New Shun 1730

This was Liu Yu's self-recommendation, and the emperor had his own intentions.

He had to be able to calm down the situation, gain the trust of the merchants, and deal with Westerners. There was only one person in the court who had enough experience.

This was no small matter. Judging from the accounts of the East India Company, this was definitely an important money bag for the court.

If it was done well, the court would not only receive the dividends from the shares. With the influx of a large amount of silver, the court could also levy a coinage tax, abolish the two-yuan system, issue currency, and even issue some Yuan and Ming paper money appropriately.

Even if these more complicated things were not considered, the income from Nanyang spices, indigo, coffee, etc. alone was a huge sum of money.

Not to mention going to Nanyang to ease the increasingly serious contradiction between people and land in the south; and after abolishing the canal and changing to the sea, a group of people were thrown into Nanyang to avoid trouble in the country.

According to the experience of the Song Dynasty, some young and strong people were to be incorporated into the Xiang army. If the young and strong were taken away, how could the remaining old, weak, sick and disabled people start a civil uprising?

The problem of Nanyang, in the long run, is related to the fate of the country.

Now we need to develop and stabilize the situation, and the emperor does not think there is a more suitable candidate.

It seems that many people in Nanyang are from Liu Yu's side, but as the saying goes, a raging fire boils oil. In the future, when the situation in Nanyang improves, these people will be gradually pulled back to the court. Those who should be granted titles will be granted titles, and those who should enter the Privy Council for retirement will be retired. This is not a big problem.

As long as the navy is still in the hands of the Li family, it will be more difficult to rebel in Nanyang than in Shandong and Henan.

Development is difficult, and when Nanyang is settled, there is no need for such capable people. As long as Xiao Gui Cao is followed, it will be fine.

If it is like the Three Kingdoms period, Sun Zhongmou is far inferior to his father and brother. He can't develop Jiangdong, but he can maintain the status quo.

However, the premise of all this is the success of cooperation with the Dutch.

If it fails, the emperor can only choose to sell spices in Malacca. At that time, there is really no need to let private capital participate. It can be monopolized like the salt and iron monopoly.

The emperor thought about it and put the memorial aside.

He thought that although this matter was good, he couldn't rush it. There was no news from the Dutch yet, and it was still unknown whether the Nanyang Company needed to be established.

Calculating the time, the Dutch should have known that Nanyang was occupied by the Celestial Empire, but I don't know how the Dutch reacted?

…………

Tens of thousands of miles away.

The reaction of the Netherlands was far more devastating than the emperor could imagine.

Amsterdam in summer was immersed in an atmosphere of extreme despair.

This was not just the influence of Dashun.

On April 13 this year.

Since Louis XIV, the French army, which had not won a big victory, broke out with amazing combat effectiveness under the leadership of a foreigner.

In the Battle of Fontenoy, Hermann, the illegitimate son of the Elector of Saxony and a foreign marshal of France, defeated the Duke of Cumberland, the son of King George of England and the marshal of the coalition at the age of 24.

The field troops of the British and Dutch coalition forces in the Austrian Netherlands collapsed.

At this point, basically, the Austrian Netherlands region can be regarded as falling into the hands of the French.

It's just a matter of time.

The field army was defeated, and the fall of those city fortresses was a matter of time, especially since France was the founder of the bastion siege method, and it was easy to attack the bastions of the Netherlands system.

Many years later, Napoleon commented on this battle and said, "This battle extended the life of the crumbling Bourbon dynasty for another 30 years."

This is true.

Louis XIV fought for so long and failed to take the Austrian Netherlands region. Now it seems that this battle can almost ensure that the Austrian Netherlands is taken, which is enough to boost the war enthusiasm of the French people.

If this battle is lost, the French Revolution may be advanced by many years.

With this victory, France can keep its colonies in North America, India, and the Caribbean in subsequent negotiations.

At this point, the southern gate of the Netherlands is wide open. France has begun to prepare to besiege Ostend and Brussels.

If France wanted to enter Amsterdam, the only thing the Dutch could do was to dig up the river bank again and use water instead of soldiers.

With this battle alone, the Dutch patriotic enthusiasm aroused by the House of Orange faded again.

There were rumors everywhere in the seven provinces that France would invade the Netherlands, force all Protestants to convert back to Catholicism, and capture the son-in-law of the governor of the provinces and the king of England to dance in the Palace of Versailles.

The Dutch were once patriotic. And they were the most fanatically patriotic in Europe.

The poor had the highest tax rates and indirect taxes in Europe, and the rich had the earliest inheritance tax in Europe. Groups of people put on military uniforms with enthusiasm for their motherland.

However, the Netherlands is a small country after all.

A small place with a pitifully small population compared to a big country can easily pull out 80,000, 100,000, or 130,000 troops; one or two hundred warships, and tens of thousands of sailors.

Fighting with Spain, Portugal, Britain, and France, they were continuously bled by these countries.

The Netherlands can't afford to fight.

The population is there.

The Netherlands deployed an army of 130,000, which is equivalent to the Dashun deploying a standard line army of 4 million in terms of population ratio.

This ratio is terrifying.

The blood of the Netherlands has long been shed, and the patriotic enthusiasm has also dissipated, just like France after World War I.

The Netherlands disarmed, reduced its fleet, and did not set up a federal governor for 40 years. This is not only the manipulation of the oligarchs, but also because the Dutch people can no longer bear it.

However, time passed slowly. The bloodshed of the War of Spanish Succession and the deaths of the Franco-Dutch War before, these memories gradually faded, and the younger generation grew up and forgot the original war-weariness.

Taking advantage of this forgetfulness of the past, Liu Yu used despicable means to rekindle the patriotic passion of the Dutch people during his stay in Amsterdam.

Relying on insults, disgust, and humiliation, the Dutch people pushed the Orange Party up, determined to let the Orange Party reproduce the glory of the golden age.

Originally, the issue of tribute can be big or small. It's okay to turn a blind eye.

Just like Portugal and the Netherlands, they were not tribute at all, but the court pretended that they were tribute; for example, Ryukyu, many ministers in the court actually knew that Ryukyu was controlled by Japan, but pretended not to know.

It is said to be an insult to national dignity and damage to the national system, but the key lies in emotional guidance.

Liu Yu took advantage of the incitement of the yellow tabloids and exerted his strength in the opposite direction. Before he was about to leave the Netherlands, he exaggerated the "tribute" issue to the point of insulting the dignity of the Dutch nation, which instantly ignited the emotions of the Dutch people.

In addition, Prussia had already agreed to Britain's mediation and withdrew from the war.

A big bargain is right in front of us. Austria, the Netherlands, Britain and other countries, fighting France without Prussia's help, isn't this a big bargain?

However...

The credibility of the Prussians is so cheap.

Just as Liu Yu analyzed with King Louis XV of France, after France took strategic defense, once the Austrians became strong, Prussia would definitely go to war again. Because Prussia ate Silesia, if the Austrians won, the next one to die would be themselves; but if the French were to advance triumphantly, Prussia would take the initiative to withdraw from the war, because Prussia did not want to win Austria and then have another France inserted into the Holy Roman Empire.

Sure enough, last year, when France began a strategic stalemate and the Austrians were advancing triumphantly, Prussia once again declared war on Austria and marched into Czechoslovakia.

What seemed like a great bargain to the Netherlands in the beginning suddenly became a quagmire.

Prussia invaded Prague again.

The State Edict coalition, which had been counterattacking France in an all-out way, was instantly passive. The Austrian troops quickly withdrew, directly opening the flank of the Anglo-Dutch coalition stationed in the Austrian Netherlands.

Then, the French army began to counterattack and invaded the Austrian Netherlands. The Anglo-Dutch coalition was defeated in the Battle of Fontenoy.

The enthusiasm of the Dutch people, who were fanatical at the time, gradually faded. With such a great danger in front of them, were they really going to fight the French to the end, flooding Amsterdam with water instead of soldiers, and committing suicide to prevent being killed by others?

The shock brought by the bad news of the Battle of Fontenoy had just passed.

On April 30, the turmoil of the Battle of Fontenoy had begun to ferment in Amsterdam.

The Dashun envoy in The Hague suddenly submitted a declaration of war to the governor of the United Provinces: In view of the fact that the Netherlands refused the trade agreement, which insulted the emperor, Dashun officially declared war on the Dutch East India Company and prepared to completely drive the Dutch out of Southeast Asia.

Because William IV did not dare to live in Amsterdam, Amsterdam was still a province ruled by financial capital and oligarchs, and he, the governor, could only go to The Hague.

Dashun had obviously planned for a long time, which was a bit too obvious: before Liu Yu came to Europe, I am afraid that Dashun had already decided on the policy of going to Southeast Asia, otherwise it would not have been possible to submit a declaration of war in April.

Then, on August 12, the first ship that brought news from Southeast Asia brought back to Amsterdam the news that Batavia fell, Colombo fell, Jaffna fell, Cirebon fell, and the Dutch East India Company fleet was completely destroyed.

At the same time, not long ago, there was news that France would support the little pretender to the throne of the Stuart Dynasty and return to Scotland, which was looking forward to his return as a king. The battleship that the Marquis of Dashun personally supported his family in the Lingdingyang incident has also been built in France and officially delivered.

Britain immediately recalled its troops in the Austrian Netherlands, and informed the Netherlands through its ambassador that it must fulfill the Anglo-Dutch Mutual Defense Treaty and let the Netherlands send 6,000 troops to Scotland. Because according to the treaty, if there is a threat to Protestantism, a threat to the orthodox throne of Britain, or a landing attack by a third party in the UK, the Netherlands must send troops.

Even if the Netherlands does not send troops, if Britain recalls its troops stationed in the Austrian Netherlands, the Netherlands will be dead. It was originally an Anglo-Dutch coalition, and the Battle of Fontenoy was defeated by the French. The Austrians were busy fighting Prussia and had no time to help.

All of a sudden, everything was in chaos.

Liu Yu seized the key node of 45 years, and with the help of the contradictions among European countries, he defeated this set of combined punches, instantly putting William IV of Orange into extreme passivity. It also put the Netherlands in a desperate situation.