When Chang Zhenchuan arrived at the Port of South Africa, he was preparing to go to Europe to set up an embassy. At the same time, he was also trying to understand the current situation in Europe through the many Thai and Western barbarians in the Port of South Africa.
Although Chang Zhenchuan is the current deputy director of the European Department of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, it must be said that he has never been to Europe before. In fact, most officials in the European Department have never been to Europe either.
In fact, most officials of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs have never been abroad in their lives, not even to Southeast Asia.
There is no way around this. Transportation is backward these days, and the empire has never paid much attention to foreign affairs. In these years, the biggest role of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs is...
Okay! It actually doesn’t do anything!
Since the establishment of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, most of the time it has been a decoration, and it is recognized as the most unpopular government office within the empire.
Because the empire has no foreign affairs at all.
Even if we fought with the Portuguese for several years and finally negotiated a truce, it could not be called a negotiation, because the imperial study directly formulated the conditions and then asked the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to present them to the Portuguese. If they agreed, they would cease the war. If they did not agree, they would continue to fight.
That kind of.
That is to say, in recent years, after the empire completely controlled the Indian Ocean coast, it controlled a large number of surrounding colonies and conducted trade with the local indigenous people. As a result, it successively established empires in parts of India and West Asia such as the Safavid dynasty, the Ottoman dynasty, and the Mughal dynasty.
Establish diplomatic missions in indigenous countries in the Northeast African region.
In this way, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs can finally find a sense of presence.
The establishment of a European embassy this time can be regarded as the biggest event since the establishment of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
Xu Zhenchuan is also under great pressure, and before going to Europe, he also needs to understand the situation there in more detail.
He had learned about the situation in Europe through various channels before. He did not dare to go into too much detail, but he still knew some basic information. He was a professional diplomat after all. Even if he had not had any European diplomatic affairs in the past, he still had to know what he should know.
Know.
In the minds of Xu Zhenchuan or most people in the Tang Dynasty, the concept of Europe these days is relatively vague, because the Tang Dynasty has only had more contact with the Spanish and Portuguese in these years, and these two countries are both
The global colonial powers were not weak in strength, so the Tang Empire naturally regarded these two countries as representatives of European countries.
Apart from these two countries, the only one that needs attention is the Ottoman Empire.
The empire basically didn't pay much attention to the remaining messy countries. They were just a group of barbarians. They didn't even have an ocean-going navy, and they were not worthy of the Tang Dynasty's attention at all.
The same is true for Xu Zhenchuan. Before, he had studied Spain and the Portuguese the most. As for England, he could only have a slight understanding of it, knowing that this country is now dominated by women.
The supreme ruler is Elizabeth I. The War of the Roses broke out a hundred years ago. It is said that this event had a great impact on Europe.
But as soon as he saw the War of Roses, he immediately forgot about England!
There were quite a few battles fought, but they were all small-scale battles involving hundreds or thousands of people. In the final moment of the decisive battle, the royalist army only assembled tens of thousands of troops.
Just imagine the unification war of the empire back then. The imperial army had hundreds of thousands, and the puppet army on the opposite side also numbered hundreds of thousands. There were several large-scale battles involving hundreds of thousands of people.
As for battles involving thousands of people, there are countless!
Not to mention the empire, even the Fuso daimyo before the return of Beihai Province fought a lot of battles with thousands of people, and occasionally there were large-scale battles with tens of thousands of people. When the empire landed in Fuso, those
The daimyo just united and organized an army of tens of thousands of people to try to resist the imperial army, but the result was naturally a failure.
As for England's war to seize the throne, the total number of troops participating in the battle was estimated to be only tens of thousands, and one side only had a few thousand troops. During the decisive battle, it was said that the losing side suffered a loss of a thousand men, while the victorious side only lost two.
Hundreds of people……
In the eyes of Xu Zhenchuan or any other person from the Tang Dynasty, a battle of this scale is a decisive battle for the throne. This is just playing house!
Even for the Portuguese, whose native population was only one million, tens of thousands died during the war with the Tang Dynasty. Although most of them were natives recruited by them, there were still tens of thousands.
Without these tens of thousands of casualties, would the Portuguese have surrendered?
Impossible!
Although the War of Roses happened more than a hundred years ago, it can be judged that England's overall national strength is small and weak.
Not worth mentioning!
Maybe England in later generations will be the world's leader, but now England is just an inconspicuous emerging maritime nation, and even its navy can only rely on pirates to make up the numbers.
It is impossible to get Xu Zhenchuan to pay high attention to it.
When Xu Zhenchuan went to Europe this time, he only paid attention to three countries: Spain, Portugal, and the Ottomans.
However, since Hawkins is visiting with the title of the Queen's Plenipotentiary Envoy, he will naturally meet him. After all, although England is not that good, it can still be regarded as an emerging maritime country, and the empire is a relatively important trading partner in Europe.
It is also possible that the empire will set up a consulate in London in the future.
However, after meeting Hawkins, Xu Zhenchuan changed his initial idea of not paying attention to it!
On the contrary, he felt that this was an opportunity, an opportunity to break the Spanish and Portuguese blockade of the Atlantic Ocean without spending a single soldier of the empire.
Although the empire is powerful, it is still difficult to deploy a large number of troops all the way across the Atlantic Ocean. The Atlantic Ocean can be said to be the home base of the Spanish and Portuguese, and they have the advantage of distance.
Therefore, it is very necessary for the Tang Empire's navy to continue to weaken the Spanish and Portuguese before launching an overwhelming sweep offensive across the Atlantic Ocean.
But this kind of weakening can only be limited to the sea, not on land.
Because the Tang Dynasty still hoped that Spain could join forces with France and other European countries to resist the Tatar attack.
Therefore, not only cannot it be weakened on land, but it must also be supported.
The empire's foreign policy toward Spain and the Portuguese was very complex and contradictory. On the one hand, it wanted to support their ground capabilities, but at the same time, it wanted to weaken their maritime control. At the same time, it also wanted to maintain maritime trade relations with them.
.
This strategy of supporting, weakening, and doing business at the same time led the Tang Empire to launch a series of seemingly contradictory foreign policies towards Europe.
Now, the country of England has allowed him to see the opportunity to implement this strategy.
England, Spain, and the Portuguese have huge conflicts. They can start a fight on their own without provoking it themselves. At the same time, when the fight starts, the situation is also controllable.
Because as far as England's strength is concerned, it would be good to be able to develop a relatively reliable navy. At most, it would cause some trouble for the Spanish and Portuguese at sea, but it would not affect the situation on the mainland too much.
"This is a chess piece that he sent up!" Xu Zhenchuan said to his subordinates after sending Hawkins away: "But it is absolutely impossible for him to buy a steam battleship!"
"However, we can't give them steam warships, the most important weapon of the country. We can buy some ordinary sailing warships. In this way, you can go to the Navy and ask if you can buy some ordinary sailing warships for these English people!"
If you want the English to cause trouble with the Spanish and Portuguese and weaken their maritime control, you can't just talk about it, you have to give them some leverage.
Besides, Xu Zhenchuan was also thinking that anyway, the empire has now fully entered the era of steam steel battleships. I heard that the navy has not built wooden battleships with pure sails for several years. The newly built battleships are all sails.
Steel battleship (not pure steel).
The sale of some wooden warships with sails did not pose an actual threat to the empire's navy, but it could exert a certain amount of pressure on the Spanish or Portuguese.
And you can also make money, it’s the best of both worlds!
The naval admiral on the African Squadron, after receiving inquiries from foreign affairs officials, answered simply: No problem!
As long as it is not a new steam steel battleship, but a traditional wooden sail battleship, the Navy does not object. Not only does it not object, but it also supports it.
Even the generals of the Navy took the initiative to approach Xu Zhenchuan and said that the Navy has many wooden sail warships that have been in service for many years and are about to be retired. If it is convenient for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, they can help sell them. At worst, the Navy will give you some for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
Benefit fee!
The Navy took the initiative to come to the door. It was also in the process of cleaning up, because the Navy did have a large number of old wooden sail warships on hand that could not be disposed of.
The Navy of the Tang Dynasty has now been fully upgraded to steam and steel.
At the beginning, they just converted the capital ships into steam engine battleships, but that thing was just a transitional product after all. Basically, starting from the 20th year of Xuanping, the Navy began to build new steam engine battleships on a large scale.
Although the Navy's construction and service of new battleships was not very smooth, it produced a failure such as the battleship Hebei.
But on auxiliary battleships such as cruisers and frigates, the development has been extremely smooth.
So far, the Navy has put into service two types of sail steel cruisers with a total of twelve large tonnage. The first batch of eight early cruisers are relatively ordinary, but the latest cruisers that have been in service in the past two years have even more combat effectiveness.
Surpassed the Jiangnan class battleship.
This is the Navy's new generation cruiser, the Hangzhou-class cruiser. Its standard displacement has reached 1,600 tons. This tonnage has exceeded the early Jiangnan-class battleships, and its combat power has also exceeded the early Jiangnan-class battleships.
Of course, you get what you pay for!
The cost of the Hangzhou-class cruiser is also more than that of the Jiangnan-class battleship!