open sea

Chapter 1342 Three Days
The Roman priest kept Chen Ju and his guns waiting for too long.

Five hundred and four General Zhenshuo came to the east coast of the Tyrrhenian Sea with a roar from across the sea. The ships in the port no longer tried to go to sea, and more than 300 defenders also retreated inland immediately.

Instead, Chen Ju's three troops disembarked at the port, and the soldiers of the old Daming Shenji Battalion, the general of the Ming Dynasty, Luo Shangzhong, loaded the artillery on the gun mounts and pushed them off the ship, followed by a Spanish company and a Moroccan army. force.

The Spanish commander was Pedro, the son of the Duke of Naples. In his early years, he joined the battlefield of the Netherlands like young Spanish contemporaries. After a few years, he made outstanding achievements, but at the cost of losing two fingers and a short right leg.

The commander of the Moroccans was also a Spaniard named Judal. He was sold by slave traders to Ottoman and castrated as a eunuch when he was a teenager.

Ahmed Mansour's elder brother Abdul Malik was the last Moroccan Sultan. After driving away his nephew Abu Abdullah Mohammed II to succeed him as Sultan, the nephew who fled to Portugal persuaded the Portuguese King Sebastian Thion waged war on Morocco.

It is the battle of the Mahazan River, because the war involved the Portuguese King Sebastiao, the Moroccan Sultan Abu Abdullah Muhammad II, and the Moroccan Successor Sultan Abdul Malik. War of the Three Kings.

Later, these three kings all died, the first two died of defeat, the latter one won the battle but died the next day, Ahmed Mansur succeeded to the throne logically, and the Spanish eunuch Judal from Ottoman also became The new Sutan's confidant.

As a Spanish slave, Judal had no surname and could only be used as an official pasha, but he was of great help to Morocco.

In the few years since Sudan Mansour succeeded to the throne in Morocco, they worked together to complete Morocco's military reform.

They adopted the Ottoman military organization, commissioned Ottoman officers to train Andalusians and Christian apostates to form an army, and used salt and nitrate to buy a large number of muskets and artillery from Spanish smugglers to arm them.

This time Judal led the fleet to escort Chen Ju in the name of Moroccan Sutan, and also shouldered another mission, hoping to use Chen Ju's influence to stop the Han people at sea.

Because while they were reforming their military, their southern neighbor, the Songhai Kingdom, was also undergoing a massive reform, but in a completely different direction.

The Songhai Kingdom just experienced a turmoil. After the death of the old king, many princes fought with each other in the country. Among them, the prince named Haji hired Han pirates to quell the rebellion, and gave large amounts of land, slaves, grain, and cattle to those who deserved merit. and cloth to make it stand out in the power struggle.

After succeeding to the throne, the entire Songhai Kingdom adopted the military organization of Ming Dynasty, set up the two-metric system of Taiwei and Prime Minister for domestic policy, implemented military and agricultural reforms, and entrusted Han general Yang Ce to serve as Taiwei, and trained tribal fighters and Arab captives to form an army , Use salt, nitrate and gold to buy a large number of bird guns, armor, artillery, shark boats, and flying shark boats from the Han Dynasty and the Ming Dynasty.

They controlled the salt pans and trade routes south of the Sahara, and their power reached the border of Morocco. It looked like it was in its heyday.

Judal must fulfill the mission for the lord, because Songhai already has a large-scale shipbuilding industry, and the Songhai Navy, with Han pirates as the main officers, is extremely aggressive, making it hard to guard against and exhausting to deal with.

It's just that this matter was very difficult for Chen Ju, and it was even far more difficult to deal with this Roman priest he didn't want to meet.

Because he had asked Yang Ce a long time ago why he chose the Kingdom of Songhai instead of the stronger Morocco. Yang Ce's answer was...Sanghai is suitable for growing rice, they grow that kind of rice, and the things in Songhai are good eat.

The Han State is not like the traditional country imagined by the imperial court. They are more like a Commonwealth Federation in the feudal era, but it is not the land but the sea that makes them feudal. The kings of the Han State and the relatively independent general Yang Ce Then Lin Afeng was enshrined as the co-lord, and Emperor Ming Yao was respected as Zhengshuo. Apart from that, there were no taboos.

Everyone has their own territory and sea area, and other Han kings cannot intervene without invitation, and they are even more extreme than Daming itself in respecting Daming as Zhengshuo.

The so-called Zhengshuo is the only orthodoxy, but this orthodoxy will face new challenges after the world grows larger. The huge productivity of Ming Dynasty determines that the Ming court, Siyang military government, and businessmen cannot communicate with other regimes with absolute orthodoxy. , and gradually transformed into mutual respect for commerce.

But the Han Dynasty did not. Their pirate background and no extra production capacity except for warships, bird guns, and artillery determined that they focused more on military expansion than communication.

The market is useless in their hands. Everything they need can be supplied through Chen Mu of the Eastern Military Mansion and Lin Daogan of Phoenix Port under the jurisdiction of the Western Military Mansion. They only need minerals.

Naturally, the unified Zhengshuo theory was very useful to them, and even became a belief that must be followed naturally, because this was the actual legitimacy of their practice of piracy.

This belief applied to the interior of the Han Dynasty is: the world is so big that all regimes that are listed alongside the Ming Dynasty are Fans, captives, barbarians, and thieves, and they can be attacked, challenged, conquered, and destroyed.

Without this belief, they are pirates, but once they have this belief, they are the Han Navy of the Ming Dynasty.

The sea area under Yang Ce's jurisdiction is the west coast of Africa, where he can do whatever he wants. If he wants to serve as the captain of Sanghai, he can also be the captain. If he wants to train soldiers, he can train soldiers. Even Lin Afeng can't control him, let alone Say Chen Ju.

Therefore, it was very difficult for Chen Ju to fulfill Zhu Da'ar's request. Before he went to sea, he tried his best to persuade Yang Ce to stop the military operations against the Mediterranean Sea. It was impossible for him to give up supporting the Songhai Kingdom.

Only Chen Mu can do all this.

In any case, at least Judal got Chen Ju's promise that when he was escorting the Wanli Fleet, Yang Ce would not take any action against Morocco.

As for the rest, it depends on whether Chen Ju can fulfill Chen Mu's expectations this time around the Mediterranean Sea.

When Spain's Naples commander Pedro, who was missing two fingers, returned to the port of Fiumicino, the port's defense force had been replaced by soldiers from the old Ming army's Shenji Battalion.

Behind Pedro, continuous bells came from the distant city of Rome: "You send greetings to Rome with the sound of cannons, and the Roman priests responded with all the bells, please enter the city."

The Ming eunuch Chen Ju in armor led the Moroccan eunuch Judal out of the tent on the beach, frowned at Pedro's words, and said: "I'm afraid the general has to go back again, he doesn't need to ring the bell, he needs to ring the bell." Come pick me up, because I am not a general of Ming Dynasty, and I am not here to occupy Rome."

"He is the priest of your omnipotent god, and I am the envoy of hundreds of millions of subjects to support the emperor. We are not big figures. Since he doesn't want to see me, and I don't want to see him, but the situation is compelling, why not give each other some time?" face."

"If he's just a coward and really doesn't want to leave the city, Chen won't force him. For three days, I will use this place to camp for three days. If he doesn't leave the city, I will leave."

　good evening!

　　
　
(End of this chapter)