The Tang Empire's Ryukyu Prefecture, an overseas territory very far from the empire's mainland coast, has undergone drastic changes in the past year.

Politically, officials from the mainland are in charge of the rule of the islands of the Ryukyu Prefecture, of course, the rule of the Tang Dynasty over the Ryukyu Prefecture is relatively relaxed, so there are still some local people who have become Sinicized and have entered the government at all levels of the Ryukyu Prefecture.

Militarily, the small Ryukyu Prefecture has thousands of garrisons, and in addition to the garrison troops sent by the army, there are actually more naval units.

The navy has deployed a marine battalion here, in addition, the strength of the Ryukyu detachment is also quite good, there are many ships, so many ships also need sailors and marines accompanying the ship, so the number of the detachment is also large, plus the garrison of the naval base, the navy has deployed more than 2,000 troops here.

With one cruiser, four frigates, six patrol ships, and more than twenty small ships, the Ryukyu Squadron was still more powerful than the ordinary main fleet squadron, and the Luzon squadron was even more incomparable to the Ryukyu squadron.

The reason for this is simple, that is, there are too many pirates in the waters from Ryukyu to Fuso, forcing the navy to continuously strengthen the forces in this sea area to escort ships and combat pirates.

In the past two years, there have been many pirates in the Fuso sea area, which is caused by many aspects, the main reason is that the Tang Dynasty cracked down on the pirates along the local coast, resulting in many pirates running to the Fuso coast to gain a foothold.

In addition, there is another point that with the gradual expansion of the sea trade between Datang and Fusang, the large number of benefits contained in it also makes many daimyo excited, and some conditional gates are to open ports and trade with merchants of Datang, and even send ships to Datang to trade, but the daimyo with such conditions and opportunities are a minority after all.

So they chose a different path, directly as pirates, plundering merchant ships from the Ryukyus to the western waters of Fuso.

Such a small investment, quick results, increase the employment rate of its samurai, and can also hit the daimyo in the western part of Fuso, killing multiple birds with one stone.

In such a complex environment, piracy along the coast of Fuso has become more and more intense in the past two years, and the looting of merchant ships often occurs, forcing the Datang Navy to continue to increase investment in this sea area.

But eight years after Xuanping, the Datang Navy found that it was unreliable to just fight pirates on the sea.

Because fighting pirates on the sea will not hurt their roots, and the roots of these pirates are all in Fuso itself, some ports are pirate dens at all, and some daimyo are pirate leaders at all, and strangling one or two pirate ships on the sea will not change the situation at all.

If you really just want to control the piracy situation from the sea, the Datang Navy has to completely block the entire sea area, but how many warships are needed in that way, the Datang Navy now has a total of dozens of warships, and there are many areas that need to be deployed, it is very good to be able to station one cruiser and four frigates on the Ryukyu side, how can there be a redundant fleet sent here.

For this reason, the navy decided that this time the bandits would not engage in any naval encirclement and suppression warfare, that would be a waste of time and there would be no results, and more importantly, there would be no deterrence, and that in order to completely eliminate the pirates in the Fusang Seas, it would be necessary to use the tactics of encircling and suppressing pirates in the homeland: smash the Yellow Dragon!

Find the port where the pirates gather, the main fleet goes up to block the port, the marines land, and destroy them on land, cleanly, easily and quickly.

As for whether this will violate the territory of other countries and whether it will cause war, the navy has not considered this, and even if it did, it did not care.

What is the territory of other countries, in the official statement of the Tang Dynasty, these territories belong to the Tang Dynasty, and they are all the Son of Heaven, and now they are just stolen by the local natives, and we will have to get them back sooner or later.

What's wrong with us landing on our own territory?

Of course, this is just the official statement, and everyone doesn't take it seriously, but if it is, even if we land?

Now Fusang is a melee of big names, and there is no unified regime at all, and it cannot stop the landing of the Tang Navy at all.

Nowadays, in the trade between the Tang Dynasty and Fusang, the ordnance trade is one of the major items, but it is not that the Tang Dynasty imports Japanese knives from Fusang or anything, but that the Tang Dynasty exports plate armor, steel swords, arquebuses and other ordnance to Fusang.

Nowadays, many powerful or wealthy Fusang daimyo have more or less some weapons from the Tang Dynasty in their hands, and plate armor that can brighten the eyes of blind people, and now they have become the status symbol of some wealthy samurai in Fusang.

Well, there's no way, this plate armor is expensive!

Although the plate armor exported to Fusang by the Tang Dynasty is mainly lightweight, its price is still very expensive after a long sea transportation, basically a complete set of about 100 taels of silver.

Being able to take out hundreds of taels of silver to buy a set of plate armor for himself is not something that any samurai can do.

From the fact that the armaments of the Tang Dynasty were popular in Fusang and the sales were very good, it can be seen how serious the chaos within Fusang was.

This also means that there will not be a unified Fusang regime to confront the Tang Dynasty.

Since there is not even a big enemy, the Tang Navy naturally does not have many scruples!

So in order to combat pirates, when the Ryukyu Detachment was preparing to go to sea to the western coast of Fuso, they brought the marine battalion stationed in the Ryukyus, and this time they were going to end a pirate port and give the pirates in Fuso a little warning, telling them that the merchant ships of the Tang Empire are not so easy to rob, even if you succeed in looting, Lao Tzu can kill you at your doorstep.

At the beginning of April, the Ryukyu Prefecture governed Zhongshan County, which was the original capital of the Ryukyu Kingdom, Naha Prefecture, after the Tang Dynasty annexed the Ryukyu Kingdom and established the Ryukyu Prefecture, the entire Ryukyu Islands were set up as three counties, from south to north to set up Nanshan County, Zhongshan County, Beishan County, in addition to the county seat is basically set up in the coastal port.

The strength of the navy was relied upon to ensure the security of the prefecture and strengthen the connection between the islands of Ryukyu Province.

At the same time, the county seat was set up in the coastal port, but also had a certain vigilance against the natives on the island, although the Ryukyu Kingdom was originally a vassal state of China, but the sinicization was not thorough, far less complete than the sinicization of Goryeo, the king of the Ryukyu Kingdom was awarded the imperial title, and the family was forcibly relocated to live in Jinling City, many remnants of the Ryukyu Kingdom were unwilling.

Although due to the strong military strength of the Tang Empire, they did not resist overtly, but the secret resistance would not stop like this.

Therefore, the rule of the imperial side in the Ryukyus is not said to be directly in place, according to the process of the empire's disposal of the Ryukyus Province, it should first control the coastal ports, control the main cities and strategic points, and then gradually extend to the villages below.

And vigorously promote sinicization in this process!

In the past year, the empire has emigrated tens of thousands of people to the Ryukyus, and unlike the unsuitable places such as Otoin Island, which are mainly exiled criminals, the immigrants on the Ryukyu side are all landless peasants recruited from all over the country, and they all emigrate one by one.

You must know that there are not many indigenous people on the islands of Ryukyu Prefecture, and these 10,000 immigrants are enough to affect the local ethnic structure, and at the same time, the local yamen is still vigorously promoting marriage.

In addition to immigration, there is also the same cultural sinicization as always, mainly reflected in the establishment of primary and secondary schools, the abolition of all local colleges and private schools that teach in indigenous languages, and the destruction of all books in indigenous languages that can be collected.

And promote the popularity of Hanfu in the local area.

The Sinicization policy of the Tang Empire was basically from military to political, to cultural and economic, to the all-round sinicization of the population structure, and this series of measures was also an important reason why the local yamen of the Ryukyu Prefecture was able to maintain its rule in the Ryukyus in a short period of time.

Today, more than 20 ships from the port of Naha, which is also the seat of Ryukyu Prefecture and the county seat of Zhongshan County, are ready to set sail for the western coast of Fuso.

This time was different from previous operations to exterminate pirates, which were only small-scale operations of a few warships, escorting ships on the sea and encircling and suppressing pirate ships.

But this time, in addition to a large number of warships, they also brought more than a dozen auxiliary ships, some of which were loaded with a large number of marines, and some were loaded with a large amount of ammunition and other supplies.

This time, they didn't plan to just encircle the pirate ships, they were going to directly attack the major ports where the pirates were entrenched, and destroy the pirate dens.

Of course, they also had an incidental goal on this trip, that is, to prepare to occupy an island in the Osumi Islands, not far north of Ryukyu Prefecture, to provide a supply port and strategic transit base for the subsequent anti-bandit operations, so as to support the anti-bandit operations in the western waters of Fuso for a long time.

Their goal was not too big, and they did not plan to land directly on Kyushu Island, which would be too much of a movement, and it would easily attract a counterattack from the Shimazu clan, the de facto ruler at the southern tip of Kyushu Island.

Although the Tang Empire did not take this small Fuso daimyo family into account, there was no need to make too much movement, and it was not suitable to start a war with the Shimazu clan in a short time.

Why?

Because the current Shimazu clan is the main collaborator of the empire in the Fuso trade!