"The Ming people signed a contract. Pen "Fun" Pavilion www.biquge.info"

Gao Wenlu shrugged his shoulders and said to Song Ke: "The war is over. ”

Song Ke said coldly: "We promise not to invade Penghu again, nor to make trouble on the sea of the Ming Kingdom, and the Ming Kingdom allows us to go to Dongfan Island to take refuge and recuperate, without interference." ”

Gao Wenlu is a middle-aged man in his forties, and Song Ke is a little older.

Both were very tall and typical Germanic Dutchmen, with blond hair and blue eyes, strong and tall bodies, and a cold look in the depths of their eyes, revealing the mentality of the typical European colonizers of this era...... Proud, conceited, cruel, indifferent, full of self-confidence and enterprise, lacking compassion and reverence for everything, only slaves, gold and silver move them the most.

Gao Wenlu looked displeased and said, "We will completely lose Penghu this time!" ”

Song Ke's expression was much better-looking, he smiled slightly, and said, "At least we have determined at the legal level that the Ming Kingdom will not touch Formosa Island...... Isn't it? Penghu was originally only a tentative occupation, at least we also understand the determination of the Ming people......"

Gao Wenlu shrugged his shoulders and said, "We have nearly 100 dead and wounded, and the cost of this temptation is a bit too great. ”

Song Kedao: "Of course, the company wants to get Penghu first, but if it takes a step back to get the recognition and acquiescence of the Ming State for our occupation of Dayuan Port, it is still worth it." ”

Gao Wenlu admitted: "The Ming State Sailor still has considerable strength...... Although their junk ships are small and old, they are well manned, and they mobilized more than 10,000 people in the Penghu War, which is only the strength of a province in the south of the Ming Kingdom, relatively speaking, the strength of our company cannot be compared with a huge empire after all. Even the Spaniards, who once wanted to conquer the Ming Empire with 30,000 men, now seem too arrogant. ”

Song Ke also agrees with Gao Wenlu's judgment, although they try to know more about the situation inside the Ming Empire, but because of their identity, it is difficult to get real first-hand information, the Ming is still very clear about the Dutch and the Spaniards, and the Portuguese Daming has a lot of trust, Sun Yuanhua is training soldiers and cannons in Denglai, the Portuguese have more than 300 people in the Dengzhou Town Army, in addition to the technicians who cast the cannons, they are the instructors who train the Ming army gunners, and also include some mercenaries.

After the Manchu Qing Dynasty entered the customs, the Portuguese were very willing to be hired by the Ming Empire to fight, and at that time there were also ministers in the Southern Ming Dynasty who proposed to hire these Taixi people to fight, but later there were many twists and turns, the execution was too poor, and the Southern Ming Hongguang Dynasty quickly perished, and then actually lost the center of the empire of great unification, and the small courts such as King Gui of Lu went their own way, fighting with each other, even if there was really a plan to hire the Portuguese, they had to give up.

At this time, the real strength in Asia was actually the Spaniards and the Dutch, even the strength of Britain was quite limited, Britain was still at war with the Dutch at this time, robbed the Spanish galleons in the Pacific, and accumulated wealth by various shameless methods, and only entered the period of British Empire's maritime hegemony after a hundred years, and there was still a period of time before they really got India, let alone trying to get involved in China.

"After the peace treaty is signed," Song Ke opened the bottle, poured two glasses of sweet wine, and said with a smile, "We can run Formosa with confidence." Come to think of it, it's also a good thing, and it's worth a toast. ”

"Nothing will change, will it?" Gao Wenlu said with some concern: "The people of the Ming Kingdom are very cunning, and they may not abide by the contract." ”

"According to Xu Xinsu's intelligence, Ming Guo is also tired." Song Ke drank it all, wiped the wine stains on his beard with his hands, and said with a smile: "They have spent more than 100,000 silver dollars and have complained everywhere, the gentry don't want to fight and are unwilling to pay, and the government has no money, so they ask their court for it, and the Beijing division in the north is thousands of miles away, so they don't want to fight it." ”

"I heard that the country was also attacked by the barbarians and was caught in the battlefield." Gao Wenlu said with great pleasure: "The annual income of the Ming Kingdom is tens of millions of silver dollars, which is far from my country and European countries. ”

Song Ke smiled: "Judging from the books, the silver coin income of this great empire in a year is simply pathetic. Of course, they called it 'taels', but in fact they weighed about the same as a tael and a silver coin, and they didn't use gold coins, which was very different from Europe. I think it's because they don't have enough gold, but it's surprising that their court is only interested in silver because they sit back and watch a lot of gold come out. The silver standard is not enough to support the financial system of a huge empire. In recent years, the Governor sent people to study carefully, only to find that the Ming Empire not only had silver coin tax revenue, but also a large amount of tax in kind. They had an annual income of ten million taels of silver, and another income of twenty-six million stone of grain a year, and they could also levy cotton, cloth, charcoal, silk, and paper, which was quite considerable. They can levy a large amount of manpower for free, and at the same time, they can also demarcate areas, such as collecting cotton cloth from a certain place in Nanzhili, and leviing coal from a certain place, and it is said that the imperial palace in Beijing will receive millions of catties of coal for free in a winter...... Therefore, the national strength of the Ming Kingdom cannot be judged only from the income of silver coins, and the fact that we are under siege at the moment also illustrates this point. ”

At this time, it was the autumn of the Ming Dynasty, even the southern Fujian became cool, the sea breeze was gentle, the waves were not prosperous, and the two senior executives of the Dutch East India Company sat in the low-level office of the castle and talked eloquently, and they actually felt relaxed and happy.

"To our gifted governor."

"To the Governor!"

To this the Governor of the Dutch East India Company, the two Dutchmen were heartily respectful, and they raised their glasses to wish their Governor good health.

At this time, the Dutch East India Company really had a genius governor, who had a study of the Ming Dynasty, went east to occupy Penghu, retreated to Taiwan, and the trade of Asian countries, including China and Japan, was deployed by this governor named Jane, Peterszonn, and Cohen.

Within Cohen's plan, the Dutch East India Company grew quite rapidly.

Before Cohen became governor, the Dutch colony was small, the area under its control was small, and the East India Company was weak. Since Cohen took office more than a decade ago, he has made several important decisions that have led to the rapid growth of Dutch power in Asia.

The first thing was to make up his mind to drive out the Portuguese in the East Indies and to include the East Indies as a Dutch colony or sphere of influence.

At the same time, Cohen began to harass the British, preventing them from entering the Indonesian archipelago, driving the British back to their strongholds in India and preventing them from penetrating Southeast and East Asia.

The third thing was to increase the volume of trade with the countries of Asia, so that the profits of trade between the countries of Asia exceeded the profits of returning to Europe around the Cape of Good Hope, and this alone made Cohen worthy of the name of genius.

The fourth thing was the decision to establish a base in Penghu and Taiwan, which would make it easier to control the existing territory and at the same time monopolize the trade route of raw silk to Japan.

In fact, the Dutch established two famous castles on Dayuan Island, and since then they have made a lot of money in Sino-Japanese trade, this trend has been until a few decades later, Zheng Zhilong's tiger Zheng Chenggong could not survive on the shore, and was determined to set up a foundation on the island opposite the sea that would not be harassed by the Qing army, Zheng Jiashui defeated the Dutch, but did not destroy the territory of power left by Cohen, and the Dutch presence in Asia lasted until World War II. Even if they had been defeated by the British on the seas long ago, the sea power of the sea coachmen would have collapsed long ago.

At the same time, Cohen not only cut off the spices and other profitable businesses, but also the whaling business in the Arctic Circle, and the asphalt, tar, and flax businesses in Europe.

The Dutch East India Company surpassed the Portuguese and Spaniards in Asia and overpowered the British for more than a hundred years.

"The war budget that the Governor has given us this year is 300,000 gold coins," Song Ke said, "and now the British are ready to move, and in Europe they are not only against the Spaniards, but also against us." In any case, the governor said, we would keep our territory and interests in Asia, and if necessary, we could send them back to Holland. This year, we must build the castle of the great staff, and even if the missing materials and stones are demolished from Penghu, we must hire people to do it at any cost. ”

There was a serious shortage of iron and stone on the island, and many of the building materials were bought by the Dutch off the coast of China, or from Japan, or even from Batavia.

The so-called Fort of Geranza, that is, Taiwan City, the address is selected on Dayuan Island, which is built in a harbor area by the beach, which can effectively control the sea surface, in order to build this castle, the Dutch really invested a lot of money, and the cost of a castle alone is hundreds of thousands of taels of silver, if the Penghu war and all kinds of costs are counted, I am afraid that the cost will be greater.

The castle is quite large, with a hint of an earlier bastion design, numerous forts, the largest ground floor with several large acute angles, and two and three floors on top of it, with the Dutch flag flying high on the top to declare the Dutch occupation of this beautiful island.

At the mention of the British, both Dutchmen had a bit of a gloom on their faces.

Britain is already catching up and catching up with the Dutch. The Dutch were born in rebellion against royal power and are a symbol of European freedom, a group of bankers and adventurers who formed the first republics in Europe. Precisely because of its proximity to the sea, and the organization of bankers and rebels, trade and navigation must have become the foundation of its state.

So far, the Dutch have more than 10,000 merchant ships, and they deserve to be the supremacy of the seas. And Britain defeated the Spanish Armada after the defeat of the Spaniards, and the Spaniards fought for a long time, and now Queen Elizabeth I, the real leader of the rise of the United Kingdom, launched the privateer system, the British in order to weaken the Spanish maritime strength, the queen personally granted the pirates privateer license, with the privateer license robbery by the British state recognition and support, as long as the wealth is handed over to the queen can be successfully laundered. Under the encouragement of this policy, a large number of British people became official pirates, the ocean was full of pirates, a large number of Spanish gold ships from South America back to Europe were robbed, hundreds of years later, there are still a large number of gold ships that were hit by the British, the Spaniards lost a lot of blood, and the glory of the year has gone, and now the strength of the British has come up, and the hostility towards the Dutch has also begun to rise, but now it is still limited to friction, the strength of the British is still not enough, but with the trade and privateer income of the British, Coupled with the determination to build a strong navy, it should be a matter of time before the Dutch catch up and war breaks out, and the upper echelons of the two countries are also well aware of this, and everyone is gearing up, but they don't know when the first shot will be fired.

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It's the weekend.,It's also the middle of the month.,Update two chapters today and ask for a ticket.,Thank you.。