1636: The China Venture

by Eric Flint

  By radio transmission to Göteborg, probably relayed by the new station in Copenhagen, Captain Hamilton of the Groen Feniks and Captain Lyell of the Rode Draak had received orders to sail by the end of June for Harlingen, a town on the Zuiderzee about sixty miles north-northwest of Amsterdam. The USE Navy had essentially appropriated it as a naval base supporting the squadron in the Zuiderzee, and strictly speaking, it was outside the Spanish siege lines.

  “There,” Captain Lyell told Captain Hamilton, “we are to verify that there has been no further change in circumstances before proceeding further. And at our discretion, we may proceed to Texel, where the SEAC is renting facilities.” Texel was the island north of Amsterdam, and the VOC’s Amsterdam chamber used it as its home port.

  “Since we’re leaving as soon as we can, what do you want to do about the silver?” Hamilton asked. “Leave it on the Groen Feniks, take it on board the Rode Draak now, or store it in Älvsborg until you’re ready to depart?”

  Captain Lyell stroked his chin. “It will be safer in the fortress, and more importantly, someone else’s responsibility. I think that more than justifies having to make two transfers instead of one.”

  The silver was also on the mind of the captains of the Kronan and the Scepter. They insisted on waiting at Göteborg and escorting the SEAC ships to the Netherlands.

  And that resolution came despite the substantial armament on board the Rode Draak. It was customary for an East Indiaman to be heavily armed; the East Indiamen carried silver to Asia, and silk, spices and sugar home; these were valuable commodities. Its crew had to be prepared to fend off both pirates and enemy naval units.

  The Rode Draak had a closed gun deck with ten gunports on each side, and two gunports facing aft. There were another four gunports on each side of the quarterdeck, for a total of thirty gunports. However, it also carried two bow chasers that just jutted over the bow, on either side of the bowsprit. As originally outfitted by the Dutch, the guns were in a variety of different calibers, firing twenty-four-, eighteen-, twelve-, nine- and six-pound shot. There were also ten breechloading swivel guns, firing one or half-pound shot, which didn’t count toward the rating of the ship.

  While waiting patiently at Göteborg, the Rode Draak’s armament had been modified. It kept its original two 24-pounder bronze stern chasers and two extra-long 12-pounder bow chasers. On the gun deck, it kept its long twelves but exchanged its 24-, 18- and nine-pounders for 12-pounders from other ships, so as to leave it with ten 12-pounders, of which the pair closest to the compass were of bronze. There were still ten gunports left there, and at these the crew installed eight new 32-pounder carronades, and a pair of experimental “short” thirty-twos. These had barrels that were a little over six feet long, and thus weighed the same as a 9.5-foot-“long” twelve—about four thousand pounds. Finally, it replaced the six-pounders on the quarterdeck with eight new 32-pounder carronades. Thus, it had a total of eighteen carronades and fourteen long guns. The Rode Draak carried just solid shot for the 24- and 12-pounders, and both solid shot and shells for the 32-pounder carronades. The total gun weight had decreased, improving the handling of the ship and reducing its draft.

  Now she could take on anything she was likely to encounter in Asian waters.

  * * *

  The Groen Feniks and the Rode Draak had a rough but thankfully rapid crossing of the North Sea from Göteborg to Harlingen, and a couple days later proceeded through the Zuiderzee to Texel.

  Texel, as the main point of departure for the VOC ships heading to Asia, had a shipyard far superior to that of Göteborg in both size and sophistication. And that shipyard was underutilized, thanks to the Spanish blockade. Under the terms of the ceasefire, food and medicine were allowed into the city, but trade had not been normalized. Captains Lyell and Hamilton were thankful that they were being handled with kid gloves.

  Chapter 11

  June 1634

  Magdeburg

  “Mr. Ambassador,” said Martina, “permit me to introduce you to your staff.”

  “Please do so,” said Johann Alder Salvius. Emperor Gustav Adolf’s pick to head the USE mission was a man in his mid-forties, and taller than average for a Swede of the time. He was heavily built, with a paunch and a thick-featured face. Above the Vandyke beard loomed a large nose and greenish eyes which protruded a little.

  “This is Eric Garlow, of USE Army Intelligence,” Martina continued. “He speaks Chinese and studied Chinese history at the University of Pittsburgh, up-time.

  “My husband, James Victor Saluzzo. He is a physicist and astronomer.” The latter was not entirely true; he had just taken one course in astronomy in college. But when he was in high school in Grantville, he had spent quite a few hours observing with Johnnie Farrell, Grantville’s resident amateur astronomer, in order to earn the Boy Scouts of America Astronomy merit badge.

  “He will be casting our horoscopes?” asked the ambassador.

  “I said ‘astronomer,’ not ‘astrologer,’” Martina explained, as her husband’s face reddened. “We in Grantville do not believe that the stars and planets have any effect on human destiny.”

  Eric coughed. “At the imperial Chinese court, the calendar—by which they mean not only the rising and setting of the Sun and Moon, but also the configurations of the planets—is considered of great political significance.”

  “Well, of course it is!” Salvius exclaimed. “I am surprised that Emperor Gustav does not employ a court astrologer.”

  Jim Saluzzo rolled his eyes but said nothing.

  “My point,” said Eric, “was that the emperor has a vested interest in accurate astronomical prediction, whatever the merits of the Chinese interpretation of the significance of astronomical events. Hence, Jim’s role is very important. Martina, please continue your introduction of the USE and SEAC mission staff.”

  Martina nodded. “Insofar as his astronomical duties are concerned, Jim will be assisted by Jacob Bartsch. He is very familiar with, um, period astronomical instruments, having been Doctor Johannes Kepler’s assistant.” And having married the boss’s daughter, Martina added mentally. So he is a Kepler, by marriage. Too bad for him that the boss died in 1630.

  “Doctor Bartsch is trained in medicine as well as mathematics, so we are very fortunate he chose to come to Grantville in 1633.” Fortunate for him, too, thought Martina, since one of the up-time books in Grantville indicated that Bartsch died of the plague in Luban later that year. “He then went to Magdeburg to offer his services to the emperor, and he was there or in Stockholm, working on navigational issues, until recently.”

  “Oh, before I forget; Jim is also our radio expert.”

  The ambassador stared at Jim. “I have heard of your radio. Can it really permit communication between China and Europe?”

  “Oh, no,” said Jim. “Not yet. Eventually we’ll have Moon-bounce stations that will make that possible, but it’ll take some years to reverse engineer the tubes and so forth. But what we can do is set up communications between stations a few miles apart. That way, if we take lodging in a town, we can still communicate with the ship.”

  “I will serve as correspondence secretary for the three of you.” Martina made a face. “To think I complained of learning secretary hand. Now I will have to cope with Chinese hanzi.”

  “If you need help,” said Mike Song, “just ask.”

  She pointed to him. “Mike Song is, obviously, of Chinese descent and a native Chinese speaker. He grew up in Taiwan.”

  The ambassador frowned. “I thought…isn’t that Dutch? Or Spanish?”

  “Both, in the here and now,” said Mike. “There were Spanish in the north, Dutch in the south, and the headhunting aborigines in between. And Chinese settlers and traders here and there on the western coast, with their numbers increasing greatly after the Manchu invasion of the mainland. The Dutch kicked out the Spanish in 1642, and then Koxinga came over from Fujian Province in 1662 and kicked out the Dutch in turn. But my family came to Taiwan in 1949.�
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  “Thank you, Mike,” said Martina. “Mike, of course, will be our chief translator, and he will be giving language lessons while we are en route. He also has a technical background and will work with Jim in demonstrating our technological goodies. Jacob and Eva Huber are on our Geological Survey Team. They are from Zwickau and are from a mining family. They have been trained in Grantville. We also have Zacharias Wagenaer, most recently employed in Amsterdam by the cartographer William Blaeu. Fortunately for us, he was out of town on a surveying mission when the Spanish put Amsterdam under siege, and he made his way here to Grantville. He and Jacob will do the mapping, and Eva the chemical analyses.

  “Colonel David Friedrich von Siegroth is our artillery expert; you may be familiar with his role in the development of the Swedish regimental guns, especially the three-pounder, before the Ring of Fire. He has also been active in the management of copper mining at the Great Copper Mountain. He is accompanied by a gunner and assistant gunner, both Swedish. We think that there may be quite a good market for Swedish and German-made cannon in China. And our ships will be, ah, armed to impress.

  “You may not be aware of this, Mr. Ambassador, but according to the history books in Grantville, in 1630 the Portuguese sent an artillery company to aid the Ming against the Manchu. And in 1642, the Jesuit Father Adam Schall von Bell was administering a cannon foundry in Beijing, helping the Chinese make cannon of western design.”

  The ambassador snorted. “I hope that we don’t find that a few decades from now, those Swedish- and German-made cannon are turned against us.”

  “I hope so, too,” said Martina. “But if I may continue the introductions…” The ambassador motioned for her to continue.

  “Then we have Doctor Johann Boehlen, formerly of the faculty of the University of Heidelberg. He is, among other things, one of our balloonists.” And, Martina recalled, according to his confidential dossier in the file of the SoTF Mounted Constabulary, he had first come to official attention when a constabulary unit had saved him from lynching by a mob that thought his controlled safety testing of a “bat suit” was a sign that he was in league with the Devil.

  “The other balloonist is Mike Song. My husband Jim is in charge of the ground crew.” Martina had been quite insistent that Jim not be a balloonist himself.

  “Maarten Gerritszoon Vries is our expert on current conditions in Asia. He is a surveyor and pilot, and he first sailed to Batavia in 1622. That is what up-time became Jakarta, the capital of Indonesia. When he heard of the Ring of Fire, he decided that he must see Grantville and not just hear secondhand tales about it.”

  Maarten offered the ambassador a somewhat casual salute. His movements were a little stiff; the result of an old injury, Martina suspected. Down-timers in general looked older than up-timers of the same chronological age, but even for a down-timer, Maarten looked older than a Dutchman born in 1589 should.

  The next man in the greeting line was exotically dressed in a silk shirt with a vest and jacket, baggy trousers, and a peaked fur hat.

  “Aratun the Armenian is our expert on silk. He comes especially recommended by Ambassador Nichols in Venice.” Martina knew that his family was from Julfa, or more precisely New Julfa, the Isfahan suburb to which Shah Abbas had moved the Julfans. They held the export monopoly over Iranian silk and there were Julfans in every major silk trading center, including Venice.

  “For establishing cultural rapport with the Chinese, we have Judith Jansdochter Leyster, the second woman to be accorded master status by the Haarlem chapter of the Guild of Saint Luke. Some of the paintings she would have done in the old time line have appeared in the books that came through the Ring of Fire. Unfortunately for her, but fortunately for us, the war has virtually choked off the supply of commissions for artwork in the Netherlands.” Martina knew, but tactfully failed to add, that Judith was unmarried and her father had gone bankrupt. “We believe that her pictures will speak to the Chinese in ways that words cannot.”

  Judith blushed, and curtseyed.

  “Doctor Rafael Carvalhal is an experienced physician and has been studying up-time medical practice at the invitation of Balthazar Abrabanel. He is accompanied by his son Carlos.

  “And finally, Peter Minuit represents the investors in the trading company that is financially supporting this mission. He is the former governor of New Amsterdam, in America.”

  * * *

  As the new ambassador to China chatted with the mission staff, Martina mentally reviewed what she knew about him from the intelligence report that Nasi had passed on to her. Born in 1590, son of a civil servant, studied philosophy at Rostock and Helmstedt, medicine at Marburg, and law at Montpelier. Ennobled as Baron of Orneholm, 1619. In Swedish diplomatic service since 1624. Married a goldsmith’s widow, thirty years older than himself, in 1627, thereby becoming quite wealthy. Attempted peace negotiations on Gustav Adolf’s behalf in Lübeck, 1629. Lived in Hamburg, from 1631 to 1634, as general war commissioner.

  It was not a term that Martina had been familiar with, but David Friedrich von Siegroth had explained it to her: “A war commissioner is in charge of conscription, collecting war contributions, obtaining provisions, paying the troops, and military discipline for a military region. A general war commissioner commands all the regional war commissioners.”

  “So what’s to keep a war commissioner, or a general war commissioner, from taking bribes for preferred treatment?” Martina had asked. “Does the emperor have some kind of inspector general?”

  Von Siegroth had looked at her with a mixture of pity and amusement. “A ‘war commissioner’ is a position that kings sell off to the highest bidder. The graft is the chief perquisite of the office.”

  Salvius, she realized, must have been very disappointed by the quick conclusion of the Baltic War.

  Chapter 12

  Year of the Dog, Seventh Month (August 23–September 21, 1634)

  Tongcheng

  The carter pushed a two-wheeled barrow down the main street of Tongcheng. It was laden with firewood.

  Tongcheng met the two criteria for a town: It had a protective wall, and a market. The word in the market was that someone had seen a cloud in the shape of a snake cross in front of the Sun. Unfortunately, there was disagreement as to the color of the cloud. If it were red, it portended treason; if black, flooding rains; if white, a mutiny of the nearest military garrison; and if green, epidemic. Such, at least, was what was written in Yu Xiangdou’s 1599 almanac, The Correct Source for a Myriad Practical Uses, and if it was in print, then surely it must be so.

  At last the carter arrived at his destination, an old barn. Two men, with hatchets laid across their knees, were seated beside its doors. At his approach, they rose, and studied him. When the carter came close enough to be recognized, they relaxed.

  “About time,” one said.

  The carter shrugged. “When rats infest the castle, a lame cat is better than a swift horse.”

  The hatchet men opened the barn doors, and the carter rolled the barrow inside. There were shapes in the shadows. As his eyes adjusted to the murk, he recognized the shapes as men.

  “Well, what are you waiting for?” the carter said impatiently. The men crowded around the barrow, tossing off the firewood. Concealed below it were weapons.

  * * *

  Fang Yizhi had slept uneasily. There were ugly rumors in town, rumors that some of the servants, tenant farmers and migrant workers were in secret communication with one of the bandit bands, and would revolt as soon as the bandits appeared outside the walls.

  Yizhi’s father Kongzhao, confident that his family had treated its dependents well, had armed and drilled his house servants and farmhands, and the family villa was guarded day and night. Other town notables, more pessimistic, or perhaps plagued by a guilty conscience, had sent their male servants to the countryside, trusting to the younger family members for defense.

  Kongzhao thought this ill-advised. He had told Yizhi, “treat a dog as if it is a wolf, an
d it will become a wolf in fact.”

  Still, there had been some family debate as to whether it was better to remain at the villa, where they were less likely to be troubled by riotous townsmen, or at their house inside the city, where the city walls would offer protection from bandit attack. They had at last decided it was better to remain in town.

  * * *

  Fang Yizhi rushed into his father’s study. “Trouble, Father! There’s a large group of ruffians down by the temple on Old Street, chanting ‘Plunder the Gentry!’ And there’s another doing the same by the river gate, and a third by the yamen.” The yamen was the office and residence of the district magistrate.

  Fang Kongzhao rose from his seat. “Did you see them yourself?”

  “No, but one of the servants saw one of the groups, and was told by a passerby about the other. Indeed, there are supposed to be many more mobs, but those are the only locations that have been reported to me.”

  “And how large are these mobs?”

  “Well, the servant thinks that there are ten thousand rioters…”

  Kongzhao guffawed despite the seriousness of the situation. “Fear always multiplies the numbers of the foe. I doubt that there are even a thousand, spread across town. Still, that’s plenty, given that we don’t have a garrison in town to call upon for help. Do you know what happened at the yamen? Was there any fighting?”

  “The mob burnt it down. If they encountered any resistance, it wasn’t mentioned to me. However, I heard that the district magistrate escaped through a secret tunnel. As for the yamen runners and guards, those who weren’t caught in the fire apparently stripped off their uniforms and fled. Some may even have joined the mob; most of the runners are an unsavory lot.”