"Jingle bell, jingle bell." The carriage with brass bells warns pedestrians on the street to avoid it, and the carriage moves quickly along the iron bars on the ground, and in the middle of the street intersection there is a stone platform with a sergeant in red uniform standing on the platform directing the passing traffic.

Since Xu Du, Xu Jiaying, Ding Ruzhang and other young people entered the city of Beijing, they were like hillbillies who entered the city for the first time to open their eyes, and they felt new to everything.

Xu Jiaying and Ding Ruzhang are also forgotten, this is the first time they have gone far away, and the largest city they have ever seen is Hangzhou City. Although Xu Du was young, his father took him to many places in order to find a famous teacher for him.

Not to mention Hangzhou, he has also seen Nanjing, Suzhou, Yangzhou and other prosperous places in the south of the Yangtze River. Although Beijing is the first good city in the Ming Dynasty, it is not as prosperous as Suzhou and Nanjing.

Although Xu Du and others were young, when they were in their hometown, they also heard those scholars and businessmen who had been to the capital talk about the scenery of the capital, and these people often shook their heads when they mentioned Beijing, thinking that the wind and sand were dusty, and the life of the people living in the outer city was really not as difficult as Nanjing and Suzhou.

However, compared with the impression of the wind and sand in my mind and the current city of Beijing, it is really a little far away. The railroad carriages passing through the streets from time to time, the flow of people from the left and right branches, the streets separating the roadways from the sidewalks, etc., the orderliness on this street really gave Xu Du and others an extremely strange feeling.

It was precisely because of this strangeness that Xu Du and the other young people became a little timid for a while, and they followed closely behind Shen Tingyang and Chen Zilong, like a group of ducklings parading with their parents.

The passers-by were not surprised by them, but they just glanced at the procession, and walked over on their own. Xu Du and a few other young people, who have always been bold and reckless, are walking quietly with their heads down at the moment, and they no longer have the indifferent attitude when they first entered the city.

Although Chen Zilong is also coming to the capital for the first time, he is more mature, and he will naturally not be as timid as Xu Du and them. It's just that he looks very calm on the surface, but his feet are much heavier.

In order to alleviate the tension of Chen Zilong and the others, Shen Tingyang couldn't help but say casually: "This capital has only been seen for a year, and I can't imagine that it is a little strange.

The places in the south of the Yangtze River where we live have changed every twenty or thirty years, and many cities in the north have not changed for decades, but only in the capital in the past two or three years, it has really changed every year.

Don't say that those of us who don't come often from other places, it is estimated that it is a place adjacent to Beijing, and if we come to Beijing after a long time, we will not be able to find a place. ”

Xu Du and the others naturally nodded again and again, but Chen Zilong said disapprenously: "The national finances have withered to such an extent, and there is such a big construction, there is really a villain around Your Majesty." ”

Shen Tingyang glanced at him, smiled and stopped answering. The carriages in the street around them began to move aside, and soon a group of horsemen in red and black uniforms passed them at a neat and uniform pace.

The neat and distinctive uniform and orderly advance procession made these cavalrymen look extraordinarily spiritual. Xu Du and his two companions were stunned, and they praised for a long time: "I can't imagine that the officers and soldiers in the capital are so mighty, and those officers and soldiers in the south can't be compared." ”

Chen Zilong also saw the passage of this cavalry, this time he did not sneer, but nodded and praised: "Since Your Majesty ascended the throne, that is, he has made great achievements in martial arts, and even the capital has cavalry with such spirit, no wonder His Majesty was able to repel Jianyu again in Ningjin." ”

After Shen Tingyang looked at the sky, he said to a few people behind him: "It's almost noon, I remember that there is a restaurant in front of me where the seafood is still good, although the seafood in the north is not as rich as Shanghai, but there are a few seafood that are not available in the south, today I will invite you to taste fresh..."

Just when Shen Tingyang took Chen Zilong and others to see the characteristics of northern food, a team of officers and soldiers also escorted several carriages into Chaoyangmen. The first carriage in the procession was Peternat, and in the second carriage were the Dutchman Hans Putmans and the priest Pastor You.

Born into a family of merchants in Fort Middle, Putmans joined the Dutch East India Company in 1624 as a junior merchant, and in 1626 he was promoted to the rank of merchant and court judge, and in 1627 he was promoted to the chairman of the Batavia City Council.

Like Anthony van Diemen, he was a close associate of the governor of Batavia, Yan Petersunkun, and a supporter of the trade policy of forcing the indigenous Asians to submit to corporations by force, then monopolizing profitable trade, and expanding the overseas colonies.

At the beginning, because of the Hamada Yabei incident, Yan Peter Sunkun was almost ready to let him replace Peter Natz and become the fourth governor of Taiwan.

It's just that Peternats's luck somehow opened the door to China's trade, and the Japanese shogunate no longer pursued it, so that he continued to sit in the position of governor of Taiwan.

However, Putmans is not optimistic about the trade agreement between the company and China, because China does not give the company exclusive trade rights. The agreement allowed Chinese merchants to expand their overseas trade activities and prevent companies from taking restrictive action against these Chinese merchant ships.

It's just that at that time, the Mataran Kingdom of Java raised troops to attack Batavia, so that Batavia could not take care of the problems of trade with China, and could only hand over these problems to the Taiwan Merchant House.

Last year, Batavia finally signed a peace agreement with the kingdom of Mataran, but Yan Petersunkun died of dysentery during the war. He was succeeded by Hendrik Brower, who succeeded the governor of Batavia.

The unanimous opinion of the new governor was that Putmans and Van Diemen were stupid and greedy. But His Excellency was a supporter of peaceful trade with China, and he was also the protector of Taiwan's governor, Peter Natz.

Because of his favoritism towards the Chinese, Batavia had to give up and ask the Chinese where the artillery used to attack the city came from.

The reason why Putmans and Peternac appeared in Beijing was because negotiations between Batavia and the Japanese shogunate finally broke down, and the Dutch had to withdraw their trading houses in Japan.

While the Dutch in Batavia were furious at the decision of the Japanese shogunate, Peternac brought back a map of Treasure Island in Japan, and the parliamentarians and the governor of Batavia, Hendrik Brower, almost unanimously approved to teach the Japanese shogunate a lesson and cede Treasure Island to the company as compensation.

Putmans was positive about this decision, believing that the new Governor had finally made the right decision.

But Van Diemen did not see it that way, and as the only MP who voted against it, he pointed out to his colleagues, "Gentlemen, please keep your eyes open and see who is the company's worst enemy in Asia?"

Is it the indigenous people of the archipelago that surround us? Are the pagan kingdoms of the western continent living in the forests? Is it the Spaniards who occupy the Philippines but no longer have the ability to expand? Is it Japan, which is an island nation but is unwilling to develop its maritime business? Or is it the sprawling empire that has integrated the entire South China Sea pirates and is actively expanding outward?

Gentlemen, please bear in mind the fact that although the company has an irresistible force at sea, we are an outsider in Asia. If an Asian nation rises up and calls on the indigenous people of the archipelago to be hostile to the company, then all our efforts may be wasted.

China is having that kind of appeal in Asia, and what is even more worrying is that China is not only a powerful country in the region, but also a powerful country. Just look at the Chinese who built Batavia, just over 4,000 Chinese have done most of the work on Batavia's castle.

On the land of that country, such smart and hard-working Chinese are like schools of fish in the sea, which is difficult to count. If there is one enemy that companies in Asia will not be able to cope with, it will be China.

Looking around China, isn't it Japan that maintains friendly relations with us, but is wary of China? If we can restore relations with Japan, we may be able to use Japan to contain China's power, so that the eyes of the Chinese can be shifted from Southeast Asia to Japan in the northeast..."

However, Van Diemen's tirade could not resist Peternats's gentle suggestion, and the Taiwanese governor thought that it was better to unite with the Chinese to attack Japan than to negotiate with those elm-headed Japanese. It can not only damage the relationship between China and Japan, but also increase the company's chances of seizing Treasure Island.

The greed for gold eventually overwhelmed the so-called long-term plan, and Putmans accepted the appointment of Governor Brouwer as an envoy to China, ready to find an opportunity to persuade China to send troops to Japan.

When I first came to Putmans in northern China, I thought I had returned to Holland when I saw the windmills on both sides of the Haihe River for the first time.

When he came all the way from Tianjin and looked at the scenery on the side of the road into the city of Beijing, he finally had a faint feeling that maybe Van Diemen was right.

The temperament displayed by the Chinese in the north does not seem to be a nation compared to the weak Chinese in the south.

And just by the windmills, watermills, rail-drawn carriages, smooth roads, and caravans he saw in Tianjin and on the road, he could understand how amazing the productive capacity of the country was, because there was also such a thriving and huge city in his country, and that was Amsterdam.

However, there is only one Amsterdam in the Netherlands, but in just a few days of disembarking, he has already seen two cities that are no less vibrant than Amsterdam. If such a large country also joined the war of maritime trade and colony development, I am afraid that only the combined forces of the whole of Europe could contain this behemoth.