I want to be emperor

Chapter 436 20 Ming Army

In the southern waters of China, the current main force is the Great Chu Empire Navy (including the former Zheng Zhilong Fleet), and then the Portuguese, Dutch, and Spaniards.

The Portuguese stronghold was in Macau before, and they were expelled by the Great Chu Empire last year, and now they don't even have a foothold.

Then there is the Spaniard, the Spaniard actually has a good relationship with the original Zheng Zhilong. Many of Zheng Zhilong's trades are carried out with the Spaniard, and the Spaniard and the Dutch are also in conflict.

The reason why the Spaniards had conflicts with the Great Chu Empire was because the Great Chu Empire wanted to regain the entire Dayuan Island after accepting Zheng Zhilong's control area on Dayuan Island.

However, the Spaniards had already established a colonial point in the north of Dayuan Island more than ten years ago, mainly for the purpose of intervening in the Fusang trade route and the trade with China in the Jiangnan area of ​​Fujian and Zhejiang.

The Great Chu Empire wanted to regain the northern area of ​​Dayuan Island, which naturally attracted a rebound from the Spaniards.

The last is the Dutchman, let alone the Dutchman, who was the biggest competitor of Zheng Zhilong's department. After the Great Chu Empire accepted Zheng Zhilong, their competitor naturally became the Great Chu Empire.

In recent months, armed merchant ships belonging to several maritime trade companies under the control of the Ministry of Industry of the Great Chu Empire have recently competed with Dutch merchant ships for the Fusang trade route, and they have already fought several battles at sea.

The armed merchant ships are fighting... Naturally, the navy will not sit idly by, and is already preparing to mobilize warships to go south, preparing to fight the Dutch, and threaten the Portuguese and Spaniards by the way.

Because the situation in the southern seas is relatively tense, the navy's only marine regiment with rich combat experience will have to be transferred south in a short time.

The follow-up of the battle on the northern coast can only be handed over to the No.20 Third Mixed Brigade.

Regarding this, Major General Bai Yangrong, the brigade commander of the No.20 Third Mixed Brigade, scolded his mother every day...

God is sorry, he really doesn't want to take the troops to land on a boat, and make himself and his soldiers vomit and diarrhea.

That's really not what people do!

But there is no way if you don’t want to. The navy is not the nanny of the army. It would be good if the navy can provide sea transportation and fire cover when landing. You can’t expect the navy to cover the tasks of landing and even stationing coastal cities.

It's not impossible to make the package round, so let's expand a few more marine regiments. In this way, when it comes to the distribution of military expenses, the navy will have to talk to the army.

It doesn't matter whether the mission is not a mission or anything, but when it comes to the distribution of military expenditures, the establishment behind military expenditures, promotion and wealth, then this problem can become bigger.

In this regard, the top brass of the Army would rather let the landlubber No.20 Third Mixed Brigade continue to float and play and land on the sea, rather than let the Navy find an excuse to obtain a larger proportion of military expenditure.

Strictly speaking, some conflicts in the sea are not wars. They are not administrative affairs between countries, but conflicts of interests between their respective maritime trading companies.

In fact, Luo Zhixue did not pay too much attention to this!

Although Luo Zhixue also attaches great importance to the sea, and pays more attention to subsequent maritime trade and overseas colonization, these are all follow-up things.

At least for the current Great Chu Empire, there is such a thing as maritime trade, but in fact, it does not affect the overall situation.

Besides, the Great Chu Empire is the same as the Ming Dynasty. The Ming Dynasty banned the sea, but the Great Chu Empire could not stop the sea...

Guangzhou, Quanzhou, Fuzhou, and Ningbo have been opened as trading ports before, and Jiangnan Shanghai, Jiangbei Haizhou, Guangdong Lianzhou and other places are also planned to be opened as trading ports.

For the Great Chu Empire, as long as you honestly conduct overseas trade in the ports designated by the Great Chu Empire and pay import and export duties according to the rules, then you can do business as you like, and the Great Chu Empire officials basically ignore it... …

However, many maritime merchants today may be maritime merchants today, and pirates tomorrow...and most of them are unwilling to pay taxes and want to play smuggling and the like.

Why are the Portuguese so resistant to the Great Chu Empire taking back Macau, even the Great Chu Empire opened up Guangzhou for them to trade, they are not willing...

Because you have to pay taxes!

The import tariffs of the Great Chu Empire on some goods are very high, especially some high-value goods such as spices and useless luxury accessories, all of which are all subject to high tariffs. Only saltpeter and sulfur are low tariffs or even exempt. tariff.

The same is true for export goods. For example, raw silk, tea and porcelain, which are important goods exported by China, are also subject to export tariffs, and the export tariff for raw silk is not low.

Some sea merchants, regardless of whether they are barbarians or common folk sea merchants, often want to engage in smuggling for higher profits...

Ever since, this led to strong dissatisfaction from the Great Chu Empire.

In addition, the Dutch wanted to take advantage of the civil strife in China to monopolize the Fusang trade, which also aroused strong dissatisfaction from the Great Chu Empire.

In order to prevent European countries from causing trouble when they came to trade, and inciting and supporting other daimyos to rebel, Fuso chose to close the country early.

The Tokugawa shogunate currently only allows Zheng Zhilong's fleet and the Dutch to go to Fusang for trade.

In the past two years, Zheng Zhilong was busy fighting with the Great Chu Empire, which allowed the Dutch to occupy a large amount of the Fusang market, and even gave them the idea of ​​​​expelling Zheng Zhilong's forces and monopolizing the profits of the Fusang market.

And this year, the Ministry of Industry of the Great Chu Empire, which accepted Zheng Zhilong's fleet, successively established three maritime trading companies, namely Dongyang Trading Company, Nanyang Trading Company, and Shiba Trading Company.

Among them, the name of the eighteen trading company may sound strange, but it is taken from the previous Shibazhi Maritime Alliance. Although this trading company is controlled by the Ministry of Industry, Zheng Zhilong and the original senior generals under Zheng Zhilong They all have the right to dividends (only limited to dividends).

After these three maritime trading companies started overseas trade, they encountered many obstacles from the Dutch, especially on the Fuso trade route, they were also attacked by Dutch armed merchant ships who turned into pirates.

Naturally, the Great Chu Empire couldn't bear it, and the Ministry of Industry quickly notified the Navy, so the Navy planned to fight with the Dutch to ensure the Great Chu Empire's absolute monopoly in the Fusang trade.

As for this, Luo Zhixue's instructions to the navy were: just figure it out!
Anyway, additional military spending is impossible, and your navy is not required to fully recover Dayuan Island now and control the entire East Asian waters.

To do this specifically, let us navy think about it for ourselves. It’s okay to fight a naval battle, and it’s okay not to engage in escort.

Anyway, in a few years, when the Great Chu Empire is free to expand its navy, sooner or later it will take complete control of the entire western Pacific Ocean.

Now, it doesn't matter.

For Luo Zhixue, and for the Great Chu Empire, the most important thing now is the Northern Expedition.

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On June [-], the Tenth Division under the Third Army of the Great Chu Empire successfully captured Liaocheng and pushed the battle line further north.

On the 11th, the No.[-] Division under the Third Army also successfully captured Jinan City after many days of besieging the city.

Almost on the same day, the Fourth Division of the First Army successfully reached Penglai, the capital of Dengzhou, and captured this important city on the coast of the Yellow Sea.

After capturing this city, the navy of the Great Chu Empire immediately made Penglai Port an important strategic transit point for shipping. A large number of ships transported supplies to the port and provided them to the various departments of the First Army for supplementation.

On June 23, the No.11 Division of the Third Army marched northward from Jinan, heading towards Shanghe and Deping.

At this time, the three main divisions of the Third Army, including the Second Guards Division, the Tenth Division, and the No. Divided into two ways to kill North Zhili.

Behind the third army is the second army, which is following closely. The attack direction of the second army is slightly to the northwest. It is currently continuing to attack the areas of Guangping and Shunde in the area of ​​Daming mansion.

The First Army is still sweeping across Shandong, and after they take down and control many other small and medium-sized cities in Shandong one by one.

The Fourth Division will be stationed in the local area to continue to suppress, and consult local deserters and illegal landlords for help.

The First Guards Division is going north to Dezhou and even Tianjin Wei to ensure the strategic security of the front canal and the logistics supply security of the [-] troops going north.

By the way, I also consulted the local illegal armed forces and the like, and acted as a strategic reserve team.

Judging from these, the Chu army has successively invested two and a half armies in the North Zhili line, three new-style divisions, three old-style divisions, three cavalry brigades, three mortar regiments, and one heavy artillery regiment. .

The above ministries combined have a strength of more than 10 troops. This number still does not include the transportation regiments organized by the Logistics Department.

The southward Jiliao frontier army commanded by Hong Chengchou only had more than 2 people, and more than [-] people from Xuanda also went south.

Adding the two ministries together, there are more than 8 people in total, plus tens of thousands of civilian men who were recruited to transport luggage along the way, the total number is about 20 to [-], and it is known as an army of [-].

Regardless of the quality of soldiers, tactics, and firepower, the Ming army does not have as many front-line combat troops as the Chu army...

Speaking of which, there is a very interesting situation, that is, the Ming army that went south to face the Chu army was all frontier troops, except that there was no Beijing camp...

Because the Beijing camp was already rotten, it was very difficult to use it to defend the city. If they were really pulled out to fight the Chu army, they would have to run away if they were dozens of kilometers away from the Chu thieves.

So those bigwigs of the Ming court simply didn't transfer these wastes to the south, and left them in the capital for garrison.

After Hong Chengchou led his army to Tianjin Wei, he stopped going south!

On the one hand, the food and grass in the army are not enough, and it is too expensive to continue marching south.

On the other hand, Hong Chengchou has already judged that these Chu thieves must have traveled northward along the canal all the way.

Leaving the canal, with the huge material consumption of the Chu thief army, it is even a problem for them to eat, let alone the shells used for war.

This Tianjin is the only way for them to go to Youzhou City!
As for Hong Chengchou, he planned to deploy a line of defense here to block the Chu thieves and even severely injure the Chu thieves.

If you don't block it...in fact, it's okay, but the Youzhou City in the back will be breached by the Chu army in a few minutes, and Chongzhen and a group of Ming court officials will be finished by then.

Therefore, it is impossible for Hong Chengchou to avoid the war!
He can only bite the bullet and place an army here, and then stop the Chu thief from going north!

(End of this chapter)