In the minds of many Chinese and foreigners, ancient China was a closed-door navyless country. What first comes to mind when it comes to the elite divisions of ancient China that can recruit good warriors? The Great Qin Ruishi who swept through Liuhe, the Yulin Army of the Great Han who chased the Xiongnu in the north, the Tang Xuanjia Army under Li Shimin the King of Qin, the Yue Family Army in the Song Dynasty, and the Qi Family Army in the Ming Dynasty... These can be called the elite divisions of ancient China's explosive combat effectiveness, but these elite divisions mentioned above are all the army without exception. This has caused some foreigners to form the stereotype of no navy in ancient China, and over time some Chinese have begun to spread false rumors.
However, Zheng Zhilong and Zheng Chenggong, who were active in the southeast sea frontier in the late Ming and early Qing dynasties, were enough to break this deviation in understanding and understanding. Speaking of Zheng Chenggong, we all know that he is the national hero who recovered Taiwan, but even the biggest hero grew up from a baby who was crying and crying. Zheng Chenggong may be just a model figure in history textbooks in the minds of many of us, but at that time, Zheng Chenggong was also a flesh-and-blood person like us. Zheng Chenggong was not born destined to become a national hero. The reason why Zheng Chenggong will become a hero is actually his own mental growth process. The legend of Zheng Chenggong begins in part from his father, Zheng Zhilong.
Zheng Zhilong was a native of Shijing Town, Nan'an, Quanzhou, Fujian Province, and served as a general officer (translator) in the Dutch fleet in his early years. At that time, the Dutch would not have dreamed that it was this Zheng Zhilong and his son Zheng Chenggong who single-handedly subverted the Dutch hegemony in the East Asian seas. The Netherlands at the time had a larger fleet than Portugal, Spain, France, England, Scotland, and Germany combined. Zheng Zhilong's tenure in the Dutch fleet had two major gains: one was to learn Dutch, Portuguese, Spanish, Japanese, and Lusitanian five foreign languages, and the other was to know how Westerners sailed and did business.
Being able to skillfully use multiple languages facilitated Zheng Zhilong's communication with foreign businessmen, and his experience in sailing and business laid the foundation for his future rise and growth. In the third year of the Apocalypse (1623 AD), Zheng Zhilong went to Nagasaki, Japan, to join the local Chinese leader Li Dan. Li Dan entrusted his fleet of overseas trade ships to Zheng Zhilong to take care of. Within a few years, Zheng Zhilong established a huge "commercial-military complex": Zheng Zhilong's fleet was both engaged in overseas trade and a maritime armed force that could not be ignored. The Dutch fleet, which roamed the world's oceans, encountered a real rival only after encountering Zheng Zhilong's fleet.
Zheng Zhilong firmly controlled the route from Japan in the north, to present-day Singapore in the south, and to the Indian Ocean in the west, and the size of the fleet once reached as many as 3,000 ships. At that time, the governor of Liangguang, Li Ti, once went to the imperial court and said: "Zheng Thief is even cunning and unusual, and is accustomed to naval warfare. His disciples are all evil in the interior, and they are mixed with more than 30,000 people. Its ship's vessels are made from the outside: the ship is tall and firm. It is not lost in the water, and it is not broken when it encounters a reef. A cannon shot should be shattered for tens of miles." From Li Ti's account, it is not difficult to see the strength of Zheng Zhilong's fleet. The Ming governor of Fujian tempted the Dutch East India Company's garrison in Taiwan to attack Zheng Zhilong on the condition that legal trade with China was granted.
As a result, the Dutch fleet's clipper Ovo was sunk and the crew was captured by Zheng Jun's generals. For quite some time thereafter, Dutch ships, fearful of Zheng Zhilong's prestige, did not dare to haunt the South China Sea. It is well known that Zheng successfully recovered Taiwan from the Dutch, but it is not known that Zheng Zhilong established a base in Taiwan long before the arrival of the Dutch: Zheng Zhilong followed the Ming Dynasty system and set up an official structure in Taiwan, thus de facto forming Taiwan's first government. Zheng Zhilong invaded Taiwan, operated on the sea, and crossed Fujian and Guangdong, and for a time a large number of people in the coastal areas of Fujian defected. A prototype of a predominantly Han Chinese regime emerged in Taiwan.
The Ming government was unable to suppress Zheng Zhilong's maritime power, and at the same time wanted to use Zheng Zhilong's power to contain the Dutch and suppress other pirate forces. In the first year of Chongzhen (1628 AD), Zheng Zhilong officially accepted the favor of the Ming Dynasty. In September of the fifth year of Chongzhen, the pirate Liu Xiang led thousands of people and 170 ships to plunder Fujian, and At this time, Zheng Zhilong, who had accepted the Ming Dynasty's recruitment, sent troops to resist as a Ming general. At that time, Liu Xiang's ship was equipped with more than ten Hongyi cannons, while Zheng Zhilong led 3,000 elite troops, 40 warships, and 500 fire bolts to meet the battle and eventually forced Liu Xiang to flee. On 22 October 1633, Zheng Zhilong, who was a general of the Ming Dynasty, engaged the Dutch navy at Shiluo Bay on the southeast coast of Kinmen.
In this battle, the combined fleet of the Dutch and the pirate Liu Xiang lost 50 warships and captured more than 100 people. After the Battle of Luowan, Zheng Zhilong took advantage of the victory to drive the Dutch fleet out of the Coast of China, and in the eighth year of Chongzhen (1635), Zheng Zhilong and Liu Xiang fought a decisive battle in the waters of Hiroshima and won a decisive victory. Zheng Zhilong annihilated Liu Xiang's fleet in one fell swoop in this battle, and Liu Xiang himself committed suicide in this battle. In the twelfth year of Chongzhen (1639), nine Dutch warships once again invaded the Coast of China, and Zheng Zhilong's fleet sank 5 of them with fire ships and sailors carrying gunpowder barrels. At this point, Zheng Zhilong completely grasped the control of the South China Sea: any ship that passed through the South China Sea must obtain the ling flag granted by the Zheng family in advance, otherwise it would encounter a head-on blow.
The Cheng family is essentially a maritime-military complex with both military and business intelligence, and it is precisely because of its strong military strength as a support that Zheng Zhilong has been able to monopolize trade in Champa City, Luzon, Beigang, Pingdo, Nagasaki, Mumbai, Banten, Old Port, Malacca, Cambodia, Siam and other places. At this time, the Zheng family already had 20,000 soldiers of different races, including Han Chinese, Japanese, Koreans, Vietnamese, and even black Africans, and a fleet of more than 3,000 large and small ships. Zheng Zhilong solved his lifelong problems while his power grew and grew: in the third year of the Apocalypse (1623), Zheng Zhilong married a local woman, the Tagawa clan, when he went to Japan to trade.
On July 15, 1624 (August 28, 1624), Zheng Zhilong's eldest son, Zheng Chenggong, was born in Chirihama, Kawauchiura, on hirado Island in the Hizen Kingdom of Japan. Zheng Chenggong lived with his mother, Theagawa clan, in Hirado until his father, Zheng Zhilong, was recruited by the Ming court to serve as an official before being taken back to Quanzhou Province to live and study in Anping (formerly Anping Town, Jinjiang County, Fujian Province, now Anhai Town). In the eleventh year of Chongzhen (1638), Zheng Chenggong passed the Xiucai Meritorious Title. In 1644 (the seventeenth year of Chongzhen and the first year of the reign of Qing Shun), Zheng Chenggong was sent to Jinling to study: Zheng Chenggong entered the Nanjing Guozi Supervisor to study from the famous Confucian Qian Qianyi in Jiangsu and Zhejiang.
It was in the year that Zheng Chenggong went to Jinling to study, a great change occurred in the whole country: first Li Zicheng, the king of the invasion, attacked Beijing, the Chongzhen Emperor hanged himself on the coal mountain, and then Wu Sangui, the general of Shanhaiguan, led the Qing army into the customs to defeat Li Zicheng and enter the city of Beijing. The ming dynasty's retainers established the Southern Ming Hongguang regime in Nanjing, with Zhu Yousong the Prince of Fu. In 1645 (the second year of Qing Shunzhi and the first year of Hongguang), on May 15, the Qing army went south to attack Yangzhou and capture Nanjing. The Hongguang Emperor Zhu Yousong was captured by the Qing army and brutally killed. After the fall of the Hongguang regime, Zhang Kentang, the governor of Fujian in the Ming Dynasty, Huang Daozhou, The Rebbe Shangshu Huang Daozhou, Zheng Zhilong of Nan'an Bo, and Zheng Hongkui of Jingfu bo, supported the Tang emperor Zhu Yujian and proclaimed himself emperor in Fuzhou (changed to Yuan Longwu).
Zheng Zhilong, who had a heavy army, became the main military force on which the Longwu regime relied. After the establishment of the Longwu regime, Zheng Chenggong, who was still called Zheng Sen at the time, followed his father Zheng Zhilong to see the Longwu Emperor Zhu Yujian. When Emperor Longwu saw Zheng Sen, he sighed appreciatively, "It's a pity that there is no daughter to marry you." I hope you can be loyal to Daming Jiangshan Sheji. You and I have no responsibility to forget each other! In order to express his favor for Zheng Chenggong, Emperor Longwu gave zheng Sen the surname "Zhu" of the Ming dynasty royal family, and at the same time changed his original name to Sen Chenggong. Since then, Zheng Sen's name has become Zhu Chenggong. Although we now generally call him Zheng Chenggong, at that time people respected him as the grandfather of the country.
From 1646 (the third year of Qing Shunzhi and the second year of Longwu), Zheng Chenggong began to lead the army: he was repeatedly ordered to enter and leave Fujian and Gansu to fight against the Qing army. Zheng Chenggong, who had made many military achievements, was greatly valued by the Longwu Emperor Zhu Yu, but Zheng Zhilong, who really held military and political power, had no intention of resisting the Qing with all his might. From his personal point of view, Zheng Zhilong is an inspirational example of a small person starting from scratch, but Zheng Zhilong is a speculator who only cares about his own interests politically. Zheng Zhilong, who rose to the sea, did not have much loyalty to the Ming Dynasty. At the time of the great changes in the world, Zheng Zhilong did not have the determination to protect the Daming Jiangshan Sheji — in fact, he was more concerned about how to keep his family business and political treatment.
At that time, zheng zhilong's political speculation was a successful political speculation, and when the Qing army went south in a big way, Zheng Zhilong wanted to repeat the same trick and speculate again. Zheng Zhilong began secret negotiations with the Qing court on the conditions of his treatment after his surrender. Zheng Zhilong's contact with the Qing court was opposed within the Zheng family by his son Zheng Chenggong and his younger brother Zheng Hongkui, but Zheng Zhilong ignored the objections of these people and insisted on going north to surrender to the Qing. After Zheng Zhilong surrendered to the Qing Dynasty, Zheng Chenggong, Zheng Hongkui and others led a part of the old Zheng clan to continue the anti-Qing struggle on the southeast coast. When Zheng Zhilong surrendered to the Qing Dynasty, he did not hand over his maritime armed forces and fleet to the Qing government, but to his son Zheng Chenggong, who was unwilling to surrender.
The old ministry that Zheng Chenggong inherited from his father was actually the most powerful naval force in East Asia at that time. In the context of the Ming and Qing Dynasties, Zheng's strength was not enough to confront the Qing army head-on, but it was not a problem to use its maritime superiority on the southeast coast to negotiate with the Qing army. Zheng Chenggong relied on his powerful naval strength as a support to control the trade routes around the Nanyang Region, established the Five Merchants system of mountains and seas, and obtained huge military salaries from the trade network connecting the East and west. The main warship of the Zheng family fleet, Daqingtou, was about 10 zhang long, 2 zhang 1 foot wide, 5 feet high, 8 feet draft, and had a load of 3,000 to 4,000 cartons. In the battles against the Dutch and Liu Xiang, the Zheng family fleet was equipped with Hongyi and Weiyuan cannons (some of which weighed 2,000 to 3,000 pounds).
In fact, for nearly a hundred years from the outbreak of the Wanli War of Resistance against Japanese Aggression and Aid to Korea in 1592 to the kangxi conquest of Geldan in 1690, there was an arms race in East Asia: first, various new firearms from the Ming Dynasty, Korea, and Japan appeared on the Korean battlefield; then the Golden Eight Banners rose in the white mountains and black waters in the northeast; then the Dutch invaded Penghu, Taiwan, and clashed with Colonizers such as Portugal and Spain; and in 1661 Zheng successfully recovered Taiwan from the Dutch colonists In 1683, Shi Lang pacified the Ming Zheng regime; from 1685 to 1688, the Qing army launched a self-defense counterattack against the Russian army occupying Yaksa and other places; in 1690, the Kangxi Emperor personally conquered Geldan.
In this century of war experience, various new weapons have taken turns in this region. The Zheng family fleet absorbed the advantages of various firearms, and was equipped with domestic firearms and Hongyi cannons imported from Europe. On the basis of taking over some of the old departments of the Zheng clan, Zheng Chenggong also recruited soldiers to buy horses and swear against the Qing Dynasty under the name of "Zhongxiao Bo recruited the surname of the great general who committed crimes and subjects to the country". In 1651, Zheng Chenggong went south to Guangdong to prepare to join Li Ding, but the Qing army took the opportunity to encircle and suppress Zheng Chenggong's stronghold of Xiamen at this time. When Zheng Chenggong returned to help, Xiamen had been breached by Qing forces: zheng Chenggong's uncles either surrendered to the Qing dynasty or fled to the sea. All the Zheng family's savings in Xiamen were looted by the Qing army.
Zheng Chenggong's name really confirms what is called failure is the mother of success: after the defeat, Zheng Chenggong summed up and reflected on the lessons learned in strategy and tactics on the one hand, and on the other hand, recruited troops, accumulated money and grain, and strengthened combat readiness. In 1656, Zheng successfully recaptured Xiamen, and then successively recovered Quanzhou, Nan'an and other places. At this time, Zheng Chenggong had gradually formed a mature strategic thinking, so he began to actively prepare for the Northern Expedition to avenge the hatred of the country and the family. By 1658, Zheng Chenggong had about 3,000 warships and 170,000 troops. In 1659 (the sixteenth year of Qing Shunzhi and the thirteenth year of the Southern Ming Yong calendar), the Northern Expedition led by Zheng Chenggong successfully entered the Yangtze River: after conquering Zhenjiang, Guazhou and other places in succession, it besieged Nanjing.
The siege of Nanjing was Zheng Chenggong's most brilliant achievement. Unfortunately, Zheng Chenggong's army strength was really relatively weak. The armed forces of the Zheng family, from Zheng Zhilong to Zheng Chenggong, are all known as water masters. Zheng's successful attack on Nanjing was to rely on the navy to break into the Yangtze River and go straight to Nanjing. However, few cities on land were occupied by Zheng Chenggong. This directly led to a problem: even if Zheng succeeded in capturing Nanjing, it was unlikely that he would be able to hold it. The combat effectiveness of the Qing army on land was indeed not comparable to the Zheng army, not to mention that the Zheng army also lacked its own logistical supply line on the land, and Zheng Chenggong won the Qing army's strategy of slowing down the army, resulting in the loss of troops under the surprise attack of the Qing army.
The Battle of Nanjing can be said to be the most brilliant and important battle in Zheng Chenggong's career, but the end of first prosperity and then decline caused Zheng Chenggong's anti-Qing cause to suffer a fatal setback. After the defeat at the Battle of Nanjing, Zheng Chenggong was always unable to obtain a large base area on the mainland, so he could only prepare the grain needed for the army through overseas trade. At this time, Taiwan, which was across the sea, attracted the attention of Zheng Chenggong. Zheng Chenggong's father, Zheng Zhilong, had developed and operated Taiwan long before the arrival of the Dutch: Zheng Zhilong had organized large-scale mainlanders to immigrate to Taiwan for reclamation and construction. For a long time, Taiwan was the main source of food for the Zheng family, but all this quietly changed after the arrival of the Dutch.
Zheng Zhilong returned to the mainland from Taiwan after being recruited by the Ming Dynasty. Since then, the mainland has undergone great changes in the Ming and Qing Dynasties, and the Dutch have seized the opportunity to invade and occupy Taiwan. After the defeat of the Northern Expedition to Nanjing, Zheng Chenggong's troops were seriously injured and faced with the problem of insufficient military food, so Zheng Chenggong had to open up a new base area to solve the problem of logistics and supplies for the army. At this time, Zheng Zhilong's old subordinate He Bin came to visit Zheng Chenggong. He Bin followed Zheng Zhilong to Taiwan in his early years, and after Zheng Zhilong returned to the mainland, He Bin stayed in Taiwan. After the Dutch occupied Taiwan, He Bin converted to the dutch religion and learned Dutch. He Bin's actions gradually earned him the trust of the Dutch.
In the eighteenth year of Shunzhi (1661), He Bin came to the mainland with a lot of information about Taiwan to defect to Zheng Chenggong. In the spring of that year, Zheng Chenggong led more than 25,000 officers and soldiers to cross the sea in more than 300 boats of various types to recover the island of Taiwan occupied by the Dutch colonists. At that time, the Dutch East India Company did not actually occupy the entire island of Taiwan: it only established The City of Plominja (Chichi City) and The City of Zeelandia as trading posts, and the Total Number of Dutch troops stationed on the island of Taiwan was only a few thousand, and the warships were only 4 armed merchant ships of the East India Company. There was no generational difference between the two sides in terms of weapon performance, and Zheng Chenggong's marine division completely achieved absolute superiority in strength over the Dutch colonists.
In the Battle of Prominjae, four armed merchant ships of the Dutch East India Company were besieged by hundreds of warships of Zheng Chenggong's marine division, and eventually 1 sank and 3 fled. After taking the city of Prominsha as a stronghold, Zheng's army immediately besieged the city of Zeelandia from both sea and land, where the Zheng army encountered more stubborn resistance from the Dutch, so Zheng Chenggong sent his subordinates to tun tian on the island of Taiwan on the one hand, and on the other hand, to obtain supplies through overseas trade, while adopting a protracted war strategy of encircling and not attacking the city of Zeelandia. The local alpine and Han people in Taiwan spontaneously assisted Zheng Chenggong's troops, and finally the city of Zeelandia was besieged for more than seven months and ran out of ammunition, more than 1,600 officers and soldiers were killed and wounded, and the water source was cut off.
At this time all the hopes of the Dutch colonial army in Theranja were pinned on reinforcements from Batavia. Dutch reinforcements of more than 600 soldiers and eleven warships arrived in Taiwan in July 1661, and they brought a large supply to the city of Zeelandia. At this time, Zheng Chenggongzheng sent his troops to various parts of Taiwan to reclaim land and appease people's hearts, and was already comprehensively carrying out the development and governance work after the recovery of Taiwan, so it was in a state of dispersion, which made the Dutch colonists think that it was organic. In mid-August, the Dutch and Zheng armies fought a fierce naval battle in the Taijiang Inland Sea: in this battle, the Zheng army sank a Dutch warship and seized several ships, and the Dutch army lost the ability to take the initiative.
In December, a Dutch non-commissioned officer defected and provided Zheng Chenggong with information on the city of Zeelandia, and Zheng Chenggong immediately organized a continuous bombardment of the city of Zeelandia, and the poor Dutch finally surrendered. At this point, Taiwan, which has fallen for more than 30 years, has returned to the embrace of the motherland. Zheng Chenggong, who always regarded himself as a loyal vassal of the Ming Dynasty, used Taiwan as an anti-Qing base. In fact, after zheng chenggong regained Taiwan, he also decided to take advantage of the victory to expel the Spaniards entrenched in the Philippines to further expand the anti-Qing base, but zheng chenggong's illness and death only 4 months later prevented this plan from being implemented. After Zheng Chenggong's death, his son Zheng Jing and grandson Zheng Ketuan ruled Taiwan for 21 years.
During this period, the Zheng regime in Taiwan, which was under the banner of the Ming Dynasty, and the Qing Dynasty on the mainland formed a state of confrontation across the sea. After Zheng successfully recovered Taiwan, he designated chihkanlou in the central and western districts of present-day Tainan City as the "Eastern Capital Mingjing", and at the same time set up Chengtianfu and er counties in Taiwan (Tianxing County to the north of Chengtianfu and Wannian County to the south), and another division to set up the Penghu Pacification Department. Zheng Jing, the son of Zheng Chenggong, changed the name of Dongdu to Dongning (dongning general system) during his reign. During their 21 years of rule in Taiwan, the Cheng family promoted tun tian, developed trade, and opened schools. During this period, more and more mainland coastal residents moved to Taiwan to engage in reclamation, and the indigenous people of Taiwan also improved their production technology in contact with mainland immigrants.
In 1665 (the nineteenth year of the Ming Dynasty and the fourth year of the Qing Kangxi Dynasty), the first Confucius Temple in Taiwan was built in Zhuo Zaipu, and the earliest school in Taiwan, "Ming Lun Tang", was also established next to the Confucius Temple. The college has set up a State Sub-Supervisor assistant teacher and further introduced the examination system of Chinese mainland. The Zheng family ordered Chinese mainland advanced production methods and Chinese culture to be comprehensively and deeply introduced to Taiwan, thus promoting the rapid development of Taiwan's economy and culture, and also making Taiwan's ties with the mainland of the motherland closer and inseparable. At the same time, Taiwan under the Cheng rule had trade relations with Japan, Siam, Vietnam, the Philippines, Cambodia and other places. By the end of the Ming and Zheng dynasties, the Han population in Taiwan had approached 200,000.
On July 8, the 22nd year of the Kangxi Dynasty (1683 AD), the Qing government sent Shi Lang, the admiral of the Fujian Admiralty, to lead more than 20,000 land and water officers and men and more than 200 warships from Tongshan to Penghu and Taiwan. The Qing naval division commanded by Shi Lang first won a major victory against the Taiwanese naval division at the Battle of Penghu, thus forcing Zheng Chenggong's grandson Zheng Ketuan to lead the crowd to submit to the Qing government. At this point, Taiwan was officially incorporated into the territory of the Qing Empire (subordinate to Fujian Province). In the 23rd year of the Qing Kangxi Dynasty (1684 AD), the Qing government established a prefecture and three counties in Taiwan: the administration of Taiwan was located in present-day Tainan, under the jurisdiction of Taiwan County (present-day Tainan), Fengshan County (present-day Zuoying, Kaohsiung), and Zhuluo County (present-day Chiayi).