It is not a trivial matter that the regent of the Ming Dynasty will go to the European continent, Zhu Youzhen can be said to be the second person of the Ming Dynasty, since the founding of the Ming Dynasty, he has not sent such a heavyweight to the West, he is definitely not so simple as to deliver goods, but is burdened with a very important mission, in Zhu Cijiong's words, summed up in eight words: promote Tianwei and open up the market.

This propaganda Tianwei Zhu Youzhen still has a little concept, isn't it just to lead more than 100,000 elites to go around Europe with strong ships and artillery, and let them see the huge navy and elite army of the Ming Dynasty. As for this market development, he really doesn't understand, what is the market? How to open up!

Zhu Cijiong is naturally very familiar with how to open up the market, which almost everyone on the earth knows in later generations, and the formal means is to advertise, and ask celebrities to take the product or use it; The informal means is to give gifts, and to give gifts to the stewards, the market will naturally open up when the gifts are in place.

Europe is now in full swing, and it is a big market with strong demand, so Zhu Cijiong spent a lot of money, and the formal and informal means were prepared for Zhu Youjian.

The formal means is to demonstrate on the spot, and now there are no big stars, so the elite of the First Legion of the Praetorian Guard can only demonstrate the performance of various weapons in person, and Zhu Cijiong has spent a lot of money for this demonstration.

First of all, in terms of personnel, he deliberately asked Qin Liangyu to select 50,000 Praetorian Guard soldiers with a height of about one meter seven, and those who were too short and too tall were all eliminated, making the team look quite neat, and the First Legion of the Praetorian Guard even reorganized it for this reason.

Then, in terms of clothing, he ordered people to rush to produce 300,000 sets of new military uniforms, regardless of the navy and army, buttons, badges, and military ranks are all cast in silver, black and white, neat and uniform, and it looks very visually impactful.

Finally, in terms of weapons, each person was equipped with a revolver, a revolver, five grenades, and 100 rounds of ammunition, and he also equipped the First Army Corps of the Praetorian Guard with 500 field howitzers of the 317, 417, 518, and 618, and 50,000 troops were fully equipped with 2,000 artillery pieces!

The combined army and navy of 150,000 troops, equipped with such sophisticated weapons, if they did not fight with others, I am afraid that France, the strongest force in the Protestant League, would be half crippled. However, Zhu Cijiong's main purpose is to sell weapons, not to help people fight, he hopes that the more chaotic the European side is, the better, and naturally he will not help Spain to fight for no reason. Of course, if Spain offered enough money, such as hundreds of millions of taels of silver or tens of millions of taels of gold, it would be okay to help him win the war.

Prepared so many weapons and equipment, although it is not to fight people, but to fight the air is necessary, when the time comes, to show the king of Spain and all kinds of princes to show the fire of ten thousand cannons, bullets like rain, God block and kill God, Buddha block and kill Buddha, the ground has blasted a big hole for him, I don't believe they are not moved.

This is just a formal means, unformal means he prepared more, such as the more popular silk, tea, high-grade porcelain in Europe, which are sent by boat, and what cloisonné, all kinds of stone carvings, wood carvings, bronze carvings, tribute wine, high-grade spices, precious Chinese medicine have also prepared a lot, he even let the Danqing masters up and down the court each painted a few ink paintings, together there are more than 100 pieces, all of which are marked in Spanish, and are framed with precious sandalwood and glass, which looks like a famous painting.

If these things are calculated according to the price of the European continent, they are more than 20 million taels, and they are not so exaggerated in Daming, and it is only 2 million taels to die, and he believes that so many 'precious' gifts will be smashed down, and any Spanish king and the princes of the Holy Roman Empire will be smashed by him.

The last problem is the problem of Zhu You's pretense, the palace maids alone selected a thousand for him, I'm afraid no European royal family can have so many palace maids; The eunuchs are also a thousand, and he doesn't know if there are eunuchs on the European side, and even if there are, I'm afraid they don't add up to so much; There are also 10,000 brocade guards, and a prince's guard alone is 10,000, and the royal family on the European continent is afraid that their eyes will fall to the ground.

Of course, these are not enough, those gifts also have the function of pretending to be in it, gifts are not directly transported to the palace as soon as you get off the boat, when to send, how much, to whom to give these are all grasped by Zhu Youzhen, when he waved his hand is a fleet of precious gifts lined up at the door of your palace or mansion, that is called bullshit!

Zhu Cijiong felt that this was not enough, and he also named the newly built third treasure ship-class super battleship the Prince Regent, as Zhu Youzhen's car, and accompanied him to the European continent. The cars are all super giant ships like mobile palaces, which king and which prince of the European continent have it? That's what it's called really awesome!

The preparations for the combined fleet of the Daming navy and land forces to go to the European continent took almost two months, and everything was ready in August, because there were too many people accompanying it, just a hundred super battleships and a treasure ship giant ship was definitely not enough, the number of Daifuku ships was added again and again, and finally it was added to five hundred, plus treasure ships and super battleships, a full six hundred and one large warships, according to a row of five ships forward, enough to row dozens of miles long, whether it is the indigenous or the powers, Any country should break out in a cold sweat when it sees such a fleet.

First of all, it is necessary to go to Manila to pick up the Spanish guide group, otherwise I am afraid that the fleet will not know how to bypass the African continent; Then, he had to go to Goa to send some supplies to the First Army of the Expeditionary Force, and at the same time to give his ally Konde a strong boost; In the end, it was along the coast, in a big circle, to the European continent. In this way, the entire fleet is afraid that it will be at least ten months away from the Ming mainland.

On 16 August, just after the Mid-Autumn Festival, all the personnel of the Ming Combined Fleet were ready to go, and Zhu Cijiong led hundreds of civil and military officials to personally rush to Tianjin Xingang in Dongdaying to see them off.

Looking at the huge fleet on the sea, even the Ming officials who are accustomed to seeing the world are shocked, and everyone's faces are shocked, joyful and proud. The legendary powers may be able to resist one or two, but that is only a legend, none of the officials present have ever seen the navies of the great powers, in their eyes, the Ming sailors are invincible!

Zhu Cijiong's thoughts in his heart were the opposite of those of the civil and military officials, watching the huge fleet slowly sail away from the port, he only felt empty in his heart, this is most of the Ming navy, it has been nearly ten months, and the strength of the Ming navy has dropped by more than half in these ten months!

Now, the Ming Dynasty has two treasure ships, fifty super battleships and five hundred Fuchuan warships left in the southeast sea, and if the Netherlands and Britain and France join forces, the Ming Dynasty may not even be able to get out of the South China Sea.

No wonder the Dutch ships were more than twice as many ships of all the great powers combined, and finally failed, for the sail warships, the world is too big, the area of the ocean can be described as boundless, more than 10,000 warships and merchant ships sailed in, just like ants entering the forest, not even a shadow can be seen, a casual voyage is a few months or even a year, if the main force is sent out, the enemy will come back to a sneak attack, the consequences are simply unimaginable.

At the beginning, Zhu Cijiong thought that in ten years, with 500 super battleships, the Ming Dynasty would be invincible in the world. Now that I think about it, that's just an ideal state, unless you don't send out a single battleship and stay at home all day, then it's really invincible, but what's the point of that? Building so many warships is to fight for colonies, it is impossible not to go out, but the world is so big, once the fleet is sent out, it is uncertain when it will turn around, as long as it occupies more than a dozen colonies, these 500 battleships are afraid that none of them will be left, what if the enemy comes at that time, does Daming really use those more than 2,000 small bluff ships to fight people?

This is definitely not possible, in his plan, the Ming Dynasty will become an empire on which the sun never sets, and if the sun does not set, there must be more than a dozen colonies, both to protect overseas colonies and to defend the Ming Dynasty, five hundred super battleships are definitely far from enough, and production must be expanded.

It just so happened that the 20 million taels of silver from the Netherlands had also arrived, and in addition to the 5 million taels promised to Zheng Zhilong, there were still 15 million taels left, and Zhu Cijiong decided to use all of them to expand the military factory.

First of all, the Dongda Construction Shipyard must be doubled in size to produce 100 super battleships and 5 treasure ships every year, and in the future, the seats of officials above the admiral level of the Navy will be replaced by treasure ships, and each fleet will be equipped with 200 super battleships as standard. As for the issue of personnel, Zhu Cijiong decided to professionalize the naval division, and in the future, the officers and men of the naval division would only be responsible for the control of the warships, and as for the land battle, all the troops would be responsible for the marine corps. In this case, four or five hundred people for a super battleship are enough, and the existing 200,000 veteran sailors of the Nanyang and Beiyang naval divisions and 300,000 newly recruited recruits can completely control more than 1,000 super battleships.

Then, the cannon foundry in Dongdaying must also be expanded, and the artillery that needs to be equipped with more than 100,000 super battleships alone is more than 100,000 guns, and according to the current output, it will be the year of the monkey to build these more than 100,000 guns. In addition, the army's field artillery is not fully equipped, and the Dongdaying artillery foundry must be expanded at least twice to keep up with the demand. As for the personnel, it's nothing, casting cannons is mainly a hard work, and the real technology can be mastered by a few people, and it's not a problem for a veteran to lead ten novices.

In the end, Wang Gong's factory must also be expanded, and Zhu Youjian can get how many orders he can get when he goes to Europe Zhu Cijiong is not clear, and the weapons of the more than one million troops of the Ming Dynasty are not yet fully equipped. Zhu Cijiong decided to double the output of Wang Gong Factory, and as for the problem of personnel, the novice apprentices let them make simple parts, step by step training, and the veterans are responsible for the production of precision parts and the final assembly.