Are the Fujian gentry such as Wu Huang and Lin Rui afraid of the Royal Maritime Trade Company? If you say you're afraid, you're afraid, and if you say you're not afraid, you're not afraid.

I'm afraid of the forces in Li Yanzhi's hands, and I'm afraid that I will be caught and end up like the Huang family in Quanzhou.

But as long as there is no more blatant collusion with pirates and red-haired ghosts like the Huang family, even Liu Mao, the governor of Fujian, will not be able to order a move against the gentry, otherwise Liu Mao will not be able to sit firmly on this governor.

Besides, although the Praetorian Guard in Li Yanzhi's hands was powerful, it was only a few thousand people, which was not enough to blockade the entire coastal area of Fujian.

At the beginning, in order to make money steadily, Wu Huang persuaded Lin Rui to compromise with the Royal Maritime Trade Company, but now Mao Liangzhe opened his mouth widely, and he actually wanted to swallow more than half of the sea trade share in one bite, so it was a fart!

The gentry also had the pride of the gentry!

"Assign people to monitor Li Yanzhi's fleet, let's privately transport the goods to a secret and remote seaport, avoid Fuzhou and other big ports, and quietly go to sea, I don't believe Li Yanzhi and they can find out!" Lin Rui sneered.

The sea is vast, as long as the ship goes out to sea, it is difficult to find it!

"I still wanted everyone to take a step back, but I didn't expect them to have too much appetite, this is to think of monopolizing the benefits of sea trade." Wu Huang sighed.

"As long as we strictly control the supply of goods, we are not afraid of them!" Lin Rui sneered, "Wait until next year, so they won't be able to buy a load of raw silk, so they have to bow to us!" ”

Wu Huang clenched his fists hard and said, "That's it!" Cooperate with other merchants, contact with the squires of various provinces, sign contracts for the purchase of bulk goods such as raw silk, and control the supply of goods first. ”

The Royal Maritime Trade Company is just an outsider, although it has the strength of the governor of Fujian and the general military officer of Fujian, but it has no foundation in the people, if the two sides really want to fight, how can Lin Rui and Wu Huang and other gentry be afraid?

But Lin Rui and Wu Huang forgot that there is another kind of power, called force, when the force is strong to a certain extent, it is enough to break through all resistance.

In another time and space, after Zheng Zhilong exterminated Li Kuiqi and Liu Xiang and other pirates, he controlled the entire southeast coast, and the gentry were very powerful, and they had to compromise with Zheng Zhilong and pay protection fees to Zheng Zhilong.

Now, Li Yanzhi has adopted the same approach.

After the negotiations collapsed, Li Yanzhi ordered the Fujian Navy Division to be divided into three teams, each with a plywood boat as the flagship, to blockade the waters of Zhangzhou, Fuzhou, and Funing Prefectures, and to dispatch sentinel ships to strictly inspect the bays and islands, and to immediately pursue them once they found ships going to sea.

For this reason, Li Yanzhi ordered the fleet of Ben Harbor to be transferred back, and thousands of ships of all sizes were patrolled on the sea surface of Fujian every day.

"Mr. Li, should our sea ship go to Japan first?" Mao Liangzhe suggested.

Li Yanzhi said: "Don't worry, the southeast monsoon lasts all summer, there is no need to go so early, wait until the sea ships of the merchant gang are confiscated, and then set off together." ”

Lin Rui, Wu Huang and other gentry chose to avoid the Fujian sailors and went to sea from the hidden bay, while the sailors patrolled closely, and the two sides launched a cat-and-mouse battle.

There are many winding and excellent seaports along the coast of Fujian, and it is natural that the strength of Li Yan's direct sailor cannot take care of all the seaports, but there are always ships that go to sea without permission and are found to be caught.

All three fleets were equipped with extremely fast bird boats, and the plywood boats were particularly sturdy, and if the sea vessels laden with cargo were discovered, there was no escape. Several ships surrounded it, and the cannon bombarded, and they had to surrender. The gentry chose to disperse to the sea to escape the recourse of the officials and soldiers, making their strength even more unable to compete with the sailors.

In half a month, more than a dozen ships loaded with goods were seized, which were loaded with raw silk, cotton cloth and other goods. All seized sea vessels were confiscated with their goods, and in order to prevent the gentry from detecting, the crew members were escorted to Taiwan for custody.

"Every year, there are only twenty or thirty sea ships from Fujian to Japan, and the others are Guangdong and Zhejiang sea ships, and the sea ships we have seized plus our own account for about half of Fujian's sea trade share." Zheng Zhilong said straight to Li Yan.

With the addition of the original five ships of cargo, the Royal Sea Trading House now has a total of sixteen ships of cargo, all of which are three-masted ships of 2,000 materials.

"Let's do this this this year, Admiral Zheng, you lead the fleet to Japan with the shopkeeper Mao. I will continue to recruit troops in Fujian, build warships, and when you come back from Japan in winter, we will recruit Liu Xiang and other pirates, control the sea surface of Fujian, Guangdong, and Zhejiang provinces, and wait until next year, without the permission of the Royal Merchant House, Pian Fan will not be allowed to enter the sea! Li Yan said coldly.

"Yes, Chief Soldier!" Zheng Zhilong and Mao Liangzhe agreed in unison.

The sea trade fleet set off, a total of 20 three-masted ships, including two Dutch plywood ships, the crew of more than 3,000 people on board, all of them are elite sailor soldiers, responsible for operating the ship on weekdays, all of them are soldiers in wartime, equipped with more than 2,000 firearms, all from the Beijing Royal Arsenal, which is already an incomparably powerful force in the coastal area of Daming.

Li Yanzhi stayed in Fujian, and was not idle, relying on the money confiscated from Quanzhou, he continued to recruit and train sailors, and the treatment of the Praetorian Guards made the soldiers of the Fujian coastal guards also come to vote, and more than 10,000 people were recruited in one summer. With the addition of the Bengang army, Li Yanzhi now has 30,000 troops in his hands and more than 1,000 ships of various seas. Of course, most of them are small boats.

Bin Harbor and the red-haired ghost fought a great victory, but through the interrogation of the prisoners, Li Yanzhi knew that the Dutch red-haired ghost still had a very strong force on the island of Java in the South Seas, and the Dutch in Java were very likely to attack and take revenge. Most of the three-masted ships were taken away by Zheng Zhilong, and although there were many ships in Li Yanzhi's hands, they were all small boats.

So through Liu Mao, the governor of Fujian, he issued an order to all shipyards along the coast to requisition all shipwrights to build ships.

Fujian maritime trade is developed, Fu ship is the best sea ship in this era of the Ming Dynasty, in the coastal area of Fujian, there are dozens of shipbuilding workshops, and Funingwei and other coastal guards also have the ability to build ships.

In fact, the government's control over the coast was weak, the local guard posts were highly corrupt, and these shipbuilding workshops were private and not subject to government constraints. Often a village was a shipyard, and the villagers made a living from shipbuilding, and whoever gave the silver would build a ship, whether it was a gentry or a pirate.

And now, with the order of the Fuzhou Governor Yamen, the officers and soldiers of the Navy Division have been stationed in various shipbuilding villages, and from then on they can only build ships for the Fujian Navy Division. Seagoing vessels with more than three masts can only be supplied to sailors. Only a two-masted boat can be sold to the people.

Of course, Li Yanzhi did not treat them badly, he built a ship for the sailors, and the treatment should be preferential, anyway, now there is silver, and the silver confiscated from Quanzhou to help Xu Xinsu send three million taels to Beijing, and there are more than one million taels of cash in Li Yanzhi's hands.

Li Yanzhi summoned the outstanding craftsmen of the shipyards, plus the captured red-haired ghost craftsmen, brainstormed and discussed, using the captured red-haired ghost plywood boat as a template to try to imitate the plywood ship. This kind of plywood ship is also called the Galen ship, the performance has far surpassed the current Daming sea ship, if you want to compete for hegemony with the Xiyi people at sea, you can only build the same large sea ship, equipped with the same number of guns.

According to the mouth of the red-haired ghost, in Europa, there are more powerful Galen warships, much larger than the three captured plywood ships, each ship can carry hundreds of cannons, is the real sea overlord, which makes Li Yanzhi have a sense of crisis.

And just when Li Yanzhi was building a ship, in late July, a red-haired ghost ship came to Fuzhou.