Rise of the 1630s South America

Chapter 1449 The Big Winner ([-])

And just when Gao Wen had just met the Tatars in the Crimea Peninsula, in the port of Arkhangelsk in the north of the Eurasian continent, several 650-ton flute-shaped ships had just anchored in the port. .This is an ocean-going merchant ship affiliated to the South China Sea Shipping Company. It took several months of sailing from Qingdao Port to reach Russia. You can see it by yourself.

There are ship repair technicians in the port, and most of them are workers from the Little Star Shipyard, a joint venture between East Russia and Russia. Rough maintenance, complete maintenance - fortunately, people on the east coast are not in a hurry, as long as they can sail before the port freezes.

After many years, the port of Arkhangelsk is still under construction, and the terminal has been slightly expanded by 10%.The layout is small, the distribution is messy, and the materials used are mostly slippery and rough logs, which makes people feel very uncomfortable at first glance.The dock town has not developed much in recent years, but it seems that there are a lot of seasonal workers, that is, a large number of poor and helpless serfs will go to Arkhangelsk to work in summer and autumn. The son stayed in his hometown to farm, thinking that he could deal with the tax collectors who collected excessively in the spring - once the tax was not paid, the tsar's henchmen would definitely make you "*******", and it was common for the family to be destroyed.

Compared with them, the technicians from the Little Star Shipyard don’t mention how happy they are, because they don’t have to farm and have a fixed cash income every month (the tax payment is mostly cash, it’s too difficult for ordinary farmers to get cash ), and the number is quite large, enough to maintain a relatively well-off life for yourself and your family after paying taxes. This is probably due to the fact that they are all technical talents. The Tsar has always valued technical talents and rewarded them generously. See you Are there a lot of well-paid foreigners living in Moscow?These people are not considered talents in Western Europe, but in remote and backward Russia, they are the distinguished guests of the tsar, which can be seen from this.

Lieutenant Zhang Zhijun, who once served as Cai Anguo's adjutant, stepped down from the deck. Now he is the captain of the sail escort gunship "Big Red Squid". His old boss, Captain Cai Anguo, has been transferred to the newly built "Southern Cross". "The captain of the USS light cruiser, so the vacant position will naturally be filled by him, and he is currently part of the Cape Verde Squadron of the First Fleet.Because they were worried that there would be a vacuum of power on the sea during the Anglo-Dutch naval battle, which would lead to rampant pirates (this is not unfounded worry), which would affect the safety of shipping. Therefore, the Squadron Command specially dispatched several ships when the merchant fleet passed through the Eastern Cape Verde Islands. The escort gunboat accompanied the ship, and the "Big Red Squid" undertook the task of escorting four merchant ships to the port of Arkhangelsk.

The whole journey was relatively easy and pleasant. For merchant ships flying the flag on the east coast, the British and Dutch navies would not move lightly if nothing happened. Therefore, the British and Danish waters sailed to the White Sea in northern Russia very smoothly.While stopping at the port of Bergen, Denmark, for supplies, Zhang Zhijun and others also heard the latest information about the British-Dutch naval battle. In late July, the British and Dutch fought again in the Strait of Dover. Unfortunately, the flagship was shot and exploded as soon as it came up, and Druiter had to change the command ship, and then the battle that lasted for most of the day was completely out of the control of the Dutch. The whole process was under the rhythm of the British, and the fleets of both sides separated in the evening At that time, the Dutch had sunk 17 warships, and many of the remaining ships were injured, while the British only sank three ships and three were severely damaged, which can be regarded as a rare victory.

Since the beginning of this year, there have been three consecutive large-scale fleet decisive battles. From the current point of view, they are almost evenly matched, and the English seem to have the upper hand.However, at present, people of insight in England have realized that if the war situation continues to be so deadlocked, it will basically be no different from fighting for consumption, and it is precisely in this respect that the Dutch have an inherent advantage-although the British shipbuilding and The ancillary industries are relatively developed, the cost of repairing ships is low, the speed is fast, and the sailors are well-trained and high-spirited. However, the Dutch also have their own advantages, that is, they have a lot of money and relatively sufficient supplies. It's really hard to say who will win, but there is no doubt that the Dutch have a slightly better chance of winning.

The most important thing for the British to do now is to concentrate the main fleet and have another large-scale fight with the Dutch, in order to completely defeat the Dutch navy in a short period of time and force them to submit.But how difficult it is, especially when the Dutch have a lot of money and people (including the East Coast) behind them, it is basically impossible for the British to do this. It was a lot stronger when the first Anglo-Dutch war started, not to mention that the British are still facing a lot of plague troubles. It killed more people than the Dutch!

To be honest, Zhang Zhijun himself really wanted to observe the spectacular scene of the decisive battle between more than 200 British and Dutch warships at close range. Mistakes, and finally had to give up.It seems that if the navy on the Great East Coast wants to learn how to command such a large-scale naval battle, it can only find a way from the Dutch after the war, although it is unlikely that they will pass on these "unique skills" to the people on the East Coast.

This time, the merchant ship escorted by the "Big Red Squid" brought many commodities to Russia, including high-end commodities such as clocks, dyed cloth, porcelain, and silk, as well as urgent supplies such as medicines. In addition, the largest cargo is undoubtedly military supplies and weapons, which is related to the current situation facing the Russian Empire.

Years of wars with Sweden, Poland and other countries have exhausted the last bit of wealth of the huge Russian Empire. In the later stages of the war, as the Ottoman Empire, a heavyweight player, also joined the game, the Tsar had to expropriate domestically and increase the degree of exploitation. Conscript more personnel to maintain a large force to deal with threats from two fronts at the same time.For the Russian Empire, which has never been very rich, the burden is undoubtedly too heavy. It is so heavy that the 1600 million Russian people cannot supply it even if they are frugal and half-starved.And once this state lasts for a long time, it's no wonder that there will be no troubles with the rough state management system of the Russian Empire!

No, in the past two years, there have been many riots and riots in the Russian Empire - some can even be called uprisings - especially in the south of Russia, which has borne heavy taxes, because it is necessary to supply a huge amount of meat that is confronted with the Poles. The army, the people of the southern provinces had been squeezed to the extreme, and finally had to rise up against the rule of the tsar.Among them, the rebel army led by Vasily Us is the most powerful, because many local noble troops in Tsarist Russia have no way to deal with them, and the entire Russian Empire has signs of falling into chaos again.

Therefore, since last year, the Russians have ordered a large amount of military supplies and equipment from the people on the east bank through the channel of the Arkhangelsk trading station to deal with the increasingly serious situation in the country.Of course, they will not forget the large number of people who are confronting the Polish army along the Dnieper River. These people have been engaged in small-scale battles with Poland all day long, which consumes a lot of money. This time they have to send some supplies together, otherwise I am afraid The combat effectiveness of soldiers will be greatly affected.

In order to obtain these cheap and high-quality military funds, the Tsar really took great pains, especially those relatively expensive artillery. In a blink of an eye, the Russians worked hard to sell food, masts, flax, tar, wood, fur, whale oil and other commodities A large part of the profits obtained has been swept away.Of course, the arrival of these weapons also enabled the Tsar to continue to show his ambitions on the battlefield, such as the half of Ukraine currently snatched from the Poles, such as conquering the Astrakhans who disobeyed the rule on the grassland, Nogai and so on.

As for the inside story of the Russian Empire, even though people on the east coast have a limited grasp of the details, they still know the general situation to some extent.You must know that there are not a few east bank businessmen who are active in Russia today. There are also a large number of east bank technicians in the Arkhangelsk gun repair plant, the small star shipyard, and the Tula arsenal. The teachers are all officials of the State Intelligence Bureau of the East Coast Republic of China. It is not difficult for them to grasp some inside information about Russia.What's more, many foreigners active in Russia—especially the Dutch—don't mind sharing the news and intelligence they have found with the east coast, so Russia really doesn't have too many secrets about the east coast.

Therefore, after learning that in recent years Russia has been very peaceful, escaped serfs, bandits, and Cossacks who disobeyed the tsar's rule have gradually become a force that cannot be ignored, and have turned the tsar's local armed forces into disgrace. The shore people are very sensitive to realize that in Russia, a large empire that can almost be called an oriental empire, a risky riot may be brewing-this was especially obvious in 1665 and 1666. , the uprising troops broke through many counties and noble territories, and their momentum has obviously grown. This can be seen from Russia's large-scale order of weapons and equipment from the east coast. The tsar is a little uneasy, and the situation is really a little delicate.

With such a thing happening in Russia, how could the people from the east, who are best at taking advantage of the fire and watching the fire from the other side, not come to this muddy water to grab more benefits?Schneider, the head of the Arkhangelsk Commercial Station in charge of trade and diplomacy with Russia, also played his own subjective initiative this time, and will continue to export a large number of cheap weapons to Russia in the future, and carry out technical renovations on the Tula Arsenal. The national interests of the Guandong Bank are linked together, such as the issue of the re-negotiation of the Blackwater region in the Far East, such as the trade issue of the Dnieper River and the Don River.

Let's talk about the former first.In fact, the issue of the border demarcation of the Blackwater region in the Far East has been discussed many times between Russia and the east bank. (Jacques) has divided the boundary, but it is relatively vague and has a lot of loopholes, and both parties are not very satisfied.

This time, taking advantage of the rare opportunity of the boiling situation in Russia, Station Master Schneider put forward a request for a re-discussion.This time, he proposed that the East and Russia should use the Lena River as the national border, that is, the west of the Lena River belongs to the Russian Empire, and the east belongs to the East Bank Republic of China. This is equivalent to expanding the territory of the East Bank people in Northeast Asia Many times, this has been rightly rejected by the Russians, who believe that the current border between the two countries is suitable and should not be changed.Moreover, the Russians also added that the northern edge of this border was vaguely defined before, but this time it should be clear. It can be bounded by the "Xing'an Mountains" that people on the east bank call, that is, the south of the Xing'an Mountains returns to the east bank, and the North to Russia.

Schneider was extremely speechless to the Russians' proposal, and finally even threatened not to provide assistance for the technical transformation of the Tula Arsenal, but the Russians did not accept this at all. They said that they would rather abandon the Tula Arsenal than make concessions on the land issue , leading to a stalemate in the negotiations between the two parties for a while.

However, Schneider has made great progress in the commercial negotiations with the Russians, having encountered trouble on the issue of land demarcation.The Russians not only promised to fully open trade in the Don River Basin, they even said that they might build a horse-drawn wagon track with a length of more than 60 versts between the Volga River and the Don River (this is known in history in the late 18th century. It was only started to be built) to communicate the material transfer between the two major rivers in its territory and increase the flow of goods on the Don River, which satisfied the people on the east bank.

As for the crucial trade on the Dnieper River, they expressed that they are also happy to see it succeed, that is, they are willing to cooperate with all commercial activities of the people on the east bank or the Crimeans in this great river basin, as long as the people on the east bank find a way to get the right bank of the Dnieper River It is enough for the Poles, after all, this is now an international river, the border between the Kingdom of Poland and the Russian Empire.

Schneider, who had run into a wall on the territorial issue, finally unexpectedly gained huge benefits on the commercial issue, which made him a little happy. I believe that when the news reached Amsterdam, Special Envoy Li Qing would also be very happy.After all, the plan that has been prepared for many years has achieved significant progress, and anyone will be very happy, because this will undoubtedly strengthen the voice and influence of the people on the east coast in the Black Sea Basin, which will be of great benefit to the national strategy—of course Russia The reason why people are willing to make concessions on this is naturally also related to their demands on the east bank (in terms of weapons), otherwise, depending on their pissing nature, the matter will not be delayed until long!Both Schneider and Li Qing are well aware of this point.

(End of this chapter)