Chapter 207
Chapter 207
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Translator: Ryuma
Chapter: 207
Chapter Title: Seven Years' War: East Asia Expansion Pack (1)
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Britain's protective measures over the Philippines (more precisely, Manila and its surroundings) were, in a word, a considerable overreach.
Even though they'd bailed out midway, Britain was still a defeated power. Swallowing the Philippines outright—something they hadn't even been able to keep when they were on the winning side—was no easy feat.
Fortunately, however, Britain had bargaining chips.
It wasn't Britain that had lost due to incompetence in warfare; that was Germany. Britain had won most of its battles against France in India and America.
The French, who had originally controlled nearly all of North America, ceded most of their 'New France' to Britain in the 1763 negotiations. This part seemed unlikely to deviate much from history.
But the reason France gave up Canada and America was their assessment that those territories held little economic value compared to the sugar islands of the Caribbean at the time.
Britain agreed with France on that point.
So as soon as the war ended, Britain weighed America against China.
What tipped the scales decisively was the Pontiac's War of 1763.
Originally, the Native Americans in Canada and the northern U.S. had gotten along reasonably well with the French. The French, who prioritized Europe, limited themselves to fur trade and avoided large-scale migration or invasion.
But once Britain took over, things changed.
Jeffrey Amherst, the man in charge there, pursued his dream of exterminating the 'Indians' with zeal. The infamous 'smallpox blankets' that always come up in discussions of North American Native devastation were his handiwork.
"These vermin have no human rights. I will deploy every means to eradicate them."
There's a reason Hitler tried to conquer Britain. It was the ideological homeland of the Führer.
Compared to Emperor Qianlong's similar tactics, Amherst's lower caliber meant he couldn't achieve total extermination.
But it was enough to enrage the tribes around the Great Lakes. British troops, who had been 'gifting' gunpowder and bullets in exchange for pelts per Native custom, suddenly found those weapons turned against them.
As forts and garrisons fell to ambushes one after another, the exhausted British Parliament and cabinet—worn down by the long war, defeat, and financial woes—rode a wave of urgent debate.
"Is it worth investing more war funds in those pelts? Russia's blown open the Baltic, flooding Western Europe with Siberian furs straight from the source. American pelts are crashing in price too."
"Negotiating with the Indians means restoring their ammo supplies to pre-war levels. It's not just finances; the military threat is a problem too."
"The East India Company keeps begging for support. Why not focus on China? Whatever happened to planting those tea trees from there in Ceylon? Didn't that Joseon general guarantee Ceylon was ideal?"
"Not smooth sailing. They're rebelling hard over messing with thriving coffee plantations. And breeding foreign species isn't easy anyway—our top experts sailed off with Endeavour."
"Speaking of which, we need to rescue those British with Endeavour, detained in Joseon on the Chinese emperor's orders."
"East India reports say Joseon's a poor backwater with no value. Better to smash China and kill two birds with one stone. Even beyond tea and hostages, unlike America, China already has vast wealth and markets established. Trade's an attractive option."
"Trade, you mean...?"
"Exactly. That."
"Then it's decided. Let France choke down Niagara and environs. In exchange, no dawdling in India, and we'll nail down demands to silence the Spaniards for good. We're taking the Philippines."
Marquise de Pompadour, Jeanne-Antoinette, the real power behind France, had no reason to refuse.
Her status, after victory in the Seven Years' War and gains in the Low Countries, was now beyond even contemplating political retirement, just like in history.
With partial preservation of American territories on the table too, she immediately coordinated with Britain to pressure Spain. The Spaniards could only whimper pathetically.
"H-Honestly, the Philippines is Felipe's land from the name alone. I-I think you should at least give us Louisiana... "
"What nonsense. Second-rate power?"
Austria turned a blind eye to Spain as well. Britain—that is, the Elector of Hanover—had agreed to actively support the complete and irreversible stripping of rights from the Elector of Brandenburg.
Britain also planned coordination with the VOC, who had been sitting idly in Batavia hugging their knees. It was outright expulsion: drive the Spaniards from Asia entirely, now that they'd been pushed to the walls of Manila.
Under the twilight of the original 'empire on which the sun never sets,' Britain and the East India Company settled on three measures.
Militarizing the Manila area.
Rapid expansion of Bengal opium plantations.
And dispatching a new large-scale expeditionary force.
Meanwhile, Russia was also brimming with the momentum of victory.
Catherine's specialty was historical revisionism. While Kim Unhaeng manipulated the present, Catherine tampered with the past.
After installing her puppet on the newly acquired Polish throne, influential figures eager to become her lovers swarmed like clouds. With their help, Catherine appropriated some of Empress Elizabeth's late achievements as her own.
Russian notables who had no desire for a 'Joseon trip' accepted the narrative that she had commanded the army during the Empress's illness.
Implications that Peter's death was a patriotic decision amid wartime treason smoothed things over too. St. Petersburg's political scene stabilized rapidly within a year of Catherine's ascension.
Thus, the urgent plea from Dzungar leader Amursana was perfectly timed.
Catherine scoffed.
"These fools dare threaten us?"
Grigory Orlov, a close aide at the rank of imperial consort, replied.
"Yet Kontaiša (Amursana) has held out this long thanks to the late Empress's policy of bringing in masses of Kalmyks and Kazakhs. If they submit wholesale to the Qing as he hints, we'll lose countless subjects before our eyes. Plus, with Britain's moves suggesting a push into Asia soon, staying ignorant isn't ideal."
Orlov, who played a key role in seizing power after Peter's assassination, was Catherine's prized military advisor. She tilted her head.
"Then will you lead troops there again?"
Orlov realized his slip.
Like many favorites of absolute monarchs, he had the same problem.
His looks and youth were fading with time, and the Empress would soon seek a newer man. Separating from her now meant some other punk would claim his bedchamber gentleman [Kammerjunker] spot.
So Orlov quickly recommended another favorite.
"Regiment commander Grigory Aleksandrovich (Potemkin) is a young, robust officer with keen international sense. No one better to test our army's long-distance logistics from the last war and politically monitor Kontaiša."
Had he stopped there, Catherine might have sent Orlov anyway, wary of the seven evils. Jealous favorites were useless.
But Orlov had an ace up his sleeve.
He swiftly produced a casket and opened it.
Inside lay a diamond even the Empress hadn't seen. He'd planned a more elaborate presentation, but timing was critical.
The dazzling gem resembled a halved egg.
Not just the shape.
The size too.
Its pale blue sheen rebounded deeply from thick facets, emanating a subtle glow. It had the sacred elegance of a noble god's eye.
Even Catherine, who had tasted all the world's luxuries, could only stare for a moment. Seizing the opportunity, Orlov poured on the flattery.
"A token of my loyalty to Your Majesty. The world's most beautiful gem belongs in the scepter of the world's most beautiful sovereign."
Catherine agreed.
She assigned the Dzungar surveillance and support mission to Potemkin, another lover, instead of Orlov.
Potemkin, recovering from injuries sustained in Sweden, wailed like a Xiongnu, but court intrigue in romance-fantasy palaces is ruthless.
Around the same time, 7,000 kilometers from St. Petersburg, another ruthless romance unfolded.
Oh Samrang burst into Wang Lun's chambers—father, lover, and superior all in one—sword in hand at the screams. But she nearly collapsed on the spot.
"Wh-what is this...?"
Wang Lun's corpse was gruesome. It looked like he'd been struck dead by a palm infused with powerful inner force; blood streamed from every orifice.
How did she know every orifice? He was naked. The screams had come from a devotee receiving Wang Lun's 'healing.'
Meng Chan slowly turned his head, ignoring the fleeing devotee entirely. Oh Samrang leveled her blade at him.
"What have you done!"
Meng Chan didn't mince words.
"Look at this man."
It was a command transcending logic, pure conveyance of will unbound by authority or social ties.
So Oh Samrang looked, as ordered.
At the corpse of Wang Lun, who preached gender-equal egalitarian republic in the White Lotus Cult yet kept concubines like an emperor to sate his lust.
At the silks draped around him, while devotees scrimped every grain to scrape together expensive—honestly, too expensive—Joseon guns and powder.
Meng Chan displayed the new-model Chunshik armor from Kim Unhaeng. Then he testified to the miracles he'd witnessed in Joseon and denounced false prophet Wang Lun's deceptions.
His tone was less fiery than red-hot iron. As he spoke, Oh Samrang's expression twisted further.
Meng Chan said quietly,
"I didn't intend to kill him from the start. I offered this and urged him to repent at last, to share our way and grace evenly with the world. But the True Man... Wang Lun only ordered my silence."
A light flickered in Meng Chan's hollow eyes.
"How could I follow such a man? In contrast, Goryeo's Daoist Kim Chunsik made no empty boasts, only pledged earnest aid. Just as yin-yang can't stand alone, this Chunshik armor demands a matching immortal elixir—which he promised to refine for us via his house's handed-down alchemy."
Oh Samrang couldn't ask if that pill—the Kim Family Great Return Pill from Joseon—was more realistic than the 'incarnation of Zimi Star.' Nor if this Kim Chunsik was truly a high official, not a peddler.
Even if she were a modern woman, not a White Lotus devotee, the atmosphere forbade such questions.
Meng Chan's eyes blazed.
"To think our Dao existed unforeseen in the east too proves the world's great truth was one from the start. Thus, I won't cower in shame or flee."
Meng Chan spread his arms wide—a posture absolutely forbidden before someone with a sword.
"If anyone blocks this cause, I'll stake my life against them. But not you. If you would stab me dead, do so."
"What?"
Meng Chan declared solemnly,
"A life without your assent is worthless to me anyway."
A profoundly bold line in every sense. Unlike a potential mocking third party, Oh Samrang—gripping the sword herself—knew the sheer will he displayed.
Her eyes wavered.
A while later, two emerged from the cult leader's quarters, not one.
Oh Samrang, whose proximity to the leader gave her strong sway, summoned men. A loyal devotee knelt, and she commanded,
"Assemble all Eighteen Great Protectors. The time has come."
Indeed. The time had come. Cult leader Wang Lun had given his final teachings to the devotees and ascended to Zimi Star in a blaze of glory.
The devotee glanced up at Oh Samrang and Meng Chan with rapture, then dashed off.
By then, Wang Lun's body had been cleared. None of the soon-assembled Eighteen Great Protectors inquired after it. With his immortal ascension confirmed, asking about the corpse disqualified one as a martial artist.
Instead, they fixated on the Kim Family Great Return Pill. Yang Wu—one of the Eighteen, famed in Shandong for matchless blade work—stroked his chin.
"Indeed, if rebellion's hour is nigh, we must procure those pills in bulk posthaste. No room to skimp on coin."
The other Protectors endorsed the vision of 'invincible soldiers advancing through flames.' Hadn't Meng Chan seen it with his own eyes?
"They say it works best worn long-term, but pairing with our cult's nourishment and breathing arts will speed it up."
"Perfect—we're short on guns, too pricey as is. If we charge through incendiary arrows and cannons, crushing foes with spear-staff fist arts, more comrades can join the great cause."
Of course, the Eighteen Great Protectors who had long led the White Lotus Cult were no carp or chickens.
This discussion merely announced they'd buy the pills.
It's the standard rhetoric of all religious groups that can't deny their own illogic: framing 'fork over cash for a new church' as 'raise a holy temple by God's grace.' Everyone gets it by now.
The pill's actual effects didn't matter. As Kim Unhaeng had thought, 100 safe Chunshik muskets beat 10 top British rifles. Devotees just needed to believe in fire-and-water immunity.
The foe was mankind's overlords. 'Rational' arms build-up wouldn't cut it anyway.
Moving a mountain? Fantasizing during endless shoveling might prove more 'rational'—dynamite could strike like lightning.
In this hopeless rebellion, keeping heads cool was essential.
In a way, the Joseon peddler's pitch was spot-on.
Kim Unhaeng's stranglehold on Pyeongan Province's smuggling routes split into two main paths.
First, guns and ammo sales to the White Lotus Cult.
Through the Uiju customs office, he pocketed patent sales fees while smuggling erotic novels and Jade Dragon Jades to Huai River merchants. Violence and sex never fail as industries, after all.
Quantities weren't huge by Chinese standards. Smuggling gonna smuggle.
But this trade held crucial significance.
Historically, Joseon-Qing trade mirrored the classic backward-to-advanced dynamic.
Joseon exported raw resources like cowhide, ginseng, gold, and silver; imported finished goods like machines, silk, books, and hats.
Interpreters profited, but the nation lost structurally.
Park Jiwon's lament nails it: 'Squandering millennium-enduring mountain silver on hats discarded after three winter months—are they sane?'
Kim Unhaeng flipped the script: importing gold, silver, and grain while exporting finished products.
Thus, profits far outstripped the modest scale. Wealth fogged Pyeongan like mist, growing ever denser by the day.
'Joseon's piggy bank' Pyeongan fattening up inevitably drew gut-slitters.
Past Pyeongan governors and military commanders resisted as best they could.
But they couldn't stonewall the court's constant cash whines year-round. The provincial office disbursed once or twice annually.
A legend in this field—as expected—was Joseon's national alchemist, Yeongseong-gun Park Mun-su. His methods bordered on plunder.
Yet current Minister of Finance and balanced-regional-duty senior official Jeong Hongsun was a fiscal expert too. If Park Mun-su was a shoot-first-skin-later hunter, Jeong was a meticulous, diligent farmer.
Even he found no proof of Pyeongan's surpluses.
No wonder. Most wealth was off-books shadow funds, unregistered with the office.
It mostly flowed into Kim Unhaeng's personal coffers or dissipated through smugglers' secret networks. You can't seize what's invisible.
Park Mun-su would've sniffed out Kim Unhaeng's presence as proof of irregularities and launched a probe himself, but he was dead.
Result: No one drained Pyeongan's cash to weaken defenses. Funds' source was mysterious, yet the military inexplicably kept bulking up.
The perfect outcome for the king.
Author's Notes
1. All quotes from 1st Baron Amherst, Jeffrey Amherst, are his actual words, and Pontiac's War did erupt from his brutality—fact. Even in real history, Britain didn't fully win and ended in negotiations.
Originally, Montreal had a street named after him, but it was stripped amid reflection on germ warfare and massacres. However, whether Jeffrey Amherst's smallpox blanket ploy truly impacted Natives is debated (mostly by white scholars).
His nephew, 1st Earl Amherst William Amherst, was a diplomat and Governor-General of India; the first British ship to attempt entry in Joseon during King Sunjo's reign, Lord Amherst, took the family title's name.
2. Russia, logistics-battered in the Seven Years' War, reformed supply systems based on those lessons. This aided their long-distance ops in later wars, especially against Napoleon.
3. Grigory Orlov was a core coup backer and Catherine's initial top favorite. As favor waned—as depicted—he gifted a 190-carat diamond: the famed 'Orlov Diamond,' often listed among legends. Originally looted from India by Britain or France. Catherine gave lavish gifts and posts in return, but favor didn't fully return.
4. Kammerjunker is a formal office title, not mere euphemism for lover—though lovers held it often.
5. Yang Wu was reportedly a White Lotus exec and martial master, famed in Shandong for his single blade.
6. In real history, Jeong Hongsun was Hamgyong Governor then, not Finance Minister. But he was a fiscal expert.