The residence of the Minister of Oriental Affairs of Onishiko.

On the beach in the port, Chen Mu watched the boatman struggling to push the shipyard noose and tow a brig clipper flying the Spanish red flag into the dock, and his eyes showed great interest in the ship.

It was a light ship with only two masts, a single deck, and an unarmed ship, and its exact load was not known as it had not yet been pulled into dry dock, but it was roughly estimated that its displacement was less than 4,000 stones.

Beside the small oarboat stranded on the shore, several Spanish military attachés and the monk Acosta, who was the envoy, stood helplessly, staring at each other speechlessly.

Brother Acosta couldn't imagine that Chen Mu was stationed in the port of Daxi, which is funny, in the land that nominally belongs to Spain and actually belongs to the Ming Dynasty, there are two ports named after the two countries, one is the Daming Port of Seville, and the other is the Daxi Port of the Viceroyalty of New Spain.

Of course, judging by what is happening on the coast right now, whatever the name of the place is, the Spaniards don't count.

Acosta was here to deliver the message, and was always on the lookout during the voyage, because it was on a new Spanish clipper, and the speed was amazing, and there was no telling if it was safe or reliable.

I was very lucky to have arrived safely.

Chen Mu was holding a letter from the court in Lisbon, Spain, dated November 14, and now December 12...... In 28 days, it sailed from Lisbon to the port of Great West in North Asia via the Azores, the Bahamas and Havana, with an average daily speed of 5 to 600 miles.

"General, the newly built ship of Spain is very good, but you should read the letter, the letter handed to you by His Royal Highness is very important."

Acosta was almost frightened by Chen Mu's reaction, originally knew that it was a good thing for him that Chen Mu was in Daxi Port, at least he didn't have to walk a long way to reach Mexico City, but he didn't expect that just after he took the letter to Chen Mu, he immediately ordered someone to pull the ship into the dock.

Obviously, the generals of the Ming Dynasty only paid attention to the relationship between the writing of the letter, the time of delivery and the speed of the voyage, and did not pay attention to the content of the letter.

"I know, you don't have to wait for me, go to the yamen to rest, I'll go to you later...... What is this ship called, and who built it? ”

If it weren't for the fact that there was no smoke during the voyage, Chen Mu even suspected that he could take out a steam engine from this ordinary hull.

In this era, all the ships that Chen Mu saw, the average speed of long-distance voyages fully loaded cargo ships traveled two or three hundred miles a day, and the warships fluctuated greatly according to the number of soldiers and artillery baggage, and the Spanish galleons full of soldiers and goods were no more than 100 miles at the slowerest, and the speed of ordinary warships was 350 miles.

In comparison, the voyage range is 500 to 2,000 li, and the galley warship is the fastest in offshore conditions, and one of the 100 households of the Guangdong Navy Division once used 16 hours to sail the ship from the mouth of the Pearl River to Danzhou, but that was only a special case.

There is never a shortage of such madmen in the world, Qi Jimei's subordinate of the Western military government, a thousand households, drove the Portuguese brig obtained from the pirates the year before last in order to escape from the wind range, hung a full sail in the tailwind and ran for 80 miles for an hour, and the ship was close to falling apart, not to mention, 42 of the 80 flag soldiers on board applied to the military government to join the Indian land battlefield, and never wanted to get on the ship again.

The sailboats are about to capsize.

Even if Lin Feng attaches great importance to the speed of the flying shark boat, the long-distance voyage is smooth, and it can reach the speed of 500 miles a day...... The crux of the matter is that the journey from Lisbon to Grand Western Port is not completely smooth.

The Spanish ship was faster than Lin Feng's speed-sailing pirate ship.

"This ship was built by the Marquis de Santa Cruz of the Navy, we call it a fast sailing ship, and it was dedicated to delivering messages to the New World." Brother Acosta reminded Chen Mu to continue reading the letter with his eyes, and said, "This is the first time it has crossed the Atlantic, and in the future, there may be a group of smaller ships that will be used in naval battles as communication boats to transmit messages. ”

Marquis of Santa Cruz.

Chen Mu chewed on the name and slowly bowed his head, Spain can make him a famous general.

After returning to Spain from the New World, Alva, a veteran of the army, advocated the implementation of army reform, mainly increasing the rate of musket equipment of the phalanx regiment to 40%, replacing the messy heavy arquebuses and light arquebuses with heavy flintlock pistols, and trying to imitate the equipment of the Illuminated Army and adding bayonets to the muskets.

Alva's reform was difficult, and Spain's royal arsenal could not afford to build a large number of heavy arquebuses, and according to the latest information, he could only equip his two phalanx regiments with 2,400 heavy flintlock muskets, and gradually equip them with plug quadrangular bayonets, which Spain spent a lot of money.

It is worth mentioning that this one-foot-long four-edged bayonet is based on the 'mercy cone stab' equipped by French knights, and is used to result in people who are seriously wounded on the battlefield and are not struggling to die.

The veteran of the navy was the Marquis of Santa Cruz, who had been building ships since the first naval battle in Minci, trying to build a powerful fleet for the kingdom to control the seas, but he faced a more difficult situation than Alva, and the cost of building warships and the shrinking of his overseas territory made his ship-building road bumpy.

Despite this, the appearance of this brig clipper still made Chen Mu look at the Marquis of Santa Cruz with admiration.

As for the third general who can be named, the Duke of Parma, an army general who succeeded Alva as governor of the Netherlands, he was also a young man in his thirties, and the reason why Chen Mu remembered him was that he gave Philip a plan to attack England.

In that plan, Parma declared that he would have 35,000 infantry and 500 cavalry land on English soil overnight, provided the navy was accompanied by twenty-five frigates.

"Okay, don't rush me to read the letter, isn't it just the expected stagnation of the offensive, England, France and the Netherlands are stepping up to build ships, Daming is not interested in this situation, relying on the strength of Spain and the Daming fleet stationed in the Azores, it is enough to defend them."

Chen Mu smiled a little shyly.

What he said was indeed from his heart, and neither he nor Da Ming had the slightest interest in the arms race.

Then again, is the arms race a matter of interest to the country?

But he could only say that, because he didn't want to provoke Philip any further, and the court of the second Fei was almost everywhere at the poker table, and everyone knew what he had to do; Second, he really has no intention of participating in an arms race at this level.

Because he did have a young man in his family who was interested in an arms race at a higher level.

Just a few days ago, the emperor sent a group of veterans of the Qi family army stationed in the southeast of China and two guards to come to farm, and the entrainment letter tried to discuss with him the evolution trend of naval ships in a hundred years, because the emperor believed that the sail iron bone ship or sail iron armor ship was the mainstream in the future, but the Nanyang minister Chen Lan thought that for the current sea warships, the empire should start to make a batch of steam cannon boats using flowering shells.

There is only one suggestion from the Imperial Ministers: take them all.

And he also taught the emperor a set of methodology, all the choices that do not know the advantages and disadvantages are put into practice, and people will know what is right in the process of use.