A large Portuguese Galenic sailing ship was "escorted" by four warships of the Siam Squadron of the Nanyang Fleet, which was watching eagerly. It slowly sailed into Dingnan Port and docked. After that, it was boarded and inspected by a unit of the First Town of the Dingnan Associated Defense Forces. Finally approved: "The envoys have landed."
Pedro de Di Fradish, the captain of the "Grandula", accompanied Alfredo de Burgos, the special envoy of the Governor of Goa, to disembark one after another. A rather "modern" port that seemed to have been basically completed appeared in front of them.
Although the location of Dingnan City built by Jinghua was dozens of miles south of later Bangkok, the location of Dingnan Port was surprisingly consistent with the "outside anchorage" of later Bangkok Port - because later Bangkok was not at the mouth of the river, but by the river mouth. It is about 30 kilometers north, so it is actually a river port that can only dock 10,000-ton ships, and its large ships leading to all over the world need to dock at the "outside anchorage", which is the river mouth port.
Gao Pragmatic thought this was too troublesome, so he moved the location of Dingnancheng directly to the south, almost directly building it into a river mouth city. However, the planning of Dingnan City was not only large in area, but also copied the capital model that the Ming Dynasty was accustomed to. The city was divided into three parts: the outer city, the royal city and the royal palace, with a total of "three rings" from the outside to the inside.
The outer city of Dingnan City has not yet been formed, so there is no need to introduce it in detail. Let’s talk about the “Siam Royal City”, which is the location of the inner city. It is probably located on the “Bang Nam Peng” river peninsula southeast of Bangkok in later generations, covering an area of about 40 square kilometers.
The term "river peninsula" is quite interesting. It actually comes from the Chao Phraya River taking a sharp turn there, thus forming a peninsula, which the locals call "Bang Nam Peng". The characteristic of this peninsula is that it is quite large in area, but the part connecting it to the land is very "thin". In other words, there is only one small land road connecting the "mainland" itself. [Note: Interested friends can take a look at the topography of "Samut Prakan Bang Nam Peng Floating Market" on Baidu Map. ]
Such a peninsula is obviously extremely suitable for land defense. In terms of land defense alone, it may even be more exaggerated than the famous "City of Desire for the World" Constantinople. Moreover, the Chao Phraya River near the entrance to the sea is wide enough, and at least there are certainly no 10,000-ton sea-going ships yet - which means that any warship from Jinghua can sail in as a surface defense aid.
It can be said that after the royal city (inner city) is built, even if the outer city of Dingnan City rebels, the rebels will not be able to enter the inner city - unless the Han soldiers in the inner city also rebel, but if that can happen... I am afraid they can only Said it was deserved.
Forty square kilometers is not small. Let’s compare it this way: The Forbidden City in Beijing in later generations (basically the Forbidden City in the Ming Dynasty minus the Three Seas) had an area of 720,000 square meters, equivalent to 0.72 square kilometers. In other words, the nominal Siamese Royal City and the actual Dingnan Inner City have an area as large as 55 Forbidden City in Beijing.
For comparison, the original area of Beijing in the Ming Dynasty was 6,670 meters wide from east to west and 1,310 meters deep from north to south. The actual area was 35.4 million square meters, which is 35.2 square meters. rice.
However, in the twenty-sixth year of Jiajing period, the Ming court decided to build more buildings outside Beijing. The original plan was to build outer cities on all sides, with a total length of more than 70 miles. However, after the construction of the southern part of about 13 miles in the 32nd year of Jiajing, the construction was stopped due to human and financial difficulties. Beijing developed from the rectangular shape when it was first built. On the south side, there is a convex-shaped plan of the outer city.
At this time, the south outer city of the capital was about 7,900 meters wide from east to west and about 3,200 meters deep from north to south. It had three gates in the south, one gate each in the east and west, and two gates in the north. Three north-south streets and one east-west street intersect vertically to form a trunk road network.
After the outer city was built, Beijing's urban central axis extended southward to Yongding Gate, with the length increased to 7,600 meters, and the urban area also increased to 62.5 million square meters, or 62.5 square kilometers.
However, it must be noted here that at this time, the northern city of the capital was called the inner city, and the southern city was called the outer city. It was already a "complete entity". As for the 40-square-kilometer "Siam Royal City" currently under construction by Jinghua, it is only the inner city of Dingnan City. The outer city has not yet started construction. Only several different design plans have been reviewed by Gao Pragmatic.
Precisely because the area is huge, the cost is also huge.
You must know that in the early years of the Ming Dynasty, especially during the Yongle period, the imperial court was really not poor, and "labor was free" (guard soldiers). But even then, it only built 35.2 square kilometers of Beijing city.
Now Jinghua has almost single-handedly built a new city that is larger than Beijing at that time. Isn’t this expense a waste?
Of course, Emperor Yongle's labor was free, and Jinghua's labor costs were not much. Jinghua's main labor expenses are on technical personnel, including those from the Ming Dynasty, as well as those from Italy, France, and Germany. As for the real coolies, most of them are locals in Siam, and these people do not need to be paid by Jinghua.
What does not need? This means that the local nobles in Siam provided these labors to Jinghua for free, and at the same time they were grateful to Jinghua for this.
Well, it sounds weird, but it’s not, it’s true. Because these people are essentially serfs of the nobles, but serfs do not have work all year round, and the nobles have to support them when there is no work to do in their free time.
It’s different now. The nobles can send their serfs to Dingnan to work in Jinghua during the off-season. Although Jinghua doesn’t pay them, they take care of the food and basically provide enough food. They will also be given two sets of clothes (coarse shorts) for three months of work. )...This is simply a living Bodhisattva!
Nowadays, many nobles in Siam even hate that their territories are too far away from Dinnan City, so much so that they waste some food when sending serfs there, which is more cost-effective than those noble territories around Dinnan City.
Now that we have mentioned the "Siam Royal City", we have to introduce the nominal "Siam Royal Palace" by the way.
It turns out that the royal palaces in various countries in southern Xinjiang are a bit fussy in Gao Pragmatic's opinion. Even though they particularly like to put gold foil on the palace buildings to show the palace's magnificence, but... the area is too cramped. What can Gao Pragmatic do? It doesn’t look very atmospheric at all.
Gao Pragmatic has no interest in things like gold foil, and even thinks that this approach will cause a lot of troubles in the management of the palace. In comparison, he still prefers the "stone style" of European architecture, but in aspects such as the symmetrical design of the central axis, the hall should be wide enough and have elevated stone steps, etc., his aesthetic concept is more inclined to the idea of Chinese-style northern gardens. In addition, he also prefers the style of Chinese gardens in places with lakes.
As always, Huang Zhiting determined the design of "Siam Palace" entirely in accordance with high pragmatic aesthetics. She referred to the old map of Constantinople, the capital of Eastern Rome, proposed by Gao Pangshi and drawn by the Italian designer from memory, and arranged the "Siam Palace" at the top of the peninsula on the Bang Nam Phong River Peninsula.
The wonderful thing is that this area is exactly in the north - in Chinese cultural tradition, the residences of rulers always face south, so Huang Zhiting is particularly satisfied with this.
And there is another place that surprises Gao Pragmatic, that is, there happens to be a lake in this area - in later generations, that place was a national park in Thailand (the lake and surrounding woodland).
Now, this area is directly designated as the royal garden in the palace. Gao Pragmatic also gave the lake a new name, called "Siming Lake". I don’t know whether his “Si Ming” was for the Ming Dynasty to see, or whether it was to commemorate Huang Zhiting’s old place in Guangxi, “Si Ming Mansion”.
After all, Siming Lake does sound a bit like Siming Mansion - many Fujianese in the Nanyang Fleet are particularly sure.
However, adding "Siming Lake" to the "Siam Palace" also made it difficult to control the area of the palace. The land finally allocated was much larger than the Forbidden City - almost eight times as big.
According to this area, the Siam Palace must not be built as densely as the Forbidden City. Otherwise, no matter how rich Jinghua is, it will not be able to afford it. So Gao Pragmatic decided to put some administrative agencies and military facilities into it based on reports from Southern Xinjiang. Go to the palace, which leads to another division of the palace.
Looking from the north to the south, there are civil servants on the left and military on the right. On the left are the administrative buildings, and on the right is the garrison station. In the future, there may be a palace guard here that is independent of the garrison system.
Of course, the palace guards are still completely gone. Currently stationed here are Huang Zhiting's own 5,000 personal guard wolf soldiers, and the 3,000 "Liu Family Army" left to her by Liu Xin. These eight thousand people can be regarded as the core garrison force in Dingnan City at this moment.
[Note: Although the guard army bears the word "guard", this naming method is the same as the Jinghua Craftsman School. It is a deception in itself. They have always been built according to the ideas of the field army, and will not be assigned to be responsible for the defense of the inner city. . ]
The Royal Siam City on the "River Peninsula" is less than 15 kilometers away from the Chao Phraya River mouth port. The distance in between is the expected outer city area of Dingnan City. Currently, because it is to be built, only two riverside roads have been built, one on the Mekong River and the other on the Chao Phraya River. The east and west sides of the Nanhe River.
The port itself is on the west side of the river mouth, so Captain Pedro and Envoy Alfredo also took the "Hexi Avenue" to go north. Although Jinghua inspected them very strictly, he did not deliberately create difficulties. They even arranged a carriage for their journey north.
Sitting in the carriage, the two communicated directly in Portuguese to avoid being overheard by people outside the carriage.
Captain Pedro did not take the initiative to talk. It was Special Envoy Alfredo who took the initiative. This middle-aged envoy in his forties is a civil servant with a standard aristocratic appearance. It is said that he once served as the secretary of King Sebastian I in his early years.
His characteristics are also in line with the identity of the former "King's Secretary". When he is cold, he can make people awe-inspiring and dare not offend, but when he is warm, he can make people feel like a spring breeze.
The official Captain Pedro was feeling like a spring breeze at this moment, because Alfredo envoy first boasted about his contribution in "mediating negotiations" in Manila, saying that he not only retained more interests for the Spanish-Portuguese Commonwealth and established special achievements , and "enables us to face the arrogant Castilians without any shame or retreat."
Pedro was very impressed by his praise, and once again described the situation to Alfredo's envoy in words that seemed modest but were actually full of praise.
Mr. Special Envoy showed no dissatisfaction, let alone any impatience. He listened to him with a smile and then nodded: "Your description of the Chinese people is very detailed, especially their arrogant and conceited faces. It makes me feel as if I have seen it myself." .I fully understand the anger you and other gentlemen felt at that time."
"But..." Mr. Special Envoy changed his subject and said seriously: "I hope you can judge one thing: Is the Chinese maritime power really so powerful that even the Spanish and Portuguese monarchies cannot defeat it? Please forgive me. It's rude, because you must know that the Governor and I must confirm this again and again before we can make the right decision."
"Ah, of course I understand." Captain Pedro smiled bitterly: "We never expected to encounter such a powerful opponent in the Far East."
The captain paused and said helplessly: "Did you know that as early as the 1920s (the 152X era), our Kingdom of Portugal had a maritime war with the Ming Empire. Although the scale was small,... hiss, how should I put it? We are defeated."
"Oh?" Mr. Special Envoy frowned: "I seem to have never heard of this matter."
"To be precise, we won first and then lost." Captain Pedro said: "I didn't experience what happened at that time. I only heard it from others. That naval battle was called the Battle of Tuen Mun or the Battle of Tuen Mun. At the beginning of the war, the navy of the Ming Empire was very poor. Not only was the ship small, but it was also not equipped with artillery or even muskets.
But soon after we won the first conflict, the Chinese sailors on the ship rebelled and leaked our guns, artillery and even hull structure to the Ming Empire Navy, which caused them to quickly imitate the old Clark ship.
However, as far as I know, although they were able to fight back with firearms on the ship after that, they ultimately won the naval battle by relying on their numerical superiority and the fact that the fire ship took advantage of the wind to set our sailboat on fire.
But it was different on land. Their military advantage was so great that we could not make up for it with quality advantage. In the end, most of our fleet was annihilated, all the fortresses on the shore were destroyed, and the remaining troops fled to the open sea, so the Ming Empire The army recaptured Tuen Mun. "
"Numerical advantage..." Special Envoy Alfredo frowned, nodded slightly, and asked: "But I heard that in this Philippine naval battle, the Chinese not only still had an absolute numerical advantage, but also They are no longer at a disadvantage in terms of quality, and even... The Castilians said that the Chinese hard-sailed warships have an advantage over our warships in the South China Sea. I want to know whether their statement is for themselves. Making random excuses for failure.”
"I'm afraid not, Mr. Special Envoy." Captain Pedro sighed and said: "Although I did not directly see the battle, judging from the battle damage of the captured warships of the Castilian Navy, they did encounter A serious or even fatal blow.”
The special envoy was silent for a moment, then asked thoughtfully: "Is it possible that the commander of the Castilian fleet made a command mistake?"
"Sir, I believe that the quality of the Portuguese Navy is higher than that of the Castilian Navy, but at the same time, I also believe that the gap is not too big." Pedro said seriously: "Castilian Navy Not only was the naval fleet defeated at sea, but it was even beaten near the port by the Ming Empire Navy and did not dare to fight back. I believe you can clearly understand the meaning of this - are their two commanders idiots?"
Special Envoy Alfredo was silent for a long time before he breathed a sigh of relief and nodded solemnly: "I understand, thank you for your candor."
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