A large Portuguese Galenic sailing ship, "escorted" by four warships of the Siam Squadron of the Nanyang Fleet, slowly sailed into Dingnan Port and docked. Afterwards, it was boarded and inspected by a unit of the First Town of the Dingnan Associated Defense Forces.
Finally approved: "The envoys 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. It seems that the ship has been basically completed and is quite "
A "modern" port 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 located 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 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 Dingnancheng was not only large in area, but also copied the capital model that the Ming Dynasty was accustomed to, dividing the city into
There are three parts: the outer city, the royal city and the royal palace, which form 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 making 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 to the land is very "thin". In other words, there is only a small land road connecting the "mainland" itself. [Note: Interested friends can look at the "Samut Prakan Bang Nam Peng Floating Market" on Baidu Map
terrain.]
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 mouth of the sea is also wide enough, at least
There are certainly no 10,000-ton sea-going ships yet - which means that any warship from Jinghua can be used as surface defense support.
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 it can happen... I'm afraid they can only
Said it was deserved.
Forty square kilometers is not small. Let’s compare it this way: the area of the Forbidden City in Beijing in later generations (basically the Forbidden City of the Ming Dynasty minus the Three Seas) was 720,000 square meters, equivalent to 0.72 square kilometers. In other words, this nominal
The Royal City of Siam, actually the inner city of Dingnan, has 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 26th year of Jiajing's reign, the Ming court decided to build additional outer walls of 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's reign was completed, due to manpower
, financial difficulties halted construction, and Beijing developed from a rectangular shape when it was first built into a convex plane with an outer city on the south.
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. It consisted of three north-south streets and one east-west street.
The main streets in each direction intersect perpendicularly 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 body". And the 40 square kilometers of "Siam" currently under construction in Beijing
"Imperial City" is only the inner city of Dingnancheng. The outer city has not been started at all, but 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 court was really not poor, and it was "free to use labor" (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 a waste of money?
Of course, Emperor Yongle's labor was free, and Jinghua's labor costs were not much. Jinghua's main labor expenses were on technical personnel, including those from the Ming Dynasty, as well as those from Italy, France, and German states. As for the real coolies, the vast majority
They are all locals in Siam, and these people do not need to pay money from Jinghua.
What does it mean that it is not needed? It means that the local nobles in Siam provide these labors to Jinghua for free, and at the same time they are very 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. When there is no work to do in their free time, the nobles also have to work.
Keep them.
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 for them. 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.
Since we mentioned the "Siam Royal City", we have to introduce the nominal "Siam Palace" by the way.
It turns out that the royal palaces of 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 grandeur of the palace, 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 contrast, he still prefers the "stone style" of European architecture, but in such aspects as the central axis symmetry design, the main hall needs
In terms of being wide enough and having elevated stone steps, his aesthetic concept is more in line with the idea of northern Chinese gardens. In addition, he also prefers the style of Chinese gardens in places with lakes.
As always, Huang Zhiting determined the design of the "Siam Palace" completely in accordance with Gao Pragmatic's aesthetics. She referred to the old map of the Eastern Roman capital Constantinople that the Italian designer drew from memory, and put "Siam" into the "Siam Palace" design.
The Royal Palace of Luo is arranged at the top of the peninsula on the Bang Nam Phong River Peninsula.
The wonderful thing is that this area happens to be 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).
Well now, this area was directly designated as the royal garden in the palace. Gao Pragmatic also gave the lake a new name, called "Siming Lake". He didn't know that his "Siming" was for
What the Ming court saw was the "Siming Mansion", an old place in Guangxi, in memory of Huang Zhiting.
After all, Siming Lake does sound a bit like Siming Mansion - many Fujianese in the Nanyang Fleet are particularly convinced.
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 the size.
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 the report from Southern Xinjiang.
The palace was divided into different parts.
Calculated from the north to the south, there are civil servants on the left and military on the right. On the left is the administrative building complex, 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, this palace guard has completely disappeared. Currently stationed here are Huang Zhiting's own 5,000 personal guard wolf soldiers, and the 3,000 named "Liu Family Army" left by Liu Xin.
The most core garrison force in the southern city.
[Note: Although the guard army bears the word "guard", this naming method is the same as that of the Jinghua Craftsman School. It is a deception in itself. They are always 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 estuary 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 Special Envoy Alfredo also took the "Hexi Avenue" to go north. Although Jinghua inspected them very strictly, they did not deliberately make things difficult, and they made arrangements for their way north.
carriage.
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 special envoy in his forties is a civil servant with a standard aristocratic appearance. It is said that he once served as King Sebastian I in his early years.
secretary.
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 him, but when he is warm, he can make people feel like a spring breeze.
At this moment, Captain Pedro felt like a spring breeze, because Alfredo envoy first boasted about his contribution to "mediating negotiations" in Manila, saying that he not only retained more interests for the Spanish-Portuguese monarchy and established special achievements
, and "enables us to face the arrogant Castilians boldly without any shame or retreat."
Pedro took great advantage of his praise and described the situation to envoy Alfredo again in words that seemed modest but were actually full of praise.
Mr. Special Envoy showed no dissatisfaction, nor any look of impatience. He listened to him with a smile, then nodded and said: "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 with my own eyes."
.I fully understand the anger you and other gentlemen felt at that time."
"But..." Mr. Special Envoy changed the topic 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 (152X), 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 about 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, it was not equipped with artillery or even muskets.
But shortly 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 fireship 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 wiped out, all the forts on the shore were destroyed, and the remaining troops fled to the open sea, so the Ming Empire
The army retaken 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 indeed encounter
A serious or even fatal blow.”
The special envoy was silent for a moment and 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
The naval fleet was not only defeated in the outer sea, but 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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