Chapter 18 their trouble

The Portuguese like to use small white stones to pave the sidewalks of the city.The stones of the sidewalks in the old city of Lisbon have been worn down into old dominoes.Walking along the dominoes is a mountain road with steep slopes, and trams are still running on such a mountain road. The mountain road is very narrow, and the tram almost passed the door of the houses on the side of the road. The houses are old and simple, and one end sticks out from the door. It is an old man with black hair and yellow skin. He looks like a Chinese accountant in the early years, but it is not Chinese people.

The winding mountain road paved with dominoes is very slippery. Fortunately, the trams and the old houses did not slide down.We had climbed out of breath, and finally reached the top of the hill, where there is a huge ancient castle, named after Prince St. George. The ancient castle is majestic, located high and facing the sea, obviously it is kept to the point.The Roman era is here, and later it has repeatedly become the target of military strategists.Its latest glorious record is that Prince St. George led the fight against Spanish invaders here in 1580.The resistance was heroic, and the castle held on for half a year when other places had fallen.

Counting the years, the Ming Dynasty was building a wall in Macau to restrict the activities of the Portuguese on the island, and the Portuguese had begun to pay land rent to the Chinese government.China was not weak at the time, but local Chinese officials who dealt with these foreigners were completely unaware that the Portuguese's own national sovereignty had become a serious problem. I went up and down the stone stairs of the castle, overlooking Lisbon again and again, thinking that every family has a difficult scripture to recite. If we only look at it from the perspective of us Chinese, the Portuguese are plotting to devour Macau step by step. , but if you think of the history of Lisbon, you will know that they may not be so calm.Huge disasters have befallen them again and again, some from nature, some from man-made, but China is far away and totally unaware of it.

You see, only six years after the navigator Da Gama returned to Lisbon after discovering India, the Portuguese were just enjoying the glory of discovering the East, and a great plague enveloped Lisbon.Their long-distance fleet in Malacca began to inquire about China's intelligence, but what was more anxious was to inquire about the safety of distant relatives and friends.According to what we now know about the Lisbon epidemic at that time, we can see that the news of relatives and friends inquired by the members of the fleet must be bad or bad. Not long after the epidemic, another major earthquake occurred in Lisbon. The first time was when their fleet requested to berth in Macau;

To put it a little closer, the larger earthquake in Lisbon in the mid-eighteenth century still holds the record for the largest earthquake in Europe, and only a few thousand of the tens of thousands of buildings in Lisbon remain.Even in the 19th century when they became arrogant on the Macau issue, Lisbon was even more restless.Britain’s bullying of China came later, but Portugal’s bullying lasted much longer, and France stepped in again. In the early nineteenth century, Napoleon invaded Lisbon, and the entire Portuguese royal family fled to Brazil. What is in the world is just the most pitiful fleeing scene, and the situation is far worse than that of the Chinese court at that time.Later, bourgeois revolutions occurred again and again, and they failed again and again. The whole Portugal was gradually weakened by foreign aggression and internal strife.

How did the Chinese know that so many disasters happened behind the Portuguese barbarians in front of us. We are rubbing against them for the sovereignty of Macau, but they themselves almost become subjugated slaves again and again, wanting to cry without tears.Maybe a few Chinese officials who approach them will feel a little bit strange why they have a brutal attitude at one time, and then they are weak and pitiful at another time; In an era when information is far from smooth, the long distance is a thick cover.Now that the cover is lifted, I realize that the account books in the past are so weird.There is also common sense in the grotesque: those who cause trouble to others are likely to suffer a disaster that is far more serious than others, but people are always accustomed to seeing the troublemaker as too powerful.