Bao Yifen described the situation in Nanyang this way: "There is no need to delay!"
When Bao Yifen said this, it was as if the sky in Nanyang had fallen, which made all the army generals feel toothache!
In that poor place in Nanyang, what is urgent is not just a few colonies, it sounds like it is so important.
But now it was the navy who was speaking. In order to avoid being rude, the army generals pretended not to have heard and let them blow it off!
Just listen to Bao Yifen continue: "Last year, our colony in Luzon was attacked by pirates. Thousands of pirates besieged our colony. Fortunately, the soldiers stationed there fought bravely and successfully resisted it. But
There are two such things, especially this pirate attack. Although we have no evidence, we can judge that the preparations must have been instigated by the Portuguese!"
"The Portuguese have already caused major obstacles to our colonial operations in Southeast Asia, and in the foreseeable future, they will continue to launch various means to hinder our Nanyang policy. Therefore, we must attack the Portuguese
arrogance to ensure the empire’s strategic advantages in the South China Sea and maritime trade interests!”
Bao Yifen's words were not finished yet. He continued to talk about how the Portuguese had seriously violated the interests of the empire. For the sake of maritime trade interests and the development of domestic industry and commerce, they must have a fight with the Portuguese and beat them to the ground.
if.
These words seem to make sense, well, they do make sense, but none of the people present are stupid!
Although the conflict with the Portuguese was serious, it was not serious enough to warrant a war. Moreover, the war with the Portuguese started before the European routes were established. How could sea trade be carried out in the future?
The relationship between the Portuguese and the empire is now becoming more and more complicated, with various interests conflicting greatly, but there are also huge common interests.
As for the common interests of both parties, before the empire successfully opened a second European route and established real trade relations with the Spanish or other countries, if it fell out with the Portuguese, both sides would lose.
You must know that the prosperity of overseas trade today relies to a large extent on the Portuguese channels, which exported a large number of goods to India, West Asia, Africa and Europe.
Especially the European market is now completely monopolized by the Portuguese!
There is no way, the Portuguese are so powerful now, they almost monopolize the African coast and some Indian Ocean routes. Even the more powerful Spaniards cannot compete with the Portuguese in these waters and can only do it secretly.
This also led to the fact that the relationship between the empire and the Portuguese could not simply be described as cooperation or hostility.
Competition in cooperation is the current relationship between the two.
In this way, going to war with the Portuguese is currently not worth the gain, so the Navy is clamoring to fight the Portuguese, which is unrealistic in the short term.
It’s not a matter of whether we can defeat it, but a matter of trade being cut off after we defeat it!
You can't say you can go to war and do business at the same time!
Well, although this is not impossible, it still feels a bit nonsense. Since we are already doing business, why are we still fighting?
After all, the core contradiction between the Portuguese and the empire does not mean that just a few Southeast Asian colonies, or even a strategic location like Malacca, is not the core contradiction in the current relationship between the two parties.
Their core contradiction is that the Portuguese monopolized the route to Europe, and thus made a lot of profits from East Asia to Europe, but they did not leave much for the Tang Dynasty.
To put it bluntly, on the hugely profitable route from East Asia to Europe, the two sides had conflicts over the proportion of the spoils.
The Tang Empire wanted more than just a small head.
The Portuguese will definitely not do it. They have put in a lot of efforts to open up and monopolize the routes to East Asia. How can they not make high profits?
This is the core of the conflict between the two parties!
This is also the key reason why the Tang Empire tried so hard to open up new European routes and at the same time wanted to bring in the Spaniards, in order to increase profits on this route.
I could earn one hundred taels of silver, so why would I settle for just ten taels of silver? Why didn’t I just take away the ninety taels of silver or even all of it!
The various contradictions and conflicts of interest between the Portuguese and the empire have made the relationship between the two parties relatively complicated. The navy keeps talking about fighting, but the army generals are too lazy to pay attention to them.
Even the Holy Emperor Li Xuan felt that the Navy was acting too hastily and that it would be a matter of the future to attack the Portuguese. Now it was time to colonize various places in Southeast Asia.
The strategic focus of the Tang Empire now and in the future, if nothing else, will still be directed to the north and northwest. The Tatars, Tubos and Oara people there are the real threats to the Tang Empire at present!
Even if they could no longer threaten the strategic security of the empire, the Tang Empire had to launch several wars to obtain horses even for the horse farm.
Among them, the Hetao area is a top priority. The Army has already formulated dozens of plans, all of which are studying how to regain the Hetao area and consolidate the defense of this area.
Against this background, it can actually be declared that in the distribution of military expenditures in the eight years of Xuanping, the army will still occupy the absolute majority, and the navy will occupy a small part.
But even if it occupies the majority, the Army will still have a harder time because the total military expenditure is less!
In the seventh year of Xuanping, the army and navy combined spent a total of about 30 million taels of silver in military expenditures, and the army monopolized more than 26 million taels of silver.
But this year, the total military expenditure is only 25 million taels of silver, and it has been clearly stated that there will be no additional temporary military expenditures allocated this year. It is whatever it is, and one tael of silver is not much.
In this case, even if the Army monopolizes 80% of the military expenditures, the total amount at that time would only be 20 million, and this money would need to support the Army's frontline field troops of more than 200,000 people, while also maintaining
There are about 300,000 local reserve troops, and part of the funding needs to be provided to support local militia organizations.
If we just maintain these troops, twenty million taels of silver is actually enough, and not only is it enough, there is much more!
But the Army is still fighting. Fighting wars costs more than maintaining troops!
The war in Liaodong is still going on, devouring a lot of military spending every day!
Then, the anti-bandit operations in various places, the small-scale armed forces of Tatars and Tibetans in border towns, etc., all require combat funds.
As a result, the Army felt that the eight years of Xuanping were a bit difficult!
And it can be predicted that the future will become increasingly difficult, because the more peaceful the period, the lower the proportion of military expenditures. The empire cannot always maintain such a high proportion of military expenditures!
what to do?
What else can we do? Use various methods to save military expenses, and then tighten our belts to live a better life. For example, when fighting, we must save artillery shells. Don’t treat the artillery shells as money. If you shoot a shell, it will cost you a lot.
A piece of white money!
However, disarmament is impossible. Disarmament is impossible. I will never see disarmament in my life!