1636- the China Venture

by Eric Flint

  For example, the Great Wall was not designed to keep out the Mongols; it was merely an early warning system. The Mongols would naturally cross the wall where it was weakest, in between the forts, and leave the forts themselves alone. Likewise, they could not break down the walls of cities, because they lacked cannon. And even if they had them, they could hardly transport heavy artillery over the mountains and past the Great Wall. They could attempt to scale the walls, and firearms could be used against them during these assaults, but arrows and spears were just as effective.

  The same was true of the bandits, whether they were small bands of a dozen or armies of tens of thousands. And handing out firearms to townspeople during a crisis came with the risk that those firearms would come into the hands of the bandits if the townspeople revolted, surrendered, were killed, or abandoned them when they fled.

  The main reason to have cannon was to deal with the Jurchen in the northeast. They had Chinese collaborators, the bannermen, and artillery. The Jurchen had used that artillery in the successful siege of the city of Dalinghe in Liaoning in the fall of 1631.

  The Portuguese had demonstrated their own cannon to the authorities in Beijing back in 1622, but the initial impression they left had not been favorable. On the third trial, one of their cannon had blown up, killing the Portuguese gunner and his two Chinese assistants.

  Cannon, under the command of Gonçalo Teixeira Correia, were used by the defenders during the siege of Beijing from 1629 to 1630, and rumors multiplied their numbers. But the effect on the Jurchen was more sound than fury, according to eyewitnesses that Lu Weiqi trusted. Lu Weiqi suspected that the subsequent Jurchen withdrawal was more the result of the spread of disease in their ranks—the Jurchen were notoriously afraid of plague—and the desire to get home with their booty, than fear of cannon fire.

  Von Siegroth’s volley guns were of course not true cannon, but they couldn’t be carried by a single soldier and thus had to be used much like artillery.

  The regimental guns—especially with the shrapnel shells—were more appealing, but von Siegroth’s employers had not thought on a Chinese scale. A guard unit with a true strength of three thousand men would need ten guns. If they consumed twenty rounds an hour, then in an eight-hour fight, that would be sixteen hundred rounds. But of course you needed to be able to fight for more than one day. So, for an on-the-spot sale, von Siegroth would have needed to bring far more guns and ammo than he had.

  It was understandable that he hadn’t, since he wasn’t sure of the market. But if Lu Weiqi were to place an order, it would be 1637 or 1638 before the hardware was delivered. And by then the political and military situation could be quite different. In 1630, in the few months it took for a delegation from Beijing to reach Macao and hire two Portuguese companies to aid in the defense of Beijing from the Jurchen, the Jurchen had withdrawn, the political opposition to European presence inland had mounted, and the Portuguese were halted in Nanchang by imperial command and sent home.

  Zheng Zhilong had more flexibility when it came to arming the navy—the imperial court didn’t care much about overseas trade—but any innovations relating to the army would be carefully scrutinized in Beijing.

  There was also the matter of local politics. The ministry of revenue would object to any unprecedented expenditures. And that was hardly the only problem. Wang Yingjiao, the minister of revenue who had died in 1628, had urged that cavalry should be replaced by chariots and firearms with crossbows. It was hard enough to keep idiots like that from turning the clock back, never mind advancing forward!

  And there was the Ministry of Rites, the defenders of Chinese orthodoxy. The first major Chinese persecution of Christians had been right here in Nanjing, at the instigation of Shen Que, who had been appointed vice minister of rites for the Southern Capital in 1615. The next year, he memorialized the throne to the effect that the Christians were seeking to discourage the rituals honoring ancestors and Confucius, that they placed their empire on par with the Middle Kingdom, and that they had rebellious intentions, like the White Lotus Sect in Shandong Province.

  In Beijing, the Christian missionaries were defended by Xu Guangqi of the Grand Secretariat, but he was then of lower rank than Shen Que, and Shen Que received authorization to arrest the missionaries in Nanjing. Longobardo and Aleni slipped away in time, but others were arrested, jailed, beaten, and even transported in cages to Macao to be sent home. As for their Chinese Christian converts, they were flogged or sentenced to forced labor.

  The White Lotus Sect was suppressed in 1622, and Shen Que died in 1624, leading to some easing of tensions. Still, it was not until 1634 that a Catholic priest returned to Nanjing. That was the Jesuit Francesco Sambiasi, and he came on an imperial mission that he had been sent on by Xu Guangqi just before the latter’s death.

  Still, even in 1634, many of Shen Que’s local allies remained in office. Sambiasi was protected, but those anti-Christian mandarins were certainly still looking for an excuse to act. The Christian apprehension of further persecution remained considerable. As it turns out, there was also another priest who arrived at the same time, the Franciscan friar Antonio a Santa Maria. The Jesuits considered the other orders to be dangerously ignorant of Chinese culture and politics. So, their disciples seized Santa Maria, bound him hand and foot, and forced him onto a boat that took him to Fujian.

  Shen Que’s local allies could also be expected to be critical of Lu Weiqi if he associated himself too closely with the westerners. Some of those allies might even be individuals with the right to memorialize the throne directly. Given the political fallout that Lu Weiqi had taken over the Fengyang incident, he had to tread very, very carefully.

  While Lu Weiqi wanted to do what was best for the empire, he couldn’t do so if his head was chopped off.

  * * *

  Zheng Zhilong was willing to pay for a fireworks display in Nanjing, provided it included a scene dramatizing his defeat of the Dutch at the Battle of Liaoluo Bay. Indeed, his rather grandiose proposal was to not only provide a fireworks display but to hire junks and sailors to fight a mock naval battle.

  His first thought was to stage the spectacle on the Yangtze. That would make it easy of course to bring in the ships he needed, but the plan was vetoed by the city authorities. That was somewhat to the relief of Colonel von Siegroth, who had feared that the current and the commercial traffic would play havoc with the fireworks display.

  Next the admiral proposed Xuanwu Lake. This “black tortoise” lake stood just outside the walls of Nanjing. The lake was a little over nine miles in circumference, with the shape of a tortoise. Its head was by Taiping Gate, pointing southeast, and the top of the shell, the western shore of the lake, was just outside Xuanwu Gate.

  In the Jin and Song dynasties, it had been used to conduct naval exercises, rendering it singularly fitting as a site for a recreation of the Battle of Liaoluo Bay.

  Unfortunately, early in the Ming dynasty, the Yellow Register Archives, the dynasty’s census records, were housed on the lake islands of Jiuzhou, Zhongzhou and Xinzhou. A census had been conducted every decade since 1381, and the records now totaled 1.7 million volumes.

  Consequently, access to the lake had been restricted, with a veritable army of archers patrolling the shoreline. Fishing was allowed only for five days each winter, and pleasure boating, farming, lumbering and lotus harvesting were prohibited. The ferry to the island ran only once every five days, and official permission was required to board it.

  The islands were in the center of the lake, near Xuanwu Gate, and Zheng Zhilong had argued that the fireworks display could be held by Taiping Gate, a mile from the nearest island. However, none of the bureaucrats wanted to take the risk that some of the spectators might attempt to sneak onto the islands, let alone that an errant shell might strike an archives building and start a fire.

  After studying the map of Nanjing provided by the admiral, Colonel von Siegroth proposed that the fireworks display be set up in front of Haitou Lake. T
his lake lay in the area between the outer and inner walls of Nanjing, west of the city, on the road from Chouchang Gate to the little village of Peihokou on the Yangtze. Canals leading to the great river passed within a hundred yards of the lake, making it easy to convey materials there.

  “You say in front of,” Zheng Zhilong complained. “Why not on the lake? How else can the audience see me sink the Dutch flagship?” He hadn’t in fact sunk it, merely forced it to flee, but sinking made for a better story.

  “A thousand pardons,” said Colonel von Siegroth, “but if you want the fireworks to be more than loud bangs and bright splashes of light in the sky, we need to make a set piece—fire tubes laid out in a particular design, and set off in a particular sequence. That in turn requires a supporting frame, and the bigger we make the design, the bigger and heavier the frame must be.

  “If we have it on the lake, then it would have to be mounted on rafts or boats. If we have it on land, we can make it taller and thus more visible, since the supports can be driven deep into the ground.

  “If the set piece is right in front of the lake, then the audience will still see the water in the background, and that will reinforce the illusion of a sea battle.”

  Zheng Zhilong hesitated.

  Von Siegroth attempted to placate him. “You can bring in a couple of small boats and stage a mock boarding action on the lake a little before sunset, since we have to wait for nightfall before we set off the fireworks. Just be sure to get the boats off the lake afterwards so they aren’t in the path of the shells.”

  “Very well,” Zheng Zhilong grumbled. “Get back to me with a plan for what this set-piece display will be.”

  * * *

  While both the Chinese and the Europeans employed set pieces, it was a fairly safe bet that this fireworks display would be somewhat different from what the Chinese were accustomed to. Even in Europe, there were distinct southern and northern styles. In the south, the firemasters were mostly Italians, and the emphasis was on the “temple,” an elaborate building facade decorated with painting, sculptures, flowers and lamps with cutouts in front of them. The structure was often huge, many times the height of a man. During the day of the event, the notables would inspect the “temple” close up, and then at night, the fireworks would be fired off from behind it.

  In the north, the firemasters were mostly Germans, and came in particular from Nuremberg. The structure that served as the centerpiece for their fireworks displays was much less elaborate than the Italian “temple,” just a large scaffold figure covered with paper with the fireworks inside. Ideally the figure was one appropriate for the occasion, such as a Cupid for a wedding, but if inspiration failed, it would be an obelisk.

  Colonel von Siegroth was a northerner, and so the fireworks displays he was accustomed to were of the northern style. Moreover, he was an explosives expert, but not an artist. So, he was inclined to keep the display simple.

  Admiral Zheng Zhilong, however, had other ideas. He wanted more than just aerial bursts, even if they were of unusual colors or patterns. He wanted a “picture in fire,” a picture that told a story.

  The colonel had no problem with the technical aspects of creating the set piece for the admiral. The artistic aspects, those were another matter.

  But the embassy had a world-class artist on its staff: Judith Leyster. Surely she could help.

  * * *

  “I have a problem with what the admiral has in mind,” said Eric Garlow.

  “And what is that?” asked von Siegroth.

  “Think about it. He wants us to present a fireworks extravaganza showing his naval victory over the Dutch. Over Europeans. Now I am sure that will make him look good, but where does it leave us? We’re from Europe, too!”

  “The Nanjing minister of war said that we should display our mastery of fireworks,” von Siegroth protested. “He said that it would be evidence that we also knew how to make good artillery.”

  “Sure. But does it make sense to remind them that their relations with Europeans haven’t been entirely rosy? Without any attempt to differentiate us from the Dutch?”

  “Which is tricky in any event,” said Mike Song, “since several of the directors are Dutch. And so is SEAC’s chief merchant in China, your nominal boss, Peter Minuit.”

  “Actually, Minuit is German. He’s from Wesel,” von Siegroth objected.

  “A Walloon from Wesel,” Eric pointed out. “His family came from the southern Netherlands. What we call Belgium, up-time. And he was the director of New Netherland. Back home we have a saying: ‘If it looks like a duck, and it quacks like a duck—’”

  “It is a duck,” von Siegroth acknowledged. “I agree that Minuit considers himself Dutch. And SEAC is a Dutch–Swedish operation, in its essence. But if we don’t give Zheng Zhilong what he wants, we will lose his financial support for the spectacle. The money then comes out of SEAC’s pocket and we also risk alienating Zhilong, which would be disastrous.”

  “Mike and I will talk to him,” said Eric. “Perhaps we can get him to agree to revisions that would put the USE and SEAC in a better light.”

  * * *

  “But I want the people to see my naval victory,” insisted Zheng Zhilong mulishly.

  “Not a problem,” said Eric. “Didn’t you just win a great victory over Liu Xiang and his pirates?”

  “Yes. And Liu Xiang and his pirates are no more,” added Mike. “Whereas there are still plenty of Dutch warships at Batavia.”

  “Right,” said Eric. “So why give offense to the Dutch, who you may trade with in the future, or risk the USE being tarred with the same brush and thus endangering the profit you hope to make through your partnership with us, by referring to Liaoluo Bay?”

  Zhilong raised his hand, started to speak, then stopped. After a moment, he said, “Very well; your points are reasonable. Depict my triumph over Liu Xiang.”

  “We’d also like to have a scene about us.”

  “Could you also show me going up in the balloon?” asked Zhilong eagerly.

  Eric looked at Colonel von Siegroth.

  “Let’s say the frame is eight feet high,” the colonel mused. “Then the ‘lancework’ representing the balloon would be perhaps one or two feet high. We couldn’t present his portrait on that scale but we could put the character zhèng next to the balloon. The balloon and the character would be on a separate board, raised by ropes to show ascension. Would that be sufficient?”

  Zheng Zhilong gave a wave of acceptance. “I will put you in touch with my agents in Nanjing so you can obtain the labor and materials you need.”

  * * *

  As an artists’ and surveyors’ aid, Judith Leyster had ruled off one-inch squares on a stencil and then run off sheets of what an up-timer would call graph paper. She and the SEAC mapmaker both carried this wherever they went, and they came in handy now.

  On the graph paper she sketched the design for the “lancework,” the drawing in fire. Each one-inch square on the graph paper would correspond to one square foot of the lancework, and two sheets of graph paper, fastened together, were needed for each set piece.

  Hired carpenters constructed the framework, about twenty feet long and eight feet high, for each set piece. Black painted bamboo poles tied together formed a grid of one-foot squares. The cheapest paper was laid over the back side of the grid, and then the framework was flipped over to present the front.

  Judith Leyster chalked the design out full size, drawing on the paper and the bamboo as needed. As she proceeded from one side of the framework to the other, a carpenter followed her, laying down the Chinese equivalent of rattan—flexible strips of bamboo—over the chalk lines and nailing or tying them down as appropriate.

  With one set piece complete, she stepped back and motioned at Colonel von Siegroth. He and his assistants had in the meantime prepared the lances. These were essentially paper tubes of various lengths filled with a slow-burning pyrotechnic composition. They were set in place over the bamboo strips and glue
d down. Of course, where the strips were curvy, several short lances had to be used. Quick match was pinned over the upper ends of the lances, connecting them together, and the paper guide was stripped off from the back of the framework.

  When the quick match was lit, the lances would ignite in rapid succession, creating the design that Judith had envisioned. In theory, at least.

  Chapter 41

  Mike Song and Liu Rushi had been deputized to organize the musical accompaniment. More accurately, Liu Rushi found the singers and musicians, and, after meeting with Judith and the colonel, picked out the songs to accompany various stages of the fireworks display.

  Mike wanted to make sure that they could be heard over the crowd. He made stiffened mulberry bark megaphones for the singers. These were unpowered, so they merely focused the sound without actually amplifying it, but they still did what they were intended to do.

  The day before the scheduled festivities, the lance frame supports were erected on each raft. These took the form of a series of A-frames, painted black. These were connected by crosspieces, forming something like a sawhorse, and in addition were secured laterally by guylines running down to the logs forming the raft. The lance frame was secured to the crosspieces; all that was needed to start the display was to light the initial slow fuse. That fuse would be lit by an operator in a rowboat and the initial fuse therefore ran through a leather hose to protect it from the water. If that still failed, the operator would have to board the raft, ignite the backup slow fuse, and make a hasty departure—not unlike that made by the crew of Zheng Zhilong’s fireships in the actual battle.

  * * *

  Zheng Zhilong had paid storytellers and street urchins to pass the word regarding the impending fireworks show. Stands had been erected for the dignitaries—the Nanjing minister of war, and his colleagues—and the common folk stood, sat or laid down wherever they could find a place.