The Ryukyu King Shonin was captured by the Shimazu family in Japan for several years. After his release, he was forced to cede the five northern islands including Amami Oshima, and signed a series of treaties that were humiliating and humiliating to the country.
So much so that the Ryukyu Kingdom was completely reduced to a vassal state of the Satsuma Domain.
Now that he saw the Ming army coming, he was naturally overjoyed. He did not expect that he would be able to escape the control of the Satsuma clan in his lifetime.
The Ming Dynasty can be said to have rebuilt Ryukyu with kindness. Ryukyu's agriculture and shipbuilding technology were all taught by people sent by the Ming Dynasty.
Even the surname "Shang" was given to the King of Ryukyu by Xuanzong of the Ming Dynasty.
Of course, the Ming Dynasty did not force the Ryukyu king to change his surname, because before, they only had a first name but no surname.
King Shangning of Ryukyu is now 57 years old and has been in power for 31 years.
However, when facing the envoy from China, he personally led Ryukyu officials to greet him and performed a "kowtow" ceremony to Li Xianzhong.
On the one hand, Shang Ning is really grateful to Daming for saving him from the fire. On the other hand, as long as he is humble enough in front of Ming's envoys, he will not only be protected by Daming, but also can continue to use tribute to collect Daming's wool.
Shang Ning's little calculation was ringing, but unfortunately Li Xianzhong was not the Ming envoy he expected.
After finishing his obeisance to the Ming envoy, what he was waiting for was not the Ming envoy's words of comfort asking him to stand up, but the other party's questions.
Li Xianzhong shouted loudly: "King of Ryukyu Shang Ning, do you know your crime?"
Shang Ning did not expect that the Ming Dynasty would directly attack him. He knelt on the ground and said tremblingly: "Xiao Wang has always admired the Ming Dynasty. I don't know where I have offended the Ming Dynasty. Why do you ask the angel to speak clearly?"
Li Xian smiled and said: "Ryukyu is a vassal state of our Ming Dynasty, but it pays tribute to Satsuma Domain every year; King Shoning, you even swore allegiance to the Shimazu clan and signed a treaty to recognize the status of a vassal state."
"How dare you claim that you are innocent of such a polarizing behavior?"
Shang Ning knew that these things would be known to Ming Dynasty sooner or later, so he cried bitterly: "Japan has long wanted to annex Ryukyu. As a vassal of Ming Dynasty, we, Ryukyu, will naturally resist to the death. But after all, the country is small and the people are weak, and the little king is trapped by the island. The Tsu captured Kagoshima and were forced to sign these treaties.”
"Although there is a breach of integrity, there is nothing we can do about it. It is definitely not intentional. Why do we ask the angels to see clearly?"
"Ryukyu is thousands of miles away from China, and the families of the tribute envoys are threatened by Satsuma Domain, so they cannot tell the truth to China. It is definitely not intentional deception!"
It was okay if Shang Ning didn't mention the tribute, but Li Xianzhong became even more angry when he mentioned the tribute.
Although Ryukyu was quite respectful to Ming Dynasty on the surface, it actually regarded Ming Dynasty as the "big enemy".
The price of pepper and other spices that Ryukyu sold to the Ming Dynasty through tribute was much higher than that of Nanyang and other vassal countries.
Li Xianzhong said: "You were coerced by the Shimazu family for not telling the truth to the Celestial Empire. Are you also coerced by using cheap spices to demand sky-high prices from the Ming Dynasty?"
"The Nanyang vassal states of Zhenla, Java, and Champa could only sell it to the Ming Dynasty for ten taels of silver per pound of pepper. You, Ryukyu, are so lucky that you actually sold it to the Ming Dynasty for thirty taels per pound." Acquisition, is this also forced?”
"It is true that the tribute system of the Ming Dynasty is a gift from the suzerain country to the vassal countries, but I have never seen any vassal country dare to speak like a lion like you Ryukyu?"
"King Shangning, do you dare to do this to the Satsuma clan?"
"You clearly think that I, Da Ming, are weak and can be bullied?"
At this time, Shaan Ning was already sweating profusely, and he was speechless when faced with Li Xianzhong's questioning.
Paying tribute is something that one is willing to fight and one is willing to suffer. Since you, Ming Dynasty, are willing to be the "taken advantage of", I, Ryukyu, will naturally not be lenient.
To put it bluntly, you Daming spent money to let Liu Qiu "call daddy". Since you, as a father, are not short of money, I, as a son, will naturally open my mouth.
But how dare he say this?
He could only say shamelessly: "The price of Ryukyu's tribute to Ming Dynasty has not changed for many years, and Xiao Wang is just following the convention!"
Hearing this, Li Xianzhong just smiled slightly.
The tribute system of the Ming Dynasty is indeed a joke. In the end, it just spent money to raise a group of "white-eyed wolves".
Once these vassal states become powerful, they will naturally not be grateful for the kindness of the Ming Dynasty, but will miss the land of the Ming Dynasty.
Even if a country as weak as Ryukyu is concerned about other countries, it will become a help to support other countries, which will eventually backfire on Ming Dynasty itself.
Therefore, Li Xianzhong must completely break this system.
He said: "King of Ryukyu, please get up. Is there any custom in the world that remains unchanged?"
"I am the Ming Dynasty's governor in Korea. I am not here to rescue you in Ryukyu. This time I am just here to do business. I didn't expect that I was extorted and robbed in Ryukyu. I suffered heavy losses!"
"And your Ryukyu officials are helping these Japanese to blackmail my caravan. What do you think we should do?"
Li Xianzhong's words made Shang Ning take a breath of cold air. He originally thought that the Celestial Empire sent someone to rescue him.
As a result, the other party mentioned the loss when they opened their mouth. What did you do to me when you were robbed by the Japanese?
This is obviously for extortion.
But he is not afraid now, because the treasures in his royal city have been emptied by the Satsuma clan long ago, and now he is completely destitute!
Shang Ning said: "I have been imprisoned in the royal city, and all domestic affairs are controlled by the demon monk Ju Yin. I really don't know anything about it!"
"I wonder what angel means?"
Li Xianzhong said: "Uncle Ben said that I came to Ryukyu this time to do business, not as an envoy. King Shangning does not need to call me 'angel' every time."
"Uncle Ben is a businessman. I drove away the Japanese for you this time, so I won't ask you for commission. But the losses caused by this must be borne by you, Ryukyu, right?"
From a business perspective, it is not too much to be paid for work.
But for the vassal states that had always used Ming Dynasty for free, this was really hard to accept.
Didn’t Ming always care about face and not care about money?
But at this moment, Shaoning would never dare to say "no".
He could only say with a smile: "That's natural. My uncle works hard for Ryukyu, so naturally he can't let him bear the losses."
Soon Li Xianzhong asked Zheng Zhilong to hand over a list of losses to Shang Ning.
A shipload of goods was extorted by the Japanese pirates, totaling 4,700 pieces of porcelain, 800 pieces of bronze, and 200 ginseng.
Worth 76,000 taels of silver.
There were 178 soldiers killed in the battle, and each received a pension of 200 taels of silver.
28 people were seriously injured and each received a subsidy of 100 taels of silver.
The total loss of cannonballs, blunderbuss shells, gunpowder and depreciation of blunderbuss and artillery silver is 57,000 taels.
All the expenses on this list of the Ming army add up to 280,000 taels of silver.
Facing this "sky-high price list", Shang Ning really couldn't laugh or cry.
This Earl of the Ming Dynasty was even more ruthless than the Satsuma clan. He directly stated that he was powerless and Ryukyu had no money.
However, Li Xianzhong seemed to have thought about it a long time ago. He said: "It doesn't matter if you don't have money. You can use Ryukyu's customs duties and other taxes to compensate."
"But the interest still has to be charged!"
"Anyway, the power of Ryukyu has never been in the hands of King Shangning. From now on, let my people take care of Ryukyu for you until the debt is paid off!"
Soon Geng Zhongming was appointed as the regent of Ryukyu by Li Xianzhong, under the command of the Governor of Korea, as the highest military and political officer of the Ryukyu region.
As the spiritual symbol of the Ryukyu people, Ryukyu King Shonin was responsible for all major military and political affairs in Ryukyu.
50 Ming troops took over the defense of Shuri Castle, the royal city!
It is obvious that this royal city has now become a veritable prison.
Now that the Kingdom of Ryukyu owed so much money to Li Xianzhong, the King of Ryukyu naturally wanted to reduce expenses. In the end, only 60 people were left in the royal city to take charge of the king's family's daily life and to maintain the basic operations of the royal city. .
Out of humanitarian considerations, Li Xianzhong still gave the royal family a monthly living allowance of 500 taels.
In addition, Ryukyu officials are allowed to enter the royal city to pay homage to their king on the first day of the Lunar New Year and the king's birthday.
The defense of Naha Port is still very important, especially since the Liaodong Navy currently only has a few capital ships and cannot always be stationed in Naha.
So Li Xianzhong decided to build a small bastion on the site of the previously bombed fortress to strengthen control of the port.
The current population of Ryukyu is approximately 110,000, of which more than 90% are concentrated on the main island of Ryukyu.
Fortunately, there are still more than a thousand Han Chinese and their descendants on the island. Most of them are Fujianese. Some have immigrated to Ryukyu for many generations, and some are maritime traders stranded here.
The existence of such a group of people can help to fully control Ryukyu.
These people can be selected to fill some important positions.
However, Ryukyu is still very mountainous and there is not much cultivated land.
Although sugar cane can be grown on the island, these cultivated lands can barely sustain the food rations of the islanders and cannot solve the problem of food storage at all.
Previously, Ryukyu's annual tribute of grain to Satsuma Domain was only 10,000 koku, which shows that Ryukyu did not have much grain reserves.
If you want to reserve a large amount of food, it seems you have to look for other places.
Geng Zhongming had previous experience in managing copper mines and was actually no stranger to this colonial model.
However, Li Xianzhong decided to hand over the tariff to Huang Cheng.
Ryukyu implements differential tax rates, and continues to implement a low tax policy of one out of ten goods for Ming merchants.
Businessmen in other countries raise the price to draw one out of every seven goods.
After all, this is not Liaodong and North Korea. Li Xianzhong's influence is not that strong, and it is impossible to implement high taxes of more than 30%.
Huang Cheng is still well-known among Fujian businessmen. Putting him in charge will be more conducive to attracting Ming businessmen living in various places to transfer their industries to Ryukyu.
As long as these businessmen come, they will naturally drive related industries.
Ryukyu Island still needs to relocate some people from the Ming Dynasty. I believe it won’t be long before Ryukyu Island is completely Chineseized.
Li Xianzhong decided to set up an "Eastern Ryukyu Company" using the Spanish galleons in his hands and the 300,000 taels of silver earned from this sale as capital.
The East Ryukyu Company's maritime trade is headed by the young Zheng Zhilong, who is mainly responsible for the operation and development of trade routes between East Asia and Southeast Asia.
Of course, in addition to doing business, the East Ryukyu Company also took care of robbery and the development of maritime colonies.
Zheng Zhilong himself is also very interested in this East Ryukyu Company.
He said excitedly: "My subordinates are from southern Fujian. Fujian has many mountains and little farmland. It is impossible to support a family by farming, so most people in southern Fujian rely on the sea for their livelihood."
"Now that the East Ryukyu Company has been established, it can solve the livelihood of many villagers."
"As for food, my subordinates suggested that the development officer (Taiwan) should be responsible for the development. Many people in the southern Fujian area were unable to survive last year's severe drought. As long as they can be provided with some seeds and farm tools, they will definitely be willing to open up wasteland."
"The main reason why Daguang has not been developed on a large scale is due to security issues. Some pirates have a stronghold there, and the natives on the island are relatively fierce."
"I believe that these are not problems for Uncle Ning Yuan."
Li Xianzhong is very clear about the reasons why Taiwan has not been developed.
Neither the natives nor pirates on the island pose a threat to him. The real threat is the miasma in the rainforest.
Before he got cinchona, he was unable to develop the depths of Taiwan, but there was no problem in reclaiming some wasteland near the coast.
The biggest problem at present is the lack of ships. We need a large number of new warships to ensure the safety of sea routes.
Currently, we only have three shipyards in Yingkou, Lushun and Incheon. In order to prevent the North Koreans from mastering the technology of building warships, the Incheon Shipyard only builds merchant ships and not warships.
These large sailing ships will take more than a year to build at the fastest. It seems that we still need to design some light main warships with a short construction period.
Ryukyu is also going to build a shipyard.
As for Taiwan, the Intelligence Department can be asked to recruit disaster victims in southern Fujian to prepare for the development of Taiwan.
Considering that there are still many pirates in southern Taiwan and that Penghu was under the rule of the Ming Dynasty, in order to reduce disputes, the targets were Tamsui and Keelung in northern Taiwan.
After the completion of these two ports, the East Ryukyu Company will also have two more supply ports.
However, Taiwan is more complicated than Ryukyu. It not only has to face the "Big Belly Kingdom" established by Taiwanese indigenous people, but also has to face subsequent intrusions from the Dutch and Spanish, and it also has to fight against various pirates.
Zheng Zhilong definitely can't handle it at this age.
After much thought, only Mao Wenlong among his men was more suitable for this kind of job.
But the most important thing right now is to solve the problem of Satsuma Domain, otherwise his Liaodong Navy will always be contained in Ryukyu.
Now the Tatars have not been completely eliminated, and it is impossible for them to launch a large-scale attack on the Japanese mainland.
Judging from the current situation of the Japanese soldiers under the Satsuma Domain, these Japanese soldiers are still relatively strong in hand-to-hand combat. The number of Ming soldiers killed and seriously injured has reached 200.
The impact capability of these Japanese soldiers even exceeded that of the Eight Banners soldiers who were heavily flooded today. That is to say, the Japanese soldiers in Ryukyu did not have many war horses. Otherwise, they would have been able to overwhelm the Ming army's fire cannon array when they were numerically superior.
Of course, Geng Zhongming led the Ming army from his subordinate Yingkou Road. Most of these soldiers were recruits who had been in the army for less than a year and had no actual combat experience.
There is definitely a gap with the elite troops of Kaiyuan Third Route under Li Xianzhong.
Even the Tokugawa family's own main force has no chance of winning against the Liaodong cavalry.
Moreover, Li Xianzhong did not believe that all the three thousand people left by the Satsuma clan in Ryukyu could wear iron armor.
The Japanese soldiers led by Shimazu Mitsuyoshi himself should be the most elite troops of the Satsuma Domain in the entire Ryukyus.
Now the dozens of remnants of Satsuma clan in the north of Ryukyu Island have been annihilated. In this way, a total of 1,300 Japanese pirates have been annihilated on Ryukyu Island.
Coupled with the fact that the Liaodong Navy sank more than 20 of their Anzha ships transporting troops at sea, the losses of the Satsuma Domain must have exceeded 2,000 people.
At this time, the Shimazu family had less than a thousand troops in the Amami Islands. The Ming army would naturally take the opportunity to take over the Amami Islands and completely drive the Satsuma Domain back to Japan.
Soon the three warships and six Spanish galleons under the Liaodong Navy left Naha Port. Amami Oshima is still relatively far away from Ryukyu Island, a full 250 kilometers away.
The Amami Islands are composed of five islands from south to north: Yoron Island, Okinagabu Island, Tokunoshima, Amami Oshima, and Kikaie Island. The Liaodong Navy finally arrived at Amami Oshima after sailing for most of a day.
When the huge mast of the Galen sailing ship appeared on the sea, Soichiro Kayama seemed extremely nervous. After the Anzhai ship that went to reinforce Ryukyu was sunk by these giant ships yesterday, he felt that things were not that simple.
Sure enough, now these Ming army warships have arrived at Amami Oshima again.
And it's not the three ships mentioned in the intelligence, there are actually nine ships.
There were pirates everywhere in this era, so armed merchant ships also needed to fight. The Spanish galleon was also equipped with 12 cannons, which also had a certain amount of firepower.
Fortunately, he had already evacuated the navy troops to land in time.
Now he has gathered around him 900 Japanese soldiers from Satsuma Domain and 500 Ryukyu soldiers on the island.
However, unexpectedly, the Ming army did not attack the island directly, but a canoe rowed directly towards them.
The person coming is an envoy from Ryukyu!
The messenger said: "As long as you return Amami Oshima, the King of Ryukyu will allow you to leave here safely. This is his letter of commitment to you."
After speaking, the messenger handed a letter to Soichiro Kayama.
Kaguyama Soichiro knew that this was a plan to attack the enemy's heart, so he cut off the head of the Ryukyu envoy with a sword.
He cursed angrily: "The oath made by Ryukyu King Shangning is like fart. Before, he swore never to betray the Shimazu family, but now he has attracted the Ming army."
As the messenger fell to the ground, the wooden box in his hand also fell to the ground, and Shimazu Mitsuyoshi's head rolled out of the wooden box.
However, the Ming army's heart attack strategy was still successful, and there was indeed a commotion in the team behind him.
Shimazu Mitsuyoshi was the highest official of Satsuma Domain in Ryukyu. His killing meant that the compatriots on Ryukyu Island must have been brutally murdered; and the reason for the commotion of the Ryukyu soldiers was simpler. Satsuma Domain was defeated, and Ryukyu wanted to regain Amami Oshima. .
Kaguyama Soichiro knew something was wrong. These Ryukyu soldiers were probably going to rebel, so he immediately slashed at the two troublemaking Ryukyu soldiers with his sword.
Almost at the same time, the Ming army's naval guns launched a fierce bombardment directly at them.
At this time, the Ming fleet had already lined up on the sea, and hundreds of artillery pieces were firing at the Japanese pirates at the same time. This scene can be imagined.
Cannonballs don't have eyes, and the Japanese and Ryukyu soldiers were quickly blown away.
Soon after, 1,500 Ming troops and 500 Ryukyu troops rushed directly towards the Japanese pirates' stronghold.
At this time, the Japanese army was suffering from internal and external troubles and had no fighting spirit.
Soichiro Kayama had no choice but to lead the remaining troops to retreat to another castle inland.
But not long after, they were surrounded by the Ming Army and the Ryukyu Army.
In the end, under the pincer attack of the Ming army's 6-pound Fo Fulang artillery and Lumi guns, this group of Japanese pirates was quickly wiped out!
So far, Amami Oshima has been recovered, and the three thousand troops left by the Satsuma Domain in Ryukyu have been completely accounted for!
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(End of chapter)
