The light and darkness of Zheng Chenggong's return

Last weekend, I was lucky enough to participate in a salon activity at Shuxiang weekend, and listened to my friend Yongxiang's topic sharing about Zheng Chenggong's return to Taiwan, which gained a lot. Combined with my own research on Ming history and military affairs, briefly explain it.

Zheng Chenggong who stepped down from the altar

Due to Taiwan Province's political reasons, Zheng Chenggong was officially portrayed as a typical national hero in Chinese mainland. I have always thought that the so-called national hero is a very politicized concept. Heroes are heroes. Heroes have their own limitations as ordinary people, that is, they have no absolute nationality. Because nation itself is a concept inseparable from politics, people are not born for politics, and the political scope of different times is different, which deviates from the boundaries of the same nation, so there is no eternal national hero. It is sometimes ridiculous to comment on ancient right and wrong with today's national view.

Therefore, the so-called national hero is nothing more than an image shaped according to the political requirements of a certain era. I admire heroes very much, and at the same time I think it is funny to praise national heroes without understanding. According to China's current national concept, Qu Yuan and Yue Fei are not national heroes, but Zheng Chenggong, whose personality is completely incomparable, has become a national hero, which is really an amazing record in the world.

Born into a merchant family in Haikou, Zheng Sen had a broader international vision and the principle of putting interests first than the traditional China people at that time. It was this jumping out of China's international vision that made him fall in the Central Plains. On the eve of the anti-Qing fire, he turned his hope to Taiwan Province Province, an isolated island outside China, and opened up new base areas. It is precisely this kind of self-interest peculiar to the merchant family that made him sit back and watch the collapse of the Ming court in the process of joining hands with Li Dingguo in the west, when the anti-Qing situation was the most promising, in order to safeguard the family interests. However, unlike his father, Zheng Zhilong, Zheng Zhilong was born at the grass-roots level and was an out-and-out self-interested maritime businessman. When he was young, he received a good Confucian education, followed the university and was influenced by loyalty, filial piety and benevolence. Therefore, in the turbulent era of great changes in his home country, he chose to part ways with his father in the Qing Dynasty. This collision between the values of loyalty, filial piety, benevolence and righteousness based on the farming society and the egoistic values inherited by the merchant thief family also caused the contradiction of Zheng Chenggong's later life and indirectly caused the tragedy of him and his family. The most stalwart father became a traitor, the closest mother was raped and killed by the enemy, and the most valued son was incestuous with the wet nurse. After this series of blows, his character became more and more irritable, and he always lost his temper with others. In the early years, self-interest was paramount, and family self-interest was put before the national justice. On his deathbed in his later years, he learned that Emperor Li Yong had been strangled in the barren land. He regretted that he had not saved the day and felt sorry for his loyalty. In short, Zheng Chenggong, a national hero shaped by later generations, did not take it for granted that he was just and magnanimous. On the contrary, he lived a very humble life and died young before he was forty. This is a tragic figure full of contradictions and imperfections. This character deserves more sympathy than admiration.

Return or invade Taiwan Province

For this sensitive topic, from the historical perspective of seeking truth from facts, we should first clarify the history of China local government governing Taiwan Province Province. At the same time, it is necessary to clarify the scope of China's administration of Taiwan Province Province in different periods.

China first set up an administrative agency in Taiwan Province Province during the Three Kingdoms period, but the textbook did not specify whether the local government of China continued its administrative rule over Taiwan Province Province after Wu Dong, and whether Wu Dong managed the whole Taiwan Province Province or only partially included it.

In fact, for a long time after Wu Dong, China did not set up an administrative agency in Taiwan Province Province, which was tantamount to giving up this land. After Wu Dong, the more important communication between China and Taiwan Province Province was that the Sui Dynasty sent troops to Taiwan Province Province again. However, this expedition was predatory and no local administrative agencies were set up. At the same time, it should be emphasized that Dongwu's administrative jurisdiction over Taiwan Province Province only includes Penghu and a small part of the west coast of Taiwan Province Province, while most of the mountainous areas along the eastern coast of Taiwan Province Province are beyond Dongwu's ability to explore and conquer.

Taiwan Province Province was valued by China people in the Ming Dynasty, which benefited from the population explosion in China and the prosperity of maritime trade brought by the great voyage in the Ming Dynasty, prompting some China people to seek new living space in Nanyang. Therefore, in the Ming Dynasty, the number of China immigrants to Southeast Asia, Japan and Taiwan Province Province was much higher than that of the previous generation. This situation was more obvious in the process of social unrest in the late Ming Dynasty. It is against this background that Taiwan Province Province began the process of China. The process of China's gradual spread from the western coast to the eastern mountainous areas is characterized by the gradual assimilation of Fujian and Zhejiang immigrants, the conquest of the aborigines in Taiwan Province Province, and the expulsion from the plains to the mountainous areas. It is not civilized at all to say that this process is politically correct, just like the European conquest of American Indians, it is full of bloody struggles and mutual compromises. Zheng Chenggong's attack on Taiwan Province naturally freed the people of China from Dutch colonial rule and was warmly welcomed by local China compatriots. But the "China people" mentioned here are mainly mainland immigrants from Taiwan Province Province, not aborigines who accounted for the overwhelming majority of Taiwanese population at that time. According to historical records, during the Dutch siege, Zheng Chenggong was friendly to the immigrants in Taiwan Province even though the army was short of food. However, his exploitation of the Dutch was even worse than that of the Dutch, and he was also rebelled by the tribes represented by Taichung's pot-bellied country, which caused great losses. Zheng Jun's repression and slaughter of these rebels is even more cruel.

Therefore, Zheng Chenggong conquered Taiwan Province Province and expelled the Dutch. From the perspective of China history, it promoted the further China of Taiwan Province Province, not to mention the recovery (because Taiwan Province Province was not included in the Ming Dynasty), but at least it was conquered again. From the perspective of the earliest aborigines in Taiwan Province Province, it was naked aggression. At the same time, no matter the Dutch or Zheng Chenggong, the rule of Taiwan Province Province did not cover the whole of Taiwan Province Province today, but was confined to the plains in western Taiwan and the Penghu Islands, which could lead some mountainous areas in central China at most. China wanted to bring the whole of Taiwan Province Province under his own rule, only after the Qing Dynasty conquered Taiwan Province Province.

The gap between China and European powers

Zheng Chenggong's war against Taiwan lasted more than September, and less than 2,000 people (including Dutch regular army only 1300 people) were besieged by more than 20,000 people, and eventually they were forced to land at the cost of losing nearly half. Judging from the results, it's not very good. Among them, it was not only the lack of logistics, but also reflected the military gap between China and the top western powers at that time.

First of all, the gap that cannot be ignored is the use of firearms. The Ming Dynasty was a period of great development of firearms in China. It can't be generalized that China's firearms in Ming Dynasty lagged far behind those in Western Europe, but should be viewed in different periods.

At the beginning of the Ming Dynasty, the Ming Dynasty inherited the experience of making and using hot weapons from the Yuan Dynasty. At that time, various types of bronzes were popular, and these weapons belonged to Firegate Gun according to the classification of modern hot weapons.

At the same time, western Europe is dominated by firegate guns, but most of the firegate guns in Europe are iron. Compared with copper, it is not easy to deform and is more durable. This may be due to the decline of cast iron technology in China in the Ming Dynasty, which led to the porous casting gun (spear) and the chamber explosion, so it was forced to replace it with copper. At the same time, in western Europe, casting technology is changing with each passing day, which creates conditions for the upgrading of hot weapons.

By the middle of16th century, the crank matchlock gun in Europe was gradually popularized, replacing the straight-handled firedoor gun as the mainstream of hot weapons, while the hot weapons in China were still at a standstill in the early Ming Dynasty, and the gap began to widen. But soon, during the Jiajing period, because Portuguese explorers clashed with Ming troops in Guangdong, China people first realized the gap with European colonists in hot weapons. China soon made domestic imitations based on the captured Portuguese firearms. This work was further promoted by rampant Japanese pirates during the Jiajing period (because Japanese pirates often used European firearms sold from European colonists). People of insight in the Ming Dynasty, represented by Qi Jiguang, gradually learned technology from Europeans (and Japanese pirates) and produced domestic versions of crank matchlock guns (birds) and auxiliary guns (Franco, whose name originated from falconet), which are now generally translated into falcon guns. It is a small and medium-sized gun that became popular in western Europe in the15th century. It has been widely promoted in the army, replacing the ware and various rocket weapons as the mainstream of thermal weapons, and basically catching up with the level of thermal weapons in western Europe.

Although weapons were replaced, the improvement of firearms was only half successful in the middle of Ming Dynasty. Compared with western Europe, the manufacturing of firearms in Ming Dynasty encountered bottlenecks in terms of insufficient precision and inconsistent standards. For example, Qi Jiguang mentioned in Ji Xiao's new book that because the barrel and bullets of bird gizzard are made in different places, there is no uniform standard, so it is difficult to match them and exert their greatest power. At the same time, due to the imprecise cast iron process, the cast barrel and barrel are often in danger of explosion.

In fact, these problems are not unique to China. Why are Western Europe not troubled by these problems? Because the seeds of capitalism in western Europe have developed into mature guilds. These local and industrial organizations will spontaneously establish unified production standards, improve processes, and finally solve the above problems. However, in farming China, people do not have enough initiative. As long as the government does not take the lead, no one can formulate these standards and develop higher technology to improve them. Even if you set a set of industry standards, no one will follow them, and developing a process may not bring higher returns. However, if the government is required to lead these reforms, it will involve very complicated interest distribution and financial distribution. If it is in troubled times when the government is rich in financial resources or the crisis forces it to change, the elites with outstanding ability can promote its implementation, while the Jiajing dynasty, which declined rather than perished, is powerless to face this system reform. In short, it is a technical problem on the surface, but what needs to be changed is a system problem. A farming China that has lost the initiative at the bottom, even with a farsighted military reformer like Qi Jiguang, can only make minor repairs based on reality, and cannot break and reconstruct the whole military system.

Qi Jiguang's compromise is to create a set of tactics of mixing hot and cold weapons. This military reform has both a breakthrough in the use of thermal weapons and a return to tradition. In short, if you can change it, you can change it, but if you can't, you can use it. For example, in the army he managed, the firepower allocation of hot weapons was higher than that of most troops at the same time, and the firepower output of hot weapons was also emphasized. But at the same time, he built the Great Wall and set up a car camp. Canon takes the Great Wall as a defense and attacks around the city. It is always based on the defense-oriented national defense thought. It's not that Qi Jiguang doesn't understand the importance of building a powerful mobile cavalry unit, and understands that attack is the best defensive strategic thought of active attack, but that reality doesn't allow him to achieve the achievements of Ran Yan Xerox, and he can only be a muddled commander who bows to reality. Qi Jiguang's military innovation is more like improvement than radical reform.

At the same time, Maurice, a Dutch military reformer, carried out a thorough reform on the basis of the Spanish phalanx and combined with the army-building thought of ancient Rome, created the Dutch military system, and extended the Dutch maritime hegemony to the Far East. After Morris, Gustav of Sweden continued to deepen the reform and founded the Swedish military system. In the end, Western Europe entered a new era of imperial hegemony and global colonization in the military transformation from generation to generation. And China, until Zeng Guofan wants to create Xiang, can also refer to two books written by Qi Jiguang in vernacular more than 200 years ago (Qi Jiguang is the only China strategist who wrote the art of war in vernacular, for nothing but to compromise with reality. I tried my best to make more people understand his books and his thoughts on running the army, but I didn't really avoid China's poverty and weakness.

At the end of the Ming Dynasty, European colonists brought a more advanced weapon-heavy artillery, which once again amazed China and called it Hony Gun. As soon as this naval gun came out, it took colonial gunboats, and the mighty Nurhachi stumbled in the isolated town of Xiaoningyuan. However, China people found it much more difficult to copy this artifact than to copy the bird spear and Franco machine in Jiajing era. Because whether manufacturing or using this kind of large artillery, it is inseparable from more sophisticated casting technology and a deep enough mathematical foundation. This just touches the most difficult bottleneck for China to improve its military strength. However, under the unstoppable promotion of the late Jin Dynasty (Manchu Dynasty), the crisis promoted the spread of western learning, led by Xu Guangqi and some missionaries, to the east in the late Ming Dynasty, which laid the foundation for China to replicate European firearms again.

However, although the movement of spreading Western learning to the East also enabled China to successfully copy the Red Yi cannon and the European musket troops, it could not make this ideological movement go deep into the bottom of society. What China can do is that a small number of high-level officials are forced to push a small-scale reform from top to bottom because of the national crisis. The result can only be to forge a small-scale new army-Dengzhou, once the starting point of Qi Jiguang, and set up a famous new army in Dengzhou, which can't change the status quo of China's army on a large scale. Zheng Chenggong inherited such an army in the late Ming dynasty-mainly cold weapons, with a small number of elite troops skilled in using firearms.

Compared with firearms, there is a huge generation gap between China and Western Europe on the key issues of urban defense and naval warfare. First of all, it is fair to say that at that time, a new kind of fortifications, the redoubt, had appeared in Europe, which was beyond the reach of Europeans themselves. The shortcomings of the Ming army's inexperience in attacking castle fortifications did not begin from Zheng Chenggong's time. In the previous Wanli War to Resist US Aggression and Aid Korea, the Ulsan Castle built by the Japanese in North Korea also suffered a humiliating failure. In the Qing dynasty, which was more advanced militarily than Zheng Chenggong, the Qing army that attacked Jinchuan was not much better than the Ming army. Objectively speaking, the attack on castles has suffered many setbacks because China has been in a state of unification for a long time, and has not experienced a long history of separatist regimes like Western Europe and Japan, so it lacks the normal performance of experience. Therefore, when China's army first encountered the redoubt built by the Dutch, such as the red embedded city and the blazing blue cover, it was understandable that the whole world had no solution at that time.

In the naval battle, the comparison of the number of ships between Zheng Jun and the Dutch army is even more crushing than the comparison of the number of marines (hundreds to dozens), but from beginning to end, Zheng Jun's navy did not dare to engage in artillery battle with the Dutch navy on the wide ocean. With the shallow water and complicated hydrological wind direction along the coast of Taiwan Province Province, it is difficult for Dutch ships to give full play to their advantages of firepower and speed, and they were besieged and attacked by wolves on the small sampan and retreated from the Dutch navy.

First of all, we use a set of data to visually compare the gap between the navy in the late Ming Dynasty and the Dutch navy, the strongest navy in the world.

According to He Rubin's "Bing Lu" in the late Ming Dynasty, the largest warship of the Ming Navy was equipped with "about 30 or 20 countersunk holes, each weighing 23,400 Jin (Jin), which was carried on a wheel frame to facilitate the charge. Each of these cannons has one or six doors or eight doors, arranged left and right; The rest of the holes are also listed as thousand tendons and five hundred tendons. If there must be 500 tendons as the rate, we will not jump and the delivery end will be straight. Go to the upper battlefield, such as using firearms, such as the Hundred Sons Wolf Machine. There are about a hundred soldiers in a battalion, and there are 50 or 60 large and small gates. The more the better. "

That is to say, each of the largest Fu ships is divided into upper and lower gun holes, with 20-30 gun positions in total. The lower layer is equipped with 6-8 Hony guns weighing 23,400 kg (about 12- 18 lb shipborne guns), and the rest are about 12-24 guns weighing 500 kg or/kl. At the same time, the top deck is also equipped with about 20-30 monk aircraft capable of firing hundreds of shrapnel at a time (a total of 50-60 guns minus 20-30 guns placed in the blast hole).

According to the records of the Ming Dynasty, the 500-Jin cannon is mainly a tribute cannon (the name comes from falcon, which belongs to the same medium-sized cannon as falconet, the source of the Buddha Lang machine). This is also a kind of bronze cannon that came from Portugal with the Buddha Lang machine during the Jiajing period. It can fire about 4 kg of shells, which is equivalent to about 8 kg of artillery. A 1000 kg cannon is probably an old-fashioned general gun, or the biggest French machine (also called invincible general gun) transformed from the old-fashioned general gun.

Compared with Qi Jiguang's "Jixiao Shuxin", the artillery equipment of Lucky Boat is "one tribute, six giant Buddha-wolf machines, three bowls and sixty nozzles". Due to the introduction of Red Yi cannon, the firepower has been improved a lot in the late Ming Dynasty. However, there is still a gap compared with the main Dutch warships.

The largest Dutch warship in the battle of Taiwan Province Province, Hecktor, should be a galleon. Galen is a very popular main European warship from the end of 16 to the end of 17. Large and medium-sized Galen ships can carry 20-30 guns 12 pounds, and several guns of 6-9 pounds. Of course, a falcon gun (French machine) of 1,000 kilograms and several hundred kilograms is indispensable. The firepower is almost two or three times that of the ambush ship after the fire upgrade in the late Ming Dynasty.

Zheng Chenggong's expulsion of the Dutch and Kangxi's expulsion of Russian troops from Japan Aerospace Defense Group soon were great victories of China's early aggression against western powers. However, these victories were hard-won, which profoundly reflected that there was a gap of about half a century between China and the most advanced western powers in military equipment and military level (the level of Zheng Jun and Jun Qing was basically the same as that of Western Europe in the late16th century), and at the same time, it did not open the eyes of the Chinese people because of these contacts and collisions with European powers, and completed a systematic social and military revolution. The so-called idea that Timur invaded the Ming Dynasty and Zheng He sailed to Europe, China people's world outlook would change, and the national blockade would be broken, is nothing but a wild imagination. It was not in 1840 that China first learned the advanced military system of the West, but earlier, when the quantitative difference between China and the West had not changed qualitatively, China people made up for the shortcomings in military technology by virtue of their own number and geographical advantages, and barely fought back against the colonists. But by the time the great powers reappeared in front of China after the exponential upgrade, China had missed the last chance.