Dragon Sea Empire

Yin Feng made it clear that he would formally establish a government agency, and everyone present immediately understood what he meant: that is to say, China United Company officially took the first step in establishing a country.

Zeng Qi stood up and said: "We all have the same goal. There is no reason to hand over the country we have worked so hard to earn, and the wealth we have earned, to those nerds who only know about factionalism, corruption and bribery. The ancient cloud snake can’t do without a head, whether it’s the town guard or the company, we must have a leader, I think this leader can only be Yin Dadong’s family, everyone has no objection, right?”

Everyone shook their heads like rattles and said in unison: "Yin Dadong's family is our leader..."

Through this meeting, Yin Feng basically took the company's decision-making power over the local administrative management of the occupied area in his own hands, and no longer needed to take the form of a board of directors.

At the same time, he also made a lot of money from Tokugawa Ieyasu: Tokugawa Ieyasu finally started the battle of Osaka to eliminate Toyotomi at the end of last year. Five times the price. At the same time, he also secretly sold some small artillery and matchlock guns to the Toyotomi family, and the price was also high.

Yin Feng earned a total of one million taels of silver from both the shogunate and Toyotomi's family, and the money was earned by the Chinese Army, so Yin Feng can completely control it alone.

With spare money in hand, he did not need the approval of the company's board of directors. He immediately began to carry out a major organizational reorganization of the Zhonghua United Company. He would establish two tutelary offices in Taiwan and Luzon. Counties (Taipei, Taichung, Tainan, Taitung), Ryukyu and West Borneo each set up a county, and the remaining Nanyang colonies are still under the militarized jurisdiction of the company and the Chinese army.

In this way, a large number of personnel from the company's business department, business information department, and agricultural reclamation department have to be converted into government administrative personnel. Since Yin Feng stipulates that administrative personnel must stay in their own jurisdiction for at least three consecutive years, this will affect those who have a large number of shares in the company. Guys and clerks who are good at the business are at a disadvantage, so many choose to stay with the company and work.

In this way, in the areas ruled by the Chinese companies, there was a shortage of local administrative officials.

In May of the 43rd year of Wanli, the China United Company sent a message to the entire Ming Dynasty ruling area through its business network and contacts in business and politics: Taiwan is about to openly recruit officials.

This is simply an act of blatant rebellion, but there are indeed many scholars who went to Taiwan to take the exam.

The imperial examinations in the Ming Dynasty made all scholars have the only way out to be an official. It seems that in the whole of China, apart from being an official, there is no other goal worth studying. Therefore, those children who failed the exam for a long time cannot enter the school Difficult scholars, those nerds who have nothing to do but study, really came from all over the world one after another, and they all thought that it would be good to be an official in Taiwan: at least , this place is nominally a territory of the Ming Dynasty, and I heard that being an official here can get a high salary without scraping the land.

Yin Feng handed over all the troublesome matters such as how to recruit these scholars and how to train them to become administrative cadres under the Chinese company system, etc., to Mr. Zeng and Zeng Shan. Hua saw off.

There are no pirates and bandits along the coast of Fujian. Hundreds of bays have become seaports under the control of the China United Company. On the coasts of Zhejiang and Guangdong, there are still some maritime armed forces that do not belong to the China United Company.

The Zhoushan Islands off the coast of Zhejiang, the Sansuan Island off the coast of Taizhou, and the Nanji Islands off the coast of Wenzhou had some residents living there in the early years of the Ming Dynasty. There is even a one-day deadline for entering the mainland, otherwise they will be sent into exile. As a result, tens of thousands of islanders abandoned their homes and properties, and even had no time to prepare boats. Therefore, it became an uninhabited desert island, and later became a paradise for Japanese pirates and pirates.

At present, there are still some small-scale pirates on these islands, who rely on smuggling some goods to make a living for the Chinese company, or just rob merchant ships that do not fly the blue Chinese flag of the Chinese United Company.

For these small bands of pirate forces, Yin Feng just dispatched the battleship Feilong with ten three-masted gunboats to cruise the coast of Zhejiang, and then called the leaders of those small bands of armed forces to gather on Sansuan Island.

Later generations called Sansuan Island Pirate Island. I don’t know whether it got its name because of the garlic-like shape of the island, or because the island was full of garlic in the old days, and fishermen often took it for food. The island’s terrain is dangerous and there are many hidden reefs around the island. , the natural cave runs through the island, and it has always been the gathering place for pirates along the coast of Zhejiang. This time, there are about a dozen pirate gangs who came to Sansuan Island to gather, basically including all the pirate gangs along the coast of Zhejiang. During the period of the Great Japanese Pirates in Jiajing, Zhejiang The pirate forces along the coast suffered a major blow, and there was no longer a hero like Wang Zhi. Since then, he has never recovered. Although there are more than a dozen pirate gangs who came to the island, the total number of pirates represented does not exceed 2000.

The huge body of the Feilong seemed very uncoordinated among a group of small sailboats. As Yin Feng's plenipotentiary representative, Chen Zhongji was climbing the rope net from the Feilong to the ferry boat on the sea. The coast of Sansuan Island was steep. , It is impossible to reach the shore without a small boat, and this kind of small boat is a wooden scull boat commonly used by local pirates. It can shuttle back and forth between the reefs and dangerous beaches, avoiding the pursuit of officers, soldiers and sailors. The locals call it "guga boat".

Why is it called this name? Chen Zhongji asked the local sailors: one said it is a homonym for "crossing the street boat". The reason is that the sea is like land, and there are streets and lanes for boats to walk on.

One said it was "guga boat", and the boats used for ferrying were all wooden boats with sculls. When the wooden oars were shaken, "guga" sounded, fishermen simply called it "guga boat", "guga" , "Guga", Chen Zhongji thinks it is more interesting to call it "Guga Boat".

Surrounded by a hundred sailors and musketeers, Chen Zhongji paddled a dozen "guga boats" onto the island, and was greeted by several dark-skinned fishermen earlier, saying that he invited the uncle of the Chinese company to a meeting at the gravel beach , walked a section of the mountain road, and then went down a stone-stacked path, passing through a narrow rock cut road shaped like a "line of sky", that is, entering the gravel beach. The beach area is not large, but the surrounding dangerous rocks and reefs There are caves in the room, the sea is open, the waves are sweeping the beach, the beach is roaring, the gravel beach is facing the endless East China Sea, and the pirate leaders who are in the meeting are waiting for Chen Zhongji in the rock cave.

"What is compilation?"

"You are bullying the small with the big, and you don't give us a way to survive,"

"Where is Captain Yin, we want to talk to him, you have to give us a meal,"

"Don't bully people just because the boat cannon is big, at worst we go to join the officers and soldiers,"

Just as Chen Zhongji finished explaining his reason for coming, the dozen or so pirate leaders broke out and shouted in disorder.

This cave will be mostly submerged by seawater at high tide, and torches must be used to illuminate it in broad daylight. At this time, Chen Zhongji's feet are still washed by seawater. He coldly watched the reactions of these Zhejiang pirates under the light of the torch, expressionlessly Leaning on a rock.

Gradually, the voice of the people fell down, and everyone looked at Chen Zhongji, the young man from the China United Company.

Chen Zhongji stood up, cupped his hands and turned around, and said loudly: "You are all seniors in the business of making a living at sea. The boy was ordered to come to recruit your team. He didn't intend to be violent. As long as you join the China United Company, everything will be fine. It’s easy to talk; otherwise, I can’t help, it’s not that my Chinese company is bullying the weak, but that my ship owner has a heart of benevolence and righteousness, and considers everyone.” He walked slowly to the largest group of pirate leaders along the coast of Zhejiang: "Boss Lin Yanlin, Taizhou, you and my ship owner have been doing business for eight years. Why did my ship owner give you a tael of silver for the goods you shipped out of land?"

Chen Zhongji didn't wait for Boss Lin to speak, and walked up to another pirate leader and said, "This senior is Big Brother Zhang from Shanghai, right? Brother Lu Shitou from our company asked me to say hello to you. Your nephew was arrested by the government. We rescued him through Ning Shao’s relationship with General Luo Qing, right?”

He turned his back to the entrance of the cave, and his tone became cold: "Over the years, you have actually lived in the cracks between the government and our Chinese army and navy. Without our Chinese company to help you sell smuggled goods and help you clear the government, you How many people can survive until now, "

There was a sudden silence in the cave. In fact, the clamor just now by the gang of pirates was just a routine bargaining method. Everyone knows how powerful the Chinese company is, and it would be self-defeating to fight against it.

Chen Zhongji continued: "As long as you hand over the people in your hands, each of you can immediately get 5 taels of silver shares in Zhonghua Company, and your family members can move to Taiwan and Luzon. Your brothers, Captain Yin, will take over all of them: willing to work in agriculture Those who are willing to continue to live on the sea, Captain Yin will select and arrange them to work in the Merchant Fleet or Navy Fleet respectively, with stable salary, After making meritorious deeds, you can still get a share of land,"

……

The pirates in Zhejiang quickly accepted these conditions, and the backbone of most pirate gangs joined the navy.

On the coast of Guangdong, the work of mopping up local pirate gangs actually started as early as when Yin Feng was still investigating in the mainland. At that time, Yuan Jin and Li Zhong surrendered to the imperial court again, but they were still not reused. They were given the position of archer leader of the inspection department. They were petty officials with no rank at all, and their gang disbanded immediately. Li Dan, however, was under Yuan Jin and Li Zhong. At this time, they all broke with Yuan Jin and Li Zhong. When Mai Dahai's second fleet began to sweep the coast of Guangdong, they surrendered to Mai Dahai off the coast of Macau.