The room goes through the late Ming Dynasty, and the back door leads to North America at the beginni

Chapter 443 Zheng’s Intelligence

Liu Sheng took the telegram and read it carefully, then smiled and said, "It seems that Zheng Zhilong is still aware of current affairs."

This telegram was sent back by the telecommunications team of Yang Heqing's army. It said, "Zheng Zhilong please allow his brother Zheng Zhibao and his son Zheng Sen to come to Nanjing for an audience."

Although Zheng Zhilong did not come to visit him in person and lacked some sincerity, sending his eldest son to Nanjing was a further expression of his submission to Da'ei.

Liu Sheng was not surprised by this incident.

The most important interest of the Zheng family now lies in maritime trade - mainly the sale of goods from the mainland, Japan, and Nanyang. Among them, the mainland and Nanyang have the largest trade volume.

As for collecting maritime protection fees after taking control of the East China Sea, although they can make a lot of money every year, they are still a small amount compared to the money earned from maritime trade.

In other words, ocean trade is the core of the Zheng Group's interests.

Therefore, many of the actions of the Zheng Group are focused on protecting their core interests.

If the Zheng Group deviates from the most powerful forces that control the mainland, such as the Ming Dynasty and Damei, and is unable to occupy several southern provinces in a short period of time, then the Zheng Group's core interests will inevitably suffer great losses.

Whether Zheng Zhilong accepted the Ming court's recruitment before or now surrendered to Dawei, he had this consideration.

But Zheng Zhilong was obviously still wary of Damei, so he only sent Zheng Zhibao and Zheng Sen to Nanjing instead of coming in person.

Considering the core interests of the Zheng Group and the fact that Da'ei belongs to the Han family, it is not as unacceptable as surrendering to the Qing captives. It is easy to understand why they chose to further submit to Da'ei.

After Zou Runniang left with the handwriting written on the secrets of the palace, Liu Sheng said to one of the secretaries: "Get all the information about the Zheng family collected by the Xunfeng Guard and the Xiuyi Guard."

Although Zheng Zhilong today is slightly younger than when he was transferred to the Qing Dynasty in history, with a real age of only thirty-nine, he has also been at ease for several years.

Putting down the telegram, Liu Sheng said: "Call the Fujian Telecommunications Group to allow the Zheng family to enter Beijing."

Since the return of Yi Zhi from Fujian last year, Xunfengwei and Xiuyiwei have not only continued to collect intelligence on the Zheng Group, but have become more frequent. And because Fujian was returned to Dawei, the intelligence work of the two guards became easier.

Among these pieces of information, Liu Sheng focused on three categories.

As for Zheng Zhilong's surrender to the Qing Dynasty in history, in addition to being forced by the situation, there may also be this reason.

It is not difficult to understand that Zheng Zhilong, who was over forty and had lived comfortably for many years, finally chose to surrender to the Qing Dynasty under the temptation of the position of governor of Fujian and Guangdong.

According to Xunfengwei intelligence, when the Zheng Navy was at its most powerful, it had more than 3,000 large and small warships, among which there were more than 20 warships that were imitations of Western Galen ships, or simply Galen ships. !

Liu Sheng started reading them one by one.

It didn't take long for several secretaries to put the intelligence files about Zheng on the display shelf next to the imperial case.

One is the strength of Zheng's navy.

Liu Sheng estimated that Zheng Zhibao and Zheng Sen not only wanted to be hostages, but also had the task of seeking benefits for the Zheng Group from the Damei court.

Historically, the Qing army quickly swept across the south of the Yangtze River the year after it captured Nanjing. After Zheng's defeat on land, it captured Fuzhou in September of that year, and soon attacked Xinghua, Quanzhou, and Zhangzhou prefectures.

Of course, the success of the Da'ei Northern Expedition last year and the consecutive victories against the Qing Dynasty must have been an important factor in prompting Zheng Zhilong to make this decision so quickly.

"Yes."

In this case, Zheng Zhilong had no choice but to surrender to the Qing Dynasty or flee to sea.

However, most of these warships are only equipped with one or several Hongyi cannons. Even if other artillery such as Hongyi cannons, Franchise guns, and general cannons are included, there are only twenty or thirty guns. Ships carrying more than thirty cannons There are very few boats.

According to Western ship classification, it is not even the lowest light battleship.

Of course, even so, this kind of ship has more firepower than Chinese ships. Because the development of Chinese-style ships over the past thousands of years was not for the purpose of loading cannons. For example, the Fuchuan, which is usually a larger tonnage among late Chinese-style ships, can usually only install one red cannon on the bow and one on the stern.

In addition, when the Zheng Navy was the largest, it had more than 200,000 sailors and soldiers of various types including Han, Japanese, Westerners, Nanyang natives, and blacks!

It can be seen from this that although the Zheng Navy is completely incomparable to the Spanish fleet, the Dutch fleet, and the rising British fleet that once dominated the world, it is indeed enough to dominate the East Asian seas.

However, according to Xiuyiwei's information, the Zheng Group has been streamlining the size of its navy in recent years, perhaps out of consideration for the "group's" profit and loss.

Therefore, the Zheng Navy now has only a few hundred thousand sailors and officers in total, and they are distributed in Fujian, Dongfan Island, Japan, Southeast Asia and other places, and are not very concentrated.

As for the current performance of the Zheng Navy in the Battle of Liaoluo Bay ten years ago, whether its combat power has decreased or improved, it is temporarily impossible to estimate.

Liu Sheng speculated that it was probably not as good as before.

The second type of information that Liu Sheng paid attention to was about Dongfan Island.

In the early days, Li Dan and Yan Siqi collaborated to develop Dongfan Island - mainly establishing strongholds and warehouses on it, cultivating farmland, planting sugar cane, and purchasing furs and other Dongfan Island specialties from the natives.

Later, Zheng Zhilong took over some of the assets of Li and Yan, including the strongholds and fields they left on Dongfan Island.

After that, Zheng Zhilong made two large-scale immigrants to Dongfan Island.

The first time was in the sixth to seventh years of Tianqi, when there was a severe drought in southern Fujian and the red land was thousands of miles away. Zheng Zhilong took the opportunity to recruit tens of thousands of hungry people in Quanzhou and sent them to Dongfan Island to cultivate land.

At that time, Zheng Zhilong had not yet surrendered to the Ming Dynasty, and he had a feud with Xu Xinsu, a large merchant in Fujian. Although he was regarded as a pirate by the Ming court, he was surrounded and suppressed. In the end, Zheng Zhilong defeated Yu Zigao, the commander-in-chief of the Fujian Navy, and killed Xu Xinsu.

In the first year of Chongzhen, there was another severe drought in southern Fujian. It happened that Zheng Zhilong was recruited by Xiong Wencan. With Xiong Wencan's support, he recruited tens of thousands of people from Zhangzhou and Quanzhou to reclaim wasteland on Dongfan Island.

However, perhaps because Zheng Zhilong's status changed after he submitted to the Ming Dynasty, he felt that Dongfan Island was no longer so important to the Zheng Group, or perhaps because the Ming court did not support it, he never organized immigration to Dongfan Island after that, and even allowed some Immigrants moved back to the mainland.

Therefore, based on the intelligence provided by Xunfengwei and Xiuyiwei, it is estimated that there are less than 100,000 Han immigrants in Dongfan Island today, and there may even be only 60,000 to 70,000 people, or even less.

As for the third type of intelligence that Liu Sheng valued, it was the income from maritime trade of the Zheng Group.

Perhaps because the information in this area was too confidential, neither the Xunfeng Guard nor the Xiuyi Guard could collect any valuable information.

However, there are rumors among the people that the Zheng family earns no less than ten million taels from the sea every year.

How true this rumor is is unclear.

The next day, Liu Sheng summoned several military ministers to discuss matters related to the Zheng family in Tianxin Palace.

Li Changwen said: "I believe that since the Zheng family intends to further submit, even if the imperial court wants to accept its navy, it should be slow to do so.

The Zheng family has dominated the southeastern seaboard for many years. If they now become enemies of Dawei and even collude with the Western Yi, I am afraid that war will be ignited in the seashores of several southeastern provinces, and peace will be hard to come by. "

Li Banghua said: "I also think that we should take it slow. In addition, we need to show grace to Mrs. Zheng and comfort her heart."

Liu Sheng nodded slightly when he heard this, remembering the history that Zheng Sen enrolled in the Imperial College in Nanjing, became a disciple of Qian Qianyi, and was later named "Zhu Chenggong" by Emperor Longwu.

Zheng Sen was a scholar in the eleventh year of Chongzhen, and he should still be a scholar now.

In this case, after he comes to Nanjing, it is better to let him enroll in Nanjing first and then find a teacher as happened in history.

(End of this chapter)