I want to be emperor

Chapter 373 The Frightened Zheng Zhilong
In addition to the political issues such as the transfer of troops, there is another point that the two sides can't agree on.

After the negotiating officials of the Great Chu Empire asked Zheng Zhilong’s troops to surrender, the armed forces belonged to the Great Chu Empire’s navy, while a large number of ordinary merchant ships and ordinary sailors were taken over by the Ministry of Finance and transformed into shipping companies directly under the Ministry of Finance, operating according to regulations.

However, a large number of ordinary young and middle-aged settlements, especially those on Dayuan Island, all recognized the ownership of the land they had reclaimed, and they would become ordinary people's lives in the future.

It can be regarded as a resettlement plan for Zheng Zhilong's 10,000+ ordinary sailors and young adults.

And this point, it is even more impossible for Zheng Zhilong to agree.

The Great Chu Empire regards these merchant fleets as the official assets of the Zheng Zhilong Group, and after defecting to them, they naturally become the official assets of the Great Chu Empire.

Those people who are doing reclamation on Dayuan Island are regarded as ordinary people trying to resettle them.

But in Zheng Zhilong's view, whether these merchant fleets or the young adults who immigrated to Dayuan Island, they are all Zheng Zhilong's private property...

You want me to surrender, and you want to confiscate my private property, isn't that nonsense!
This made many high-level officials of the Great Chu Empire, especially Chen Xingkai, who was in charge of police affairs, extremely dissatisfied.

Thousands of ships, you fucking tell me private property?
Even if it is private property, I have to confiscate it.

Many vassal kings and dignitaries who were confiscated by the Great Chu Empire, they also said that their tens of thousands or even hundreds of thousands of acres of land were private property, and they were confiscated one by one by the Great Chu Empire.

Even the officials who surrendered knew that the Great Chu Empire valued land. Many of them took the initiative to give away a large amount of land in their families to show their intention to surrender and to be able to get better in the officialdom of the Great Chu Empire in the future. Donated, or sold at a low price to the local government as official land.

In the Great Chu Empire, hundreds of mu to thousands of mu of land can be regarded as your private property by the government... But if you have tens of thousands of mu of land, even if it is well-behaved, the tax bureau will have to trouble you every day .

Otherwise, why do you think the tax department is either ransacking the house every day, or is on the way to search the house.

It's not that there are so many armed resistance to taxation or large-scale tax evasion, but that the taxation department is focusing on some wealthy families.

Whenever you have a small tax problem, they will immediately be targeted by them and they will rush to bite you.

If you resist for a while, you will be given the name of armed tax resistance and ransacked your home.

The reason is still a large amount of money, food and land!
Families who own tens of thousands of acres of land these days are all guilty of original sin, and they will never kill one by mistake if they copy them one by one.

The tax department, in the hands of Luo Zhixue, not only collects taxes, but also is an important tool for redistribution of production materials!
It's just that most of the time, it's just doing it in the name of collecting taxes.

Think about it, the tax department is so cruel to wealthy gentry, you, Zheng Zhilong, still want to keep thousands of merchant ships, almost the entire Dayuan Island and the people on the island as private property...

In Chen Xingkai's words: It's broad daylight, what are you dreaming about!

By the way, Zheng Zhilong also has his own reasons.

How did the youth and land on this island come from?It was he who had worked so hard to recruit young adults over the past few years, and then slowly cultivated and developed it.

And it costs money!
Three taels per person, three people give a cow!
In addition, eating, drinking and sleeping during the organization and transportation process, as well as the grain seeds, agricultural tools, rations, etc. needed in the early stage of opening the village.

It costs a lot.

Now the Great Chu Empire is about to put Zheng Zhilong's years of hard work in vain with a casual word, and Zheng Zhilong is naturally not happy about it!
The views of the Great Chu Empire and the Zheng Zhilong Group were too different, and it was naturally impossible to reach an agreement, so they have always been in such a stalemate, and occasionally fought.

However, Zheng Zhilong has become more and more irritable recently.

Because as time passed and the situation became clearer, Zheng Zhilong could no longer see any possibility of really resisting the Chu thief.

At least it's unstoppable on the ground!
On this point, Zheng Zhilong is more pessimistic than others, and this kind of pessimism does not mean that he is timid or something. fear.

When the Chu army attacked Ningbo in early February, Ningbo was in critical condition. Zheng Zhilong, who was in charge of the Zhoushan Islands at that time, sent [-] troops from the Zhoushan Islands to cross the sea from Dinghai and along the river to reinforce Ningbo City.

However, after his 2000 men went down to Ningbo City, they never came back... because only three days later, the 3000 men of the department and the more than [-] young and strong officers and soldiers in Ningbo Chengli were wiped out!

The confidant spies reported that when the Chu army stormed Ningbo City, the guns and guns were fired, and the momentum was huge!
There are at least ten nine-jin long cannons, more than twenty five-jin long cannons, and large skyrocketing cannons weighing tens of catties.

Unstoppable!

The Ningbo city wall only resisted for a day or two before it was blasted through a short city wall abruptly.

Immediately afterwards, thousands of armored soldiers rushed into the city, causing countless casualties to the defenders in the city.

Some of the defeated soldiers wanted to escape by boat along the river, but unexpectedly, the Chu thieves set up artillery on the riverside and directly stopped the defeated soldiers who were trying to escape by boat.

In the end, there were more than [-] Ningbo defenders, and the entire army was wiped out, and none of them escaped.

If this is just hearsay, then when the Chu army attacked Dinghai, a small coastal town, Zheng Zhilong witnessed the fierce attack of the Chu army with his own eyes.

When attacking such a small city, the power of its guns is too great, and it is impossible for the defenders to fight with flesh and blood.

In field battles, Zheng Zhilong once dispatched troops to detour and land, and tried to sneak attack.

The result was even worse!

More than 1000 Zheng Zhilong's troops who went ashore to perform a surprise attack directly hit the iron plate. Even the main infantry force of the Chu Army was caught by the cavalry regiment of the Sixth Division of the Chu Army's Sixth Division before they could be found. up...

Under the threat of the cavalry, these troops under Zheng Zhilong's command could not even move, so they could only passively form a defensive formation, trying to form an formation and then slowly retreat to the seaside, and then retreat sideways under the support of the battleship.

But I didn't expect that these damn Chu thief cavalry directly pulled out four field guns weighing two and a half catties.

After a bombardment, their formation could no longer be maintained.

After the formation collapsed, they were attacked by Chu thief cavalry again...

Naturally, the result was another major defeat. Only a hundred lucky people were left to flee, and the rest either died in battle or were captured.

After this series of small and medium-scale wars in Ningbo Mansion, Zheng Zhilong's troops lost at least [-] people, and Zheng Zhilong fully realized the horror of the Chu thief!
With this combat power, no wonder it can beat the officers and soldiers of the Ming army!
If this player is fighting head-to-head, I'm afraid Dongyao will have to kneel directly when he comes!

This gun, especially the artillery, is too powerful.

After seeing how powerful the Chu thief is, Zheng Zhilong no longer has the courage to resist the Chu thief in his heart.

Now they are able to defend Chongzhen Island and Zhoushan Islands only by relying on the advantages of the fleet, but on land, they are absolutely unstoppable.

But you let Zheng Zhilong lose to the mainland so willingly, and retreat to the place where the birds don't shit on Dayuan Island, he is not reconciled either.

It took him so many years to successfully clean up and go ashore, but he is not willing to go back to being a pirate again!

However, you asked him to confiscate all his family wealth, and then just become a naval officer or civil servant in the Great Chu Empire. To be honest, he didn't want to either.

In short, Zheng Zhilong is very entangled now!

The monarchs and ministers of the Great Chu Empire don't know about Zheng Zhilong's entanglement, and they don't care!
For the Great Chu Empire, the Zheng Zhilong Group seems difficult to deal with, but the threat to the Great Chu Empire is very limited.

The reason why Zheng Zhilong's troops are strong lies in the strength of his fleet.

And this point, the Great Chu Empire is actively responding!

Otherwise, do you think that the more than 20 Daye-class frigates and many Xiangyang-class cruisers of the Great Chu Empire Navy are preparing for the war?

It was not prepared for Zheng Zhilong.

The current navy of the Great Chu Empire is still a little weaker, and it can't even defend the mouth of the Yangtze River. It can only rely on the forts along the river to block the intrusion of Zheng Zhilong's fleet.

But you can't hold back that the Great Chu Empire has money and a large number of craftsmen and resources!
In order to build warships, the Great Chu Empire set up the No. [-] Navy Shipyard on the Huangpu River in Songjiang Prefecture!
In addition to this shipyard that specializes in building large-scale naval warships, the Great Chu Empire also has many shipyards that can build large-scale warships and belong to the Ministry of Industry.

Including Hanyang Shipyard, Yuezhou Shipyard, Daye Shipyard, Jiujiang Shipyard, Anqing Shipyard, Dangtu Shipyard, Jinling Shipyard.

Basically along the Yangtze River, all spread out.

And these are directly under the Ministry of Industry, and the shipyards used to build large ships are all shipyards that can build coastal warships like Daye-class frigates.

If it is a shipyard that builds small and medium-sized ships of tens of tons, one to two hundred tons, there will be more. The Ministry of Industry will set up a shipyard in many places with lakes and rivers. Most of them are civilian ships, and some of them will also build some inland warships by the way.

The Great Chu Empire has invested a huge amount of manpower and material resources in the shipyard in the past year, which resulted in more than 20 Daye-class frigates, which were fully rolled out and built at the same time.

Hanyang Shipyard, which is currently the largest and most technically capable, started construction of five Daye-class shipyards at the same time!
The No. [-] Naval Shipyard in Shanghai County, Songjiang Prefecture, although it is still under construction, and it is still built on a deserted beach, but its scale is so huge that the Navy has even mobilized troops to participate in basic engineering construction .

At present, three [-]-ton cruisers have started construction at the shipyard, and the factory is still building more and larger docks, and Jinling Shipyard is also building such large docks.

According to the speed at which the Great Chu Empire is building shipyards and starting construction of warships, in two or three years, the Great Chu Empire Navy is estimated to have dozens of serious large warships.

(End of this chapter)