To be honest, the negotiations with the Hongmen team were extremely smooth, and the two sides were also very satisfied.

The Hongmen themselves demanded no more than normal commercial trade and the right to mine the Shilu Mine found on the island of Qiongzhou.

These two requirements, even if Hongmen does not mention the first request, as long as the high-level leaders of the Ming Dynasty do not make a decision to tear up their faces with Hongmen, in fact, they are more willing to see normal trade between each other.

It is good to know that in this period of great maritime trade, not only the people of Hongmen are enjoying the benefits brought by ocean trade, and countless gentry families, princes and ministers in the Ming officialdom are also secretly enjoying the benefits brought by ocean trade.

If it is not necessary, no one wants to easily offend Hongmen, who now controls the sea, coupled with the commercial tax that Emperor Chongzhen insisted on, the rich tax brought by it has become one of the most important financial revenues of the Ming Dynasty, and the Ming Dynasty does not want to see the business route cut off from top to bottom.

And the second point, in fact, not long after they began to spy on Hongmen, Daming Jinyiwei had already discovered the source of Hongmen's steel resources, and at the same time, they were also slowly arranged, preparing to take down the Shilu Mine in one go after Ming Court made up his mind.

The reason why they have not made up their minds until now, the high-level people of the Ming Dynasty are also worried that they will anger Hongmen and make them have other ideas.

Now the Hongmen negotiation team took the initiative to bring it to the negotiating table, so it allowed the Ming court to take the initiative.

The Ming Dynasty is rich in resources, although it is known that the output of the Shilu mine is now expensive, but in the Ming Dynasty, it is not that there is a shortage of this mine, and there will be a shortage of iron in the Ming Dynasty; On the other hand, Hongmen, most of the iron ore resources now come from the Shilu mine, if the Ming Court easily moves this mine, it will inevitably cause a great reaction from the Hongmen, and if it is used to negotiate with the Hongmen, then the Ming Court can get more benefits and occupy more bargaining chips.

Sure enough, a Shilu mine finally brought a lot of benefits to the Ming court, relying on the bargaining chip of the Shilu mine, the Ming Dynasty obtained twenty forty-eight-pounder guns and two thousand spears from Hongmen.

At the same time, the Ming Dynasty can also obtain 10% of the firearms sold by Hongmen Qixintang at a flat price in the following years, and purchase firearms at a market price of not less than 20%.

In exchange, the Shilu Mine will be owned by Hongmen for the next 20 years, and Hongmen will be able to mine iron ore in the Shiroku Mine on a large scale.

However, Hongmen itself is not a loss, only 20 artillery pieces and 2,000 muskets as a price, in exchange for the mining rights of Shilu Mine, no matter how you look at Hongmen, there is still a profit.

Although Hongmen has discovered an iron ore field in the northeast, it is not a matter of one or two days to mine it. Not to mention that the iron ore veins of Gongchangling are in the frontline position between Hongmen and the Qing people, and no one can guarantee how much Hongmen will be able to develop it under the harassment of the Qing people.

Moreover, the iron ore in the Shiroku Mine is not only extremely high in iron, but also limited by the lack of chemical technology in the current era, and it is not possible to find out why the steel produced in the Shiroku Mine is more corrosion-resistant and not easy to rust, but it also makes the steel produced in the Shiroku Mine more of a better material, which makes Hongmen unwilling to give up so easily.

In order to allow these two requirements to be accepted by the Ming Dynasty and allow it to achieve peaceful coexistence with Hongmen, Hongmen also gave other rich conditions: unified procurement of Ming goods purchased by the Ming government, such as tea, porcelain, cotton, linen and silk; In addition to commercial taxes, Qixintang also needs to pay a certain percentage of additional benefits, as the price of the Ming Dynasty to ensure the normal trade of Qixintang's sea ships, and so on.

And when the two sides reached a consensus, and the first assistant of the dynasty personally signed the name, and stamped with the seal of the Ming Emperor, this contract was completely laid.

Of course, although Hongmen seems to only pursue these two superficial conditions, which is not proportional to what they pay, in fact, the biggest factor that Hongmen has always sought to coexist peacefully with the Ming Dynasty is the huge population base of the Ming Dynasty that they value.

The total population of Hongmen is already approaching three million, but compared to the territory it owns, this amount of population is slightly insufficient to develop Dayuan Island and Luzon Islands, and where can that Hongmen use it to expand its military strength with reckless force.

Without a sufficient number of middle-aged men, Hongmen could not maintain a stalemate with the Qing people outside the pass, consolidate the territory and results they occupied, and then regain the territory by them, so that the sacrifices of tens of thousands of soldiers in the Hongtang military department came to naught, and the wealth accumulated by Hongmen for several years of hard work became a waste.

In the end, if the Hongtang military department wanted to expand rapidly again, without shaking the local form of Hongmen, Li Tianyang had to maintain a friendly attitude towards the Ming Dynasty, negotiate with the Ming through these two demands on the surface, and obtain greater benefits in secret.

Although the Ming Dynasty now lacks a lot of territory in the north, Jiangnan has been the largest and fastest-growing commercial and trade place in recent years, and the growth rate of its population has gradually made the local land production and support reluctant.

More land was swallowed up by the gentry and landlords and converted to the more profitable mulberry hemp, which caused the grain production to decrease year after year, and the people had difficulty in food and clothing.

The development of industry and commerce made it easier for the people to earn money at first, but because they did not have land in their hands, they could not grow food sufficiency themselves, but because the age of the land for grain cultivation was declining, the price of grain rose, in fact, these workers who lost their land did not necessarily live better than when they lost their land.

A large number of refugees from the north survived in the Jiangnan area, which occupied many jobs that originally belonged to the people in the south, and at the same time, those unscrupulous workshop owners began to lower their wages, and finally caused the people to earn a day's work, but could not feed their families.

In the end, the northerners were forced to go south in search of life due to successive natural disasters and foreign invasions. However, the southerners were annexed by the gentry and their jobs were contested by refugees from the north, which made the living environment worse, resulting in the richest area south of the Ming River, and gradually breeding groups and countless waves of refugees.

As long as the friendly relationship with the Ming government can be maintained, then Hongmen will rein in the recruitment of manpower, and the Ming local government will not only not stop it, but will also applaud it!

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