unclear

Chapter 1392 The Pessimistic Strategist 2
Hearing these slightly mysterious murmurs, General Tropp felt it was time to ease his old friend's mind. Although he hadn't spent as much time in Asia as Cohen, nor had he ever met the Ming Emperor in person, his understanding of the Ming Empire was not necessarily lacking.

Looking at the development trajectory of this great empire, it is filled with a strong personal touch, and every step of success is tied to the Ming emperor alone.

When he is clear-headed and makes the right judgment, the country advances rapidly and unstoppably; conversely, he can plunge the country into utter ruin. Such short-lived strongmen are not uncommon in the vast river of history; the Ming emperors were not the first, nor will they be the last.

"Your words remind me of an old friend! She was a beautiful and wise lady, and also the president of the Sun Moon Bank. We met several times a year, mostly for business loans."

The bank she managed handled nearly 70% of the private lending in the Ming Empire, while also managing accounts for the army and the government. The wealth flowing through her hands every day was probably more than the total wealth of all banks in Europe combined.

Whether in Asia or Europe, she was considered an extremely successful woman. However, what most people don't know is that she and her husband were once prisoners of the Ming Dynasty navy, captured from a Spanish silver-carrying ship.

Whenever I ask her what kind of person the Ming emperor really was, I am warned with the same sentence: Anyone who thinks they have understood and found his weaknesses is not far from being doomed!
I never dared to consider her a friend, mainly because of the vast difference in our social standing. As business partners, she always reminded me not to try to challenge the bottom line of the Ming Emperor, which is probably why she was able to succeed in a foreign land.

I certainly didn't have her privilege of having extended contact with the Ming Emperor, but I still had far more than you. Every time I met the Emperor, I felt as if I were back in school listening to a lecture.

Sometimes it can be annoying, even making me think he's just boasting and deliberately showing off his knowledge. But every time I go back and verify things from various sources, I come to roughly the same conclusion: everything the emperor said is correct. Some issues may not be verifiable in a short time, but with enough patience, they will be proven one by one.

Can you tell me definitively, if after twenty years of verification it has been proven that a person has not made any mistakes in matters of national importance, can we conclude that this person has made a mistake in the twenty-first year?
Actually, you asked a really good question. If you can figure that out, you'll probably know the outcome of this war.

The Ming Empire had a population of over 100 million, numerous factories producing guns and ammunition, and all the necessary raw materials. Yet why did it have such a small army, unable to effectively defend three fronts?

If this task were entrusted to me, I could equip hundreds of thousands, even a million, of troops with basic training within six months. Do you think it's possible that the generals of the Ming Dynasty are inferior to me? Or perhaps they simply cannot afford it?

Tropp and Cohen were both Europeans with considerable knowledge of Asia and the Ming Dynasty, but there were still significant differences between them, mainly in their perspectives.

Tropp was more like a specialist, focusing his research and investigation on the military system of the Ming Empire, especially its navy, which was closely related to his profession.

Cohen, on the other hand, was more like a graduate student. During his tenure, he conducted extensive observations and analyses of the Ming Empire, including Emperor Jingyang and several key officials, focusing on almost everything from the political system, economy, and military to humanities and history.

Different starting points, different perspectives, different breadths of involvement, and different depths of contact led them to reach different conclusions about the same person and the same country.

Regarding this specific war, Cohen should have more authority to speak on the matter. After all, he had communicated face-to-face with the high-ranking officials of both sides, fully understanding the causes and objectives, and could accurately assess the strength of both sides. This led to a question. Based on his assessment of the military strength of both sides, what he heard, saw, and knew, the Ming Empire clearly had the advantage. If its attitude had been more proactive, it might even have been possible to turn the tide of the battle, using a sharp offensive to force the European coalition into a passive defensive posture.

However, almost a year had passed from preparation to action, and the Ming Empire seemed to have suddenly fallen seriously ill, becoming very sluggish. Apart from mobilizing its existing troops to adopt a defensive posture, it showed no intention of launching an offensive, which was very inconsistent with the consistent preemptive strike style of Emperor Jingyang and the Ming military.

The allied generals unanimously believed that this was due to the Ming Empire's insufficient military strength. Asia's land area is several times larger than Europe's, and it also has numerous seas stretching from the Sea of ​​Japan in the east to the Arabian Sea in the west. Controlling them with the strength of a single country would inevitably lead to the predicament of having too many troops scattered.

If it were only facing a challenge from a single European country, such as Spain, the Ming Empire could still gain an advantage by relying on its advanced navigation technology. However, if it were to encounter a joint attack from the whole of Europe, it would inevitably be overwhelmed and unable to cope.

However, Cohen never believed that the Ming Empire's defeat at Enniu Port was due to its lack of strength, because the war was not initiated by the European countries. On the contrary, the Ming Empire took the initiative, and the European countries were only passively responding.

Looking back at Emperor Jingyang's decades of campaigns, most of them were proactive attacks, and he never showed any signs of fatigue. Logically, this time, his provocation of European countries should have been meticulously prepared, and he shouldn't have revealed such a glaring weakness at the very first encounter.

Therefore, the fall of Enniu City does not necessarily mean that the European coalition had the upper hand; it may have been another pre-dug trap, which is consistent with the Ming emperor's usual style.

"...Yes, they have over 200 warships, and a similar number of armed merchant ships. Even if they were to deploy them in parts of the Persian Gulf and the Red Sea, there shouldn't be only a dozen or so here, right?"

Having spent several years actively observing Asia, Tropp was certainly not a reckless person who acted without considering the consequences. After listening to his friend's analysis, he immediately realized that the Ming Dynasty's naval force deployment was seriously unbalanced.

However, merely sensing something suspicious is useless. To convince Bernhard and even the generals of the allied forces not to be blinded by temporary victories, more concrete intelligence is needed, such as the possible location of the main force of the Ming navy.

"Do you remember the naval battle that took place off the west coast of the Americas last year? There's a question I've never understood: why did the Ming emperor launch a preemptive attack on the Spanish fleet in the Americas?"
If he had been able to commit all the troops intended for the Americas to Asia Minor, and with the assistance of the Persians, the Ottoman Empire would probably no longer exist.

Complete control of the eastern Mediterranean coast would be tantamount to strangling the land choke point between Europe and Asia. Wouldn't that be more strategically valuable than destroying a dozen or so Spanish warships?

Seeing that Tropp did not rudely dismiss his analysis and also expressed doubts about the Ming Empire's strategic deployment, Cohen was willing to continue. This time, he no longer limited himself to the direct confrontation between the European coalition forces and the Ming army, but broadened his perspective to look for clues from a global viewpoint.

(End of this chapter)