Industry and commerce were so prosperous that the wealth far exceeded the agricultural output of the past. More than five million taels of silver were transported from the south to the north every year. Some officials at the time said that the south had become another "inner palace" of the emperor.
Silver has prompted China to start industrialization and urbanization in some areas. Cities such as Suzhou, Yangzhou, Guangzhou, Quanzhou, Chongqing, Linqing, Hankou, etc. have become increasingly prosperous because of the development of commerce and trade.
The most important thing is that China's silver-based social transformation has greatly promoted the vigorous development of the world economy. If China did not use silver, there would not be a Spanish empire, and Europe and China would not have the same "price revolution"
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China was the engine of expansion, and the energy used was silver. Silver could not have such an effect as a currency in any country at that time, because at that time, China's share of the total world economy was more than one-third.
All industries were prosperous and flowers were blooming. At the end of the 16th century, the middle and lower reaches of the Yangtze River and the southeastern coast of China were prosperous. Although Emperor Wanli of the current dynasty was passive and sabotaged and did not go to court for more than 20 years, there was a serious shortage of officials in various ministries, and civil servants were fighting, the empire
Overall, there were no major shocks. Occasionally, there were people's rebellions and urban civil commotions, but they quickly subsided. During this period, the Japanese madman Toyotomi Hideyoshi sent troops to attack North Korea, which made the Celestial Empire furious. Then the army went abroad to fight, and actually defeated the Japanese samurai.
Silver had a huge impact on the social atmosphere in the mid-Ming Dynasty. The past tradition of frugality gradually faded away, and an era of consumption suddenly dawned. Silver made wealth easier to identify and easier to accumulate. At that time, many businessmen owned hundreds of thousands of taels of silver, which was only considered moderate and exceeded.
There are also many rich people with millions of taels of silver.
After the mid-Ming Dynasty, the entire society advocated business and pursued worldly wealth. More and more people left the land, and nearly 60% of the people in the country no longer worked in agriculture.
However, people have never thought about a question that should be seriously considered: This silver flows in from the outside. What will happen if one day the flow of silver stops or decreases?
It can be said that the decline of the Ming Empire began with silver... Of course, although this statement is a bit extreme...
"No wonder the Ganrasi people have to transport so much gold back." Cai Jiuzhou suddenly realized.
Ding Yunyi smiled coldly: "But no matter what, they can't transport the gold back!"
All the wealth that Governor Cocuyera had collected with so much hard work became Ding Yunyi's bag. And this was not the only harvest. Zheng Zhilong's hidden wealth on Luzon Island was also quickly revealed.
The property that Zheng Zhilong accumulated in half his life is undoubtedly an astronomical amount of wealth, and now these, along with the Spanish wealth, have become Ding Yunyi's.
The war was about money, and apparently now Zheng Zhilong and the Spaniards "joined forces" to solve this problem for Ding Yunyi.
Now there is no need to think too much about the military expenditures for the expedition to Japan...
On March 21, the 13th year of Chongzhen's reign in the Ming Dynasty, good news reached Luzon: the expeditionary colonial fleet commanded by Ye Dahai conquered Siam and Taungoo in a series of bloody battles.
In this battle, Ye Dahai used the excuse of an expedition to Siam to suddenly launch a surprise attack on Toungoo. In the early decisive battle of Babamai, he used artillery to scare away the elephant soldiers, the most powerful force in Toungoo, and then succeeded in the assault. The decisive battle of Babamai was a great victory.
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After that, the expeditionary force fought seventeen battles, and successively recovered Mubang, Mengyang, Manmo and other places. Then it joined forces with the 10,000 elite Siamese army who had been summoned in Dagong, the capital of Toungoo, for the final decisive battle.
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On September 18th, the twelfth year of Chongzhen in the Ming Dynasty, the decisive battle of Dagon broke out.
In the decisive battle of Dagon, Ye Dahai took full advantage of his firearms and fired a series of artillery fire. The Dongxu soldiers and civilians in Dagon were frightened, thinking that the God of Thunder was angry, so the decisive battle started, and the troops of Dagon were disheartened.
In despair, Anabilong, the king of Toungoo, personally led all the dead soldiers to fight. They were bombarded by fierce artillery fire from the Ming army. Anabilong fell from his horse and died.
Anabilon's heart made Taungoo's last bit of determination to resist disappear.
At the end of September in the twelfth year of Chongzhen in the Ming Dynasty, the Toungu Dynasty perished.
According to the previous agreement with Ding Yunyi, Ye Dahai announced that Toungoo would become the third colony of the Ming Empire and changed Toungoo to "Myanmar". This colony was born much earlier than Luzon Island became a colony of the Ming Dynasty.
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The happiest people are the Siamese. They had been suppressed by Taungoo for too long before, and the country was almost destroyed. But overnight, the situation was reversed, and the Taungoo dynasty perished early!
The Siamese army that entered Dagon became unscrupulous, and they vented all their previous anger on Dagon.
Ye Dahai did not stop their crazy move, but just watched with cold eyes...
At first, the Siamese army was a little worried, but when they discovered that the Ming army seemed to have no intention of stopping their actions, they became more and more unscrupulous.
Burning, killing and looting were happening in Dagon every moment... The atrocities became even crazier after the discovery...
Killings and rapes are happening in front of our eyes all the time. The people of Taungoo are wailing, but no one sheds even a tear of sympathy for them.
When the situation gradually became out of control, finally, the Ming army began to take action!
On the second day of October, at midnight, when the Siamese army, which had been looting and burning for a whole day, finally fell into sleep exhausted, a large number of artillery suddenly appeared outside the Siamese military camp.
At three o'clock in the morning, the Ming army's artillery bombarded the Siamese barracks. The "Dagon Night of Terror" broke out!
The so-called "Night of Terror in Dagon" refers to the most tragic experience of the 10,000 elite Siamese soldiers who participated in the attack and defense of Dagon on this night.
The shelling killed nearly half of the unsuspecting 10,000 Siamese soldiers. When the surviving Siamese soldiers ran out of the barracks wailing, they were massacred by musketeers.
The killing continued until dawn... In this horrific massacre, not a single one of the 10,000 Siamese soldiers survived.
Is this a terrible tragedy? Or a miracle? No one can tell what it is...
The person who has been directing this massacre is a one-armed and scarred Ming army general - Ye Dahai!
Ding Yunyi has a nickname called "Pirate King", and Ye Dahai also has a nickname after "Dagon Terror Night":
The King of Terror!
It was also from this day that Ye Dahai's notoriety spread everywhere...
When the Siamese people are suffering, it is the end of the suffering of the Taungoo people. Shortly after the "Dagon Night of Terror" ended, Ye Dahai publicly condemned the various atrocities committed by Siamese soldiers in Dagon City and issued a warning to Siam
Received an order of subjugation.
The Taungoo people who survived the ravages of the Siamese rushed to join the crusade without even mobilizing.
Yes. The Ming army was indeed a colonizer, but compared to the Siamese, the Toungoo people's hatred for the Ming army was instantly resolved. However, the anger towards Siam has been ignited.
The power of hatred is huge.
On October 11th, Ye Dahai commanded the allied forces composed of Huben Guards, land and sea soldiers and Toungoo people to march towards Siam.
Ten thousand elite soldiers were annihilated. Siam's military power was almost paralyzed. They no longer had the strength to resist the Ming army's attack. Under such circumstances, King Ayu Tieta of the Ayutthaya Dynasty had to pin his hopes on the Folangji people.
and the Hongyi people.
But the Fo Langji and the Hongyi people are cunning. None of them are willing to fall out with the Ming Dynasty people, and none of them are willing to become enemies of the Ming Dynasty people.
They know who is coming - the Tiger Guards! They even know who is standing behind this army - Ding Yunyi!
That Ding Yunyi who regained Taiwan and defeated the four-nation combined fleet!
If you offend him, what will be the consequences? This person will send troops regardless of everything, and even die with you. If this is the case, why can't you just sit on the mountain and watch the fight between tigers and tigers?
With this idea in mind, Franji and Hongyi stood by and watched. The British were too weak here. Even if they wanted to get involved, there was nothing they could do.
As a result, Siam's demise became doomed.
However, whether it was Ye Dahai, Fo Langjiren or Hongyi, they all ignored one thing: the determination of the Siamese people to resist to the end!
During the attack on Siam, Ye Dahai's expeditionary colonial army encountered heavy casualties.
During the attack on Mokaya, infantry commander Li Dongsheng, who had narrowly escaped death in a shipwreck and a pirate attack, was unfortunately killed in action.
This was the first officer to die in the expeditionary colonial fleet.
When Mokaya was finally captured, Meng Tianxiong walked slowly into Mokaya holding the body of his friend Li Dongsheng, and then gently put Li Dongsheng's body down.
The battle flag of the Ming Dynasty was flying at the top of the city of Mokaya, but Li Dongsheng could no longer see this scene.
After the Battle of Mokaya, although the Ming army advanced very quickly, it encountered resistance from the Siamese at every turn. It was not until mid-November that the enemy was initially eliminated and troops arrived at Ayutthaya City, which was the Ming Dynasty.
People like to call it the "Great City", the capital of Siam.
The attack and defense of Ayutthaya broke out!
No Ming army officer could have thought of the difficulty of the battle to attack and defend the city beforehand.
When the artillery arrived one after another, Ye Dahai ordered the bombardment of the city. Cannonballs fell on the city one after another, and the solid city wall tenaciously withstood the attacks one after another.
Whenever there was a gap in the city wall, someone would quickly repair it at all costs.
This made Ye Dahai extremely anxious.
The cannonballs carried by the expeditionary colonial fleet are not endless. Every time a cannonball is fired, its own cannonball reserve will be reduced by one.
But the city has no intention of being demolished... and the determination of the soldiers and people of the city to resist has not been weakened at all by the endless artillery attacks...
When the number of artillery shells gradually decreased, the siege battle evolved into a siege battle, and this was what Ye Dahai least wanted to see...
Originally, Ye Dahai and his expedition soldiers might have returned without success this time, but then something unexpected happened:
Folangji and Hongyi in the big city sent their envoys, bribed the officers guarding the city, quietly left the city, and found Ye Dahai, the commander-in-chief of the Ming army.
The conditions put forward by Franji and Hongyi are very simple. They will organize all the Taixi people in the city, seize the city gate at night, and let the Ming army enter the city in large numbers, but the condition is that the lives and property of the Taixi people in the city are not allowed to be harmed.
Safety.
Ye Dahai was overjoyed when he heard this, and immediately signed a secret agreement with representatives of the Thai people.
This became the famous "Selling the City Agreement" in later generations.
What King Ayutthaya of Siam could never have imagined was that at the most critical moment of the battle to defend Ayutthaya City, the Taixi people on whom he had placed hope not only failed to provide him with any help, but actually betrayed him.
With the help of the Thai people, the gate of the great city was finally opened...
Countless Ming troops rushed into the city, and the city fell completely.
But the Siamese did not give up. They fought hard with the enemy in every corner of the city. It was not until the end of December that the resistance in the city was gradually eliminated. The Ming expeditionary colonial army controlled most of the city.
area.
Immediately, Ye Dahai ordered a direct attack on the palace.
As before, the resistance of the palace was as surprising. The battle lasted for twenty days, and the palace finally fell and King Ayuttetha was captured.
The entire palace was stained red with blood...
After a long period of resistance, Siam completely fell into the hands of the Tiger Guards in February of the 13th year of Chongzhen in the Ming Dynasty. The Ding Yunyi Group once again had one more colony.
When the cheers of the soldiers of the Ming Dynasty rang out in the big city, when the battle flag of the Ming Dynasty fluttered in the wind over the city, countless soldiers lay quietly on this strange land...
Among these people is Meng Tianxiong...
This loyal soldier of the Tiger Guards, together with his good brother Li Dongsheng, fulfilled his final mission in life.
In every battle, countless people will die, but their blood is condensed into the hunting and flying battle flag:
The brave and loyal tiger guards!
No one will forget their meritorious service, and no one will forget that they also had a share of the blood on that flag.
This is their greatest glory!
The smoke of war is gradually dissipating, but their names will never disappear.
Long live these loyal soldiers!
Ye Dahai and his expeditionary colonial fleet completed their mission brilliantly, successfully integrating Siam and Myanmar into the territory of Ding Yunyi's forces.
As for the suffering of the colonial people? Who will care about them? The rise of every empire is always accompanied by countless naked plunders and bloody crimes.
Ding Yunyi is no exception.
Maybe his reputation will not be very good. Slaughterer, conqueror, devil? But what does it matter? When did the Ming Dynasty's Marquis Wulie care about other people's evaluation of him?
His goal is just to move from one victory to another more glorious victory! Piaotian Literature registered members recommend this work