Receiving the news of Zhao Yan's upcoming wedding, the happiest person was Wang Wenyue, who robbed nearly 20 million taels of silver in Yueben, and also captured so many Japanese slaves, the first of this year's military achievements, he is the best. At the same time, the Tokugawa shogunate finally gave in and sent an official envoy to negotiate the treaty.

Also present was Zhao Yan's instructions, and Zhao Yan added several articles to the treaty.

Article 1: Shandong businessmen are allowed to invest in mines in Yueben, and half of the saltpeter and sulfur minerals are owned by the Shandong Military Group.

Article 2: The Tokugawa shogunate was not allowed to use silver currency mixed with other metals in trade.

Article 3: Any Ming person who commits a crime in this book has no right to be tried in this political axe, let alone has the right to punish any Ming person, and must be handed over to the Shandong court for trial in accordance with the "Da Ming Law".

As for the content of the treaty, Nagai began to fight hard, and the two sides continued to grind at the negotiation table, and Nagai Naosada has been focusing on the content of the reparation, and the issue of sulfur and saltpeter minerals.

The treaty stipulates that half of the sulfur and saltpeter minerals will be assigned to the Shandong Military Group, which is difficult for Nagai Naosada to accept.

Although there is a lot of saltpeter and sulfur in Ben, there is no problem in setting aside half of it, but this will mean that the profits from the export of saltpeter and sulfur will be lost.

This was a very unfavorable clause for the shogunate, which was already facing a serious financial crisis. As far as the goods exported are concerned, the most important ones are precious metals saltpeter and sulfur.

For other things, there is almost nothing to export.

Gold, silver, and copper will eventually dry up as they become less and less spent, but saltpeter and sulfur are abundant, and it is very likely that they will be the breadwinners of the shogunate's income in the future.

At the same time, Nao-sada's proposal to help exterminate the Catholics in Shimabara was also unacceptable to Wang Wenyue, and according to the orders of the military headquarters, it was best to let the two sides cease fire and place these Catholics on an island, which was equivalent to holding a trump card forever.

Once the Tokugawa shogunate was disobedient, they played cards and tossed him.

Both sides did not budge an inch, and the negotiations were at a stalemate.

…… Nanyang.

The South Seas are still very warm in October.

In Palembang, a fortress was built. It has been more than half a year since Wen Bangliang came to Nanyang, and during this half year, he led a detachment of ten frigates, centered on Palembang, to plunder the Dutch merchant ships passing through the Sunda Strait.

The Sunda Strait is a strait about 20 kilometers wide, and the seabed cannot pass through the sea due to frequent volcanic activity, so there are naturally no such large ships in this era, so the Sunda Strait is a sea passage for the Dutch to avoid the Strait of Malacca.

The Strait of Malacca, on the other hand, controlled by the Portuguese, was the sea passage to the Far East for the Portuguese and Spanish.

Almost all Dutch merchant ships pass through the Sunda Strait, and very few pass through the Strait of Malacca.

This world is far from being as peaceful as imagined, even if there is an agreement between countries, but if the fat is delivered to the mouth, there is no reason not to swallow it.

As long as they kill all people, no one will know that they did it, or they can disguise themselves as pirates and plunder merchant ships.

Therefore, the merchant ships of the Dutch rarely passed through the Strait of Malacca.

As coachmen at sea, the Dutch sent hundreds of merchant ships to East Asia every year, constantly classifying the goods of the Asian colonies and transporting them to Taiwan, Yueben, Annam and other places.

Among these goods, the import volume of this book is the highest, and Daming also imported some, all of which were purchased by Zheng Zhilong's merchant ships to Taiwan.

It's just that these imported goods, compared with the goods exported by Daming, are a drop in the bucket.

Every year, the Dutch would import large quantities of porcelain, tea, raw silk, silk, sugar, honey and other goods from Daming, and they would buy as many Dutch as they could, unless there was not enough cash.

The Spaniards, who had the most cash, transported large quantities of silver from Central and South America to Luzon every year.

Daming's goods are very marketable in Europe.

Take silk as an example, after shipping to Europe, you will get a profit of about 300%, this is only the wholesale price, and the price of silk that has been retailed by merchants is higher.

It's not so much that silk is expensive, it's that it's cheap. Because the silk of the Ming Dynasty is very cheap compared to the silk of the Europeans themselves, and the quality is more exquisite.

Cheap and fine!

This is the almost uniform characteristic of all kinds of commodities exported by the Ming Dynasty, and there are some commodities that Europeans cannot produce, or the production level is very low.

The amount of goods that can be bought from the Ming Dynasty and shipped back to Europe every year is the core criterion for the profitability of the Far Eastern colonies. The profit of this book is much worse than the profit of purchasing Daming goods.

As a result, Dutch merchant ships came and went in and out of the Sunda Strait very frequently.

It's simply a great pirate paradise. It's just that the warships are a little annoying, and the ten frigates that enter and leave the strait to plunder often encounter Dutch warships in the strait.

Often, just after a Dutch merchant ship was forced to stop, the Dutch warship had already rushed over.

Although the Dutch could not have set up artillery in such a wide strait, the warship could get a view of almost the entire strait with a telescope as soon as it stopped in the strait.

The initial plundering was very unsuccessful, not only was it harassed by Dutch warships, but once the Dutch sent a large group of warships to block the strait, the frigates that grabbed the ships could not return to the north.

After analyzing the situation, Wen Bangliang decided to concentrate his forces on first clearing the warships in the strait and then plundering the merchant ships.

At the same time, he contacted the Portuguese, promising them an annual transaction of five million taels and asking them to open the Strait of Malacca for their frigates to pass.

It is very easy for a frigate to pass through the Sunda Strait, as long as it is night, it can pass.

First of all, the merchant ships were slow and could hardly escape the pursuit of the warships, so they had to find other passages to return to the north, and detouring from the Strait of Malacca was also a good option.

The Portuguese were very excited when they received Wen Bangliang's promise, and the annual trade volume of five million taels was equivalent to a profit of five or six million taels of silver.

In fact, countries have been troubled by not being able to open the Ming market, and the export rights of Ming goods have been occupied by Zheng Zhilong for a long time, and sometimes there is not enough money to buy enough Ming goods.

The trade volume of 5 million taels is 10 million taels, and Shandong can also promise it.

Exports are naturally promoted.

The Portuguese were still fearful of Shandong's rising naval power in the north, as the Dutch, who were powerful at sea, were repeatedly defeated by Shandong's navy, and most of the time suffered heavy defeats.

To be able to catch up with Shandong, the Portuguese are still very willing. Although the two sides are nominally allies in the Americas, there has been little cooperation in Asia.

Opening the Straits of Malacca to their privateers is just a small thing. These privateers had been fighting the Dutch all the time, which was extremely advantageous for the Portuguese.

Because the Dutch's Ming goods could not be shipped back to Europe, their goods had more profit margins to grab, and at the same time, once the Dutch's power was weakened, they did not have to worry about their merchant ships being robbed by the Dutch.

The Portuguese readily agreed, but in terms of trade, the Portuguese still needed their own ships to go to Shandong to buy goods.

There is no need to apply for the 5 million taels promised by Wen Bangliang, because there is no restriction on this thing at all, but if the goods are transported to Macao, there is no right to promise.

At the same time, on the plundering of the Sunda Strait, Wen Bangliang launched an attack battle.

Ten frigates acted together, fearless in the face of two Dutch warships, and fought the Dutch in the Sunda Strait.

The assault lasted from about nine o'clock in the morning until twelve o'clock.

The ten frigates of the Nanyang detachment always grasped the initiative on the battlefield, always maintained a certain distance from the Dutch warships, and occupied the upper hand, and then bombarded the Dutch warships with accurate artillery.

The Dutch warships simply could not get close to the frigates of the South Sea detachment of the First Fleet, and the speed of these frigates was too fast.

In this situation, Dutch warships were constantly sunk.

When the Dutch warships lost five, the Dutch finally ran away. It's just that none of them ran away, and the fleeing Dutch warships were quickly caught up, and the sails were scrapped one by one under the blow of the escort aircraft, and in the end they could only be captured.

In the first operation, ten warships of the Dutch were annihilated.

The number of warships lost by the Dutch in East Asia soared to 23, and with the loss of 10 warships, the number reached 33.

It can be described as a heavy loss.

However, the Netherlands has a great business, and last year it supported more than 40 warships, and the Batavia Company still has more than 30 warships in its hands.

This loss temporarily caused the Dutch to temporarily lose control of the Sunda Strait.

Their warships were scattered all over the place, and for a time they did not have enough strength to protect the merchant ships passing through the Sunda Strait.

The result was naturally very tragic, and the ten frigates were like wolves in the Sunda Strait, and all the merchant ships that passed during the day were intercepted.

The merchant ships of the Batavia Company had to stop entering and exiting the Sunda Strait and instead detour through the other two straits of the archipelago, albeit with much more distance.

However, the merchant ships coming to East Asia from Europe suffered a disaster, and these unannounced merchant ships entered the Sunda Strait for unknown reasons and were immediately intercepted.

As the number of merchant ships gradually decreased, the First Fleet's Nanyang detachment began to disperse and plunder, cruising the Dutch trade lines throughout the South Seas.

When the Dutch gathered the warships in their hands, they had to fight the fires everywhere and destroy these annoying frigates in the face of the frigates scattered and plundering the Nanyang detachment.

It's just that these frigates are very difficult to deal with, they are always vigilant, and if there are fewer warships to be destroyed, they will be sunk or captured by the other side.

The frigate is a combination of speed and precision long-range strike, and has an advantage over the Dutch warships in terms of speed and artillery.

One-on-one simply cannot defeat these frigates.

But as soon as there are many warships, these frigates will never be in love with war, and will immediately turn around and run.

Sometimes, under careful containment, these frigates could rush directly into the shallows, leaving the large-tonnage Dutch warships so excited that they could not continue the pursuit.

(To be continued)