to the island of Kyushu in Japan. Most of those men became mercenaries of the Satsuma Domain, and only a hundred and several dozen naval officers, sailing separately on five 300-ton armed galleons that had slipped away to Funai Bay after the great battle of Kagoshima Bay, escaped back to Acapulco (an important port on the Pacific coast).

"Admiral García, you — you took from me an entire fleet and thousands of sailors, and now you have brought back only five ships and six or seven hundred men, and you tell me that countless Chinese are about to cross the Pacific to the New World—"

At this point the Marquis of Spinola lowered his head and began searching for something on his luxurious desk.

"My Lord Marquis, what are you looking for?" asked the naval admiral, dark and gaunt, his spirits utterly deflated.

"I am looking for my pistol!" the Marquis roared. "I am going to shoot you, you fool! Do you know what you have done? You have buried most of New Spain's finest sailors! Even if I could now obtain many new armed galleons, I would not have enough sailors to man them!"

New Spain's whites and mixed-bloods were not few in number; raising a hundred thousand troops would be somewhat difficult, but thirty or fifty thousand was no problem, so the loss of a few thousand soldiers was something the Marquis of Spinola could bear.

But several thousand sailors...

Now New Spain's navy probably could not even defeat the pirates of the Caribbean!

However, the Marquis of Spinola did not find his pistol — and even if he had, he could not really have had the admiral shot. The admiral was the son of the Duke of Alba, the grandson of Fernando Álvarez de Toledo, and his elder brother was the King of Spain's most trusted minister — how could he be executed so casually?

And besides, the Spanish Armada had suffered so many defeats, yet no Regional Commander had ever been executed...

What was more, if García were shot, who would command New Spain's remaining fleet? The Marquis of Spinola himself certainly could not do an admiral's work.

After slamming the desktop hard, the Marquis gave up looking for his pistol and instead asked about the matter of the Chinese coming to America.

"You say China is coming? Where did this news come from?" the Marquis asked. "Could there be some mistake?"

"There is no mistake..." García said weakly. "Had I not received this bad news, I would not have rushed back from Japan."

"The news was brought back by the envoys the Satsuma Domain sent to China to sue for peace. The Emperor of China has announced the establishment of a joint-stock United States of the New World! They intend to raise one hundred million taels of silver for colonizing the New World!"

"My Lord Marquis, China now has a population of one hundred fifty million to one hundred eighty million! Far more than all of Europe combined. And they now have bases in Japan, which means their low-cost hard-sailed junks can drift with the ocean currents to the west coast of the New World!"

(End of Chapter)