prosperous age

Chapter 990 1081 Spying on Each Other

"Oh, Lin Feng is still in Luzon?"

Hearing Garcia say this, Li Jin immediately became interested and asked further.

"Yes, they settled down at the river mouth more than 200 miles to the north, and even built a city. It seems that they plan to live there permanently, haha."

Garcia laughed contemptuously.

Hearing the other party's tone, Li Jin guessed something, so he pretended to be curious and asked: "You want to send troops to attack him. You should know that you only have a few hundred people, while he has thousands."

"Of course we must conquer him and kill him. Anyone who dares to offend the Spanish Empire is an enemy."

Garcia smiled and said, "As for what you said about us only having a few hundred people, haha, in addition to the 500 soldiers we have already summoned, we have also trained 2,000 new Filipinos to fight with us.

Even though that Lin has several thousand people, so what? We have already sent people to investigate, and they only have more than 2,000 people who can fight. The remaining 2,000 people are all old people, children, women and children, and they have no combat effectiveness at all.

Well, it should be the families of those pirates, they are not considered warriors.

You said, we have 2,500 well-trained soldiers, so why should we be afraid of them? "

After listening to Garcia, Li Jin's heart sank.

According to him, the Lin Feng pirate group was on the verge of destruction.

  Where is the estuary more than 200 miles north of Manila?

Although Li Jin has flown the Manila route countless times, they were all point-to-point, from Yuegang to Manila and then back to Yuegang. He is really not familiar with other places on Luzon Island.

The person who is more familiar with the situation here is naturally our manager Chen Zhenlong. Unfortunately, he is still at the dock and can only work as a porter unloading goods. He won't be back for a while.

Yes, Li Jin was still thinking about Deng Zilong's matter, which was to find the whereabouts of Lin Feng's pirate group.

Now that we have learned about it from the barbarians, we naturally have to find a way to pass the news on.

As for how the Ming Dynasty would react, that had nothing to do with him.

But thinking of the more than 2,000 pirates, well, Li Jin didn’t actually care whether they survived or not.

However, there were still more than 2,000 women and children, all of whom were Ming people. Although they were the pirates' families, Li Jin still felt somewhat uneasy watching them being killed by the barbarians.

  “By the way, Li, is your court also hunting down this pirate Lin?

I heard that they came here because you were chasing them too fiercely, so they had no choice but to flee to the Philippines, after all, this place is far away from Ming Country."

Garcia asked.

“The Lin you mentioned is indeed the pirate leader we are currently hunting.

Now, after these years of crackdowns, there are no large pirate groups along the coast, and they have all been eliminated by the troops sent by the court."

Li Jin didn't think this needed to be concealed, and he could find out by asking the businessman.

However, Li Jin had made up his mind not to provide the news of the arrival of the Ming navy to the barbarians.

After all, if the Ming government knew Lin Feng's whereabouts, it is unknown whether they would send the South China Sea Navy to Luzon to capture him and bring him back.

If this is true, when the South China Sea navy warships arrive, the barbarians might think that the Ming Dynasty wants to attack them.

If both sides start fighting, it would be dangerous for me to stay in Manila.

"Your court is very powerful. You are able to force thousands of pirates to run around."

Garcia said seemingly nonchalantly.

"Thousands of people, just a few pirates, haha."

Hearing Garcia say this, Li Jin laughed sarcastically.

"What do you mean?"

Garcia obviously didn't understand the meaning of his smile, so he asked.

"I don't know what you mean by, uh, your country, what the hell is that"

"Correct."

"I don't know how many troops were mobilized in the biggest war in Gansila, but I can tell you that my Ming Dynasty has a million soldiers under armor. Our emperor can easily mobilize hundreds of thousands of troops to march north and attack the Mongols."

Perhaps influenced by historical novels such as "The Romance of the Three Kingdoms", the Chinese of this era, and even the Chinese of later generations, regarded ancient Chinese wars as world wars. This was because when the West was still engaged in tribal wars, the Han people living on the loess land were already able to organize and launch wars of more than 100,000 people.

Such a huge number is unimaginable in the West.

Therefore, in later generations, many Westerners were puzzled by the wars recorded in ancient Chinese books, because they could not understand what kind of country could organize an army of such a scale in that era.

In the eyes of Westerners, the unit "ten thousand" is already the limit.

In the wars they were familiar with, it was common for hundreds of people to kill each other.

A fight involving thousands or tens of thousands of people is simply impossible.

Sure enough, after hearing a series of numbers from Li Jin's mouth, Garcia was stunned for a long time before he understood the numbers. A war involving hundreds of thousands of people, this was almost all the military force of his country, and perhaps it was not enough, and he also needed to recruit farmers from the public.

"How many soldiers do you have in Ming country?"

Garcia was a little shocked at this time and asked this question with a slightly trembling accent.

“I don’t know the exact number, maybe only the senior officials in the Ministry of War know the number.

But I think there must be a million.”

Li Jin said with a slightly proud tone.

Although he didn't know the purpose of Garcia's questions, Li Jin just said them subconsciously according to his own impression.

This is also the natural sense of superiority that all Ming people of this era had when they saw the barbarians. Yes, they were too weak and had no qualifications to be compared with the Ming Dynasty.

While they needed a long time to prepare for launching a war involving hundreds or thousands of people, it seemed that in the Ming Dynasty, it was enough to dispatch a garrison.

Apparently, there are more.

Yes, the Ming Dynasty’s garrisons had a full strength of 5,600 people, twice the number of the army mentioned by Garcia.

"But, as far as I know, your country has been helpless against these pirates for a long time."

Garcia said again.

"Yes, in the past few years, there was no country around that was more powerful than our Ming Dynasty.

Without war, the army became lax.

However, after the pirates caused trouble, the imperial court began to take it seriously and started training the army again.

Now, the pirate groups are either being wiped out or hiding everywhere. They are so worried that they are fleeing abroad."

Li Jin said with a scornful smile on his face.

"In the north of our Ming Dynasty, there are actually elite soldiers who have experienced hundreds of battles, but they need to deal with the Mongolian cavalry in the north. Therefore, even though the coastal bandits are rampant, the court did not mobilize the elite northern troops to the south. Otherwise, it would be faster to eliminate the pirates."

In the Ming Dynasty, there is also a legend that the northern soldiers are so powerful that one can defeat ten southern soldiers.

Therefore, even when the Japanese pirates were plundering the coast of the Ming Dynasty, everyone, from the government to the public, simply thought that the court did not really intend to eliminate the Japanese pirates.

Otherwise, the northern soldiers with powerful combat capabilities would have already moved south.

It is an indisputable fact that the Northern soldiers are stronger than the Southern soldiers, but it is not as exaggerated as the folk rumors say.

After all, the north has been under constant military threat from the Mongols, so the army's combat readiness must be much better than that of the idle southern soldiers.

Li Jin was talking about the popular view of the people in the Ming Dynasty, but he didn't know how much damage this would do to Garcia. Yes, for the wealthy Ming Dynasty, no matter whether the Yi merchants saw the poor Ming people in Yuegang, the dazzling array of goods in the Yuegang shops was enough to show the wealth of the Ming Dynasty.

There are also these Ming Dynasty maritime merchants who trade everywhere with goods that are better than those in Yuegang.

To be honest, the powerful Spaniards are accustomed to snatching anything they like. It doesn't matter if they can't snatch it. I will draw troops from all over the world to snatch it.

Everything must belong to His Majesty the King.

Therefore, although the Spaniards in East Asia were still weak at this time, they had already begun to have evil intentions towards the Ming Dynasty.

"How many troops does Mongolia have?"

Garcia asked curiously.

Although he was frightened by Li Jin's words, he still asked calmly.

“I don’t know, but I heard that more than 200,000 troops can be mobilized.

The main reason why the imperial court found it difficult was that they all rode on horses, and it was impossible to organize a battle or mobilize hundreds of thousands of troops to fight against them.

The Mongols always chose to launch surprise attacks at places with weak defenses on the border, robbed the goods and ran away. "

Speaking of this, although Li Jin felt a little nervous, when he thought of the splendor of the early Ming Dynasty, his mouth was as sweet as honey, and he kept boasting about the power of the Ming Dynasty.

"Then why doesn't your king send troops to fight them, those Mongols you mentioned?"

Garcia asked with some doubt.

Hearing this, thinking of the several northern expeditions led by Emperor Chengzu of the Ming Dynasty, Li Jin started talking about it directly, but he did not mention that it happened almost two hundred years ago.

"How could we not send troops? Every time the army marched north, the Mongols would run north and never fight with us.

Just think about it, how much logistical support is needed to feed hundreds of thousands of people.

Also, I heard that the weather gets colder the further north you go, which is not comparable to the climate here.

So after a few times, our emperor had no choice but to give up the idea of ​​completely destroying them and could only send troops to defend. "

Li Jin talked nonsense.

Although it is true history, it is all old news. If this was said in the Ming Dynasty, people who heard it would definitely sneer at it. But today's audience is barbarians, so it is naturally different.

Although the way wars are fought in the West is different from that in the East and there are not so many twists and turns, they are basically the same.

Garcia listened to Li Jin's half-true and half-false words and believed them.

Providing food and drink to hundreds of thousands of people is no small matter.

Seeing that there is a deviation in the understanding of the Ming Dynasty, this information must be reported to the Governor as soon as possible.

Yes, the relationship between Garcia and Li Jin is actually a working relationship, but he also received an order from the Governor-General to extract as much intelligence about the Ming Dynasty as possible from Li Jin.

The Ming Dynasty had an army of millions, which was something they had never dared to imagine before.

No wonder the Ming Dynasty was so wealthy. A country that could afford to support an army of one million was truly extraordinary.

"There is one more thing. The one you have over there is called a king. In my Ming Dynasty, there is no king, only an emperor.

The kings of the surrounding kingdoms were all appointed by our emperor, otherwise they would not be able to be called kings."

Li Jin added.

"Oh my God, that's not just the Pope's right"

Garcia paused in the middle of his words. He had just spoken with European thoughts, forgetting that this was in the far East.

Well, there aren’t many people here who believe in Jesus Christ.

Yes, not much, but yes, not none.

Central Asian merchants had mastered the routes of the Maritime Silk Road very early, so they traded with the Ming Dynasty for a long time and sold Ming Dynasty products to Europe at high prices.

Among those on the ship, there were not only those who believed in Allah, but also those who believed in Jesus.

In Central Asia, although Islam is the mainstream religion, there are also other religions.

Everyone is quite realistic and will not kill foreign pagans who are doing business.

Unless the Pope starts a religious war and carries out a purge.

"Oh, by the way, you said that Lin Feng and his men built a city on Luzon Island. Where exactly is it? What's its name?"

After talking for a while, Garcia invited Li Jin to go into the city for dinner. It was almost dark, so of course he had to have a good meal and reward himself, otherwise he would feel sorry for the days he had spent on the boat.

"Pengaslan Bay, more than 200 miles north of Manila, has a river flowing into the sea that can provide them with fresh water."

Garcia did not doubt him, because in his opinion, pirates were the natural enemies of merchants and they should definitely not be the same kind of people.

Therefore, he readily told Li Jin what he knew, "They call that place Tortoise City."

Although he didn't know where Pengaslan Bay was, Li Jin only needed to remember a few key words and ask the manager later. He should know where it was.

Then we had to find a way to notify General Deng, and also to finish the transaction in Manila as soon as possible and leave here.

Luzon is too dangerous now.

After nightfall, in a hotel room near the pier, Li Jin told Chen Zhenlong the news he had obtained, and he quickly found out where the so-called Pengasinan Bay was.

"Boss, how are we going to tell that General Deng?"

Chen Zhenlong said in a low voice.

“There’s no rush for the next two days. Starting tomorrow, we’ll sell the goods we brought this time as soon as possible, then leave here and head north to find them.

Also, you should also pay more attention to the sweet potato matter and see if you can get it."

Li Jin said: "By the way, today, I also looked at a house in the inner city, a two-story stone house, which looks pretty good. I plan to hire two locals to be responsible for cleaning and guarding the house.

Choose carefully and ask them if they can get sweet potato seeds, either sweet potatoes or sweet potato vines.

I remember hearing them say before that this thing can be planted regardless of whether it is sweet potato or sweet potato vine. "

"Boss, this is a good idea. I will do it tomorrow.

As long as they can get some sweet potato vines, we can hire them and it should work."

Chen Zhenlong immediately laughed and said, "The boss still has a way. I was still thinking about how to do it before. We don't look like the people here, so it's hard to hide it from the eyes of the barbarians.

It would be best if they could use local people to do things for them.

But even if we get the sweet potatoes and sweet potato vines, how can we take them out?"

"We'll talk about this later. Our ship is so big, we can always find a way."

Li Jin hesitated for a moment and then answered, "The main reason is that there is not much produced in Luzon that can be bought in Ming Dynasty. Otherwise, it would be nice to mix it in with the goods."

"It's a bit difficult. Every time we go out to sea, the barbarians will inspect the cabins. It's quite difficult."

Chen Zhenlong reminded.

Li Jin thought of the inspections of the ships by the barbarians and felt a little overwhelmed. He yawned and said, "Let's talk about it later. I'm sleepy and I drank a little wine. I can't hold on any longer. Let's talk about it tomorrow."