Madras, India, inside the Indian headquarters building of the British East India Company.
In the drawing room of Baron John Churchill, the king's special envoy, at this time, in addition to the baron himself and Ji Dabao, a professor of Oriental studies at the University of Cambridge in England, there were also two guests wearing flower feathers sitting on their heads. They were Majia Tuhai who led the exiled Li Emperor Zheng Zhu from Annan to India, and Zhang Ying, the ambassador sent by Kangxi Khan to Madras.
Tu Hai and Zhang Ying each held a copy of the letter translated by Ji Dabao himself, and looked at it carefully for an unknown amount of time. Both of them had their mouths open, looking dumbfounded.
I don’t know how long it took before I heard Ma Jia Tuhai hesitate and say: “Could it be that the great states of Yin, Tianyi Shang and Shang Fang were destroyed by King Wu of Zhou two thousand years ago? The remnants of the Shang Dynasty?"
Zhang Ying was born in Liangbang, and his knowledge was much greater than that of Ma Jia and Tu Hai. Hearing what Tu Hai said, he nodded and said: "It's possible... they are probably the survivors of Shang. The lower official once lived with Kong Shenggong. I have read the "Book of Yizhou" passed down by his family. It records that Prince Lu's father fled north and disappeared. This prince and his father was Emperor Xin's son Wu Geng. The "Book of Yizhou" said that he was After the Sanjian Rebellion, he led the remnants of merchants to flee Chaoge, and his whereabouts were unknown. He might have fled across the ocean to the New World..."
It turned out that after Baron Churchill returned to Madras, he received an order from London asking him to find out "the relationship between the Shang Fang Kingdom of the New World and the Ming Dynasty" - during this period, a mysterious ancient Shang Dynasty who may have come from China was discovered in the northwest corner of the New World. The rumors about Fang Guo shocked the European continent!
The Ming Empire in the Old Continent is enough to cause headaches for the Western powers. Wouldn't it be even more troublesome to have the Shang Fang Kingdom in the New Continent?
And this Shang Fang country actually has flintlocks and cannons, as well as a large number of horses, cattle and sheep, and can nomadic herdsmen. Of course, it also has wheels... This hard power is really new, the Indians in the Americas No country can compare with them.
It's okay to say that horses, cattle, sheep, and wheels are nothing to visitors from the Old World. The Chinese must have had them 2,000 years ago. It's not surprising that they brought them to America when they crossed east... ..It’s just that those people have lived in the Americas for more than two thousand years, and it’s a bit weird that they didn’t spread the technology of raising horses, cattle, and sheep to the Indians, as well as the wheel.
But guns and cannons cannot have existed in China more than 2,000 years ago. If King Zhou of Shang had "guns and cannons," how could King Wu of Zhou attack him? After the Shang Fang Kingdom arrived in America, they had no strong enemies to fight with them. The most powerful weapon in the hands of Zhou's Indians was an obsidian stick. To deal with them, bronze weapons are enough. How could merchants develop "merchant guns and cannons"?
Therefore, the leaders of the Western powers in Europe are very suspicious that there is some kind of connection between this Shang country and China... and it has even received the support of the Ming Dynasty!
This is troublesome... One of the reasons why it is difficult for Ming Dynasty to establish hegemony in the New World is that there are no people of its own in the New World!
Why was the Ming Dynasty so powerful in Southeast Asia? The current New Ming Dynasty was originally founded by "Chaozhou warriors", and their Chaozhou fellows and Minnan fellows are everywhere in Nanyang. Therefore, the Confucian sect and the Nanyang Trading Company of the Ming Dynasty easily penetrated into Nanyang. The Chaozhou people and the Hokkien people banded together again, and soon armed groups were formed under the organization of the Confucian sect and the Nanyang Trading Company, with the Ming Navy behind them. Support them, no one dares to mess with them!
If there are millions of merchants in the Americas, and Emperor Zhu develops the Henan Association, will there still be a new continent for Europeans by then?
So the news of the discovery of the Shang Dynasty in the Americas spread to Europe, and the European powers such as Spain, Portugal, France, and England, which had large colonies in the New World, immediately exploded!
Nanyang, which was just taken away by Emperor Zhu, is actually not the core interest of these European colonial empires... Except for the Spanish religious fanatics who snatched a large Philippine colony in Nanyang, the Portuguese colony in Nanyang is a On the island of Timor, the Dutch only had Batavia, Malacca and a few spice islands. These Europeans did not really "colonize" Nanyang. They just used these territories in Nanyang as a base for obtaining spices and trading with China.
Therefore, Zhu Heji's strategy of sending troops to Southeast Asia without depriving the Western powers of their economic benefits was acceptable to the Western powers. The two sides would not break up and start a war... Even the trade war was caused by the Dutch and The Portuguese surrendered without fighting.
But the New World is different!
That is the core interest of countries such as England, France, Spain, and Portugal!
Moreover, the New World and the European continent are across the sea. The distance from the island of Ireland to the island of Newfoundland is less than two thousand miles. If this Shang country swept the New World under the auspices of the Ming Dynasty, then the west coast of Europe might be attacked by the Ming-Shang Dynasty combined fleet in the future!
In addition, the good days of the European powers were actually gold and silver from the New World!
Wasn't their idea of starting a trade war with Ming Dynasty just to use the gold and silver in their hands to choke Ming Dynasty?
If the New World of America was taken away by the Shang Dynasty, what else would the European powers use to fight a trade war with the Ming Dynasty? Not only the trade war with the Ming Dynasty cannot be fought, but also the war with the Ottoman Empire for Central Europe will not be fought because of lack of money.
By then the entire Christian civilization will be in crisis!
Therefore, "investigating the merchants" became a major task that Baron John Churchill had to complete before returning to Europe.
Baron John Churchill first approached Ji Dabao, an expert in Oriental studies who followed him, and obtained from him a book about the period of King Wu's conquest of Zhou - "The Legend of Angels", which is the English version of "The List of Gods".
John Churchill also studied "The Legend of Angels" very seriously. He has a certain understanding of the history of King Wu's defeat of Zhou... and he also pointed out an obvious mistake made by King Zhou and Shen Gongbao. They did not use "Jie Angel" intensively, but divided it. A batch of "angels" with limited investment have become a fuel tactic. If they had hired more "Angels" at once and concentrated on the "Angels" to fight the annihilation battle, Ji Fa and Jiang Ziya would have lost the war long ago.
Of course, John Churchill also knew that the story of "The Legend of Angels" was untrue... The fact that a fox turned into a beautiful woman was a fairy tale as soon as you heard it. So he asked Ji Dabao to find Zhang Ying and Tu Hai, two "experts" who knew more about Shang's history, to inquire.
"Baron," Ji Dabao said to Baron Churchill in "old English" after listening to Zhang Ying and Tu Hai, "Ambassador Tu believes that the Shangfang Kingdom in the northwest of the North American continent is the China that perished 2,600 years ago. Descendants of the Shang Dynasty. Ambassador Zhang said that in an ancient book called "Book of Yizhou" there is a record that Lu Fu, the son of the last Shang king, led his people to flee and ended up unknown."
""The Book of Yizhou"?" John Churchill asked, "What kind of book is this? Who wrote it?"
Of course Ji Dabao couldn't answer. As a professor of Oriental studies at Cambridge University, his knowledge was obviously a bit small... so he could only throw the question to Zhang Ying.
Zhang Ying said with a smile: "The so-called Yi means lost. "Yi Zhou Shu" is the deleted part of "Zhou Shu" in "Shang Shu". It is said that Confucius once deleted "Shang Shu" and revised it from "Shang Shu". Some contents were deleted from Zhou Shu" and compiled into "Yi Zhou Shu". Among them is the incident of "Lu Fu ran north". However, there is no record of where Lu Fu ran to the north. In other historical materials Among them, Father Lu died in the Three Prisons Rebellion."
Ji Dabao listened carefully to Zhang Ying's explanation, and then said to John Churchill, "Baron, this Book of Yizhou was written by Confucius using the deleted parts when he revised the history book of the Zhou Dynasty, Book of Zhou." Therefore, the content about Lu Fu leading his tribe to escape was deleted because there is no record of them in subsequent historical materials, but there is a record of Lu Fu dying in the war."
Baron Churchill nodded and said: "The bodies of those who died in the war may not necessarily be found, and the missing persons will be recorded as dead if they are never found... It seems that this last prince of Shang This is the case. So, are there any records about these missing businessmen in later historical records?"
Ji Dabao's memory does not exist, but whether it exists or not, one has to ask Zhang Ying and Tu Hai.
Zhang Ying is very knowledgeable, so it is up to him to answer this question.
But before Zhang Ying could answer, Tu Hai frowned and answered: "There seems to be records in this regard..."
There seems to?
How can it be?
Zhang Ying was stunned. Just when he was about to refute Tu Hai, Tu Hai said: "It seems that there is a record in the book in the Four Books and Six Classics..."
"Four Books and Six Classics"? Zhang Ying was born in two rankings, and he has been engaged in research on rebellion studies for many years. How smart is he? You will immediately know what Tuhai means.
This "Anti-Jing" in the "Four Books and Six Classics" was created by Zhou Peigong!
And this Zhou Peigong is said to have been captured by the Ming army in the Battle of Ulan Butong, and then disappeared... Based on Zhang Ying's understanding of Zhou Peigong as a person, this guy will never die if he can be a second minister. of the Qing Dynasty.
And he, the "lost-all strategist", is not an enemy to the Ming Dynasty - his strategy must be "lost-all" when faced with the Ming Dynasty. The more such enemies, the better!
So Emperor Zhu will definitely not kill him, and maybe he will be given an official position...
In addition, Zhang Ying also knew that many Junggar warriors who participated in the Battle of Ulanbutong were missing... In his letter to Kangxi, Galdan also accused Zhu Heji of fighting in Ulanbutong. After the war the prisoners were massacred.
But everyone knows that this is unlikely. Because the Junggar Khanate was actually divided by Emperor Zhu, many high-level officials of the Khanate, including the three brothers Anuktun and Tsewan Alabutan, had already taken refuge with Zhu Heji.
Therefore, there was no need for Zhu Heji to massacre the prisoners of the quasi-division, and those Mongolians had no moral integrity, and no one would die for Galdan.
And the "Shang Fang people" who were grazing in the New World of America that Ji Dabao just mentioned sound a bit like Mongolians!
Thinking of this, Zhang Ying immediately said to Ji Dabao: "There seems to be such a record...but I can't remember it clearly. I have to go back to the Western Qing Dynasty to check the historical materials."
Ji Dabao said to Baron Churchill: "Baron, Ambassador Zhang and Ambassador Tu all said that there are records in this regard, but there are not many and it is difficult to verify. They have to check historical materials before they can be sure."
John Churchill thought to himself: "What else is there to prove? The descendants of the merchants are all in the New World!"
Thinking of this, he asked Tu Hai again, "Ambassador Tu, did you hear about the discovery of Shangfang Kingdom in the New World when you were in Ming Dynasty Middle School?"
Of course Tu Hai had never heard of it... When he left Guangzhou, the second wave of New World transport fleets had not yet returned, so no one knew that there was a Shang Fang country in the New World. Moreover, the matter of sending people to the New World has always been a secret. Tu Hai was not involved at all. At most, he had heard some rumors.
So Tu Hai didn't know how to answer. Fortunately, Tu Zhongtang, who had been an official for many years, was still very good at talking, so he frowned and replied: "Actually, there has always been a country of descendants of Shang on the Shenzhou side. It’s the country of North Korea... It’s the country of Jizi. If there is still contact between the Shangfang State who traveled east and the hometown of Shenzhou, then they must be in contact with North Korea.”
Ji Dabao said to Baron Churchill: "Baron, Ambassador Tu said that there have been rumors about this in Korea... Jizi, the pioneering ancestor of Korea, was the uncle of the last Shang king, Emperor Xin, who led the army after the demise of the Shang Dynasty. Some merchants crossed the sea to establish a country in Korea. If Father Lu once crossed east, then he must have received help from Jizi, and there must have been exchanges between the Shangfang Kingdom in America and Korea in China."
This North Korea has always been closed to the outside world. To the West, those countries are quite mysterious. And judging from the map, North Korea is not particularly far from the Americas. You only need to pass through the Japanese archipelago and then follow the warm North Pacific current to the east... If Jizi conquers North Korea first, Lu Fu will then go to seek refuge. , with the help of Jizi, he accidentally crossed the Japanese archipelago and entered the Pacific Ocean when crossing eastward to Japan. It is very likely that he will follow the ocean current to the New World.
Baron Churchill thought hard about it and finally discovered the truth. He was thinking in his mind: "If this Shang Fang country really originated 2,600 years ago, and has maintained contact with North Korea for more than 2,000 years...then the population and level of civilization of this country will probably be... It will all exceed imagination. Even if there are millions of people and a civilization that far exceeds that of the native American Indians, it is still normal.
And the Ming Empire has now merged with North Korea, so Emperor Zhu must also know about the existence of Shangfang State, and he has probably contacted Shangfang State and started to provide them with weapons and equipment. No wonder the Spaniards encountered gun-toting Shang Dynasty people in the New World. It turned out that it was the ambitious Zhu Heji who was causing trouble.
The situation in the New World... is very serious!
