Chapter 673: Winning People Over by Virtue

"Your Majesty, when this subject arrived at Phu Xuan (the capital of the Nguyen lords of Quang Nam), Trinh Trang, the Trinh lord who occupies the greater part of northern Annam, had just launched an unprecedented southern campaign, raising a hundred thousand troops, and had also taken Le Duy Huu, the Military Commissioner of Annam (who styles himself Emperor at home), along with him as they advanced south. It looked very much as if he meant to wipe out the southern Nguyen in one stroke!

And the Nguyen lord Nguyen Phuc Lan sent his heir Nguyen Phuc Tan and the great general Nguyen Huu Tien north with twenty thousand troops to the Changde Fortress, the border stronghold where the southern Nguyen defend against the northern Trinh, to set up their defense. This battle is on a scale never seen before, and if the southern Nguyen are defeated, their state may well perish.

Because he had to devote all his strength to meeting the northern Trinh offensive, Nguyen Phuc Lan had no leisure to attend to Prey Nokor and Saigon, so he agreed to our court leasing land from King Outey of Lower Chenla for clearing and cultivation.

In addition, Nguyen Phuc Lan also approves of the four lords jointly governing and jointly protecting the Le sovereign. But he fears that the Le sovereign is being held hostage by the Trinh lord, which would make the four lords' joint governance come to nothing. So he hopes to invite a son or younger kinsman of the Le sovereign to take up residence in Phu Xuan."

Zheng Sen was seated in a waterside pavilion within East Lake Palace, reporting to Zhu Cilang on his gains in Annam and Lower Chenla. His father Zheng Zhilong sat on Zhu Cilang's right, and the smile on his dark face was so broad it could hardly be contained.

It looked as though this richest man in the Great Ming had surely made a killing in the speculation over the princely bonds! He was the number one black market operator in the Great Ming!

The wise sovereign Zhu Cilang had no time to settle accounts with him yet; for now his mind was entirely on the questions of Lower Chenla and Annam.

Zheng Sen's mission to Annam and Lower Chenla had happened to coincide with the decisive battle of Quang Duc between Nguyen and Trinh — a great decisive battle that the Trinh lord Trinh Trang had painstakingly prepared for years to launch, aimed at annihilating the Nguyen of Quang Nam!

To ensure certain victory, Trinh Trang had even hired Dutch military advisors to help train his so-called Imperial Guard, bought Dutch armed merchantmen to form a navy, and purchased large quantities of cannon and firearms — one could say he had staked his utmost capital!

On the side of the Nguyen of Quang Nam, because the territory they held was all newly opened "wild and barbarous land," Annam's population was comparatively small, and they also had to suppress the resistance of the Cham people on the newly occupied lands. So the troops they could use to resist the Trinh lord numbered only twenty thousand.

But these twenty thousand men were an elite force that the Nguyen had spent years having Portuguese foreign officers train and temper, and they were also equipped with large numbers of war elephants, making their strength very formidable. Moreover, the Nguyen held the strategic passes of Mount Hoanh and the Linh River in central Annam, and relying on those strategic points they had built two lines of defense: the Changyu Fortress and the Changde Fortress.

However, in the last great war between Trinh and Nguyen, the Changyu Fortress had been captured by the Trinh army, so now the only line of defense protecting the Nguyen of Quang Nam was the Changde Fortress.

Under such perilous circumstances, the Nguyen lord Nguyen Phuc Lan naturally had no spare strength to stop Ming power from entering Lower Chenla. And Ming involvement in Lower Chenla was not necessarily a bad thing for the Nguyen lord. If the Nguyen were defeated at Changde and Quang Nam fell, the Nguyen lord's last foothold would be Saigon.

If the Ming opened a foothold near Saigon, could the Nguyen not follow the example of the Mac and shelter under the Great Ming, eking out a lingering existence?

"How much land have we leased in Lower Chenla? And where is it?"

Zhu Cilang had little interest in Annam's internal politics, because he knew that in the original history, the man who destroyed the Nguyen dynasty was named Ho Chi Minh — and he had not even been born yet!

So the outcome of this Trinh-Nguyen war would most likely still be a draw.

"Your Majesty," Zheng Sen replied, "this subject leased two pieces of land in Lower Chenla. One is near Prey Nokor, where King Outey agreed to let us choose any site along the lower Nine Dragons River to build a fortress; the other is at Cape Ca Mau, which is a peninsula at the easternmost part of Lower Chenla. There are several harbors there that can provide food and fresh water to ships trading in the Southern Seas, and we may choose any one of the harbors."

"This King Outey is quite easy to talk to." Zhu Cilang smiled. "Eldest Senior Brother, you didn't use gunboats to frighten him, did you?"

Of the ten Western-style warships that Zhu Cilang had ordered Zheng Zhilong to build in the previous two years, five had already been completed. Two of them were running the Shanghai–Uraga route, one had been requisitioned by Zheng Jiangong as a training ship, and the other two had gone with Zheng Sen to Prey Nokor and Phu Xuan. These five Western-style sailing ships were built using as a model an armed galleon of the Dutch East India Company that had undergone a major overhaul at the Zheng family shipyard in Anping Harbor. Nor were the five ships all started at once; first one was begun, and only after it was completed and sea-trialed were two more begun, and after those two were completed, two more were laid down.

So these five ships were built in three batches, and the ships of the second and third batches were each improved over the previous batch — improved in the direction of warships.

And the two galleons Zheng Sen took to Prey Nokor and Phu Xuan were the two from the third batch, built with large quantities of Siamese teak, with very sturdy hulls, and each armed with twenty-eight 12-pounder Hongyi cannon. They would not do against the ships of the line of the Dutch East India Company (the gap there is not only in the ships, but even more in the sailors), but to frighten a prince of Lower Chenla, was it not as easy as play?

But Zheng Sen was a scholar-official, and would not admit to using such immoral things as Hongyi cannon and warships to force the barbarians to cede land.

"This subject did not use gunboats to frighten Outey," Zheng Sen said with a smile. "This subject is an envoy of the Celestial Court, so naturally I must win people over by virtue!"

Zheng Zhilong joined in with a laugh: "Right, right, win people over by virtue, win people over by virtue."

Very well, win people over by virtue. Fifty-six 12-pounder Hongyi virtues could indeed win people over!

"That is good," Zhu Cilang nodded with satisfaction. "Then exactly how many li of land can we take?"

That sounded like something a country landlord would ask.

The great pirate Zheng Zhilong laughed: "Imperial Lord, in those wild and barbarous places of the Southern Seas, taking territory is not reckoned in li."

Zhu Cilang nodded, thinking to himself: I knew your family doesn't go by reason!

"Then what is it reckoned by?" Zhu Cilang asked.

"By how many forts and stockades there are along the coasts and rivers," Zheng Zhilong explained. "The kingdom of Lower Chenla has a small population, and the population along the lower Nine Dragons River and around Cape Ca Mau is even smaller, so administration there is very loose. They have only occupied some forts and stockades along the Nine Dragons River, and between the forts there are vast stretches of forest and marshland. However much land each fort can open up, that is how much it has.

What Zheng Sen obtained from the vice-king of Lower Chenla was the right to develop two forts and stockades in the lower Nine Dragons River and Cape Ca Mau areas. As for how much land can be opened up, that depends on our own ability."

"Is it all wild, unbroken forest there?" Zhu Cilang also knew that the forests of Southeast Asia were not easy to develop.

"Not entirely," Zheng Sen said. "There are already quite a few ports and fortified stockades built by Annamese settlers and settlers from our dynasty. As long as the court can build cities and open up farmland along the Nine Dragons River and at Cape Ca Mau, we can bring them one by one under our banner."

"That is good." Zhu Cilang was very satisfied. The Great Ming's tiger-skin was more intimidating than Lower Chenla's, and with warships that won people over by virtue as well, they should be able to bring many forts and stockades into the fold.

"Honored Father-in-law, Eldest Senior Brother," Zhu Cilang asked again, "do you have any suitable candidates to recommend for the posts of Land Reclamation Commissioner for the Nine Dragons River and Cape Ca Mau?"

"Your Majesty," Zheng Zhilong said, "the Great Ming subjects now living and farming in the Nine Dragons River and Cape Ca Mau areas are mostly Cantonese, while the sea merchants who travel between Lower Chenla and the Great Ming are mostly Fujianese. So the Land Reclamation Commission should have one chief commissioner and three deputy commissioners, with the deputies chosen from among the Fujianese, the Cantonese, and the Hakka respectively. That would make things easier to manage."

Zhu Cilang thought for a moment. "Then the chief commissioner shall be appointed by Us, and the three deputy commissioners shall be appointed respectively by the Governor-General of Guangdong and Guangxi, the Governor of Guangdong, and the household of the Duke of Quan."

He paused, then asked: "Opening up farmland along the Nine Dragons River and at Cape Ca Mau will cost a good deal of money, will it not? Where can the silver come from? The court's finances are hardly ample!"

"That is easy to handle," Zheng Zhilong laughed. "Just issue princely bonds. This subject has heard that the princely bonds of the Pingxi and Shuofang principalities have been issued quite well."

"Do you call the matter of the two principalities' bonds well handled?" Zhu Cilang's face darkened slightly. "A while ago the princely bonds suddenly soared and plunged, ruining many Hubei gentry and merchants and driving them to bankruptcy. We have already ordered the Embroidered Uniform Guard, the Ministry of Revenue, and the Censorate to jointly investigate thoroughly, and they have discovered that there is a hidden hand behind the manipulation of the princely bond market, spreading false information, and also buying and selling short, turning princely bond trading into a rigged gamble. It is truly detestable in the extreme!"

Zheng Zhilong's face changed drastically at these words. "Ah, there are such hateful villains? Imperial Lord, have the Embroidered Uniform Guard, the Ministry of Revenue, and the Censorate found out who the villains are?"

(End of Chapter)