Chapter 697: Oboi, Are You Afraid of the Russian Devils?

"What? The British East India Company's merchants and the Qing state in the north... wasn't the Qing supposed to be very poor? How could the English possibly..."

Cavallero was somewhat skeptical of Van Diemen's words.

England's civil war wasn't over yet! Whether Parliament or the Royalists, both were busy slaughtering each other and had no spare energy to meddle in the internal affairs of a great Eastern empire. So whatever the British East India Company was doing in the Far East, it should be — and could only be — the pursuit of short-term profit.

And to pursue short-term profit, they naturally ought to be dealing with the Great Ming.

The Great Ming not only had silver, but also bulk trade goods like silk and porcelain. And the Qing state in the north... how much silver did they have? What did they have that could be sold to Europe?

With nothing at all, how could the British East India Company's people be on close terms with the Qing court? Weren't they afraid of offending the Ming court?

Besides, the British East India Company and the Dutch East India Company were mortal enemies... if they had secret dealings with the Qing, they would certainly have to keep it hidden from Van Diemen — otherwise he would go straight to the Ming and expose them.

Van Diemen also knew the Manila Chief Justice wasn't so easily fooled — if he were that easy to deceive, how could he be Chief Justice? How could he try cases?

But the profiteer Van Diemen wasn't at all afraid of being seen through by the Manila Chief Justice... so what if he was seen through? The Spanish would still go and take over Bruce's post — Bruce van Diemen had recently found a new assignment. The new Governor-General of the Dutch East India Company in Batavia felt there was no profit in maintaining secret contacts with the Great Qing, so he was going to send Bruce van Diemen and his team to the Great Ming to serve as military advisors!

So Van Diemen now wanted to find a bag-holder for the situation he had opened up in the Qing — and the Spanish, who didn't much care about profit, were clearly a very suitable party to take it over.

And their conflict with the Great Ming was irreconcilable... so they could only grit their teeth and take the handoff!

Van Diemen did not — and disdained to — explain why the English wanted to be friendly with the Great Qing. Instead he went straight to talking about the Qing's position.

"The Qing state has a population of over ten million and a standing army of about two hundred thousand. Their cavalry is extremely strong, and they also possess a small number of 3-pounder guns... all high-quality artillery made in England, with well-trained gunners. In the Mongol war of 1648, a Prince of the Qing commanded an army of fifty thousand and, at an extremely light cost, defeated the Khalkha Mongol coalition. Moreover, they inflicted utterly devastating casualties on the Mongols — now all of Mongolia prostrates itself at the Qing's feet!"

What Van Diemen described was the campaign fought between the Qing army commanded by Dodo and the Khalkha Mongol coalition supporting the Sunid tribe. Just as in history, Dodo won a complete victory! And the victory was even more brilliant, because Dodo's army had thirty or forty 3-pounder bronze cannon.

Against Ming troops in positional warfare, these guns might have had trouble showing their power, but against the poorly equipped Mongols — who had chanted Amitabha a bit too much — they worked wonderfully. In the battle at Mount Oket, thirty-some 3-pounders concentrated their fire at close range, blasting the Mongol coalition into heavy casualties and total disorder. Dodo seized the moment to send his cavalry charging in, shattering the Mongols with ease, and left the Mongol coalition's dead strewn for dozens of li.

With that, the Khalkha Mongol tribes finally learned the might of the Great Qing's heavenly power, and weeping, they offered the Nine Whites tribute to Imperial Ama Dorgon and begged for mercy.

But Dorgon, having defeated the Mongols, did not develop any new ambition to march south. Instead he shifted his energy to the Jingqili River basin and the Yaksa region — the Daur tribes living there had reported to the Ningguta authorities that raiders from Russia had been discovered invading!

Because of the help of his "English military advisors," Dorgon already knew that this Russia was a vast and powerful Western nation, and could no longer be treated lightly.

Moreover, with the Great Qing's southward advance now hopeless, if their old homeland in the northeast were seized by Russia, wouldn't they lose even their place to flee?

So he now dared not treat the matter lightly, and was considering whether to fight it out with the Russians... and this was precisely the opportunity for the "English" to exit and the Spanish to enter and take over the position!

While Dorgon's gaze turned north, intent on protecting the retreat route of the Ten Banners' sons, the Great Ming was busy heading south to eat — the territories of the Jin'ou Army and the Jinghai Army were not small. Though not very fertile, they were an extremely well-watered great plain. Once developed, shipping ten million shi of rice home every year would be no problem.

At three shi per mu, ten million shi was only three or four million mu.

In the Jinghai Army's territory alone, the abandoned farmland now amounted to no less than one and a half million mu!

And bringing abandoned land back into cultivation was far easier than opening up new farmland... so in the eyes of Yao Daqiao and Ye Jiaxin, who truly understood farming, the Jinghai Army was a treasure ground for making a fortune!

Outside the Shiliupu Wharf in Shanghai.

At this moment the scene was one of noisy chaos. The wharf was packed with people — some queuing to board ships, others there to see off their loved ones.

Preparing to put to sea were three bird-boats with a capacity of five or six thousand shi, belonging to a small shipping firm of the Huizhou Guild — six maritime merchant groups had now appeared in the seas southeast of the Great Ming. The largest was of course the Minnan Guild headed by the Zheng family, followed closely by the Haisha Guild headed by Shen Tingyang's Shen family. These two guilds of maritime merchants were half-official and half-private, with great influence, but even they could not monopolize the sea trade. Besides them, there were four other maritime merchant guilds: the Huizhou Guild, the Ningbo Guild, the Guangfu Guild, and the Hakka Guild.

The reason for forming guilds was to band together for warmth.

The sea was a place without law. Even with the north-south maritime order established by Zheng Zhilong and Shen Tingyang, one hundred percent safety could not be guaranteed.

Moreover, the Great Ming's maritime merchants were now sailing farther and farther, already doing business beyond China's coastal waters. Out there, the influence of the Zheng and Shen families was not so great. So the other maritime merchants had formed four great guilds based on their native places.

Yao Daqiao, the great profiteer from Hubei who had lost everything but half a street in the princely debt crisis, had business dealings with several big Huizhou merchants, and so on their recommendation he had chosen this medium-sized bird-boat belonging to the Hui Guild.

"Boss Yao, rest assured — my boat couldn't be safer. No wave is big enough to capsize her, and she's fitted with six 3-pounder guns. And we're sailing as three bird-boats together, so there's no fear of pirates..."

The man thumping his chest and assuring Yao Daqiao was a Huizhou shipmaster, surnamed Wang, said to be a kinsman of Wang Zhi, the Wufeng shipmaster who had once terrorized the coasts of China and Japan. He was in his thirties and had sailed the seas for a full fifteen years, tanned as dark as an African.

Yao Daqiao still had some means, so he had chartered an entire deck — not only to carry people, but also cargo and livestock.

He was a profiteer who had done business for a long time, and he knew that before placing a heavy bet one should investigate — last time, when speculating on princely debts, he had been too impatient and hadn't investigated properly, which was why he had lost everything but half a street.

But this time he had learned his lesson. He did not charge straight at the Jin'ou Army at the first opportunity — instead he sent Ye Jiaxin ahead first. A trip there wasn't cheap: the passage alone cost over a hundred taels! If one had no capital and borrowed at usurious rates to buy a ticket aboard, then upon reaching the Jin'ou Army or Jinghai Army one was fated to be a coolie...

And Ye Jiaxin's trip had not been wasted — he had gotten a clear picture of the Jin'ou Army and Jinghai Army. He knew the Jin'ou Army was not the place to go; one had to go to the Jinghai Army — the Jin'ou Army was all endless forest, not easy to develop, unless one wanted to cut trees and sell timber.

The Jinghai Army, on the other hand, had large stretches of abandoned paddy fields. Anyone in the know understood that farmland abandoned only recently was not hard to bring back into cultivation.

Besides, it was very hard to buy livestock and farm tools in the Jinghai Army's territory — the agriculture of the Chams and the Annamese was not very advanced. They lacked quality farm tools, and water buffalo were few. If one really had several hundred or a thousand mu of land, without oxen and without good tools, one simply couldn't farm it.

So Yao Daqiao had staked his capital on chartering a deck, bought thirty water buffalo and a large quantity of "Shen steel" farm tools, and was shipping them all to the Jinghai Army.

Besides the water buffalo and farm tools, Yao Daqiao had also bought some sweet potatoes and taro to take on the journey — farming was risky, so one couldn't plant only a single crop. One had to plant several varieties, to make sure colonization didn't end in starvation.