Chapter 1486: We Are the Pirate King

"Quick, escort the Heir Apparent to New Shuri Castle! Yunyi, come with Us to Fort Hill!"

The present Zhu Cizhao had indeed matured a great deal. Hearing that a roving-bandit fleet or Western warships were approaching, he remained calm and composed, showing not the slightest intention of fleeing.

After instructing the wet nurse to escort the Heir Apparent, Zhu Yijin, back to New Shuri Castle, the capital of New Ryukyu Island, he immediately set out with Zhu Yunyi straight for Fort Hill to observe the enemy.

Fort Hill naturally had a fort. Situated in the western part of New Shuri Island, it was a small hill extending into the sea, surrounded by water on three sides. Twelve-catty bronze long cannons mounted atop this small hill could command two small bays, one to the south and one to the north. Of these, Fort Bay, lying south of Fort Hill, pressed close against New Shuri Castle in the New Shuri valley, making it of the utmost importance.

But holding Fort Hill and Fort Bay did not guarantee holding New Ryukyu Island, for the island was covered in beaches suitable for landing, making defense extremely difficult.

And the forces at Zhu Cizhao's disposal were rather limited. Although the Western Garrison under his command had been established very early — if one traced it back to its predecessor, the Calm Seas Army, it had over twenty years of history — the number of military households in the Western Garrison had never managed to grow, because in the Southern Seas making a fortune was easy but staying alive was hard.

The Southern Seas, on the one hand, were rich in resources, abounding in rice, spices, sugarcane, timber, and metals such as gold, silver, and tin, and moreover sat astride the vital choke point of East-West trade, making money all too easy to earn. On the other hand, the many epidemic diseases kept the mortality rate of northern immigrants stubbornly high.

In other words, "colonizing the Southern Seas" was essentially a business of trading one's life for money!

For the penniless wretches of Guangdong, Guangxi, Fujian, and Japan's Kyushu, going south to the Southern Seas was the final gamble of their lives! Either return home in glory, or die in a foreign land. Going south empty-handed, toiling for five to ten years, earning a fortune of several thousand or even ten thousand taels, then returning home to marry and raise children and live out the rest of one's days in comfort — that was life!

Staying in the Southern Seas forever — who knew when malaria would strike you down? Having finally made a fortune, who wouldn't want to live a few more years?

Northern immigrants willing to put down roots in the Southern Seas could not be said to be nonexistent, but their numbers were very limited. Moreover, the Han Chinese who did put down roots in the Southern Seas were usually unwilling to serve as soldiers. People came to the Southern Seas to get rich, not to win glory and build a career. Besides, when making money was so easy, who would still be a soldier?

Thus, after more than twenty years of development, the main force of the Western Garrison's Military Commissioner's office was no longer recruited soldiers, but rather over five thousand households of enfeoffed feudal warriors, called "Western Warriors." Only these warrior lords, who possessed small fiefs and were waited upon by a host of native slaves, were willing to risk being struck down by malaria to put down roots and serve as soldiers in the Southern Seas.

After all, the joy of being a feudal lord was very hard to buy with money in the Ming homeland or in Japan!

As for the "Luo Estate Warriors" on New Ryukyu Island directly subordinate to Zhu Cizhao himself (Zhu Cizhao was enfeoffed as the King of Kenan Luo), their numbers were even smaller — a mere five hundred households. No matter how hard they mobilized, those who could take the field and kill the enemy numbered only a little over a thousand, and the fighting ability of these lordly soldiers was not particularly reliable either.

Therefore, after the Luo Estate had shifted its garrison to New Ryukyu Island, the place had frequently suffered raids from the band of "sea roving bandits" entrenched in Burma.

But Zhu Cizhao was no pushover. He had ways of dealing with the "sea roving bandits" under Li Jicheng's command. Specifically, there were two methods. The first was to hold New Shuri Castle — a bastion fort that had taken the Shang dynasty more than ten years of painstaking effort and countless manpower and resources to build. Though it did not cover a large area, it was extremely sturdy and easy to hold for a long time. And when besieging a castle in the Southern Seas, the greatest difficulty was not the castle itself, but the various deadly epidemic diseases. Because a besieging army had to deploy in the open field, the danger of contracting disease was far greater than for the troops defending the castle.

The defending side had only to hold out until an epidemic broke out in the enemy camp, and victory could be won without fighting!

Compared with a prolonged siege, Zhu Cizhao's second method was clearly more effective — almost every time it could make the "sea roving bandits" withdraw within a very short time. That was to use "silver bullets" to make them withdraw.

The specific method was to give the "sea roving bandits" a large sum of silver, letting them deeply feel the imperial grace of the Great Ming Celestial Dynasty, and then, out of shame, withdraw without fighting.

This was called "subduing the enemy without fighting." It sounded rather cowardly, but it was the lowest-cost, least-loss method of repelling an enemy.

And for the attacking "sea roving bandits," obtaining gold and silver was satisfaction enough for them. The scenery of New Ryukyu Island was fine, but taking it would be of little use, and they couldn't hold it anyway! The place lay at the western exit of the trumpet-shaped Strait of Malacca — that is, on the northern side of the great trumpet mouth — only two thousand li by water from Temasek Island, where the Ming Malacca Fleet was stationed. The Ming's "Malacca-type" oar-and-sail gunboats could arrive within ten days. The Ming's army in the Southern Seas might not be much good in a fight (troops that could fight, they were reluctant to station in the Southern Seas), but the naval fleet guarding the Strait of Malacca (the navy was stationed in relatively clean and cool harbors, and would not contract malaria while operating at sea) was formidable indeed!

The Ming navy's "Malacca warships" looked somewhat like the large galleys active in the Mediterranean, driven simultaneously by long oars and sails. In high sea states they were not much to look at (oar-and-sail ships had poor seaworthiness), but in the Strait of Malacca, where there was little or no wind all year round, such oar-and-sail gunboats were very hard to deal with.

Because they had long oars to row with, they could sail quickly and nimbly without relying on wind power (there was never much wind in Malacca anyway), seize advantageous firing positions, and then use their shipboard twelve-catty bronze long cannons to fire spiked explosive shells.

Because of the widespread adoption of spiked explosive shells, the number of shipboard guns was no longer the hard indicator pursued by the navies of various nations — the more guns, the greater the difficulty of preventing ammunition cook-off!

If ammunition cook-off occurred in one gun compartment, a large ship of the line costing tens of thousands of taels of silver would be half ruined, and repairs would be extremely troublesome. If two gun compartments exploded, the warship, if it did not sink, would have to be scrapped.

And after this naval revolution triggered by explosive shells, any ship that could not be equipped with twelve-catty (or twelve-pound) bronze guns (whether long guns or short guns) and the corresponding spiked explosive shells (requiring explosion-proof magazines and gun compartments) was no longer a warship, but merely an armed merchantman.

Even first-rate sailing ships of the line capable of mounting over a hundred guns were no exception — these former overlords of the sea could not withstand bombardment by a few spiked explosive shells! Even if they encountered a light warship of two or three hundred tons burden, equipped with only a few twelve-catty or twelve-pound short-barreled guns, there was a considerable probability of being sunk or crippled.

Thus this naval revolution on the one hand raised the threshold for naval power, and on the other hand leveled, to the greatest possible extent, the gap in naval strength between early naval powers and late-developing nations.

Otherwise, with the Ming Empire's navy alone, it could not have become the world's foremost navy even in another twenty or thirty years!

And the Shun, exiled to Burma, if it had not happened to encounter this naval revolution, could not have transformed overnight into the "sea roving bandits" of the Indian Ocean.

Of course, large bombardment ships of the line of seven or eight hundred tons or even a thousand tons burden were beyond the Shun dynasty's means to build, and there was no need for them either. But with Dutch help, the Shun dynasty could produce some small, sturdy "Sea Roving King"-type oar-and-sail warships of only a little over two hundred tons burden, capable of mounting eight Dutch-imported twelve-pound bronze short-barreled guns on the broadside. This type of warship had now become the sharp weapon with which the Shun sea roving bandits ranged the Indian coast and raided the coasts of the Malacca Peninsula and Sumatra.

The Shun Emperor Li Jicheng was at this moment seated calmly aboard a two-hundred-fifty-ton "Sea Roving King"-type oar-and-sail warship, leading a fleet that, by the Shun dynasty's standards, could absolutely be called unprecedentedly vast, advancing slowly, majestically, from north to south along the western coastline of the Malacca Peninsula, and had already appeared in Zhu Cizhao's telescope.

His coming this time in such force was not merely to collect a little money, but to establish a stronghold on New Ryukyu Island, and moreover, using that stronghold as a base, to have a proper contest with the Ming's Malacca Fleet!

(End of Chapter)