Mystery Makes Me Strong

At this moment, Red Hair's largest Galen ship.

Captain Joswaite was looking at the Ming army navy attacking in the distance with binoculars.

"A group of small boats, with few cannons and weak boards, can be destroyed with a few shots." He said arrogantly.

"Your Excellency is right, these damned navy masters of the Ming Dynasty don't know who is strong and who is weak, they will soon know how powerful you are!" an interpreter humbly said there.

"Humph, first send them a semaphore and tell them that if they agree to free trade with us and make the current port a free trade port, we will retreat, otherwise, we will break their fleet and send them all into Feed the sharks at the bottom of the sea!" the captain said arrogantly.

"Yes." The mate replied.

Immediately send someone to play the semaphore.

I saw the semaphore there, but no one understood it.

Wen Rensheng naturally understood.

After all, he is always studying.

All the knowledge in this world can be found is learning.

"What are they talking about?" Chief Soldier Zhou Ming asked strangely.

"They are saying that we must agree to them and give them a free trade port." Wen Rensheng said.

"How can there be such a reason? The imperial court has its own laws and regulations on foreign trade, how can it be their own reason?" Zhou Ming was suddenly furious.

This is where the differences between the two sides lie.

In fact, Westerners at this time looked at Daming as a behemoth.

Even in Australia, it is obtained by deception and bribery, and it is necessary to please the local officials from time to time and do a lot of things.

It was only slowly that the fort was built and its own rule was established.

But Daming still has ownership.

What they want most is free trade, free buying and selling.

However, foreign trade has always been a means for the imperial court to control the vassal states, mainly tribute trade.

Many small countries often choose to pay tribute several times a year, causing the court to lose too much money and have to limit the number of times.

Tributary is the loss of Ming Dynasty, which is used to restrain and appease the vassal state.

Why not open free trade?

One is the fear of internal and external collusion, resulting in internal instability.

The second is to worry that Westerners will enter the interior of Daming without authorization, causing internal turmoil.

The third is the secret obstruction of the big merchants.

If the imperial court chooses free trade, how can their big merchants earn high profits by monopolizing foreign trade?

Therefore, they also have the motivation to push the imperial court to ban sea and trade.

Wen Rensheng did not explain to Zhou Ming, the commander in chief. He knew that people's thoughts are difficult to change.

Especially these adults.

And he can't use advanced concepts to solve this matter now.

So he had to find some existing ideas to solve.

"Master said, isn't it a pleasure to have friends from afar? Why doesn't the court welcome red-haired people?" Wen Rensheng asked rhetorically.

"Of course the red-haired people came to our place, committing more crimes, colluding with Japanese pirates, plundering the seaside, and even causing trouble frequently." Zhou Ming said without thinking.

Wen Rensheng nodded.

What the other party said is not false.

Maritime merchants these days are weak merchants and strong pirates.

When they came to the coast of Daming Sea and looked at the affluent villages, could they not feel a sense of tyranny?

Impossible, honestly pay for trade, that is in the big port.

If you anchor at the seaside and go ashore, it is impossible to expect those frantic sailors not to take them into captivity.

And this just created too many problems for the feudal bureaucrats.

It's better to ban it.

Anyway, Daming originally had the ancestral law of sea ban.

It's just that until now, no one can really implement the official verbal prohibition.

Great merchants from all over the world stock up their own goods and trade with the red-haired people.

But the red-haired people are not satisfied with this trade model with middlemen.

Profits will be severely scraped off a large part.

Such as raw silk is the case.

If you go directly to buy 80 taels a load, if you go through the hands of a sea merchant, it will cost 140 taels to 170 taels, but if you resell it to an island country, it can reach 280 taels.

Who wouldn't be jealous of such a profit?

You must know that it is not too far from Daming to the island country.

As long as the goods are prepared and the joints are opened, the raw silk is free money.

Why is the demand so high?

Because silk is worn by gentlemen. The upper classes have concentrated a lot of wealth, and their clothes need to be changed frequently.

Moreover, high-class people don't wear old clothes, and extravagance is the norm in peacetime.

With a lot of gold and silver, clothes, food, housing and transportation are the most frequently consumed.

There are many other restrictions.

This is why the Industrial Revolution first broke out in the textile industry, which is the same reason.

A wealthy family can change new clothes every year, one hundred and one thousand pieces a year.

Some rich girls fill several houses with just clothes.

But it is impossible to eat so much for a meal, and the food is not convenient for long-distance transshipment.

As for the residence, it is also built once, and it is rarely built again.

Walking, many people stay in one place for a lifetime without moving.

It can be said that in feudal society, only clothes were a product with unlimited demand.

No matter how much you produce, as long as it meets the taste of the nobles, you can buy it for you.

Extravagance and extreme desire is a realism.

For example, an aristocrat wears one set before going to the toilet, and another set after going to the toilet.

After going to the toilet, I threw the underwear away and gave it to the servants to wear, and I completely changed into a new set.

In this way, if you go to the toilet 700 times a year, you will need to change 700 sets of new underwear.

exaggerate?

It's not an exaggeration, look at Cao Xueqin's description of her own family life, a meal costs 2,000 taels of silver.

I knew it was nothing to wear these clothes.

Women from wealthy families don't know how to wear old clothes. Last year's or last season's clothes must not be brought into the next year.

Otherwise, your family is in decline.

Anyway, the big and small families that are on the rise, and the families in their heyday, all have to wear new clothes.

This is why the island nation was so thirsty for raw silk during the Tokugawa shogunate.

There is an endless stream of fine silk.

At this time, Wen Rensheng continued: "It is easy to defeat the red-haired people for a while, but it is difficult to defeat them for a lifetime. It is like the captives of the grassland, because they are poor in winter, and if they don't want to starve to death, they have to go south to take captives. And they these years No captives, because a large number of horse markets have been opened, and a large number of grassland northern captives can rely on cattle, sheep and horses in exchange for enough food for the winter without the need for captivity. Those who are taken captive will be beaten to death."

"Of course there must still be people who want to be kidnapped, so we will keep killing the kidnappers, leaving only the traders. In this way, the traders will survive, and the kidnappers will die."

"So what's left is the ones who are willing to trade."

Wen Rensheng said so.

Zhou Ming thought about it.

This is not a new idea.

But it has already been summed up.

If you want to make the grasslands peaceful, you cannot leave trade.

But the essence of trade is to make money.

If the court does not make money, it will not be able to persist.

The deal with Beilu was very profitable. The imperial court could get cheap horses and cattle, as well as mutton and sheepskin, which were very useful materials.

So I stuck with it.

It also made the northern captives slowly soften and lose their combat effectiveness due to corruption.

This is normal. Those who survived the transaction would not think about taking them into captivity because it would be easy to die.

Captives are only taken when they are tyrannical.

"Do we have to do the same with the red-haired people? But the red-haired people came from the sea. They traded and they got rich. They will only continue to build big ships, and they will become stronger and stronger. They are completely different from the northern captives." Zhou Ming in the end He is a character who can be the commander in chief, and he can tell the difference between the two sides at a glance.

"Hehehe, well said, yes, this is the difference between the two parties."

"Then how should we deal with the red-haired man?" Zhou Ming wondered.

Wen Rensheng said: "It is actually very simple to deal with them, that is, we ourselves are constantly strengthening ourselves through trade, and we are constantly building large ships and cannons."

Zhou Ming nodded first, then shook his head:

"It's too difficult. Our people will only buy houses and fields when they have money. They will not continue to invest in bigger ships and bigger guns. For them, wealth and stability on land can be passed down for generations. For the matter, no one knows that a shipwreck will be gone, and a family property of 100,000 can't resist being given away at once."

Wen Rensheng smiled, Zhou Ming really deserved to be the commander-in-chief of a town, and he still saw things very clearly.

This problem is indeed difficult to solve.

Because this is the common problem of most maritime merchants.

Even the Zheng family, which dominates the southeast sea, has fallen into the situation of a household dog. They don't want to continue to attack and continue to expand. Instead, as Zhou Ming said, buy fields and build houses, and establish the Zheng family's foundation in the middle left.

When the Manchu Qing Dynasty took over, they wanted to seek wealth and honor in the new dynasty, and sat back and watched the Ming emperor be killed.

Abandoned his great sea foundation, without any ambition of self-reliance.

To be honest, if Li Zicheng could have the Zheng family's annual sea trade income of several million taels, he would have to laugh out loud, and he would be able to overwhelm the Qing Dynasty.

Send a partial division to go ashore from Liaodong to fight guerrillas, which is good at it.

When the Manchus sent troops into the customs, they went ashore, and when the Manchus returned to the army, they left.

On guerrillas, Li Zicheng is a master.

And they are different from Ming, most of Ming's army can't confront the 10,000 people of Manchu directly.

Before the Manchus entered the customs, there were always 10,000 people left behind.

But these 10,000 people can't deal with Li Zicheng's old army.

The elite soldiers who have been trained for many years can still defeat the Manchus with a ratio of 2:1 and 3:1.

At that time, Wu Sangui was about to be defeated in the battle of Piece of Stone, and then lost to Dorgon's sneak attack.

After losing this wave of the most elite veterans, they lost battle after battle.

It is also because there are no firearms, poor.

Wen Rensheng nodded now, and indeed he must find a way to solve this problem.

He can't use the thinking of later generations, he must find a way out from the existing thinking.

This is also the limitation of the Golden Armored God.

Just as Wen Rensheng made a decision, the battle had already begun.

Yu Datao, the commander-in-chief, galloped all the way with the clipper, when the artillery fire from the enemy ships had already begun to roar.

The enemy's naval guns can shoot seven or eight miles away, and they should be heavy guns weighing more than 18 pounds.

Now the Ming Dynasty had at most nine-pound, six-pound, and four-pound cannons.

And the casting is not the specification of the red cannon.

It was the small cannons and all kinds of artillery in the past.

It took one or two years before they learned how to forge red cannons, and then established fortress defense tactics, and were able to successfully defend important fortresses with cannons.

At this time, Wen Rensheng saw that the speed of the clipper was accelerating.

The sailors were paddling hard, with the aid of the sails, much faster than the galenic ships slowed down and went into battle mode.

If they don't raise their sails, the Clippers will be able to approach each other in about half an hour.

But if you start to escape immediately, you can definitely escape smoothly.

The other party bombarded them calmly.

After fighting for a long time, with dozens of shells at a time, according to the hit rate of 12% this year, they finally hit three Clippers.

One of them was shot through the hull and was about to sink, and two were damaged.

However, three Clippers were injured, and the rest of the Clippers had begun to rush over in one breath.

Outflank left and right.

At this time, the opponent's big ship had already issued a semaphore and fled on its own.

Galen's ship was fully sailed and turned to flee.

In fact, they are already in a place downwind, ready to escape at any time.

In this way, they had reached top speed before the clippers approached, at which point the sailors were too exhausted to sprint.

He could only watch helplessly as his opponent fled.

This battle fully demonstrated the huge gap between the two sides at sea.

That is someone else's boat, which runs fast, shoots accurately, has more guns, and has more shells.

In this case, if the fight continues, the losses on one's own side will increase day by day.

But in the same way, the opponent's big ships have no way to besiege the port, and they have not yet mastered the sea.

Because they cannot rely on cannons to destroy them before the Clippers fight their bayonets.

Only to be driven away.

It's like cavalry being driven off by infantry.

They still can't dominate, but they can cause a lot of trouble.

Wen Rensheng saw a lot here.

The opponent's big ship can go to the ocean, but their fast ship can only be close, and they have an advantage in the vicinity of the harbor.

In the battle just now, in fact, if the opponent's ship got closer for a few miles, it would not be able to escape.

At least two must be burned.

This means that their Ming Dynasty navy can still control the sea in the offshore waters.

This means that the two sides can still share the advantages at sea.

This is also the basis for the red-haired people to be repulsed.

If it was really the end of the Qing Dynasty, the opponent's steam ironclad ships were not afraid of these small ships and fire boats at all, and they could control all the near and far seas, then they had to bow their knees and surrender.

Unlike now, the navy can also shield offshore defenses, and the enemy cannot attack the port.

If they want to go to other places to bombard the port, they should also be careful of being surrounded by ships transferred from other places along the coastline.

So this kind of port bombing tactic that can be used later cannot be used on Daming at this time.

The advantage of this battle is that the opponent is driven away, and it is still a victory in name.

achieved a tactical purpose.

But his side lost one ship and injured two ships.

This is because the opponent does not have much time to slowly bombard.

After all, the wind direction along the coast is complex.

If they do reach the ocean, they will lose all of them.

The Clippers can't get close to each other either.

After three battles like this, the navy of the Ming army will definitely go bankrupt soon.

A clipper is also valuable.

That is absolutely unsupportable.

Originally, the imperial court did not give any military salary, and it was all raised by the province itself.

It is still Wen Rensheng who has served Yinliang himself.