"The emperor has decreed that the army is going to go on the expedition again, and this time it is going to lay down a territory as big as our Ming Dynasty now!"

"This is too big, can the emperor still manage it?"

"Don't tell me, don't you know? All the clans, currently above the county king, must come to Jingshi. It is said that conquering those territories has something to do with them! ”

"No, how did you hear that it was related to the Franc machine?"

"Who said that it was the remnants of Jianyu who fled over there, and the Spaniards in Luzon also fled back there, so the emperor ordered the pursuit. Do you think that even if you are far away, you will be punished? ”

“……”

As time passed, vassal kings from all over the country appeared in Jingshi, and the news became clear.

First, the princess of the country of Francois married to the prince as a side concubine, and the dowry has two territories;

Second, the imperial court really wanted to cross the ocean to attack the place called America, and use it to divide the Ming vassal kings who were willing to go. It is said that he was the first prince to respond to the fact that he wanted to go to the Americas to become a real and powerful vassal king.

Third, it is true that he went on an expedition across the ocean to pursue and suppress the remnants of Jianju, and it is also true that the Spaniards were killed.

After these three big news, there are legends about the Americas.

Not to mention the vast territory, there are also many mountains of gold and silver, and the Spaniards even transported gold, silver and jewelry to their country by boat. There are also many specialties that the Ming Dynasty does not have, and it is said that the emperor has decreed that they must be brought back, which is definitely a good thing.

All of a sudden, after the tea and dinner of the people of the Ming Dynasty, it was all about the Americas.

In the army, officers and men who are eager to make military merits have asked for war and want to make meritorious contributions. And today's princes, including vassal kings from all walks of life who are unwilling to surrender to the throne, such as the Tang King and the like, have begun to recruit troops and prepare to go to new places to build a country.

In short, Daming is more lively than ever.

In the midst of all this excitement, on the contrary, some things are not noticed.

For example, Emperor Chongzhen issued an order to transfer the main force of the southern navy of the Ming Dynasty to the Xiaoxi Ocean, that is, the Indian Ocean, and renamed it the Western Navy of the Ming Dynasty, and the general army was still Zheng Chenggong. Zhang Huangyan was appointed as the governor of Dongwu, and Yan Yingyuan, the former governor of Dongwu, was appointed as the governor of Dongwu, and concurrently served as the governor of the western navy, with jurisdiction over Colombo and Mumbai, and the governor's palace was located in Colombo.

Lu Xiangsheng was transferred back to Beijing to serve as the secretary of the military department, of course, the title is inevitable. And Yang Tinglin succeeded Lu Xiang and was transferred to Nanyang. In addition, Li Dingguo was transferred to Bombay as a general soldier.

Needless to say, Emperor Chongzhen did this in preparation for sending troops to the Middle East. The reason why Yan Yingyuan was put in charge was mainly because Lu Xiangsheng was old and had been fighting in the north and south, so it was time to rest.

Speaking of which, Sun Chuanting and Hong Chengchou are older than Lu Xiangsheng, and they will be about to be sixty people soon. But Hong Chengchou guarded the Tianshan Mountains, did not get tired of it at all, and led the troops to give people a good look at every turn; And Sun Chuanting actively wrote a book, asking to give full play to the residual heat and continue to expand the territory for the Ming Dynasty, that is, to go to the Americas.

Emperor Chongzhen knew that both of them were suffocating. But since they are healthy and can afford to eat, it is up to them.

But there is a problem that still emerges in front of Emperor Chongzhen, that is, the older generation of capable ministers are slowly aging. Therefore, he subsequently promoted Zhang Pu to the cabinet. In addition, Song Yingxing is the secretary of the Ministry of Industry and is directly in charge of the Kaiwu Division; Chen Zilong is the secretary of the household department and is directly in charge of the agricultural department......

All the work is about preparing for the future.

To go to the Americas, it is necessary to mobilize enough warships and transport ships, and the troops must also be in place, and more importantly, the Pacific Warm Current from Fuso Province to the Americas is best in May and June every year; Therefore, it is necessary to wait until the following year before going on the expedition.

…………

Ceylon, the most important site in the Indian Ocean, is blocked by the shipping lanes from the Middle East to the South Sea, and the island is rich in gemstones, most famous for rubies, sapphires and cat's eyes. In addition, Ceylon is also an important production area for the cultivation of black tea and cinnamon.

The Portuguese, at the Age of Discovery, immediately fell in love with the area and concentrated almost most of their resources in the Indian Ocean region to conquer Ceylon. Of course, even so, they did not get their wish, and in the end they only established Colombo as a stronghold, mastered the coastal area centered on it, and kept fighting against the natives of Ceylon.

If we simply summarize the situation of the Portuguese in Colombo, it is in Ceylon that the Portuguese won the defensive battle of the natives attacking Colombo; The Portuguese tried to expand and further control the natives, and the natives often surrounded and annihilated the Portuguese.

At the end of March 1638, the Portuguese launched another attack on the Kingdom of Kandy, which was dealt a heavy blow by the king's army. In May of the same year, the King of Kandy invited the Dutch fleet to the east coast. On 28 May, the King's army joined forces with the Dutch navy and captured the Portuguese fort in Matgradebwa. Five days later, the two sides signed the Kandy-Dutch Treaty, which was a brief ceasefire.

However, this has nothing to do with the Dutch. The Dutch began to assemble and prepare, and then after May 1639, the Dutch launched a surprise attack, conquering important cities and fortresses such as Trincomalee, Migbois, and Galle, and defeated the Portuguese, but the Dutch were unwilling to return the territory they had won to the king of Kandy.

You must know that the Dutch can have this record, in fact, the natives of Kandy are behind it. And the Dutch don't give those territories, it is clear that they know what they want to do!

So, in order to combat the ambitions of the Dutch, Rajsingh II took the following decisive actions:

First, they took the initiative to send troops to attack the Matar region occupied by the Dutch, and moved all the cinnamon producing families to Kandy.

secondly, to stop supplying food to the Dutch, putting them in a difficult situation;

Third, to preemptively regain the areas from which the Portuguese troops had withdrawn, and quickly establish royal rule. As a result, about half of the coastal areas that had been controlled by the Portuguese were incorporated into the territory of the Kingdom of Kandy.

In this way, the place of Ceylon fell into a more delicate relationship between the three powers. It can also be seen from this that none of them are fuel-efficient lamps.

On this day, in November of the 24th year of Chongzhen, outside the city of Colombo, a group of Portuguese led their servant army, carrying a lot of booty on their shoulders, escorting thousands of natives back to Colombo.

Along the way, the Portuguese or their servants could be seen scolding and whipping the natives, and they themselves laughed as they watched the natives look embarrassed.

At this time, large-scale warfare was gone, but it was common to send troops to loot from time to time. Among the several forces, the most unlucky are the ordinary natives in the border position of the Kandy Kingdom, who can be said to live a miserable life.

For them, they are certainly not the henchmen of those nobles in the Kandy Kingdom, and no one cares about them. And for the Portuguese and Dutch, they were colonizers, did they have to farm and fish themselves? It must also be to rob the local natives.

Of course, these natives have fought against this situation, but they are scattered and are no match for any of the forces. The result of the struggle was to be killed and abused. Later, they became numb.

No, though they were whipped and driven away by the Portuguese and their servants, few of them were angry, and they just walked with a sluggish expression.

There was only a young and strong native named Laburaca, whose eyes glistened with hatred as he was whipped by the Portuguese servants. Although he covered it up, he was eventually seen by the minion who beat him.

"Damn, I'm not convinced, I still want to continue looking for fights!" When the servant saw this, he was furious, and went down with several lashes, so that there were several more blood marks on Labraka's unclothed back.

Laburaka was furious, as if he wanted to get out, and when he turned his head and was about to go crazy, he suddenly saw something, and his face suddenly showed a look of shock.

The servant soldier was about to whip him again, but when he saw his face, he was curious, and subconsciously turned his head to look, and suddenly, his face changed greatly.

Immediately afterwards, he jumped up like a monkey that had been stepped on by his tail, pointed to the sea and shouted: "Oh no, there is a fleet coming over the sea, no, there are many warships on the sea......"

As soon as he shouted like this, not only did the Portuguese and the servants turn their heads to look and make an uproar, but even the numb natives of Ceylon also turned their heads to look at them, and there were too many voices of surprise.

"How many warships are there, and they're all big ships, where did they come from?"

"I'm coming to Colombo, what should I do, do you want to escape?"

"Look, the city of Colombo already knows about it, and the flag is being issued?"

"You are just a group of lonely and unheard, and you see that the flag is hanging, it is a friendly army, haha, a friendly army is coming!"

"What a friendly army, the other Europeans are all enemies, should it be...... It's from the Ming Empire, right? ”

"It's not the flag of the Ming Empire, just that battleship, see it, it's also only the Ming Empire!"

“……”

Labraka saw that the men were nervous at first, and then revelry, and to be honest, he himself didn't feel anything at all except for the first surprise at the sight of the sheer size of the fleet.

Because he knew that to them, the natives, who came from the sea, were robbers, who had come to harm their suffering natives.

However, the arrival of the Ming fleet also had a direct benefit to them, that is, whether it was the Portuguese or those servants, they were all excited, and they did not scold or whip them anymore.

With a "bah" sound, Laburaka spat at the mouth with hatred. This hatred is not only for these Portuguese and the most hateful servant soldiers who have plagued them, but also for the newcomers who are estimated to be harming them in the Ming Empire!

Whether they were natives happy or not, the Ming fleet, about two hundred warships, slowly approached the port of Colombo.