"Your Highness, it's time to rest."

"Don't worry, I'll rest when I'm done with this design."

Xue Shanggong approached and saw a large stack of white paper on the desk in front of Zhu Zhanji, each of which was painted with a relatively abstract pattern, which was very different from Zhu Zhanji's previous brushwork.

Zhu Zhanji's handwriting is good, and his painting is also passing, including sculptures. However, his style is biased towards gongbi and realism, which are two styles from the freehand style that is now admired, so it is not well recognized.

"What is this?"

"The royal flag, the national flag, and the military flag. These are just the first drafts, and they will be shown to the imperial grandfather tomorrow, and then they will be determined. ”

Since he was going to the West, Zhu Zhanji certainly thought of making the national flag, the military flag, and the royal flag.

The main color of the royal flag is red and yellow, and the pattern is a yellow five-clawed golden dragon with the sun in its mouth.

The pale yellow hue of the national flag is a slightly smaller golden sun and a slightly larger silver crescent, forming a large circle, representing the sun and moon. Underneath there is a patch of blue, embellished with wavy lines, representing the rising sun and moon.

The military flag is divided into navy and army, the army is yellow tone, embellished with red, a map that includes the Eurasian continent and the South Sea Islands, representing the territory of the Ming Dynasty, the sun and moon on the top, and the code names of the armies below.

The Navy flag is almost the same as the Army flag, but in a blue tone, and on land it is yellow.

These flags are also about three to two, or five to four, but unlike modern flags, they are longer in height and shorter in width.

Because the flags of this era are basically vertical rectangles in order to hold up the flag. In fact, such a design is more in line with the principles of mechanics than the flags of later generations.

The longer the height and the hanging on the flagpole, the larger the unfolded area. The devil knows why the flags of later generations became wider and hungrier when there was no wind.

As for the map of Asia and Europe, it was also Zhu Zhanji's intention, and it would only be printed on the flag when the Ming Dynasty actually occupied those new continents.

Now Europe, has not yet gone abroad, and now Portugal has just established its first colonial base in North Africa.

They simply don't know how big the world is, what countries there are.

Xue Shanggong sighed and helped Zhu Zhanji sort out these drawings and put them away. "Not long after I came back, you were going out again."

Zhu Zhanji said with a smile: "If there is no accident, this will be the last time I will go far away, and in the future, there will be no such opportunity." ”

Xue Shanggong wanted to say something, but several eunuchs and palace maids ran to the door of Zhu Zhanji's side hall and said excitedly: "Your Highness, Chen Liangyuan is about to give birth to ......."

Chen Liangyuan is Qiu Yue, the fourth daughter of Zhu Zhanji's former Fenghua Xueyue, and after becoming Zhu Zhanji's concubine, she used her name back.

Zhu Zhanji's feelings for her are still relatively deep, and when he heard this, he said to Xue Shanggong: "You go and explain to Yang Fengyu, I will go to Chen Liangyuan first, and then I will go to her later." ”

According to the rules, Zhu Zhanji is going to accompany Yang Fengyu today, but now that the child is about to be born, of course he has to go to see the child first.

That night, until the early hours of the morning, Chen Liangyuan was tossed to death and gave birth to a boy.

So far, Zhu Zhanji has become the father of five children.

Zhu Di did not pay attention to the design of the national flag at all, on the contrary, he paid special attention to the royal flag and military flag.

He also put forward some opinions on a few flags, made some small adjustments, and then took them to the court for discussion.

The ministers knew that this was Zhu Zhanji's design, and they were approved by Zhu Di, so they decided on it almost without encountering any opposition.

Led by the Ministry of Rites, the Internal Supervision Printing and Dyeing Bureau is responsible for printing, and all kinds of dragon shapes and sun and moon have ready-made templates, and the finished product can be produced in half a month at the latest.

This is just a trivial matter, and it is not worth mentioning compared to the things that Zhu Zhanji has done to benefit all the people, or that can directly affect future generations.

Seeing that this matter had become normal, he stopped paying attention. As long as these flags are printed, it will not take long for all local governments and military guards to receive the printed national flags and military flags.

In addition to the establishment of the bank, he focused more on the allocation of personnel and materials to the West.

In the past, Zheng He went to the Western Ocean four times, with about 27,800 people and more than 200 ships, including various ships of different sizes.

The fleet is composed of three sequences: boat division, amphibious troops, and honor guard. The boat division is the ship force, and the basic unit is the warship, which is formed into formations, called the front battalion, the rear battalion, the middle battalion, the left battalion, and the right battalion; amphibious forces for landing operations; The honor guard serves as a guard and the etiquette of foreign exchanges, solemn and majestic.

In terms of personnel, there are five main components. It is divided into a command part, a navigation part, a diplomatic and trade part, a logistics support part, and a military escort part.

The command part is the center of the entire fleet, making command decisions on navigation, diplomacy, trade, operations, etc.

The nautical part is mainly responsible for nautical business, ship repair, weather forecasting, etc.

The diplomatic and trade section includes diplomatic etiquette, conducting trade, and liaison and interpreting.

The logistics support part is responsible for managing finance, logistics supply, drafting documents, medical personnel, etc.

The military escort component is responsible for navigation safety and military operations.

The composition of such a fleet and the establishment of the fleet are perfect and tight.

This time, Zhu Zhanji personally led the team to the West, and the number of personnel should be increased by at least two times. His personal guards alone reached 12,000 people, as well as more than 20 princes of the royal palace and county kings, and each of them led a team of at least three or four hundred people.

In addition, it is necessary to increase the number of trade personnel and increase the combat troops, although the personnel have not yet been determined, but roughly estimated, the number of people is nearly 100,000, and the size of the fleet has reached nearly 1,000.

But don't think that this is the whole family of the Ming Fleet, in fact, even if it is nearly a thousand warships, it only occupies a quarter of the total warships of the entire Ming Navy.

In the fourteenth year of Yongle, the Ming Dynasty had nearly 4,000 ships, including 1,300 patrol ships, 1,300 warships, as well as 400 treasure ships and 400 grain ships stationed at the base of Xinjiangkou in Nanjing, in addition to more than 200 ocean-going treasure ships and a large number of guard and law enforcement ships and herald ships to protect the ocean and patrol the river.

If you add river boats and private sea boats, the total number of ships in Daming today is nearly 20,000, and all the ships in other countries in the world together are not as many as Daming's family.

Now that there are nearly three months before departure, Zhu Zhanji has already begun to arrange manpower and set up a command system.

However, Zhu Zhanji basically arranged these jobs to Zheng He, and he had more experience in this area.

Except for some formed military arrangements, Zhu Zhanji basically did not interfere.

Although the increase in personnel has increased a lot of workload, in terms of fleet establishment and personnel composition, this system has been very well established after four trips to the West, and there is no need for major changes.

What Zhu Zhanji needs to be appeased is the admirals of the navy, because most of them want to follow Zhu Zhanji to the West and then make a fortune.

Zhu Zhanji could not attack the enthusiasm of the generals, and could only focus on appeasement. In fact, the naval fleet that returned to the capital with him this time will basically be brought with them.

When he returned from Dongying, he brought back a fleet of about 30,000 people from the navy, all of whom were brave in battle and had a thorough implementation of tactics.

This time he went to the West, Zhu Zhanji was not willing to just bring peace like he had done the previous times. If someone is disobedient, it needs to be taught a lesson.

For this reason, in the limited sequence of reloading muskets, Zhu Zhanji also increased the share of several amphibious units.

Of course, they could not all change their muskets. Zhu Zhanji was basically able to ensure that each guard had 5,500 men and distributed 1,000 muskets to enrich their tactical arrangements.

Now that the personnel of these troops are still on vacation, they will be conducting live-fire training with muskets in Xinjiang Estuary Shuizhai from next month.

Naturally, these are also to worry about by the governor Liu Jiang and the chief officers of the three fleets, and Zhu Zhanji still only needs to understand the situation.

As a superior person, he doesn't need to work his own. As long as the task is arranged, there will be countless people who are willing to do it, and they will compete desperately for this opportunity.

Preparing trade materials is another aspect that Zhu Zhanji needs to worry about.

Other countries in this era lack everything. No matter what kind of materials Daming transports, they are in short supply.

But there are still differences between goods and goods. Because the profit of some goods is less than half, and the profit of some goods can reach dozens of times.

The Ming Dynasty sent some iron tools and tools to South Asian countries, such as hoes and sickles, and the profits were actually not very high.

But in order to envelop these small countries and let them settle down, they know that the value of these goods is not high, and they have to sell some of them to them.

But if you trade with Central Asia and Europe, then of course these iron tools will not be sold, and if you want to sell those high-profit goods such as silk, tea, and porcelain.

Of course, spices are also indispensable.

Since last year, at least 20 ships of spices have been brought back by merchant ships bound for the South Seas. The total weight of these spices has reached 2,000 tons, more than half of which were shipped back from the Spice Islands.

The annual production of spices in the entire Spice Islands is now only more than 1,000 tons, and all the rest are monopolized by internal supervisors except for their own food.

The locals did not recognize the value of these spices at all, and many eunuchs in the inner prison even arranged for their families to buy islands there, and then specially supply spices to the Ming Dynasty.

The rest of the spices came from Tau Shan, which later became Sri Lanka, and some came from southern India, Thailand, Cambodia and other countries.

But spices here cannot be monopolized, because the Delhi Sultanate, the predecessor of the Timurid and Mughal states, also monopolized a part of spices.

More than ten years ago, in order to sell spices to Europe, Timur even did not hesitate to launch a major war, directly conquering the Ottoman Empire and capturing their king Bayezid I alive.

And at that time, the state of Timur did not know that they actually saved the whole of Europe. Because at that time, the Ottoman Empire was almost on the verge of destroying the Byzantine Empire, that is, the Eastern Roman Empire.

In the twenty-ninth year of Hongwu, the Ottoman Empire defeated the coalition forces of Hungary, France, Germany and other countries in one fell swoop. Nearly 10,000 crusaders were captured, and the Europeans, with the exception of three hundred noble knights who ransomed with huge sums of money, almost all of the rest were killed.

From then on, Europeans could only watch the expansion of the Ottoman Empire.

However, the state of Timur defeated the Ottomans at once.

The equivalent of the state of Timur temporarily saved the Byzantine Empire, because Bayezid died in prison and a war for the throne began between his four sons,

The people of the occupied areas of Europe also took the opportunity to revolt, and the Ottoman Empire was in a serious crisis and had to postpone its expansion in Europe, allowing the Byzantine Empire to survive for a while.

Today's spices are basically controlled by the Ming and Timurid states and the Ottoman Empire.

The Ottoman Empire was actually more struggling, and now they had no access to Asian spices at all, and could only get spices from Africa.

But the blacks in Africa are too lazy, and the production of spices is pitiful.

Speaking of which, it is impossible to mention the thirst for spices and the huge consumption of spices in Europe.

The land in Europe is not suitable for growing crops, and since ancient times, they have not produced enough food. However, the land in Europe is a natural pasture, so it is suitable for livestock.

In this day and age, the center of Europe is still South Asia, and Western and Northern Europe are still barbarian lands, because the land of Southern Europe can supply sufficient food.

Europeans eat meat for a living, in ancient times without refrigerators, a livestock could not be eaten in one meal, and the meat was easy to flood and spoil, so ancient Europeans often ate stinky meat instead of fresh meat.

In order to solve the problem of food deterioration, spices were introduced to Europe due to their strong aroma, so spices have become a food in great demand.

The aroma of spices and the food they produce have an extraordinary significance in the Mediterranean region, and the Romans consumed spices as a sign of civilized eating.

And spices were also indispensable in the funerals of the Romans. The Romans were keen on cremation, and cinnamon was the protagonist in their funerals, and the Romans believed that cremation with cinnamon symbolized that the soul of the deceased would be reborn like a phoenix, so no matter how the state of the Roman Empire changed, the love of spices for the Romans remained the same.

Even smearing incense and offering incense to someone was a prerequisite for kingship in Rome.

Europeans have a long history and tradition of eating spices, which has led to an increase in demand.

A few decades later, the Age of Discovery in Europe arose. The original reason was not for porcelain, not for tea, not for gold and silk, but for spices.

For porcelain can be replaced by pewter, tea can be replaced with grass juice, silk can be replaced with linen, but spices cannot be replaced.

In modern times, spices were more than just spices for preserving meat, because they were much more valuable than meat, and doing so well was like putting the cart before the horse in a cheap cloth shoe with diamonds.

Zhu Zhanji had heard a joke that was not a joke in his previous life.

A German Archbishop of Cologne can elect one of the seven electors of the Holy Roman Emperor, these seven electors are four laymen and three archbishops, such as the Archbishop of Mainz and the Archbishop of Cologne, who can directly elect the Roman Emperor.

He crossed the Alps to meet the Pope. Halfway through, the archbishop fell ill and died.

Died halfway up the mountain, there is no spice, there is no way to apply spices and embalming, what should I do? Otherwise, in a few days, the corpse will rot and stink, and there will be no way to bring it back.

His entourage also really has a trick to say, just cook it for him, and if he cooks it, he won't be rotten. But the craftsmanship of these retinues was so bad that they didn't master the heat properly, and finally the archbishop was boiled into a pot of broth, and only a skeleton of bones was left in it. There was no choice but to pour out the soup and bring the skeleton back to the cathedral.

The other bishops were buried with their whole bodies, but this bishop was buried with a set of bones. So just from this point can show how strong the desire of Europeans for this spice is.

At that time, people superstitiously believed that the stench of corpses was a sign of soul depravity, and if a person had a holy soul, his corpse would smell of spices even if he died, which made the Christian church the largest collector of spices.

Spices have become more than just food, but something that is closely related to the lives of Europeans. From the baptism of birth to the burial of the coffin of death, spices are inseparable.

In the Middle Ages, the rise of the Arab Empire and the severance of trade between the East and the West made it more and more difficult for Europeans to obtain spices.

So the Europeans began to do business with this Arab, who was a very shrewd merchant who transported spices from the Orient to Venice, and the Arabs were the first dealers, the second boss of Venice, and the wholesalers were wholesale all over Europe. Then the price of this spice from Asia to Venice is equivalent to fifty times the price of origin.

Although the price may vary slightly, it is not a big difference.

Storing so many spices is actually a trouble. Yu Xian of Ningbo City has mentioned many times that just to store these spices, the budget of the city has been overspending, because it costs a lot just to build a warehouse.

Because Daming also has a lot of spice production, cinnamon, cardamom kernels, cloves, pepper, and star anise are almost all available, and the sales volume is not large. Most of them can't be sold, so they can only be stored in warehouses.

But for Zhu Zhanji, these are all cost-effective, suppressing all objections.

On this trip to the West, he was ready to open sea routes and sell these spices to European countries.

Of course, if you want to successfully occupy the European trade market, you will need not only commerce, but also may need to deter or even suppress it by force.

Those disobedient European city-state lords, as well as the Arabs and Turks who monopolized the European spice trade at this time, may become a stumbling block to the economic conquest of Europe by the Ming Dynasty.

In another world, he wants to re-implement the unequal treaties and unequal trade that Europe knocked on the door of the country with guns.

However, how to get to Europe is also a big question.

Although the sea route is the least expensive and convenient, it is also the farthest and the least safe.

Today there is no Suez Canal, only an ancient canal. Because he killed a lot of people here and caused an international dispute, he knows the history of the Suez Canal very well.

In the eighth century BC, the pharaohs of ancient Egypt borrowed a tributary of the Nile to build an ancient canal here.

After the Persians occupied Egypt in the sixth century BC, they dredged the canals, but they still had to rely on human haulage.

By the third century BC, during the unification of China by Qin Shi Huang, Alexander's expeditionary force entered Egypt and improved the canal by the Ptolemaic family. The manually operated locks and reservoirs have helped the canal to have the ability to store and regulate water.

The canal was able to drive on its own and was used by the Romans and Arabs until the 12th century.

It's just that the ancient canals, after all, are still inferior to their modern counterparts in all aspects. The Nile's increasingly unstable water levels and high maintenance costs led the Egyptians to abandon the canal.

Many caravans would enter the Nile from Alexandria and land on the banks of the Nile to transport their goods to ports on the Red Sea for reship.

Therefore, if the Ming fleet wants to go to Europe, it cannot use this canal, but can only bypass the whole of Africa.

As for the later Venetian merchants who wanted to dig the Suez Canal for spices, that would happen decades later, and there was no such plan at all.

Zhu Zhanji is not worried about anything else, he is very familiar with the hydrological conditions of the world, he will never get lost, and he will bring enough vegetables, dried vegetables, and fruits to supplement vitamins.

However, the typhoon of this era is the biggest difficulty in the ocean.

Even the steel giants of later generations look so helpless when facing the sea, let alone the current wooden ships.

The Pacific and Indian Oceans are easy to handle, as long as you avoid typhoon periods, it is not a big problem.

But the hydrological conditions of the Atlantic Ocean are dangerous except for the Arctic Ocean, where there is not only the threat of typhoons, but also the most dangerous undercurrents and waves in the world, which cannot be solved by avoiding typhoons.

The warm Atlantic Current brings a warm climate to Europe, but it also makes the ocean look dangerous.

Zhu Zhanji made many marks on a world map, and these strongholds were all strongholds that the Ming Dynasty needed to occupy.

Now he is in the place of the Suez Canal, drawing a circle and putting a question mark.

It can be said that this is the most important passage in the next few hundred years, and Zhu Zhanji has not made up his mind whether to occupy it or not.

Defeating the Mamluk dynasty, which was about to fall, was a breeze for the Ming Dynasty. Timur fought Damascus at the beginning and left only after sacking Damascus, not to mention the Ming army, which had firearms.

It was also easy for the Ming to dig the canal after it was beaten, and several Venetian merchants had the financial resources, let alone the Ming Dynasty.

However, the maintenance after the excavation of the canal, including the complex situation around it, will involve the great energy of the Ming Dynasty. For hundreds of years, it will be a huge powder keg.

There are fewer people in the Ming faction, and they can't keep it, and if there are more people in the faction, it's not cost-effective. Therefore, before coming into contact with the Mamluk king, before understanding the specific situation, Zhu Zhanji was a little undecided.

He sighed, and still did it and see, if the time comes, trade is normalized, and the annual profit is more, maybe if he doesn't dig this canal, someone will urge him to dig it.

This time, let's go around South Africa, and by the way, build two strongholds there in South Africa to prepare for the occupation of it in the future.

(I'm going to Zhengzhou on a business trip today, and tomorrow's update will be a little later.) Thank you for your understanding)

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