Chapter 77: Stories at Sea

Chapter 77: Stories at Sea

Chapter 77: Stories at Sea

After explaining things to Meng Chong, Zhu Zaigui waited for Gao Gong's lecture today.

During this period, Gao Gong finally told Zhu Zaigui almost everything he knew about the story of Anda, and Zhu Zaigui also had a general understanding of this heroic leader from the grassland.

This Anda might really have ambitions that surpassed those of his ancestors, so much so that the imperial court was extremely wary of him and was unwilling to agree to his request for tribute no matter what.

However, Zhu Zaigui, who knew some history, knew very well that Anda was only ambitious on the surface. His prestige on the grassland was still not as great as that of the Mongols. Therefore, what he valued was actually his absolute status on the grassland.

As for the territory of Ming Dynasty, even though he had plundered Xuanda and other places countless times, he was clear that his strength was not enough to shake the rule of Ming Dynasty.

Therefore, Andada's greatest demand was to pay tribute. So even when he later led his army to the capital, he did not impulsively follow the example of his predecessors on the grassland and launch an attack on the capital of the Ming Dynasty.

The reason why he could resist the temptation and not attack the capital was because he was very clear about the true strength of the grassland cavalry he brought with him.

These grassland cavalrymen are like a group of greedy and bloodthirsty wolves. When facing weak prey, they can burst out with extremely brutal looting nature, but if they are asked to take huge risks to attack cities and capture strongholds, these grassland cavalrymen will not be so interested.

After all, times have changed, although the Han people are not as mobile as they are.

But the weapons of the Han people are still very powerful.

If they really attacked Beijing in a fit of impulsiveness, they would surely be greeted by countless artillery fire from the city walls!

These grassland cavalrymen obviously do not want to be cannon fodder in sieges, and the fighting style they are good at is cavalry field battles. When it comes to sieges, their advantages cannot be fully utilized.

Therefore, even if Anda himself wanted to attack Beijing, the grassland cavalry under his command might not be willing to ride on horses, hold swords in hand, and use their flesh and blood to test the neatly placed cannons on the top of Beijing City!
And this is not the most terrifying thing. If they fail to capture Beijing in a short period of time, they will not only have to pay a huge price in casualties, but will also have to face encirclement and suppression from other large armies gathered in the Ming Dynasty.

It can be said that such a risky decision, as long as Alda is not stupid, he will never really attack Beijing.

So what he wanted might just be tribute.

It was precisely because of his idea that in the original historical time and space, under the planning of Gao Gong and Zhang Juzheng, they took advantage of the inherently unstable conflicts of interest among the grassland tribes and reached a tribute and trade agreement with Alanda. The court conferred Alanda the title of King of Shunyi, ending the nearly two hundred years of hostility between the Ming Dynasty and the grassland.

The Ming Dynasty then took advantage of the opportunity to successfully eliminate traitors such as Zhao Quan and weakened the organizational strength within the grassland, resulting in a situation where large-scale wars rarely broke out in the north of the Ming Dynasty for the next hundred years.

Therefore, to deal with grassland enemies like Anda who only care about short-term interests, the best way is to use the mode of appeasement, winning over, dividing and fanning the flames. After all, the Ming Dynasty is really vast and full of temptations for the grassland. Who doesn't want to gain the unique favor of the Ming Dynasty?
It's a pity that the Ming Dynasty court has always viewed Altan and the grassland with extreme caution and vigilance, believing that they are still determined to move south. Therefore, in the end, both Emperor Jiajing himself and the civil and military officials within the court held a great hostile attitude.

Under the influence of this mentality, the Ming Dynasty and the grasslands will never coexist peacefully, and the wars in the nine borders will never stop. The national strength of the Ming Dynasty will be endlessly consumed by the extremely long battle lines in the nine borders, and finally fall into the abyss. But now Zhu Zaigui has no political say, let alone any decision-making power.

So what he can do now is to try his best to protect the people in the suburbs of Beijing, so that they will not become abandoned pawns of the court and spoils of Altanari in the future Gengxu Rebellion.

Zhu Zaigui had to do everything he could within this year to turn the outskirts of Beijing into a barbed iron lump. Anyone who dared to take a bite would be made to bleed profusely!
Just when Zhu Zaigui was still thinking about how to build up the strength of the suburbs of Beijing, Gao Gong arrived.

"Your Highness, I have almost finished telling Anda's story. Which story do you want to hear?"

Zhu Zaigui and Gao Gong arrived at the study, and Gao Gong asked Zhu Zaigui this.

Zhu Zaigui thought about it and realized that he had been a little confused by thinking about Anda's affairs recently. It was time to change his mind and think about other issues.

Zhu Zaigui said: "Sir, please tell me about the things on the sea. I also want to know about the stories on the sea borders of my Ming Dynasty."

When Gao Gong heard that Zhu Zaigui wanted to hear stories about the sea, he was more or less surprised.

Although Gao Gong didn't know much about maritime issues, his years as a Hanlin scholar had greatly broadened his horizons and allowed him to learn many stories about the sea.

Therefore, Gao Gong did not have the same paranoid view on maritime issues as the ordinary inland scholars.

Through getting to know southern officials over the years, Gao Gong also learned about the existence of smuggling trade at sea from these southern officials.

Although these southern officials hated this maritime smuggling trade which originated from the people, Gao Gong intuitively believed that these southern officials who hated maritime smuggling did not really oppose maritime business, but were opposed to the private merchant groups that condoned their smuggling.

After having this feeling, Gao Gong couldn't help but feel that these southern officials must have some secrets in their hearts that they couldn't tell outsiders, and this secret was obviously the benefits of maritime trade!

But Gao Gong grew up in the inland after all. Although he could guess some of the truth, he still did not fully understand the huge interests at sea.

Just think of it as a dispute over interests between southern gentry and southern private smuggling consortium, not a big deal.

After all, the Ming Dynasty had a tradition of maritime ban since the time of Emperor Taizu. Although there were intermittent experiences of opening the sea in the meantime, due to the uncertainty at sea and the problem of pirates, the main tone of the Ming Dynasty's maritime policy was still maritime ban.

The most recent maritime ban was during the "tribute dispute" that broke out in the second year of the Jiajing reign!
It was precisely because of this internal strife among the Japanese, who were vying to prove that they were the legitimate envoys of the Japanese, that the people of Ningbo in the Ming Dynasty suffered an unexpected disaster. Finally, at the suggestion of Xia Yan, the court abolished the Fujian and Zhejiang Maritime Customs Offices, leaving only one in Guangdong.

(End of this chapter)