"It's too arrogant!" Zhu Linmiao slapped it on the table hard when she heard this, and said angrily, "The Helan people have been stealing from Dongfan for many years, I didn't go to them to settle accounts, they went to the Daming coast to make trouble?!" ”

At this time, the Netherlands was at its strongest in history.

Its shipbuilding industry is one of the largest in the world, with hundreds of large and small shipyards in Amsterdam nearby, and its technology is among the most advanced in the world.

At this time, the Netherlands had more than 15,000 merchant ships, nearly three-quarters of the tonnage of all of Europe, and the maritime trade was almost monopolized by it, so it was given the title of "sea coachman".

At the same time, the Dutch fleet was extremely powerful. Although they did not build heavy warships due to the shallow water off the coast of the Netherlands, in terms of the number of warships, they were more than twice as many as the British and French warships, which were the second and third largest in the European navy combined!

With a powerful navy and large merchant ships, the Dutch West India Company held a firm grip on trade between Northwest Africa and the Americas, with a large colony in North America.

The Dutch East India Company, on the other hand, was responsible for controlling trade in Asia. With the Far East Fleet, they defeated the Spanish fleet in Java and Malacca, and had already achieved a monopoly on East Asian trade, and they had always occupied the island of Taiwan in the Ming Dynasty.

The Spaniards were defeated by the Dutch in Europe, and the Far East was far inferior in maritime power, so they could only rely on their colonies in Luzon and other places to get scraps from the Dutch.

Previously, the Dutch were afraid of Zheng Zhilong's huge fleet, and they were quite honest along the coast of Daming. Although they monopolized the maritime trade of the Ming Dynasty, they had to pay Zheng Zhilong a tax every year. As for the casual shelling of merchant ships along the coast of Daming, they categorically did not dare.

However, at present, Zheng Zhilong has brought all the warships to join Jianyu, and the Ming Dynasty has relied on Zheng Zhilong's fleet for coastal defense for decades, and there are almost no decent warships in his hands.

It was when the Dutch saw this that they dared to show off their might near the Nanao Mountains. The sinking of the Spanish grain ship was on the one hand a warning to Spain not to get involved in East Asian trade, and on the other hand, it was also a demonstration against the Ming Dynasty, whose coast was their world.

"Are our people badly injured?" Zhu Linmiao asked Zhu Jizuo first.

"Back to His Royal Highness, still in Lu Wang, he was only overturned by the momentum of the cannon, and it was only some skin injuries, and he would be safe for a while."

Zhu Linmiao nodded, "It's okay." ”

"Your Highness, this is very different from the Lan people." Zhu Jizuo pondered, "However, the sailors are short of boats and boats at the moment, do you think, should the Westernians stop transporting grain?" ”

"No." Zhu Linmiao shook his head, although the grain price in southern Fujian is under control, but the drought and poor harvest are real, and it is beneficial and harmless to transport more grain, and it cannot let the Helan people set a precedent of doing whatever they want along the coast of Daming.

He instructed Zhu Jizuo: "I'll go back to my house now, and you can bring that envoy to Helan, Bertman, to see me." ”

Zhu Jizuo hurriedly said: "Xiaguan will go here." ”

Zhu Linmiao then instructed Shi Lin to prepare a car and rush back to the palace. In the car, he couldn't help frowning slightly, he was fighting with the Lan people on a Spanish merchant ship, which seemed to be insignificant to Daming, but in fact it was extremely serious.

This is an important maritime trade.

Now, with the situation in Jiangxi and Fujing, the annual tax revenue can be four or five hundred thousand taels of heaven. Even if Liangguang and Yunnan were brought under the rule of the imperial court in the future, the total tax revenue would be about one million taels.

It's going to have to be smooth all the time. For example, if there is such a catastrophe in southern Fujian, not only will it not be able to collect taxes within a year or two, but it will also have to be subsidized.

This tax and silver still have to pay for officials, water construction, royal expenses, etc., and the rest is only to pay for the food and salary consumption of the Ming army of the Northern Expedition, and I am afraid that it will be overstretched. If you want to invest some spare money in industrial development and transportation construction, it is simply a pipe dream.

From the very beginning, Zhu Linmiao planned to subsidize the state treasury with lucrative maritime trade.

For example, the fleet of Zheng Zhilong's family has a net profit of about 3 million taels from trade with Japan, Southeast Asia and other places every year, and the Lan people pay him the same amount of taxes.

And in addition to Zheng Zhilong, Fujing also has a large number of maritime merchants who make a living from smuggling, and their profits are probably not under Zheng Zhilong.

This is also the result of Zheng Zhilong's concession to give all overseas trade except for Japan and Southeast Asia to the Helan people to monopolize, and even if Japan and Southeast Asia, the Helan people also share at least half of the trade volume.

In the 17th century, the Ming Dynasty produced the world's most profitable goods – porcelain, silk, tea, etc., and now steel and cement were added. It can be said that as long as there are ships constantly entering and leaving the ports of the Ming Dynasty, the silver from all over the world will flow into the Ming Dynasty in an endless stream. In fact, one of the biggest motivations for Europeans to expand their overseas colonies was to plunder silver everywhere in order to buy Ming goods.

If the Ming Dynasty can control these overseas trades, he estimates that there will be at least nearly 20 million taels of income every year! At that time, the financial problems were simply not worth mentioning for Daming.

At the same time, militarily, with a strong economic backing, he can invest a large amount in the manufacture of advanced weapons, expand the size of the army, and form an absolute superiority in quantity and quality over the construction of captives.

But in the current situation, the Helan people want to take advantage of the lack of the Ming Dynasty to monopolize all the trade in East Asia.

In fact, since they came to Taiwan, they have been working in this direction all the time. It was only because he had been suppressed by Zheng Zhilong with an absolute advantage in the number of warships that he had to pay a large amount of taxes to Zheng Zhilong.

Zhu Linmiao sighed helplessly. In fact, because Europe was too far away from the Ming Dynasty to reach Helan's huge fleet, their naval power in the Far East was not very strong.

He remembered that at present, there were only five main warships stationed in Taiwan by the Helan people, and only two of them were fourth-class frigates, with less than 40 guns and a displacement of nearly 600 tons.

The other three were only larger, double-decker armed merchant ships with a displacement of up to 500 tons.

Other than that, there are merchant ships of two or three hundred tons or even smaller.

But it is such a fleet, but it can show off its might along the coast of Daming, and the reason is only because the European-style Galen ship structure is more suitable for carrying more guns.

The Ming Dynasty also had five or six hundred ships, but they were usually only equipped with guns in the bow and stern, with no more than ten guns and only three or four heavy guns.

However, the Galen ship of the same size was capable of carrying forty cannons, of which more than thirty percent were heavy guns above the eighteenth list.

Therefore, in the battle, the warships of the Helan people can almost be ten with one as ten, and a salvo can destroy the main warships of the Ming Dynasty. However, the Ming warships were limited by firepower, and they had to besiege more than six or seven at the same time in order to hurt the European-style warships.