From January to April, Lee Sik's textile factory has been expanding production. Pen, fun, and www.biquge.info

The quality of Li Zhi's Li Jiajing cloth is better than that of hand-woven cloth on the market, and it is very easy to sell. However, if it is dumped in the prefectures and counties of Daming, it will bankrupt the housewives who spin and weave at home, causing very serious social problems, and eventually it will become a political problem. Therefore, Li Zhi has not been a large-scale textile factory.

However, after the steamship opened the route to Hirado, Li Zhi had the Japanese market, and he could dump the high-quality and inexpensive Li Jiajing cloth into Japan.

Of course, the dumping of Li Jiajing cloth with mechanized large-scale production to the Wa State would also cause the weavers of the Wa State to go bankrupt. But that was a problem for the Japanese people, and Li Zhi didn't bother to think about it.

During this period, Li Zhi's trading fleet had been running the Taiwan route, and the cotton cloth produced by the textile factory was piled up in the warehouse. Li Zhi plans to let the fleet continue to run in Taiwan until mid-May. During the period from the middle of May to the end of August of the lunar calendar, there will be a typhoon on the southeast coast, and the fleet will be drawn out to run the Tianjin-Hirado route to avoid the typhoon.

By the end of April, Li Zhi had recruited tenant farmers and began to cultivate 200,000 mu of private land on both sides of the rivers in Qingxian and Xingji counties. Although the harvest of paddy fields cultivated in Taiwan is higher, the construction of Tianjin cannot be left behind. After all, Tianjin is the base camp, and the large amount of farmland in the local area is still conducive to the stability and prosperity of the local area. After all, Taiwan's rice has to be shipped across the sea, and no one knows if there will be problems at sea. For example, during a typhoon, the fleet cannot run back and forth between the two places.

Zheng Hui was not in Tianjin, so Li Zhi asked Li Xing to be in charge of organizing the reclamation of Xintian. Now Li Zhi's prestige in Tianjin is in full swing, and the garrisons in various places are extremely obsessed with Li Zhi, and the local gentry do not dare to stop Li Zhi from repairing irrigation canals. With the cooperation of all parties, there is basically no obstacle to the reclamation of new fields. Although Li Xing did this for the first time, he was able to organize 10,000 tenant farmers to open up the wasteland.

During this period, Li Zhi's shipbuilders continued to launch new ships. In late February, five large ships built in Dengzhou and Laizhou, Shandong, with which Gao Ligong was in contact, were launched. On the ninth day of the fourth month, another big boat was built in Wangjiawan, and Li Zhi had ten big boats.

With these ten big ships, Li Zhi can transport more than 3,000 peasants to Hsinchu in one trip.

Although there were ten ships, there were not so many cannons. The new gunners in the artillery workshop are not yet skilled, and the production capacity of the artillery workshop is still slowly increasing. From the beginning of January to the end of April, Li Zhi's gunsmiths produced only eighty heavy guns in four months. Eight of Li Zhi's ten ships were equipped with guns, and two boats were without guns.

But even so, the Hachijo gunboats were very powerful. Even the Dutch pirate fleet had only nine gunboats. Moreover, Li Zhi's steamship runs faster than a sailing ship, and it can run when it encounters a large fleet that cannot be defeated. So on the whole, Li Zhi's fleet is very safe.

In early May, Li Zhi followed the fleet and sailed to Hsinchu, a stronghold in Taiwan. Now Hsinchu has transported 10,000 people, and every month it consumes 2,000 stone of grain, a large amount of silver and various materials for Li Zhi, and Li Zhi wants to see how the construction is going.

Along the way, the wind was clear and the clouds were light, and ten steamers broke the waves and moved forward, and it took eight days to reach the sea off Zhejiang.

On this day, Li Zhi was standing on the stern of the Nova with a cup of Longjing tea, chatting with Captain Lu Hu.

"Metropolitan Governor, Taiwan is so wild, why doesn't the Metropolitan Governor wait for the construction to be completed?"

Li Zhi smiled and said, "Wilderness is a good place. It is precisely because of the wilderness that we can reclaim and profit. If we are as highly mature as Daming everywhere, and there is a lot of resistance to everything we do, it will be extremely difficult for us to carry out our career. ”

Lu Hu nodded and said: "The governor of the capital is not afraid of miasma, and he personally went to the wild Taiwan to inspect it, I admire it!" ”

Li Zhi looked at the seagulls following the stern of the ship and said, "In the future, we will explore more places and conquer more wild places." and the Europeans, the blood of the Han people occupies the whole world. ”

The two were talking there when they suddenly heard Aban on the mast shouting, "There is a fleet to the south!" ”

Everyone was stunned and looked to the south. Li Zhi raised his binoculars and observed on the horizon for a while, and sure enough, he saw a fleet gradually emerging from below the horizon.

After a while, the two fleets gradually got closer, and Li Zhi saw the opposite fleet clearly. The fleet was huge, with nine ships. The ships in the fleet were not small, each one looked the size of the Nova, and the two largest ships were even larger than the Nova.

The ship's Aban shouted: "Tricolor! It's the red-haired pirate fleet! ”

Hearing Aban's words, the people on the boat became a little nervous and looked at Li Zhi in unison.

Lu Hu said: "Governor, eight of our ships have cannons, which may not be able to beat the Dutch. Let's get out of the way of them, right? ”

Li Zhi carefully observed the fleet of the Dutch and did not speak.

Lu Hu couldn't help it, and he also held a telescope to look at the Dutch fleet, but he couldn't see anything famous.

"Governor, can we escape?"

Li Zhi put down the binoculars, shook his head and said, "Our shells are much more powerful than them." We don't run away, we sink them all! ”

Lu Hu was stunned and said, "The Metropolitan Governor..."

Li Zhi waved his hand and said, "The order will go down, and the fleet will form a line to meet the red hair who rushed up to send him to death." ”

Lu Hu had no choice but to shout loudly to the sailors who were in charge of the flag: "The fleet platoon is lined up to meet the enemy!" Aim the ship with the broadside cannons. ”

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"Captain of the Combined Fleet of the United East India Company of the United Republic of the Netherlands and Captain of the Flagship Bredan" Forreston looked at the Ming fleet in the distance with a monocular, and did not speak.

Formosa is the Dutch name for Taiwan. The Combined Formosa Fleet is a fleet based in the city of Geranza in southern Taiwan. This fleet has been plundering near Taiwan, sometimes robbing merchant ships, sometimes rushing to the territory of Daming to plunder, as if it was a local hegemon.

With the exception of Zheng Hui being repulsed by Zheng Hui when he went ashore to rob northwest of Formosa in January, the pirate fleet never encountered an enemy that could match it. Even if it was Zheng Zhilong's ship, this fleet would dare to rob it.

After a long time, Forreston put down the binoculars and said, "It's this Ming fleet that doesn't use sails and smokes overhead, and there are more ships in the fleet than last time!" ”

After thinking about it, Forreston smiled and said, "The Ming people have set up a horizontal formation, this is to use artillery against our fleet!" ”

The first mate Caron beside him put down the binoculars and said coldly: "These Ming people don't know naval battles at all!" They learned that we placed cannons on ships, and they thought that they could decide the battle with cannons. They don't know how strong our ship is, and even if it is bombarded by hundreds of cannons, it will only make a few holes in the board. (To be continued.) )