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is not an effective way of fighting pirates to give up territory, such useless tactics have never been heard of before in history.”
The hypocrisy of the official excuse is also pointed out by the scholar Ch'ü Ta-chün, author of a book on Kwangtung province30 which contains many satirical comments on the Manchus. He writes:
“A Manchu self-styled official arrived who proclaimed himself greatly concerned with the protection of the people from marauders. The fact of the matter was of course that Formosa remained unconquered.”
The evacuation was announced by a proclamation giving the people three days in which to remove behind a boundary which had been set up roughly 50 li from the coast. This was disregarded and soldiers had to be marched in to drive the people away. At the same time the coastal defences were organised into a line of fortifications only a few miles from each other. Many of these mounds of earth and stone must still be visible on the hills. The people evacuated had no food or lodging provided for them. The fishing boats were prevented from entering or leaving the rivers by a line of stakes set across them. There appears to have been no attempt at organising relief. Some local magistrates tried to assign places for the refugees to live but there was too little land available for such a vast number. As a result, large numbers died, others trekked inland; whilst a good many managed to avoid the boundary guards and returned to their villages.
A second and more stringent evacuation then took place. The boundary was placed even further inland and everyone was made to leave their homes. Twenty-four villages whose population remained were severely punished and the people were threatened with death if they returned. A large number died from ignorance of the official decrees since they were not adequately circulated and not all could read them. The soldiers after removing the population had instructions to pull down the houses and build forts and towers with the bricks. Ch'ü Ta-chün describes the distress over the boundary as follows:
30 廣東新語 - 屈大鈞著