The Ryukyu Prefecture of the Tang Empire, an overseas territory directly under the jurisdiction of the People's Republic of China that is far away from the empire's mainland coast, has undergone earth-shaking changes in the past year.
Politically, officials from the mainland were in charge of the governance of the Ryukyu Islands. Of course, the Tang Dynasty's rule over the Ryukyu Islands was relatively relaxed, so some local people who had been Sinicized still entered the Ryukyu Islands to serve in governments at all levels.
In terms of military affairs, the small Ryukyu Prefecture has thousands of garrison troops. In addition to the garrison troops dispatched by the army, there are actually more naval troops.
The navy has deployed a marine battalion here. In addition, the strength of the Ryukyu Squadron is also quite good. There are many ships. Such many ships also require sailors and marines on board, so the number of the squadron is also large, plus the garrison personnel of the naval base.
, the navy has deployed more than 2,000 troops here.
The Ryukyu Squadron has one cruiser, four frigates, six patrol ships and more than 20 small ships. Although the ships in it are all early ships, even so, its organization is still smaller than that of an ordinary main fleet squadron.
It is more powerful, and as for the Luzon Squadron, it is even more incomparable to the Ryukyu Squadron.
The reason for this is very simple, that is, there are too many pirates in the waters from Ryukyu to Fuso, forcing the navy to continuously strengthen the power in this sea area to escort and combat pirates.
In the past two years, there have been many pirates in the Fuso Sea. This is caused by many factors. The main reason is that the Tang Dynasty cracked down on pirates along the local coast, which caused many pirates to set up foothold along the Fuso coast. In addition, the daimyo here in Fuso continued to attack each other.
The war produced a large number of wandering warriors, and these warriors joined pirate gangs one after another in order to survive.
Another point is that as the sea trade between Datang and Fuso gradually expanded, the large amount of benefits contained in it also made many daimyo excited. Some qualified gates opened ports to trade with merchants from Datang, and even
They would also send ships to the Tang Dynasty for trade, but after all, there were only a few daimyo with such conditions and opportunities.
So they chose another path, directly becoming pirates and plundering merchant ships traveling from Ryukyu to the western waters of Fuso.
With such a small investment and quick results, it can increase the employment rate of its samurai, and it can also attack the daimyo in western Fuso. It achieves multiple goals with one stone.
Under such a complex environment, piracy activities along the coast of Fuso have become more and more intense in the past two years. Merchant ships are often robbed, forcing the Tang Dynasty Navy to continuously increase investment in this sea area.
But eight years after Xuanping, the Tang Navy discovered that it was unreliable to just combat pirates on the sea.
Because fighting pirates on the sea cannot hurt their roots, and the roots of these pirates are in Fuso. Some ports are simply pirate dens, and some daimyo are simply pirate leaders. It is impossible to strangle one or two pirate ships on the sea.
You can't change the situation.
If it really just wanted to control the piracy situation from the sea, the Datang Navy would have to completely blockade the entire sea area, but how many warships would be needed? The Datang Navy now only has dozens of warships in total, and it needs
There are many deployment areas. It is very good to be able to station one cruiser and four frigates on the Ryukyu side. How can there be an extra fleet to be dispatched here?
For this reason, the navy decided not to engage in any maritime siege to suppress bandits this time. It would be a waste of time and would have no results. More importantly, it would have no deterrent effect. To completely eliminate the pirates in the Fuso Sea area, we must use the original method.
Tactics for encircling and suppressing pirates in the mainland: Go straight to Huanglong!
Find the port where pirates gather, move the main fleet to block the port, land the marines, and destroy them on land. It is clean, simple and quick.
As for whether doing so will infringe on other countries' territory and whether it will cause a war, the navy has not considered this, and even if it has, it doesn't care.
What do we mean by the territories of other countries? According to the official statement of the Tang Dynasty, these territories belong to the Tang Dynasty and the Holy Emperor. Now they have just been stolen by the local indigenous people. We will get them back sooner or later.
What's wrong with us landing on our own territory?
Of course, this is just an official statement, and no one takes it seriously. What if we take it seriously? So what if we log in?
Now Fuso is a free-for-all with various daimyo. There is no unified political power at all, and there is no way to stop the landing of the Tang Dynasty navy.
Today, in the trade between the Tang Dynasty and Fuso, the arms trade is one of the major items. However, it is not that Datang imports Japanese knives from Fuso, but that Datang exports plate armor, Japanese knives made of fine steel, and match ropes to Fuso.
Guns and other ordnance.
Nowadays, many powerful or relatively wealthy Fuso daimyo have more or less some ordnance from the Tang Dynasty. Plate armor that can brighten people's eyes has now become some of the most popular in Fuso.
A status symbol for wealthy samurai.
Well, I can’t help it, this plate armor is expensive!
Although the plate armor exported to Fuso by the Tang Dynasty was mainly lightweight half-body armor, its price was still very expensive after being transported by long sea distance. Basically, a complete set would cost about a hundred taels of silver.
Being able to spend hundreds of taels of silver to buy yourself a set of plate armor is not something that just any warrior can do.
From the popularity of the Tang Dynasty's ordnance in Fusang and the huge sales volume, we can see how serious the internal chaos in Fusang was.
This also means that there will not be a unified Fusang regime to confront Datang.
Since there are no big enemies, the Tang Navy naturally doesn't have much scruples in doing things!
Therefore, in order to combat pirates, when the Ryukyu Squadron was preparing to go to sea to the western coast of Fuso, they brought the Marine Battalion stationed in Ryukyu with them. This time they were going to take down a pirate port and give the Fuso pirates a warning.
, the merchant ships of the Tang Empire are not that easy to rob. Even if you successfully rob them, I can still kill them at your doorstep.
In early April, Ryukyu Prefecture governed Zhongshan County, which was the original capital of the Ryukyu Kingdom, Zhongshan Prefecture, Naha Prefecture. After the Tang Dynasty annexed the Ryukyu Kingdom and established Ryukyu Prefecture, the entire Ryukyu Islands was divided into three counties, established from south to north.
Nanshan County, Zhongshan County, Beishan County, and other counties are basically located in coastal ports.
Rely on the strong strength of the navy to ensure the security of the county and strengthen the connections between the islands of Ryukyu Prefecture.
At the same time, setting up the county seat in a coastal port also has a certain degree of wariness against the indigenous people on the islands. Although the Ryukyu Kingdom was originally a vassal state of China, its sinicization was not complete, and it was far from as thorough as the sinicization of Goryeo.
After the king of the Ryukyu Kingdom was awarded an imperial title and his family was forcibly relocated to Jinling Castle, many remnants of the Ryukyu Kingdom were unwilling to accept it.
Although they did not openly resist due to the powerful military power of the Tang Empire, their secret resistance would not stop just like that.
Therefore, the empire's rule in Ryukyu is not said to be completed in one step. According to the empire's disposal process for Ryukyu, it should first control the coastal ports, control the main cities and strategic points, and then gradually extend to the villages below.
And in this process, we vigorously promote Chineseization!
In the past year, the empire has immigrated to Ryukyu by tens of thousands of people, and unlike Daiyu Island and other contemporary places that are not suitable for survival, which are mainly composed of exiled criminals, the immigrants here in Ryukyu are all recruited from various places.
Landless farmers immigrated one by one.
You must know that there are actually not many indigenous residents on the islands of Ryukyu Prefecture. These 10,000 immigrants are enough to affect the local ethnic structure. At the same time, the local government is still vigorously promoting marriages.
In addition to immigration, there is also the ongoing sinicization of culture, which is mainly reflected in the establishment of primary and secondary schools, the abolition of all local colleges and private schools that teach in indigenous languages, and the destruction of all collected books in indigenous languages.
And promote the popularity of Hanfu in the local area.
The Sinicization policy of the Tang Empire was basically all-round Sinicization from military to politics, to culture and economy, and then to the population structure. This series of measures allowed the local government of Ryukyu Prefecture to maintain its rule in Ryukyu in a short period of time.
important reasons.
Today's Naha Port is also the prefecture of Ryukyu Prefecture and the county seat of Zhongshan County. More than 20 ships are preparing to set sail. They will be sent north to the western coast of Fuso.
This time is different from the previous operations to suppress pirates. In the past, it was just a small-scale operation of a few warships, escorting and suppressing pirate ships on the sea.
But this time, in addition to a large number of warships, they also brought with them more than a dozen auxiliary ships. Some of these ships carried a large number of marine soldiers, and some carried a large amount of ammunition and other supplies.
This time, they did not plan to just encircle and suppress pirate ships. They wanted to directly attack several major ports where pirates were entrenched, go straight to Huanglong, and destroy those pirate nests.
Of course, they also have an additional goal for this trip, which is to prepare to occupy an island in the Osumi Islands not far north of Ryukyu Prefecture to provide a supply port and strategic transit base for subsequent anti-bandit operations to provide long-term support in Fuso.
Bandit suppression operations in the western seas.
Their goal was not big, and they did not plan to land on Kyushu Island directly. That would make too much noise, and it would easily lead to a counterattack by the Shimazu clan, the actual ruler of the southern tip of Kyushu Island.
Although the Tang Empire did not pay attention to this mere Fuso daimyo family, there was no need to make too much noise, and it was not suitable to start a war with the Shimazu family in the short term.
Why?
Because the Shimazu family is now the empire's main collaborator in the Fuso trade!