The Spaniards did not know what it meant to be in this new continent that they had given up to the point of passing by.

But Alva thought he had made a mistake, and it was a fool's idea to build seven forts in the winding mountains of the official road.

"Eighty-five thousand, where did they come from so many idlers? I even want to applaud this miraculous will of the Ming Emperor! ”

In recent days, the Duke of Alva has ordered people in Mexico City to frantically search for information, trying to find out how many Spaniards there are in the New World, but the work is doomed to be in vain, and the church where the books are stored in Mexico City has borne the brunt of the previous Natives uprising, and a large number of books have been burned and destroyed, leaving nothing useful at all.

In the last year, more than 210,000 Spanish believers were able to pay the titheflower tax for the Holy See, including a large number of mestizos.

This figure is also a rough estimate, and not every mulatto has the will to pay the tithe tax to the church, and not everyone who is willing to pay the tithe tax to the church, because some people have no property at all and no rights as human beings.

This was one of the starting points for the friars, including Acosta, to hope that Spain would give enough rights to the Indians.

In any case, it has been 70 years since the Spanish landed in the New World, and in the past 70 years, they have only about 200,000 people on this land, scattered in New Spain, Peru and the West Indies in the Caribbean, and only about 20,000 Portuguese in the vast land of Brazil.

And in less than a year with the Ming people, they lost nearly 10,000 Spaniards in the New World, accounting for twenty-third of the total.

"This is not spontaneous, it is the emperor named Wanli himself who ordered the people from all over the country to come here by boat, and they migrated from all over the country to the port called Tianjin, called more than a thousand merchant ships assembled by the Great Emperor, and came to the New World."

Opposite Duke Alva, Acosta, a monk who had returned to Mexico City from Changsheng County to urge Chen Mu to trade grain, recounted the ins and outs of the large number of Ming immigrants: "In Changsheng, the land was distributed by their officials, according to the family, and more than 60,000 people were clearly arranged. ”

The old duke Alva supported his forehead with his arm, lowered his head and twisted his eyebrows and closed his eyes to think, and it took a long time before he said: "They still have officials who are in charge of this matter?" ”

"Dukes, their officials manage everything, they are called parents, in fact they control more than their parents, and the victorious Zou County Commander is a young man, who rules everything of all the people in this land, their food and clothing, their life and death."

This was a shock to the Duke of Alva.

The Spanish people who came here, except for the army and the great nobles, the conquerors were never under the control of the king.

The first adventurers were financed by wealthy nobles, followed by merchants and wanderers who spontaneously followed the wealth, and when they achieved success, the king granted them satrapies to govern them.

It took a long time for all this to come into form, and the first explorers were rewarded with ten or twenty years of wealth and expropriation, and the king really regarded this place as his source of wealth, and ordered those who really possessed the talent of the governor to come here to develop and collect taxes for the court.

But everyone who comes here is voluntary, completely uncontrolled.

Just like Cheng Dawei and Wang Chaozuo in the Ming Dynasty.

But Philip never issued a decree on what kind of people were to come to the New World.

Alva said: "This is something that our king can learn from, that Chen Mu, the agreement he wants to sign with us is very tricky, and the king will like it very much when he sees it, but it will bring deeper suffering to Spain." ”

The old duke, Alva, could easily cede large swaths of Chile and land west of Mexico City to the Ming army, but he was reluctant to transfer the entire agreement to Madrid.

In fact, he was not ready to hand over all the agreements to the ship until now.

Acosta thought so, even better than the old duke, and said: "He is dividing the relationship between the church, the court, and the nobility, and his contract is perfectly advantageous to His Majesty, with more weapons, more wealth, and even a clear purpose, which is to support the king in sending troops to other countries." ”

"But no one but His Majesty the King will be satisfied with this."

The interests of adventurers, nobles, merchants, and churches in the New World are like being chopped off by an axe, and it is precisely these people who really command the Indians to dig hard in the mines and take care of the plantations in the New World, but Chen Mu did not leave them much room to survive.

It seems that only in this way can Chen Mu take a piece of the benefits he gets and give it to Philip, resulting in a situation where both parties are happy.

But no one will be happy about this, it is foreseeable that when the nobles and adventurers who lost their land in the New World return to Spain, even Philip will not be able to laugh, this huge power will not blame Chen Mu, they will only blame Philip who signed the treaty.

But Alva knew very well that no one could change the situation, especially when there was still a sharp sword hanging over his head, and he asked: "What exactly does Chen Mu's letter mean, I don't understand, I have handed over more than sixty tons of grain to various villages on the border. ”

"Those picky Ming Dynasty people don't even want corn, and let us grind them into noodles, saying that they don't even have a stone grind, which is not enough, and now let you come back and urge."

To tell the truth, Duke Alva has never experienced this kind of qi since he was born, and stretched his arms forward to make a downward cutting motion: "How much grain does he want?" ”

Acosta didn't speak, but took out a letter from Zou Yuanbiao from Changshengzhi County from his bosom and handed it over, "They want us to send them flour and rice made from corn and potatoes through trade, which can be exchanged for silk and porcelain. ”

Hearing that he could trade silk and porcelain, Duke Alva's expression softened slightly, he had previously transported sixty tons of corn flour to those villages, almost for nothing, and his people had not collected a penny of silver in any village, and what about the money he had promised?

However, when he glanced at the letter, he frowned again and said, "I just said that those Ming Dynasty people are picky!" ”

The letter said that they needed to trade at least 1,000 tons of flour and rice a year, and that this was not a problem for Mexico City at the right price, but that the problem was the extra requirements.

Cornmeal and potato flour should be finely ground and packed in a fine white cotton bag, the bag should be tied tightly with cotton rope, and each bag should weigh 77 catties, and each bag can be exchanged for 200 tongbao in Wangjiabao, which is close to the official road on the border of Ming and Western China.

With the exchange of Tongbao, you can go to Zhangjiagou on the other side of the official road to buy porcelain and silk.

"It's a lot! Who knows how much the letter says! ”

Hearing Duke Alva's complaint, Brother Acosta turned pale and whispered, "When they asked me to come over, they specially brought measuring tools from the Ming Dynasty......