"I have seen in this section of the history of the Ming Dynasty," Li Xin said, "After the death of Ashikaga Yoshimitsu, the successor son Ashikaga Yoshinori thought that the tribute was "insulting" to the Japanese national system, so he began to suspend tribute, and it was not until twenty years later in the Xuantoku period that Ashikaga Yoshinori's son Ashikaga Yoshinori was restored to the throne. In fact, due to the strength of the Ming Dynasty government at that time, there were not many Japanese who really dared to make trouble, but there were many Chinese hooligans who took advantage of the troubled waters to fish in troubled waters under the banner of the Japanese invaders, so as to completely wipe themselves out. ”

This Wang Ling and Lao Pi heard it was an eye-opener, they couldn't imagine that even Li Xin was so proficient in history, and couldn't help but be impressed by this woman again, Li Xin realized that they began to focus their eyes on themselves, and stuck out their tongues again and again and said a little embarrassed: "The class has an axe, or let Lao Zheng continue to talk, I just have a cursory look at a little Ming history." ”

"During this period, the bloody battle between two Japanese tributary groups in Ningbo affected the local people, so that the Ming Empire completely banned Japan's exploration trade, and this opened up a broad space for smuggling." Zheng Jiuwu said: "Wang Zhi started from smuggling arms, when the smuggling paradise of Shuangyu Island became the center of world trade, and the Ming Dynasty officials destroyed it by force in order to crack down on smuggling, which in turn cleared the way for Wang Zhi to become the king of "pirates".

According to the "Iron Cannon Record" written by the famous Japanese scholar and monk Fumiyuki Nanura, on August 25 of this year, several Portuguese merchants came to Japan under the introduction of the "Five Peaks of Confucianism in the Ming Dynasty". The Portuguese demonstrated the "iron cannon" to the Japanese, and the Japanese bought a few, the so-called "iron cannon" was the arquebus of the Ming Dynasty at that time, which was extremely advanced at that time, but the Japanese government brought great shock.

This is the story of the famous "Iron Cannon" in Japan, and this "Ming Confucian Five Peaks" is Wang Zhi.

At this time, Sino-Japanese trade had been interrupted, and all commodity exchanges could only be forced to "smuggle", and due to the lack of official management and restraint, the sea route had become a free world, and the risk of logistics had also greatly increased. Make more money, and have a guy in your hand, this business has been the greater the risk since ancient times, the higher the profit, some hooligans who are active at sea take the opportunity to start haunting and robbing, and Wang Zhi also began to recruit troops and horses, and began to form his own armed forces.

Five years after going to sea, Wang led more than 2,000 people to join Xu Dong's maritime armed group. Xu Dong and Wang Zhi are fellow villagers, entrenched in Shuangyu Island off the coast of Zhejiang, which was regarded as a "national deportation and abandonment land" in the early Ming Dynasty, and the residents were forcibly relocated inland, leaving no one to live, which happened to become a smuggling paradise. Under the coaxing of smugglers, Shuangyu under Xu Dong became a populous and well-equipped trading hub, and the famous Japanese historian Fujita Toyohachi even called it "Shanghai in the 16th century".

In the twenty-seventh year of Jiajing, Zhu Kun served as the governor of Zhejiang, and he made every effort to search for and arrest the traitors, rectify the coastal defense, strictly prohibit merchants from going to the sea, and began to actively prepare for military operations to destroy Shuangyu Island with an overwhelming advantage. Before that, Wang Zhi, the number two person on the island, calmly commanded, and led the rest of the troops to escape from Shuangyu and become the new leader. The Ming Empire, on the other hand, painfully discovered that an even more difficult opponent was born.

"Wang Zhi, who escaped from Shuangyu Island, gathered the rest of his army at sea, and he took almost all the wealth accumulated by Xu Dong of Shuangyu over the years, and led his subordinates to establish a base in the Goto Islands in Nagasaki, Japan, according to Japanese historians, this should have been invited by the local lord Matsuura Takanobu in order to expand overseas trade with Wang Zhi." Zheng Jiuwu said, "But Wang Zhi is a scheming person, after Japan gradually gained a foothold, Wang Zhi changed his strategy, actively moved closer to the Ming Empire, the motherland, and assisted the officers and troops in attacking other maritime armed groups, one can do a good job in government public relations, and the other can take the opportunity to expand his own power."

Under these circumstances, Wang Zhi took the initiative to ask the imperial court to be a maritime "joint defense team" and undertake the difficult task of "resisting the Japanese" for the government. At this time, Wang Zhi has become the "big brother" in the East China Sea, his "Wufeng Banner" is a pass on the sea, the pirates did not dare to rob, the officers and soldiers were not difficult for a time, freedom of action, his power and momentum reached the peak at that time, almost all the business in and out of the sea in the capitalist-developed Ming Dynasty was monopolized by Wang Zhi alone, from the South China Sea to the Bohai Sea, the long coastline of the Ming Dynasty was full of smuggling merchant ships of the Wufeng Banner and armed pirate ships full of artillery. ”

However, the good times did not last long, and the imperial court would never allow a "snoring" "other person" on the "side of the couch". So, in the 32nd year of Jiajing, Yu Dayou and other "thousands of boat driving divisions" besieged Ligang, and under the fierce offensive of the official army, Wang Zhi once again led his troops to break through and fled to Japan. In Songpujin, Japan, Wang Zhi announced that he was called the king of the system, first calling himself "King of the Pure Sea", and then changing his name to "King Hui", "those who are dressed in color and banner to imitate the king, deploy official subordinates, have titles, control key points, and the 36 islands of the Yi are all under command."

After being called the king, Wang Zhi's wealth has reached the point where he can be an enemy, and at the same time his men and horses have also developed to an astonishing point, at this time Wang Zhi began to take revenge, he led the army to counterattack the Ming Dynasty, often thousands of giant ships crisscrossed and fro, cruising up and down along the border line as if entering a no-man's land. In desperation, the Ming Empire raised the reward for capturing Wang Zhi to an astonishingly high price: "There is a capable master to set up a strange plan, capture Wang Zhi alive, and give him ten thousand gold." So far, Wang Zhi has become one of the most highly appreciated "pirates" in the entire history, and has also established his position in the history of world piracy in one fell swoop. Compared with the Caribbean pirates and Viking of the same period, whether it is equipment or scale, or control, they are nothing compared to Wang Zhi, not at all at the same level, you must know that at that time, he could rely on the power of one person to compete against the peak of the Ming Dynasty at sea!

Zheng Jiuwu said: "And the reputation of this great pirate in the people is very good, what makes the Ming Empire quite embarrassed is that this "Japanese pirate" has a great prestige among the people, and everyone runs for it. or to give fresh food, or to give wine and rice, or to offer children". Mainly because he earned a lot and was willing to give, often helped the poor, and treated all the people who came to him, but then he died after all. ”

At that time, the Ming Dynasty had a strict sea ban, and it was impossible to allow such a figure to exist for a long time, and his power was already large enough to fight against the country. So they began to use both soft and hard methods, first arresting Wang Zhi's relatives in the mainland, including his wife, children and old mother, and then sending people to Japan to negotiate, telling him that the imperial court had the intention of recruiting peace, and revealed that his relatives had been placed in Hangzhou to take care of him, the implication is that I have hostages in hand, if you can come back, I will guarantee your safety and increase your official status to glory, wealth, and so on.

After more than two years of hard grinding, Wang Zhi is still a traditional Chinese man in his bones, and the return of fallen leaves to his roots and filial piety and Confucian and Mencian ideas finally made him choose to return to China, and his fate is visible. Not long after, the pirate king was arrested and imprisoned, but because he was afraid of his remaining strength, he did not dare to do it for two years, so it was delayed for two years, and the central government finally decided to execute Wang Zhi, but the crime was not piracy, but "treason", in the verdict issued in the name of the holy decree, accused Wang Zhi of "betraying China and colluding with China, and committing a serious crime" - although Wang Zhi did not obey the orders of the Japanese, but the Japanese obeyed his orders.

To the embarrassment of later generations, Wang Zhi neither thought of himself as a "widow", nor did he consider himself a "rebel". While in prison, he wrote a copy of "Self-Enlightenment and Shu", believing that he was just "seeking profit from the sea, selling goods and blessings, sharing benefits with others, and defending the border for the country." Not only did he "never seduce the party and thieves to intrude on things," but also, "Chen Yi served the country, appeased the frontier, and defeated the masses."

After hearing all this, several people not only began to sigh about the tragic ending of the pirate king's life, but such a legendary figure still went to the point of no return, but after all that, what does it have to do with this? This question is what everyone wants to know, so Zheng Jiuwu, who has always talked little, continued:

"There are some Ming Dynasty royal archives in the Palace Museum that were transported to Taiwan that year, and when sorting out these archives, people found that there was a reason why Wang Zhi was still under house arrest for two years before being poisoned. Wang Zhi traveled all over the world, traded with the whole world, and was still monopolistic, and accumulated more wealth than people imagined, but the whereabouts of this wealth after he was arrested were unknown. The reason is that Wang Zhi left a back hand for himself, he hid those wealth in a few secret places, if he said the whereabouts of the treasure, he knew that he would die immediately, so this became his talisman again, but unfortunately the last Wang Zhi still died in the factional struggle within the court, becoming a stepping stone for others to come to power, and this most dazzling wealth since the history of piracy has become a lost treasure. ”

Hu Zongxian, who captured Wang Zhi back then, started politically because of the contradictions between the governors of Zhejiang and the central commissioners. Now, as a senior member, he himself is caught in this power struggle game, and he can only call for helplessness. Hu Zongxian really wanted to recruit Wang Zhi to use his power to pacify the sea frontier. Hu Zongxian asked the emperor for pardon, but "after that, the discussion was raging, so he did not dare to insist on asking." At that time, some people in the court were afraid that he would threaten his own power because of his merit because he found Wang Zhi's treasure, and even jointly wrote a letter to impeach Hu Zongxian, and rumors in the capital had begun to spread that Hu Zongxian had received a huge bribe of hundreds of thousands of taels of silver from Wang Zhi's group. Under the crowd, Hu Zongxian was "terrified" and had no choice but to echo the opinions of most people, and the emperor of the current dynasty had to take Wang Zhi's head first for the sake of the stability of the government.