Dragon Sea Empire

The Chinese army saw the great chaos in the Ming government army camp at the head of Wuchang city. Yang Qi and other Chinese army officers looked at each other in blank dismay, and sat on the top of the city to watch the tigers in a good mood. In the end, the chieftain rebels were defeated by the Ming officers and soldiers. , The remaining troops fled to the south one after another, and the Ming army also pulled out their battalion and left Wuchang City, chasing after them. The battle of the Ming army's counterattack on Wuchang was over before it even started.

Since the fall of Wuchang City, the Ming army has basically not been able to launch a decent counterattack along the Yangtze River. Most of the battles with some records are just guerrilla warfare and harassment warfare of sneak attacks on Wuhu and Guazhou.

Of course, this has something to do with the restraint of the Chinese army on the Yangtze River. Since the capture of Jingzhou, the Chinese army has stopped combat operations. Liu Xiang's surprise attack on Yangzhou with a small number of troops is purely his own behavior, and because it is counterattacking the Ming army The attack was also directly praised by Yin Feng. However, afterward, Chen Zhongji, the general manager of Jiangnan Road, and Luo Quanxiu, the deputy general manager, jointly issued a clear order to the troops under their jurisdiction: unless provoked by the Ming army, all combat operations against the Ming army should be stopped.

In order to create a peaceful atmosphere for the peace talks with the imperial court, the Chinese army also released several concubines and concubine princes of King Chu back to Jinling City.

After hearing the news that the imperial appeasement mission headed by Xu Guangqi had arrived in Yangzhou, Luo Quanxiu, who was in Suzhou, sent a communication ship to inform Chen Zhongji, Mai Dahai, Yang Qi and others who were still in Wuchang City.

Luo Quanxiu was not good at dealing with the civil servants of the imperial court, otherwise he would not have defected to Yin Feng's command. In the entire Jiangnan theater, the only high-ranking Chinese army expert who was good at diplomatic negotiations was Chen Zhongji.

In the last appeasement negotiation five years ago, the Ming court was forced by the Northeast Jurchen Eight Banners to sweep over Liaodong, and had to acquiesce in Yin Feng's many excessive demands, such as occupying many counties in the eastern part of the south of the Yangtze River, etc., but now, Yin Feng's The Chinese Army has defeated the Jurchen Eight Banners that threatened Liaodong, and the Eight Banners who replaced Nurhachi became the confidant of the Ming Dynasty.

The tribes of Eastern Mongolia that were originally suppressed by the Eight Banners of Manchuria, after Nurhachi died in the Hetuala battlefield, were influenced by the remaining tribes of the Eight Banners of Manchuria, and began to frequently enter the customs and harass them: Now, affected by the Chinese Army’s Yangtze River Raiders, minority areas in Southwest China have emerged The various chieftains rebelled headed by She Chongming.

Due to the imperial government’s levy of sea rates and Liao’s rates, coupled with successive years of floods, droughts and famines, farmers in the Northwest are increasingly moving towards becoming refugees and starving people. The first clues.

In July of the first year of Apocalypse (1622), the Ming government appointed Xiong Tingbi, released him from prison, and appointed him as Liaodong economic strategy. Maintaining a defensive position, the bureaucrats in power of the Ming government did not have a clear understanding of the situation in Liaodong. Whether to take advantage of the entanglement between the Chinese Army and the rest of the Eight Banners to take advantage of the opportunity to attack, or continue to sit on the mountain and watch the tigers fight and stick to the defense, relevant strategic decisions have been hesitant.

Xiong Tingbi disregarded the censors' continuous attack on him for "cowardly fighting", advocated active defense with all his strength, discussed the three-party arrangement, increased the number of soldiers in Deng, Lai, and Jinmen, and heavily stationed at Shanshan Customs, with the Daning River as the front line, focusing on food and pay. However, Xiong Tingbi did not only defend and not attack. He planned to wait for the troops and horses in all the towns to gather, to prepare enough food and pay, and to provide support from Denglai. Cover the four state lines of defense.

Before launching the counter-offensive, Xiong Tingbi believed that many things still needed to be done: the purchase of new firearms and military training were the two most important things. Expenses of ten thousand taels of silver

As soon as this memorial was published, there was a lot of opposition from the whole court. The biggest question of Ke Dao Yushi was: where did the money come from? One-third of the Ming Dynasty’s annual fiscal revenue needed to support hundreds of thousands of Zhu Jialong. The sons and grandchildren, and the rest need to deal with the salaries of hundreds of thousands of bureaucrats, the huge palace expenses, and the food and salaries of millions of soldiers all over the country... In the past few years, the Ming court has been in deficit everywhere, and the income cannot cover expenses. 300 million taels of silver are available.

At this time, the imperial court has been cut off from most of the southern territory, and is unable to continue to support Xiong Tingbi in the management of western Liaoning. In his memorial, he directly stated the fact that Liaodong was short of food, and asked the court to temporarily cease fighting with the Chinese army, which would not only relieve the entire Ming Dynasty, but also enable the Ming army in Liaoxi to obtain some food supplies from the sea as soon as possible-otherwise , the wave of mutinies that occurred last year is likely to recur again.

Due to the birth of the Chinese company, the course of history has been "tampered" by Yin Feng. The scale of the extravagant Ming rebellion far exceeded the level of the original time and space. The direct cause of the mutiny that once swept all over the Ming Dynasty was The new army's rebellion was actually the result of the Chinese Army's military intelligence department and others pushing and fueling the flames.

The Chinese Army has become the main trouble for the Ming Dynasty in Liaodong and the southeast coast, as well as the whole country. No matter where it is, the Ming government is in a strategic passive state.

Now, the Ming Dynasty government is in a very passive situation in the negotiation that is about to start in Suzhou.

The flagship "Feilong" of Taiwan's fleet used to be Yin Feng's ship. Now it has been rebuilt many times, and its speed and operational reliability have been greatly improved. The Flying Dragon came down the river from Wuchang City.

Mai Dahai, the commander of the Taiwan Fleet, was going back to the Chongming Island base on the Feilong, but when he passed Zhenjiang, he was stopped by Chen Zhongji and asked him to be responsible for picking up the imperial envoy of the Ming Dynasty.

Chen Zhongji's meaning is very simple: in front of the imperial envoys, show off naked force.

It was more appropriate to use Galen-type battleships like "Long Xiang" and "Long Teng" with nearly a hundred cannons to show off their force, but these two ships are too deep in water and sail slowly on the Yangtze River It was used as a floating fort on the river outside Wuchang City.

Zeng Yue, who secretly promoted the imperial court's appeasement, had also rushed to Jiangnan from the capital at this time. He will serve as Yin Feng's personal representative and join Chen Zhongji in the negotiation with the imperial court's appeasement envoy.

Zeng Yue had been active in the capital for several months, and he found that among the scholars who were promoted in the same year, only a very small number of people still remembered him as a small man who was an official far away in the world. Only dozens of people in the district have become officials in the capital, and there are quite a few of them dawdling in the six ministries and nine ministers, Yushitai, etc., and none of them has real power.

For decades, the Zeng family has been completely forgotten by the relevant people. Only the children of the Zeng family are still on the court's most wanted list. Zeng Yue's trip to the capital for several months, in addition to helping the Ministry of Military Intelligence and the Intelligence Bureau of the Ministry of Internal Affairs in the capital Apart from the arrangement of new hidden stakes and the establishment of a few underground contact stations, there was no obvious effect. After seeing him, the acquaintances of Beijing officials were either scared to see him off immediately, or they did not dare to accept the offer from Zeng Yue. Gift.

There were tens of thousands of bureaucrats in the entire capital of the Ming Dynasty. Those influential figures who were active in the political arena, that is, those at the top of the pyramid, most of them were admitted to the imperial examination after a ten-year cold window. An opportunity to be promoted to an official position or to be a local official, a chance to make a fortune.

Zeng Yue's activities among the middle and lower Beijing officials of the Ming Empire basically had no effect. He only developed one or two small Beijing officials from Fujian and Hainan who were willing to serve as insiders for the Chinese army.

When Zeng Yue returned to Taiwan angrily, he passed by the Chongming Navy Base at the mouth of the Yangtze River, and just got Yin Feng's new order.

Yin Feng felt that it would be appropriate for Zeng Yue to receive imperial envoys after spending time in the officialdom of the Ming Dynasty, so he sent a flying clipper communication ship to send him a new appointment.

Zeng Yue was working in the capital, and things were not going well, and he felt extremely disgusted with the Ming court at this moment.

Therefore, when he negotiated with Chen Zhongji about the plan to entertain imperial envoys, he appeared to be more radical than Chen Zhongji. After discussing for a long time, they felt that in political negotiations, no one in the Chinese army could compete in literary grace, intrigue, and officialdom. Compared with the high-ranking officials of the Ming Dynasty in terms of response and other aspects, and the Chinese Army is the one who proposed the peace talks, although the Yangtze River Raider almost divided the Ming Empire into two, the consumption of all aspects of the Chinese Army is also great. It is also the season of producing silk cocoons in various places in the south of the Yangtze River. The bulk silk fabric business is about to start. The annual Japanese trade fleet going north needs to purchase goods in the south of the Yangtze River. The cargo fleet from Malacca and Banten will also go north to the southeast coast for large overseas trade. The smooth progress of the Chinese Army's Jiangnan Campaign has come to a halt.

More importantly, Yin Feng will not directly participate in this negotiation. Therefore, this negotiation cannot completely rely on the good "foresight" ability of the ship owner King Yin Feng to gain advantages and benefits like the last Jinling negotiation.

Therefore, the two decided: the initiative of this negotiation must be in the hands of the Chinese Army from the very beginning, and the negotiation process must be led by the Chinese Army. The negotiation process will start naked and straightforward, starting with force. The show off begins.

"Boom, boom, boom..." The Feilong was on the Yangtze River, a hundred steps away from the Guazhou Wharf.

In the midst of gunpowder and flames, almost half of the imperial conciliatory mission standing on the pier were so frightened by the sound of the cannon roaring almost directly above their heads that was only a hundred steps away from the opposite side, what's more, their legs went limp. He wet his pants.

It was early morning at this time, with light rain and early sunshine, a rare sunny day in the rainy season in the south of the Yangtze River.

Xu Guangqi shook his body tremblingly. The book boys and attendants around him rushed to support him, but he pushed him away. He stood on the muddy pier, his ears were filled with the roar of cannons, and his nose smelled of black powder. The smell of gunpowder smoke, Xu Guangqi's eyes were full of envy, and he murmured: "The new Western cannon, there are so many cannons,"

Xu Guangqi was not intimidated by the sound of cannons. During the period when he presided over the formation of the "New Army", he often participated in the test firing of Western cannons bought from the Chinese company's control area. He just had so much experience with the Chinese Army. The new cannon was envious.

The five thousand-jin-class bronze cannons at the head of Guazhou City and the gunboats of the Tenth Fleet moored on the pier all started to fire. The rumbling sound echoed between the heavens, the earth, and the rivers. The marine soldiers on the pier stood at attention At the same time, he raised his gun and shouted: "The Chinese army is victorious, and the Chinese army is victorious."

The sound of the cannons gradually subsided, and a young Chinese army officer wearing a silver-white helmet, black iron breastplate, and a Japanese sword on his waist came forward to Xu Guangqi, saluted with his right hand and chest, and said loudly: "I am the Chinese Army Taiwan Fleet No. Admiral of the Fleet, Lieutenant Colonel Liu Xiang, now, Master Xu, please board the ship."