Chapter 980 1069 Lin Feng's News
In a blink of an eye, it was October of the second year of Longqing, and more than a month had passed since the Emperor Wanli's birthday.
The military preparations against Myanmar had been carried out in an orderly manner under the personal charge of Li Chengliang. He personally brought 100,000 taels of silver and had already arrived in Huguang, and would arrive in Sichuan soon.
And in the north of Luzon Island, thousands of miles away from the Ming Dynasty, at the mouth of the Ange River in Fengjiayan Bay, a Han ethnic group of nearly 5,000 people lived here, and also built a small town called Daimao Port.
Their leader was naturally the Lin Feng Pirate Group that was driven out of Dongfan Island by Yu Dayou and went south to attack Manila.
However, perhaps due to bad luck, the Lin Feng Pirate Group did not capture Manila, which had a weak military force, but lost hundreds of people. Finally, after seeing the surrounding Spanish reinforcements rushing back to Manila, they chose to withdraw from the battlefield and returned to the north of Luzon Island along the coastline and chose a harbor to settle down.
At that time, Lin Feng led more than 60 warships, nearly 6,000 people, and carried a large number of agricultural tools and seeds, and marched towards the Philippines.
Lin Feng almost went out in full force this time, and all the soldiers brought their families with them. He planned to capture Manila and move his maritime base here, and even to establish his own maritime kingdom in Manila in the future.
This may be the first organized and large-scale military action for maritime territorial expansion in Chinese history, but Lin Feng could not get the support of the Ming court.
For the Ming court, the biggest task was to completely eliminate Lin Feng's pirate group, and it was impossible to support Lin Feng's attack on the Philippines.
When the fleet led by Lin Feng entered Manila Bay in the early morning, it immediately sent a vanguard assault force of 300 people to land and attack Manila City.
When the commando passed by the village of Bagong Layang on the way to attack Manila, they learned that the Spanish garrison commander Goyante lived there, so they changed their plan and attacked the village of Bagong Layang and killed Goyante.
After several guards were killed by pirates, the others in the house immediately used the terrain advantage to defend and delay time, hoping to get support from the guards in Manila.
In fact, at this time, the Spaniards did not know the arrival of Lin Feng's pirate group.
The residences of Spanish nobles are generally built like a small castle, not the villas seen in later generations, so the defense is strong. The pirates' advance team had no way to deal with them for a while, and finally chose to use fire to drive people out of the house and kill them.
Although Goyante was killed, Lin Feng's army also exposed its whereabouts, allowing the defenders of Manila to know the news in advance.
Spanish Governor Lavezares immediately ordered the urgent construction of fortifications and set up an ambush on the road that Lin Feng's commando must pass, and finally repelled the commando's attack.
But the situation is still favorable to Lin Feng. After all, Lin Feng's pirate group has an obvious advantage in manpower. If Lin Feng increases his troops at this time, it will be a natural thing to take Manila in one go.
At this time, there were only more than 50 defenders in Manila, and the Spanish governor and many senior officials were in the city. As long as Manila was captured, Spain's colonial rule in the Philippines would collapse.
Unfortunately, Lin Feng took the initiative to make mistakes at the critical moment. Perhaps he was overconfident in his military advantage. After all, many captives said that there were not many people in Manila, or he underestimated the strength of the Spanish defenders. Lin Feng chose to rest for a day outside Manila.
Perhaps, in Lin Feng's view, Manila could no longer stop him from entering the city, and his men who had traveled across the ocean to come here also needed to rest.
But it was this critical day that completely changed the outcome of the war.
After the gunshots in Manila, Salcido, the Spanish garrison commander of Ilugu Island near Manila Bay, led 54 soldiers to urgently rescue Manila.
The Spanish troops scattered in other parts of the Philippines also rushed back to Manila one after another after receiving the news, which immediately boosted the morale of the defenders in Manila.
Although Manila, which received assistance, still had only more than a hundred soldiers, the Spanish colonial army at that time was well-equipped and well-trained, and the city walls, fortresses and other defensive facilities that had been built were extremely strong, and their strength should not be underestimated.
You know, they were originally grabbing territory, so they naturally had to build their own castles after landing to avoid being attacked and driven out by the locals.
As for the combat effectiveness of the Spanish soldiers that Lin Feng ignored, well, as early as forty years ago, the Spanish colonist Pizarro led only less than two hundred soldiers and actually destroyed the South American Inca Empire with tens of thousands of troops and looted a huge amount of wealth.
But Lin Feng didn't seem to think so, he still believed in his numerical advantage.
After all, he had captured many Spaniards and thought he was familiar with their combat effectiveness through fighting.
After a day of rest, Lin Feng organized more than 600 soldiers again and attacked Manila in three directions. Although Lin Feng's pirate army was very strong in combat and launched a fierce attack on Manila City with muskets and artillery, there was a huge gap in weapons with the Spanish army.
The fortifications built by Spain were extremely strong and difficult to conquer. After a day of fierce fighting, Lin Feng's army suffered heavy losses, with more than 200 casualties, and had to stop the attack.
This attack made Lin Feng truly realize the strength of the Spanish soldiers and the Manila Castle. Without the advantage of surprise attack, he thought it would be difficult to capture this place with his own men.
Although, they did have many more people than the Spanish.
The next day, when the Spanish Governor Lavezares was anxiously waiting for Lin Feng's army to attack again, he found that Lin Feng's army had quietly retreated overnight and disappeared.
After that, the Spaniards carefully sent people to conduct reconnaissance around to find the traces of the attacking enemy.
However, they searched the surrounding area for hundreds of miles and did not find the whereabouts of the enemy.
However, they had suffered a loss once, so they would not rest assured easily and think that they could rest easy here.
On the one hand, they realized that they were short of manpower, so they recruited obedient people from the natives and organized them into vassal troops to assist them in the battle.
On the other hand, they sent people to look for the whereabouts of the enemy.
From the bodies of the enemies left behind, the Spaniards had already made a preliminary judgment that the people who came were both Ming people and Japanese people.
Yes, there were also many Japanese people in Lin Feng's pirate group, otherwise they would not be called Japanese pirates.
After searching outward little by little for more than a month, the small town built by Lin Feng more than 200 miles away from Manila was also discovered by the Spaniards.
Originally, the Spaniards thought that Lin Feng had left the Philippines because they had not found any trace of the enemy for such a long time.
But in the end, they received such shocking news that Lin Feng had not left the Philippines at all, but settled in Daimao, more than 200 kilometers north of Manila.
It turned out that after the second attack on Manila failed, Lin Feng made his own choice again.
He thought that he was no longer sure to capture Manila, so he simply led the fleet north and came to a place called Daimao Port.
After arriving here, Lin Feng led his men to establish a settlement. These Chinese people built houses, cultivated land, recruited refugees, and even those local Filipinos who did not want to be enslaved by the Spaniards began to surrender to Lin Feng.
Seeing this, Lin Feng immediately proclaimed himself king and began to rule this land.
Originally, this was also the reason why he chose to come here.
Compared with the Spanish colonial policy of burning, killing and looting in the Philippines, Lin Feng was more tolerant to the local people in the Philippines, did not discriminate against ethnic groups, and even taught them the farming techniques of the Ming Dynasty, which won the respect of the local people, and the area around Daimao Port began to prosper.
The Spanish naturally could not tolerate Lin Feng openly claiming to be king under their noses, so the Spanish decided to kill Lin Feng.
You know, from the 15th to the 17th century, explorers from European countries began to drive ships to explore the oceans of various continents, and the Age of Exploration officially began.
With the beginning of the Age of Exploration, European countries began to colonize other newly discovered continents and plundered local resources and materials crazily.
Spain, with its advanced shipbuilding technology, was one of the earliest countries in Europe to sail. Soon after Columbus discovered the New World, Spain began to colonize Mexico.
After Magellan traveled around the world, Spanish colonists began to turn their attention to Asia, and the Philippines became a new target for Spanish colonists.
Magellan came to the Philippines in 1521, and the Spanish came here again 20 years later.
There is a very big feature in the colonial period. Western colonists do not regard local indigenous people as a group that can have equal dialogue with them.
After they set their eyes on a piece of land, they just put up a sign here and give it a random name. If there is no competitor from the West, they will legally consider it their colony.
In fact, when Magellan came here, he tried to turn the Philippines into a Spanish colony, but he was killed here because of the resistance of the locals and did not personally complete the round-the-world voyage he led.
However, the Spaniards did not give up. After gaining a foothold in the Americas, the Spaniards always wanted to cross the Pacific Ocean and come to the Philippines again to turn it into their own colony.
In 1543, the Spanish navigator Lopez de Villalobos finally crossed the Pacific Ocean and came here, and named these islands after the Spanish Crown Prince Philip, which is the origin of the name of the Philippine Islands.
Initially, they hoped to use a good seaport in the Philippine Islands as a base to conduct maritime trade with China. What made them very happy was that Chinese merchant ships were indeed found near the Philippine Islands.
The Spaniards chose Cebu Island as a trading place, but the local location advantage is not obvious. This island is located in the southern half of the Philippine Islands, with many reefs and dangerous shoals around it, and transportation is very inconvenient.
After investigation, the Spaniards decided to occupy Manila Bay, located on the east coast of Luzon Island. It is a natural and excellent seaport. It faces the East Asian continent to the northwest, which is very conducive to commercial activities.
After occupying Manila, the Spaniards went out in a big way. On the one hand, they continued to go out to sea for trade and collect surrounding geographical information, and on the other hand, they enslaved the indigenous people on the island on a large scale to build a city for them.
Therefore, the Spaniards were very hostile to the locals.
Of course, Lin Feng's raid on Manila did scare the Spaniards.
However, at this time, they were short of troops, so they did not launch an attack on the hawksbill for the time being, but quietly accumulated strength, and at the same time trained and recruited more than 2,000 vassal troops, preparing to occupy this place in one go and kill Lin Feng.
The news that the Lin Feng pirate group attacked Manila was finally transmitted back to Yuegang in October through a Ming merchant ship trading here.
Yuegang was the only port for Ming Dynasty to trade with foreign countries at that time. Although the three Maritime Customs Offices could also conduct tribute trade, merchants had to hold a permit to do so.
The first thing the Municipal Shipping Department does for arriving foreigners is to verify the authenticity of the contract, and then receive them and do business.
Well, they are nominally envoys from various vassal states, not businessmen.
Because of Yuegang's advantage, both Yu Dayou and Jin Yiwei arranged for people to collect overseas intelligence here, using these merchant ships to bring back information.
Even the spies they want to send out are mostly arranged to go to sea on these merchant ships.
A few days later, the news reached Yu Dayou's ears. He could hardly believe that Lin Feng would lead people to Luzon to seize territory, and failed despite his absolute advantage.
As a military general, Yu Dayou couldn't believe that Lin Fengzai was in Manila because he thought about the problem from the perspective of a general.
As the admiral of the navy, he certainly knew the current situation in Manila. He could not imagine how Lin Feng was able to fight with so many people to block the attack of thousands of people.
But now that he knew Lin Feng's whereabouts, he had to deal with it.
Since he had not received any follow-up news at this time, he naturally did not know that Lin Feng was still lingering in Luzon.
After learning about Lin Feng's failed expedition, he immediately sent an alert to the coastal state capitals of the Ming Dynasty, asking them to be on guard against Lin Feng's pirate group returning home.
At the end of the road, they were worried that they would take risks and attack coastal counties again.
On the other side, it was natural to quickly report to the capital.
Pursuing Lin Feng's pirate group has always been his mission.
However, before his urgent report reached the capital, Jin Yiwei had already passed the news to Wei Guangde.
"Luzon? You said the Japanese pirates went to Luzon to attack Manila?"
In the cabinet duty room, Wei Guangde received an urgent report from Liu Shouyou, with an expression of complete disbelief.
"Is the news reliable?"
Although Liu Shou nodded, Wei Guangde couldn't help but ask.
"According to the news brought back by the businessman, Lin Feng and his group stayed in Manila for four or five days. Afterwards, they chose to leave due to the failure of the siege. Their current whereabouts are unknown."
Liu Shouyou stood up and replied.
Wei Guangde stretched out his hand and pressed down, indicating for him to sit down. Then he lowered his head and looked carefully at the emergency report in his hand.
Just now, I heard Liu Shouyou talking, but I haven't looked at it yet.
But soon, Wei Guangde frowned and said displeased: "This Lin Feng is really shameful. Thousands of people attacked a city held by hundreds of people, and he actually ran away in the end."
"I heard that the cities built by the Yi people are different from those of the Ming Dynasty. They are mainly castles, and the city walls are also different from those built by the Ming Dynasty."
Liu Shouyou said immediately.
"Siyun, do you think that after Lin Feng failed to attack Manila, did he return to the Ming Dynasty or look for other places to settle overseas, just like Zhang Lian?"
"Mr. Wei Ge, we really can't say for sure. I will order them to track down Lin Feng's whereabouts."
"Lin Feng's whereabouts naturally need to be investigated, but since Japanese pirates have appeared in Luzon"