Chapter 360: Taking Shape

Seeing that Lin Rong still looked worried, Wu Qun patiently continued: "Old Lin, rest assured. From what I know, the red-haired barbarians to the south number fewer than a thousand. If they come to attack us, they'll surely leave men behind to guard their city, lest we raid their nest. By that reckoning, if they do attack, their force should number between six and eight hundred. Old Lin, you may be a civil official who knows nothing of war, but you can do the math—two thousand against eight hundred, who wins? Hmm?"

"Old Wu, what you say isn't wrong, but I've also read some miscellaneous books—there are plenty of cases where the few defeated the many. You'd best not be careless!"

Lin Rong looked out toward the hall, reminding him with lingering unease.

"Hey! I say, Old Lin, where did you read such nonsense? Beating a larger force depends on what kind of formation both sides have! I'm not bragging—my two thousand men could cut through ten thousand roving bandits seven times over! Those red-haired barbarians have muskets and cannons, and we've got the same in no short supply. What makes you think they've got the ability to defeat me?"

Since landing on Taiwan in the ninth year of Chongzhen, nearly two years had passed, and Wu Qun and Lin Rong—one military, one civil—had gotten along harmoniously, coordinating well on most matters great and small. Their friendship had steadily warmed until it reached the point where they were inseparable.

The two had first surveyed the island's situation, then used force to execute several of the Zheng family's chieftains left on the island, forcing the others to submit to the imperial court. After that, they began large-scale infrastructure construction in the island's central-southern region.

It had to be said—Zhu Youjian's decision to send craftsmen to the island first was an utterly correct move. With the efforts of these craftsmen and their families, and with the cooperation of the island's original two thousand-plus migrants, four large villages spaced ten li apart rose at a visible pace.

The vast majority of the villages' buildings were constructed from timber. For this reason, Lin Rong had made a special trip back to Fuzhou, where he requested an audience with Zou Weilian, the Governor of Fujian, laid out the island's current situation, and earnestly requested greater support from the Fujian provincial government.

Zou Weilian, having rendered merit in the matters of Zheng Zhilong and the migrants, had already been specially promoted by Zhu Youjian to the title of Grand Secretary of the Eastern Pavilion.

And from what he had heard, his days in Fujian might be numbered—the Emperor, mindful of his arduous service, planned to transfer him to an inland province to spare him the damp heat and humidity of the south.

Zou Weilian naturally understood the importance of the Taiwan migration. In excellent spirits, he specially received Lin Rong, and with a flourish of his brush, used silver allocated by Zhu Youjian to purchase a large batch of supplies Taiwan urgently needed, hiring ships to deliver them to the island in batches.

This shipment—including hammers, sickles, knives, axes, iron nails, raw lacquer, lime, rope, cloth, medicinal herbs, mosquito nets, bricks, and stone—greatly alleviated the island's material shortages and sped up the pace of various construction projects considerably.

The officials from various prefectures and counties who had come with the disaster refugees played a very important role. Under their supervision and direction, the craftsmen dug wells, repaired canals, built roads, and laid bricks, quickly giving every village the most basic conditions and facilities for survival.

That the four villages were built so properly was thanks to the planning and layout done by personnel sent to the island by the Fujian Governor's Office's Bureau of Works.

These clerks and scribes of the Bureau of Works marked out the village arrangements with lime, making especially strict and meticulous arrangements for the drinking wells at the center.

At the very center of each village and at each of its four corners, a well was placed—five in all. The inner walls were entirely lined with brick and stone, the well mouths arched and slightly raised above the ground, and the surrounding area paved entirely with bluestone to prevent mud and debris from entering the wells and polluting the water.

Thanks to Taiwan's abundant groundwater, digging the wells required little effort. None of the wells were deep, the water was clear and sweet, and the yield was plentiful—five wells sufficed for the daily use of two thousand people.

Each village was built on higher ground, and the drainage ditches within the villages were dug deep and wide enough that even a sudden downpour would not cause serious flooding.

Because labor was plentiful, the villages' basic infrastructure was completed in under ten days, after which came the construction of individual homes.

Under the unified coordination of Lin Rong and the officials, the migrants and the able-bodied men the Zheng family had moved over formed several construction teams that helped build houses and courtyards for every family free of charge, while the elderly, weak, women, and children handled laundry, cooking, and support tasks. Within a few months, all the migrants had moved into their new homes.

Taiwan's warm, humid climate in the central-southern region also provided the best conditions for opening wasteland and cultivating military farmland.

The island's rice could yield three harvests per year, and the several granaries the Zheng family had originally built on the island were already long since filled to the brim with paddy.

With village construction and land reclamation proceeding simultaneously, the island's grain was already sufficient to feed the ten thousand-plus people, and there was no longer any need to rely on the Zheng family's fleet to ship food in from outside.

After the disaster refugees' homes were completed, the simple-styled Taizhong County Magistrate's Office, located at the center of the four villages, was finally built as well, and Lin Rong finally felt like a true official.

Subsequently, two military camps of differing sizes were also completed one after another.

After much deliberation, Wu Qun built the main camp to the southwest of the southernmost village, with the purpose of guarding against the threat from the Dutch to the south.

Once this camp was finished, Wu Qun personally led fifteen hundred men stationed within it.

Aside from the side facing the sea, the camp had three spacious artillery platforms built on its other three sides with rammed earth and brick, each platform equipped with six Folangji cannons. Under such overwhelming firepower, breaking through the camp and advancing toward the migrant settlements would cost an enormous price.

The other, smaller camp was built on the northwest side facing the sea, designed to prevent an enemy landing from the coast from cutting off their rear. The two camps were essentially identical in layout.

Today, Wu Qun had made a special trip from the main camp thirty li away to the county office, seeking Lin Rong for Bureau Directors and medicinal herbs to prepare for casualties in the coming battle—and, while he was at it, to mooch a meal.

Lin Rong's cook, Lin San, was a master of fine cuisine, and his exquisite Southern Fujian dishes never failed to delight Wu Qun, a northern country bumpkin who could not get enough of them.

"I say, Old Lin, where's Lin San? I haven't seen the fellow in quite some days. He hasn't gone off looking for that widow again, has he? It's nearly noon—the lad had better hurry back!"

"Bah! You were just here mooching a meal a few days ago, and you still have the nerve to say you haven't seen Lin San in days! Stop fretting about whether Lin San's found a widow—he's busy in the kitchen right now!"

Just as the Ming troops on the island were preparing to resist any possible attack, inside Fort Zeelandia, located to the southeast of Taiwan, the highest-ranking Dutch official on the island, Putmans, was convening the relevant personnel in the Governor's Office to discuss the Ming court's migration of people to the island.

Fort Zeelandia was a typical modern European bastion fort, surrounded by moats on all sides, with sloping earthen embankments as its base.

The walls were built of red brick, bound together with a mortar of sugar water, glutinous rice, oyster shell ash, and sand. The inner citadel was square, with two levels, measuring one hundred and twenty paces on each side. The walls stood about three zhang high and over four chi thick, while the corner bastions were a full five chi thick—with such thickness and hardness, even cannon fire could not breach them.

The basement within Fort Zeelandia served as warehouses for storing ammunition, grain, and miscellaneous goods, while the upper level housed the Governor's Office, a church, watchtowers, soldiers' barracks, and other facilities.

The outer citadel (the four corner outworks) was rectangular, about two hundred paces long and nearly one hundred wide, slightly lower than the inner citadel. Within it were the Governor's and staff's residences, offices, meeting halls, a hospital, warehouses, and other public buildings.

"Gentlemen, after several close-range reconnaissance missions by our scouts, we can now confirm that aside from the two thousand-plus people the Count Zheng's family has moved to the island over the years, the Ming government is organizing large-scale migration to the island of Taiwan, and has even dispatched substantial military forces to protect the safety of these migrant settlements. The Ming government's actions have seriously threatened our Dutch interests in Southeast Asia. Our Governor-General's office must adopt appropriate measures to halt the continuation of such activities!"

Putmans, in his forties, wore an extremely grave expression, and his words carried a hint of anxiety and worry.

Since the second half of last year, various reports had come in from Dutch merchant ships and fleets plying the oceans.

They had observed vessels of all sizes flying the Zheng family's flag frequently shuttling across the Taiwan Strait, continuously shipping large quantities of various supplies to the island—and such activity had not diminished in the first half of this year.

When they relayed this situation back to the Taiwan Governor-General's office, it aroused Putmans' high alert.

Putmans had long known that the island held several thousand people the Zheng family had moved over from the Ming, but because the migrant numbers were so small, the Dutch had not taken the matter to heart.

However, the Zheng family fleet's recent movements were somewhat abnormal, and Putmans decided to dispatch small teams of scouts to the vicinity of the Zheng family's docks to investigate the specifics.

After several close-range reconnaissance missions over the course of months, the reports that came back made Putmans realize something was wrong.

Not only had the island's population grown substantially, but there was also a military force of no fewer than a thousand men protecting it—and these troops were clearly not the Zheng family's armed men. They looked far more like regular Ming government soldiers.