In April 1656, Alexander VII stood on the deck of a ship, chatting with King Joao IV of Portugal.
After sailing at sea for two months, Alexander VII has now arrived in the coastal waters of China. According to the estimation of the old Portuguese sailor on the ship, the ship has now passed through the strait between the Shandong Peninsula and the Liaodong Peninsula and entered the Bohai Sea.
The Pope was very surprised that he could reach China in only two months.
If the previous understanding of steamships was still on paper, this personal experience allowed the Pope to understand for once what "oriental technology" is. You must know that the average speed of wooden sailing ships in this era was only about four or five knots.
It takes six months to sail to China. The ship directly reduced the six months to one-third of the original time.
This speed can be said to have changed the geopolitics of this era. In the past, Europeans could invade Africa and the New World, which were a two-month voyage, but they could not invade China, which was a six-month voyage. But now, Li Zhi only needs two months to invade
What does it mean to ship cannon and rifles to Europe?
If the voyage between two countries with similar technological levels takes two months, it means exchanges and trade. Civilizations with similar levels will sell their special products and unique technologies to each other at a certain price, and in the communication, each other's development level will be improved.
Get close and maintain a strategic balance in the end.
However, now Li Zhi has changed this balance. When Europe, which had been advancing rapidly, was feeling complacent, it suddenly discovered that China in the East had become an arrogant monster. The white people who originally thought they could conquer the world are developing their own
colony, but suddenly found that the Chinese were pressing over them like a steamroller.
Now that Li Zhi had ascended the throne and China was now called Daqi, Alexander VII understood that China would become more powerful in the future.
This means war.
Smart people have understood that with the increasing number of steamships under Li Zhi's command, the strategic balance between Europe and China has been broken. Now it is no longer a question of how Europe and the Chinese will seize colonies. All knowledgeable white people have
Understand: Europe will be invaded by the Chinese before long.
The eight-hundred-ton steel ship cut through the waves in the sea, traveling at high speed through the waves like a sword. This was a technology that should not have appeared in this era. The Pope looked back at the chimney of the big ship and looked at it.
The billowing black smoke coming out of it made me sigh.
Some seagulls appeared above the ship. These waterbirds circled around the ship and occasionally rested on the railing of the ship. Generally speaking, seeing seagulls means approaching the coastline.
The Chinese sailors on the ship were a little excited, probably because they were happy to be close to home. These sailors who sailed to Europe can only go home once every six months, and only have the opportunity to hug their wives and see their children twice a year. No matter how high the captain gives them,
Without money, their lives are still unsatisfactory.
Probably because their lives were unsatisfactory, these Chinese sailors were not very friendly towards Europeans. Alexander VII, who had been on the ship for two months, knew this very well. He tried to minimize conversations with the Chinese and spent most of his time talking to them.
The King of Portugal chats.
Suddenly, the lookout on the mast let out a loud roar, and the Chinese sailors on the ship immediately cheered.
King Joao IV of Portugal patted the railing with joy, took out his telescope and looked to the west.
"Your Majesty the Pope, I see the lighthouse! In front of us is the Chinese port."
Then Joao IV excitedly waved to a five-member band next to him: "Tianjin is ahead, let's play music!"
The Pope frowned and looked at John IV, wondering why the king of the Chinese vassal state liked music so much. Those Portuguese music were not religious music, which made Alexander VII unhappy at being disturbed.
However, the King of Portugal was Li Zhi's favorite, and even the Pope did not dare to offend him easily. The Pope narrowed his eyes and looked to the west.
At first he couldn't see anything, but as the ship moved a little bit, he soon saw a huge harbor that shocked him.
The Pope also visited Amsterdam, the Netherlands, which is an impressive giant port. The Dutch port is the trade center of Europe. Originally, the Pope thought that there could not be a port larger than Amsterdam in the world, but what he saw in front of him
Everything completely shattered his judgment.
On the coastline of the west coast of the Bohai Sea, countless ship berths appeared in front of Alexander VII's eyes. He couldn't count how many there were specifically. He only knew that from south to north, all the ship berths in his field of vision were docks and berths.
Generally speaking, ports in this era were built in bays. The entrance to the bay had to be small so that the defenders of the harbor could establish sentries and defense facilities at the entrance to protect the ships in the bay.
However, Li Zhi's Tianjin Dagu Port did not consider the issue of defense at all, and expanded arbitrarily along the exposed coastline from north to south. Because Li Zhi did not believe that anyone would dare to go to East Asia to challenge his sea control.
The further ahead you drove, the more ships you saw around you. Alexander VII originally thought that the 800-ton steel ship he was on was already a giant ship. After all, there were very few thousand-ton giant ships in Europe.
However, the actual situation is that the 800-ton cargo ship in Tianjin Port is only above average.
After more than 20 years of development, Li Zhi had begun to mass-produce large ships of more than one thousand tons. Alexander VII soon saw a huge cargo ship with a steel hull and white ship paint. It was the ship he was on.
It's twice the size of the ship, which is several times bigger. The ship is filled with gray containers, and there is a pulley crane on the ship.
His Majesty the Pope stared dumbfounded as the giant ship passed by him. He thought that since the cargo ship could be so big, how far could Li Zhi's warship be?
Two thousand tons?
Large ships, small ships, and ships loaded with cargo were busy with traffic, forming two long queues on the waterway entering and exiting the port. The closer to the coastline, the higher the density of these two long queues. At the back, Alexander VII felt that the ship
The gap between the ship and the ship is less than 100 meters.
How many goods does Dagu Port send out in a day?
How much trade exchanges were there between Daqi and its overseas colonies? The busyness of Dagu Port in Tianjin completely exceeded Alexander VII's imagination.
This is not the center of a country, this is the center of the Pacific and Indian Oceans.
The ship entered the harbor and gradually approached the berth assigned to it.
Alexander VII soon saw Tang Ruowang waiting for him on the dock. He had worked with Tang Ruowang when he was an ordinary priest. At that time, Tang Ruowang was very knowledgeable and talented, and Alexander VII was good at dancing. Both of them were quite famous. Decades later,
Tang Ruowang became China's most famous missionary, and Alexander VII became the Pope.
However, what surprised Alexander VII was not Tang Ruowang's thoroughly Chinese style of dressing and hairstyle, but the three carriage-like transportation vehicles on the dock.
Under the operation of three coachmen, the three vehicles without horses drove automatically without external power and docked at the pier. The vehicles even reversed several times to find the best parking spot on the pier.
Place.
Alexander VII's eyes widened and he did not react for a long time. He pointed at the big black cars and asked loudly to the Portuguese sailors beside him:
