Before Zhao'an, or last year, the Li family's pirate group had a total of 275,000 people.

After this year's recruitment, the empire organized these populations into households, and moved the vast majority of them to live on land, and most of the remaining young people with rich seafaring experience were also incorporated into the navy or shipping companies.

There are 22,000 of them, which is not a small number, but most of them are still undergoing short-term training in study classes (mainly in politics and religion), and it is estimated that it will take three to six months before they can return to sea again.

At least at this moment, Li Feihu, the vice admiral of the Imperial Navy, has less than 2,000 people left in total, and more than 20 medium-sized lucky ships.

plus Li Feilong, Li Feifeng, Li Feihuang and others, the number of troops is less than 10,000.

Moreover, Xu Shiyang was not allowed to give up Shuangyu Port, and half of the 10,000 people had to stay in Shuangyu to be responsible for the transit trade between Jiangnan and overseas - now the empire did not allow merchants including Tianzhu, Pars and more Western merchants to trade directly with the Great Zhou, and all import and export goods must be registered and paid at Shuangyu Port before they were allowed to go to sea.

Any foreign ship that enters the port of Jiangnan without passing through Shuangyu Port is likely to be intercepted by the Huaxia Navy.

This aspect involves a huge economic and resource flow problem, and there is no room for sloppiness, and the existing human ships of the Li family must take turns to go into battle, or stay in the old nest of Shuangyu Port, or go to sea to arrest those foreign merchant ships that do not obey orders.

And the order given by Xu Shiyang, the crown prince, had to be carried out.

Xu Shiyang wants to get the struvite and sea grass resources of Sansha, and Li Feihu is unwilling to give up the fishery resources and rich marine luxuries there, which need to be mined by manpower.

What's even worse is that there are still some pirates who split from the Li family on Taiwan Island at this time, and the route to Sansha is threatened by these pirates, but it is not easy to walk.

In order to safely transport Sansha's resources back to the north, the navy must first eliminate the Taiwan pirate group.

After the elimination of the Taiwan pirate group, we cannot lightly abandon such a large island as Taiwan and must continue to develop, and this requires the investment of more human resources .......

It's an endless cycle, and how much power does it take to break it?

Li Feihu has just attended a regular meeting of the Navy Staff, at which the Navy Department put forward the following goals:

To maintain a naval base in Shuangyu Port, 10,000 people, including family members and logistics personnel, are needed.

The Taiwan Island Raid requires 10,000 naval officers and men, and even if it is only a simple development, it will require at least 500,000 immigrants.

If the resource exploitation of Sansha is only concentrated in Dongsha and Xisha for the time being, it will still need to maintain 5,000 to 10,000 people for a long time.

"Is Your Highness really willing to invest so much manpower over there?" Li Feihu asked.

This is also the question that all the admirals of the Navy want to ask.

As we all know, the empire is still very short of population, the core five provinces are like this, and the newly built provinces are even more, especially the two provinces of Ji and Moxi, the territory is vast, but there are Tartar tribes everywhere, and the empire can only mobilize about 2,000 Han Chinese in the two provinces.

This is very dangerous, and if there is a large population, you can only migrate to these places first to consolidate local rule.

In those places in Sansha on Taiwan Island, I really can't see the possibility of investing so much manpower.

"I'm really going to invest more in these areas."

For this question, Xu Shiyang gave a positive answer:

"But you think about it, investing manpower on these islands does not necessarily require a large number of migrants from our country."

In terms of the development of Taiwan Island, which is expected to be the most labor-intensive, it is closer to the southern Fujian Province of the Yangtze River, which has always been known as seven parts of the mountains, two parts of water and one part of the fields, and the agricultural resources are not enough to feed the entire population of the province.

Therefore, Fujian Province has been a place with a high incidence of infant drowning incidents in all dynasties, and it is also one of the provinces with the largest population of overseas immigrants.

In this era, immigration abroad is actually a wilderness of immigration, and it is one of the symbols of the extremely pioneering spirit.

Although there is a problem of tropical epidemics, as long as you are willing to invest in the development of human resources, you can easily get a large amount of farmland resources, and whether the farmland there is planted with rice or sugarcane, the harvest will be very good.

In fact, the pirate group that split off from the Li family has been doing this kind of thing in recent years -- they use Taiwan Island as a base, rely on attracting immigrants from Fujian Province to develop land, maintain the finances of the pirate fleet, and use the pirate fleet to maintain the pressure on the coastal defense of the south of the Yangtze River to ensure their own existence.

For the once desperate Taiwan pirate group that left Shuangyu Port, this has in fact become a positive cycle, and their strength has gradually recovered and strengthened.

Xu Shiyang values this point, as long as the Taiwan pirate group is destroyed militarily, then Huaxia can logically take over this positive circulation system and continue to attract immigrants from Fujian Province to develop Taiwan Island.

This not only allowed the empire to obtain the mineral, timber and agricultural output of Taiwan Island, but also gave the empire a new way to introduce immigrants, which is a major benefit.

Of course, there is another advantage of an isolated island like Taido, which is that it can use a large number of slaves to maintain initial production, without having to worry about slaves fleeing and connecting with the locals.

The indigenous headhunters of Taiwan were not good communication partners, both for Han Chinese and Han Chinese slaves.

Xu Shiyang planned to recruit some Tartar immigrants or slaves from Liaodong and other places to fill the island with Taiwan.

The local native slaves obtained in the process of conquering Taiwan Island were used in Liaodong and other places.

As for how many casualties such drastic environmental changes will cause, this is basically not the focus of Xu Shiyang's attention.

In other words, Xu Shiyang never paid much attention to the mortality rate of slaves, and he attached the same importance to this figure as the mortality rate of large animals such as cattle and horses.

Sometimes, for example, whether it is outside the two provinces of Ji and Hei, whether it is a foreign commoner, or a slave, it is a good thing to lose more.

"Don't be afraid of dead people when you develop Taiwan Island, as long as you don't die Han people, it doesn't matter how many outsiders die, you are a pirate, when are pirates afraid of many dead people?"

Xu Shiyang said unceremoniously to Li Feihu:

"As for the development of Sansha, it can be temporarily focused on the economic aspect, and the exploitation of Hairen grass needs to be launched, and if it is too dangerous, try to use the ama of Goryeo and Fuso."

"Your Highness, the slaves over there in Fusang are not easy to obtain." Li Feihu suddenly interjected: "The Oda family has already agreed to most of Fuso, and he is not willing to sell it to our population now." ”

The source of Fuso slaves in China was basically captives in the Fusang Civil War, and the far-sighted Fusang daimyo would resell these "enemies" to Xu Shiyang in exchange for short-term profits.

But if there was a man of great talent who could unify Fusang, he would not agree to sell the people who could cultivate their own land and pay taxes as slaves.

Oda Nobunaga was such a person, and he preferred to let the captives help him reclaim the land rather than sell it directly to the Chinese maritime merchants.