Tolu Manatu Incident

The Tolu Manatu Incident was a short armed conflict between the Queendom of Tolu Manatu and an expedition of Daxian adventurers led by Captain Huang Mao that took place in 1661. An ambitious official, Huang Mao set up a private expedition to seize the island of Lotoa, which ended in total disaster and the violent death of most of those involved in the scheme. The increasingly frequent encounters between Daxian and Sarpedonian vessels in the Polynesian Sea in the aftermath of Gabo de Pogiano's voyage set off a race between the various powers to secure an advantage against the others by seizing the local islands and atolls. After the seizure of Zhijun in 1593 the Daxian court was focused on; through its South Seas Trading Company proxy, expanding and securing its hold over modern day Australis but would also act opportunistically to seize other islands given the chance.

Background
A company captain by the name of Huang Mao had received credible reports from fishermen of sighting of a number of islands not far north of Zhijun, in a then unexplored stretch of sea. Huang Mao attempted to convince his superiors at the company to fund the outfitting of an exploration party to corroborate the reports, but his request was denied on grounds of cost and lack of available manpower. He was also warned not to attempt to circumvent the company and go directly to court with his proposal, he would be forfeiting his employment and captain's license. Huang Mao was not deterred by this and decided then to carry out an unsanctioned expedition with his own ship, equipped at his own expense. In addition to his present crew, he recruited sixty men from his hometown and male members of his extended family. His group had forty muskets available to them, half of which were taken from a government armory after he bribed the quartermaster. Huang Mao's plan was simple: to sail north guided by the fishermen and claim the islands for Daxia and the governorship for himself (as was the custom of the time); should the islands be inhabited the locals would be enjoined to submit to his authority, or be destroyed if they refused. While Huang Mao lured a sizable complement of men with promises of riches, he did not disclose that in the case of returning empty handed, his insubordinate actions would likely see them all clapped in irons at best or facing a hangman's noose at worst.

On April 8th the expedition set sail on Huang's vessel, the Haiwang, a Daxian style carrack with a deck length of about 18 meters and some 100 tons of displacement. Apart from minor incidents between crew related to gambling, the trip was uneventful and on the morning of April 15th flocks or birds were spotted by the lookout and not short after were the islands sighted. The expedition made landing the next day in a beach south of the modern day town of Uafalima, on the island of Anamua, which Huang called Qiji the daxian word for miracle. This landing action went unimpeded as no locals, if they even existed, made no appearance. The Daxians spent the rest of the 16th and 17th unloading supplies from the ship and building a fortified camp surrounded by sharpened palm tree logs. On the afternoon of the 19th some of the Daxians on the beach saw a man paddling a hollowed wood canoe near the shore and attempted to communicate with him, waving their arms and yelling at him. The man seemed startled but did not respond back and soon turned his canoe around and paddled away. One of the Daxians fired his musquet at him but missed by a wide margin. It was decided that next day a party of forty men would go south along the shore in the direction the canoe man had gone. The next day as planned, the assigned party set out, fully armed.

After a few hours travel they did indeed come upon a populated fishing village with a primitive look about it. Huang Mao reports in his diary that as he and his group approached, a call sounded in the village and there was frantic movement before a large mob coalesced and surged from the small wooden huts carrying spears. He ordered his men to place in front of them the baskets full of dates they had brought as gifts; a standoff ensued as the suspicious locals refused to get closer until at last after what seemed like hours and many soft spoken words from Huang Mao some of them tried the dates. The suspicion began to break down and the natives seemed pleased with the sweetness of the dates. Huang Mao wrote that such simple minded people would surely be ruled by Daxia as a parent rules over his children. Through hand signs and pointing Huang's group was invited to the village where they spent the night.

Conflict
On the morning as the Daxians prepared to leave the village a dispute arose over the apparent rape of a local woman, a thing of no great consecuence for sailors at sea. The Daxians refused to hand over the culprit and a fight ensued, all previous good will forgotten. The musquets and scale armor of the newcomers were used to great effect, leaving dozens of natives dead or dying. Unbeknownst to Huang Mao a few of the survivors had fled into the jungle to call for aid from a local chieftain subordinate to Tola Manatu. Huang Mao had his men hang a Qian banner from the tallest hut in the fishing village, claiming it for Daxia and then had his men put the survivors in manacles. The Daxians began the march up the coast back to their fortified camp with their prisoners in tow, stopping mid afternoon to eat their rations at the beach. Suddenly scores of tribesmen emerged from the treeline and began throwing missiles at the Daxian party including arrows, javelins and bolas. Under fire the Daxians formed a crescent formation with those with shields at the front and muskets and crossbows behind them. The skirmish and exchange of missile fire went on for a few minutes before the natives retreated into the trees, leaving two Daxians dead to six natives. The incident shook the Daxian confidence and they hastened back to their camp but not before executing their prisoners and mutilating the bodies(by cutting off their ears) in retaliation. Back in camp, Huang Mao ordered that the trees around the radius of the camp be cleared out and more wooden stakes be added to the perimeter. He also ordered the construction of an observation tower to give them advance warning of enemy parties.

Sporadic sightings on what appeared to be native scouts were reported during the following days and foraging parties were shadowed from a distance; overall the majority of the Haiwang's crew were now uneasy and wanted to leave but Huang Mao insisted they could still talk their way out of hostilities. On the night of the 20th of April a force of natives possibly numbering on the thousands set up camp a few hundred meters from the walls of the Daxian camp. In case the camp was attacked and could not be held, escape would only be possibly by rowboat back to the Haiwang which was anchored some hundred meters away, and then some men would have to wait ashore as the number of boats limited a full evacuation. Huang Mao resolved to attempt to dialogue with the native host and get it to retreat. As he walked towards them away from the camp he was hit with darts, with one getting lodged in his neck and two on his right arm. As he was dragged back inside the palisade, the natives surged forward to attack. The fight raged for hours as the natives tried to climb the palisade walls or hacked at the gate with stone hatchets and the greatly outnumbered Daxians desperately tried to repel them. The darts that Huang Mao had been struck with were poisoned and his wounds soon went began to become necrotic. Seeing the situation all but lost, the crew abandoned the defense and their dying captain and made for the boats. Only around forty men made it back to the Haiwang, the rest presumably being killed on the shore or drowning as they tried to swim back to the ship.

Aftermath
The starving survivors of the expedition managed to sail the Haiwang back to Zhijun, with a dozen more dead from the original forty that survived the island. They were interrogated for their accounts of the trip before being summarily fired by the company and then imprisoned for theft and misuse of company assets, namely the ship. Despite the grievous consecuences for the participants of the expedition ultimately it was a mere blip in relation to Daxian endeavours around the Polynesian and was not seen as a factor in favor of a policy of caution. Only three years later a Company backed attack on Kiravian Sarolasta known as the Yam War would end in another military setback.