Haisheng Mingdi

Chapter 739 Sending troops to Japan
"Send troops to Japan?"

At noon, when the emperor had dinner, he called Zhu Chenggong to have dinner with him.Every morning, the internal affairs office will send out the list of ministers who asked to meet that day, and it is up to the emperor to decide whether to summon him or not.

As soon as Zhu Chenggong uttered his words, he said that he was going to send troops to Japan.

"Your Majesty, Japan has been very dishonest recently. The Shimadzu family of the Satsuma domain and the Matsuura family of the Edo domain have secretly organized many Japanese pirates to rob at sea recently, which has seriously threatened our routes to Japan. Japanese pirates have even appeared. on the coast of Taiwan."

"As the Royal Navy, we must not sit back and watch the Japanese pirates be so rampant. I think that instead of looking for these Japanese pirates everywhere, it is better to capture the thief and the king, and directly destroy their nests. This can be done once and for all. And I heard that the Japanese kingdom has recently restricted trade with Ming everywhere. , banned the export of gold, and reduced the export of silver and copper. Originally, 1000 million catties of Japanese copper flowed into our Daming Dynasty a year, but now they only export a million catties.

Last month, the Japanese Tokugawa shogunate unreasonably seized some of my copper merchant ships from Daming, claiming that our copper sales were prohibited, and directly confiscated all the copper we bought. If the imperial court does not fight back, they will become more and more rampant. .

The imperial court raises soldiers for thousands of days, and uses them for a while. How can we wait for the navy to spend countless money and food from the imperial court every year, so how can it be useless?Please allow your majesty to let the minister lead the navy to send troops to Japan to teach those arrogant Japanese people a lesson. "

Zhu Yihai couldn't help but put down the knife and fork for cutting the deer steak.

He felt a little dazed.

He felt that the progress was a little too fast. Two years earlier, he was still fighting against the Qing Dynasty with Japan. At that time, some ministers even proposed to borrow troops from Japan. Later, when the situation improved, he still actively contacted Japan and conducted friendly trade with them.

Unexpectedly, it has only been a few years, and now the Ming Navy actually proposes to send troops to Japan and force them to open their ports for trade. This is a bit like an opium war.

Daming is already this strong?

Or are Zhu Chenggong and the others overconfident?
Or seeing that the Royal Army has made great strides all the way in the past two years, beating up the Tartars, driving them out of the pass, and making military exploits repeatedly, are you envious now?

In the past two years, the court, especially the military, has been quite controversial about the navy.Many generals, especially the generals of the army, feel that the navy is useless now, and it is useless to fight wars. As a result, building ships every year is like making dumplings.

Macau shipyards, Manila shipyards and other joint venture shipyards with foreigners put sailing ships into service one after another, and even purchased sailing warships from Batavia in the Netherlands and the Bengal colonies in India.

Daming not only bought, but also learned by digging ship craftsmen and by himself, and built ships in Ningbo, Fuzhou, Lushun, Qingdao and other places, including Western-style sailing warships, Chinese-style hard-sailing offshore and inland river ships, and even sailing warships, armed merchant ships, etc. , a staggering number.

Its investment is also very large.

Not only to buy ships and build ships, the imperial court has successively established a number of naval academies, naval academies, and even ship technical schools in recent years, as well as artillery factories, naval artillery academies, marine officer academies and so on.

This is a comprehensive investment in the overall system. The number of naval divisions is small, but its military investment, plus the training costs of surrounding shipbuilding, officers, and technicians, is very high.

Even the treatment of those naval officers and soldiers is generally superior to that of the army.

The army has always paid attention to the ability to eat meat, and the incompetent to drink soup. Why can the salary of the navy not be proportional to the credit?
Why can the navy get so much in the military budget every year?

Among these accusations, the Navy has also suffered a lot of pressure.

They train hard and have strict military discipline, but in the past few years, apart from escorting grain at sea, protecting commercial routes with armed forces, catching pirates, cracking down on smuggling, and the raging war in the Central Plains, they can't participate at all, they can only watch theatre.

Zhu Chenggong, the admiral of the navy, even went to Nanyang to fight before. As the admiral of the navy, he led a marine team to besiege the city. Thousands of miles away from him.

Others laughed at them as useless sailors.

Zhu Chenggong was indeed aggrieved, although he also led the camp at the beginning, took Taiwan, drove away the Dutch, and later surrounded Macau to force the Portuguese to surrender.

But in the past two years, there was indeed no record of shooting.

Recently, the Japanese are doing death, and the daimyos of Satsuma and Hirado have started to become pirates again, and the Tokugawa shogunate actually disregarded the previous agreement and began to impose various restrictions on Daming's trade with Japan.

The admirals all cheered up.

Finally found a place to use it, everyone is running around, the Ministry of War, the Governor's Office of the Five Armies, and the cabinet are spreading the threat of the Japanese everywhere, hoping that the imperial court will send troops to the Japanese.

They even patted their chests and said that they could deal with the Japanese severely, and even occupy Hirado Island, and they could also occupy Kyoto, capture the Japanese king, and snatch their queen queen back to warm the emperor's bed.

Zhu Chenggong is the representative of the navy.

It is also a representative who actively wants to send troops to Japan.

At the same time, he also represented the Zheng family of Fujian and the interests of many businessmen who traded with Japan.

"Zhang Gelao planned to send troops to Liaoshen, and Geng Zhongming and North Korea were also very active. The Ministry of War and the Governor's Office of the Five Armies both thought it was possible to fight. The imperial court planned to use Geng Zhongming, the North Korean army and Sauron's soldiers to march from the east, and the Liaodong Imperial Battalion would start from the east. The Liaodong Peninsula goes up along the Liaohe River, and the Chahar Department and the newly-organized Liaoxi Imperial Battalion move eastward from the Liaoxi Corridor.
The navy also joined the battle, escorting supplies, food and grass at sea, and sending troops and ships into the Liaohe River, reaching the vicinity of Liaoyang. "

Zhu Chenggong also heard that the imperial court was going to fight Liaoshen, but the navy was not very interested in it. The reason was that even if they participated, it was only to assist and cooperate, and they did not have their share in meritorious service. If they went to others, they would eat meat. , they can drink soup at most.

They want to fight Japan, and then they will be the absolute protagonists.

And they are very confident. The navy has been making dumplings for several years. Now the ships are strong and the guns are strong, and the soldiers and horses are well-trained. Qi and Kyoto are full of silver ingots and copper ingots. When they fight over, they will bring back mountains of gold and silver in ships. How much credit is this?

It is enough to listen to the gossip of the army every day.

Everyone wants to show off their strength.

It proves that they can match the silver money that the emperor gave to the navy.

"Your Majesty, if the imperial court wants to launch the Liaoshen Campaign, it is enough for our navy to deploy a fleet to cooperate. We have four major fleets, and we can't spend a lot of military expenses all the time, but we can't guard the sea. Now the Japanese on the sea dare to attack us. , We border guards will never tolerate it.

The ministers and others asked His Majesty to issue a decree, let us form a fleet to conquer the Japanese, we don't need too many soldiers and horses, more than 5000 people, no, [-] people are enough. "

"Our plan is to take Hirado Island first, which used to be the nest of Japanese pirates. It was also the earliest port for foreign trade in the Japanese country. Later, the Japanese shogunate moved the foreign trade port to Nagasaki in the south in order to control trade.

But there are many businessmen from our Ming Dynasty in Hirado, and the minister was also born in Hirado. Before Waguo and our Ming Dynasty signed a mutual business agreement, they agreed to open Hirado Port to the Ming Dynasty again. My Ming Dynasty also established a consulate in Hirado. Many Chinese businessmen in Hirado Establish chambers of commerce and guild halls there. "

Zhu Chenggong believed that Hirado had a good location and good port conditions, and that even Daming was familiar with that area, and there were many Chinese businessmen there, with a certain foundation, which was conducive to rapid occupation and control.

Then use this as the base camp to send troops to Nagasaki, a major trading port.

After taking Nagasaki, they went south and wiped out the Shimadzu family of the Kagoshima Satsuma clan who dared to rob merchant ships in the waterway.

The navy has a very wild plan. It plans to use Hirado Island as a base first, then destroy Nagasaki, then destroy Satsuma, and then send troops to Kyoto to capture the king of heaven. If there is a chance, they will destroy Tokugawa in Edo.

There is no need to directly occupy Kyoto, Edo or something. After plundering, return to Hirado, first use Hirado and Nagasaki as bases, slowly expand the port base along the coast, and then conquer and colonize Kyushu Island.

If Edo can be broken, the Tokugawa family can be forced to cede Kyushu.It doesn't matter if you can't, slowly swallow it, build a bastion, and slowly eat away with the power of the navy, artillery, and bastion.

The navy is ambitious.

The appetite is not so big, they actually want to annex Japan.

Zhu Chenggong even came up with another plan, first leased a port on Jeju Island from North Korea, and used it as a naval expedition base, where he would reserve military resources and build a ship repair yard.

Then attack from Jeju Island to the five islands of Wa, seize a port, and then attack Hirado Island, implementing island-hopping tactics.

Justified.

The plan is solid and bold.

Zhu Yihai felt a bit moved.

Originally, there was a two-year short-term honeymoon cooperation period with Japan. After Zhu Yihai's comprehensive trade with Japan, Zhu Yihai imported tens of millions of catties of Japanese copper a year for the precious resource of copper alone. Tomorrow's trade will make half of Japan's new All the silver mined flowed into Daming.

Especially after Zhu Yihai continued to increase the ratio of gold to silver, the ratio of gold to silver reached an astonishing [-]:[-]. In the past, like Japan, the ratio of gold to silver in Ming Dynasty was about [-]:[-] or [-]:[-]. They used a lot of silver to get Daming's gold.

But now Japan not only has a large amount of copper and silver flowing into Daming through the trade deficit, but even a large amount of gold has been flown away.The Japanese daimyos and businessmen didn't care about the long-term prospects, they only knew that gold in Ming Dynasty was expensive, so gold began to rush to Ming Dynasty.

The result was a large outflow of gold, silver and copper from Japan. The speed and quantity of the outflow were astonishing. It even made Japan’s money shortage extremely aggravated. The daimyos in various places even began to print and issue banknotes. The local money shortage problem seriously endangered the rule of the shogunate, and even because of the disorderly printing of the names of many feudal clans, it led to inflation and price disorder.

The shogunate also wanted to control this large outflow of gold, silver and copper, but they couldn't control it, because after the full-scale trade with the Ming Dynasty, Japan had a huge deficit, and their goods could not compete with the Ming Dynasty at all. Naturally, a large deficit can only be offset with gold, silver and copper.

A large number of high-quality and cheap goods from the Ming Dynasty entered, and also impacted many industries in the country, such as textiles, papermaking, iron smelting, porcelain, shipbuilding, etc. Many industries went bankrupt because they could not compete with Ming Dynasty.

There are bright goods everywhere in the market, a large amount of gold, silver and copper flowed out, and even raw materials such as iron ore, raw silk, cotton and linen from the Wa country flowed out, and the merchants of the Ming Dynasty shipped them back, processed them, and then shipped them back to the Wa country for sale.

The shogunate also panicked.

The whole society began to be chaotic, and even some vassal daimyos obtained a large amount of income through trade, relying on resources or port advantages, and their power expanded, gradually becoming uncontrollable by the shogunate.

Under such circumstances, many retainers of the Tokugawa shogunate wrote letters requesting the resumption of the closed-door policy, strictly limiting the number of Ming merchant ships trading in Japan, and even restricting all Ming ships from trading in Nagasaki Port.

Daming was naturally injured by this transformation of the Wa country.

Only the import of Japanese copper used to reach a new high of tens of millions of catties a year. Most of these copper materials were used to make coins after being transported back. After being cast into copper coins and copper coins, there will be great minting profits.

It not only earns seigniorage, but also increases currency circulation, which is conducive to the development of industrial and commercial economy.On the other hand, the imperial court could also sell part of the Japanese copper on the market to produce some copper wares such as bronze mirrors and incense burners, which could also make a lot of profits.

Now that Japan has banned the reduction of copper exports, [-]% has been reduced by [-]%. The direct loss of this item alone in Ming Dynasty is very huge, which is annoying.

The same is true for silver. Over the years, the Ming Dynasty traded more than [-] million taels of silver from Japan. It can be said that one-third of Ming’s silver came from Japan.

Since the Ming Dynasty, silver has become the main currency of Ming Dynasty.Now that the yuan has been abolished and the silver coins have been minted, the silver standard system has been established. While the silver imported from the Americas is decreasing, the silver imported from Japan is even more important.

Now the Japanese want to close the country and stop importing silver and copper. How can this be done?
This seriously endangered Daming's currency security and damaged Daming's economic interests.

And very serious.

As for the Japanese thieves in Satsuma and Hedo, they were all small-scale troubles, but it was also an upright reason to send troops.

Raising soldiers for a thousand days and using them for a while, the navy has spent so much military expenditure, it is impossible to go fishing in the sea every day.

Zhu Yihai has been insisting on making dumplings for the navy in recent years to build ships. He also knows that the navy's combat power has a long period of improvement. Unlike infantry, a stick can be used as a gun, and a group of farmers can hold long guns and they can fight.

If the navy of this era wants to compete in the sea, it must have giant ships and cannons, both of which are indispensable, especially experienced captains and sailors, otherwise they will just go to the sea to feed the fish.

Zhu Yihai plans to regain the world in the future, and then go to Nanyang to fight for hegemony.

Unexpectedly, the first sea target is now Japan.

pondered for a long time.

Zhu Yihai said to Zhu Chenggong, "After making a decision, we will take it step by step. I support and teach Japan, which has no promises, but there is no rush. This way. The imperial court first sent envoys to North Korea and Japan, and at the same time discussed with North Korea about the lease of Jeju Island or Regarding the incident at a port in Jeju, I went to meet with the Japanese shogunate, warned them to condone the daimyo pirates robbing merchant ships that threatened the route, and asked them to abide by the trade agreement and continue to open trade."

"As for you, make preparations, first draw up a list of expedition fleets, integrate the ships and people together, conduct exercises and training first, and then move to Jeju Island to prepare to attack Japan when you are ready.

You also have to make a comprehensive plan. The lion must fight the rabbit with all his strength, and he must not be careless.

The first battle is the final battle, do you understand what I mean? "

Zhu Chenggong got up excitedly, "Please rest assured, Your Majesty, our navy will never disappoint His Majesty's trust."

(End of this chapter)