Late Ming sea owl

Chapter 338 Returning to the Country, Drought is Coming

The difficult negotiations on the division of the spoils were finally over, and the two sides then negotiated the specific plan for invading Cambodia.

Since the dry season in Indochina is from October to March of the lunar calendar, which is when the northeast monsoon blows from land to sea, the two sides agreed that the two armies would meet in Da Nang when the north wind starts to blow in the second half of the year, and then go by sea to the Kunlun Islands off the mouth of the Mekong River.

The specific time depends on the weather. Before that, Guangnan needs to instigate the new Cambodian king Benha Tho. When the coalition forces arrive at the Kunlun Islands, Benha Tho will flee from the Cambodian capital of Oudong and raise the banner of borrowing troops to kill the regent king Oudi at the mouth of the Mekong River, so that the coalition forces can have a legitimate reason to go out.

Regarding the number of troops, Nguyen Phuc Yuan said that Quang Nam would send out 10,000 elite soldiers. This surprised Lin Hai a little bit, after all, the Zheng-Nguyen conflict had entered the hot war stage, and according to Nguyen Siqi, Quang Nam's standing army totaled only 30,000 people. It seemed that the Nguyen Lord was determined to compete with the Jinhe Kingdom.

Therefore, Lin Hai immediately stated that in order to deal with the possible disruption of Siam, the Kingdom of Jinhe would send 20,000 troops. Now it was Nguyen Phuc Yuan's turn to be dumbfounded. He knew very well that the two countries' voice in Cambodia after the war basically depended on their performance on the battlefield, but he could no longer put more chips on the table.

But think about it from another angle. If the coalition forces can really send out 30,000 troops as agreed, then there will be no suspense in Cambodia. Siam will probably not dare to move at all...

After the military action plan was negotiated, the subsequent trade negotiations became much easier and more pleasant.

Nguyen Phuc Yuan agreed to Lin Hai's request to set up a trading house in Da Nang, and announced that all official transactions between the two countries in Da Nang would be exempt from tax and return tax, that is, port entry tax and port exit tax. However, there is a prerequisite for tax exemption, that is, bringing in no less than the specified amount of strategic materials such as iron, copper, lead, saltpeter, and yellow.

Lin Hai asked the Nguyen Lord to pay the bill with buffaloes and timber. In fact, these two are also strategic materials for the Huiyou Company. The number of buffaloes is particularly important for large-scale immigration, which is directly related to food production.

The number of buffaloes exported from Hoi An Port each year is not large, but the number of buffalo horns is considerable, which shows that the number of buffaloes in Quang Nam is sufficient. Southeast Asia is one of the places where buffaloes are domesticated. The number of buffaloes in various countries is huge, especially in Java, where they are very cheap. However, buffaloes take up a lot of transportation space and weight, so it is more cost-effective to import them from Annan, which is the closest.

The transportation cost of wood is also not low, but who says that Jinhe Kingdom does not have teak? Teak has high strength and toughness, and its corrosion resistance is even higher. The reason why the Guangnan Navy has so many ships is probably inseparable from this. Many warships have been in service since the Nguyen Hoang era.

As for elephants, the cost of raising them is too high, and Lin Hai doesn't need many of them. Lord Ruan actually can't afford many either, so he can just occasionally exchange wrought iron cannons for a few elephants for fun.

In addition to the strategic materials needed by both sides, other goods can be freely bought and sold by the trading house staff in Hoi An. A major feature of Hoi An trade is that the prices of various commodities fluctuate greatly. Having a trading house in the local area allows people to buy low and sell high at any time, thus maximizing profits.

After the trade negotiations were completed, the two sides signed a secret agreement covering military and trade terms on the spot. Kim Ha Prime Minister Lin Hai and Quang Nam General Nguyen Phuoc Khe signed and sealed as plenipotentiary representatives of the two countries. The next step is to wait for Quang Nam to deal with Ben Ha To, and then wait for the northeast monsoon to blow over this sea again.

When all this was settled, the mission of this mission to Guangnan was successfully completed. Unknowingly, the twice-a-year monsoon transition period had quietly arrived.

Lin Hai chose a day with suitable wind direction to leave Fu'an. After meeting up with the Dingyuan in Da Nang, he set off for home. His first stop was naturally Yulin Port.

In just over half a month, Yulin Port has undergone tremendous changes. More than ten simple artillery forts have been built at the throat of the main water and land routes leading to the inner port, and thousands of stilt houses have appeared in the water fort on the west side of the inner port. Among them, several houses built with stones are under construction. Lin Hai curiously asked Li Zhongguo: "Where did so many stones come from? Why don't you use them to build artillery forts?"

Li Zhongguo said: "This is coral stone, which is everywhere on the shore of Dadonghai. This stone is not easy to break, but it is very good for building houses. Living in it is warm in winter and cool in summer. We also learned it from the salt farmers in Linchuan Field."

"Very good." Lin Hai nodded with satisfaction. It seemed that these pirates and the Linchuan salt households got along well. He then asked, "Do you have any difficulties here?"

"It's nothing else, except that the price of rice in Yazhou is a bit high." The start-up capital for Li Zhongguo's army was provided by Lin Hai, but it was mainly silver and firearms. The rations were only enough for one month, so he sent a boat to Yazhou to buy food not long ago.

"There's nothing we can do about it. The land in Qiongzhou is barren, so the price of rice has always been a bit higher."

"But it's more expensive this year than in previous years..." Li Zhongguo said, "I heard that several prefectures and counties in Guangdong suffered from spring drought. This year's harvest is not expected to be good, so many rice merchants in Qiongzhou Prefecture have begun to stockpile rice, hoping to sell it when the price is the highest."

"Spring drought in Guangdong?" Lin Hai was a little surprised when he heard this. Spring drought usually occurs more frequently in the north and southwest regions, but is rare in the southeast coast.

Rice merchants are undoubtedly one of the groups with the most sensitive nose to drought. Since many rice merchants have begun hoarding rice, it seems that the situation in Guangdong this year is not optimistic.

Lin Hai suddenly remembered something. In the first year of Chongzhen in another time and space, Zheng Zhilong was surrendered by Fujian Governor Xiong Wencan in September. Later, at the latter's request, he recruited tens of thousands of disaster victims to go to Taiwan to open up wasteland.

What is even more incredible is that the Fujian local government actually distributed silver and buffaloes to this group of people. It should be noted that the years of war at sea had already caused the local treasury to be full of rats, and Xiong Wencan was a famous corrupt official during the Chongzhen period...

From this we can see that this drought seems to have occurred not only in Guangdong, but it is very likely that Fujian has also been affected, and the situation is very serious, and there will be no improvement until the end of the year.

In fact, the estimates at the end of the year were optimistic, and the actual situation was even more serious than Lin Hai imagined. The consecutive years of drought in the late Ming Dynasty were rare in history. Shaanxi suffered from drought for 14 consecutive years, not to mention that even Guangdong and southern Fujian suffered from drought for more than two consecutive years in the early years of Chongzhen...

"Master Le, I need you to lend me a boat. I want to send someone to Tokyo." The Tokyo that Lin Hai mentioned was not in Japan, but Thang Long City, the capital of the Later Le Dynasty, which is Hanoi in later generations.

After learning that there would be a severe drought in Fujian and Guangdong this year, he was both happy and worried. He was happy that the drought would accelerate the immigration process, but he was worried about where the food needed for large-scale immigration would come from.

(End of this chapter)