Zhu Ying did not object to the feudal princes developing their own overseas power. He did not want to suppress the feudal princes too much.
Historically, emperors have always suppressed vassal kings because they were worried about the instability of their throne, or even fear that vassal kings would seize the throne.
Of course, in history, vassal kings have never successfully rebelled. Now that Zhu Ying has entered the palace, Zhu Di will naturally have no chance.
It was just because of the special nature of the Japanese country that the four feudal kings were prohibited from causing war conflicts.
If it were in the Middle East, Zhu Ying wouldn't be in charge of so much, and he could develop whatever he wanted.
The first month of the thirtieth year of Hongwu.
This year's Zhengdan is as lively as ever.
With the rapid development of the capital's economy, all walks of life in the capital are now in a prosperous state.
The most important thing is that the security in the capital is very good.
With the permission of Zhu Ying's decree, the Department of Public Security expanded rapidly. There were nearly 40,000 personnel in the Department of Public Security in the capital alone.
Including all the streets and alleys of the capital.
Anyone who commits petty theft will be severely punished. Anyone found will be directly sent to labor reform.
Due to the shortage of construction land across the country, currently, once a person commits a crime, he or she is required to undergo a two-year hard labor reform at the beginning, so the free labor does not go to waste.
Especially for those idle street kids who have no life skills themselves, it is a good thing to be reformed by hard labor.
No matter which industry you are sent to, you will always learn professional skills so that you can start a new life after working hard.
For those who commit the crime again, the penalty will be doubled for the second conviction, starting with four years.
Under such a governance environment, the security of the capital can be described as keeping the house open at night. Especially for businessmen from other places and foreign countries, the business environment is unimaginably good.
In order to prevent unjust, false and erroneous cases, Zhu Ying specifically reserved the right for ordinary people to apply for a joint trial of the three divisions after being convicted. However, while exercising this power, if the government manpower is deliberately wasted, the crime will be severely punished.
Similarly, once an unjust, false or wrongful conviction is caused by an official, dismissal from office will be considered a minor offense and strict investigation will be carried out.
Rules and regulations are driven by people, and there will always be some people who violate them. There is no way to prevent these things. At least for now, Zhu Ying has made it so that in the Ming Dynasty, at least on the surface, no official dares to do anything wrong.
In the cases in the 29th year of Hongwu, most of the offenders were the second sons of noble nobles and concubines. Many of these people were sentenced to hard labor and were not allowed to use any privileges.
Because in any case involving the heirs of officials and nobles, Zhu Ying would involve the officials.
Yan Guan, who usually held his breath, naturally used all his strength.
It was also during this year that the situation in Europe changed greatly.
The Ottoman Empire was the overlord in the Middle East. Especially after the succession of the monarch Murad I, it launched large-scale military operations in the southeast where its country was located.
After occupying Adrianople, an important town in the Byzantine Empire, and renaming it Edirne, it became the royal capital of the Ottoman Empire.
This put a lot of pressure on many European kings, but Europe, with its own contradictions, could hardly say that it could unite to fight against the Ottomans.
Taking advantage of this opportunity, the Ottomans conquered Western Thrace, Macedonia, Sofia, Salonika and the entire northern Greece, forcing the rulers of Bulgaria and Serbia to surrender and pay tribute.
Then they defeated the Serbian, Bulgarian, and Hungarian coalition forces in the Battle of Kosovo.
Intense pressure forced all of Europe to unite against the Ottoman Empire.
Just like the current steppe alliance against Timur, troops from all over Europe gathered on a large scale to support the Byzantine Empire.
In wars, sometimes it really doesn't matter who has the most soldiers. Even if Europe sent a large number of reinforcements, and the strength of the troops was far greater than that of the Ottoman Empire's invading army, it was still a disastrous defeat.
There are many factors involved. Perhaps the European coalition had many opportunities to turn defeat into victory, but in the end they missed it.
The outcome was that after the defeat of the entire European coalition, nearly 10,000 Crusaders were captured. Except for 300 noble knights who were redeemed with a huge sum of money, almost all the rest were killed.
Europe has no way to stop the expansion of the Ottoman Empire. It can only watch the Byzantine Empire getting closer and closer to its demise.
It was precisely because of the winning streak along the way that the Ottoman Empire became more and more arrogant.
Such arrogance started from top to bottom with the new successor, Ottoman monarch Bayezid I.
Therefore, the envoys sent to Timur's empire were also very powerful, which angered Timur and detained envoys from all countries.
Of course, this is also an excuse in itself.
Timur's current army is getting stronger and stronger, and he is about to conduct larger-scale military operations to expand his territory.
Seeing that the Byzantine Empire was about to collapse, Osman and Tamerlane started fighting.
The Mongolian cavalry is really a nightmare for the entire Middle East and Europe. The Ottoman Empire, which has never tasted defeat, will naturally have to fight Timur if it is willing to give up.
"Mobilize an army of 500,000 people. This time I will personally go to conquer the Ottomans."
During the first month of the year, Pirma Heima was also summoned back from the Delhi Sultan to attend the meeting.
Compared with the Sultan of Delhi, the Ottoman Empire, the dominant empire in the Middle East, was obviously more important.
Even Timur cannot be taken seriously.
The Sultan of Delhi was like a lamb on a sticky board, and Timur didn't think he could make a big wave.
But the Ottoman Empire is completely different. At least as far as the entire Middle East is concerned, the current Ottoman Empire seems to have no rivals.
Before attacking the Delhi Sultanate, Timur wrote to the Ottoman Empire to warn: "You are like ants, remember not to provoke the elephant, otherwise you will be ravaged and retaliated by us."
The Ottoman Sultan Bayezid I naturally responded strongly: "If I am scared away by your army, then my wife will abandon me. But if you run away from my army, all your women will find others." His husband."
In the dialogue between two overlord-level kings, neither one was willing to show weakness, which made the relationship between the Timurid Empire and the Ottoman Empire tense.
The Turkish princes who had been driven away by Bayezid and took refuge in Timur's court provided the Ottomans with a pretext for war.
Soon, Bayezid asked the emir who had surrendered to Timur to pledge his allegiance to him, creating a diplomatic pretext for war.
At the same time, the Ottoman Empire withdrew the siege of Constantinople in the Byzantine Empire and redeployed its forces to face the war with Timur.
With the exchange of intelligence, the Ottoman Empire deepened its understanding of Timur and began to be wary of him.
Even Bayezid regretted that he shouldn't have provoked Timur. The Byzantine Empire was already a cooked duck, but now he could only watch and couldn't stop talking.
But now that the words have been released, we can't give in. Then we can only use war to solve the problem.
It's not that Bayezid was afraid of Timur, it was just that in the interests of the empire, it was best to capture Byzantium first and seize the wealth.
Now that Byzantium has not obtained its wealth, it has fallen into another war quagmire.
Timur's power has only risen in the past twenty years. Although he has achieved great victories in North India, these are not taken seriously by the Ottoman Empire.
A large number of Mongolian cavalry gathered towards the border. With the newly built concrete road, Timur easily gathered almost 400,000 troops.
The cold winter had just passed, and Timur led one hundred thousand elite cavalry to set off from Samarkand. After the spring, they were going to have an unprecedented battle with the Ottoman Empire.
The size of the army this time can be said to be that of all the elites of Timur, and it was under the condition of Timur's personal conquest.
Except for the 300,000 troops of the Sultan of Delhi, these 500,000 troops were all the troops Timur could use. After all, other border areas also needed troops to maintain stability, and it was impossible to say that all of them were withdrawn.
Of course, say fifty
In fact, Timur's core elites did not have that many, and most of them were composed of slave armies.
Timur's core elite was probably more than 100,000 cavalry and a few elite infantry, as well as 32 war elephants.
The main force on the Ottoman side is 85,000 people, consisting of the powerful Jenicheri Guards, Sipaxi cavalry, cavalry from Serbian ally Stefan, and mercenaries.
If Timur is defeated this time, it will be a huge crisis for the entire Timur Empire.
"It's a pity that the distance is too far, so there is no way to participate."
When Zhu Ying received the news, it was already three months later, which was the fastest possible time.
Normally, even the fastest trip from Samarkand to the capital of the Ming Dynasty would take nearly half a year.
In order to better obtain news from the Middle East, Zhu Ying specially built a post military route specifically for transmitting intelligence, and sent special people to transmit the news at a speed no less than Baili Express.
Moreover, the information transmission on this special route must be carried out at least once every seven days even in normal times. If there is any important information, it will be set off overnight.
For this reason, the Ming court naturally spent a lot of manpower and financial resources. The postmen who delivered the information were all one person and two horses, and the main members were Mongolians, even the Northern Yuan cavalry.
The reason why a large number of Mongolians are used is mainly because they have the ability to sleep immediately.
On the journey from Samarkand to the capital of the Ming Dynasty, especially the section passing through Tubo, it was difficult to build a post station that was too short. The distance between the two post stations was often hundreds of miles.
This special ability of the Mongols allowed intelligence to travel through the vast Tubo region at night and at night.
Three months is already the fastest speed.
"This is already very good." Zhu Yuanzhang said with a smile.
The establishment of the intelligence line and the transmission of large amounts of intelligence allowed Zhu Yuanzhang to open his eyes to the world.
Previously, for Zhu Yuanzhang, the Tubo region was the furthest border that the Ming Dynasty could reach. Although he knew that there were many countries outside Tubo, Zhu Yuanzhang did not understand them and had no interest in them.
You must know that without the intelligence line established by Zhu Ying, it would normally take at least three to five years for news from Europe and the Middle East to be naturally transmitted to the border of the Ming Dynasty.
Moreover, if there were no dedicated people to collect this information, it would not be spread to the Ming Dynasty at all, let alone Zhu Yuanzhang to know about it.
It is also mixed with the influence of cultural differences. Even if someone hears it, no one cares. No matter how the Middle East and Europe fight life and death, it will not have the slightest impact on the Ming Dynasty.
You must know that in order to maintain this military line and deliver seemingly useless information, the Ming court spent nearly 400,000 guan of treasure money every year. This was a price that the Ming Dynasty could not have spent before Zhu Ying entered the palace. .
Only now that Ming Dynasty has become richer can it afford such a costly intelligence line.
The key is that there is more than one intelligence line like this.
Although the other journeys are not as far away as this one and cost as much money as this one, the total annual consumption is almost two million guanbao banknotes.
Two million Guan Baobao is nothing now, but before the official salary reform, this was the total annual salary expenditure of the entire Ming Dynasty officials.
"If the Ottoman Empire fights with the Byzantine Empire, which one I think will have a better chance of winning?"
When the grandfather and grandson were chatting, Zhu Yuanzhang asked.
Zhu Ying said without any hesitation: "Of course Timur wins."
Zhu Yuanzhang was a little surprised: "Is the great grandson so sure?"
Zhu Ying shrugged and analyzed: "In today's world, there are really not many people who can defeat Timur. Even our Ming Dynasty, if we are close to Timur, the outcome will be 50-50."
"The area where Timur is now located was the seat of the Persian Empire, which was once a powerful country in history. Due to the nature of the geographical area, Timur is now a semi-agricultural and semi-nomadic composition. This composition is very easy to adapt to.
Easy to form a strong fighting force. "
When Zhu Yuanzhang heard the word Persian, he nodded in agreement.
In fact, Persia had a lot of exchanges with the Central Plains dynasties, and they were even very intensive. Compared with the Central Plains period, it belonged to the Spring and Autumn Period and the Warring States Period.
Including the Ming Dynasty, they are all influenced by Persian culture.
The Mingjiao here originated from the branch of Persian religion in the Central Plains.
Although the current Timurid Empire is said to be dominated by Turkic Mongols, it has been assimilated by Persian culture.
Including the current court language is Persian rather than Turkic.
Timur now controls the official institutions in various places, which are basically composed of Persians. The Persians are also the largest population group in Timur's empire and the main body of the entire empire's manpower and material resources.
There is a saying that bad mountains and harsh waters bring out unruly people. The geographical conditions of Timur's empire were very harsh.
The high mountains of the Zagros Mountains, and then the endless, rugged and complex Iranian plateau, as well as many arid and water-deficient deserts, are comparable to the strong cities and walls of the Ming Dynasty.
In other words, when Timur was fighting against Osman, Timur could march into Osman without having to worry about Osman coming over.
The Ottoman Empire, located on the Anatolian Plateau, would be very uncomfortable when entering Timur's territory, which was equivalent to a natural barrier.
To put it simply, I can send troops to attack you at any time, but you have no conditions to send troops to attack me.
"When Osman and Tamerlane fight, our ocean fleet should be almost there, and we can put some pressure on it by then."
Zhuying said with a smile.
This pressure, of course, must be placed on Timur.
Who said that Timur is too powerful now? This is completely inconsistent with Ming's interests in Central Asia and Europe.
Especially now that Timur has detained the Ming envoys, this gives him a good excuse.
Although the strength of the ocean-going fleet is only over 10,000, the deterrent power of the Ming Dynasty treasure ships is not much more than this.
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Thanks to the bosses for their monthly votes. I was supposed to update more in these two days, but I ended up suffering from pulpitis. The pain was so heartbreaking that I couldn't sleep all night.
After the tooth is extracted the day after tomorrow, the fillings and extensions will be gradually returned. Thank you for your understanding.
(Remember to bookmark it for next time reading!)
