Chapter 1236: Hello There, We Have Come to Invade!

The bow of the warship "Welcome the Roving King" plowed open a snow-white spray of waves, its wake pointing straight west. The sailors on deck were conducting gunnery drills at the gun positions along both sides. Following the shouted commands of the Dutch instructors, the sailors from Sichuan and Yunnan nervously carried out simulated loading and firing.

Li Jicheng and Song Yaowen stood on the sterncastle deck of this large oared sailing warship with a displacement of 280 tons, watching the sailors' training with interest. Beside the mainmast amidships, other sailors, under the guidance of the Dutch instructors, were either clambering up and down the mast or hauling hard on the ropes, practicing furling and unfurling the sails.

At the moment, however, a west wind was blowing over the Bay of Bengal, so the "Welcome the Roving King," sailing westward, was not relying on its sails for power but was moving under oars. Beneath the upper deck of the "Welcome the Roving King" there was another deck of oars, where eighty oarsmen from Arakan and Chittagong were straining at the heavy long oars, driving the flagship of the Shun navy onward through the waves to the west.

Before them, the surface of the Bay of Bengal rolled with swells, and the sea wind howled. A vast fleet of fifty-five Western-style oared sailing ships was beating against a west wind that had suddenly sprung up at sea, heading for the coast of Orissa Province of the Timurid Empire of India, a thousand li southwest of Chittagong.

Among these fifty-five warships, only five were of the same size as the "Welcome the Roving King." Besides the "Welcome the Roving King," they were the "Welcome the Crown Prince," the "Welcome the Imperial Grandson," the "Welcome the Prince of Qin," and the "Welcome the Prince of Han."

These five ships had all been built in the Portuguese shipyard that the Dutch had "purchased" on Boki Island outside the city of Mrauk U, and could be considered the "top configuration" of oared sailing ships. The hulls were sturdy, the displacement was large, the sail area was also very large, and the number of oars was great, allowing for relatively high speed. Their firepower was also extremely formidable, with a total of twenty-eight gun positions on the upper deck, capable of mounting up to twenty-four 6-jin bronze or cast-iron cannons.

These five "Welcome"-class warships undoubtedly carried the naval dreams of Li Jicheng, the Imperial Grandson of the Shun, so the sailors aboard, apart from the oarsmen, who were Arakanese, were all proper Shun fubing soldiers, and Dutch instructors had also been hired to train them and serve as advisors.

The other fifty oared sailing ships that had put to sea along with these five "Welcome"-class ships were the larger and newer warships selected from the original Arakanese navy. The sailors aboard were all Arakanese, though Shun officers and guards had been sent aboard to supervise them.

Now aboard these fifty-five oared sailing ships, besides the sailors, marines, and Dutch instructors, there were also 5,000 elite fubing soldiers of the Long March.

And the targets these Long March fubing soldiers were going to attack were the corrupt officials and landlords of Orissa Province in eastern India, which was under the rule of the Timurid Empire!

The Shun army, after all, was still relatively sympathetic to the working people. Even though it had become imperialist, it was a progressive imperialism that would strike down the local tyrants and distribute the land.

So this expedition to India would also raise the slogan "Welcome the Roving King, pay no grain tax, and divide the land." Oh, and there was another slogan: "Abolish the caste system!"

The one who proposed "Abolish the caste system" was Song Yaowen, whom Li Jicheng had sent to India on a fact-finding mission. He had originally wanted to seek an audience with Aurangzeb, but Aurangzeb was in Samarkand, so he could only meet with the mortally ill governor Mir Jumla in Bengal. Because Mir Jumla was so ill he was nearly at death's door, he had no energy to wrangle with Song Yaowen and very readily agreed to the Shun Empire's demand to annex Chittagong.

After his diplomatic mission ended, Song Yaowen proposed to travel and worship at Buddhist temples within the territory of the Timurid Empire of India. Mir Jumla gave him a pass and sent several officials who followed the Hindu faith to accompany him on his wanderings.

After this investigation, Song Yaowen discovered that the working people of India had it far harder than the working people of the Great Ming!

The greatest injustice facing the working people of the Great Ming now was one thing alone—the inequality between rich and poor!

Moreover, the inequality between rich and poor in the Great Ming was not entirely without solution. The poor still had many ways out... if they were willing to endure hardship and were not particularly afraid of death.

As for the problem of being born unequal, if one set aside inequality of wealth, then in the world of the seventeenth century it hardly counted as anything at all. The Shun, which was supposedly born of a peasant uprising, could not even compare to the Great Ming in this regard—the Shun now had as many as 600,000 fubing households, more than ten times the number of nobles in the Great Ming!

Moreover, the nobles of the Great Ming were mostly concentrated in Yingtian Prefecture, where under the watchful eye of the Zhu Emperor they could not do too many bad things, and the greatest privilege they enjoyed was access to a high-standard and high-level education.

But the common people of the Great Ming were not without opportunities to receive a high-level education either. The best aristocratic schools in Yingtian Prefecture also admitted commoner students, though the places were limited and competition was fierce. However, many privately run new-style schools had now appeared within the Great Ming, some of which were of no low standard, so commoners with a certain amount of wealth and intelligence had many opportunities to receive a new-style education.

But for the peasants, artisans, and merchants of the Shun to become "scholars" was far more difficult!

Of course, difficult as it was, it was not impossible—otherwise the Shun would not have so many fubing households.

However, the problem of inequality between rich and poor on the Shun side was not severe, because everyone was poor! The peasants had been impoverished by paying rent, and the fubing soldiers had been impoverished by fighting wars...

But the working people of India had swallowed the sufferings of the common people of both the Great Ming and the Shun, and had swallowed them doubled!

They were not only poor but also lowly, and moreover, they and their descendants would never be allowed to rise!

India had something called the caste system. People had a "seed," and if the seed was bad, then their descendants for generations would all be untouchables! "Are kings, lords, generals, and ministers born of a seed?"—such a thing was not permitted among them.

The only way to rise was to cultivate a better next life... but who knows what happens in the next life? This was simply too much bullying!

Since the untouchables could never rise, generation after generation, they were of course also poor. On the Shun side, the fubing landlords collected thirty percent rent, and already the Emperor Li Guo went on day after day about reducing rents and capping rents. But in India, the government of the Timurid Empire directly collected one-third in taxes, and the landlords with good "seeds" collected at least another third in rent, and there were also some religious charlatans and corrupt officials who would stretch out their hands to demand money as well!

In the end, it was doubtful whether even ten percent remained in the hands of the untouchables. It was truly a mystery how these untouchables survived on so little food.

"Your Highness the Imperial Grandson, the untouchables in Orissa Province of India, where we are going this time, are especially numerous and especially poor. They are all starving and barely clothed, on the verge of death! If we do not go, I estimate it will not be long before they rise up on their own!"

Song Yaowen saw that the sailors' training on deck had come to a pause, so he began talking with Li Jicheng about inciting the untouchables of Orissa Province to rebellion.

Li Jicheng nodded, but said nothing.

Song Yaowen continued: "This subject has also selected several hundred foreigners in Chittagong who are proficient in the languages of India and taught them all to speak Chinese. Once we reach Orissa Province, we will send them to rouse the Indian untouchables to welcome the Roving King."

"Good. Well done!"

Li Jicheng had little interest in rousing the Indian untouchables to welcome the Roving King, because all he was thinking about was grabbing a haul and running. He had no intention of becoming a roving bandit in India, and whether the untouchables welcomed the Roving King or not made no difference to him.

Still, he expressed approval of Song Yaowen's efforts, because "welcoming the Roving King" was political correctness for the Shun!

Li Jicheng had also written it up this way in his memorial to Li Guo—he did not dare say that he was going to India to be a robber. He himself did not care about the matter, but his grandfather very much tabooed it and would not allow anyone to speak of it. If Li Jicheng dared to speak of being a robber, his position as Imperial Grandson would likely be gone in an instant...

So Li Jicheng's memorial was filled from beginning to end with the misery of the Indian untouchables, who gazed toward the great Shun dynasty from afar like infants longing for their parents, waiting only for the Roving King to come and save them.

Li Jicheng was silent for a while, then said: "Yaowen, are there many corrupt officials in Orissa Province of India? What sort of people are they? How did they get their posts? Have you inquired about all this? Do they have local influence?"

Song Yaowen smiled and said: "I have inquired about all of it. The corrupt officials of Orissa Province are mostly warriors who came from a place in northwestern India called Rajput Province. They are all outsiders with no local influence."