open sea

Chapter 900 Not Bad
When the Ming army was vigorously digging earth, building roads and transporting iron in Pingxiang, Duke Alva of Mexico City was moving his troops to the official road, looking west across the border with great anxiety and expectation, waiting for the transferred company to arrive. .

The truce comes step by step. It has never been said that a truce can immediately enter a state of truce. Even if the treaty has been signed, the land has been handed over, and even if the trade boom has ended, we can only try our best to become trade friendly on the border between Ming and Western countries. The country does its part.

Only when their army can really come out of Changsheng, can it show that the two sides have established a foundation of mutual trust.

What Alva was afraid of was not that the Ming army would attack this company. No one would be naive enough to ambush a company with more than 300 points that neither threatened nor had valuable goods to escort. It will bring the soon-to-be good diplomacy to a stalemate.

A little spark can rekindle the frontier.

Although the Duke of Alva had enough troops to cope with the First World War, after summing up the lessons learned from the defeat of Bernal and Chen Mu, this huge army composed mostly of veterans who suppressed the Dutch revolution added ten musket companies, with In response to the strength of the battle, they had repelled the German and French armies led by Prince William of Orange and Louis of Nassau in the Netherlands, but the situation did not allow him to go to war.

The impending war of the Portuguese succession beckoned him.

This left the Spanish Iron Dukes useless in New Spain, instead working towards peace on the frontier.

"We're not doing badly."

The old Duke's legs and feet are not good enough. He was born in a wealthy family and lived a life full of wine and meat, which caused him to suffer from gout just like the king he served. He never left his cane in the mansion, but he still had to show his strength outside Mexico City, so he had to bear the pain on a horse.

Beside him is Almansa, the former governor of New Spain. After Yang Tingxiang entered Mexico City, the West India Committee's right to speak in affairs decreased rapidly, so that Almansa could easily sit back without any external force from Chen Mu. The position of Governor of New Spain - of course, only Vice-Governor in the context of the Ming garrison in Mexico City.

"The seventeen plantation owners on the border have recruited Chinese language teachers from the other side, and some businessmen can also freely cross the border to buy goods in the villages over there."

Almansa said to the preoccupied old Duke: "Although there is still some hostility, as long as our people abide by their laws, the people of Ming Kingdom can accept us."

"There is no stupid war. The goods produced by the villages of the Ming Dynasty are dozens of times that of the aborigines, and several times that of our plantations. As long as we have silver, we can exchange them for all kinds of goods on the border. King Can get more wealth than before."

"If you accept Chen Mu's conditions from the beginning, if Bei..."

"Your Excellency Governor." Duke Alva turned his head immediately: "I know you hate Bell who expelled you, but with all due respect, the real wrong decision he made was not to expel you, the governor who negotiated an agreement with the Ming commander."

"He was just wrong because he was dazzled by anger before he was ready, and launched a correct war at the wrong time. What does it mean that the people of the Ming Dynasty can accept us, eh? If you mean acceptance, it is like we accept Indians If people are like that, yes, the people of Ming Kingdom can accept us.”

"It was the war in Peru that brought down the level of officers in New Spain so badly that they thought all enemies were as vulnerable as the Indians. We lost the war, but we learned enough from Acapulco that now every legion There were three batteries of muskets to ensure adequate firepower in battle."

Almansa did not agree with the Duke's words: "But if there is no war, we can still learn from the Ming army. Thousands of soldiers will not die in the war, and Acapulco still belongs to us. Chen Mu started Just want us to recognize their place in the North."

"When he had only a few thousand soldiers, of course he only wanted the north. The Chinese monarch sent him one hundred thousand immigrants in the second year. Even if you agreed to his request, one hundred thousand immigrants flocked to the north. Do you think Chen Mu Won't I show you a new treaty?"

"We discovered the New World. People have been here for decades. If you want to give this place away, you should be grateful to Bernal. He saved you from death."

Duke Alva frowned, and his feet began to ache again. He said: "If there is no war, large areas of land will be handed over, how do you think the West India Council will deal with you?"

"Yesterday company captain Garcia sent someone to send a letter, saying that Fu Yuan, the commander of the Ming army stationed here, wanted to entertain him. The Ming army was not friendly to them along the way. They tried their best to avoid conflicts with the Ming general who caused trouble behind. The uniform shames our soldiers."

"After I leave here, do you have a way to keep His Royal Highness's New Spain?"

Alva saw that Almansa did not speak anymore, and he did not hear Almansa's straightforward answer. Everyone knew that whether or not New Spain could be kept did not depend on their ideas.

None of them knew what Ming Dynasty really looked like, and only the news they got intermittently in those details could gradually fill up the image of Ming Dynasty in the minds of Spaniards.

And this image becomes especially frightening when they are compared with themselves.

The first time Columbus landed in the New World, he used three ships with 87 sailors on board to cross the ocean.

In the second year, his fleet approved by the royal family expanded to 500 ships, transporting more than [-] royal officials, craftsmen, and soldiers to the New World and began to develop their careers.

Magui landed on the New World for the first time, using dozens of ships with thousands of soldiers and sailors on board to cross the ocean.

Then Chen Mu came, with more than 200 ships and nearly [-] soldiers, not only landed in various parts of the north and west coast, but even fought a war with Spain in the middle of the New World in only half a year.

Also in the second year, the Chinese monarch issued an immigration decree. Hundreds of ships sailed from the distant Ming Dynasty to form the largest fleet in history, transporting [-] immigrants to the New World.

To be honest, such news sounds weak.

It has been nearly 80 years since the Portuguese landed in Brazil, and their colonization in Brazil has been going on for more than 40 years, but now there are only 2000 Portuguese immigrants in Brazil.

If it is said that the natives of South America thought the Spaniards were gods in the early years because they could ride horses and use muskets, then most of the Spaniards now also think that the people of the Ming Dynasty were gods... because they would not die of scurvy.

"This result is not bad, Your Excellency the Duke." Almansa was not discouraged by the danger of New Spain, he said: "I will let the Ming Dynasty need us, as long as Potosi can dig silver, as long as the domestic It wouldn't be a bad result if we could get the iron, as long as we'd buy Ming people's goods—they just want to make money, and we'd get what we need."

　Good morning!

　　
　
(End of this chapter)