open sea

Chapter 846 Trafficker
The most trusted admiral under Lin Feng's command besides Duke Zhuang is Yang Ce. During the same period of time when he was training the flag army in Beiyang, Yang Ce trained a group of pirates with almost the same drills on an island thousands of miles away from Daming.

At this very moment, the Admiral Yang Ce is leading the fleet he trained on the other side of the African continent to carry out the important mission entrusted to him by the Han Dynasty - selling salt and cloth.

Selling salt and cloth sounds low-end, but in fact, it is a very high-end thing when the amount is huge. For example, in West Africa, salt and cotton cloth can be exchanged for gold, and silk from Ming Dynasty can be equivalent to gold.

Yang Ce led the most powerful fleet under the command of the four kings of the Han Dynasty, with [-] elite soldiers from Fujian and Luzon. They received an average of one and a half years of training. Yang Ce seems very crude, but it is still enough to make them stand proudly among the many armies of the Han Dynasty.

Limited by the reserves of gunpowder and muskets, the [-] musketeers fired less than [-] rounds of lead bullets at most, and the artillerymen fired an average of [-] cannonballs, but they could arrange more training for physical fitness, spear formation, and spear throwing. Among them, fortifications and hand-to-hand combat, adapting measures to local conditions allows them to have extraordinary combat power.

Although the training can be saved, it is fair to say that the armies of various countries have drawn 200 people from the regular army, and they may not be able to defeat them pirates on the battlefield.

Africa is rich in gold. Regardless of the chaotic chiefs in the south or the three major countries in the west, Songhai, Mali, and Benin, salt is a very important hard currency, because they do not know how to cook salt. This daily necessities has always been the focus of foreign trade.

At Songhai, they traded mainly gold, slaves, ivory, spices, kola fruit, and cotton, and bought salt, weapons, horses, copper, glassware, sugar, and North African shoes and wool.

Doing business does not require a fleet. Lin Afeng values ​​this rich land, and cares more about this route. The area is complex and difficult for large troops to enter. Attacking is a sign of insanity. Trade is more likely to bring wealth than conquest.

But there is a problem with the trade ahead of them - there are many competitors.

The Spaniards, Portuguese, English, and Ottomans all do business here. Salt is too low-tech for many countries, and other handicrafts are difficult for Han to compete with others, so its status is very embarrassing.

The weapons and horses of the Han Kingdom were not enough for themselves, and it was impossible to sell them to others. The pirates did not like farming, and it was impossible to make sugar. They could only survive by cooking some sea salt, but there were so many competitors.

But they are pirates, in Lin Feng's words: kill them, won't there be no competition?
Therefore, Yang Ce's goal is very clear, clear out all the goods on the ship from the chaotic chiefs in the south, and then go north along the coast around the west of the mainland. The goods were sold in West Africa.

This job is very addictive. Not to mention the huge profits brought by the prosperous commercial routes, even important materials such as weapons, war horses, copper, and iron are delivered to their door. The only downside is that Yang Ce finds that he can't go back.

The longer the route was cut off, the higher the price of the goods in the three major trading countries, and he couldn't get away from the constant ships coming from the north.

In fact, he only has seventeen small flying sharks of [-] materials and five lucky boats of [-] materials. This kind of strength is nothing to the navy, but to those European businessmen who only have one or two ships?

Oh, this is a nightmare.

You can't escape, you can't fight, you can't fight, don't mention how annoying it is.

Of course, few people would have the chance to hate Yang Ce, except those who slipped through the net.

For example, right now, Yang Ce's subordinates are still blocking the route in the north, and he personally leads three flying shark ships equipped with the most artillery to chase a notorious English dealer. The speed of the slave ship is very fast, and his pursuit is all over Africa On the west coast, until the slave trader arrived at his destination, Congo, there was no chance of catching up with the war.

By this time the chase had failed, the pirates knew what they were here for and the slaves were of no use to the pirates.

But Yang Ce couldn't swallow this breath, he wanted to kill the three ships.

Not for wealth, but for comfort.

But when it came time to do it, the pirates were timid again.

"Admiral, many people, many people were driven from the forest to the shore!"

The voice of the watchman holding the dilapidated binoculars on the mast was trembling. When Yang Ce looked over, there were really many people.

They were already dark, and there were hundreds of thousands of them. Those slaves with ropes tied to their arms and ankles, with only a piece of cloth covering their bodies, stood side by side. Even Yang Ce couldn't tell the difference. How many thousands of people are standing by the side?

"It won't be less than five thousand, what are they going to do?" Yang Ce frowned while looking at the coastline from afar, and blurted out while leaning on the side of the boat: "Those three boats can't even hold 400 people, what are they driving so many people out for?"

The pirates knew that these traders from Europe bought and sold slaves. They did not rely on plundering, because they were not an army, and a small amount of firearms could not pose too much threat to bows, arrows and spears when they were not large-scale. African tribes are not American, they also use iron For weapons, the price of looting is too high, not to mention plateaus, rivers and tropical rainforests make it difficult for them to enter.

So South Africa has become their paradise. Experienced slave traders will use cheap handicrafts to win the favor of the chiefs, and then sell weapons to support one or several chiefs in fighting. When they win, they will buy all the captives at a very low price. down.

These slaves also have a place to go. The Potosi silver mine in Spain has been dying. There is a serious shortage of manpower for mining. Every year, [-] to [-] slaves are sold there and will eventually die there.

But at what cost would these people be transported to another continent?

Yang Ce saw through the binoculars that the slave trader he was chasing ordered his subordinates to pick and choose from the crowd, and finally picked out less than 500 people, and with the assistance of the chief's soldiers, they drove them onto the boat with spears.

A smile appeared on Yang Ce's face. He said that these three ships couldn't even accommodate 400 people, but now they have to accommodate 500 people. The more people are loaded, the slower the boat will go.

He has even explained the tactics to the left and right: "We will rush up when the ship is eight miles away from the shore. They will flee to the shore, but one round of shelling can sink three ships, and the slaves on board can swim back. Not too many dead... what are they doing?"

Before Yang Ce finished speaking, he could even hear the commotion on the coast from a long distance away. When he moved his eyes to the binoculars, his eyebrows raised involuntarily, and the hairs on the back of his neck even stood up. What happened was probably one of the darkest moments in human history.

The slave trader watched with satisfaction the [-] pieces of goods he had carefully selected loaded onto the ship, and waved to his subordinates. Someone blew a whistle, and several attendants with muskets shot obliquely into the sky. The slaves were driven away with swords at their waists or spears and halberds, and then the chieftain's soldiers blocked the coast with spears, and more people joined them with spears.

There were indeed more than five thousand slaves on the coast, and the total number of captives was seven thousand and five hundred.

Now, the remaining 7000 people are worthless to them, and they plan to drive these people into the sea to drown!

　Good morning!

　　
　
(End of this chapter)