Ever since the affairs of southern Xinjiang were handed over to Huang Zhiting, Gao Pragmatic had not worried much. He only learned about them from various reports received or discovered by the Ministry of Internal Affairs.
There were also occasional moments when he wanted to fine-tune Huang Zhiting's arrangements, but he endured it in the end. On the one hand, there were no major flaws in Huang Zhiting's handling, and on the other hand, he attached great importance to trusting people when employing people. In addition, he firmly believed that a man should keep his word, including to his wife, so he simply "just watched." explain".
It can be counted from the time when Gao Yuan was born, the situation in southern Xinjiang has stabilized.
Judging from Gao Pragmatic's plan, this period of stability may not be short, ranging from three to five years to seven or eight years at most. Gao Pragmatic has no plans to make any moves.
It's fun to open up new territories, but it's not enough to conquer territory. You have to establish a long-term and stable rule before it truly falls into your own pocket. Alexander's conquests seemed exciting, but they immediately fell apart as soon as he died, and the empire failed to survive as a unified entity.
Of course, the reason why the death of Alexander the Great had such serious consequences had a lot to do with the fact that he had no heir at the time. Although Gao Pragmatic was not the "Great Emperor", he had an heir now, and he was his eldest son. The most legitimate successor in legal terms.
However, there is no guarantee that his foundation will be stable in the future. Even he himself cannot guarantee it. What can really ensure this is for Jinghua to always be vigilant and not act blindly or radically.
For a person as powerful as Li Shimin, he had to calm down and develop and strengthen himself first during the Weishui Alliance, not to mention he was very pragmatic. Besides, he is the emperor, and Jinghua's rule in southern Xinjiang is not justifiable, so he must be even more careful.
However, he also knew that Huang Zhiting was now eyeing two targets, one was Arakan further west in Myanmar, more specifically Chittagong in Arakan, and the other was the Malay Peninsula further south from Siam.
Chittagong was targeted by Huang Zhiting herself. Gao Pragmatic did not hint at anything and even rarely mentioned it.
The reason is not complicated. If you want to hit Chittagong, there is almost only one land route, which is easier for the opponent to defend. If you want to take the sea route, Arakan itself is a country based on the navy. Not only is the fleet strength not weak, but the coastal defenses are definitely better. complete. No one can predict in advance what kind of losses the fleet will suffer if they fight.
Secondly, Chittagong is adjacent to the Kingdom of Bengal, and Bengal has been conquered by the Mughal Empire for nearly ten years. If Beijing suddenly launches a large-scale military attack on the "bedside" of the Mughal Empire, it will be difficult to guarantee that this expansion will be at a disadvantage. Will the empire in its strongest period announce the Eastern Expedition on a whim?
The Mughal Eastern Expedition itself did not frighten Gao Pragmatic so much. After all, the Mughal Empire's current dominant force was actually cavalry. Therefore, Ming Jinghua retreated a little east and retreated to the mountains of western Myanmar to fight mountain warfare with the Mughal Empire. With the wolf soldiers serving as "instructors" or "model troops", he was not afraid of playing in the mountains with the Mughal Empire. One play.
But not being afraid does not mean that there will be one. The Mughal Empire is an empire with a land area of about four million square kilometers. It is not much smaller than the Ming Dynasty. And unlike the Ming Dynasty, it is still under the control of the third generation emperor Abak. Under his rule, it was a prosperous period, and the country was very powerful.
In short, the Mughal Empire should not be too afraid of tug-of-war now, and although Gao Pragmatic can claim not to be afraid, at least he has suffered a loss - the war in Beijing only cost him his own money, and the countries in southern Xinjiang have just How much surplus will there be after coming out of the war? If it is not posted, it will be managed well.
So whether it can be won is one thing, and whether it is cost-effective is another. It is not cost-effective to risk war with the Mughals for a mere Arakan Kingdom. Chittagong sailors are certainly an asset, but they are not absolutely irreplaceable. At least after so many years since the Ming Dynasty opened the sea, it is no longer as difficult as it was in the early years for Gaowu to recruit sailors from the southeastern coastal provinces.
Another goal of Huang Zhiting is the Malay Peninsula. The emergence of this goal has a lot to do with Gao Pragmatism. The main reason is that when Gao Pinggong explained the situation in Nanyang to her, he repeatedly emphasized the importance of the Malacca Strait.
"A car can travel half a hundred miles, but a ship can travel a thousand miles." At this time when transportation is backward, the advantages of sea transportation are self-evident. As a maritime traffic artery and shipping hub, the Strait is bound to be a battleground for military strategists.
The Strait of Malacca is the gateway to Asia. When the ocean age is coming, whoever controls this place will be the overlord of Asia's oceans.
As early as the beginning of the 15th century, the Ming Dynasty and Malacca formed a relationship similar to a strategic alliance. The Kingdom of Malacca became a regional power with the support of the Ming Dynasty, while the Ming Dynasty established a maritime transit station in Malacca with Malacca as the center. tributary circle, and then controlled the route from the Pacific to the Indian Ocean, becoming the empire that controlled the Asian oceans in that era.
In 1403, Zhu Di, who had ascended to the throne, inherited the tribute system and diplomatic thinking in Chinese history. When he came to power, he immediately sent envoys to all directions to announce the succession of the imperial throne and reaffirm the empire's influence and control overseas. Immediately afterwards, envoys from Ryukyu, Japan, and Siam came to pay tribute to the Ming Dynasty one after another, establishing vassal and canonization relations.
The Kingdom of Malacca at this time was called Manlajia by the Ming Dynasty. It was located on a strategic passage and received great attention from the Ming court, which quickly included it in the Ming Dynasty's tribute system. In October 1403, Zhu Di sent the eunuch Yin Qing to deliver gifts to Manlajia. "Bailimi Sula was overjoyed and sent envoys to pay tribute with the celebration," which set a precedent for the Yongle Dynasty's imperial inscriptions on gifts.
Chengzu of the Ming Dynasty also wrote an inscription in his own handwriting to confer Man Lajia. The inscription praised Man Lajia and his king: The king is kind and considerate of his dynasty, and I hope that Yihua in Nei County will be more beautiful. However, what "Hua Feng" was, Paramesura didn't really care about it at that time. What he cared most about was to get rid of the rule of Siam immediately. This was the substantive meaning of his friendship with the Ming Dynasty.
At the beginning of the founding of the Malacca Kingdom, there were powerful enemies on all sides. Paramesura used his soft body to fight for a living space. On the one hand, it established a good relationship with the Kingdom of Siam and paid 40 taels of gold to the Kingdom of Siam every year in exchange for temporary peace. On the other hand, it formed a marriage alliance with the kingdom on the Indonesian Islands in the south. At the same time, it took the Ming Dynasty as its suzerainty and established a vassal whose political significance was greater than its actual jurisdiction. relation.
In 1406, Paramesura led his wife and more than 540 attendants to visit the Ming Dynasty with Zheng He's fleet. This was the largest foreign mission to visit the Ming Dynasty since the Ming Dynasty. During this visit, Paramesura received courtesy from the Ming court. On the 25th and 28th of the seventh lunar month, the first of August, the first of September, and the fifteenth of September, Chengzu of the Ming Dynasty hosted banquets or rewards for the envoys. When the envoys left Nanjing and returned to China on September 18th, Chengzu of the Ming Dynasty He also ordered a farewell banquet to be held at Longjiang Post. Such standard treatment was the only king in the Ming Dynasty who received visits from other countries.
In 1411, Paramesura visited China for the second time. In 1414, when Zheng He was returning from his fourth voyage, Paramesura led a delegation to visit the Ming Dynasty for the third time.
It is self-evident that Malacca has important strategic significance for the Ming Empire. Controlling the Malacca Strait means that the Ming Dynasty will have long-term maritime peace. The Ming Dynasty's control of the Malacca Strait was achieved by establishing close suzerain-vassal relations and ocean shipping transfer stations.
For the next century, Malacca maintained close relations with the Ming Dynasty. During Zheng He's seven voyages to the West, he visited Malacca six times.
The establishment of the Malacca shipping transfer station meant that the Ming Dynasty established a strategic buffer zone based in Southeast Asia. At that time, the South China Sea truly became the inland sea of the Ming Dynasty.
However, with the death of Zhu Di, the Ming Dynasty's maritime strategy shrank significantly and the sea was banned. The "transit stations" in Malacca and other places lost their meaning and gradually dispersed and collapsed. Today, only the Guangdong Navy occasionally sends ships to patrol the south, and their role is almost just for display. exist.
And when the Ming Dynasty's strategy shrank for more than a hundred years, the Portuguese came.
It was from Malacca that the Portuguese gained a relatively real impression of China, and the steps towards China also began from Malacca.
After Vasco da Gama's fleet arrived at Kozhikode in present-day Kozhikode, the state of Kerala in the southwest of the Indian peninsula, they systematically collected geographical and humanistic information about Asia on a large scale, with the main target being the Ming Dynasty in the Far East.
After Portugal occupied Goa, it paid more attention to the Ming Dynasty. Gorea, a historian who has lived in India for half a century, said that he met Chinacota at that time, which means "fortress of the Chinese" because the "white people with black and long hair" had many "official factories" in India. .
In 1508, King Don Manuel I of Portugal asked Fleet Commander Seguera: "You must find out about the Qin people (i.e. Chinese people, Ming people). Where did they come from and how far did they travel? When did they arrive in Manchuria? Luca or other places where they traded? What goods did they bring? ... Were they Christians or pagans? Was their country large? Did they have more than one king? Where did their territory extend? What countries did they associate with? As neighbors?”
In 1512, the Portuguese who conquered Malacca bribed five Ming shipowners and began planning a plan to go to the Ming Dynasty.
In 1517, the Portuguese officially arrived on the southeast coast of the Ming Dynasty. Around 1557, they occupied Macau through fraud and bribery.
The Portuguese colonists were of course interested in the wealth of the Ming Dynasty, and imagined that the Ming Dynasty would fall into their hands as easily as Malacca. Although after hundreds of years of coming to the coast of the Ming Dynasty, they found that this empire was not something they could swallow, but The capture of Malacca indeed opened the most glorious history of the Portuguese maritime empire.
In addition to encountering powerful foreign enemies, another important reason for the demise of the Malacca dynasty was internal decline and disputes. The Ming Dynasty, the nominal suzerain state at that time, had long ignored sea power, and they showed indifference to the fall of Malacca.
The Ming court learned that Malacca had been invaded in 1520, nine years after Malacca fell into Portuguese hands. In these nine years, the Portuguese have already crossed the South China Sea and entered the coast of Guangdong.
If it were not for the impudence of the Portuguese and the envoy Mohammed, the prince of Malacca and Prince Bintang, who came to Yanjing and sent a letter of help from Malacca to the Ministry of Rites, the Ming court might even have been kept in the dark about the fall of Malacca into the hands of the Portuguese. inside.
It was the Zhengde Dynasty at that time, and Emperor Zhengde happened to have lost the ability to solve the matter at that time - he died after being ill for three months. However, under the advice of a group of ministers at the time, the imperial court finally responded to the fall of Malacca: Franji (Portugal) was not allowed to pay tribute. At the same time, Pires and his party, the Portuguese envoy to the Ming Dynasty, were taken to Guangzhou in the spring and summer of the same year. , and was thrown into prison as a hostage to return the territory of Malacca.
In the face of repeated requests for help from the Malacca court, the Ming court declared that it required Portugal to return Malacca, otherwise it would detain the mission until it was returned to Malacca.
This method of detaining envoys to respond to the armed occupation of the Portuguese was simply nonsense in Gao Pragmatic's view. It was not only incompetent, but also showed a lack of international ocean view.
However, after all, the Ming Dynasty had no military presence in the Nanyang area at this time, and its tributary relationship with these Nanyang countries was just a political commitment letter to each other, which was completely feeble. To be precise, when royal fleets like Zheng He's fleet disappeared in Nanyang, the Ming Dynasty's weak diplomatic words and negotiations could not save Malacca from destruction, let alone spread the voice of the empire to the world.
In order to spread the voice of China to the world, we must have a powerful fleet and effectively control Malacca.
Huang Zhiting was so anxious that what impressed her most was when Gao Pragmatic drew the Pacific and Indian Oceans on the map: "The capture of Malacca is the beginning of Beijing's control of the two oceans."
Huang Zhiting has always been convinced by Gao's pragmatic strategic vision, so she firmly believes in his words. Since then, she has been thinking about how to capture the Malay Peninsula - yes, she will not just capture the Malay Peninsula like the Portuguese. Malacca City, relying on this stronghold to control the entire strait.
If she wants to take it, she must take the land as well. The entire Malay Peninsula must be firmly in her hands.
As for the truth, just like the Chinese dynasties that have been divided for a long time, they must unite. The deep-rooted cultural tradition is that the winner takes all. Later generations of foreign educators mentioned the shortcomings of the Chinese students they taught and said that Chinese students have a strong desire to win and would feel like they had failed if they did not take first place.
In fact, this is also a manifestation of the winner-take-all spirit, and even the tribute system is inseparable from this idea.
What is the spiritual nature of tribute?
It means that I am the best in the world, "you will not accept my concubines".
Even if Huang Zhiting is a woman, she is still affected by this culture. Therefore, in her understanding, Gao Pragmatic wants to control Malacca, that is, to capture the Malay Peninsula.
Her husband wanted it, and Southern Xinjiang was handed over to her. Of course, she began to plot the Malay Peninsula wholeheartedly.
Gao Jingshi guessed what she was thinking from the way she transferred Gao Ruiqiao to Siam. Although he agreed to the transfer as always, he still hoped to cool down his wife's mind a little.
After thinking for a long time, he walked to the table, sat down, and began to write a letter.
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