I want to be emperor

Chapter 616 The Royal Orchestra

The Navy, which wanted to make money to build a first-class battleship formation, was unwilling to give up the plan for a first-class battleship formation after its domestic attempt to make money failed, and was unwilling to eliminate other warships to free up military expenses.

Finally, I set my sights on Nanyang!
Because they remembered that when they were expanding in Nanyang a few years ago, a large number of indigenous properties were confiscated. According to the fine traditions of the empire, the confiscated assets and the indemnity of the aboriginals added up to more than 1000 million Chu yuan. money……

The Ministry of Finance took the bulk on behalf of the treasury, but the military also took a lot.

Among the military's money, the navy, as the main promoter of the Nanyang strategy, occupies a major position in a series of actions. Even if the battle after landing is mainly fought by the army, the navy still takes the bulk.

After all, a series of transportation and sea operations are all done by the navy, and the army is just going to work for a job.

In the end, the navy allocated more than 250 million Chu yuan, which was allocated to the navy in the form of special shipbuilding funds.

The more than 250 million Chu Yuan does not seem to be much, but the navy's military expenditure has never been too much.

For example, in the 14 years of Chengshun, the total military expenditure was 4000 million, but the army was the absolute bulk, directly taking more than 3000 million, the navy only took 600 million, and the rest was taken away by the guards.

Therefore, the additional military expenditure of more than 250 million yuan does not seem to be much, but it is not too small for the navy.

After all, the size of the navy is far inferior to that of the army.

The army has a total strength of more than 100 million. To maintain these forces and many small and medium-scale wars, coupled with the continuous replacement of new equipment over the years, the military expenditure is extremely huge. The 3000 million or so is actually not enough for the army. Otherwise, the army would not call out self-reliance, carry out large-scale military reclamation, and farm and raise pigs by itself, just to save military expenses.

As for the navy, the number of personnel is actually far less than that of the army. A battleship needs only a few hundred people. Even if it is a hundred battleships, the required strength is only tens of thousands. So many battleships.

As for battleships such as cruisers and frigates, and auxiliary warships such as transport ships, fewer personnel are actually needed.

Then add some logistics support personnel in various naval bases, and then the Marine Corps.

Today, the total strength of the Chu Navy is actually just over 8 people, and the Marine Corps and base support personnel account for more than half of them.

In addition, the navy itself will also conduct reclamation in the naval base, raise pigs and grow vegetables, so as to supply the base garrison on the spot.

Therefore, although the military expenditure of the navy is less, the life of the navy can actually be decent.

However, this is all under the premise of not expanding or building new warships on a large scale, especially expensive things like battleships.

The Navy wants to build a large number of first-class battleships, which are very expensive, and one will cost hundreds of thousands of Chu Yuan.

With more than a dozen ships down, all the naval military expenses for a year have to be filled in.

Therefore, the navy is under great pressure to expand the formation of first-class battleships. After all, the number of first-class battleships has expanded, so the third-class battleships, cruisers, and frigates that cooperate in combat must also be expanded accordingly.

You can't let the first-class battleship go to sea to fight alone!
Fortunately, there were more than 200 million additional military expenditures in the past two years, which enabled the Navy to realize certain shipbuilding attempts, but now the money is almost spent, but the military expenditures have not increased.

Under such circumstances, they naturally want to make another fortune in Nanyang...

In addition to making a fortune, the navy actually wants to further promote the empire's Nanyang strategy. As long as the Nanyang strategy is implemented, the cabinet will have to give money no matter what.

The emperor is not hungry yet.

In this way, in November 14, the navy officially submitted the Nanyang expansion plan, the focus is to capture the city of Malacca!

Then control the entire Strait of Malacca!

Today's Malacca City is still in the hands of the Portuguese, but today's Portuguese rule in Malacca City is already shaky, and the Dutch and the Kingdom of Johor have brought them too much pressure.

In addition, Portugal is still fighting with Spain internally, and has no ability to reinforce overseas colonies. Today, the Portuguese overseas colonies can basically only rely on themselves.

Under such circumstances, not to mention that the Dutch wanted to take Malacca, even the Great Chu Empire couldn't help but be tempted.

In the past few years, they did not do anything because there was no suitable springboard. The Great Chu Empire could not set out from Guangzhou all the way, float on the sea for a few months and then go to attack the city of Malacca.

That's pure brain burnt out.

But it's different now. The Great Chu Empire has acquired the Beijia area from the Kingdom of Siam.

In the south of the Beijia area is the Kingdom of Aceh, and in the southeast is the city of Malacca.

Under such circumstances, it is entirely possible to rely on the Beijia area, and then send troops to parts of the Malay Peninsula controlled by the Kingdom of Aceh, and then attack the city of Malacca.

It can even continue eastward, attacking the Kingdom of Johor, and continue to control the entire Malay Peninsula to fully control the Strait of Malacca.

This plan of the Navy has aroused the interest of the cabinet.

In particular, the navy said that if they want to fight, they don't need many troops. Sending three marine regiments from the Beijia area can basically sweep the Malay Peninsula.

The navy is fully capable of ensuring the smooth operation.

Moreover, Malacca has been operated by the Portuguese for many years, and the wealth inside must be indispensable. In addition to other places in the Malay Peninsula, seizures are also indispensable in the process of taking it down.

This vote, even if it can't replicate the previous gains in the Siam Kingdom operation, should still make a fortune.

The investment is limited, and the income is relatively high, and these incomes are divided into multiple parties according to the previous scale, and the cabinet can take the bulk.

It is not surprising that the cabinet is tempted by this.

Of course, these are only superficial reasons.

What really makes the top management of the empire, especially the business community support it, is because if the operation can go smoothly and the empire fully controls the Strait of Malacca, then it means that the empire has completely opened up the channel to the Indian Ocean, and there is no need to worry about the Strait of Malacca being controlled by others. There is danger.

At the same time, after opening the Strait of Malacca, the merchant ships of the Great Chu Empire can directly enter the Indian Peninsula and even West Asia, without having the Dutch and Portuguese as second-hand dealers.

In the past two years, although the Great Chu Empire also wanted to directly get involved in the trade of the Indian Peninsula and West Asia, but the Great Chu Empire was too far away from the local area, and the deployment of troops was too troublesome, so that it failed to obtain trade in the Indian Peninsula and West Asia. A true colonial piece.

If there is no colony, the merchant ships of the Great Chu Empire, even the merchant ships of the Nanyang Trading Company, will actually need to look at the faces of the Portuguese and the Dutch when they go to trade.

If people don't give face, it is impossible for the merchant ships of the Great Chu Empire to enter the local port for trade.

Even if you can enter these ports now, you still need to pay a lot of taxes.

The most important thing is that even if the goods arrive, they can only be handed over to Denmark, Portugal, the Netherlands, and the United Kingdom for sale.

The business network of the Nanyang Trading Company of the Great Chu Empire, due to the lack of colonies, has no way to directly establish its own business network in the Indian peninsula.

This is equivalent to the fact that the Great Chu Empire worked so hard to engage in Indian trade, but all the money was earned by other Western colonists, and they only took some hard-earned money.

In addition, a more important point is that in the Indian Peninsula in recent years, the wave of boycotting goods from the Great Chu Empire has become more and more frequent.

In order to protect their fragile handicraft industry, a large number of local indigenous kingdoms began to refuse the goods of the Great Chu Empire, especially cotton cloth.

This made the high-level industrial and commercial circles of the empire want to send troops to teach them a lesson, so that the natives know what freedom of trade is!
Unfortunately, India is too far away, and although the empire also has ports facing the Indian Ocean coast in Dagon and Beijia in Myanmar, the Strait of Malacca behind it is controlled by the Kingdom of Johor, and the Kingdom of Johor has close ties with the Dutch, and then there is the city of Malacca Also in Portuguese hands.

This means that the back road is unstable!

Once the Great Chu Empire colonized the Indian Peninsula on a large scale, it was basically equivalent to throwing away the Dutch and Portuguese, and even the British and Danes in Indian trade.

There is bound to be a strong backlash!
No one wants their wealth to be robbed by the Great Chu Empire.

Cutting off people's wealth is like killing their parents. The four colonial countries that rely on India and Southeast Asia trade can only be convinced.

Both the English and the Danes can say that the Danes are not very strong, and the English colonies are limited to the Indian peninsula, and England is still fighting a civil war, and has no intention of engaging in colonial expansion.

But the Portuguese and the Dutch, especially the Dutch, are not going to sit idly by.

You must know that a large part of the profits of the Dutch East India Company comes from the trade between Southeast Asia and India. Chu Empire.

After making money on this route, they exchanged the money for silk, spices and other valuable goods and shipped them back to Europe for sale.

Once the Great Chu Empire directly established itself on the Indian peninsula, what would happen to them as second-hand dealers like the Dutch.

For their own benefit, the Dutch backlash will be strong.

Under such circumstances, the control of the Strait of Malacca has become a top priority.

If you rush to colonize the Indian peninsula without taking control of the Strait of Malacca, it is tantamount to handing over your back to the Dutch, which is too risky.

Now the navy has proposed to fully control the Strait of Malacca, which is very attractive to the cabinet.

Especially the Navy said that the cost would not be too much, those natives are scumbags, they can win if they fight casually, and they will have a lot of money at that time!

Although the cabinet can actually guess that the navy has its own little things, in the final analysis it is for military expenses.

But as long as the navy can bring greater benefits, it is not impossible for the cabinet to invest a wave.

Ever since, the two sides, who were still cursing on their front feet, soon sat together and began to discuss the feasibility of controlling the Strait of Malacca.

During the cabinet discussions, Guo Quanshu, on behalf of the other members of the cabinet, put forward a number of requirements to the Navy, and these requirements can be summed up as follows: money can be given, but more work should be done with less money, and secondly, it should be used for special purposes.

This money is used for war. You are not allowed to take the money in front of the navy and build some first-class battleships in the back. If the navy dares to play like this, the cabinet will dare to cut off the navy's conventional military expenditure next year.

Even if the trouble comes before His Majesty, their cabinet will never give up!

The representative of the navy turned black. Damn, who do you think our navy is? Our navy doesn’t bother to sneak around. This money must have been used for the battle in the Strait of Malacca, and it will never be used for other purposes.

But as soon as the negotiation was over, before the money arrived, the navy had secretly placed an order for two first-class battleships...

However, once the order is placed, the navy will make a calculation, oops, the military budget given by the cabinet may not be enough!
After all, the rest of the Malay Peninsula is quite large. If their navy wants to use the marines to rush there, it will not take too much time and money.

The cabinet is not a fool, and they have carefully calculated with their abacus before giving the money. Although the money is a lot, it is definitely not much.

The Navy wants to embezzle hundreds of thousands of Chu Yuan to build a new first-class battleship, and this gap is naturally difficult to make up.

But after thinking about it, the high-level navy felt that it was too expensive to fight, so they simply asked the army to be a thug!

Ever since, the navy found the army: Guizi, your father and I are going to make a big deal in the Straits of Malacca recently, but the strength of the troops is a bit out of hand, so, when the time comes, you will also send tens of thousands of people over to make soy sauce.

I'll pay for the freight and ammunition, and you can share some of the loot later.

When Lu Jun heard that there was such a good thing, he immediately agreed.

As for the navy's bad words, that's okay, as long as they have money, it's nothing to ask the navy to taunt them.

Recently, the Army has gone crazy... The Battle of Hami cost the Army a lot of money, and it is estimated that they will continue to pay for it in the next year or two, but they did not get a dime of the spoils.

Now some navy say that they will pay for them to go to Nanyang to fight and train troops, and let the officers under them accumulate some military merits. Naturally, the army has to catch up.

As for the dangers, the natives in Nanyang and the Portuguese, the army said that they can be swept away by sending tens of thousands of people at will, and they don't even need to transfer troops, and it is enough to directly use the troops in the Nanyang region.

The army expects that they don't even need much ammunition... the ammunition money can save a lot of money, and then they can make a fortune by falsely reporting ammunition consumption and exaggerating the amount and asking the Navy to take advantage of it for reimbursement.

Armed parades can earn several waves at a time, and such a good thing can't be found on weekdays.

At this time, the army didn't know that the navy had reached an agreement with the cabinet, and the navy had already raised millions of Chu Yuan in investment from the cabinet... Oh, no, it was temporary war expenses!

This battle cost includes the cost of large-scale landing operations.

However, the Navy felt that the number of its own marines was small, and they were all scattered in various places. It was not only troublesome to mobilize, but also more expensive.

It's better to ask the army to work part-time and save money!
Of course, this kind of thing was just kept from the army at the time, and the army knew the news within two days... After knowing the news, the army's top leaders were all pissed off!
These bastards in the navy, they give our army some leftovers when they eat their own meat, and they want our army to work to make money for them.

Think beautifully.

As a result, the army soon proposed the so-called Malay Peninsula plan... to launch an attack directly from the Beijia area to the east, capture the territory of the Kingdom of Aceh in the Malay Peninsula area, capture Malacca, and then capture the Kingdom of Johor and other places, comprehensively Conquer the Malay Peninsula.

Well, just as the Navy's battle plan has nothing to do with the Army, the Army's battle plan also has nothing to do with the Navy.

For the transportation of logistics materials, the worst thing is to hire merchant ships in advance to transport and store them in the Beijia area, and then the army will sweep them directly.

As for the blockade of the Dutch East India Company afterwards, the navy can't just sit idly by!

The most important thing is to swallow the meat first, and we will talk about how it ends later...

And the respective operations of the army and the navy... made His Majesty Luo Zhixue, Emperor of the Great Chu Empire, speechless after seeing it!

It's okay to be shameless, and you have forgotten the overall situation, and only the military expenditure is in your eyes.

In the end, I personally decreed that the cabinet, the army and the navy should all sit down and have a good talk.

As for the matter of controlling the Strait of Malacca itself, Luo Zhixue is still very supportive. Anyway, this place is to be fought, and the time is relatively ripe now. At least the Portuguese and the English are fighting at home, and the Dutch are also facing a war at home. With a lot of pressure.

At the same time, the Great Chu Empire has also gained a foothold in the Nanyang region, with the advance base of Beijia.

The feasibility of capturing and controlling the Strait of Malacca is very high.

As for whether the trade with the Dutch will be cut off once the war breaks out, will it affect the development of the domestic industrial and commercial economy.

There is certainly some short-term impact, but after taking down Malacca, the Great Chu Empire will not hesitate to go to the Indian Peninsula to open up colonies. At that time, with the support of the huge Indian Peninsula market, the empire's industry and commerce will not be affected. If it is affected, it may even usher in the opportunity to take off.

After all, the market in the Indian Peninsula and even West Asia is still very large.

As for the conflict with the Dutch, which cut off the European market under the channel of the Dutch, there are only things like silk and porcelain in that place, which seem to be expensive, and the total trade volume is not small, but the actual export goods are not many.

These things actually have little impact on the current economic system of the Great Chu Empire, far less than cotton cloth.

What's more, in Southeast Asia, the European colonies in India are not Dutch.

And the Spaniards and the English.

In particular, there is no conflict of interest between Spain and the empire, and the scale of trade has been expanding in recent years, so Spain is also an important channel for the empire's precious goods to be exported to Europe, and the Dutch are not the only channel.

What's more, the trade between the Great Chu Empire and the European market is unilateral...

It is the European market that needs oriental goods such as silk and porcelain from the Great Chu Empire, not what the Great Chu Empire needs from them. It is the Europeans who traveled thousands of miles across the ocean to China to buy silk and porcelain. He went to Europe to sell silk and porcelain after untold hardships.

Without the Dutch, merchants from other countries would continue to take risks, transporting goods from the Great Chu Empire to Europe for sale.

In short, the impact of trade restrictions caused by the war will certainly be somewhat, but it is not worth mentioning compared with the huge market benefits of the Indian peninsula.

Even if the European market is completely lost, the impact will not be great.

The imperial goods needed in the European market are mainly silk and porcelain, and these two products have a very limited impact on the industrial development of the Great Chu Empire. The scale is not large and the share is not high.

The export commodities promoted by the Great Chu Empire are actually all kinds of industrialized products, and the cost of transporting these products to Europe for sale is too high, and it is not worthwhile for the time being.

So where is the main export market for industrial products of the Great Chu Empire?

It is Southeast Asia and India, or add West Asia and North Africa.

The distance is not too far, the transportation cost is acceptable, and these places, especially in India, have a large population.

Moreover, they are not a unified kingdom, but there are many countries that are fighting each other endlessly, which means that the various export weapons of the Great Chu Empire can find a good place again.

If the Indian peninsula can be controlled, then this place will be the largest and best dumping place for industrial products in the empire!
Comparing this way, we also know why the cabinet officials of the Great Chu Empire supported the military to attack the Strait of Malacca. In essence, the cabinet is still for the industrial product market of the Indian peninsula!

But how to fight, the cabinet doesn't care, and they can't control it.

Anyway, just after the meeting started, the cabinet has already stated its position, we don’t care how the two of you distribute or cooperate, but there is only so much money, there is no more steel, and whoever has an opinion will withdraw...

It is naturally impossible to withdraw, so the army and navy can only do their best to compete.

Still the same sentence, there is only so much money, no matter who gets more, the other party will get less.

And whether you can eat it or not, swallow the money first and then talk...

Regarding the quarrel within the military, the cabinet officials expressed that they were too lazy to listen and left the meeting directly, and Luo Zhixue even withdrew from the meeting at the very beginning.

Today's meeting is destined to be a big quarrel like a vegetable market, and it is not a problem for him to stay there and listen to a group of important officials and generals scolding the street.

So he left early and went back to the harem to watch the performance of the Royal Music and Dance Troupe with the Queen.

This royal music and dance troupe is not a dance troupe composed of young and beautiful women who don't have enough clothes and can only twist and turn, but a very formal court dance performance team.

Managed and established by the Palace Affairs Department, it convenes and trains musicians and dancers. It mainly focuses on orthodox court music and dance, and is mainly used for performances on formal occasions.

This kind of dance is also called court dance by later generations.

Empress Wang has been fond of watching this kind of serious and grand court dance recently, and sometimes Luo Zhixue will watch it with her, but to be honest, this kind of court dance looks very boring to Luo Zhixue.

Overdressed!

It won't twist!

The only thing worthy of praise is that the members of the Royal Music and Dance Troupe are all beautiful women.

Looking at the actresses on stage, Luo Zhixue felt that their acting talents should not be wasted, and some better-looking programs should be rehearsed, especially some programs that reflected the coolness of summer and autumn, and the performance costumes were thin and transparent.

Otherwise, what a waste!

Luo Zhixue has always been a person who will do it when he has an idea, so he quickly told the queen next to him about his idea.

After listening, Queen Wang was silent for a few seconds, then forced a smile and said: "The concubine will arrange it later!"

On the other hand, Luo Zhixue pretended not to notice the strangeness of Wang and Empress. The husband and wife had always been in charge of division of labor and cooperation.

Except for matters of principle, such as the protection of the prince, Luo Zhixue generally does not interfere with other matters in the harem, and delegates power to the king and queen, including the draft, the promotion of ordinary concubines, and so on.

Naturally, there is no need to deal with trivial matters such as asking the Royal Music and Dance Troupe to rehearse a new dance, the Queen can do it for her!

Luo Zhixue left after watching the meeting again, and Queen Wang also lost interest in the dance on stage at this time, and she probably won't come to see the court music and dance of the Royal Music and Dance Troupe in the future.

It’s better to watch Kunqu Opera. For so many years, it has been proved that the emperor has no interest in Kunqu Opera and those Kunqu opera actresses with ghostly symbols painted on their faces...

(End of this chapter)