Chapter 13b - Ekat'otsarat (fl1612-1620)
Tuggurt's Gold
The discovery of the Wewak goldfields caused some consternation in the Court of Ayutthaya. Obviously, so valuable a resource should be exploited to the benefit of the Elephant Throne, but the region was so hostile, and so remote, that there was considerable dissention as to the proper course of action. Tuggurt's financial supporters in the Guild of Indonesian Trade suggested that the region fell within their purview; they offered both to provide the workers and to protect them using guards hired with their own resources. Their claims were immediately challenged by The Guild of Philippine Trade, who had more recent experience opening up unsettled districts; the viceroy of New Ayutthaya, from whose lands Tuggurt had sailed; and Tuggurt himself, who proposed to resolve the dispute by setting up a new Guild of Wewak to take charge of the goldfields. Back in the capital, Court officials worried about the prospect of so rich a revenue stream passing into the hands of any but the King.
Eventually, the courtiers won, the Guilds' offers were rejected and and the Expeditionary Army was mobilised to secure the province and establish Ayutthayan rule. The matter remained of the long, arduous sea-voyage to Wewak from the nearest established settlement in Tindore. Rejecting Tuggurt's offers of assistance, General Samanarat chose to follow a plan suggested by one of the King's advisors, of first establishing a settlement on the uninhabited Sorong penninsula and using it as a base from which to sail to the goldfields. A landing was made on Sorong in March of 1612, and the region rapidly pacified, but therafter progress slowed. The hostile jungles and unhealthy climate of Sorong - and perhaps more sinister forces - defeated every attempt to establish a permanent settlement there, let alone a fleet base. By mid-1614, Samanarat was ready to admit defeat (1).
At this point he wase approached again by Tuggurt, who had just returned from a long voyage to the northern seas, where he had reached the fabled lands of the Koreans and the Manchu. Swallowing his pride, the general agreed to accept Tuggurt's assistance, and so the explorer came to lead the Royal Fleet east from Tindore. Ships were wrecked and men died, but the Tuggurt's skills kept the fleet together, and the bulk of the army survived to reach the coast of Wewak. General Samanarat led his men ashore in October 1614, and they, doubtless grateful to be alive, slaughtered the local savages in a single merciless campaign. Returning to the landing site, they found they had to fend for themselves, for not even Tuggurt could find a safe anchorage on that desolate shore and the fleet had sailed for Tindore (2).
The fleet did not return until the middle of the next year, when Tuggurt brought out workers and artisans to build the first permanent settlement. Slightly under half of the Expeditionary Army eventually returned to Tindore, though it must be said that many of those who did came back rich men. Samanarat himself refused to speak to his 'rescuer', or to set foot upon Tuggurt's flagship. Stricken by a disease known as 'Wewak fever', he refused his offered promotion, resigned from the army and retired to his estates, never to serve in the field again.
The Guild of Overseas Gold, with King Ekat'otsarat as its Permanent Senior Member, was officially chartered in 1616. Tuggurt, as Acting Senior Member, retained his connections with the goldfields. In the years that followed, he divided his time between encouraging further settlement and expansion of the mining effort, and ploughing the funds accrued back into a series of ambitious voyages to the North and East. He reached as far as Hokkaido and the tundra of Nakhodka (3), but never again did any of his finds attract more than academic interest.
Messaud in India
While Tuggurt was covering himself in gold and honours in the far seas of the East, his fellow explorer was engaged in a less glamourous but no less significant endeavour. Year by year, voyage by voyage, Messaud slogged away to the West, endeavouring to uncover the mysterious west coast of India. His progress was unspectacular but steady. In 1612 he mapped the growing boundaries of Chinese influence in the south-west, where the Dragon's servants had rebuilt the settlement of Cochin and extended their outposts to Kerala and Trivandrum. The next year he mapped the vacant lands of Bombay; in 1616 he reached the northernmost Chinese outpost at Goa and finally, a few months before his death at sea in 1618, he reached the great trade port of Kutch (4), whose maps and charts had alway been kept secret by the greedy Sultans of Delhi. He never dined with the King, nor was a gilded stupa raised in his memory, but the Thai Quarter of the vast port of Kutch is still known as 'Messaud's Landing.'
The Quiet Years
At home, the years following the gold-strike at Wewak were placid ones. Not a single major domestic event is recorded in half a decade, and even foreign affairs touched the Kingdom only lightly. There was a minor scandal in 1612, when the Atjan ambassador was inadvertantly served pork at a royal banquet (5), but that was more than outweighed by the great State Visit the following year, when Howrah of Champa came to Ayutthaya in great magnificence and behaved towards Ekat'otsarat with proper courtesy and indeed deference (6). The only event that approached significance came in August 1614, when the Guilds presented a formal petition to the Throne, complaining about the increase of foreign shipping in Ayutthayan waters. The King was disinclined to act on their requests, declaring his fullest confidence in their ability to face such challenges without his assistance (7).
Meanwhile, to general relief in Ayutthaya and elsewhere, the Shogun of Nippon chose to expend his ferocity on his realm's Christians, a policy with whch the Elephant Throne was in full agreement. Further abroad, the Portuguese conducted another series of wars against various tribes in Europe, Africa and America, to no obvious benefit, and the English were actually humbled by the Iroqouis in 1614, causing many Ayutthayan smiles at the inability of Europeans to master overseas expansion. Forced to endure a full six months of peace before they were again in a postion to make war (8), the English reluctantly began to invest in fortifying their American colonies.
All in all, the region seemed more stable than it had been for decades. This made what followed all the more unexpected.
The Manchu Restoration
For some time, there had been rumblings coming from the north of China, concerning the inhabitants of the former Manchu lands, their numbers, ferocity and restlessness under the Dragon's foot. Still, the Imperial government appeared secure, and no-one anticipated the events of May 1615, when the Emperor appeared in public on the wall of the Forbidden City to announce that 'to avoid further perturbing the harmony of the Middle Kingdom', he was granting the Manchus self-government under their own leader! (9)
Just in case anyone thought this an admission of weakness, it was swiftly followed by an Imperial Rescript to all neighbouring countries, declaring that the Emperor had in no way remitted his claims to overlordship of the world, and tribute and service was expected of more than just the Manchus (10). Weakness was assumed anyway, but it appeared the Emperor had been correct. Those few local uprisings which did occur were swiftly snuffed out by the Imperial Legions, and the stability of the Empire restored within a very few years (11).
Final Moves
Ekat'otsarat was distracted during this time by a dispute with his provincial governors, who claimed that the rights and privileges granted to New Ayutthaya should be extended to every province inthe Kingdom. The governors had widespread support among the nobility and the general population of Old Ayutthaya, who resented the increasing prominence of the colonies, and Ekat'otsarat was eventually persuaded to back down (12). The Hindus of Surabaja, naturally, took their increased autonomy as an excuse for anti-Buddhist rioting and the disorder was suppressed only with difficulty (13).
Abroad, the Sultan of Arakan unexpectedly declared war on Pegu in May 1617. Ekat'otsarat, not wishing to see his vassal destroyed, considered intervention, but eventually decided Arakan was too weak to represent a serious threat (14).
Such a policy of leaving well enough alone would have served him well in other areas of diplomacy. Early in 1618, his secret negotiations with the 'under-king' of the Manchus were discovered by Chinese agents, causing a massive scandal and withdrawal of the Chinese ambassador (15). War threatened briefly and the King hastily renewed his ties with Tibet and Cambodia, not to mention ostentatiously supporting a rebel prince in Atjeh (16) so as to show that he had turned his attention from the North. But the Emperor had problems of his own - or perhaps he thought the King had learned his lesson - and the storm passed. Further contact with the Manchus was conducted unofficially, via Manchurian merchants resident in Malacca (17).
The last act of Ekat'otsarat's reign was the first fruits of Messaud's voyages. A group of Indian and Muslim artisans and shipwrights, unhappy with their treatment by the Sultan of Delhi, chose to sail east in search of greener pastures. The governor of Riau province permitted them to settle in Sumatra, and the new designs and techniques they brought helped to revitalise the tradition-bound shipbuilding practises of Ayutthaya (18).
The King did not live to see this, he was already in the grip of his final illness. He died at the end of 1619 and was succeeded by his eldest son, Songtham, a studious youth, unversed in the ways of war or diplomacy (19). Songtham took the title of Int'araja II, and with it the task of guiding Ayutthaya through the years that followed.
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Notes
(1) Colonisation chance on Sorong was about 40% even without natives, and I was running out of colonists.
(2) Naval Attrition is a bitch, particularly when you can't built transports.
(3) I was trying to map some Korean and Manchurian provinces - I was expecting both nations to pop up again shortly.
(4) Another CoT to trade in! I know now 6 in total, though, bizarrely, Kutch is much more expensive to send merchants to than, say, Mascate.
The annoying bit is that, though Jodhpur and Hyderabad apparently exist, they don't have coastlines! Isolation penalty, how I love thee...
(5) Scandal at Court, February 1612. (-25 Relations with Atjeh).
(6) Diplomatic Move, May 1613. (+75 Relations with Champa).
(7) Foreign Trade Competition Rises, August 1614. I went with Deny New Tariffs (-1 Mercantilism, now Mercantilism 5) - I wanted more colonists!
(8) England is pulling a classic AI self-destruct. They DOW American natives every chance they get, fail to prosecute the wars properly (they've gained one whole province since they took out the Lenape back in the 1580s), and as a result are at perpetual -3 stability. The six months' delay was to let stability rise enough for another DOW.
(9) China went with 'We Are Too Weak' in the Manchu Rebellion event and released Manchu as a vassal.
(10) Diplomatic Insult from China, Jun 1615. I seriously thought I might get a chance to use the CB, but...
(11) I was left glaring at the screen going '
That was meant to be one of the great Chinese Revolt Events?!' China got +5RR from the event, which at -2 Stability gave an RR of 2 or 3 in every province. I counted three whole revolts in the two-and-a-half years China took to get back to +2 Stability, at which point the RR in all provinces was zero.
(12) Cities Demand Old Rights, Jun 1616. I went with 'Grant' (-1 Centralisation, now Centralisation 1). Centralisation isn't worth much in 1.05, and -3 Stability hurts.
(13) Heretics event, March 1617. Revolt in Surabaja.
(14) Arakan has been guaranteed by China. Neither side has an army - I'm hoping this war will be another no-combat fizzle.
(15) Scandal At Court, January 1618. (-100 Relations with China, Monarch Dip Skill -4 for 12 months).
(16) Support Dissidents in Atjeh, December 1618.
(17) Manchu sent a merchant to Malacca! I know another country!
(18) Unexpected Invention, Septemvber 1619. Naval Manufactory in Riau
. I may yet reach Naval Tech 3!
(19) Adm Good, Mil Very Poor, Dip Poor. I forsee more conversion attempts.
jwolf - I'm still waiting for China to blow up (I thought it started in 1615, but no such luck). China has upwards of 200,000 soldiers, so the big revolt (when it comes) is going to be bloody - and if I want to gain provinces, I have to do it
before the government starts to fall every other month. I think everything's going to depend on how many provinces Dai Viet revolts with - if it does. If the Vietnamese can pick up Hanoi and Lao Cai, I ought to be able to get Yunnan while China's distracted - rebel-held forts are much easier to assault. The risk will be an accidental turboannex of unwanted Confucian provinces.
My new ambition is to take out the Chinese holdings in India, preferably
before they turn into Han Chinese cities. Not sure how I'm gonna do that without a turboannex....
27% success with missionaries isn't too bad - it's when you have a good monarch and the success chance is still <20% that things really suck. 0/7 at those odds is just unlucky - though I agree that the 'Whammo! 400 ducats down the drain!' result palls quickly.
Machiavellian - Give me a weak China or an Orissa without infinite cavalry. It's not the money that's the problem, it's the manpower. 21,000 men just don't go very far in a land war in Asia.
Regarding New Ayutthaya - I was at Centralisation 2, and Indonesia to Australia is several months (and an attrition hit) by Naval Tech 2 boat. I reckon they'd end up running their own show down there. Fortunately EU2 doesn't model independence movements