Whether in Deng Ming's previous life or in this life, Defoe's magnum opus, Robinson Crusoe, is known as the pioneering work of modern Western fiction. After the success of the first edition, Defoe's publishing house learned that the great man of the East had also ordered one of his books, so Defoe specially added a dialogue between Robinson and Friday in the reprint of the work, as a reward for the great man's attention to himself, and the background of the dialogue was Robinson telling Friday about the various ** teams in the eyes of the British:

"When fighting the Spaniards, we don't need to go out before eight o'clock, because the Spaniards get up at seven o'clock and have a hearty breakfast followed by half an hour for dessert; In the fight against the French, this time was an hour later, because the French had to look in the mirror, perm their hair, wear perfume and tie colorful bows - leaving camp early was also standing on the battlefield in vain. ”

"What about the Chinese?" Friday asked.

"Oh, those Chinese, they don't fight during the day."

……

Decades later, Deng Ming laughed when he saw the translation of this passage, and before solemnly collecting the book signed by Defoe, he showed it to his guest, Defoe's old friend, John of Scotland, who in his previous life was a brilliant mathematician, a suave playboy, and a famous master of swordsmanship; He was also the inventor of concepts such as "credit money", "equity", "options", and "tax cuts and appropriate inflation to stimulate economic circulation", and three hundred years later, the financial world still uses John's money and economic model, only to modify it to make it more contemporary.

In another seventeenth century, when John went to Edinburgh at the age of fourteen to attend university, he seduced the headmaster's unmarried twin daughters, and when their angry brother came to John for a duel, he was also seriously injured by John, who was excellent at swordsmanship. Unable to stay at university, John travels to London to sell the king his fledgling idea of a credit currency and a central bank, and while accepting the king's hospitality, John has an affair with the king's mistress, and then stabs the king's mistress's brother to death in a duel. After escaping England as a wanted man, John travels to France, where the economy is on the verge of collapse, and in Paris, where unemployment is already 90 percent, John aggressively sells his currency and central bank to the dying King of France, but is soon expelled for having affairs with married noblewomen and nuns.

When the elderly Louis XIV died shortly after, and even though France had imposed more than 1,000 harsh taxes and miscellaneous taxes, the tax revenue for a year was still not enough to cover three months' expenses, and the Prince of Orleans, the regent, made a desperate attempt to appoint the Protestant, married husband, and nun scandal with the British wanted man as the Minister of Currency, opened the first central bank in human history, and issued the first set of credit money decoupled from gold and silver.

A few years later, John's career reached its zenith, as Minister of Revenue, Chancellor of the Exchequer, and Chief of Banks, and he decided how the French government made money, how it spent it, and how it planned its economy and currency. Under John's mathematical management, France abolished 90 percent of the original taxes, rebuilt the national economy, and developed Louisiana on a large scale. At the height of John's reign, the French changed the cheers to "God bless the King and John" and "Long live the King and John"; The European powers even exclaimed that France only needed John's banks and currency to bring its old rival Britain to its knees; The word millionaire was coined by John, and the right investment could turn the duke's coachman into a billionaire man who in turn turned into a servant a day earlier. Montesquieu later recalled that it was the upside-down time of John that made him realize that there was no insurmountable gap between the nobility and the commoners.

At John's office at the time, the ladies and ladies who came to visit him began to line up from the door, and the long queue led to the lobby and corridors until the main entrance extended to the road. The most delicate noblewomen in France said that they would do anything for John as long as he was willing to sell them stock. The Prince of Orleans, the Prince Regent, also recalled with sourness that, after breaking into John's office, he had met four noble ladies of noble family at the same time, none of whom were wearing a shirt......

Deng Ming was so impressed by these beautiful stories that he remembered them decades later, and he probably remembered that John's mathematical model completely collapsed because the regent had privately printed billions of francs for him; And when the hyperinflationary collapse came, the angry French suddenly remembered that John was a sinful Protestant, a hateful Englishman, and that he had openly cohabited with a married man in Paris, seducing nuns and insulting the holy church and the faith of the French people...... John's failure to flee to Switzerland and die there was summed up by financiers for the next two hundred years: John was proficient in mathematics, but he did not understand that the greed of the human heart is infinite, so pure credit money could never be pegged to gold and silver and guaranteed reserves.

However, this time John did not go through the ups and downs, nor did he go to Switzerland to end up depressed, but was taken to China by Deng Ming after running into a wall with the Sun King, where the central bank, currency, stock and futures systems were very familiar to John, and he certainly did not think that this was an alien technology derived from his mathematical model, but thought that someone had the same thing as him. John was a guest of honour here, and taught mathematics and economics at the academy - although China had decades of real knowledge of central banks, equities, and futures, which were earlier than John's real yàn and some of the norms were even more advanced than John's, Deng Ming knew that he didn't really understand any mathematical principles, and this playboy was the ancestor of the invention of these alien financial technology, and his mathematical and economic ideas were important compared to Deng Ming's central bank - of course, just to be on the safe side, Despite John's age, Deng Ming forbade his daughters to come near John and warned his friends.

Tonight's battle was the beginning of Deng Ming's name being picked up on a large scale by people in Europe.

……

It was already early hour, and everyone on the flagship had their eyes wide open, carefully searching for the enemy in the darkness, and by this time the lights had already been turned off in the captain's room of the Spaniards. On the cloudy sea, a soldier approached the bridge in the dark, and asked Li Siming beside Deng Ming in a low voice: "Major, should we slow down or launch rockets?" ”

"Deceleration, of course." Li Siming said without thinking, he was also trying his best to lower his voice.

The soldiers retreated quietly, and according to the pre-planned plan, the Ming army would continue to advance until it had formed a rough encirclement of the Spanish fleet before attacking. However, the distance between the two armies should be very close at this time, and the Ming army's berthing place for the Spanish fleet just now can only be estimated by a very rough estimate, and at this time, the error range of their own speed is also very large, and the Ming army ships are likely to suddenly crash into the enemy ship, and it will become dangerous if they do not slow down. Now that Deng Ming did not give Li Siming a new order, of course he would not modify the advance plan.

Deng Ming felt that he had not yet reached the predetermined position, but this was all his feeling, maybe when he fired the flare rocket, he would find that the Ming army and the enemy had missed it - but it was better for the ships in front of him to pass by than to find out that they were actually far away from the enemy, so that at least some of the ships could attack immediately.

Although he knew that Li Siming and Feng Xifan were by his side, Deng Ming had no idea of talking to them, and no one dared to say whether there were no hidden enemy ships around, and whether they would hear the sound of conversation in the wind.

"Our army has a total of one hundred and twenty warships and one thousand three hundred cannons." Deng Ming once again silently weighed the comparison of the strength of the two sides in his heart: "The Spaniards have more than thirty warships, which should not exceed forty, and they should have one thousand to one thousand two hundred cannons. ”

It sounds like the number of guns on both sides is about the same, but the difference in caliber is huge, and the largest artillery of the Ming army is the eighteen-pounder gun on the two battleships; Most of the armed merchant ships were twelve- and nine-pounderers, and even smaller six-pounderers. If heavier cannons were used, the boats were in danger of capsizing due to recoil.

But the Spaniards had many heavy guns of more than thirty pounds, and the opposing sixty-gun flagship even had a powerful forty-eight pound cannon. In the past, in order to show off their strength, the Spaniards also showed the power of their capital ships to the Ming army, and the sixty-gun ship had a double-deck artillery deck, and when the fire on one side was at full strength, it could shoot a thousand pounds of projectiles in a salvo, even the flagship of the Ming army could not withstand several salvos at close range.

After several years of exploration of the center of gravity, Chongming Shipyard has just begun to try to manufacture ocean-going warships with double-deck guns, which are brand-new European-style designs that need to take into account speed and combat performance, which is not an easy task for Chongming, which lacks experience in the design and manufacture of European-style warships. Relying on a large number of students who graduated from Sichuan Academy and underwent mathematical training, the design of warships has progressed rapidly, and a large number of models have even made designers feel that the underwater part of the hull is not the least resistant to pointed ends, but five years is still not enough for the Ming army to have a number of self-produced powerful warships.

"If there are a few more years ......," Deng Ming couldn't help but think.

At this time, a muffled sound interrupted Deng Ming's train of thought, and it sounded as if a violent collision had occurred far away.

Hiss, hiss, hiss.

A few moments later, a barrage of rockets took off from miles away, flying into the air and then exploding violently, turning the dark clouds in the sky a dark red.

This was the lighting fireworks of the Ming army, and with this faint red light, Deng Ming saw huge black shadows emerging from the sea.

Almost at the same moment, several Spanish rockets with long tails also flew into the air. The Ming warship immediately warned its friendly forces after the collision, and the Spaniards were the same, since the ship had been exposed, it also fired rockets to reconnoiter with impunity, and the Spaniards had a larger range of reconnaissance and used more rockets.

When a flaming rocket slid down in Deng Ming's direction, releasing its last rays of light, they both saw the outline of a swarthy battleship not far away. The huge size of the black shadow made Deng Ming and the people around him gasp, and the enemy ship closest to the Ming flagship looked like a small mountain.

Almost as the Ming army looked up at the majestic hull and inhaled collectively, they also heard a rapid bell from the nearby enemy ships, which was the Spaniards beckoning their sailors into their combat posts.

"The double-deck artillery is the flagship of the Oniyi!" Li Siming shouted, jumped up and shouted: "The searchlights are all on, the artillery is all on!" ”