With Zheng Zhilong's surrender, it means that the Chu Empire has completely eliminated the threat from the south, and can then use most of its strength on the Northern Expedition.

Many people can see this.

It can be seen within the Chu Empire, people from the Ming court can also see it, and even Dongdu can see it.

That’s why Zheng Zhilong’s surrender caused such a huge response.

Before Zheng Zhilong surrendered, even though Zheng Zhilong had already retreated in Fujian, he was still entrenched on many coastal islands and Dajuan Island.

Chongming Island, Zhoushan Islands, Nan'ao Island, Xiangjiang Island, Penghu Islands, Damuan Island and many other islands are all under the control of Zheng Zhilong's command.

Although its ground forces suffered heavy losses, its fleet was still huge, with dozens of large warships and hundreds of medium-sized warships. Although these ships were all lucky ships and bird ships, they were equipped with no more than twenty or thirty cannons, and as few as

Most of the more than ten ships in Europe are not even considered sixth-class battleships.

However, it is still considered an important force in the East Asian waters, especially in the coastal areas of China. Even the more powerful foreign fleets such as the Dutch and others come from afar, even if they rope in Liu Xiang, a local pirate.

We fight together, but it is difficult to compete with Zheng Zhilong's fleet.

A single ship cannot defeat you, but Zheng Zhilong’s ship has many people.

It doesn’t matter whether the beating is ugly or not, as long as you can beat the Dutch until they lose their temper.

Zheng Zhilong, who possesses such powerful water power, even if he is defeated on the mainland, can still cause great trouble to the Chu Empire by raiding coastal areas such as Guangdong, Fujian, Zhejiang and Jiangsu.

How to put it, even if it can block the attack from the sea by Zheng Zhilong's troops, the Chu Empire will inevitably spend a lot of manpower and material resources to deploy coastal defense lines. Various coastal and riverside forts need to be intensively built, investing hundreds or even thousands.

Gate artillery is used to build defense lines for coastal and river forts.

At the same time, it is necessary to deploy garrison forces in various coastal cities and deploy the main force for mobile operations.

Just these two items will contain at least a hundred thousand or more troops of the Chu Empire, and at least a thousand artillery pieces of various types.

And these forces will inevitably crowd out the Chu Empire's resource investment in other directions.

The military expenditures of the Da Chu Empire were limited, as were the money and grain, and the production capacity in the arsenal was also limited. When a large amount of money, grain, and factory production capacity were invested in the coastal defense line, the investment in money, grain, weapons, etc. for the Northern Expedition would inevitably decrease.

And these are the reasons why the Chu Empire has been trying to recruit Zheng Zhilong’s troops.

Even after conquering Fujian and seizing Quanzhou, Zheng Zhilong's home base on the mainland, Zheng Zhilong was offered more favorable recruitment conditions, allowing Zheng Zhilong and others to continue to share in the huge capital by taking shares in the new maritime trading company.

maritime interests.

All this is to completely resolve the threats along the coast and free up our hands to carry out the Northern Expedition.

——

The Northern Expedition was something we started talking about last year, but the Northern Expedition plan has been postponed many times.

At the beginning of the third year of Chengshun, the senior officials of the Dachu Empire originally planned to officially launch the Northern Expedition this fall. If not, they would first attack Jiangbei and capture the three cities of Yangzhou, Huai'an, and Xuzhou.

But in fact, so far, the Chu Empire Army has not even captured Yangzhou. To be more precise, the Chu Empire has not attacked Yangzhou City at all!

All this is because the ongoing Guangdong-Guangdong Campaign and the Fujian-Zhejiang Campaign have squeezed out a large amount of resources from the Chu Empire, leaving insufficient strategic resources for the Northern Expedition.

After such a fight, the top military officials would rather wait until they are more fully prepared, and then wait until next year to attack the north in one go.

Recruiting Zheng Zhilong is part of many preparations.

After Zheng Zhilong accepted the recruitment, he quickly took many of his main subordinates and his son Zheng Sen to the north on ships. They first went to Zhoushan Islands and Chongming Island, and presided over the reorganization of local Zheng Zhilong's troops.

According to a series of plans in Zhaofuli, Zheng Zhilong's troops were part of the overall uprising and surrendered anyway, and were not included in the ranks of prisoners of war, so their treatment should be better.

The troops and ground combatants under Zheng Zhilong's command, those who meet the conditions and are willing to volunteer, are organized into the garrison, with a total of three garrison divisions. The rest who do not meet the conditions or are unwilling to join the army are organized into the reclamation camp or transportation camp.

, construction camp and other transitional periods, and decommissioning will be arranged one after another according to the voluntary principle after half a year.

Maritime personnel, most armed merchant ships and ordinary merchant ships were organized into three maritime trading companies. These three trading companies are controlled and managed by the Ministry of Industry. The original middle and senior leaders of the Zheng Group

They hold different shares in it. To a certain extent, they can be regarded as taking shares together with people and ships, and the Ministry of Industry? They bring a "maritime trade license" to take shares.

There is no doubt that the maritime trade license is the most important. Without this thing, no one can trade in the ports of the Dachu Empire.

More than a hundred warships were integrated into the Great Chu Empire Navy, and then mixed with the navy's original fleet.

Zheng Zhilong's fleet, together with Zhao Xinhou's who had surrendered one after another, and the original warships of the Chu Empire, were finally reorganized into the Nanyang Fleet and the Beiyang Fleet, a total of two ocean-going fleets.

The Nanyang Fleet, with Xiangjiang as the headquarters of the fleet, is responsible for the South China Sea waters south of Taiyuan Island.

The Beiyang Fleet, with Wusong Port as the fleet headquarters, is responsible for the vast sea area north of Damuan Island.

Each ocean-going fleet consists of the first and second frigate squadrons, the first and second cruiser squadrons and other subordinate squadrons.

In addition, there are two inland river fleets, the Pearl River Fleet and the Yangtze River Fleet.

The Pearl River Fleet is fully responsible for combat missions in the inland waterways of the Pearl River system.

The Yangtze River Fleet is fully responsible for the combat missions of the Yangtze River water system.

In the end, the Chu Empire formed a structure with two oceans and two inland rivers, and a total of four fleets.

There are currently nine large battleships equipped with more than 30 guns and classified as second-class cruisers. They are all from the original Zheng Zhilong fleet, four are old-fashioned Fu ships, and five are newer large-scale bird ships.

There are thirty-seven warships equipped with twenty to thirty cannons and classified as first-class frigates. More than half are old Fuchuan ships and half are new-type bird ships.

There are more second-class frigates carrying more than ten and less than twenty doors. There are hundreds of them, and most of them are medium-sized ships.

There are also dozens of sailing paddle boats used for offshore and inland river operations.

Judging from the classification of these ship types, it can actually be seen that the previous Zheng Zhilong fleet was in the midst of a ship type change.

The old-style Fu ships, Cangshan ships, sand ships, etc. cannot adapt to the naval battles of the gun era, so bird ships with better maneuverability and more artillery have become the new choice of Zheng Zhilong's fleet.

But after Zheng Zhilong's fleet was merged into the Da Chu Empire Navy, the Da Chu Empire Navy would no longer continue to build these bird ships.

Because the Dachu Empire Navy has more professional Daye-class first-class frigates and Xiangyang-class second-class cruisers specifically designed for naval battles.

In addition, the Naval Ship Affairs Department of the Dachu Empire is also designing and preparing to build larger battleships, such as first-class cruisers and even third-class battleships.

The top brass of the Chu Empire's navy are still very ambitious.

Of course, this ambition is for the future. Now, all the resources of the Great Chu Empire are preparing for the Northern Expedition. There is no big threat from the navy, so there will not be too much resource investment in the short term.

It would be good if we could maintain the current scale of shipbuilding efforts and add a few large warships to the construction.

It is worth mentioning that with the surrender of Zheng Zhilong’s troops, the maritime trade of the Da Chu Empire became completely smoother. A large number of various strategic raw materials from overseas, such as saltpeter and sulfur, began to enter the areas controlled by the Da Chu Empire in large quantities, and

The price is much cheaper than before.

This directly reduced the ammunition production cost of the Dachu Empire by several levels, which was another great benefit for the subsequent Northern Expedition.

In addition, when the Navy is preparing for the future Northern Expedition, it will directly provide certain material supplies to the Northern Expedition troops through sea transportation, such as directly transporting materials to Shandong and even Tianjin to provide supplies to the Northern Expedition troops nearby to supplement the lack of canal transportation capacity.<

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As for the safety of maritime transportation, there is no need to worry about pirates. After all, most of the current warships and soldiers of the Da Chu Empire Navy are pirates... As for sea storms and the like, as long as you sail along the coastline honestly

, the problem won’t be too big. If you really encounter it, you can only consider yourself unlucky.

The navy is trying to add drama to the future Northern Expedition, lest China be unification and the navy will be idle and become marginalized.

Naturally, Luo Zhixue would not attack the navy's initiative.

Although in his opinion, the current sea transportation is not very reliable and has great limitations, but since the navy has taken the initiative to share the worries of the Northern Expedition, there is no reason to refuse, so he also ordered the logistics department to follow up.

Material transportation can also provide some tasks to the navy.

However, in Luo Zhixue's view, just material transportation cannot fully play the role of the navy.

If possible, Luo Zhixue also wants to use the navy in his hands to conduct a wave of landing operations to attract and contain the enemy. Maybe it can also have miraculous effects.

For example, a landing in Tianjin at a critical moment... Chongzhen would not be frightened to death, but he would force him to mobilize troops to serve the king... Or he could go to Liaodong and land a landing. It is estimated that Huang Taiji would not be able to sleep well, let alone enter.

Closed.

Thinking of this, Luo Zhixue called several generals from the navy to discuss the feasibility of directly crossing the sea to land in Tianjin or Lushun.

It's just that the answer given to him by the navy left him unsatisfied.

The navy believes that there is no problem in simply attacking Tianjin or Port Arthur. It is feasible to organize a huge fleet to flee, land directly with thousands of troops, or even directly capture the Tianjin Acropolis.

But the problem is that it is difficult for the navy to maintain the operations of the landing troops for a long time, especially when the ground troops are directly landing on the mainland and are facing a large number of enemy ground troops attacking. When ammunition consumption is extremely high, it is necessary to protect the landing troops.

Continuous operations require high levels of transportation and supplies.

Vice Admiral Lu Xingye, after seeing that Luo Zhixue was not satisfied, proposed a compromise plan and ran directly to land in Tianjin. Lushun and the like were not reliable.

But it would be much easier to land on an island and occupy an island in the north. With the strength of the Chu Empire's navy, it is completely possible to capture an island and then use the fleet to protect it.

In the future, this island will be used as an advance base, and after hoarding a large amount of strategic materials in advance, a landing operation will be launched nearby, so that long-term operations can be maintained.

The overall model is somewhat similar to the previous model in which Zheng Zhilong's troops relied on Nan'ao Island and then sent troops to occupy and defend several coastal cities in Chaozhou Prefecture.

After hearing about this model, Luo Zhixue thought it was feasible and immediately said: "The Navy will study a specific feasible combat plan!"

After Vice Admiral Lu Xingye, the Minister of the Navy, returned to the Navy Department, he found a group of senior navy generals to discuss, including Zheng Zhilong, who had just defected.

But in the conference room, Zheng Zhilong didn't say much among more than a dozen senior navy officials, looking like he was keeping a low profile.

He knew very well that he had just defected, and even though he had the rank of rear admiral and the title of Duke Zhenhai, no one dared to say that he had won the emperor Luo Zhixue and the trust of other senior leaders in the navy.

He had anticipated this before defecting.

A defeated general wants to continue to maintain his glory and wealth, and he must return to the mainland to maintain his glory and wealth and give his family a better future. This always requires paying a price.

Handing over the fleet was the price he paid.

After handing over the fleet, he had no hope of continuing to control the real power.

To be honest, it was beyond his expectation that he, a so-called senior adviser to the Navy, could still participate in high-level meetings of the Navy.

Naturally, he didn't know that the reason why he was called to today's meeting was not because of how much Lu Xingye and the others trusted Zheng Zhilong, but simply because His Majesty had given him the task of capturing an island in the north and using it as a transit base before landing in the north.

Some are beyond their capabilities.

The senior naval officials present were actually the same as Lu Xingye. Many of them were from the army, and a few were from the Ming Army's inland navy. In fact, few of them really understood naval warfare.

There used to be a few, but now they have all been assigned to serve in the Nanyang Fleet and the Beiyang Fleet. Now, more than half of the dozen or so senior naval officials staying in Gyeonggi have never even seen the sea...

If you ask them to plan a long-distance attack to capture an island, it is really embarrassing.

Therefore, Zheng Zhilong was brought to this meeting. After all, Zheng Zhilong is a senior adviser to the navy, and he is an old pirate who is knowledgeable about naval warfare. It is always right to ask his opinion.
Chapter completed!