How can a nineteen-year-old boy who only has one big ship persuade maritime merchants from all over the country to fund him and build an ocean-going fleet of twelve ships?
First, he relied on the reputation of his late father Chen Shuangxi, and second, Chen Li himself was also very brave!
Chen Li told the merchants: "A few years ago, Quanzhou merchant Chen Gao led his ship to sea. In addition to dumping more than 60 refugees in the far east and earning some gold from trade in the Sulong Kingdom (Inca), what else did he do?
None of them were caught. He had the wrong idea. He actually organized people to go to the far east to pan for gold. How can gold mines be so easy to find? If I explore the sea, I must have enough soldiers to go directly to rob those savage countries with so much gold and silver!"
Yes, gold mining is not as easy as robbery?
The maritime merchants thought they could give it a try, so a total of seventeen maritime merchants jointly funded the construction of a fleet for Chen Li.
Although the fleet was established and successfully reached the far east... it will be called Yinzhou from now on. However, only one ship is owned by Chen Li, and the other eleven ships are all maritime merchants. Only by continuous victory and gold and silver,
Then they will always be willing to obey.
Once the battle fails, or the gold and silver cannot be obtained, or encounters extremely bad conditions, the fleet itself will probably break out into internal strife.
After leaving Fushan Bay (San Francisco), Chen Li took the fleet to Xinquan Town (Los Angeles) and dumped all the more than 300 immigrants on board here.
Xinquan was developed by Chen Gao, a maritime merchant from Quanzhou, but he did not dig or bury it. No gold mine was found, so more than 60 immigrants were left alone. Chen Li planned to swallow up the place and use it as a basis to slowly expand. When the immigrants arrived,
As the number of naturalized savages increases, we can try to build a country - we cannot throw immigrants further south, as all Central America is Spanish territory.
Because Chen Li brought a large amount of salt, the residents of Xinquan Town warmly received them and were happy to meet more than 300 new neighbors.
However, the food here was not enough, so Chen Li's fleet continued southward. On the coast of the Baja California Peninsula, he used a telescope to see a very spectacular sight - the beach was densely packed with seals.
The seals did not run away when they saw people, but looked at the outsiders curiously.
Chen Li sent people to kill the seals with bows and arrows and return with countless seal carcasses? Finally, the food problem of the new immigrants was temporarily solved.
This peninsula is inaccessible. There are not even natives, but there are many kinds of animals. The crew eats seals and turtles? They almost make them vomit? Chen Li uses this as a food base and constantly sends expedition fleets there.
Search off the coast of Mexico.
"Where is Chen Da? We didn't find any cities in the coastal area to the south? We only encountered some savage tribes sporadically?" Lu Fang said depressedly, "These savages don't know what gold and silver are, and they have nothing to rob."
Lu Fang is the ship's representative sent by the cooperative merchants. He was also a pirate in the past, and he is equivalent to the deputy leader of the fleet.
After searching to no avail, Chen Li had no choice but to continue heading south and arrived at the Bay of Fonseca in a few days.
This bay is very suitable for anchoring, and there are several deltas washed out by rivers around it. A large number of indigenous savages live in the delta area. The fleet exploring Haber? Every time it passes through this place, it must replenish its supplies in the delta.
When Chen Li came here to supply supplies, the natives took the initiative to receive him and even spoke some simple Chinese: "Me? Water, meat? Corn? Fruit. You? Cloth, salt."
"Haha, the natives here can actually speak Chinese," Chen Li said with a smile, "Bring some cloth and salt off the boat."
After the transaction between the two parties was completed, Chen Li did not leave immediately, but planned to rest in this bay for a few days.
On the third day, several people suddenly came running over, kneeling on the ground and yelling.
Chen Li couldn't explain it to them, and he didn't know what happened, so he prepared to get off the ship with his armor to check. As a result, more and more savages came running, and many of them were stained with blood. It looked like they had just fought a battle.
"Everyone wear armor, get off the boat quickly!" Chen Li shouted.
Twelve boats, armed with a total of 800 people, all wearing cotton armor (cotton armor wrapped with iron sheets).
Making armor in the Ming Dynasty was a serious crime of treason, but it was easy to do overseas. Wang Yuan's steel-making method has been spread to Foshan, where private iron plants have been rapidly reformed, steel output has greatly increased, and steel prices have also dropped. Building weapons
Person A is no longer a big deal, many maritime merchants have private armed forces, and robbery while doing business has long been commonplace.
It's a pity that there are not many fire gun soldiers. They are still expensive. Chen Li only has fifty fire gun soldiers.
While Chen Li got off the boat to organize the fleet, a group of Spaniards on the shore also looked at the fleet on the beach in great surprise, wondering why there were twelve more large ships here.
Going northwest from here, about 200 miles away, the Spanish colonists established a town half a year ago called "Sucototo", which was later the capital of the Republic of El Salvador (nearby). They continued to expand around the town, building one after another
plantations, and captured natives everywhere to serve as slaves.
Eight hundred armed men moved toward the shore, and the Spaniards were immediately frightened.
A Spaniard rode up and shouted from a distance: "Who are you?"
Chen Li only spoke Portuguese. Listening to the other party's Spanish, he felt familiar, but he just couldn't understand it. He immediately replied in Portuguese: "I am Daming Maritime Merchant, who are you?"
A man who spoke Portuguese immediately came over and scolded: "This is the jurisdiction of the Spanish Governor of Guatemala. You must leave immediately without the Governor's permission!"
Governor of Guatemala, in charge of all Central America except Panama.
Chen Li drew his sword and sneered: "Governor, who cares about you! The whole world is the land of the king, and the shore of the land is the ministers of the king. Since the people of the Ming Dynasty are here, this is my land of the Ming Dynasty. Sons and gentlemen, follow me and kill!"
There were only about thirty slave-catching Spaniards in total, and they didn't even have muskets. But they were able to kill thousands of natives just because they had two horses, and the natives regarded war horses as demons.
beast.
Spain also relied on war horses to destroy the Aztec Empire.
The Aztec Empire was a tribal alliance. The Spaniards came here and fought with one of the tribes. They used their war horses to scare the other tribe into submission. So the Spaniards united this tribe and went to attack the emperor of the Aztec Empire. Again
They used the fear brought by war horses to win local wars, and the emperor regarded them as descendants of gods.
Unfortunately, the cavalry could scare off the natives, but not these Han explorers.
There were 800 men against 30 men, and the Han people still had 50 firecrackers. The Spaniards fled in an instant, and the two horsemen were the fastest.
When the natives saw that their friendly forces had won, they immediately followed suit. They ran very fast and used flying rocks and javelin fire to knock the Spaniards to the ground.
Twelve people were killed on the spot, four were seriously injured and killed directly, and several prisoners with minor injuries were captured.
Under severe torture to extract confessions, these prisoners quickly revealed military information.
In the town of Sogototo, two hundred miles away, nearly a thousand Spaniards settled, including elderly people and children. At least half of them were no longer pure whites, but a mixture of whites and indigenous people.
There are many plantations surrounding the town. There are very few whites and mixed-race people in the plantations. Most of them are captured indigenous slaves. This time they came to the Delta with the intention of capturing slaves.
The town has no walls, only wooden fences to protect it from wild animals.
The residents did not have many weapons, and they mainly relied on cold weapons, but the plantation owners all carried muskets.
"Do you want to do it or not?" Lu Fang asked.
Chen Li licked his lips and said with a smile: "There must be a lot of wealth in a small town with a thousand people, and there are horses there. I heard that Uncle Tan Hai brought two batches of horses, but they all died on the road. I just grabbed a few and dedicated them to him."
Tan Haibo, we will be able to have a much easier time in the future."
Lu Fang said: "These natives can be used."
Chen Li smiled and said: "Of course, if we help them drive away their enemies, they will definitely follow suit."