Chapter 256: African Spheres of Influence (7)
Seeing such a novel way of fighting, coupled with the varied battle process, Pedro II was a little dumbfounded, he himself was the king and commander of the three armies, personally led the army to participate in the war against Portugal, and that time also won the battle and expelled the Portuguese army, but compared to today's battle, he led ten times the army, it is impossible to achieve victory, and it will be even worse to lose.
From the moment the exercise ended, King Pedro II of the Kingdom of Congo became a loyal admirer of the Ming Empire. Originally, they had more favors for Chen Liang than Zhu Changrun, but the results of this exercise clearly showed that Daming was the real family behind the Daimyo's Kingdom, and Zhu Changrun was the object they needed to befriend. Soon Pedro II made up his mind and hired Zhu Changrun as his advisor to help him build a powerful army, recover the lost lands of his kingdom, and build a powerful state.
Around the 10th and 11th centuries AD, early agricultural settlements appeared in the Congo estuary area, which were the prototypes of the Kingdom of Kongo. Congolese because there is no writing, so the history of the Kingdom of Congo before contact with the Portuguese has not been recorded, only in the legends of the local people have a sporadic description of its history, so the written records of the Kingdom of Congo and the Portuguese have a certain relationship, now Pedro II hired Zhu Changrun as his consultant, only more than 100 years of written history of the Kingdom of the Congo, it is obvious that there are very few people who know writing, even in the aristocratic class, the writing they know is also Portuguese writing, and it is not too much, The Kingdom of Congo does not have its own script, since there is no unique script of its own country, this gives Zhu Changrun a good opportunity to promote Chinese characters here, so Zhu Changrun did not hesitate to start the general education of Chinese characters here.
The spread of Chinese characters first began in the army, just as in Abyssinia, when Zhu Changrun, Chen Liang and the guards taught military knowledge in Chinese, so that these officers had to use their best efforts to adapt to the teaching in order to obtain the best academic results. The officers who can come here to study are certainly not stupid, most of them are children of certain family backgrounds, and the family education they have received will more or less understand society more thoroughly than ordinary people. Pedro II's royal family had the highest level of education in the Kingdom of Kongo, so they ruled the whole country, and the tribal leaders were second only to them, and there were many people who tried to surpass them, which was the biggest motivation for these people to learn.
With the continuous spread of the Chinese language in the army, especially the influence of these educated noble children, the elders of their families also paid more attention to the education of other children, most of the soldiers brought by Zhu Changrun were from the Ming Dynasty, and there were not too many, they were not very suitable for the environment here, and there was no way to enter the vast countryside, so they could only carry out elite education in the city, and meet the elite disciples of the aristocratic class as much as possible. Compared with these new Yingtian soldiers, the soldiers of the Daimyo Kingdom are much better, not only soldiers, but also many businessmen have begun to gradually enter the vast Congo Kingdom countryside, establishing large and small private schools, so that the children of small landlords in the countryside also began to learn Chinese, but their own Chinese is not very accurate, and they have taught many disciples whose pronunciation is not very accurate, fortunately, Zhu Changrun also brought a large number of Chinese dictionaries from the Ming Dynasty, which has played a corrective role in this phenomenon.
It will take a long time for the popularization of the Chinese language in the Kingdom of Kongo to accumulate, and it can only play its due role when it reaches a certain time, but the goods brought from the Shin Ontenh and Daimyo Kingdoms have begun to play a role here, iron farming tools have been widely used here, the level of agricultural production has been gradually improved, a complete set of perfect farming habits have been formed, and grain production has been greatly improved, and many people no longer have to worry about starving to death, nor do they have to worry about being robbed of food by others. As a result, tribe-based villages were gradually formed here, and people began to settle down and become a fixed circle of production and life.
With these changes in living habits, King Pedro II of the Kingdom of Congo began to see the benefits of these changes, at least one point is that taxation is much more convenient, which is the most important change, and the other point is that there are fewer and fewer conflicts between tribes, because there is no need to fight to the death for that little bit of food and prey, naturally there will be no more deaths of a large number of people, with more people will have more tax sources and materials, and his kingdom will become stronger and stronger, Naturally, there will be more armies, and at the same time it will be possible to conquer the surrounding countries and tribes. Of course, it's still a long process, but there's hope.
Zhu Changrun and Chen Liang could not stay in the Kingdom of the Congo for a long time, and talked with Pedro II about some principles of mutual interaction, and after signing a large number of agreements, they helped Pedro II establish a seed guard, and after staying here for three months, they each returned to their own countries, and they naturally did not know about the many changes that happened later, but they knew that Pedro II would never have other changes.
After having his own relatively elite guard, Pedro II began to carry out a series of reforms to the domestic army, based on the gold and silver that has continued for hundreds of years, Pedro II purchased a large number of new weapons from Xinyingtian, and built an army exclusive to the kingdom, the senior officers of these armies have been trained by Zhu Changrun's personal soldiers, and they are all direct children of Pedro II, or selected one by one according to the method of selecting and allocating officers of the Ming Dynasty. There is no doubt about the loyalty of Pedro II, which is the basis of Pedro II's rule over the Kingdom of Kongo, and he must have absolute control.
In the history of the world, there have been countless military coups, in addition to the ambition of some generals, but also the absolute loyalty of their subordinates, and the fact that they have great financial resources and materials. In order to avoid such a thing, Pedro II organized the army of the Kingdom of Congo according to the method provided by Zhu Changrun, so that a military coup could not be successful, and he adopted a military academy training system. In the future, all officers must be trained through military academies to be promoted, just a qualification, and the principal of the military academy is Pedro II himself, which means that these officers are his own disciples, and good military training and education can make the army form a complete command mode, no matter any troops, as long as the trained officers can command like a finger, there is no phenomenon that anyone will be paralyzed in the command of the army. All senior officers of the armed forces can be transferred to each other without any obstacles, and this is the role of nationalization and regularization of the armed forces.
There is also an important method of controlling the army, and that is the way of supply of military supplies. In countries with relatively simple weapons and equipment, the source of weapons is very simple, for example, in Chinese history, Chen Sheng and Wu Guang rose up from the pole, sharpening the bamboo pole can be used as a weapon, with a sufficient source of soldiers, there are enough personnel to carry out military secession, carry out a coup d'état. However, when weapons and equipment are developed to a certain extent, the numerical advantage will be reduced to a minimum, and as long as the supply of logistics and materials is controlled, an army can be controlled, and this is the foundation of national stability. Pedro II took this measure, and the most important clause in the agreement signed between Zhu Changrun and him was that only the supply of weapons at the national level with the Kingdom of Congo would occur, and there would be no arms transactions for any tribes and tribes, so that all weapons would be controlled by Pedro II himself, and he would deploy these key military materials in a unified manner. Through a series of military reform programs, Pedro II after a short period of army reorganization, completely mastered the country's military power, even if an external force bribed a certain or several high-ranking officers, it could not pose a threat to the control of the entire army, and the Congo Kingdom under the rule of Pedro II formed a new type of military state with a certain combat capability.