Chapter 1109: Rather Than Let Spaniards Die, Better to Let Japanese Die (Please

"Rather than let the Spaniards in the New World fall victim to the Ming dynasty's Japanese mercenaries, better to let the Japanese slaughter each other on Kyushu!"

Inside the Spanish embassy outside Funai Castle, de Velasco was explaining his plan to Basabo, who had hurried over, and to Barcelo, the newly appointed commander of the Spanish Eastern Fleet.

De Velasco paused, then asked the old navy veteran Barcelo, whose hair and beard had already gone white: "Admiral, does the fleet currently have the ability to evacuate the personnel trapped in Manila?"

After the near-total destruction of the Invincible Armada in the East, the Viceroyalty of New Spain had rebuilt an Eastern Fleet, though it no longer bore the unlucky title of "Invincible." Moreover, this fleet was far smaller than the previous Invincible Armada, with only eleven fast three-hundred-ton (burden) armed galleons in total. With so few galleons, the Spanish Eastern Fleet was incapable of contesting control of the western Pacific with the Great Ming, so it had adopted pirate tactics, appearing and vanishing unpredictably in the waters near Japan and striking at ships belonging to the Ming dynasty and the Tokugawa shogunate.

Because these armed galleons were very fast, struck and then fled, and often sailed under foreign flags, the Ming navy found them a tremendous headache. It had organized many encirclement campaigns but had never been able to wipe them out completely.

However, because the Spanish Eastern Fleet had a limited number of ships and greatly feared the Ming navy's explosive shells, it could not handle large transport convoys traveling in groups with gunboat escorts (explosive shells in this era were extremely dangerous and could only be used by rigorously trained gunners), so the losses it inflicted on the Ming and the shogunate had not reached an unbearable level.

"Ambassador," Admiral Barcelo said with a deep frown, "has it truly come to the point where Manila must be abandoned? If we hold Manila Castle, we will make the enemy pay a terrible price, because any enemy besieging Manila must endure the ravages of tropical infectious diseases."

"I know," de Velasco said after thinking for a moment, "but considering the current international situation, abandoning Manila Castle is clearly more advantageous.

Because once the Ming dynasty seizes Manila and the whole of Luzon, the Dutch East India Company will feel the threat closing in."

"The Dutch will stand with us?" Admiral Barcelo's frown deepened; he did not trust the Dutch at all.

"They certainly will!" De Velasco nodded. "There are no eternal enemies in this world. In fact, in our war with Cromwell, the Dutch were already standing behind us. Otherwise the Spanish Netherlands would long since have been completely occupied by the combined Anglo-French forces, and there would not have been so many privateers striking at English merchant ships.

Moreover, compared with the profits from selling Chinese silk and porcelain, the several spice islands of the South Seas are the Dutch East India Company's greatest source of profit.

If Luzon falls into Chinese hands, the Sultanate of Brunei and the Sultanate of Sulu will immediately swing over to the Ming dynasty, and then the Dutch spice islands will lie exposed beneath the edge of the Ming army's sword!"

In the South Seas at present the main powers were the Sultanate of Johor, the Sultanate of Patani, the Sultanate of Brunei, the Sultanate of Sulu, the Sultanate of Mataram, the Sultanate of Aceh, and so on. Among them, the Sultanate of Sulu and the Sultanate of Brunei had originally been tributary states of the Ming dynasty, and had only gradually drifted away from the Ming because of the dynasty's decline and the incursion of Western powers.

The Sultanate of Johor had developed from the remnants of the Sultanate of Malacca, which had originally been a tributary state of the Great Ming — the Sultanate of Malacca had been overrun by the Portuguese, and its royal house had fled to Johor and established a new state.

The Sultanate of Aceh actually belonged to the Islamic circle of the Indian Ocean, and therefore received support from the Mughal Empire and the Ottoman Empire. For a time it was quite fierce and fought the Portuguese colonists with considerable success, but after the rise of the Dutch East India Company it too had declined.

And after the Dutch East India Company replaced the Portuguese as the overlord of the Strait of Malacca and the island of Java, it changed the Portuguese religious policy and no longer forcibly promoted Christianity, so its relations with the Sultanate of Johor, the Sultanate of Patani, and the Sultanate of Aceh were not as tense as they had been when the Portuguese ruled the Strait of Malacca.

Moreover, the Dutch had to some extent become allies with these sultanates — the Dutch East India Company's policies were extremely flexible, unlike the Spaniards, who were so adept at making enemies. Therefore their policy in the Strait of Malacca was to focus on striking at Portuguese and Spanish power and at the Sultanate of Mataram, while at the same time keeping a close watch on the colossal power to the north, the Celestial Dynasty of the Great Ming.

As for the Sultanate of Brunei and the Sultanate of Sulu, because the spice trade of the South Seas was monopolized by the Dutch East India Company (they had originally shipped spices to China), their conflicts with the Dutch East India Company were relatively great, and at the same time they were threatened by the Spaniards, so they had always been longing for the Celestial Dynasty of the Great Ming to move south.

De Velasco said: "From what I know of the Dutch, they may not immediately step onto the front stage, but they will certainly manipulate the three sultanates of Patani, Johor, and Aceh from behind the scenes to form an alliance against the Great Ming. And we have no ability to hold Manila. A few thousand Japanese samurai trained and equipped on the model of the Ming New Army would be enough to completely surround Manila.

Even if the siege lasted for years, Manila would still fall. And given the ferocity of the Japanese samurai, we would lose everyone!"

Do not think that because Spain and the Great Ming were now trading blows at sea with apparent relish, the casualties on both sides were not actually very great. On the one hand, the Zhu Emperor did not have the ability to escort every ship, and it was also impossible to equip ordinary merchant ships with dangerous explosive shells, so he needed to exchange Spanish prisoners for Ming sailors captured by the Spaniards — the Ming population was large, but experienced sailors were very few, and they could not afford the losses!

Likewise, the Spaniards were unwilling to endure enormous personnel losses. They were few in number, and even fewer in the East.

Therefore the mission of the Holy Roman Empire stationed in the Great Ming played the role of intermediary in prisoner exchanges.

But the Japanese paid no attention to such conventions. They had no sailors who needed to be exchanged, so any Spanish sailor who fell into the shogunate's hands was doomed to die!

De Velasco paused, then said: "Admiral, I hope you will find a way to evacuate all personnel from Manila Castle to Japan, and at the same time try to collect as many Chinese-style sailing ships capable of crossing the Pacific as possible — the more the better!"

"Sailing ships capable of crossing the Pacific?" Barcelo asked. "Ambassador, do you intend to..."

De Velasco said: "We must let Shimazu Mitsuhisa see hope. Even samurai who do not fear death need hope to fight on!"

Japan, Nagasaki.

This port city, surrounded by several hundred small islands and a chain of rolling hills, had now been transformed from a commercial metropolis into an enormous military camp and fortress.

The roads leading overland to the Nagasaki peninsula had been completely sealed off by a series of newly built fortifications. The original Nagasaki city wards were now tightly protected by walls and moats. Even the sea, the least likely avenue of attack, had been blockaded with gun batteries.

An army of ten thousand ronin recruited by Hoshina Masatsune in the name of Tokugawa Taka now guarded the various forts and walls, holding back the attacks of the Toyotomi (Shimazu) side.

And the remnants of the pro-shogunate daimyo who had been defeated in battle against the Toyotomi (Shimazu) army had also retreated to Nagasaki in a steady stream, all of them encamped outside the Nagasaki city wards.

In what had once been Japan's largest foreign-trade port, the people now coming and going were all samurai with swords at their sides — most of them living in poverty, their prospects bleak.

During the Tokugawa peace, these men had daydreamed day and night about the chaos of the Warring States era, as if once chaos came, they could all rise to glory like the "Monkey"! Even if they could not become the "Monkey," they could at least win some title like one of the Seven Spears or the Four Heavenly Kings, and thereby escape their tragic lives, rising from the bottom against all odds.

But once the fighting actually began, they discovered that they were not the Monkey, nor the Seven Spears or the Four Heavenly Kings — they could hardly even manage to become an ashigaru drawing a meager stipend, because their lords had all lost their domains and were living under another's roof, and they themselves were about to become mere retainers!

(End of Chapter)