On one of the ships, he saw a man with the same official uniform as him coming out of the cabin, and he was also older than him.
When Li Yan saw it, he hurried over to greet him.
Li Yan is now the governor of the Mughal region, but the visitor is Yang Weizhi, Dongwu and governor of Dhaka.
When it comes to official positions, the two are actually about the same, but Yang Weizhi is much more senior in terms of qualifications.
Not only that, Li Yan was born in Juren, but later he became a bandit, and after being recruited, he followed Sun Chuanting to conquer the North and South, and then joined the Ministry of War to gain experience before starting to serve as a governor. He was not a serious Jinshi.
However, Yang Weizhi was a real Jinshi and was promoted normally. He finally became the governor of Yunnan and was also in charge of the Dongwu and Dhaka areas. With his merits, he will be promoted soon, that's for sure.
Also, Li Yan was younger than Yang Weizhi, so this was a meeting between the old and new generation of governors. He greeted him with a low profile, which was as expected.
What surprised Li Yan was that behind Yang Weizhi, his wife, the Red Lady, came out.
As soon as the red lady saw him, a smile appeared on her face, slightly excited.
The two were separated when Li Yan went to Tibet. The Red Lady trained female soldiers for the imperial court and had been in the country. She did not expect to come to the Mughals.
At this time, Li Yan naturally did not bother to chat with his wife, and greeted Yang Weizhi first, focusing on official business first.
"Mr. Yang, it's hard work coming from afar. I wonder if you have brought the things?"
Upon hearing Li Yan's question, Yang Weizhi immediately laughed and said, "Of course I brought it. Look, I also brought your wife!"
While joking, I let the red lady and her husband say hello.
Afterwards, Yang Weizhi reached out to the guard beside him for the rifle he was carrying, handed it to Li Yan and said: "Look, this is the Shenwei Rifle Type A, there are 30,000 in total, and there are two hundred Shenwei Artillery Type A
, is it enough?”
Li Yan reached out to take the rifle and saw the special features of this new rifle at a glance. After looking at it, he said in surprise: "Could this be a breech-loaded flintlock rifle?"
"Of course!" After hearing this, Yang Weizhi nodded immediately and said, "The rate of fire is extremely fast, and the tactics will also change accordingly. We will talk about the specific details later!"
Li Yan nodded. Only then did he react and quickly said to Yang Weizhi: "Sir, I have nearly 100,000 troops here, and these only 30,000 guns are not enough!"
As a soldier who has led troops for many years, he certainly knows how much impact the breech-loaded flintlock rifle has on the war, so naturally he hopes that the entire army will be equipped with the best.
When Yang Weizhi heard this, he smiled slightly and said, "This involves another decree given to you by the imperial court."
Hearing this, Li Yan couldn't help but feel a little strange, and hurriedly rushed to the governor's Yamen to meet Yang Weizhi. As for the arms, of course, his generals would hand them over.
After about an hour, Li Yan finally understood what the court meant.
It’s not that the imperial court didn’t have the Shenwei Rifle Type A, and it didn’t say that it wouldn’t be given to the Mughal Expeditionary Force. It had already been prepared. It was just that Yang Weizhi took some of them, and more were transported by the Ming Navy to the new military base in the south of the Mughal Empire.
According to the arrangement of the imperial court, the Ming Expeditionary Force will be divided into two parts. Thirty thousand troops will be on land, which is currently facing off against the Persian army to continue to exert pressure on the Persian Empire.
The replacement of this part of the army was brought by Yang Weizhi. The 30,000 original Shenwei rifles that were replaced will be sold to the vassal state, and they will be recruited to participate in the war against the Persian Empire. This is the vassal state's
obligation.
Another 70,000 troops will march to the southern Mughal military port to join the navy and complete refitting and training.
The main force attacking the Persian Empire was not the army, but the navy.
These 70,000 expeditionary troops became the Marine Corps and launched attacks against the enemy from the coast.
This enemy will not only be the Persian Empire, but also include various Arab tribes in the Middle East. The most effective method is to use the navy to maneuver in the Persian Gulf. In this way, the logistical pressure will be greatly reduced.
In order to achieve this combat goal, the imperial court has sent an additional navy, including the latest steam iron-clad battleships in the Ming Dynasty navy.
The brand new fighting method surprised Li Yan, and even his wife, Red Lady, was sent to assist him, which also surprised him.
There was also very detailed information on the island conditions in the Persian Gulf, hydrological conditions, mountains and terrain in the Persian Empire, etc. Such differences made him feel if there were any changes in the imperial court.
He could feel that the previous battle plans did have something similar to this, but they were definitely not so specific and organized. They were even more detailed about the enemy's situation.
Yang Weizhi even told Li Yan that there was a lot of commotion at the Academy of Sciences, and there was a lot of new equipment that we couldn't keep up with this time, but that would shock the world when used in the next war.
This information made Li Yan very curious, but the distance was too far, so he just thought about it for a moment and became busy with current matters.
According to the arrangements of the imperial court, Yang Weizhi will be in charge of the Mughal Empire, while Li Yan will be in charge of the entire Middle East war. He will set off with the navy.
Before that, he rushed to the other side of the border and sent people to issue an ultimatum to the Persian Empire again to increase the tension of the war.
In order to cooperate with the operation, all border areas were under martial law. Anyone who appeared here without a military order would be treated as a spy of the Persian Empire. The army was mobilized frequently, showing a stormy rhythm.
But in fact, he took advantage of this opportunity to secretly attack Chencang and led an army of 70,000 people southward.
In the middle of the 26th year of Chongzhen, when the army arrived at the newly built military port in the south, Li Yan, his generals, Tian Jianxiu and others were all shocked.
It's not that there are many Ming warships. They have actually seen this before, and it doesn't shock them so much. It's that they saw warships that they had never seen before!
Originally, Li Yan had received news from the Persian Empire and knew that the Netherlands, Britain and other Western barbarians had formed a joint warship, numbering as many as a hundred, plus the local indigenous people, that is, the size of the Persian Empire and the Middle East Arabia
There are nearly five hundred warships.
If the Ming Dynasty had its original naval strength, this naval battle would not be easy. But at this time, Li Yan was already convinced that the naval battle would definitely be a crushing one.
The same goes for the imperial court. They have used such strong strength to fight in each of these wars, and they cannot demonstrate their ability to lead troops at all!
After five months of training, mainly hoarding supplies, the Ming Dynasty finally launched an attack on the Persian Empire.
……………………
On the Persian Empire's side, there was indeed a roar of wind and cranes at the beginning, and the troops were everywhere. However, on the side of the Ming Dynasty's army, there was always heavy thunder and little rain, so they became a little slack.
Another one is that Abbas II has been preparing for war, which has greatly affected people's livelihood and is a bit overwhelming. The recruitment of troops and the increase in military taxes have triggered conflicts in various places.
Another thing, as the Persian Empire began to imitate rifled flintlock guns, their confidence gradually increased.
It took about five months and the participation of a large number of Persian craftsmen to finally build about 5,000 rifled flintlock muskets. Then the quarrel began.
Five thousand rifled flintlock muskets are equivalent to five thousand troops using the most advanced rifles. Compared with the old flintlock muskets, they have a crushing advantage. After all, the range and accuracy of shooting are there.
Then Abbas II said that he would provide money and people, the number of craftsmen alone was 20,000, and facing the attack of the Ming army, it would cost a lot of money no matter what.
But the Europeans said that without their guidance, not to mention 20,000 craftsmen, even 100,000 craftsmen would not be able to build 5,000 rifled flintlock guns.
There were also quarrels among the Europeans about distribution. The Dutch claimed that it was their intelligence and that they were familiar with the Ming Dynasty, but the British did not do it, and neither did the Danes.
In short, for these rifled flintlock muskets, Abbas II and the Europeans wanted to share as much as they could. If the Ming army had not pressed the border, they might have fought.
In fact, the quality of the rifled flintlocks they imitated was still not as good as the Shenwei rifles produced by the Ming Dynasty.
Not only the technical gap in steel smelting, but also the standard mass production of rifled flintlock guns, the matching of bullets, etc. are definitely not comparable to those handmade by Persian craftsmen.
But even so, the Persians and Europeans were jealous of each other.
It's not that they don't know that the quality of the imitation guns is not as good as the equipment of the Ming army, but with this kind of imitation guns, they will not be suppressed too much by the Ming army in terms of equipment.
In addition, using this rifled flintlock gun to attack other enemies is very advantageous.
For example, if the Persian Empire's army can equip a large number of troops, it will have a great advantage against the Ottoman Empire. The Ottoman Empire does not have it, and maybe it can take back the Mesopotamia including Baghdad.
While they were fighting for rifled flintlocks, the Ming Dynasty finally began to invade the Persian Empire.
First, on the land border, the Persian army was slack because the Ming army kept threatening but never really acted. As a result, the Ming army suddenly became serious.
With the help of heartless cannons, grenades, and breech-loaded artillery, they invaded the Persian territory without much effort.
However, the Ming army did not advance like they did against the Mughal Empire, but stopped after breaking through the border.
Abbas II was shocked when he heard the news, and immediately sent reinforcements, as well as troops equipped with rifled flintlock muskets.
In this battle, he not only wanted to take charge of the battle himself, but also asked the Europeans to send coalition forces to assist.
The British and Danes had no problem with it, but the Dutch found various reasons to refuse.
In the end, the Dutch were mainly responsible for coastal defense, which made Kueyi relieved that he finally did not have to face the Ming army.