Chapter 730 829 Annexation of Xiaoliuqiu

The Fujian Navy and the Guangdong and Guangxi Navy worked together to encircle and suppress Zeng Yiben's pirates. The battle was successful. After the news spread to Fujian and Guangdong, the coastal counties were naturally rejoiced.

In the past two decades, it has been difficult for people elsewhere to understand the suffering suffered by the people here.

On the one hand, Japanese pirates and pirates were plundering, and on the other hand, in order to suppress Japanese pirates and bandits, the government continued to increase taxes and levies, which has triggered several civil riots.

But after Zeng Ben was captured, it looked like it was finally over.

Although the word "Japanese pirates" still often appears in court documents, everyone from the government to the common people knows that there are no more Japanese pirates. Under the encirclement and suppression by Qi Jiguang and Yu Dayou, there are not many Japanese pirates left along the coast, and most of them have escaped the Japanese country. .

Most of the remaining Japanese pirates were attached to the banners of those big pirates, obeying their orders and becoming pawns.

Most of these people are unwilling to return to the Japanese country because they are wanted criminals designated by the major names in the Japanese country, and there is only a dead end if they go back.

So now, the government and the people mostly call them pirates, but they don't call them Japanese pirates.

This is actually the reason why the word "Japanese pirates" almost disappeared after the transition from the Jiajing Dynasty to the Longqing Dynasty in the Ming Dynasty.

However, the opening of the sea in Fujian has indeed played a role in eradicating the roots. Not many coastal boat people are willing to join the pirates. This allows the government to see the opportunity to eliminate these bandits who have long been entrenched on coastal islands and wreak havoc on land and sea.

Among the three naval forces of the Ming Dynasty that entered the battlefield in this battle, the Fujian Navy was naturally the most powerful, with as many as 24 thousand-ton sealing ships, in addition to several Dafu ships.

The Guangxi Navy has the smallest number of ships. Although there are only a hundred ships, the large ships account for the vast majority, and the overall strength exceeds the Guangdong Navy, which only has 70 black ships.

Although the Guangdong Navy has a large number of warships, most of them are clippers and small boats, and their combat power is the weakest.

According to Yu Dayou's idea, the next step is for the joint fleet to continue southward along the mainland, passing through the coastal islands and reefs, leaving no room for pirates to survive, in order to completely eradicate the scourge of banditry.

In fact, at this time, pirates on the southeast coast were not banned and could not be banned, but this did not prevent local officials from reporting their merits to the court.

As a result, the memorials from Liu Tao, the governor of Fujian and Guangdong, and Tu Zemin, the governor of Fujian, were sent to the capital.

Yu Dayou did not send this news to Wei Guangde in advance, so he only knew about the war in Fujian.

But no matter what, this is a great victory, defeating the only remaining big pirate leader who is still active on the southeast coast. According to the memorial, the southeast coast will be fine for a long time.

"Besides reporting victory to the palace and discussing merit with the Ministry of War, what else should the court do?"

Li Chunfang was now older and worried that she might not think well and leave something unfinished, so she asked.

"That should be all. We'd better send the memorial to the palace first. Your Majesty will probably be very happy to see it."

Chen Yiqin said.

"I just passed the grand parade in the suburbs of Beijing a few days ago, which greatly demonstrated the power of our Ming Dynasty. I didn't expect good news to come from the southeast so soon. It is God's blessing for the Ming Dynasty."

Yin Shizhen also said with a smile.

Zhang Juzheng frowned and thought for a moment, but quickly nodded without any intention of speaking.

The Ministry of War discussed meritorious service not only to reward meritorious soldiers, but also to provide pensions to casualty soldiers. Zhang Juzheng did not expect to do anything else for the time being.

As for the big pirate Zeng Yiben who was caught, the prosecutors in Fujian and Guangdong were afraid that they would start to arrest him, so they all wanted to take him to their own side for trial.

But thinking about it, the person who caught the person was Guo Cheng, the commander-in-chief of Guangdong. There is a high probability that the person he arrested would be handed over to the Guangdong Police Department. The Fujian side was destined to be disappointed.

But to the people in the cabinet, these local achievements are trivial and they don't care.

It's just that Wei Guangde doesn't see it that way. He will not intervene in the trial. Instead, he will consider the aftermath of the southeastern coastal provinces and counties after the Japanese invasion subsides.

Don’t forget, in order to suppress the Japanese, the imperial court liberalized its policies to these places, allowing them to raise money to train militia groups, etc. Most of the excess tax money was taken away by Hu Zongxian, the governor of the Japanese suppression, even though the imperial court had issued an order to stop it. , but Wei Guangde would not believe that these taxes and money would really not be collected.

Thinking of this, Wei Guangde felt that he should say something. Don't wait two years for someone to cause trouble in the southeastern coastal counties because of this matter.

Now that we have done so, even if local governments continue to go their own way, it has little to do with the cabinet and is considered local corruption.

“On the imperial court’s side, it would be best to make it clear to the southeastern provinces and counties that taxes and levies should be restored to the level of the 32nd year of Jiajing, and that no new assessments should be made.

The Metropolitan Procuratorate should also send more censors to monitor and patrol to prevent local officials from having inappropriate thoughts.

At present, the banditry in the southeast has been eliminated, and everything is waiting for improvement. There can be no more chaos. "

Although Wei Guangde did not specify what to prevent, the words "returning to the taxes and services of the 32nd year of Jiajing" were enough for all cabinet ministers to understand his concerns.

Speaking of which, in the past few years of the Ming Dynasty, most of the troubles occurred in Fujian and Guangdong. Most of them were because of taxes, and people were forced to go up the mountains to steal.

If there is an ambitious one among the bandit leaders, there will be big trouble.

As for the ethnic minority rebellions in Guangxi, Guizhou, Huguang, Sichuan and other places, that is of another nature. The imperial court has never found an effective way to resolve the relationship between the government and the chieftains.

There are also places like Shanxi and Shandong where the White Lotus Sect is causing chaos.

But these are really different from those in Fujian and Guangdong. They can be prevented. It depends on local officials.

"Shan Dai's words make sense. This matter still needs to be handled by the Ministry of Personnel and the Censorate. It has been in chaos for 20 years, and the people need to recuperate."

Li Chunfang praised Wei Guangde's words. He only thought about the official issues, but forgot that the people there were actually the most miserable and needed the most attention from the court, so he immediately agreed.

After he said this, naturally, there was no need for others to discuss it, and it was considered to be settled.

"Then let's go to the Qianqing Palace together to report the victory to His Majesty."

If it was a defeat, Li Chunfang would definitely not want to go, but would throw the task to Chen Yiqin.

But this time it was a victory, and the documents in Fujian were also written very beautifully, and even said that the Japanese invasion in the southeast had been resolved. I think Emperor Longqing would be very happy to see this memorial.

As for why he didn't send it alone, it was also due to Li Chunfang's personality.

Since it was a good thing, everyone went to congratulate the emperor.

So, under the leadership of Li Chunfang, several people in the room left the cabinet and rushed directly to the Qianqing Palace to report the victory.

Only more than half a month later, Yu Dayou learned about the victory documents reported to the court by Governor Li Tao and Governor Tu Zemin. Thinking of the real situation on the southeast coast, he hurriedly wrote a letter to Wei Guangde, in which he described the situation in the southeast in detail and wrote some of his own analysis.

It was not until he finished reading Yu Dayou's letter that Wei Guangde finally understood why the Japanese invasion that was so noisy in the Jiajing Dynasty quickly disappeared in the Longqing Dynasty.

Not only because of the influence of the opening of the Longqing Gate, the real situation is that the court has been catching big pirates and big Japanese pirate groups in recent years, and has eliminated several of the most powerful bandits. The rest are just some remnants and small fish and shrimps.

These remaining people no longer have the strength to go to the land to attack the prefecture and seize the county, and even just invading the coastal fishing villages has become difficult.

After all, whether it was Qi Jiguang in the past or Yu Dayou now, as well as Li Xi, Guo Cheng and others, after more than ten years of training in the war against Japanese pirates, the prefectures and counties along the coast have already explored a set of countermeasures against the enemy at sea.

Often, the Japanese pirates would be discovered when they approached the sea, and then set off beacons to summon the surrounding Ming army and famous groups to come to the rescue.

For a small group of only a dozen or dozens of pirates, it is no longer a big deal.

They dare not look at the land of the Ming Dynasty, but they also know to keep up with the times and change their way of survival.

In the past two years, Yuegang has been opened, and there have been more merchant ships along the coast, so the pirates have changed from attacking prefectures and counties to rob money to now only doing business on the sea and robbing merchant ships.

Merchant ships going out to sea are inherently extremely dangerous. Even if merchant ships are captured by pirates, relatives on land only think that they have encountered misfortunes in a shipwreck.

After all, these days, navigation technology is really not good. Don't think that the West has begun the Age of Exploration and that the ship technology and navigation technology are awesome. In fact, there are really many shipwrecks under the oceans around the world, including large treasure fleets that regularly travel between Spain and its overseas colonies, transport European goods to the American colonies, and transport colonial products, especially gold and silver, back to the motherland.

Although many contents in Yu Dayou's letters are quite different from the reports of Fujian officials, Wei Guangde still thinks that what Yu Dayou said should be more true.

After all, Liu Tao and Tu Zemin are governors and governors respectively. In fact, they have been somewhat out of touch with the grassroots and may not know many situations.

Yu Dayou is different. He has been drifting on the sea recently, leading the navy warships of Fujian, Guangdong and Guangxi to suppress bandits everywhere. He has been at the bottom and of course he knows the actual situation better.

After thinking for a while, Wei Guangde felt that although the letter was written by Yu Dayou to him, there was no inappropriate words, so he planned to take the letter to the cabinet tomorrow and let several cabinet ministers read it to know the truth in the southeast.

The reason for considering doing this is mainly because Wei Guangde plans to form the Ming Navy, with the three-province navy warship as the backbone.

You must know that the military force of the Ming Dynasty is the system established by Ming Taizu Zhu Yuanzhang. Although there were some changes during the Chengzu period, the big framework remained unchanged, and it was mainly based on the garrison system.

The Ming army's navy is composed of garrisons along the coast and rivers, and officers and soldiers familiar with water are drawn. There is no special navy unit. Even the Chaohu Navy, which helped Zhu Yuanzhang conquer the world, is this unit that helped Zhu Yuanzhang seize control of Jiangnan. However, after he became emperor, the navy is still not the most important military force of the Ming Dynasty.

But now the situation is different. The opening of the sea by the Ming Dynasty means that there will be a large number of sea vessels along the coast.

Although the Ming Dynasty has only opened Yuegang as a trading port, merchants from Guangdong, Zhejiang and other places have gone out to sea, but they only use sea vessels to transport goods from various places to Yuegang for trading.

As for what will happen to the sea vessels after they go out to sea, it is unknown.

However, the merchant ships of sea merchants from various places apply for ship permits from the government, and the destination is Yuegang.

There are many merchant ships on the sea, and Wei Guangde knows who these sea merchants are.

Whether the ships are merchants or pirates after going out to sea is up to them.

With such chaos, the court naturally needs to control it. The Ming Navy just took this opportunity to make Yu Dayou officially become the admiral of the Ming Navy.

Just like Qi Jiguang, the prime minister who trained the troops at the beginning, Yu Dayou's current admiral is only a temporary official position.

As for whether to name it "Royal", Wei Guangde felt that it was unnecessary, because the Navy's military expenses should be specially allocated by the Ministry of War.

In the current navy, shipbuilding expenses come from the court and local governments, but most of them are borne by local governments.

These all need to establish rules, such as how much taxes the coastal provinces must provide each year, and how much military pay the Ministry of War must allocate. Only by setting rules can we ensure that the Ming Dynasty Navy will always exist independently and will no longer be a temporary force composed of provincial guards.

Cabinet, Li Chunfang is in charge of the house.

Several cabinet ministers took turns reading Yu Dayou's letters and knowing the true situation in Southeast, but they were all silent.

"Everyone knows that now Japanese pirates and pirates don't come ashore to harass us, but they are still active on the sea. This is undoubtedly a great threat to our Ming Dynasty merchant ships.

These businessmen are, after all, members of my Ming Dynasty.

If they committed crimes and committed crimes, they would be punished by the court's laws, but since they were leading a boat out to sea, the court would naturally protect them.

Therefore, our Ming Dynasty now needs to build a huge naval fleet to patrol various sea areas and protect the navigation of the Ming Dynasty fleet. "

Wei Guangde was standing in the middle and spoke to everyone.

“It’s understandable to establish the Ming Dynasty Navy and protect shipping lanes, but where does the money come from?

It can be said that the warships in various provinces do not need money from the court, but what about in the future?

These warships will have to be replaced sooner or later, and the court also needs to pay military salaries to the navy officers and soldiers. "

Zhang Juzheng said.

"Military pay can always be squeezed out if you squeeze."

Wei Guangde replied directly, "As for the military expenses for ship repair and shipbuilding, the imperial court will bear some, and the southeastern coast will also bear some. After all, the navy was established to protect their safety.

With the navy around, they don't have to worry about any more threats from the sea. "

"Shandai, I also know about the situation in the southeast. We really need a fleet to maintain the safety of sea routes, but you keep talking about the southeast. My Ming Dynasty is not only located in the southeast."

Chen Yiqin frowned and said.

"The Zhejiang, Fujian, and Guangdong naval divisions will form the southern navy, and the Denglai navy will form the northern navy. In this way, there will be a sea defense along the coast of the Ming Dynasty, and Japanese pirates will become history and never reappear."

Wei Guangde said, "Furthermore, according to my review of classics, Xiaoliuqiu has never had a so-called king among the countries that Taizu decided not to conquer in the early Ming Dynasty, so naturally it cannot be called a country.

According to the news from Fujian, the small Liuqiu island is huge, with suitable land for building ports in the north and south. The trees on the island are also dense, which can be used to build more warships.

In the past, it was a place where pirates were harbored. It was just right for Yu Dayou to lead his troops to occupy it in the name of suppressing bandits. It could be used as a base for the Southern Navy, which could be regarded as opening up territory. "

Xiaoliuqiu is Taiwan. Wei Guangde knows the history of later generations, so of course he will not give up this land, and naturally he will not leave it to others.

Incorporating it into the territory of the Ming Dynasty is also considered an achievement.