A complete truce between the Ming Dynasty and Burma was finally reached in June of the sixth year of Xiaokang.

Peace can come again, on the one hand, because Da Ming has completely taken back what should belong to him (Sanxuan Liuwei was originally the territory of Da Ming, which was gradually lost after Jiajing), and also punished the non-subordinate Burmese king who dared to accept Da Ming's rebellion and swaying toast.

On the other hand, it is because Da Ming really does not want to invest more resources in the war against Burma, and continues to be mired in the quagmire.

During the duration of this war, Li Dingguo always maintained a scale of about 40,000 troops, and once there was a loss on the front line, he would continue to recruit troops to replenish the source in the future, so more than 60,000 soldiers were probably mobilized before and after.

Zheng Chenggong of the sea route also mobilized 20,000 or 30,000 people, adding up to 90,000 soldiers.

To provide support for such a large cross-border expedition, even if the grain and grass have been "given to the enemy" as much as possible, and the Burmese people are robbed of the grain stock while eating, the rear is mainly responsible for the first stage of food, and the whole process of medicine, ammunition, weapons and ordnance loss.

But even so, the logistical pressure is enormous. The provision of supporting facilities for 90,000 people involved at least 300,000 people, sailors, and craftsmen. In particular, the Ming army had a high rate of firearms, and the logistics were far more complex than those of other ancient armies, and the types of materials needed were also complicated.

The national strength of the Ming Dynasty can be sustained, all because of the first four years after Zhu Ciyu ascended the throne, his father has been insisting on recuperation, farming and climbing technology, and has not spent money indiscriminately.

The surplus grain stocks in Yunnan and Guizhou every year have also been saved up in advance. Since the first year of the well-off, the central court has not allowed Yunnan and Guizhou provinces to transfer a grain from outside, which can withstand today's war.

And with this battle, which finally lasted for about ten months, the grain stored in the official warehouse accumulated by Yungui in the past four years has almost eaten more than half, and it is about to approach the warning line.

Of course, some people may think: Didn't you only eat more than half of the grain in Yungui's official warehouse? Since there is still a small half, why not continue to fight? Why is the food security threshold set so high?

But in fact, this cordon really has to be lenient against the enemy.

Because the enemy of the Ming Dynasty in southern Xinjiang is not only Myanmar-

As mentioned earlier, last year, which was the fifth year of Xiaokang, the Ming Dynasty condemned and beat Myanmar at the same time, and also beat Vietnam together. After all, Vietnam also committed the crime of "sheltering the rebellion of the Ming Dynasty" at the beginning of Zhu Ciyu's ascension to the throne.

At the beginning, in order to retreat and farm, the Ming court could turn a blind eye and pretend not to trace. But once the opening is opened, it is no longer possible to pretend to be deaf and dumb, and it is necessary to condemn Myanmar and Vietnam at the same time.

Otherwise, if one is condemned first and the other is condemned every few years because of the same thing, then the diplomatic credibility of the Ming Dynasty will be finished in the future, and it will be regarded as "selective punishment and persimmon picking soft pinch".

After all, the meaning of the "statute of limitations" is that people can have a buffer time to file a dispute "when they do not know that their interests have been infringed". Instead of letting you know that your interests have been infringed, you don't take a stand in time. It would be hypocritical to have the latter case in the latter case.

This is also why in international law in later generations, the measure of "shelving disputes, but not acknowledging them, and maintaining condemnation" will become so important.

In many international disputes, as long as you have not recognized the other party, and you make your position clear that there is a dispute in it, and condemn it first, then you will retain the legal basis for turning the other cheek in the future. After the condemnation is over, you can continue to forbear, farm and develop yourself, and then turn your face when you are strong, then international law will give you a chance.

But if you don't even condemn it when you encounter controversy at the beginning, and acquiesce in it, it is tantamount to admitting that there is no controversy. Even if you become stronger in the future, there is no legal basis for turning your face since ancient times, and even if you have a hard fist, you will risk the world's condemnation.

Therefore, for Da Ming, the condemnation of Myanmar and the condemnation of Vietnam must be issued at the same time and cannot be delayed.

It's just that condemnation must be at the same time, but there is still a time lag between condemnation and action.

Since the turn of last summer and autumn, after condemning both Myanmar and Vietnam, the Ming Dynasty has quickly moved on Myanmar. As for the Vietnamese side, they only insisted on verbal condemnation and did not actually send troops.

After all, from the point of view of the art of war, if you can defeat each of them, why bother fighting two enemies at the same time? As long as I keep condemning, my casus belli and the strategic initiative will always be in my hands.

Because Vietnam's national strength was several times weaker than that of Burma, although it was united by the Burmese king Mang Bai and secretly supported Burma, it did not dare to directly take the initiative to invade the Ming Dynasty.

As a result, on the Ming-Vietnam border, from July of the fifth year of Xiaokang to February of the sixth year of Xiaokang, for a full seven months, the two sides were like a "sit-in war".

The guys in the Ministry of Rites who are responsible for writing and scolding people don't know how many KPIs they have swiped, including Gu Yanwu, who has just ascended to the Ministry of Rites, and they all went down in person, swiping an average of one piece of data per month.

By the end of February of the sixth year of Xiaokang, the Vietnamese who had always scolded and refused to fight back finally had a subtle change in their mentality and behavior - this change was mainly due to hearing that Zheng Chenggong had landed in the Bago estuary delta, and he also attacked Li Dingguo from the north and south to open up the supply channel of the Irrawaddy River in the Burmese battlefield.

I have to say that this change has refreshed and shocked the Vietnamese people's cognition, which is really extraordinary.

So much so that when Zheng Zheng, the ruler of the Lê Dynasty in Vietnam, learned about it, he couldn't help but feel a shudder, and immediately summoned his sons to discuss the opportunity to deal with it.

……

Outsiders looking at the political situation in Vietnam in the 1660s may be a little confused: since it is said that the Vietnamese dynasty at that time was the Lê Dynasty, why would the ruler be Zheng Tsangze?

This matter is a little complicated, but to make a long story short, it can be roughly summarized as follows: At that time, there were two dynasties and four surnames in Vietnam.

The so-called two dynasties are the Li Dynasty and the Mo Dynasty. The Li Dynasty was founded earlier, and it was founded during the Ming Xuanzong period, which was basically the original regime that was re-established in Vietnam after the Ming army that went south to Vietnam during Zhu Di's reign.

The Mo Dynasty was founded more than 100 years later, about the early years of Jiajing on the Ming side, before usurping the throne and destroying the country built by Li. It's a pity that not long after the founding of the People's Republic of China, Zheng Jian, an old minister of the Li Dynasty, supported a side branch of the Li Dynasty royal family as the Later Li King, and then in the name of the Later Li King, he ordered the princes to reoccupy the Red River Valley occupied by the Mo Dynasty.

However, the Mo Dynasty was not wiped out, and after the defeat, it fled north to the Gaoping and Langshan areas bordering the Guangxi border of the Ming Dynasty, leaving only the land of the two prefectures to survive.

For more than 100 years after that, there have been two dynasties in Vietnam, North Monamri.

And the Zheng family is worried that if they also usurp the throne and depose Li, they will lose their legitimacy and will be regarded as a chaotic minister and thief like the Mo Dynasty. Since the Mo Dynasty had occupied that self-reliant ecological niche, the Zheng family did not dare to mess around, and finally learned from Cao Cao for more than a hundred years, and always only blackmailed the king to power and did not usurp the throne.

But after being in power for a long time, some people within the Li Dynasty will eventually say that the Zheng family is blackmailing the king, so in the early years of Chongzhen, the last year of the Apocalypse on the side of the Ming Dynasty, there was a local real power general in the south of the Li Dynasty, Ruan Fuyuan of the Ruan family, and openly pulled the flag to break with the Zheng lord.

Nguyen Phuc Nguyen played a banner similar to that of "the thief who blackmailed the king", and then, after more than ten years of conquest, occupied Hue and the southern half of Vietnam to the south, and divided the north and south with the Zheng lord.

In this way, there are three de facto local military and political forces in Vietnam, from north to south:

They are the northernmost Gaoping Lang Mountain, close to the border of Guangxi Mo Dynasty,

In the middle of the Hanoi Plain to Hue the Truong lord (and the puppet king of the Trung family surnamed Lê),

Nguyen lord south of Hue in the south (Nguyen lord still nominally submitted to the Lê king, but said that he would defeat the Trung family and rescue the king)

Between these three forces, the Ming Dynasty usually did not come, and they themselves did not stop.

Since the beginning of Chongzhen, there have been six wars between Zheng and Ruan in the past forty years, with an average of one every six years. In a few more years in history, they will fight again, and then it will stop there, acquiescing to each other's spheres of influence.

In the original history, just last year, that is, in 1667 or the fifth year of Xiaokang, Zheng Zheng Zheng would take advantage of the weakness of the Ming Dynasty to attack Mo Jingyu, the king of the Mo Dynasty, and break Mo Jingyu's Gaoping Mansion, forcing Mo Jingyu to finally have to take refuge in the remnants of history.

And now, it is only because Daming has not declined, but has become stronger, that Zheng Zheng did not dare to rashly launch the final blow against Mo Jingyu, who took refuge in Daming.

However, after they discovered that the Ming army could actually fight a large-scale amphibious landing battle by sea and land and thousands of miles by sea, Zheng Zheng finally couldn't sit still. Because he knew that he had to strike first, otherwise Vietnam would be finished sooner or later.

……

In such a context, the discussion of countermeasures between Zheng Zheng and his son Zheng Gen and others is also very sad.

One day at the end of February, Zheng Zheng went straight to the point and expressed his concerns to Zheng Gen and others:

"The wolf ambitions of the Ming Kingdom for my Vietnam have been known to everyone for two hundred years. At the beginning, Zhu Di's thieves brutalized our Vietnamese people, and were finally repelled by Wang Shi, all thanks to the stupidity of the Ming Emperor to ban the sea, and the supply of troops against our Vietnam had to go down the Red River from Yunnan.

Only then was my Li Dynasty Taizu relied on the destruction of the Red River waterway, cut off the Ming army's backup, money, food, ordnance, and medicine supplies, and finally forced the Ming army to suffer heavy casualties and have to retreat.

But now I heard that Zheng Chenggong landed in Bago last month, and the sea route from Guangzhou to Bago is 8,000 miles away. If the Ming army was able to strengthen the sea, wouldn't it be much easier to go to sea from Qinzhou, Guangxi, to the Qinghua landing at the mouth of the Red River, than to go to Bagu? How will our army respond then?

Our geography in Vietnam is long and narrow and mountainous, and if we rely on land supplies, there are two or three thousand miles of mountain roads from north to south. However, if it can rely on sea transportation, Vietnam will have no danger to defend everywhere.

What's more, the Mo puppet dynasty in the north, since the Apocalypse has completely taken refuge in the Ming Kingdom, and now if it is chaotic inside, the Ming army will attack outside again, and the country will be destroyed! ”

Faced with worries, his eldest son Zheng Gen also tried to say comfort: "Father, although Zheng Chenggong successfully landed in Bago, Burma, he may not be able to land in Vietnam in the future.

The Burmese king Mang Bai was a fool after all, just because Burma was not worried about being landed by the enemy country on land, so Mang Bai never wanted to spend gold and silver on the purchase of Western warships.

But our Vietnam is different, our dynasty knows that the territory is long and narrow, and it is easy to be cut in half by the enemy at sea, so in recent years, we have spent a lot of money to buy Portuguese and Dutch warships, and the Hongyi artillery is also more advanced than the Burmese army.

Six years ago, when we were fighting with Nguyen Thanh in the south, we tried to land at Nguyen Dieh, south of Hue (now Dong Hai County, Quang Binh Province), south of Hue with the escort of the two Dutch Galen gunboats we bought at that time, but unfortunately our Dutch warships were still not enough to break through the Portuguese fleet accumulated by Nguyen Thoy for many years, so we were unable to cut off Nguyen's Hue province from the rear!

This time the Ming people attacked, Ruan Shun should take the overall situation into account and fight side by side with us. If we unite the battle-hardened Western warships of both of us to resist foreign aggression, we will definitely be able to annihilate Zheng Chenggong at sea! In this way, the Ming army still had to attack by land, and sooner or later it could be dragged to death by our army! Just like the annihilation of Zhu Di's army back then! ”

Zheng Gen's words cannot be said to be completely unreasonable.

It is now the 1660s, and the Dutch VOC has been operating in Southeast Asia for more than half a century, and the coastal regimes in Southeast Asia have actually engaged in arms trade with the Dutch and even the Portuguese before.

In particular, countries with a lot of internal wars and turmoil have spared no expense in buying guns in order to compete with each other.

In fact, don't talk about Southeast Asia, if you look at Fuso in the late Warring States period, you will know how much price those Warring States daimyo were willing to pay for "iron cannons and big barrels", and even the daimyo of Kyushu and Western countries were willing to buy more muskets and cannons, and one by one they converted to Chezhi Dan, preferring not to buy gods and Buddhas but also to buy foreign guns.

The Ming Dynasty was definitely an outlier at that time, mainly because the Ming Dynasty had no existential crisis until the end of Wanli, and he regarded himself very highly, so he was unwilling to grovel in order to buy foreign guns and cannons.

And on the Vietnamese side, Zheng and Nguyen have played each other's dog brains, at this time the warlords are very pragmatic, as long as they can improve their combat effectiveness, no matter whether you are a Western barbarian or not, they will not hesitate to buy it at any cost.

Since the 1620s, the north and south of Vietnam have been desperately engaged in an arms race of warships.

So when it comes to the navy alone, they are indeed entitled to look down on Myanmar and think that these landlubbers in Myanmar are some kind of garbage. Zheng Cheng's function to bully Myanmar does not mean that he can bully Vietnam!

As long as the naval battle is won, the Ming Dynasty will not be able to destroy Vietnam!

However, Zheng Zheng is much more mature than his son after all, and he knows that things are not so simple.

"When encountering foreign enemies, all factions within the Li Dynasty can put aside their grievances and unite with the outside world", he didn't dare to think of such a thing.

It's good if the Ruan family doesn't fall into the ground, how can they fight Zheng Chenggong with him? Even if the troops are dispatched, it is estimated that the grass on the wall will wait and see at any time, and when it comes to the decisive battle of the naval battle, it will also let the Zheng family fleet go first, suffer losses first, and then the Ruan family fleet will try to pick peaches and pick up cheap.

But at the moment, he had no better way, so he could only sigh: "Let's try to take responsibility for righteousness first and stabilize the Ruan family." It would be good if the Ruan family didn't add to the chaos.

Then our army will try to eradicate Mo Jingyu in Gaoping and Langshan before the Ming army withdraws from Burma! We must not wait for the Ming army to draw their hands and then join forces with my puppets in Vietnam!

Anyway, sooner or later, the Ming army will invade our Vietnam, and when Burma is completely finished, we will miss the opportunity to fight to the death, so it is better to strike first.

If we can take advantage of the fact that one part of Zheng Chenggong's fleet is still pinned down in Bagu, provoke it here, let the Ming army advance arrogantly, first try to land rashly with the sailors, and then annihilate them at sea by our sailors, then we can break them all and cut off one of their arms before encountering Zheng Chenggong himself. ”

Zheng Zheng's idea is also similar to that of the commander of the German High Seas Fleet in World War I. Admiral Scheer is about the same.

The essence of Scheer's naval warfare thinking in World War I was that he knew that he could not defeat the main force of the British Royal Fleet, so he wanted to lure out a few Royal Navy fighters.

Each defeat weakened a part of the British fleet at a time, and then the final decisive battle was fought after the other was eliminated. The Battle of Jutland in 1916 was, in the final analysis, a failed battle to lure the enemy and annihilate it, but unfortunately the Germans' radio encryption was too rubbish, and the scheme had long been branded by the British, so it was played in vain.

But in any case, there is nothing wrong with Scher's strategic thinking itself, and what is problematic is the execution and intelligence leaks.

Zheng Zheng now also feels that the naval strength of the whole country of Vietnam may not be the opponent of Zheng Chenggong's main force, but if he can hide his strength first and show weakness, and then provoke on land, and seduce the Ming army when the main force is not there, he will rashly let the navy division move first, and maybe there will be a chance to annihilate each one.

After cutting Zheng Chenggong's fleet into two parts and fighting it twice, Zheng Zheng felt that he still had a little chance.

(End of chapter)