In the twenty-sixth year of the Ming Dynasty Yongli, it was early March.
Macau, as well as the neighboring Guanzha Land Market and Qianzhai Village, are already firmly under Zhu Heji's control!
Shang Kexi originally had a full battalion of soldiers and horses in the Qianshan stronghold near the Guanzha Gongchang. However, in order to send troops to Jieyang, the soldiers and horses in the Qianshan stronghold were evacuated. There were only less than a hundred people left, who could not resist Lin Lin. The offensive of the Jinyi pro-army led by Ahu.
After Lin Ahu captured Qianshanzhai, the land passage from Xiangshan County to Macau Island and the customs clearance field was completely blocked.
Therefore, Zhu Heji could calm down and sort out the government affairs of Macau and the Jinyi troops stationed in Macau.
Macau's government affairs are very complicated. They should neither be too indulgent nor too stuck. Too much indulgence can lead to trouble... Foreign businessmen and Catholic groups in Macau are very powerful. Among them, the foreign businessmen held a citizens' meeting, and in the past they had been co-ruling Macau with the Governor of Macau, who represented the Portuguese royal power.
There are even more Catholic groups. In addition to a religious college, a cathedral, and a main church, as many as a dozen religious orders have also set up branches or offices in Macau.
It is no exaggeration to say that Macau is both a country of merchants and a city of religion.
And now Zhu Heji needs to maintain the openness and prosperity of Macau... He also needs to conduct equal trade with European colonists.
His perfume, sugar, rum, as well as ironware from Foshan and porcelain also produced in Chaozhou, all needed to be exported through Western merchants.
Therefore, Zhu Heji adopted a strategy of pressing and pulling against these foreign businessmen. The so-called pressure refers to temporarily controlling departure. Right now, we are just not allowed to leave. After the situation stabilizes for a while, we may find other ways to keep people here. For example, let them pay a fine, and then let them pay taxes for their beliefs...
The so-called pull, of course, is to support the Bello family, who is related to the Yanping Palace, to be the chief merchants of Macau Portuguese and mixed-race Portuguese.
He asked Bei Jiaxin, the eldest daughter of the Bei family, to be his Latin teacher, firstly because he was eager to learn; secondly, because he really liked beautiful female teachers... Thirdly, of course, it was to establish a relationship between himself and the Bello family. bridge.
As for the religious forces in Macau, Zhu Heji mainly focused on suppression!
The reason is very simple, these gangsters are so damn rich!
Zhu Heji has frozen their property worth one million and several hundred thousand taels of silver, and it's mainly cash!
How could Zhu Heji spit out such a huge windfall? And he couldn't vomit...because he scored a sum for Qiu Hui and Qiu Rong! The rest must be paid to the officials and soldiers below, especially since the Jinyi army is about to expand, and there are opportunities to spend money everywhere.
Therefore, Zhu Heji is now just like those monarchs who initiated the Protestant Reformation in Europe. It is impossible to be friends with the Catholic Church anymore.
However, if Luo Wenzao was willing to take refuge in Xu Guangqi's second priest, Zhu Heji was still willing to win over him. Therefore, not only was Luo Wenzao made the bishop of Macau, he was also made the general manager of Macau's shipping, and he and Bello were in charge of Macau's civil affairs.
In addition to foreign businessmen and priests, there is actually a third force in Macau, which is mercenaries. Including Portuguese soldiers, mixed-race Portuguese soldiers, Japanese mercenaries, black slave soldiers, etc. If you include the black slave soldiers, the total number is about two thousand. Some were killed and injured in the previous battles, and more than 200 people ran away with Rodoni, and some were "purged"... not killed, just disarmed, and then placed under house arrest in the former mountain stronghold. In the end, there were still 1,230 people left, and they were all handed over to Anton Aoi.
Although Anton Aoi's attitude changes a bit quickly, he is good-looking and dignified, not like a devil, and he is a pure oriental.
Therefore, they were an oppressed class in the original Macau mercenary system. Now Zhu Heji has promoted these oriental faces and asked them to oppress white people and mixed-race white mercenaries.
Of course, the status of black mercenaries is still very stable, firmly entrenched at the bottom!
Among all the Eastern mercenaries, Anton Aoi has the best attitude and is the fastest to surrender.
And after discovering that Zhu Heji didn't have enough people around him, he immediately sent his daughter Aoi Saiwu to the fort to be Zhu Heji's personal maid...
With this relationship, Anton Aoi was naturally reused and became Zhu Heji's "head of the barbarian soldiers", leading all the barbarian soldiers in Macau.
While rectifying the treasure land of Macau, Zhu Heji also began to recruit strong men from the Guanzha Gate Market to join the Jinyi Guards - but he did not recruit too many people at once, only more than 1,800 people were recruited. The twenty leaders he brought to Macao were expanded to 150 men each, and the entire army was expanded to 3,000.
The reason why he recruited so few was because he was worried that the pace would be too big to digest... After all, his team had just opened, and it had expanded from one to two hundred young soldiers to three thousand troops in a few months, which was already very radical. . The young men who lead the troops need time to adapt, and the young soldiers do not have enough experience. They cannot be allowed to take care of the old men from the beginning, but the young men must be allowed to take charge of the young ones. Once the teenagers have accumulated some experience and established some prestige, it will be no problem to let them take charge of adults.
Therefore, the first batch of soldiers Zhu Heji recruited from the Guanzha forges were all poor young men aged 16 or 17.
In order to quickly form an army of these 3,000 young Jinyi soldiers, Zhu Heji also ordered Aoi Anton to select a group of mercenaries who knew Cantonese to serve as instructors.
Everything went according to plan and looked very good.
But on the morning of March 8th, after Zhu Heji had finished handling his few official duties and was thinking of going to recruit Teacher Bei for some Latin lessons, Lin Ahu, who was in charge of managing the customs market, suddenly came flying over. When they arrived at the Macau Castle, they also brought news that Zhu Heji did not expect.
"What? Disease?"
"Your Majesty, the customs at Guanzha have been profitable. There are more than 2,000 people suffering from diarrhea, and more and more people are sending troops!"
The worst is dysentery, which can easily break out in places where people gather, sanitary conditions are poor, and drinking water is contaminated!
The Customs and Excise Department seems to be such a place where diseases easily breed!
"Your Majesty, it would be great if the profits really rise now!"
"That's right, Your Majesty, there are tens of thousands of people over there at the Guanzha Gate... What will happen if ten or twenty thousand of them fall ill?"
"Your Majesty, the market must be sealed off to prevent the immune disease from spreading to Macau!"
"Your Majesty...you have to be careful over there in the former village!"
When Military Advisor Zhuge, Master Guo, Luo Wenzao, and Da Bo Ling received the news, they all arrived at Zhu Heji's study as soon as possible and began to give Zhu Heji advice.
It's said to be a suggestion, but they don't have any clever ideas, and even this idea is a bit bad.
Zhu Heji, on the other hand, was quite confident... He might not be able to deal with other diseases, but this diarrheal disease really couldn't stop him.
Moreover, in his opinion, this epidemic is not only not a crisis, but even a God-given opportunity!
Because Zhu Heji happens to know the extraction method of an antibiotic that can treat dysentery and common diarrhea... This antibiotic is allicin!
As a senior perfume expert, Zhu Heji himself is very proficient in extracting the essence of various spices...including extracting the essence of garlic! Because he once tried to produce a "garlic" perfume!
That’s right, it tastes like “garlic bone”! People who have never worked in this industry cannot imagine that the distance between perfume and the kitchen is so close... Chili peppers, Sichuan peppercorns, cinnamon, cardamom, and bay leaves can all be used to process perfume. , garlic will work too, of course!
Although the "garlic bone" flavored perfume ended up being a joke, Zhu Heji still mastered several methods of extracting allicin, a broad-spectrum antibiotic, and three of them can be used in the 17th century. Tools for local extraction!
Thinking of this, Zhu Heji stood up as soon as he slapped the table, looking at the people in front of him with burning eyes, "Isn't it just a profit? I can cure this disease!"
