Chapter 349: Hegemony in the South Seas

After rejecting the Dutch's request for peace, Zhu Cicheng ordered the two major fleets of the navy to continue plundering Dutch merchant ships, and began to plot to attack several Dutch colonies in the South Seas.

Zhu Ci asked Shen Jingchao and Zheng Sen to discuss the matter of attacking the Dutch colony in Nanyang, and Yan Yingyuan's Fourth Army still followed the navy to act.

The Duke of Avelan, who was in the Dutch East India Company, was angry when he learned that the Ming Dynasty refused to sue for peace, and he was even more frightened, he didn't know what the East India Company, which had lost the protection of the Far East Fleet, would use to resist, even if the warships were remobilized from all over the world or the mainland, according to the situation of the destruction of the Far East Fleet, it would be difficult to suppress the Ming Dynasty without hundreds of warships, but it was impossible to mobilize hundreds of warships for the current Netherlands, after all, the great Netherlands had only more than one hundred and fifty warships, The destruction of the Far Eastern Fleet has lost more than 50 ships, so at present, there are only 100 warships left in the whole of the Netherlands, and these warships have to protect the mainland and other colonies around the world, and they cannot be transferred for a while, and as for the construction of other warships, it is not possible to complete it in a short time.

The more Duke Havelan thought about it, the more desperate he became, once the Far East was lost, the income of the great Holland would be reduced by half every year, and he, Havelan, would be the sinner of the great Holland!

No matter how painful and anxious the Duke of Havelan was, he could only find a way to redeem the prisoners first and always be on guard against the attack of the Ming Dynasty.

In the two naval battles and the battle of landing on Taiwan, more than 3,200 Dutch were captured by the Ming Dynasty, and according to the price of 200 taels of silver per person offered by Zhu Cijiao, the Dutch needed to pay more than 650,000 taels of silver.

This is undoubtedly a sky-high price, if it was before, the Duke of Havelan could not accept it anyway, but now that the Far East Fleet has been destroyed, the East India Company is also in danger, and it is in urgent need of strength to protect the colony, and it is unrealistic to transfer troops from the mainland, so he can only reluctantly ransom the prisoners.

"The Dutch are really sensible, and the so-called Duke of Havelan has made the right choice." Zhu Ci smirked.

Although letting the Dutch redeem the captives now will enhance the strength of the Dutch colonies in the South Seas, Zhu Ciji is still happy to do so, the Dutch who have lost the support of the Far East Fleet, no matter how many they are, are not the opponents of the Fourth Army of the Ying Long Army, let them redeem them now, and they can be captured again in the future, and then it will be a ransom of two hundred taels of silver per person.

In the next three months, the two major fleets of the navy plundered hundreds of Dutch merchant ships, and the goods on board plus the merchant ships themselves were worth more than 7 million taels of silver, and there were more than 2,000 Dutchmen, and the Duke of Havelan ransomed more than 2,000 Dutchmen and spent hundreds of thousands of taels of silver, adding up, the navy captured 800 taels of silver.

"Your Majesty, the Ming Dynasty is a state of etiquette, this kind of plundering of merchant ships is really insulting to the national body, please order the navy to stop such behavior!" Huang Daozhou, the secretary of the Ministry of Rites, summoned dozens of officials to the palace to find Zhu Ci to oppose such a thing.

"Aiqing is right, Daming is indeed a state of etiquette, and Daming has been following etiquette, but Aiqing should not forget, Daming and the Dutch are not on good terms, the two countries are still hostile countries, that is to say, the Dutch are our enemies of Daming, and the navy plundering the enemy's merchant ships is really needed to strike at the enemy's country, and there is nothing wrong with it, this move can not only weaken the strength of the enemy country, but also earn back the money spent for Daming, killing two birds with one stone, what does Aiqing think?" Zhu Ci said with a smile, full of indifference.

"This, this"

"But Your Majesty, even if the two countries are at war, they should not hurt the innocent people of the other side, otherwise my Ming is no different from a barbaric and brutal barbarian!" Huang Daozhou disagreed with Zhu Cijiao's words, in his eyes, the Ming Dynasty should be a country of benevolence, righteousness and etiquette, and the barbaric act of plundering the people of the enemy country must not be done.

It's not just the Zodiac Monday who thinks this way, otherwise there wouldn't be so many officials coming with the Zodiac Monday.

Zhu Ciji had long expected that Huang Daozhou would say this, shook his head and said with a smile: "Aiqing doesn't know, as far as I know, the Dutch people on those Dutch merchant ships are not ordinary Dutch people, most of them are composed of Dutch soldiers, Dutch merchants on merchant ships, and Dutch soldiers on warships. The first sage Confucius once said: to kill to stop killing, for the enemy, we do not need to be polite, with the other way to give back to the other, since they often plundered our people and merchant ships, now we can also plunder their merchant ships, this is not impossible, after all, we can not watch them transport the goods back, increase the strength of the enemy, right? ”

Huang Daozhou and the others were speechless all of a sudden, indeed, could it be that they watched people transport countless goods to increase their strength? Wouldn't this be even more harmful to the Ming Dynasty?

Zhu Ci has his own bottom line, he will not attack the innocent who have no ability to resist, but those Dutch merchants are definitely not innocents who have no ability to resist, on the contrary, they are more greedy and cruel than the army, the Dutch colonies in the world, the pioneers are not the Dutch warships and armies, but those Dutch merchants who do anything for the sake of profit, and the number of colonial natives who die in their hands is at least more than 100 times their own.

In May of the third year of the Ming Dynasty, after five months of precipitation, Zhu Ciji officially ordered the Fourth Army to attack the Dutch colonies in the South Seas, the most important of which was the East Indies where the Dutch East India Company was located.

After these few months, although the Netherlands urgently dispatched more than a dozen warships from all over the country to the South Seas, it is a pity that there are too few, they are not the opponents of the Ming Navy at all, and they do not even dare to fight, and they have been pursued by the Ming Navy everywhere.

Without the support of the fleet of warships, the Dutch in the colonies were no match for the Fourth Army of Yinglong's army, and they were defeated in just over a month, and the Ming Dynasty soon controlled the Strait of Malacca and a large part of the East Indies.

Nanyang has almost become the backyard of the Ming Navy, and the Dutch have been suppressed in all directions in this place.

The defeat of the Dutch undoubtedly greatly stimulated Portugal, Spain and other European countries, which were afraid of offending the Ming Dynasty, and suffered the blow of the Ming Dynasty like the Dutch, and sent envoys to make friends one by one.

Zhu Ci didn't talk nonsense, if he wanted to be good friends with Daming, he had to pay tribute to Daming every year, otherwise he would be expelled from Nanyang!

Although Portugal and other European countries were angry, they did not have the ability to compete with the Ming navy in the South Seas, and if they wanted to continue to trade with the Ming Dynasty, they could only accept the conditions of the Ming Dynasty.

With the compromise of European countries, the Ming Navy truly dominated the South Seas and established a veritable hegemony in the South Seas, which was better than the Zheng family back then.

The third volume has written so much that it is almost finished, and I am ready to start writing about dominating the world.

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