Daming: Wanted to be a small landlord, but was forced to ascend the throne

Chapter 423 Inside Story of the Battle of Tuen Mun Sea

"Why? Are you a Portuguese and want to speak for your country?"

Qin Shao knew that foreigners couldn't understand the words that went around in circles, so he said it directly.

The biggest characteristic of Chinese people is that they like to talk in circles and play tricks. Foreigners are generally more direct. When talking to them in circles, they don’t understand at all. It’s more enjoyable to speak directly!

If this kind of thing is said to the people of the country, it is estimated that the people of the country will suspect that the emperor has something against him, and they may be so frightened that they kneel down and plead guilty!

Magellan stood up unhurriedly:
"Your Majesty, in the words of you Daming people, we hit it off right away! You are the most enlightened Ming people I have ever met. Your citizens call us Portugal and Spain Frangi, no, they call our surroundings This is the name of the country. Only you know that we belong to different kingdoms. I think you are so knowledgeable, you should know that the idea of ​​our Portuguese king coming to Nanyang is to do business and make money, not to seize the territory of Ming Dynasty. Of course, we also occupied other places, just for business, we Portuguese still respect Daming very much..."

Magellan explained.

If other people heard these words, they would definitely think that what Magellan said was a scene, and they didn't know what they meant.

For example, Zhang Cong and Yan Song are also here at the moment, and Qin Shao invited them over to let them know about the outside world.

Of course, they didn't understand what Magellan said, but Qin Shao and Wang Zhi translated the general meaning, and the two of them also understood the general meaning.

It cannot be said that Zhang Cong, Yan Song and others are not smart people. They can reach the position of the Ming Empire. There are no stupid people, but there are limited things they can go out and see.

At least these two people currently feel that Magellan is speaking for their own country. In their eyes, there is no one who does not favor their own country.

Of course, Qin Shao felt that Magellan definitely had feelings for Portugal, but it would not be enough to just say good things about the Portuguese army.

According to Magellan, Portugal yearns for and respects Daming, and really wants to do business with him.

It's just that there are too many cultural differences between the two sides, especially language differences, and many things have been exaggerated and misunderstood.

For example, when the Portuguese arrived at the maritime border of the Ming Dynasty, especially when they entered the Pearl River Estuary to show their cannons, it was actually a kind of excitement and a gesture of goodwill. However, the officials of the Ming Dynasty misunderstood it as a provocation by the other party, and a stalemate emerged between the two sides.

The reason for this misunderstanding is actually the deliberate actions of some shipping merchants in Daming and some countries in Southeast Asia.

The reason is of course obvious!
Daming and some countries in Southeast Asia could earn a lot of money by bringing some goods through Daming. Even if the Frangians came, because they had no contact with the Ming court before, they could only trade through them.

If they had direct business dealings with the Ming court, especially if Pires had directly connected with the Emperor, it would directly endanger their interests.

Therefore, in the middle of the communication, those local merchants of Ming Dynasty who were the messengers naturally deliberately discredited the Portuguese caravan to prevent the court from tying them to trade.

Who knew that Zhu Houzhao, Emperor Wuzong of the Ming Dynasty, would appear later, he didn't care about so many miscellaneous things, he directly contacted Pires, and regarded him as a guest of honor!

This directly cut off the interests of many maritime merchants in the coastal areas, and behind these people are the local officials in the coastal areas. Behind the local officials in the coastal areas are important officials of the Ming court, and their interests are one!
It's no wonder that after Zhu Houzhao's death, Yang Tinghe directly executed Huo Zhe Yasan and expelled Pires!
Qin Shao has seen this history.

After Zhu Houcong came to power, he believed in Taoism and was not interested in outside things.

Hearing reports from local officials that the Portuguese had directly provoked something, they followed the advice and beheaded Pires who was in the prison, and the gifts they brought were also thrown out.

The local defenders in Guangzhou have begun to organize naval forces to attack the Portuguese on Tuen Mun Island, and have launched a surprise attack on the Nanyang ships carrying Portuguese in the port.

The Portuguese on board were arrested and killed, including some innocent Nanyang businessmen. Many of the survivors were sold as laborers, and all the goods on board were embezzled by local officials.

In the final analysis, the local officials along the coast of Daming did not want to switch to fair transactions for their own interests. Compared with the imperial court, they wanted to close the country and do independent business.

After Longqing opened the sea, many coastal areas were very opposed to it. Once the sea was opened, the rich would be the imperial court, and it would affect themselves. Naturally, they would not do it.

In fact, Zhu Houzhao has long intended to rectify these places, but he has enough energy to spare!
These local officials are the worms of Ming Dynasty. You must know that although the Battle of Tuen Mun Sea did expel the Portuguese and finally won, but according to the development of history, 20 years later, Portugal, who understood Ming’s interpersonal thick and black knowledge, made a comeback. By bribing local officials, he directly obtained the residence right of Omen!
Qin Shao understands that while fighting is important, the most important thing is to open the sea. Only by opening the sea can he strengthen his dynasty!
Learn from the barbarians to control barbarians!
If you close the country, if you fall behind, you will be beaten!
Especially these western kingdoms, if you are strong yourself, conduct normal trade with them, and both parties will benefit from each other, they will respect you and respect you, and they will not dare to invade and attack you!

Just like now, he believes what Magellan said, and the Kingdom of Portugal and Western Europe is absolutely in awe of the Ming Dynasty and wants to deepen friendly exchanges.

Just follow Da Ming's strategy in the past, that is, retreat and not interact with others!

The more this is the case, the easier it is to fall behind and become corrupt. When the other party sees clearly that you are strong in the outside world, it is time to do it. You!
This was the case when the Qing Dynasty was shut down by those Westerners. What is even more ridiculous is that when the Qing soldiers fought with the Westerners, the people in the Pearl River Estuary stood by and watched the fun!
When you are rotten beyond recognition and the public is indifferent to your existence, you have actually reached an irreversible end.

……

"Your Majesty, do you want to switch?"

After Magellan and Hong Fu left, Zhang Cong stayed.

Regarding Qin Shao's actions today, Zhang Cong was already full of doubts.

Today's Zhang Cong is equivalent to the chief assistant of the cabinet. He is busy these days with the issue of land annexation in the capital, recovering a lot of land seized by local tyrants and evil gentry. This policy is being implemented step by step.

Although many problems have been encountered, of course, this policy of attacking local tyrants has of course met with opposition from many people. The forces opposed it, but they didn't dare to be blatant.

After all, those people in the capital have been cleaned up, and they are still a little scared to kill chickens and monkeys!

The northern region is better. The local officials have been cleaned up, and the people below dare not move. The land statistics and acceptance work is going smoothly.

The clan forces in the south are intertwined, and the southerners are bloody... As a southerner, Zhang Cong naturally understands, so he directly sent Huo Tao to the south to supervise. I heard that Huo Tao has arrested many people in the south now, and even killed two of them. , the people over there are quite honest.

Zhang Cong felt that it was very difficult to do this alone!

Some time ago, there were two censors in Nanjing, the Emperor Zhijian, who took the opportunity to report Zhang Cong on some unfounded things.

Zhang Cong knew that this was because his reform touched the interests of many people. Even though the new emperor had punished many people by killing chickens and monkeys, there were still some people who were not afraid of death and came out to throw dung on themselves!

Fortunately, Zhang Cong has great trust in the new emperor Zhu Houxi, and since he took the position of chief assistant, he has kept himself clean and kept away from others, let alone having any selfishness. Those people are not easy to catch even if they want to find a handle.

Of course, the new emperor also fully trusted him, and directly ignored the letters of advice that reported him, and asked the people in Nanjing to investigate those two people. They really had a lot of unclean places, and they were directly arrested. They were caught, charged with false accusation, and thrown directly into prison. If nothing else happened, then the two of them must have reformed there during the Spring Festival this year.

Now the new emperor actually contacted the Frangians and discussed the issue of the sea. Through their conversation, Zhang Cong felt that the new emperor was going to do something new. Could it be that he wanted to switch?
The common people don't know about those things at the pass, but those who are scholars and officials naturally understand the benefits!
"Of course the gate must be opened!"

"His Majesty!"

"Don't worry, we won't switch on and off blindly. We have to make a perfect plan to switch on and off! Now those people deliberately create conflicts between the Frangians and the court, just hope that the court will not have trade with foreigners, so that they can monopolize the benefits! Daming Shui The teacher was supported by the imperial court, and now it seems that he is looking after their home and nursing home!"

Qin Shao sneered.

"Your Majesty, those Frankies really just want to do business with us, have no other ideas?"

Even though Zhang Cong is more knowledgeable than the general Ming people, but after all, he received Confucian education. To be honest, he doesn't accept those Westerners very well. He always feels that those blond people look like barbarians!
"At least for now, they want to do business with us, and they don't want to go to war. As for the future, if we still hold back like this, they will certainly have ideas about us, and they are big ideas! I guess their long guns and cannons will be They will face us! The switch is a matter of time. If we don’t switch it blindly and don’t protect the area around our port, those people will set up camps there sooner or later, which will become our worry! Switch, training powerful sailors is the right thing to do. thing!"

"Your Majesty! Wang Hung's side... As Hong Fu said before, Wang Hung did have friction with those Frangians. He doesn't have anyone around him who can understand those Frangians. It's from the local maritime merchants, maybe just as His Majesty said, those people deliberately misled Wang Hung during the transmission process, if you don't want to have deeper misunderstandings, you must find someone capable of going to Wang Hung's side!"

Zhang Cong reminded.

Wang Hung was one of them, and he was also the first batch to stand up and support the new emperor.

"Well, Bingyong, Wang Hung will naturally send him his right-hand assistant, let them stabilize those Frangians, and learn more about their sailing technology, especially guns. If not, you can buy some research. How much does it cost? , Let him make a plan, and also, go to Guangzhou to look for that man named Pires, if he is still in prison, get him out!"

"Yes!"

……

Hong Fu and others stayed in the capital for more than ten days, and handed over a large part of the income from the sea in the past few years to Qin Shao.

Qin Shao only accepted some jewelry, spices and other things. As for the silver, he returned it to Hong Fu, and asked him to go to Guangzhou to meet Wang Hung. First, he would rebuild the caravan in his own name, recruit more people, and equip weapons. All of these required a lot of money. It's also the reason why Qin Shao didn't receive the gold and silver they honored.

"Your Majesty, I have a gift here that I want to give to Your Majesty!"

When Magellan followed Hong Fu and the others to Guangzhou, he walked up to Qin Shao, holding a flower pot covered with fabric and said.

Qin Shao was amazed that Magellan was going to give him some rare jewels. Thinking about the important and famous things in Portugal and Spain, he really couldn't remember them after a while.

As for the spices and jewelry in the Nanyang region, since Daming has always been in contact with the Nanyang region, he really doesn't lack things from there.

Since Magellan came to give presents, and was so mysterious, he certainly wouldn't give anything ordinary.

"Thank you!"

Qin Shao expressed his gratitude and asked Zhang Zuo to accept the gift.

After sending those people away, Qin Shao asked Zhang Zuo to open the cloth covering the flowerpot and found a green plant with white flowers and yellow stamens in the middle. He was a little disappointed.

It seems that for thousands of years, foreigners in the West have been doing this kind of virtue. When they see people and give gifts, they just send some shabby flowers, things that they don’t like to eat!

"Your Majesty, how do you send potted flowers? White ones..."

Zhang Zuo was a little unhappy.

Fortunately, this is a foreigner who has never seen the world. He gave flowers in Daming, and the white ones were given to the emperor. If you want to get to the bottom of it, grandma, this is a crime of murder!
You must know that in Ming Dynasty culture, white things are only accepted for funerals.

Planting flowers is also a relatively delicate color, such as red peony!
"It's all the rage over there at Frangie!"

Qin Shao could only explain.

"Your Majesty, these bastards are really weird, they like white flowers, how unlucky! But this pot has a little yellow in the middle of the flowers, which is not good, but what kind of flowers are they, I don't see much Pass!"

Zhang Zuoxu babbled, apparently he still felt that the flower was not very auspicious, but His Majesty didn't care, so he couldn't say anything.

If it was a person from Ming Dynasty, sending this kind of thing may be deliberately dialed, and those Maozi (yes, because these Westerners have a lot of hair, they call them Maozi) do not understand those, so they don't care.

"Your Majesty, this flower...how to deal with this flower?"

After all, it was the flower that Maozi gave to His Majesty, Zhang Zuo didn't know how to deal with it.

Of course, if he followed his own wishes, those frustrated things would be thrown away.

But Zhang Zuo thinks this way, he has to do everything according to the new emperor's wishes.

Their new emperor is not ordinary, they have their own ideas in everything they do, and they often do things not according to common sense.

When his master Li Di asked him to serve and follow the new emperor, he had already told Zhang Zuo countless times that the new emperor had his own ideas, more assertive and decisive than the old king Xing.

In the face of such a person, don't play any tricks or have any small thoughts, just do what the new emperor asks you to do!
Zhang Zuo was not stupid, but when he knew that he was going to serve the future emperor, he couldn't help being a little excited and panicked.

"Master, what do you mean by doing what the emperor says?"

He was so excited that he couldn't help asking stupid things.

"You idiot, of course you have to tell His Majesty everything. You do what His Majesty tells you to do. Whatever Your Majesty says is what you say. If Your Majesty says charcoal is white, then it is white. If Your Majesty says that a deer is a horse, then it is a horse... "

Li Su was a little angry and said concisely.

"Put it in the imperial garden for people to take good care of it. I've never seen this flower before. Let's see what it will look like!"

Qin Shao glanced at the pot of white flowers, paused for a moment and said.

He didn't know what this flower was, and none of the people around him, including Zhang Zuo, had seen it before, and Magellan gave it to him, so it must be considered a rare thing, so you might as well keep it and have a look.

Qin Shao kept the potted flower, not because of the great changes in Ming Dynasty's agriculture after the potted flower!

(End of this chapter)