Daming Yuanfu

Chapter 1913 Returning to Japan ([-]) Sweeping Wool

Is Zhu Yijun really interested in these captured warships?Yes and no.

He had indeed taken a fancy to these warships, but his real focus was not on these ships, but that he discovered a major problem in Daming that needed to be resolved urgently.

There is no navy, no professional navy.

Daming has a navy, and this navy used to be extremely brilliant in the past.Its rise and victory over Chen Youliang reached its peak in seven voyages to the West.

It never timidly fought against the Japanese pirates at its worst. Qi Jiguang once said in his early years: "The lucky boat is as tall as a city. Pushing down is like crushing a praying mantis. Fighting boats is not about fighting human power."

Zhu Yijun knew these things, so he always believed that the Daming Navy was strong enough to not be afraid of any threats at sea.

When Gao Wushi first opened the shipyard and loaded cannons on ships, Zhu Yijun wondered, is it necessary to install so many cannons on merchant ships?
When Gao Yushi surrendered Annan, he used Huang Zhiting's troops as the main attack on Lang Son and Cen Ling as Qi Kexuanguang, but secretly used the fleet to attack Thang Long with a surprise attack.

This battle originally highlighted the power of Gao Yushi's so-called "navy", but the whole court, including Zhu Yijun himself, didn't care.On the contrary, they were more concerned about the "heavenly collapse" in the battle of Lang Son, and Huang Zhiting's toughness and iron blood in commanding the war.

The final result was that when Huang Zhiting moved to Annan shortly after the war, she was granted the imperial edict by the deputy capital envoy of Annan, and the Jinghua Fleet that surprised Thang Long and forced Mo Chao to become a puppet was almost ignored by the court—although at the time, it was What high pragmatism likes to see.

After that, Jinghua's fleet almost disappeared in the eyes of the imperial court. It was not until the outbreak of the Burma War that Huang Zhiting sailed to the sea, set out from Jingang for a thousand-mile expedition, and rushed to Bagu, and then returned to the imperial court's vision.

But this time, the fleet has never encountered a war. The most glorious thing is Huang Zhiting's epic victory over Jinlou Baixiang Wang Mangyingli after the surprise attack on Bagu.Thus, the role of the fleet was once again ignored.

These two large-scale fleet dispatches could be ignored. Later, when the rebellion of the old Siamese nobles was put down, Liu Xin's raid was naturally ignored by the court.

The most recent time that Zhu Yijun paid a little attention to the movement of the sea was the Beiyang expedition to Luzon.However, the news received by the emperor and even the court was processed, and many things were specious, or they only knew one thing and did not know the other.

For example, the imperial court learned that the Beiyang Fleet's expedition to Luzon was because Luzon was subjugated, and the ancestral land was occupied by the red-haired devil Frangji.Of course, this is not the key point. The key point is that many local Han merchants were damaged in the war. Therefore, as the leader of the maritime merchants, Gao Wushi was forced to send troops to teach Frangji people a lesson.

Is this the case?Of course not, the facts are due to two other reasons: First, at that time, the "Xungui Capital Group" made an idea of ​​Iwami Ginzan in Japan, but Gao Wushi was unwilling to challenge Zhengchou at that time because he had too many soldiers to support him. Toyotomi Hideyoshi, who has been promoted, needs to divert the attention of the nobles and let them change their targets.

Second, de Villa, who was the governor of the Philippines at the time, raised the ship trade tax twice within a month, from the original 3% to 6%, and then soon announced an increase to 10%.

The 10% tax rate is highly pragmatic and firmly unacceptable to all Ming maritime merchants, but there is a compelling reason why Governor Devilla is so crazy-the Kingdom of Spain is facing three major wars at the same time this year: Spain suppresses the Netherlands The Revolution, the Anglo-Spanish War, and the Franco-Spanish War, and the kingdom had gone bankrupt twice before, and had to start taxation frantically, and Governor De Villa couldn't refuse it at all.

In any case, the imperial court always believed that this battle was mainly to protect the maritime merchants, to give Daming "awe-inspiring foreign lands", and even helped Luzon restore the country by the way, but to "survive and perish" - what Daming likes to do most, so the court Nothing prevents.

In the eyes of the Ming court, Luzon was far away, broken and small, and the court naturally did not pay much attention to this trivial matter. Therefore, although there were rumors that the fleet of the Beiyang Maritime Trade Alliance "broke the fleet of Flangji", Zhu Yijun was still just laugh it off.

In this way, the time came to the year of Renchen, and Japan invaded Korea.There is no need to repeat the process, but only related to the navy: Zhu Yijun suddenly discovered that the Japanese navy shown in the intelligence and battle reports is not weak, and even the Korean navy is fighting decently under the command of Yi Sun-shin.

He went back to the Ministry of War to find out about the situation of Daming's navy, and only then did he realize that the problem was serious.

The total number of warships of the Daming Navy is quite a lot. According to the Ministry of War, there are a total of 1000 or more than 49 warships. However, after a closer look, it is discovered that there are only [-] lucky boats that can be used as the main warships for such a large-scale navy. ship!
That's right, there are only 49 lucky boats serving in the Daming Navy all over the country!

Zhu Yijun, who was extremely shocked, immediately asked the Ministry of War to check the yellow book of naval warships from the past twenty years, and only then did he know what was going on.

From the fourth year of Longqing to the 24th year of Wanli, although the total number of warships in Ming Dynasty increased—from 720 three ships to 1000 two hundred and fifty-two ships, the number of Fuchuan, which were large warships, decreased significantly: There are 52 Dafu ships, which were almost cut in half this year.

why?This is mainly because the Japanese invasion had just been quelled during the Longqing period, and Daming still kept many large ships left over from the fight against the Japanese pirates.In the Wanli period, due to the rapid growth of Jinghua's two-ocean fleet after the opening of Longqing, the pirates in the East and South Oceans were almost wiped out in just a few years, and the sea was calm for a long time. Law and order and the detection of smuggling, rather than combat, have led to the degeneration of the Navy.

Going a step further, Zhu Yijun discovered that the degradation of the Daming Navy was not only due to the reduction in the number of Fuchuan, but also the combat effectiveness of the remaining Fuchuan.

Let’s talk about the weapons and equipment on the ship. The standard equipment of the dignified Dafu ship is actually only one Hongyi cannon, six Qianjin Flang machine, and the rest are small cannons such as bowl-mouth guns.

You must know that the Hongyi cannons on these ships are imitations of the 18-pound cannons salvaged from Western sunken ships in the early years, not the Jinghua artillery that is commonly equipped on the nine sides of the Ming army.

The so-called Qianjin Flang machine is even more unbearable. It is an outdated firearm left over from Europe in the 15th century. Launching a 3-pound projectile can hardly cause any effective damage to large ships, and it has long been abandoned by Europe, let alone compared with the current Jinghua Cannon.

In short, the Daming navy at this time has long since become a "safety navy", and the stinky fish and rotten shrimp left after beating Jinghua to clean up the pirates are still so-so. It is purely a joke to really fight a naval battle.

And this is why Chen Lin stayed in Yantai shipbuilding for a long time after he took office. No matter how urgently urged by the North Korean side, he did not move like a mountain—no ship!

As for why it is in Yantai... The North Factory of Jinghua Shipyard is here. He urgently needs a large number of warships. Who else can provide them besides Jinghua?The so-called shipbuilding is actually waiting for the goods directly in Yantai (but Jinghua only undertakes the Dafu ship, and the smaller ships are ordered from shipyards all over the country).

It is precisely because of the building of the Dafu ship in Yantai that the Pingwa fleet dispatched this time did not follow the original armament arrangement that was extremely hip-stretching, and the artillery strength on each ship was greatly improved.Although the shape of Fuchuan is actually more or less suspected of wasting tonnage, it has made great progress after all.

However, this is far from enough for Zhu Yijun. With the help of Gao Pragmatic, he has made Daming invincible for more than 20 years. How can the navy who thought it was "always very strong" be so unbearable? Can you bear it?

In Zhu Yijun's view, even though there is no threat to the security of coastal defense in Daming now because of the presence of Jinghua and the Maritime Trade Alliance, that does not mean that the Daming Navy will be able to put weapons and guns into storage and release horses as it has done in the past 20 years. Nanshan.

In Zhu Yijun's eyes, the Jinghua Liangyang Fleet, or the Maritime Trade Alliance Fleet, is like the generals and servants in the Ming army. Everyone knows that they are actually the main force, but the main force belongs to the main force. These servants account for the total number of personnel in the entire Ming military system. It is still limited. In theory, the million guards left by Zhu Yuanzhang are the foundation.

To put it bluntly, if there were no million guards, and it was all dependent on the guards of the generals, why would the emperor command them?Therefore, Zhu Yijun realized that the Daming Navy must be revived.

However, revitalizing the Daming Navy is not just a matter of lip service, the most critical issue in this matter is to have money!Although Zhu Yijun doesn't have accurate information on how much the pragmatic Liangyang Fleet spends, he still has a general understanding—the Jinghua Shipyard has a public price!
However, it was this public price that made Zhu Yijun, the Ninth Five-Year Master, grit his teeth when he saw it: a single armed transport ship costs 5000 taels of silver, a single second-class cruiser costs 12 taels of silver, and a single first-class cruiser costs 16 taels of silver. The cost is 24 taels of silver, the cost of a third-tier battleship is 35 taels of silver, and the cost of a second-tier battleship is [-] taels of silver!
In Zhu Yijun's view, the price of armed transport ships is already exaggerated, and the prices of the latter pure warships are even more outrageous.Look at those second-tier battleships, the price of one ship is actually enough for an army of [-] to fight a battle for about two or three months! [Note: The land-washing of the cannons in the battle of fortifications does not count. ]
How can this be afforded?Gao Pragmatism can afford to play because the main business of his two-ocean fleet is actually maritime trade, and naval warfare is a kind of haystacking and hare hunting, just by the way.If you don’t believe me, look at the proportion of pure warships in the two ocean fleets. Almost every time there is a large-scale naval battle, there are dozens of armed transport ships paired with a few warships.

This shows that even if the wealth and wealth are as high as they are pragmatic, warships can't come like an army, they can only be used as the core of the fleet for decisive battles, and usually rely on armed transport ships as a panacea.

As a very practical person, Zhu Yijun's attitude in doing things is of course more pragmatic.He believes that the Daming Navy does not need to build giant ships like Jinghua, and even if they want to build one or two ships as flagships, the main means of improvement is to build ships similar to armed transport ships. "Extremely high cost performance".

To put it simply, as long as the ship is not too bad, we are playing with quantity.

Quantity, this factor is the most important factor in the construction of Chinese naval forces in the past dynasties. In the original history, the so-called naval battles of the Daming Navy that defeated England and the Netherlands were all based on quantity.

For example, after the rise of the Dutch "Sea Coachman", compared with Europe, Dutch ships in East Asia generally travel alone along the coast of China, serving as merchant ships and warships.Sometimes they act as merchants and sometimes as pirates, and there are rarely large-scale gatherings.

Relatively speaking, the Dutch East India Company would assemble a certain number of ships only when confronting the Ming Dynasty navy head-on.The two largest ones were the Battle of Penghu, where 7 warships were assembled; the other was in Liaoluo Bay, where 11 light fast ships and 50 Chinese pirate ships were assembled.

A comparison must be made here. At the same time, in order to cope with the British threat, the Netherlands greatly expanded its navy, with 120 main warships, 2 sailors, and 6000 artillery pieces.

Even in the first battle, the smallest of the three Anglo-Dutch wars, the Netherlands dispatched 44 warships, and the largest battleship in the Netherlands at the time, the Seven Provinces, was equipped with 80 cannons, including 36 12-pound guns and 24-pound guns. 16, 18 14-pounders, 12 12-pounders, 6 26-pounders.

At that time, the most common mid-level warships in the Dutch fleet had an average of 50 cannons, among which more than half of the cannons weighed more than 18 pounds (equivalent to Ming imitation Hongyi cannons).

Among the Dutch navy in East Asia, many ships have less than 30 guns, which is at the level of a light warship in Europe. It is also an insurmountable obstacle in the eyes.

Nan Juyi, the governor of Fujian who had personally fought against the Dutch, was deeply touched by the European warships at that time. He recorded the Dutch ship in his memorial "The History of Fujian and Fujian": "Seeing the surging sea, all difficulties will be rescued. The barbarian boats are strong and big, and can poison people ten miles away, but our boats will crush everything. Even if there are hundreds of thousands of water rhinos, the skills can't be used."

In fact, the Battle of Penghu was not as glorious as many people in later generations thought.In this battle, Nan Juyi first used the method of treachery—of course, it can also be understood as a soldier who is not tired of deceit—to detain Dutch officers during negotiations, and then mobilized more than 1 people and 200 ships to besiege the Penghu stronghold.

At that time, there were only more than 900 defenders in the Netherlands, and due to time reasons, only simple fortifications were built, which were far inferior to the bastions that were already everywhere in Europe.In this way, the Ming army took a lot of effort to defeat it, and even finally let some Dutch escape by boat.

This battle cost 17 taels of silver in military pay, and it was fought so hard despite having an absolute superiority in troops that even Nan Juyi himself didn't have the nerve to show it off.

Although the Dutch fleet has caused such a shock to the Daming Navy, in fact, as I said just now, the Dutch ships in East Asia are far from the main force of the Netherlands in Europe in terms of scale, size, and firepower.Compared with the Netherlands' hundreds of warships and thousands of cannons in Europe, the Netherlands' East Asian navy is the size of a guerrilla.

Why does Gao Pragmatism maintain such a large two-ocean fleet?Isn't it just to prevent European sea robbers!Is it still for the sake of Japan?
Both scale and saving money are needed, the dozens of Japanese naval warships in front of Zhu Yijun are naturally not for nothing, not to mention that in his opinion, Gao Yushi really has no interest in these ships.

The emperor is so shameless, Zhou Yong and Song Yingchang have nothing to say, they can only euphemistically say that the emperor has handed over the full power of the aid of the Korean War to Pingwa, and if these ships are to be requisitioned by the navy, it seems that they should The prophet will meet Mr. Gao Ge.

How did they know that Zhu Yijun was only afraid of opposition from the government and the public, but he was not afraid of Gao Pragmatic's opposition - he was very familiar with this young character, as long as he had a legitimate reason, he would never be stingy.

"Well, since all the ministers have no objection, I will immediately ask the supervisor of rites to make an order to inform the Jingchen about this matter, and let him make the balance." Zhu Yijun showed a satisfied smile on his round face, and he even looked Some proud.
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(End of this chapter)