Liu Kongzhao had no choice but to listen to Zhu Youzhen's instructions, and immediately prepared to get up and go to Fujian. Pinshu.com

Zhu Youzhen's praise of the Zheng Group made Liu Kongzhao, who is now complacent, very disapproving, and he was quite unconvinced in his heart, even if he was on the road, he couldn't help muttering: "Benjue has to take a good look at the difference between his Zheng family, but a pirate ear, it is difficult to have three heads and six arms to fight with the red-haired fan." ”

Liu Kongzhao was accompanied by cadet officers and students of the Daming Ship Administration, such as Chu Huaisheng and others, who performed well in the naval battle to exterminate pirates.

It is worth mentioning that after learning that the gunsmith surnamed Bao of the Ordnance Institute was over fifty years old, Chu Huaisheng finally did not marry his sister to him, and did not mention it again.

"Why should the lord be angry, no matter how different this Zheng family is, as long as you are here, my Ming Navy will surpass them sooner or later."

Chu Huaisheng said a word and bought a newspaper on the street.

"Wrong, as long as Your Majesty is here, my Ming Navy will surpass them sooner or later, little cub, I really can't speak", Liu Kongzhao scolded with a smile, grabbed the newspaper in Chu Huaisheng's hand, and looked at it for a while: "When did this end of the school appear, and dared to beat Huang Zongxi on the street." ”

"How do we know about things between scholars", Chu Huaisheng said, Liu Kongzhao slapped the table:

"Confused! Where is this between scholars, the water in it is deep, don't look at the surface is a group of scholars arguing around, there may be some big man behind this who is making waves, Benjue has been in Nanjing for so many years, this bit of eyesight is still there. ”

Liu Kongzhao said that he told Chu Huaisheng and other officers and students about his judgment of the political situation in Nanjing.

Naturally, the officers and students did not know as much as Liu Kongzhao's sights and hears, so they asked Liu Kongzhao to give advice, and finally even begged Liu Kongzhao to tell the story of his ancestor Liu Bowen.

Liu Kongzhao was also very happy, talking with this group of officers and students all the way, and unknowingly arrived at Jiaheli (Xiamen) half a month later.

Zheng Zhilong personally met with Liu Kongzhao, and heard that Liu Kongzhao had come to watch the battle on the orders of Zhu You's prosecutor and to collect prisoners of war and equipment, Zheng Zhilong hurriedly asked his second brother Zheng Zhihu to personally accompany Liu Kongzhao.

Although Zheng Zhilong only wanted to get Dongfan Island as an additional supply base and remove the interests of the Dutch colonists in the Taiwan Strait to hinder the interests of the Zheng family, he did not want to exterminate the Dutch colonists.

However, the Dutch colonists were not willing to give up the colonial base that had been operating for several years so easily, and did not follow Zheng Zhilong's ultimatum to withdraw from Dongfan Island within a month.

After Zheng Zhilong received Zhu Youzhen's approval to agree to his plan to recover Dongfan Island, Zheng Zhilong, in the name of the prefect of Taiwan, began to tell the inland Chinese merchant ships to suspend their going to Dongfan Island and ordered the Chinese merchant houses to transfer their property back to the mainland, and began to mobilize warships from all over the world to gather in Kinmen and Penghu within this month, ready to attack Dongfan Island at any time.

At the same time, Zheng Zhilong also asked the imperial court for military salaries and ordnance, and at the same time hoped to get the intelligence help of Jinyiwei.

By the time Liu Kongzhao arrived in Kinmen, the military forces of the Zheng group to attack Taiwan had already been prepared.

However, the Dutch colonists also began to step up preparations at this time, and the Dutch governor of Dongfan Island had already reported to the governor of the Dutch East India Company and asked for support.

In Batavia, the governor of the Dutch East India Company had already sent the commander Van der Laan to lead the "Stubborn John", a total of more than 1,400 men and twelve warships, to support.

He also strengthened the reconnaissance and defense of the waters near Dongfan Island, and began to explicitly prohibit the Chinese gentry in the city from leaving the city, and restricted the freedom of the Chinese, burned the grain outside the city, and implemented the policy of fortifying the walls and clearing the wilderness.

The Zheng clique and the Dutch colonists have always been at odds, after all, they are both vying for each other's maritime supremacy in Southeast Asia.

In the eighteenth year of Chongzhen, the Ming Emperor Zhu Youzhen's commercial tax increase and the opening of the tax exemption privilege for the Zheng Group further intensified this contradiction.

The Zheng Group established the Zheng firm because of the tax-free privilege, and the wealth was rapidly accumulated, the business capital increased dramatically, and the foreign trade market was urgently needed.

However, the Ming Dynasty began to levy taxes in the mainland, which made Zheng's Group unwilling to expand its procurement and production institutions in China in order to reduce production costs and procurement costs, and could only hope to find a business base abroad.

Within a few years, the Dutch colonists managed Dongfan Island to a successful scale, establishing cities such as Geranza and Prominza, which naturally aroused the coveting of the Zheng group.

It can be said that Zheng Chenggong's recovery of Taiwan in the original history was due to the Qing court's relocation order, which led to his helpless move to occupy Taiwan and re-establish an anti-Qing base.

However, Zheng Zhilong's recovery of Taiwan in this life was due to the contradiction between the external expansion of the Zheng Group and the external expansion of the Dutch East India Company.

Unwittingly, Zhu Youzhen turned the Zheng group into a Han commercial armed group that expanded abroad.

The current Zheng Group, the Zheng Group in the Zheng Chenggong era, which was originally in history, was much stronger.

At this time, the Zheng group had not experienced the consumption of the anti-Qing war in the Yongli period, and the father and son had not turned against each other, and there was no internal disintegration, coupled with the support of the imperial court, which made the power of the Zheng group much stronger in the past.

Liu Kongzhao, who was unimpressed at first, also began to be dumbfounded when he saw the Zheng Group's warship equipment again.

In his note to Zhu Youzhen, he directly stated that the Zheng group has more than 3,000 warships of all kinds, with no less than 120,000 troops, and in addition, the trading ships serving the Zheng group at sea are also not to be underestimated as the logistical support capability of the Zheng group to launch the war, and these ships are almost tens of thousands.

In addition, Liu Kongzhao also mentioned that the equipment of more than 100,000 soldiers and horses of the entire Zheng group should not be underestimated, including large cannons, spirit cannons, serial cannons, baizi cannons, divine machine guns, thousand flower guns, baizi flower pole guns, bird guns, deer guns, Lianzhu rockets, spray cans, fire cans, swords and countless other weapons.

Even these more than 100,000 horses have a large number of heavily armored Westerners, Japanese slaves and Kunlun slaves (Africans), all of whom are fierce.

In short, Liu Kongzhao's Song Shuli said that the power of the Zheng group was no longer strong, and even directly proposed that it might deter the rule of the imperial court in the future, suggesting that the Ming navy should continue to develop in large quantities, and implicitly hoped that His Majesty the Emperor Zhu Youzhen would not give the Zheng group flintlock pistols and new artillery and other ordnance support, so as to make the Zheng group further bigger.

Liu Kongzhao found out how big the gap between the Ming Navy and the Zheng Group was, and he began to seriously and carefully observe the military strength of the Zheng Group, and no longer put on the rack of the earl, and began to use the cliché skills he practiced in the Nanjing Xun Qi circle to use the wine table to fight with these Zheng Group generals, and began to have some of their words.

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