Chapter 571: Lin Mengchu's path to fame

Jiang Feng's talents are too few, not only people who know about Huazhou say so, even Huazhou's own people also admit it, and it is precisely because there is no talent, so they can make the best use of their talents, as long as you have a certain ability, you can be quickly promoted, Huazhou start-up, all kinds of official positions, and even new official positions continue to appear, a large number of talents are needed to fill, naturally there are talented and hardworking people to quickly ascend.

The sailors of Huazhou are actually divided into three fleets: the Huazhou fleet, the Yizhou fleet and the Malacca fleet, and the three forces that are in charge of these fleets are the Portuguese and Dutch people, the Lin family, the Xia family, and the only one left who has some say is the Li family.

The Lin family and the Xia family are all generations of maritime families, of course, if this is ugly, it is a pirate background, both of them have such and such a relationship with the center of Huazhou, that is, with Jiang Feng, and they also have some experience in naval warfare, so the officers of the naval division are all from them, but when the Xia family attacked Zhejiang Gate Island in Jiangfeng's fleet, and bulldozed Xia Qingjiao and Zheju Zhongshou, the people who could fight were already killed and injured, and most of the rest were some talents who did business. So now the Lin family's status in the navy is getting higher and higher.

Not only is the leader of the small fleet in Malacca the Lin family's Lin Zhi, but even the commander of the Yizhou fleet is also a member of the Lin family, that is, Lin Mengchu in front of Yang Shishi, the Yizhou garrison is Yang Shishi, and naturally all the military forces are in his hands, but Huazhou's system is to manage the people with the military, and the garrison is equivalent to being responsible for the military and civilian management of the entire Yizhou and the surrounding islands, including Luzon, and the affairs are complicated, so the naval division is still under the jurisdiction of Lin Mengchu, the captain of the naval division, most of the time.

Lin Mengchu's age is considered young among the officers in Huazhou, and the officers in Huazhou have no veterans and generations of military households, they are all the iron soldiers that Jiang Feng brought when he was around Beijing, the two thousand battalions recruited in Dengzhou, and the soldiers who have made meritorious contributions in several battles.

These people were promoted through meritorious service, and after the training and experience in the martial arts hall (in the past, Jiang Feng had to be a personal guard for a period of time), they became officers, and when they were recruited, most of them were young people under the age of twenty, and after more than ten years, the eldest was Yang Da, who was in his forties, and the rest were in their thirties. The generals of the Ming Dynasty are generally in their fifties and forties, but Huazhou is very different.

Even compared with these people in their thirties, Lin Mengchu can be regarded as young, he is twenty-two years old this year, he can really be called a young talent, he was originally just a first mate on the Yizhou fleet, and the captain of the ship he was on was sick and returned to Huazhou to recuperate, which was to let him replace him temporarily.

This was all two years ago, when he was just 20 years old, and he was on a routine cruise on the sea north of Yizhou with his ships, and his ship was only a medium-sized warship of 400 tons and 60 guns.

As a result, he rescued a floating man nearby, who had been climbing on the plank, already dying, and the sailors on the ship were pouring wine and rice soup, and finally woke people up, but they learned the news that there was a riot in the Ryukyus.

The distance between Ryukyu and Yizhou is much closer than the distance between Yizhou and Luzon, and there are also many good harbors, and the fleet of Yizhou naturally wants to control it, and several 400-ton "wolf" class warships sail over, and the king and courtiers of Ryukyu, of course, do not dare to say anything, and immediately take the initiative to ask for everything to accept the guidance of Huazhou.

It didn't take long for it to become an important port for ships from the Americas to dock, and many merchants from Liuheng Shuangyu also went there to trade with Westerners, and the market prospered day by day, and the taxes of the port alone were recorded in large sums of money, but these were all into the finance of Yizhou, and the Ryukyus could only look at it dryly.

When Huazhou is about to make a move on Fujian, the Yizhou fleet has to take care of the local defense of Yizhou, the escort of Nanyang merchant ships, and the guard patrol of Luzon, the strength of the fleet is already a little nervous, and the fleet support in Huazhou will not be able to get here for a while and a half, so the relatively less important Yizhou fleet in Ryukyu can only be transferred to Luzon.

Seeing the transfer of the fleet, the king of the Ryukyus and the courtiers all felt that something had happened to the other party, and that they might have a chance here, but after waiting for a month, they found that the fleet had not returned, and there were only dozens of tax collectors and guards stationed in the Ryukyus.

To tell the truth, up and down Huazhou, especially in Yizhou, which is far away from this town, because there are many foreign colonies under Yizhou, whether it is a native or a foreigner, as long as a foreigner sees the Han people in Huazhou, they are all respectful, and the troops of Yizhou have never suffered a defeat in the battle.

The arrogance and arrogance of the mood affected everyone more or less, and they didn't think that there would be any danger in a place the size of a fingernail like Ryukyu, so when it was dispatched, the long history under the Yizhou garrison took it upon himself to directly withdraw all the fleets.

At this time, the whole Ryukyus thought that Huazhou could not control them at all, and with the red eyes of various interests, the king of the Ryukyus made a rare bold move, he sent a messenger to contact the pirates near Shikoku in Japan, preparing to cooperate with the outside world and regain control of this port.

Although this Ryukyu has always been a vassal state that claims to be the Ming Dynasty, and symbolically accepts rewards and tributes, the country is too small, and the vassals and pirates of the Wa Kingdom also have a great say in him, and after the Ming Dynasty banned the sea, the vassals of the Wa Kingdom were often "patronized".

The king of the Ryukyus thought so, the Ming Dynasty was forbidding the sea, and the people who came to occupy the port of the Ryukyus were all Han Chinese, and the pirates who went to ask the Ming or the Ming pirates might not get help, so it was better to collude with the Japanese Invaders.

The Japanese and wandering samurai in the area of Kyushu Shikoku were driven away by the navy of Huashu and hid in the sea to the east, where there were no families or trade routes, and they only used their own supplies there, and became poorer and poorer. There was even such a business, that is, they plundered each other's population, captured each other's population, and then sold it to the market in Incheon, Hwasa, where they were bought by slave merchants, and then sold to Nanyang.

After receiving the letter from the king of the Ryukyus, they were all ecstatic, and the leaders of the dozen or so Japanese pirates who had plundered and attacked each other actually gave up their previous suspicions and formed an alliance with each other, saying that after occupying the Ryukyus, they would be assigned separately, and this time should be sincerely cooperated.

Three months after the Yishu fleet left the Ryukyus, at night, under the guidance of the lights in the Ryukyus, the Japanese invaders took advantage of the darkness to touch the port, and the first thing they did after arriving on the island was to rush into the houses of the tax collectors sent by Huazhou under the leadership of the Ryukyu officials, and cut everyone into pulp.

These tax collectors and so on, in the Ryukyus are too addicted to the heavenly courts, the Ryukyu natives have always been as polite to them as pugs, silver, women are not lacking, they live very comfortably, they never thought that there would be any danger, Huazhou's military power is enough to shelter anyone.

Therefore, when the Japanese rushed in with knives, whether it was a guard or a tax collector, they were all there to sleep with the woman in their arms, and there was not even a person standing guard, or a guard who hooked up with the local people's daughter, and did not return to the residence at night, which was the escape.

At dawn the next day, I knew that things were not good, and I couldn't care about anything, so I fled to the mountains, and only when it was dark did I dare to go to the port and steal a small sampan to escape into the sea.

The small sampan didn't play any role in the sea, and sure enough, he sneaked a short distance, and a wave turned up, and directly beat the sampan to a pulp, this person held the plank and drifted on the sea for three days, living by drinking rainwater, until he met the boat that Lin Mengchu carried.

Hearing the news of Ryukyu told by this person, Lin Mengchu and the sailors on the ship were all angry, Huazhou has never suffered such a big loss since its establishment, everyone felt that they had been slapped in the face, revenge is certain, the key is how to retaliate.

Lin Mengchu's opinion is that he should go to Ryukyu immediately to quell the chaos, after all, there are many Western ships in Ryukyu, and there are many Japanese merchant ships, these are outsiders, and they are also the main forces at sea, watching the performance of Huazhou there, at this time, Huazhou's main energy is against the Ming Dynasty, and it can't be involved too much by other things.

However, I heard that there were already more than 1,000 Japanese in the port of Ryukyu, which made the people on the ship more worried.

Lin Mengchu, who has always been considered too delicate and weak to be a soldier, put the knife on the neck of the second mate at this time, and said:

"I'm the captain, follow my orders and go to the Ryukyus!"

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