Back to the end of Ming Dynasty to be a warlord

Chapter 519 Declaring War on the Dutch
The new book "The Rise of Great Powers 1900" is for collection.

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In the second half of the sixth year of Longwu, Yang Chao focused his energy on encouraging production.

But the military was not forgotten either.

Under the bitter battle of Li Wuliu Shandong Corps and Wang Pu Henan Corps, the north blocked the main force of the Eight Banners and stabilized the front line in the Kaifeng area and the Hutuo River line before mobilizing many male troops to go south.

After many male troops went south, Yang Chao appointed him as the governor of the Hunan Corps, coordinating the Lu Mo Department in Changsha and Wuchang, restraining the Xie Fei Department in Jiangxi, and the Song Kun Department in Guangxi. Hong Chengchou launched an offensive.

It took half a year and the scramble for one city and one pool finally drove Hong Chengchou out of Hubei, wiped out [-] Hong troops, and captured [-] people.

Then the army went to rest.

In the seventh year of Longwu, Yang Chao will launch an attack that shocks Sun Kewang. He wants to completely defeat Sun Kewang in the first battle, and demands that the troops capture Sun Kewang alive. He wants to judge Sun Kewang and beat him into a national sinner.

After Li Dingguo rested in Guangxi for two months, he couldn't wait to enter Yunnan. He was anxious to fight back to Yunnan, and then went to Burma to welcome Emperor Longwu back.

Although Li Dingguo's military strength is only 2, these people have fought with him through life and death, and turned into an extremely united army.This is really ironic. Sun Kewang's army has also been fighting with him for a long time, but it is like loose sand, while Li Dingguo's army is becoming more and more condensed, just like fine steel after continuous forging.

The difference between them is mainly due to people's hearts. Li Dingguo fought and charged at the front, shared joys and sorrows with the soldiers, and had great prestige, but Sun Kewang could not do this. But the most important thing is that Li Dingguo's army always had clear goals. It was the Northern Expedition, and now it is to welcome back the emperor. The goal is the same, and the whole army is united as one. Such an army is naturally an iron-clad army.

So after Sun Kewang entered Yunnan, Wu Sangui's [-] soldiers couldn't stop them at all, and they kept retreating. Finally, they had to give up Yunnan and retreat to Guizhou to join forces with Sun Kewang.

Sun Kewang had no choice but to accept Wu Sangui. The first was that they faced the pressure from Yang Chao. Yang Chao had publicly declared in the newspaper that he would capture Sun Kewang alive. Although he sent people to contact Yang Chao three times and proposed various conditions, Yang Chao did not If he refused straight away, even if Sun Kewang was willing to join Yang Chao, Yang Chao would not accept it, which would be tantamount to forcing Sun Kewang to the side of Man Qing.

But what about this?

When Sun Kewang was on the side of the Ming Dynasty, he did not make any effort in the Northern Expedition. Now he is on the side of the Qing Dynasty. When Yang Chao attacked Hong Chengchou fiercely, he also did not support him.

Although the infantry was launching an offensive, Yang Chao did not increase the strength of the infantry. In Yang Chao's view, the army was enough, and a million troops was enough to destroy the Qing. It is better to increase the combat power than to increase the number endlessly, so Training was strengthened, and at the same time, Zheng Yongwang and Sun Changfu's two armies went north from time to time to fight with Wang Pu, Li Wuliu and others to exercise their combat effectiveness.

Apart from the army, Yang Chao plans to support the navy.

Yang Chao's navy is now very objective. In the past few years, he has received more than 30 sea-going ships of 80 materials from Longjiang Shipyard and Treasure Shipyard, and more than 120 sea-going ships from the Dutch. Now there are [-] ships. There are two big ships, twenty of which are eight thousand warships, and one hundred four thousand warships.

Three fleets were formed, one resident in Zhoushan Islands, one in Wusongkou, and one in Nanjing.

Jiang Fan is the commander of the navy and is based in Wusongkou, Shi Lang, who has experience in naval warfare, is based in Zhoushan, and Wu Risheng leads the navy in Nanjing.

These three fleets, not to mention being placed on the Yangtze River, even if they enter the sea, they are also a force that is difficult to match in East Asia at present. Apart from the Zheng Group, Yang Chao's navy is stronger, that is, the number of ships of the Dutch , but only more than 40 ships.

But most of the Zhengs are small boats. Although the number is as high as a thousand, the main gunships are only a hundred or so, and the number of artillery is not large. The idea of ​​strong ships and sharp guns.

Yang Chao's number of warships this year may reach [-]. He purchased [-] large ships of [-] materials from Treasure Shipyard, forty large ships of [-] materials, and purchased another [-] large ships of [-] materials from the Dutch. Two hundred warships and three hundred merchant ships were purchased at the same time as transport ships.

It can be seen that Yang Chao's procurement is tilted towards Daming's own shipyard.

Under the management of Yao Jiangtou in the past few years, the scale of Longjiang Shipyard has become larger and larger, and it has undertaken the main task of building Yangchao warships. At the same time, it has restarted the production of Treasure Shipyard, but it is still not as good as the Dutch shipyard.

The Dutch built a large shipyard in Taiwan, which can produce hundreds of large ships every year. They have always hoped that Yang Chao will increase his purchases, but apart from warships, Yang Chao did not buy a merchant ship from them. However, the Zheng family purchased a large number of ships from them.

The Dutch shipyard is not only large in scale, but also very efficient. Yang Chao purchased warships from Longjiang Shipyard at a price of 5 taels. Yao Jiangtou’s profit was only 1 taels of silver, but he bought the Dutch ship with 3 taels. , they can still get 1 taels of profit.

The cost advantage of the Dutch is obvious.

In order to find out the secrets of the Dutch, Yang Chao sent many spies to Taiwan through Zheng's channel, and also sent craftsmen from the Longjiang Shipyard to visit the Dutch shipyard under the banner of ordering for the Navy.

But they still can't learn the things of the Dutch. All kinds of standardized processes, even standardized operations, are still not available to Longjiang Shipyard.

Of course, the Dutch shipyards are not as good as their local shipyards in the Netherlands.

In order to build the Taiwan shipyard, the Dutch recruited a dozen craftsmen in the Netherlands, but these are managers, not directly in charge of production, they are all engineers, real technicians, the Dutch recruited from India, and recruited more than 1000 people.

Don't underestimate India. In this era, India's productivity is not bad. They have many large shipyards along the coast, and they are all private shipyards. Later generations infer that India has also produced the germs of capitalism.

It's a pity that India can't produce pirates like the Zheng Group. They have strong shipbuilding capabilities, but they can't resist the invasion of Western pirates.

I heard that the way the Dutch hired Indian craftsmen was to go directly and rob these shipbuilders, and then recruited a large number of carpenters from Taiwan to cooperate, and produced a large number of warships. In fact, there are also large shipyards along the coast of China, and there are also craftsmen. It is a pity that the large shipyards along the coast of China basically belong to the Zheng family. They dare not snatch the Dutch if they have eight guts, so they can only grab the Indians who are farther away.

Dutch management methods, skilled Indian craftsmen, and a large number of Taiwanese carpenters who do odd jobs, this is the secret of the high efficiency of Dutch shipyards. Obviously, it mainly lies in management, and management is the most difficult to learn.In addition, it is impossible for people to stay here to learn, so they have never learned.

Yang Chao could only let Carpenter Yao figure it out on his own, and told him that the protection period could not be extended indefinitely, next year Yang Chao could only pay 4 taels for a sea-going ship of [-] materials, that is, one material. The price of twelve taels was already one-third higher than what was given to the Dutchman, and Yao Jiangtou didn't have any complaints.

The reason why Yang Chao vigorously expanded the navy is of course not without purpose. Although he paid more attention to the navy before, it was mainly due to the needs of Jiangfang, so the scale of expansion is not too large. It is the expansion of dozens or even ten ships every year, but This year, it will double at once, but there is no reason for it.

Inspired by Zheng Chenggong's attack on Shanhaiguan, Shi Lang, who was in Zhoushan, couldn't sit still. He strongly suggested that Yang Chao use the sea as his way and go north to attack the Qing Dynasty.

He suggested stationing a fleet in Shandong, starting from Shandong, and crossing the Bohai Sea to attack Tianjin. Shi Lang was willing to issue a military order, expressing that he would not only attack Tianjin, but also Shanhaiguan.

Shi Lang's fighting spirit was good, but Yang Chao didn't fully accept it. Attacking by sea was useless in Yang Chao's view. Later generations of British attacked Tianjin and won the Opium War, but there was a special reason for that, because the British After the people captured Tianjin, the Manchu emperor ran away.

But this time when Yang Chao came to Tianjin by land, didn't Dorgon run away? From time to time, Yang Chao knew very well that unless the warship could go directly to Beijing, the navy would not be able to defeat the Manchus. .

So Yang Chao didn't station a navy in Shandong, but just maintained cruises and maintained the sea trade between Shandong and Jiangnan.

Yang Chao’s purpose of building a navy is not to attack Tianjin, nor is it to attack Shanhaiguan. Yang Chao is going to attack the Northeast, and go directly to the lair of the Qing Dynasty. Yang Chao is not tempted to attack Beizhili. The troops in Hunan are not retreating north. Yang Chao If you don't believe that he went to fight Shenyang, the Manchu and Qing courts would remain indifferent.

If they retreated northward, it would give Li Wuliu an opportunity. If they didn't retreat northward, Yang Chao would directly take root in the northeast, build a few strong castles, station [-] troops, and see how they would return to the northeast in the future.

Tell Shi Lang directly that he intends to send Shi Lang to fight Shenyang and dig up the ancestral graves of Nurhachi and Huang Taiji. This kid immediately became excited and desperately trained the navy recruited from Zhoushan area, ready to go out at any time.

The area around the Zhoushan Islands, including Hangzhou Bay, has always had a tradition of sailing. In the past, Mingzhou Port, located in Ningbo Prefecture, was the largest port in China during the Tang and Song Dynasties.

Therefore, Shi Lang, who was stationed in Zhoushan, had sufficient conditions to recruit sailors.

Under Yang Chao's orders, Shi Lang plans to recruit [-] sailors and speed up training. As long as these people learn how to drive ships, they can send troops to Liaodong.

One hundred thousand sailors seems to be an impossible task. The Ming Dynasty was a country with a sea ban. It seems that no one can enter the sea. It seems that no one knows how to sail.

But the real situation was just the opposite. It took Shi Lang only one month to recruit enough sailors, and all of them were qualified sailors who lived at sea all year round.

People in later generations only know that there was a sea ban in the Ming and Qing Dynasties, but they don't know that the sea ban in the Ming Dynasty is very different from the sea ban in the Manchu Qing Dynasty.

Before the Ming Dynasty, the reason why Ningbo became a big port was absolutely related to the customs and customs of Fujian and Zhejiang. Both Zhejiang and Fujian are mountainous provinces, and there are many fishing villages along the coast.

Although the Ming Dynasty also strictly prohibited maritime trade, and there was a ban on not going to the sea, the Emperor of the Ming Dynasty obviously did not have the courage of Kang Mazi, who dared to kill people dozens of miles along the coast, and the civil officials of the Ming Dynasty were not as cold-blooded as the civil officials of the Qing Dynasty.

Officials of the Ming Dynasty recorded: "At the beginning of the country, there was a law that prohibits going to the sea. But every month when yellow croakers are caught, there are thousands of huge ships, all of which are prohibited. If it’s difficult, which one is better for you.”

This is the reason. There are many fishermen along the coast of Zhejiang. Before the yellow croaker fishing season, the fishermen go out to sea with big boats.

Although the officials wanted to ban it, "the discussants are always desperate, and the situation is difficult, and they can't bear it." The officials of Daming obviously don't have the heart to attack the people of Daming, and they can't bear to see the people without food and clothing.

In the later Manchu Qing Dynasty, the ruling class was the horse people, and the officials were all shameless people who surrendered. These ruling groups composed of cold-blooded nomads and Han Chinese dregs obviously did not care too much about the livelihood of coastal fishermen. Kang Mazi was praised by literati as One emperor through the ages, but killing all the fishermen within [-] miles of the coast, this is indeed the one emperor through the ages.

If the Emperor Ming did not have such courage, the effect of the sea ban would not be complete, at least it would not be able to prohibit fishermen from fishing in the sea, and the fishermen were often landless farmers who had no choice but to go to the sea to fight the wind and waves, so they were the most difficult.

It's not surprising that Shi Lang raised the recruiting flag and quickly recruited enough sailors.

While Shi Lang was actively training and taking these people out to sea almost every day to get them used to sailing in the open sea, something happened.

Shi Lang personally came to Nanjing to plead guilty. Of course, the plea is false, but the pleading is true. He hoped that Yang Chao would send him to kill all the Dutchmen.

What happened to the Dutch?
After Yang Chao made some inquiries, he was also furious. The ocean-going ships of the Dutch East India Company attacked Haining, a city in Hangzhou Bay, killing several villages and hundreds of people.

It was already December, and Yang Chao didn't plan to use troops this year, and next year he would only use troops against the Manchus, but he didn't expect to attack the Dutch.

Why did the Dutch attack the people in Hangzhou Bay? The purpose was nothing more than looting.

Two large ships and three hundred sailors raided a village near Haining County, killed many people and robbed many things, and then rushed to Haining County, where they were repelled by the military trainers.

Jiangning is the Haiyan County of the later generations, a county magistrate by the sea. It is rich in fishing and salt production.

As a result, Dutch bandits were attracted.

Yang Chao recruited Nassau.

Seeing Nassau coming in a hurry, Yang Chao threw a list in his face.

Nassau picked up the list and looked at it. He had already heard about the incident in Haining County. He knew that it was serious. He knew that Yang Chao had always been an official who cared for the people. If something like this happened, he knew that it would definitely affect the East India Company. benefit.

(End of this chapter)