I was the emperor in the Ming Dynasty

Chapter 507 Pirates!pirate!
On the island side, although there have been a lot of twists and turns, the three parties finally gathered together.

A vigorous treasure-digging operation by nearly a thousand people began.

But what people didn't expect was that at the same time, a fleet of three brigantines was quietly approaching Tongchi Island.

The appearance of these three ships looks a little dilapidated, as if they have existed for many years and have been repaired countless times.

But the people on board were not as decayed and dilapidated as these ships. They were all gearing up, like wolves that had been hungry for a long time, full of aggressiveness.

These people are all pirates. They used to wander around Jiangsu and Zhejiang, but this time they ran to the vicinity of Liaodong for some reason.

On the leading ship, there was a man named Akagi Yoshio who was not tall but had a dark face full of murderous looks. He was a general in the Southern Dynasty of Japan when he was young.

After the defeat, he had nowhere to go, so he drifted to sea and became a famous pirate leader.

Although Japan has not yet entered the Warring States period in this era, there are not many homeless wandering samurai.

But at this time, Japan was only twenty years away from the end of the confrontation between the Southern and Northern Dynasties, and many samurai who failed back then were still alive.

Like the Japanese pirates of later generations, they are also homeless ronin, and they can only start business without capital in order to make a living.

How these people came here actually started with the confrontation between the Northern and Southern Dynasties in Japan decades ago.

Back then, after Emperor Go-Daigo wiped out the Kamakura shogunate, he carried out the first restoration of the royal government.

The so-called restoration of the royal government is to take back the power from the shogunate.

As we all know, the emperor of Japan is a symbol most of the time, and he does not have much real power in his hands.

But this Emperor Go-Daigo can also be regarded as a man of great talent, he is naturally not reconciled, and he has been a nominal emperor all his life.

So after he annihilated the Kamakura shogunate, taking advantage of his power, he planned to return power to the royal family and implemented a series of new policies, known as the Jianwu New Deal in history.

However, due to the unstable foundation of the Japanese royal family and the lack of real power in their hands, he only reused the nobles and ministers of Kyoto, and did not reuse the samurai class, the backbone of society at that time.

This led to great dissatisfaction among the samurai class.

In particular, the general Ashikaga Takaji, who helped Emperor Go-Daigo topple the curtain at that time, became dissatisfied in a rage and launched a coup d'état.

Emperor Go-Daigo was deposed from the throne, and Emperor One-day was re-supported to succeed him, who became Emperor Guangming later.

Emperor Guangming was very obedient, not only named Ashikaga Takashi as the general who conquered the barbarians, but also established the Muromachi shogunate.

Seeing that a shogunate had just been overthrown, a new one was born.

Emperor Go-Daigo, a generation of outstanding people, how could he be willing to let power go to others, so during his house arrest, he contacted many parties and subdued many people who were still loyal to him.

With the help of these people, he stole the three artifacts symbolizing imperial power, and went to Nara to establish a new regime.

So far, the situation of confrontation between the North and the South has been formed.

This opposition is more than 50 years of time.

There were four or five emperors in each of the Northern and Southern Dynasties.

Finally, in [-] A.D., after many conquests in the Southern Dynasty, its strength was weakened to the limit, and it was necessary to return the three artifacts, completely ending the situation of confrontation between the North and the South.

Although the confrontation was over, the Northern Dynasty was still in the hands of the Muromachi Shogunate. In order to prevent such a thing from happening again, they hunted down those generals who supported the Southern Dynasty.

It was when Akagi Yoshio was forced to have no other way out that year that he took his samurai to leave overseas and became a pirate.

In the first few years, Akagi Yoshio's subordinates were very entangled with a group of warriors who were good at fighting, and they were in the limelight for a while.

Frequently harassing Ming's borders.

It was precisely because of their commotion that Zhu Yuanzhang ordered many guards to be relict along the coast, and stipulated that every 500 households should set up a warship. There were [-] warships and [-] soldiers in the five sea guards.

But defense alone cannot completely wipe out the Japanese pirates.

Although Emperor Yongle later set up Japanese soldiers and Zheng He's Western Fleet successively, he was still unable to completely wipe out these cunning Japanese pirates.

In the mid-Yongle period, Yoshio Akagi's power reached its peak, with hundreds of warships of all sizes and tens of thousands of pirates under his command.

Constantly harassing the coastal areas of Koryo and Daming.

In the end, Emperor Yongle couldn't bear it anymore. In the ninth year of Yongle, Li Bin, Marquis of Fengcheng, Bo Chen of Pingjiang and others led Zhejiang and Fujian boat divisions to suppress pirates.

In the 14th year of Yongle, Cai Fu, the commander-in-chief, and others were ordered to lead hundreds of soldiers and horses to hunt down the Japanese pirates in the coastal areas of Shandong.

But for the pirates who fled away immediately after a single blow, an attack on land could not completely wipe them out.

So in the 17th year of Yongle, the Ming army took the initiative to attack, and Liu Rong, the commander-in-chief of Liaodong, seized the opportunity to lead the army to a decisive battle with Akagi Yoshio, who was the most popular at that time, in Wanghaiguo, Maxiong Island and other places.

Liu Rong first ordered people to hide, and after the pirates landed, he attacked from the side and burned most of the pirates' ships in one fell swoop.

The pirates had no way out and had to fight the Ming army.

In this battle, under the leadership of Liu Rong, the Ming army raped thousands of enemies and captured hundreds of prisoners. They completely disbanded Yoshio Akagi's pirate group and restored the rare calm in the East China Sea.

But the pirate leader Yoshio Akagi was very cunning, saw the Ming army's ambush, boarded a small boat and sneaked away, escaping his life.

Because of this great victory, Liu Rong was named Uncle Guangning, with a salary of [-] shi, a world certificate, and changed his name to Rong.

Although it has been seven or eight years since that battle, Yoshio Akagi may have been completely feared by the Ming army, or it may be that he has lost his ambition and his forces are no longer as strong as before.

This time, he didn't know where he got the information that there was a treasure hidden on Tongchi Island.

They managed to get three warships together, entangled more than 300 pirates, and planned to make a fortune.

These people are already his foundation, if he loses these people, his life will be over.

Seeing the island in sight, he suddenly found a three-masted warship of Ming Dynasty docked on the shore.

Seeing the battleship of this fateful enemy, Akagi Yoshio suddenly panicked.

"Damn it, what is that guy surnamed Lu doing? Didn't he say that there are only a few hundred aborigines on the island? How could there be Ming's warships here!"

"Leader, shall we still go to the island?"

Anyway, Yoshio Akagi was also a great pirate who once ruled all over the country. Seeing from a distance that there was no sign of Ming's warships being dispatched, he guessed in his heart that the Ming army might have already landed on the island.

If they could take advantage of the Ming army's unpreparedness and seize the Ming army's warship in one fell swoop, not only would they be able to trap the Ming army to death, but they would also be able to get a warship for nothing.

So he decreed,

"Paste it up first, and play by ear."

(End of this chapter)