Chapter 77 The Story of the Sea
After explaining Meng Chong, Zhu Zaijing waited for Gao Gong’s lecture today.
During this period, Gao Gong finally told Zhu Zaijing about the story of Nanda that he knew. Zhu Zaijing also had a general understanding of this hero from the grassland.
This Anda may really have ambitions that surpass those of his ancestors, so much so that the court was wary of him in every possible way and was unwilling to agree to his request for tribute in any case.
But Zhu Zaijing, who knew some history, knew very well that this An Da actually only seemed ambitious. His prestige on the grassland was still not as good as that of Meng Yuan, so what he valued was actually his own position on the grassland. absolute status above.
As for the Ming Dynasty's territory, even though he had plundered countless times in Xuanda and other places, he also knew that his own strength could not shake the Ming Dynasty's rule.
Therefore, Anda's biggest appeal was to pay tribute, so even when he led a large army to the capital, he did not imitate his predecessors on the grassland and launch an attack on the capital of the Ming Dynasty.
The reason why he could resist the temptation and not attack the capital was because he knew the true strength of the prairie cavalry he had brought.
These prairie cavalry are like a circle of greedy and bloodthirsty wild wolves. When facing weak prey, they can burst out with extremely ferocious and predatory nature, but they must take great risks to These prairie cavalry were not that interested in attacking the city.
After all, times have changed, although the Han people are not as mobile as they are.
But the weapons of the Han people are still very powerful.
If they really attack the city of Beijing in a hurry, they will definitely be greeted by countless artillery fire on the city of Beijing!
These prairie cavalry obviously do not want to be cannon fodder for sieges, and the fighting method they are good at is cavalry field combat. For sieges, their advantages cannot be used at all.
So, even if An Da himself wants to attack the city of Beijing, these grassland cavalry under him may not really be willing to ride on their horses, hold up their swords, and roar with their own flesh and blood to attack the city of Beijing. Cannons with neatly arranged heads!
And this is not the most terrifying thing. Once they fail to capture the city of Beijing in a short period of time, they will not only have to pay a huge price in casualties, but they will also face the encirclement and suppression by other Ming armies gathered together.
It can be said that for such a risky decision, as long as An Da is not stupid, he will never really attack Beijing.
So what he wants may just be tribute.
It is precisely because of his thoughts that in the original historical time and space, under the planning of Gao Gong and Zhang Juzheng, the conflict of interests between the grassland tribes was not stable and they reached an agreement with An Da. In order to exchange tribute and trade, the imperial court canonized An Da as King of Shunyi, ending the nearly two hundred years of hostility between the Ming Dynasty and the grassland.
Then the Ming Dynasty took advantage of the opportunity to successfully eradicate traitors such as Zhao Quan, which weakened the organizational strength within the grassland. As a result, large-scale wars rarely broke out in the north of the Ming Dynasty for hundreds of years.
Therefore, to deal with grassland enemies such as Anda who only care about short-term interests, the best way is to use gentleness to win over and divide the fire. After all, the Ming Dynasty is really a vast land and rich resources for the grassland. , full of temptations, who doesn’t want to gain the unique favor of the Ming Dynasty?
It is a pity that the current Ming Dynasty court has always viewed Anda and the grasslands with an extremely cautious attitude, thinking that they are determined to go south. Therefore, in terms of the final attitude, neither Emperor Jiajing himself nor the civil servants and generals within the court All with great hostility.
Under the influence of this mentality, the Ming Dynasty and the grassland will never be able to coexist peacefully, and the war on the nine sides will never stop. And the Ming Dynasty's national power will be endlessly consumed by the extremely long nine-sided battle line, and finally fall into the abyss. But now Zhu Zaijing has no political say, let alone any decision-making power.
So what he can do now is to try his best to protect the people in the suburbs of Beijing so that they will not become the imperial court in the future Gengxu Incident The abandoned son and the loot of An Da.
Zhu Zaijing will try his best to turn the suburbs of Beijing into a prickly iron lump within this year. Whoever dares to take a bite will be forced to bleed!
Just when Zhu Zaijing was still thinking about how to build strength in the suburbs of Beijing, Gao Gong came.
"Your Majesty, we have almost told the story of An Da. What other stories do you want to hear, Your Majesty?"
Zhu Zaijing and Gao Gong arrived in the study, and Gao Gong asked Zhu Zaijing So asked.
Zhu Zaijing thought about it for a while. He had indeed been a little dizzy recently thinking about An Da. It was really time to change his mind and think about other issues.
Zhu Zaijing said: "Sir, let's talk about things at sea. The students also want to know about my story on the Ming Dynasty's maritime borders."
When Gao Gong heard that Zhu Zaijing wanted to hear stories about the sea, Gao Gong was somewhat surprised.
Although Gao Gong doesn't know much about maritime issues, being in the Imperial Academy for so many years has greatly improved Gao Gong's horizons and he knows a lot of stories about the sea.
So Gao Gong does not have a paranoid understanding of maritime issues like the average inland scholar-officials.
Through these years, Gao Gong got to know southern officials, and Gao Gong also learned about the existence of the maritime smuggling trade from these southern officials.
Although these southern officials deeply hate this kind of maritime smuggling trade that originates from the private sector, Gao Gong intuitively believes that these southern officials who hate maritime smuggling do not really object to maritime business, but It is to resist the private business groups who spared their smuggling.
After having this feeling, Gao Gong couldn't help but feel that these southern officials must have a secret that was not humane to outsiders, and this secret was obviously the interests of maritime trade!
But Gao Gong grew up inland after all. Although he could guess some of the truth, he still didn't have much full understanding of the huge benefits at sea.
Just think of it as a battle of interests between the southern gentry and the southern private smuggling syndicate, not a big deal.
After all, the Ming Dynasty has a tradition of banning the sea since Emperor Taizu. Although it also had intermittent experience in opening the sea, due to the uncertainty of the sea and the problem of piracy, the Ming Dynasty’s policy on the sea The tone is still forbidden sea.
The most recent sea ban was the "Battle for Tribute" that broke out in the second year of Jiajing!
It was precisely because of this internal fight among the Japanese who were competing to prove that they were the Japanese envoys that the people of Ningbo in the Ming Dynasty suffered unreasonable disasters. Finally, under Xia Yan's suggestion, the imperial court eliminated the shipping companies in Fujian and Zhejiang, leaving only One in Guangdong.
(End of this chapter)