Chapter 2108: Drive away from Hongmao
At this moment, Hongmao is on the largest Galen ship.
Captain Joe Sweet was looking at the Ming navy attacking in the distance with a telescope.
"A group of small boats with few cannons and weak planks can be destroyed by a few cannons." He said arrogantly.
"My lord is right, these damn Ming Dynasty naval forces don't even know who is strong and who is weak. They will soon know how powerful your lord is!" an interpreter said humbly.
"Humph, first send them a semaphore and tell them that if they are willing to allow us free trade and use the current port as a free trade port, we will withdraw our troops. Otherwise, we will break their fleet and send them all into Feed the sharks at the bottom of the sea!" the captain said arrogantly.
“Yes,” the first mate replied.
Immediately send someone to raise flags.
I saw the semaphore there, but no one understood it.
Wen Rensheng naturally understood.
After all, he is always studying.
Learn all the knowledge you can find in this world.
“What are they talking about?” Commander Zhou Ming asked curiously.
“They are saying that we must agree to give them a free trade port.” Wen Rensheng said.
"How can this be true? The imperial court has its own laws for foreign trade, so how can it be that they should be independent?" Zhou Ming suddenly became furious.
This is where the differences between the two sides lie.
In fact, Westerners at this time still viewed the Ming Dynasty as a behemoth.
Even the first place in Australia was obtained through deception and bribery, and one had to constantly please local officials and do a lot of things.
It was slowly that the forts were built and their own rule established.
But Ming still has ownership.
What they want most is free trade and free buying and selling.
However, foreign trade has always been a means for the imperial court to control vassal states, with tribute trade being the mainstay.
Many small countries often choose to pay tribute several times a year, causing the court to suffer huge losses and have to limit the number of times.
Tribute was used to restrain and appease the vassal states when the Ming Dynasty suffered a loss.
Why not open up free trade?
One is the worry that internal and external collusion will cause internal instability.
The second is the worry that Westerners will enter the Ming Dynasty without permission and cause internal turmoil.
The third is the secret obstruction by the merchants of the sea.
If the imperial court chooses free trade, how can their large merchants earn high profits by monopolizing foreign trade?
So they also had the motivation to push the imperial court to ban sea and trade.
Wen Rensheng did not explain to the commander-in-chief Zhou Ming that he knew that people's thoughts are difficult to change.
Especially these adults.
And he can't use advanced ideas to solve this problem now.
So he must find some existing ideas to solve it.
"Confucius said, wouldn't it be great to have friends from far away? Why doesn't the court welcome red-haired people?" Wen Rensheng asked in return.
"Of course it's the red-haired people who come to us. They often commit crimes, collude with Japanese pirates, rob the seaside, and even cause trouble frequently." Zhou Ming said without thinking.
Wen Rensheng nodded.
None of what the other party said is false.
The maritime merchants of these days are weak as merchants and strong as pirates.
They came to the coast of the Ming Dynasty and looked at the prosperous villages. Could they not have the desire to kidnap them?
It's impossible to pay for trade honestly, that's in a big port.
If you anchor at the beach and get ashore, it is impossible to expect the sailors who are going crazy with suppressed blood not to kidnap you.
And this created too many problems for the feudal bureaucrats.
It is better to ban it.
Anyway, the Ming Dynasty had its ancestral law of sea ban.
But now, the ban is only official rhetoric, and no one can really implement it.
Major merchants from all over the world prepared their own goods and traded with the red-haired people.
But the red-haired people are not satisfied with this trade model with middlemen.
Profits will be severely shaved off a large part.
For example, this is the case with raw silk.
If you directly purchase 80 taels of silver per load, if it goes through the hands of a maritime merchant, it will cost 140 to 170 taels, but if you resell it to an island country, it can reach 280 taels.
Who can not be jealous of such profits?
You must know that it is not too far from Daming to the island country.
As long as the goods are prepared and the joints are opened, this raw silk will be free money.
Why is demand so high?
Because silk is worn by the upper class. The upper class gathered a lot of wealth, and their clothes needed to be changed frequently.
And the upper class people do not wear old clothes, and extravagance and lust are the norm in peacetime.
With a large amount of gold and silver, among the basic necessities of life, clothing is the most frequently consumed.
The other items have many restrictions.
This is the same reason why the industrial revolution first broke out in the textile industry.
A wealthy family can buy new clothes every year, one hundred thousand pieces a year.
Some rich girls fill several rooms with just clothes.
But it is impossible to eat so much when eating, and it is not convenient to transport food over long distances.
As for the residence, it is built once and rarely built again.
Walking, many people just stay in one place for the rest of their lives.
It can be said that in feudal society, only clothes were a product with no upper limit on demand.
We can buy it for you no matter how much we produce, as long as it meets the taste of the nobles.
Excessive luxury is a realism.
For example, a nobleman has one thing before going to the toilet and another thing after going to the toilet.
After going to the toilet, I threw away my underwear and gave them to the servants to wear while I changed into a new set.
In this way, if you go to the toilet 700 times a year, you will need to change 700 sets of new underwear.
Exaggeration?
It’s not an exaggeration. Look at Cao Xueqin’s description of his family’s life. A meal costs 2,000 taels of silver.
Just know that wearing these clothes is nothing.
Women from wealthy families don’t know how to wear old clothes. Clothes from last year or last season must not be brought into the next year.
Otherwise, your family background will decline.
Anyway, large or small families that are on the rise, families in their prime, all need to wear new clothes.
This is why the island countries were so hungry for raw silk during the Tokugawa Shogunate period.
There is an endless supply of fine silk.
At this time, Wen Rensheng continued: "It is easy to defeat the red-haired people for a while, but it is difficult to defeat them forever, just like the captives of the grassland. Because they are poor in winter, if they don't want to starve to death, they have to go south to fight. They did not take captives in recent years because they opened a large number of horse markets. A large number of northern captives in the grasslands could exchange cattle, sheep and horses for enough food for the winter without being captured. Over time, they fell into a contrast. You can survive, but you will be beaten to death if you go to kidnap someone.”
"Of course there are still people who want to be kidnapped, so we will continue to kill the kidnappers, leaving only the traders. In this way, the traders will survive, and the kidnappers will die."
"The only ones left are those who are willing to trade."
Wen Rensheng said.
Zhou Ming was thoughtful.
This is not a new idea.
But it has been summarized by someone a long time ago.
If you want to open up a peaceful grassland, you cannot leave trade.
But the essence of trade is to make money.
If the court does not make money, it cannot persist. The trade with Beilu was very profitable. The court could get cheap horses and cattle, as well as mutton and sheepskin, which were very useful materials.
So I persisted.
It also caused the Beilu to gradually weaken, become corrupted and lose their combat effectiveness.
This is normal. People who survive the transaction will not kidnap someone just because they think nothing is wrong. That could easily lead to death.
A kidnapping is only done by force.
"Do we have to do this to deal with the red-haired people? But the red-haired people came from the sea. They trade and they get rich. They will only continue to build big ships and become more and more powerful. They are completely different from the northern barbarians. Same. "Zhou Ming is a person who can be the commander-in-chief, and he can see the difference between the two sides at a glance.
"Hahaha, that's good, yes, this is the difference between the two sides."
"Then how should we deal with the red-haired man?" Zhou Mingwei wondered.
Wen Rensheng said: "It is actually very simple to deal with them, that is, we ourselves continue to strengthen ourselves through trade, and continue to build big ships and cannons."
Zhou Ming first He nodded, then shook his head:
"It's too difficult. When our people have money, they will only buy houses and fields. They will not continue to invest in bigger ships and bigger guns. It's not good for them." Generally speaking, wealth and stability on land can be passed down for generations. No one knows that things at sea will be lost in a shipwreck, and a family fortune of 100,000 cannot be given away at once. "
Wen Rensheng smiled, Zhou Ming was indeed the commander-in-chief of the town, and he still saw things very clearly.
This problem is indeed difficult to solve.
Because this is a common problem among most maritime merchants.
Even the Zheng family, which dominated the southeastern sea, fell into the situation of a watchdog. They did not want to continue to attack and expand. Instead, as Zhou Ming said, they bought land and built houses, and established the Zheng family in Zhongzuo. 's foundation.
When the Manchu Qing Dynasty took over, they wanted to seek wealth and honor in the new dynasty, and sat back and watched the Ming Dynasty emperor being killed.
He gave up his great maritime foundation and had no ambition to be independent.
To be honest, if Li Zicheng could have the Zheng family's annual sea trade income of millions of taels, he would have to laugh out loud and defeat the Manchu Qing Dynasty.
Send a partial division ashore from Liaodong to fight guerrillas, which is a good trick.
The Qing Dynasty sent troops to enter the pass, and they went ashore. When the Qing Dynasty returned their troops, they left.
When it comes to guerrilla warfare, Li Zicheng is the master of it all.
And they are different from the Ming Dynasty. Most of the Ming Dynasty's army cannot face the 10,000 Manchu troops.
Before the Manchus entered the customs, they always left 10,000 people behind.
But these ten thousand people cannot deal with Li Zicheng's old army.
The elite soldiers trained for many years can still defeat the Manchus at a ratio of 2:1 or 3:1.
At that time, in the battle of Yishi, Wu Sangui was almost defeated first, and then lost to Dorgon's sneak attack.
After losing this wave of the most elite veterans, they lost one battle after another.
It’s also because we don’t have firearms and we are poor.
Wen Rensheng nodded now, he really wanted to find a way to solve this problem.
He cannot use the thoughts of later generations, he must find a way out of existing thoughts.
This is also the limitation of the golden armored god.
Just when Wen Rensheng made his decision, the battle had already begun.
Commander Yu Da Tao led the clipper all the way, when the enemy ship's artillery fire began to roar.
The enemy's naval gun can shoot seven or eight miles, and it should be a heavy gun of more than 18 pounds.
Now the Ming Dynasty has at most nine-pound, six-pound, and four-pound cannons.
And the casting is not to the specifications of the red cannon.
But the previous small cannons and various artillery pieces.
It took a year or two to learn how to cast red cannons, and then established fortress defense tactics, and was able to successfully defend important fortresses with cannons.
At this time, Wen Rensheng saw that the speed of the clipper was increasing.
The sailors are rowing hard, and with the help of sails, the speed is still much faster than those Galen ships that have slowed down and entered combat mode.
If they don't raise the sails to full, the clippers will be able to approach each other in about half an hour.
But if you start escaping immediately, you will definitely be able to escape smoothly.
The other party bombarded them calmly.
After fighting for a long time, with dozens of shells fired at a time, with a hit rate of 12% this year, we finally hit three clippers.
One of the ships was hit through the hull and was about to sink soon, and two were damaged.
However, three clippers were damaged, and the remaining clippers began to rush over in one go.
Surrounded left and right.
At this time, the opponent's ship had already sent out a semaphore and fled on its own.
Galen's ship hoisted its sails and began to turn and escape.
In fact, they are already downwind and can escape at any time.
In this way, before the clippers approached, they had reached their maximum speed, and at this time the sailors were exhausted and unable to sprint.
He could only watch his opponent escape.
This battle fully demonstrated the huge gap between the two sides at sea.
That is someone else's ship. It can run fast, shoot accurately, have more cannons, and more shells.
In this case, if the fight continues, one's own side will suffer increasing losses.
But again, the opponent's large ships cannot surround the port, and they have not yet gained control of the sea.
Because they can't rely on cannons to destroy the clippers before they can bayonet them.
Can only be driven away.
It's like cavalry being driven away by infantry.
They still can't control the situation, but they can cause a lot of trouble.
Wen Rensheng knew it well when he saw this.
The opponent's big ships can go far across the ocean, but their clippers can only stay close and have the advantage near the harbor.
In the battle just now, if the opponent's ship were a few miles closer, it would be impossible to escape.
At least two ships must be burned.
This means that their Ming Dynasty navy can still control the offshore sea.
This means that both sides can equally share the advantage at sea.
This is also the basis for the red-haired people to be driven back.
If it was really the late Qing Dynasty, and the opponent's steam ironclads were not afraid of these small boats and fire ships at all, and could control all the near and far seas, then they would have no choice but to surrender.
Unlike now, the navy can also block offshore defenses and the enemy cannot attack the port.
If they want to go elsewhere to bombard the port, they must also be careful about being outflanked and attacked by ships from other places along the coastline.
So this tactic of bombarding the port, which could be used later, cannot be used on Ming Dynasty at this time.
The advantage of this battle is that the opponent was driven away, and it was still a nominal victory.
The tactical purpose was achieved.
But our side lost one ship and damaged two.
This is because the opponent does not have much time to bombard slowly.
After all, the wind direction along the coast is complicated.
If they really reach the ocean, they will definitely lose everything.
The Clippers can't get close to each other either.
After three such battles, the Ming Navy will definitely go bankrupt soon.
A clipper ship is also valuable.
That is absolutely unsupportable.
Originally, the imperial court did not provide any military pay, and it was all raised by the province itself.
Wen Rensheng still repaid the military expenses himself.
(End of this chapter)