"Jingle ......"

Layue is also on the ocean, but the location has changed from the Atlantic Ocean to the Little Western Ocean, and from a desert island to West Hong Kong Island.

West Harbor Island (Andaman Islands), as an archipelago stuck in the Lesser Western Ocean and the Burma Sea, is only more than 400 miles away from Myanmar and only 1,500 miles from the northernmost part of the Burmese coast.

The development of Xigang Island by the Ming Dynasty began in the eighth year of the Apocalypse, and has been more than four years so far, with more than 40,000 Han residents on the islands.

Most of the countryside is scattered across the islands, with the largest island, West Hong Kong, home to 34,000 people.

Although West Hong Kong Island is only a little more than 1,000 square kilometers, due to the use of prisoners in re-education through labor, 170,000 mu of cultivated land has been reclaimed in four years, with an average of more than 5 mu per capita.

Moreover, at this moment, there are still 100,000 labor prisoners on the island who are constantly cultivating land.

According to the estimate of the former Hong Kong Cheng Xuan Minister, a total of 400,000 mu of cultivated land can be reclaimed on West Hong Kong Island, which covers an area of more than 2 million mu, reaching the per capita allocation of 11 mu of cultivated land.

After that, the 100,000 prisoners on the island will be sent to Luchuan to reclaim the cultivated land in Luchuan, and there will be six years before their labor camp expires.

Six years later, they were sent to live in the Southern Kunlun Overseer in Levia.

However, these things are the problems of the political envoys, and they have nothing to do with Huang Fei......

"How's the preparation of military rations?"

"Preparations are underway, and six thousand stone military rations have been made."

"The ammunition should be waterproofed well, and the ammunition of the rifle should not be soaked in water."

"The Governor is relieved ......"

On the lively Xigang wharf, Huang Fei, dressed in a round-necked robe, inspected the wharf with the commander of the four naval guards.

The bustling dock was full of navy soldiers, and their goal was very clear, that is, to wait for news from Hong Chengchou, and then land on the beach from the sea, and stab them hard from the back of the Donghu countries.

After half a year of training, the non-commissioned officers of the navy have become proficient in the Apocalypse 11 rifle, and it is precisely because they have mastered the rifle that they will disdain the countries of Donghu.

In the eyes of all of them, when the rifle appeared on the battlefield, the scales of the entire battlefield had completely fallen in favor of the Ming army.

What they have to do now is to quickly capture the empty cities of Donghu and Arakan in the rear, and then arrive at the west bank of the Dajinsha River (Yinrawaddy River) first, and use the Dajinsha River with Hong Chengchou to completely annihilate the Burmese army in the area of Miaodang and Osingu.

As long as the main force of the Burmese army of more than 300,000 is wiped out, the remaining forces will not be able to organize large-scale guerrilla attacks, and there will be no rebellion in the south, such as the Yellow Dragon fighting the Mughals in the north.

"Governor! Here comes the news! Hong Jing invites you to attack the countries of Donghu and Arakan on the New Year's Day! ”

While Huang Fei was inspecting the armament, a Navy Governor's Office informed him of the good news that Huang Fei had been waiting for.

Hearing this, Huang Fei quickly snatched the letter, and after reading it at a glance, he turned around and issued a military order to the four commanders beside him:

"Before the fifteenth day of the lunar month, all kinds of armaments must be prepared, and the whole army will set off on the sixteenth, and a general attack will be launched on the evening of the thirtieth day of the lunar month!"

"The last general commands!" The four commanders resolutely responded, and Huang Fei also looked at the waves of the sea.

This was his first battle as Governor of the Navy, and it was definitely a good battle.

He knew in his heart that some people in the military governor's mansion said that he was young and unbearable, but he had to show that group of people and let them know how powerful he was!

Huang Fei got the news of Hong Chengchou and began to actively prepare for the war, but on the other side of the ocean, Felipe IV, who had Zhu Youzhen's handwritten book, couldn't laugh.

[If your Spanish Empire is willing to withdraw from the Americas, the Ming is willing to provide all the saltpeter you have fought this war with, and at the same time export a large number of low-cost agricultural products and handicraft products to stabilize prices for your empire, it doesn't matter if you refuse this offer, it will not affect the trade ...... between you and me]

When Zhu Youzhen's long letter was sent to the Spanish royal palace in Madrid and read by Felipe IV, known as the "King of the Earth", the King of the Earth was immediately unhappy.

Felipe IV, as the people of Castile called the Great, was now King of the Habsburgs of Spain and the third King of the Habsburgs of Portugal, and Lord of the South Netherlands.

Its kingdom still controlled 30 million square kilometers of territory, but he was suffering from economic and political problems at home and in the colonies, as well as wars abroad.

In order to win the Thirty Years' War, he continued to expand his army regardless of the domestic economy, in order to use the war to solve some of the political and economic problems.

It's just that the good times didn't last long, the sudden rise of the Ming Dynasty, coupled with the robbery of the Nanyang colony, Spain's economy weakened for a time.

In order for the Ming Dynasty to solve the economic blockade and continue the ocean-going trade between the East and the West, Spain had no choice but to cede its interests, including Luzon, Nanyang, and India.

Fortunately, there are still some rewards for such concessions, such as the annual trade of millions of catties of saltpeter, which is enough for him to not have to worry about gunpowder on the battlefield.

At the same time, with the beginning of industrialization in the Ming Dynasty, a large number of brown sugar, white cloth, and tea from the Ming Dynasty poured into the country, which curbed the domestic inflation caused by the inflow of cheap gold and silver from the Americas.

Because of this, Spain, which was supposed to go bankrupt in the seventh year of the Apocalypse, miraculously survived until the eleventh year of the Apocalypse, and will soon survive until the twelfth year of the Apocalypse.

Even so, though, the situation in Spain is still unpleasant.

At sea, Britain and the Netherlands continued to attack the Spanish treasure ships, causing a severe recession in the Spanish economy, while the Dutch economy was booming.

Gradually, Felipe IV discovered that the current Spanish navy was no longer able to cope with the growing naval threat from other countries, not only the Netherlands, but also France and England.

Although they don't want to admit it, from 1623 onwards, Spain's monopoly on the Americas has been broken by them, and parts of Brazil, St. Kitts, Jamaica and other places have been invaded.

It was also because of the occupation of South America that merchants from Britain, France, the Netherlands and other countries began to sell some things that Spain forbade the sale, such as rubber tree seeds obtained by Xu Xiake.

Even if the interests of the Americas were invaded, relying on the saltpeter trade with the Ming Dynasty, the Spanish army could still fight on an equal footing with the Protestant League on the European battlefield, but now this letter from the King of Qi in the Ming Dynasty instantly made him a little uncertain.

In the letter, Zhu Youzhen promised that the Ming Dynasty would provide enough saltpeter for him to win the Thirty Years' War, and that its Qi Kingdom would provide a large amount of agricultural products to Spain after it became a vassal in the Americas, helping Spain to restore its livelihood and economy.

As the world's first empire on which the sun never sets, no matter what point in time the earth is in and what angle it turns, the sun will always shine on the land of the Spanish Empire, so it is called the empire on which the sun never sets.

This shows how vast Spain's colonies were on all continents.

However, the vastness of the territory does not mean that the country is strong, and in the eyes of later generations, colonialism must be highly bound to capitalism.

But for Spain in this era, although they adopted the means of colonial expansion, the domestic political system has always been feudal.

Among the feudal kings in Europe, Spain has the strongest feudal color, and the state power in Spain is highly concentrated in the hands of the king alone

In order to run the whole huge state, the king had to constantly maintain power through the small aristocracy, although the large wealth brought by colonial expansion stimulated some factors of capitalist development within the Spanish state, but this was only a factor, all the favorable conditions in the feudal environment will be transformed into the power of the king to rule the country alone.

For example, in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, due to the continuous development of the European commodity economy, the germ of capitalism began to appear in Western European countries.

Under such shocks, the feudal lords of many countries lost their feudal privileged status, but Spain was different.

Under the same conditions, the feudal privileged position of the Spanish feudal lords not only did not shrink, but expanded, and the Spanish king, as the most powerful person in the country, constantly rewarded the small nobles with the right of feudal privilege to enjoy the right of tax exemption.

In addition to this, Spain required every Spanish citizen to give the king one-tenth of the wealth they had acquired through colonial plunder in the New World, and two-fifths of all the gold they had acquired to the king.

This kind of very unfair behavior was a normal thing in the Spanish Empire under the feudal system.

Thus, when Felipe IV succeeded to the throne, he was confronted with a small aristocracy of less than a fifth of the population, holding more than 60% of the country's wealth.

The petty aristocracy is different from the burgher class, who, after accumulating primitive wealth, wants to use the wealth for reproduction, expand the scale of production and continue to accumulate wealth, but the petty aristocracy has a very large power, they are idle, indulgent in pleasure, and are not keen on expanding wealth.

The values of honor and disgrace that they have formed since childhood drive them to constantly turn their wealth into gold, silver, jewelry, houses, and all the things that can show their power, instead of buying more means of production for production, and all the wealth is used by them to maintain feudal relations.

Under these conditions, all the wealth acquired by the Spanish Empire was constantly circulating upwards, eventually concentrating on the minor nobles and kings, rather than among society.

In a country with such a strong atmosphere of feudalism, the accumulation of capitalist primitive wealth by the method of colonial expansion is contrary to the economic base and superstructure, and one side must defeat the other, which will inevitably lead to undesirable consequences.

Therefore, in the Age of Discovery, no matter how vast the land and how huge the wealth Spain acquired through colonial plunder, it did not shake the feudal system and social structure of Spain in the end, nor did it stimulate Spain's transformation from a feudal country to a capitalist country from the inside out.

The Spanish Empire in the hands of Felipe IV, although it looked extremely powerful on paper, was like an aggressive wolf, participating in every major war in the world

Under feudalism, the absolute power of the Spanish king also determined that the national wealth of Spain was used by one person.

In order for him to maintain his position of absolute power, he has to pay money constantly.

As a result, the king of Spain was not keen to convert existing wealth into greater wealth, but instead spent a lot of money on maintaining its vast state apparatus, even into endless wars.

The current Thirty Years' War was, in effect, the one that decided whether the Spanish Empire would rise or fall.

Having won the war, Felipe IV was able to use the prestige of the victory to carry out some political reforms, economic reforms, and thus revitalize Spain.

If this war is lost, there is no doubt that Spain will gradually decline, falling from a world-class country to a second-rate country.

Therefore, every article in Zhu Youzhen's letter pinched the life of Felipe IV.

There is no doubt that war consumes money, and a country that is engaged in war will not put more energy into the operation of the national economy and national society, and not only will the national economy fail to develop, but the war will even destroy a country's national economy.

When the front line is tight, the state has to constantly obtain wealth from the people at the bottom to maintain the cost of the war.

In feudal countries, the circulation of money was one-way and unconditional, and the Spanish king, who had absolute power, could expropriate the property of the whole country at the slightest order, which was undoubtedly a catastrophe for economic development.

For Spain at that time, no matter whether the war was won or lost, there was no economic benefit, and the king continued to increase domestic taxes, but no one could stop him, everything seemed to be justified.

However, as a feudal past, his every action would lead to certain consequences, and the overthrow of the Spanish Empire was accumulated in this little bit by bit.

Spain was a feudal country through and through, and the feudal mode of rule led to the feudal mode of production.

First of all, the whole country of Spain is dominated by animal husbandry, agriculture is not developed, not to mention industry and commerce, basically disappearing, shipbuilding, weapons production and silk weaving are the only few industrial sectors in Spain.

Even though it has an area of more than 3,000 square kilometers, the homogeneity of the industrial structure has led to difficulties in the development of Spain.

The fragility of Spain's industrial base makes it particularly difficult for Spain to develop its own industry.

Felipe IV did not try to change the situation, or that the Spanish kings before him were interested in developing industry, but they did not have an advantage in the goods they produced.

Neither the quality nor the price of these goods could compete with other countries, so that in the long price revolution of the mid-sixteenth century, Spain was no longer able to meet the needs of the colonies for all kinds of industrial goods and daily necessities.

The large number of colonies had ceased to be Spain's wealth, but had become a burden to it.

Spanish merchants had to import all kinds of goods from all over the world, and then transfer them from Spain to their colonies, and the Ming Dynasty became the top priority of Western merchants' ocean-going trade because of the Longqing switch.

Indian spices from the South Seas, porcelain, tea, brown sugar, white cloth, silk and other commodities from the Ming Dynasty all flowed into Europe in a steady stream, and Spanish merchants were the vanguard of East-West trade, constantly transporting oriental goods to Spain.

However, in this way, the handicraft industry in Spain was constantly attacked by the handicraft goods of the Eastern countries.

In the absence of state support, the hope of the local handicraft industry to rise began to become more and more diminished, and the gold and silver of the colonies also became popular in the East, which is why the Ming Dynasty was able to make hundreds of millions of taels of silver in the decades after the Longqing switch.

Whether it was silk, embroidery, porcelain, tea, or brown sugar and cloth that the common people liked, these handicraft goods produced by the Ming Dynasty were very cheap, so the Spanish aristocracy did not take pride in developing commerce and manufacturing goods, but took pride in using goods from other countries, thus forming a vicious circle.

Under the influence of the price revolution, the prices in Spain are much higher than those abroad, which makes the goods in Spain have no price advantage in the world.

Even in the Spanish colonies, foreign goods were able to enter the market quickly at very low prices, and then quickly occupied the market, and even the Spanish merchants themselves continued to buy foreign goods and sell them in the colonies.

They are not keen to produce their own goods, but to resell them, which makes the domestic economy even more difficult to develop.

Spain's European trade could not balance the trade deficit, and by the time of Felipe IV, Spain was dependent on imports for even domestic food, and foreign trade in animal husbandry alone could not reverse Spain's domestic and foreign trade deficits.

Under such a vicious circle, Spain's economy naturally could not support Spain's management of the vast colonial land, and it could not control the colonies through economic means.

Spain itself is not a large country in size, and the population is not dominant.

It would have taken a great deal of human and material resources to control such a vast colony with a small population, and if it could not be economically restrained, it would have to be suppressed by force, but this path obviously did not work, because Spain did not have so many troops to suppress it.

Therefore, even with the help of the Ming Dynasty, extreme poverty in Spain is still very serious.

Outside the royal palace of Felipe IV, just a wall, beggars were everywhere outside, and the agricultural products were expensive.

If this continues, there will be more and more rebellions in Spain, so the agricultural product plan proposed by Zhu Youzhen is also solved from the root of the Spanish problem.

Saltpeter coped with war, agricultural products were used to stabilize the commoners, and handicraft goods were used against the nobility.

"He's a brilliant politician."

Looking at the letter written by Zhu Youzhen, Felipe IV could only give such an evaluation.

It can be said that this Ming man, whom he has never met, knows better than him what kind of problems his empire is facing.

Each of his solutions was so simple, but each one solved the problems facing Felipe IV.

However, these problems were not enough for Felipe IV to support him in abandoning the vast colonies of the Americas.

Perhaps Zhu Youzhen also knew that he would not give up this colony, so he also remarked that "the proposal does not affect trade".

It's just that Felipe IV knows that if this King of Daming Qi really wants the American colonies, then the current army in the Americas is probably not his opponent, after all......

"You say their fleet arrived in Europe this time with nearly 20,000 men?"

Felipe IV looked at the nobleman kneeling in the center of the palace, and the nobleman nodded hurriedly when he heard this:

"Yes, Your Majesty, the tonnage of their fleet far exceeds that of other countries, the largest one is probably 3,000 tons, and the other warships also range from 1,000 tons to 2,000 tons, and there are thousands of guns."

"But they are very polite, and they are not reckless because of their strong force."

"After all, the Ming Dynasty is a country of etiquette." Some of the nobles in the palace praised the Ming Dynasty when they heard this, but Felipe IV knew that no matter whether the other party was polite or not, in short, the sudden appearance of such a powerful regional fleet would make the battlefield on the European seas unbalanced.

Although Xu Xiake and they only stopped on a desert island not far from Gibraltar, such a powerful warship will definitely make the British and Dutch people jealous, plus Xu Xiake They need livestock, and the most commendable thing in Spain is animal husbandry, so this is a good thing to do business and use the Ming Dynasty fleet to protect Gibraltar.

"Tell Real that Daming's supply ships can enter the port of Cádiz and ...... at the same time"

Felipe IV glanced at the nobles in the palace, and then spoke: "They need enough livestock to tell the lords everywhere that they can go to Cadiz to sell their livestock." ”

】

Felipe IV's short-sightedness was revealed at this moment, and he handed over the trade orders of Xu Xiake and others to the Spanish nobles, rather than the very poor Spanish commoners.

For the aristocracy, it was just a bonus, but for the commoners, it was a good opportunity for them to alleviate their poverty.

However, such an opportunity was wasted by Felipe IV.

"Your Majesty, you have made a wise choice......"

The nobles of the palace praised Felipe IV, but Felipe IV continued:

"If you can, let Real ask the people of Ming if they are willing to cooperate with us in animal husbandry for a long time."

Felipe IV wanted to use animal husbandry to earn back the trade surplus with the Ming Dynasty, even if he sold all his livestock short, he would not be able to earn back the gold and silver that Spain had flowed to the Ming Dynasty in recent years, but these trade returns could make the financially embarrassed Spain return some blood.

Not surprisingly, however, these orders were later given to the nobles, who praised Felipe IV for his wise choice.

Soon, the nobles of Cadiz began their return journey, but in the same way, the countries also received the strength and purpose of the Ming Dynasty's second voyage to the Western Ocean.

The muddy waters of Europe continue to be muddy, but compared with Europe, Daming's eyes have always been on the new domestic policy.

In addition, the day of the implementation of the new policy is getting closer and closer......