Chapter 1387: Since Louis Was Born, Why Was Hongxing Born Too?

The opportunity to arrange for Luo Dongni to go to Goa was connected to Princess Nisha — she was the bridge between the Ming Emperor Zhu Cilang and the Emperor Aurangzeb of the Timurid Empire of India!

Aurangzeb had sent such a beautiful and talented daughter to Zhu Cilang as a Noble Consort — how could Zhu Cilang not regard the Timurid Empire of India as an important friendly state of the Great Ming Empire?

And this Princess Nisha truly knew how to please Emperor Zhu, especially when it came to spending money and enjoying life — she suited Zhu Cilang's tastes perfectly.

Although her father Aurangzeb was a Muslim puritan who grudged spending on food and clothing, that did not stop Princess Nisha from spending three or four hundred thousand rupees in silver coin every year. If not for Zhu Cilang, the richest man in the Great Ming, Aurangzeb would have been the richest man in the world — his highest annual income once reached three hundred million rupees, roughly one hundred million taels of silver!

This talent for amassing wealth was unprecedented and unrepeatable in the seventeenth century.

With a world's-richest father who grudged spending on food and use, how could Princess Nisha's spending habits be small? If she did not help spend a little of it, how much would her richest father have to spend building vaults to store his money?

When she first came to Zhu Cilang's side, she put on a show of austerity for a while — one look at those Rajput maids throwing money around and you could tell just how austere she really was. But after she bore Zhu Cilang's "Little Ah San" and followed him to the Old Mountain Palace in Yingtian Prefecture, she began to spend freely.

This hot-spring palace, not too far from the Old Mountain Red Fort, had been converted from a large mansion on the Old Mountain hot-spring belt that Princess Nisha had taken a fancy to.

Princess Nisha paid a large sum to buy the mansion from its original owner, then threw in another sum for renovation and remodeling. And for the convenience of her own and Zhu Cilang's comings and goings, she spared no expense to build a covered passage leading straight to the Old Mountain Red Fort. She also had high walls built around the hot-spring palace and a moat dug — that way it looked safer and more private. A moat encircled it, high walls guarded it, and apart from two gates that were always shut tight, the only way in or out was the covered passage. Once she and Zhu Cilang entered, it was a world for just the two of them — oh, no, a perfect world for two people plus twenty more: twenty Rajput maids.

Especially in winter, when it was freezing outside but warm as summer inside, and then a soak in the hot spring — those were truly heavenly days.

Throughout the winter of the twenty-first year of Hongxing, the cold-fearing Princess Nisha stayed here long-term. After finishing court affairs, Zhu Cilang often came here to keep Princess Nisha company. Besides enjoying life, he could also conveniently sound her out about the situation in the three great Muslim powers — India, Persia, and the Ottoman Empire. Emperor Zhu also from time to time put forward a few ideas that might well change the course of Western history, and had Princess Nisha give her counsel. This was not the nineteenth century — the Western world had not yet grown strong enough to be unshakable. And the Muslim world had not yet fully declined either. So Zhu Cilang had to scheme carefully, to see how he should stir the winds and clouds so as to maximize the interests of the Great Ming Empire.

Of course, no matter how one schemed, the Timurid Empire of India was an important player in this power game that concerned the direction of all human history.

But how would King Louis of France and the Grand Pensionary of the Netherlands play their cards? Would they merely shout about the Ming threat and collude with the Shun roving bandits to harass the Indian Ah Sans? Aurangzeb did not look that fragile, did he? Besides, he could still obtain Ming support — this time Zhu Cilang intended, under the name of "return gifts," to send Aurangzeb a batch of flintlock muskets, cast-iron cannon, and explosive shells, to strengthen the Timurid Empire of India.

But he did not doubt in the slightest the determination and perseverance of the Westerners in bullying India. They had developed to this stage, so of course they would go all over the world looking for colonies to seize money, raw materials, and markets. Even if the French and the Dutch suffered setbacks in the Indian Ocean, the English, already standing on the threshold of the Industrial Revolution, would keep on seizing — a poor but strong nation will always have an inexhaustible spirit of adventure and pioneering, of that there is no doubt!

And Zhu Cilang also knew that the Great Ming, a rich and strong nation, could not — at least under the technological conditions of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries — fight its way to Europe to crush those poor but strong European powers. Just as the Great Ming under Zhu Yuanzhang and Zhu Di, though powerful, could hardly completely crush the Mongols on the great northern steppe.

It was not for lack of strength. If the Great Ming Empire of that time had been willing to pay any price, it could certainly have been done. But crushing those Mongols in the early Ming would absolutely have brought no profit, and the price paid would have been unimaginable! The Mongols on the steppe in those days were no weaklings — perhaps one would have had to stake everything to achieve a relatively thorough victory. But "pay any price" is not as simple as a sentence or an edict.

The several great powers of Europe today are also truly strong — they would probably have to fight it out with the Great Ming for two or three hundred years without end. This should be a protracted struggle!

Zhu Cilang was now soaking in the hot spring, a towel on his head, squinting lazily. Beside him was a glass of chilled wine — when he got too hot from soaking, he would drink a few mouthfuls, and not by his own hand either, but served by Princess Nisha. Ah, the feudal emperors of the seventeenth century had only these few pleasures.

And while enjoying life, he still had to serve the people of the Great Ming — truly hard work!

Princess Nisha had not entered the pool. Wrapped in a bath towel, she sat on a reclining chair, holding a gift list in her hand, reading it out item by item in a low voice.

"Ten thousand of the latest Hongxing Year 18 flintlock muskets, all fitted with three-foot socket bayonets — total value eighty-five thousand taels of silver."

"Sixty six-pound field guns, all fitted with carriages, limbers, and ammunition carts — total value twelve thousand taels of silver."

"Thirty twelve-pound short-barreled guns, all fitted with carriages, limbers, and ammunition carts, each gun with sixty studded explosive shells."

"Thirty thousand wooden-handled grenades."

There were many items on the return-gift list in Princess Nisha's hand. She was so precious and had brought so much dowry, so Zhu Cilang naturally had to give Aurangzeb sufficient gifts in return! Otherwise it would be far too humiliating. But Princess Nisha had little interest in silks and satins, gold, silver, jewels, or fine porcelain, so after finishing reading the weapons list, she put the list away. Then she rose, walked to the edge of the pool, removed her bath towel, and slipped in as well.

Hearing the movement, Zhu Cilang opened his eyes, glanced at Princess Nisha, and said with a smile, "Satisfied? These firearms are the most advanced in the world right now — even many units of the Ming army have not yet been re-equipped with them!"

"Of course I am satisfied!" Princess Nisha said with a laugh. "With these weapons, the Timurid Empire will never again have to worry about threats from the West. The French, the Dutch, the Portuguese, and the English will just have to do honest business with Indian merchants."

Princess Nisha understood something of military affairs. She had personally tried out the Year 18 flintlock musket — it was indeed a fine and excellent weapon, and a mass-produced one at that. Completely standardized production was impossible, but they had made every effort in that direction, so output was still relatively high. If Aurangzeb found them satisfactory, the Great Ming could supply them in bulk at favorable prices.

Of course, Indian manufacturing in this era was among the best in the world — the matchlocks and camel guns they made themselves were quite good. Now that they had obtained so many samples of firearms, copying them should not be difficult; the only issues were quality control and output.

The question was whether Aurangzeb, once he received these weapons, could drive the Western colonizers off Indian soil. If the Timurid Empire could hold its ground, the Great Ming could save some effort.

Zhu Cilang nodded and said with a smile, "Since you are satisfied, then We shall trouble Luo Zhichen to make the trip. Nisha, could you write a letter to your father, asking him to permit the Great Ming to establish an embassy in Delhi and a trading post in Surat?"