From January to April, Li Zhi's textile factory has been expanding production.
The quality of Li Zhi's Lijiajing cloth is better than the hand-woven cloth on the market, and it is very easy to sell. However, if it is dumped in the prefectures and counties of the Ming Dynasty, it will bankrupt the housewives who spin and weave at home, causing very serious social problems, and eventually
It became a political issue. Therefore, Li Zhi never launched a large-scale textile factory.
But after the ship opened the route to Hirado, Li Zhi had the Japanese market and could sell high-quality and low-priced Li family fine cloth to Japan.
Of course, dumping the large-scale mechanized production of Li's fine cloth to the Japanese country would also cause the Japanese weavers to go bankrupt. But that was a problem for the Japanese people, and Li Zhi didn't bother to consider it.
During this period, Li Zhi's trading fleet has been sailing to Taiwan, and the cotton cloth produced by the textile factory is piled in the warehouse. Li Zhi is planning to let the fleet continue to sail to Taiwan until mid-May. From mid-May to the end of August in the lunar calendar
During this period, there will be typhoons along the southeast coast, so the fleet will be diverted to run the Tianjin-Hirado route to avoid the typhoon.
By the end of April, Li Zhi recruited tenant farmers and began to reclaim 200,000 acres of private land on both sides of the rivers in Qing County and Xingji County. Although the harvest of paddy fields reclaimed in Taiwan was higher, Tianjin's construction could not be left behind. After all, Tianjin
It is a base camp, and the large amount of farmland in the local area is conducive to local stability and prosperity. After all, Taiwan’s rice has to be transported across the sea, and no one knows whether there will be problems at sea. For example, during a typhoon, the fleet cannot run back and forth between the two places.
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Zheng Hui was not in Tianjin, so Li Zhi put Li Xing in charge of organizing the reclamation of new fields. Now Li Zhi's prestige in Tianjin is at its peak, and the guards in various places are extremely fawning over Li Zhi, and the local gentry dare not stop Li Zhi from building irrigation canals. On all sides,
With the cooperation of others, there were basically no obstacles to reclaiming new land. Even though Li Xing was doing this for the first time, he was able to organize 10,000 tenant farmers to reclaim land.
During this period, Li Zhi's shipbuilders continued to launch new ships. Among them, in late February, five large ships built in Dengzhou and Laizhou, Shandong, contacted by Gao Ligong were launched. By April 9th, another one was built in Wangjiawan.
Big ships, Li Zhi had ten big ships.
With these ten large ships, Li Zhi could transport more than 3,000 farmers to Hsinchu in one trip.
Although there are ten ships, there are not that many cannons. The new gunsmiths in the artillery workshop are not yet skilled, and the production capacity of the artillery workshop is still slowly increasing. From the beginning of January to the end of April, Li Zhi's gunsmiths only had
Eighty heavy cannons were produced. Eight of Li Zhi's ten ships were equipped with cannons, and two ships were without cannons.
But even so, eight gunboats are very powerful. Even the Dutch pirate fleet only has nine gunboats. Moreover, Li Zhi's steamship can run faster than a sailboat, and can run away when encountering a large fleet that cannot be defeated. So comprehensively
Generally speaking, Li Zhi's fleet is very safe.
In early May, Li Zhi followed the fleet to Hsinchu, a stronghold in Taiwan. Now Hsinchu has transported 10,000 people there, and Li Zhi consumes 2,000 shi of grain, a large amount of silver and various supplies every month. Li Zhi wants to go
See how the construction is going.
The wind was clear and the clouds were clear along the way. Ten ships cut through the waves and took eight days to reach the sea outside Zhejiang.
On this day, Li Zhi was standing on the poop of the Xinxing with a cup of Longjing tea, chatting with the fleet captain Lu Hu.
"Grand Governor, Taiwan is so barbaric, Grand Governor, why don't you wait until the construction is completed before going there?"
Li Zhi smiled and said: "The wilderness is a good place. It is precisely because of the wilderness that we can cultivate and profit. If everything was as mature as the Ming Dynasty, there would be a lot of resistance to whatever we do, and our career would be extremely difficult.
It’s difficult to carry out.”
Lu Hu nodded and said: "The Governor is not afraid of miasma and went to the wild Taiwan to inspect it in person. I admire you!"
Li Zhi looked at the seagulls following the stern of the boat and said: "In the future, we will open up more places and conquer more wild lands. We will compete with the Europeans and fill the entire world with the blood of the Han people."
The two were talking there, but suddenly they heard Abban on the mast shouting: "There is a fleet to the south!"
Everyone was stunned and looked towards the south. Li Zhi raised his telescope and observed the horizon for a while, and sure enough he saw a fleet gradually emerging from the horizon.
After a while, the two fleets gradually approached, and Li Zhi saw the fleet on the opposite side clearly. The fleet was quite large, with nine ships. The ships in the fleet were also not small, and each ship looked like it had a new star.
It's so big, the two largest ships are even bigger than the Nova.
Abban on the boat shouted: "The tricolor flag! It's the red-haired pirate fleet!"
After hearing what Aban said, the people on the boat became a little nervous and all looked at Li Zhi.
Lu Hu said: "Grand Governor, eight of our ships have cannons, so they may not be able to defeat the Dutch. Our ships are fast, let's escape around them, right?"
Li Zhi carefully observed the Dutch fleet and said nothing.
Lu Hu had no choice but to look at the Dutch fleet with his telescope, but he couldn't see anything interesting.
"Grand Governor, shall we escape?"
Li Zhi put down the telescope, shook his head and said: "Our artillery shells are much more powerful than theirs. If we don't escape, we will sink them all!"
Lu Hu was stunned and said: "Grand Governor"
Li Zhi waved his hand and said: "Give me the order, and the fleet will form a line to greet Hong Mao who is rushing forward to die."
Lu Hu had no choice but to shout loudly to the sailor in charge of the flag: "The fleet lines up in a horizontal formation to meet the enemy! Aim the broadside cannon at Hong Mao's ship."
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"Captain of the Formosa Combined Fleet of the United Provinces of the Netherlands and the United East India Company and Captain of the Flagship Braidan" Forreston looked at the Ming fleet in the distance with a monocular telescope and said nothing.
Formosa is the Dutch name for Taiwan. The Formosa Combined Fleet is a fleet based in the city of Jelandia in southern Taiwan. This fleet has been plundering near Taiwan, sometimes robbing merchant ships, and sometimes rushing to
They looted the territory of the Ming Dynasty and became a local tyrant.
Except for being repelled by Zheng Hui when they landed in northwest Formosa for robbery in January, this pirate fleet has never encountered a rival. Even Zheng Zhilong's ship, this fleet dared to rob it.
After a long time, Forreston put down the telescope and said: "It's this Ming fleet again that doesn't use sails and has smoke above its head. There are more ships in the fleet than last time!"
After thinking about it, Forreston smiled and said: "The Ming people formed a horizontal formation. They want to use cannons to deal with our fleet!"
The first mate Caron beside him put down his telescope and said coldly: "These Ming people don't know how to fight at sea! They learned from us placing cannons on the ship, and they thought they could rely on cannons to decide the outcome. They didn't know that our ships had
It is so strong that even if it is blasted by hundreds of cannons, it will only make a few holes in the ship's plank." (To be continued.)
