Last time, when everyone went to the military camp to inspect, Emperor Chongzhen learned from Xu Guangqi that the problem of war horses still needs to be solved to build a new army and gather national strength, and he needs money!

"Oh? Do you think I'm kidding? Emperor Chongzhen Zhu Youzhen was amused by Xu Guangqi's old man's expression, so he smiled: "It's a little meaning." All you have to do is ask the 'household' for it. There are also war horses, copper and iron, tin and lead, sulfur, saltpeter and other military supplies, I will let the 'military department' give you a large supply, hehe. ”

"Huh? This...... Really? The emperor is wise! The old minister knelt down to thank the emperor! Xu Guangqi was so excited after hearing that he bowed his head in tears, but many of the deputies, generals and Westerner advisers on the side felt inexplicable, and they hurriedly bowed down one after another, feeling that it was not easy for the emperor!

With the convenience of soaring clouds and fog, everyone didn't need to see the various camps and military camps around the capital division in a day, and walked around, and also came to a conclusion based on what they saw in front of them, that is, as long as the money was in place, there was nothing that could not be done, including going to some of the Moxi Mongolian tribes and the Western Regions to buy military horses.

At the beginning, Zhu Yuanzhang, Taizu of the Ming Dynasty, also imitated the founding kings of the previous dynasties, and fought the world from the horse, so he attached great importance to the military system, because the Ming Dynasty was established by Zhu Yuanzhang at the end of the Yuan Dynasty, and the number of regular troops in the early Ming Dynasty also reached 1 million.

By the time of King Yan, the number of Ming Dynasty troops reached 1.5 million, and if you include the military households of various guards, the Ming army reached its peak in terms of quantity and quality, and the total number of troops that could be mobilized at any time far exceeded 2 million. Despite the small number of cavalry and the large number of infantry, the fighting power was still strong.

In the middle and early Ming Dynasty, the country was strong and no enemy dared to invade, so in order to reduce the financial pressure, the government began to reduce the number of military personnel.

By the time of the "Tumubao Change", the number of regular troops in the Ming Dynasty was only about 700,000, and most of them were distributed on the line of "Liangjing" and "Border Wall" (Great Wall), and the remaining troops were scattered and placed in various places "Dusi" and "Weisu". In the late Ming Dynasty, the army construction was strengthened, reaching 900,000 in Wanli.

After the "Three Great Expeditions of Wanli", the Ming Dynasty's government finances became increasingly tight, and had to begin to reduce the army, to the Chongzhen period, the army had 800,000.

At that time, the weapons and equipment of the Ming Dynasty were relatively advanced, and a large number of firearms were used, but they were also equipped with long-handled broadswords, spears, waist knives, shields, etc. Firearms include three-eyed guns, thunderbolts, shotguns, five-thunder machines, swarms of bees, antique backyard howitzers, general cannons, mines, earth-shaking thunder, etc.

There were many land wars in the Ming Dynasty, and the "Wanli Korean War" was a large-scale foreign war. At that time, Japan attacked Korea and overwhelmingly captured the capital of Korea within a month, and Korea, as one of the vassal states of the Ming Dynasty, had to ask for help from the Ming Dynasty, the suzerain.

So, as soon as Emperor Wanli waved his hand, the Ming army went to support Korea, and after seven years of hard fighting, it finally defeated Japan completely and won. Therefore, the victory of the "Wanli War to Aid Korea" laid the pattern of East Asia for the next 300 years, so that Japan had to close itself off for fear of retaliation!

The Ming Dynasty Navy was the world's first-rate navy at that time, and reached its peak when Emperor Yongle of the Ming Dynasty promoted "Zheng He's voyage to the West". At that time, the Daming Navy Division had 3,800 sea vessels, including 1,350 "patrol ships" and "war ships". In addition, in the Nanjing base, there are 400 large ships and 400 grain ships.

As for the famous Zheng He's fleet, it was only an ocean-going fleet of the Ming Dynasty Navy, because the Ming Dynasty had a long coastline, and there were more or less naval divisions stationed in various coastal ports, just to prevent Japanese pirates from coming to China to make trouble. The Ming Dynasty has been established for nearly three hundred years, and the Ming Dynasty has not been defeated!

There are many famous naval battles in the Ming Dynasty, such as the "Battle of Tuen Mun" in the waters of Guangzhou Bay, which took place in 1521, commanded by the deputy envoy of Guangdong Haidao, and fought the Portuguese fleet in the Tuen Mun area, and finally won the victory of the Ming Dynasty, indicating that the naval strength of the Ming Dynasty was not worse than that of the Westerners at that time.

Unfortunately, in the late Ming Dynasty, the luck was not good, and in the "Xiaoice period", the northern climate changed greatly, and the northern climate was arid and rainless, and the grasslands were even colder, so that the nomads continued to go south to raid the northern territory of the Ming Dynasty in order to survive. At the same time, there was a peasant uprising caused by famine, which led to the decline of the Ming Dynasty.

As the protagonist of the future expedition to Japan and the resumption of "going to the West", the Ming Dynasty sailors are also the key direction of this military reform, and they must regain their glory.

During the period from Chenghua to Zhengde (1465 - 1521), the evolution of Guangzhou's "market trade" made the "tributary trade system" in the early Ming Dynasty, after more than 100 years of slow and steady development, to the reign of Zhu Jianshen, the "Emperor of Chenghua" Ming Xianzong, "contributed to the Japanese gang", and the trade was very prosperous.

This was because there were so many foreigners who came to trade with envoys from other countries that the officials of Guangzhou in the Ming Dynasty had to seek restrictive measures, such as allowing only "envoys to enter the meeting, and the rest to stay at the post." Because the "tributary trade" of the Ming Dynasty was completely different from the "bandit logic" style of "business thinking" of Westerners.

Westerners like to hold the Bible in one hand and draw a sword in the other, showing their identity as a "merchant", "missionary" and "robber" to the fullest, and like to buy and sell by force. This can be seen in the actions of the old colonizers such as Portugal, Spain, the Netherlands, England, and France.

But the problem now is that the tributary envoys go north to meet them, and it takes several months for them to travel back and forth, and the excess entourage and merchants who remain in Guangzhou to wait because of their "strange clothes" have caused the people of Guangzhou to "look at them with their old children." Of course, this threatens local order and management, and we have to face it.

These foreign merchants from the West came to trade in Guangzhou, China in the name of "tribute", and at the same time increased the income of the Ming Dynasty in Guangzhou. As well as the prosperity of non-governmental trade, the local economy has improved significantly. And the so-called "pepper wood, copper drums, rings, gems overflow in the warehouse, the market is very cheap, the poor promise to buy bo, get rich." This is the best explanation, because even the common people dare to hoard and resell it for a profit.

Due to the increasing number of foreign ships to Guangzhou, there are inevitable problems in management and order, such as the sailors in the Westerners who have been sailing at sea for a long time and are tortured by "sexual repression", in addition to replacing the "women's buttocks" with "sheep's buttocks" to release their sexual desire, every time they go to a place to dock, in addition to openly calling themselves to sell goods, they are forming a team to prostitute themselves, and they are generous, so that the old bustard in the Qinglou can't put it down, but it hurts the "girls".

As a result, in addition to the rapid spread of "bayberry sores" and "willow disease" (syphilis), many "cases of sexual violence" and kidnapping of local folk women occurred frequently, which further triggered the contradictions between Western ghosts and local people, and as a result, affected the defense of Guangzhou City and put pressure on government governance.

Therefore, for the sake of safety, the Ming Dynasty government stipulated that foreign ships must be arranged to trade along the Pearl River estuary, that is, the phenomenon of "Boliuwan" and "Trade Goods Haikou", without the permission of the local government of the Ming Dynasty, foreign cargo ships were not allowed to go ashore along the Pearl River and trade with the local people.

At that time, the king of Champa Gulai led a fleet of ships to try to break into Guangzhou and go to Beijing to complain, which further strengthened the management of the Pearl River estuary by the Guangzhou authorities, and it is believed that the tributary missions that were not normal at this time were no longer allowed to enter Guangzhou. As a result, many foreign merchants and even envoys felt that the Ming Dynasty government was becoming more and more domineering.

During the Hongzhi period (1488-1505), the scope of foreign ships anchoring in the coastal bays of the Pearl River has been expanding, from "Xinning" on the west coast of the Pearl River to "Jiqi" on the east coast. As a result, the activities of "Trade and Goods Haikou" continue to develop rapidly.

However, the sea area of "Tuen Mun O" should be the most lively bay anchorage, because most of the foreigners trading in the bay "have not settled in the previous year".

Once the trade was complete, the foreign merchants had to leave by ship and wait for the next trading season. However, it is worth mentioning that the form of trade at that time was supposed to be "ship trade", that is, when foreign ships arrived at anchor, Chinese officials in the Ming Dynasty immediately boarded the ships for inspection and tax collection, which was a "custom".

After that, it was the ship-to-ship trade between Chinese and foreign merchants, that is, the so-called "fair trade" of "bartering" between the two sides.

As a result, there are no wharves or warehouses at the Hoi O berths at Foreign Plover Cove, and foreign traders do not have to go ashore to meet their trade needs. This was prescribed by local officials in Guangdong, and the levy on foreign trading vessels had been levied for quite some time, and the initial levy may have been decided at the discretion of the bureaucracy.

These revenues will become one of the main sources of revenue for the local government, and the local bureaucrats will also use their power to receive benefits or enrich their own pockets. However, this kind of behavior that was not approved by the central court of the Ming Dynasty will inevitably attract attention, after all, the eyes of the "brocade guards" of the East and West Second Factories are bright.

In the Zhengde period, the foreign trade point system became more and more standardized, which can be said to be the result of the central and local governments in the Ming Dynasty jointly dividing the interests of maritime trade. As for the "institutionalization of points", it is suspected that it has something to do with the great eunuch Liu Jin in power, after all, as the "chief administrator" of the Ming Dynasty, he controls the east and west two factories.

In October of the second year of Zhengde (1507), Liu Jin, the "chief of the inner house", sent Chang Bin, the "chief eunuch of the Inner Palace", and the "Kedao official" to Guangdong to check the accounts. At that time, Wuzhou's salt grain and military rewards were worth 407,000 taels of silver, and the treasury of the "Guangdong Political Division" was 3,704,000 taels of silver, that is, a total of 7,801,000 taels of silver. And Chen Jinzuo, the "imperial envoy of the right capital" of the military affairs of the governor of Liangguang, asked for an amount to be reserved for urgent use. In the third year of Zhengde (1508), Wuzong had a decree: "stop 500,000 taels from entering Beijing".

However, when the "eunuch" Chang Bin escorted 280,000 taels of grain and silver to Beijing, he went so far as to say, "The silver stored in the Guangdong treasury is 270,000 more than before." Therefore, Liu Jin once again ordered Chang Bin to "solve 500,000 taels in addition to the solution." "In other words, the great eunuch handed over all the grain and silver reserves in Guangdong!

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