Emperor Zhengde

Chapter 337: Building a Foreign State

Before leaving the Ming Dynasty, Zhu Zaijie recruited a group of civil and military officials and appointed them as officials of his own palace. They included talents in administration, finance, military affairs, culture, and even science, technology, and medicine.

In addition, there was a group of civilians consisting of farmers and craftsmen.

In short, Zhu Zaijie was really serious about preparing to establish his own vassal state in North America.

After enduring hardships and traveling across the ocean, Zhu Zaijie finally arrived at today's Florida Peninsula. Blowing in the sea breeze, he did not feel tired but excited because he could build his own country on this land.

But if Zhu Zaijie wanted to establish his own Great Chang Kingdom here at this time, he had to first eliminate Texas, a Spanish stronghold here, which was also a trading port.

Unlike the hospitable Indians that the Spanish colonists encountered when they first came here, the Spanish colonists that Zhu Zaijie and his immigrant ministers encountered were naturally not hospitable or enthusiastic.

Texas is a transliteration of the word "tejas" that the Indians uttered when they saw the Spanish colonists. It originally meant "friend", but it is obvious that for the Indians, the Spanish colonists were not visiting friends.

Today, this is the territory granted to Zhu Zaijia by the Ming Emperor Zhu Houzhao. Zhu Zaijia naturally does not want to use this name anymore, but changed its name to Xin Dezhou to commemorate the Central Plains where he grew up. The word "Xin" naturally indicates that this Dezhou is not the Dezhou in Shandong.

When the Spanish galleon in New Texas was about to set sail to transport gold and silver back to Western Europe, the Spanish colonists discovered Zhu Zaijie, the Prince of the Ming Dynasty and his entourage.

Therefore, the Spanish warships stationed here went out directly and attacked Zhu Zaijia against the waves.

Zhu Zaijia gave an order to the navy following him to attack, and the Ming Dynasty's rifled cannons bombarded the Spanish warship, smashing it into a pile of loose wood on the spot.

The officers and soldiers of the Spanish colonies were either killed or injured, and many fell into the sea like dumplings in boiling water.

The Spanish warships were defeated and could not gain any advantage against the Ming warships.

At this time, Zhu Zaijia was not in a hurry to let the Ming army land, but first ordered the Ming army to capture some Spanish colonial officers and soldiers floating on the sea.

As a result, these Spanish colonial officers and soldiers became prisoners of Zhu Zaijie.

The whole process did not take long. Before all the Spanish merchant ships had time to return to the port of New Texas, the Spanish Governor Odok stationed in New Texas was also a little surprised when he saw all this:
"How did the Orientals get here? Their artillery has become so sharp! They just used the Indians to seize Saint-Domingue. What do they want to do now?"

No one answered Odok's question. At this time, he could only order his well-trained soldiers to hold the city relying on the artillery and city defenses.

At this time, Zhu Zaijie and his fleet had stopped in the shallow sea area not far from the Xindezhou port. Then, the Ming army opened the gun windows and fired directly at the Spanish defenders on the shore.

The intensive artillery fire caused the Spanish colonial army to lose most of its soldiers on the spot, and the entire army was defeated in less than half an hour.

Odok had to flee New Texas in a hurry with his few remaining troops.

Zhu Zaijie also landed, bringing with him thousands of Han immigrants.

The other Spanish colonists in New Texas had not yet had time to escape. They were merchants or craftsmen who immigrated from Spain, as well as many Indian slaves and black slaves.

These people looked at Zhu Zaijie and his group with a look of fear and curiosity.

Zhu Zaijie took a deep breath of the air from the land and walked towards New Texas. Soon, he entered the city hall of New Texas and sat on the leather chair left by the Spanish Governor Odok. Looking at the paintings, sculptures and mistress that Odok had not taken away yet, he only ordered: "Leave this woman here, and move the others away!"

Zhu Zaijie unceremoniously took possession of Odok's mistress, named her Xin Mi, which means "new bride" in Chinese pronunciation, and made her his selected concubine.

Before this, Zhu Zaijie also issued a royal decree, which was to arrest all the women in Xindezhou City, except Lao Ru, and he also asked his chief secretary Song Zu to select the ten most beautiful girls to be his concubines.

Zhu Zaijie actually already had twelve concubines in the country, and before leaving the capital, he spent a lot of money to take in three more. Now that he has come to New Texas, not only has he taken possession of the mistress of the Spanish Governor Odok, but he also wants to take in ten more young girls. He seems to be a foolish prince.

But in fact, Zhu Zaijie wanted to use this to continue his offspring, because he knew that if he wanted to build his own empire, what he needed most was people, especially people with his own bloodline. Naturally, he couldn't wait to marry more women and reproduce.

What Zhu Zaijie is thinking about now is to increase the population, especially the number of Han people. After all, there are relatively few Han people who are willing to immigrate here with him.

Therefore, not only did he have sex with the women he captured, he also ordered that except for the ten most beautiful women, the rest be distributed to his officers and soldiers. The number of women given varied according to their ranks. Moreover, he numbered the Spanish women in New Texas and then drew lots, so it was relatively fair. However, Zhu Zaijie still required them to have sex immediately, and ordered the old maids he brought from the palace to form an inspection team to randomly check whether these women had been deflowered by the Ming army.

Therefore, at the request of Zhu Zaijie, the Ming troops who occupied Xindezhou raped all the women in Xindezhou, whether they were scholars or warriors, as long as they were Han males.

This does seem cruel and is undoubtedly a nightmare for these Spanish women in New Texas.

However, Zhu Zaijie had no choice but to do this in order to increase his population. He could not violate the law and emotions and capture Han women from the Ming Dynasty. He could only ensure that half of the new generation of Changguo citizens were of Han descent.

The Spanish men in New Texas naturally became the first civilians, including the Indian slaves and black slaves here.

The first thing Zhu Zaijie asked these people to do was to move the equipment and firearms they brought from the Ming Dynasty to the new Dezhou city.

At the same time, Zhu Zaijie also began to order his civil officials to formulate the "Great Ming Code" as the law of his vassal state. In addition, he also ordered his civil officials to prepare for his coronation ceremony.

Zhu Zaijie advocated governing the country with Confucianism, so he advocated reducing punishments and made it clear that etiquette was more important than law. At the same time, he granted the title of scholar to all the Han people who immigrated with him, and conferred titles of officials such as Daifu or Lang according to their different classes. Even the peasants who came with the immigrants were conferred titles of Wenlinlang. Then, all these people were classified as scholars, and he directly stated that scholars would not be easily killed except for treason!
All the others were classified as civilians. The civilians now could only be the captured Spanish immigrants and Indian natives who were already under his management. The punishment for the civilians was not harsh. Except for the ten unforgivable crimes, the most severe punishment was castration.

After all, Zhu Zailei himself knew that what he lacked most now was people. Instead of killing these foreigners easily, it would be better to cut off their descendants so that they could continue to serve as the labor force of the empire.

In line with the principle of emphasizing agriculture and suppressing commerce and considering that he was a prince of the Ming Empire, Zhu Zaijie also ordered his civil officials to compile the "Dachang Kingdom Code", which clearly stipulated that the status of Indians, or local farmers, was higher than that of Spanish immigrant merchants.

This was also influenced by the idea that the Indians were hereditary slaves of the Han people of the Ming Dynasty, which had become popular in Central America. It also happened to be in line with the Confucianism that Zhu Zaijie believed in, so it was stipulated in this way.

In addition, with regard to business, Zhu Zaijie adopted a policy of closing the country to the outside world, stipulating that Changguo could only trade with the central empire, the Ming Dynasty. All other foreign countries were regarded as pirates, but tributes could be accepted.

Zhu Zaijie had his own purpose in doing this, which was naturally to prevent his young Kingdom of Dachang from being invaded by foreign forces by implementing a maritime ban policy.

The Spanish Governor Octo was eventually captured by the Ming army, which was now a regular army.

However, Zhu Zaijie castrated him and was prepared to use him in an important position. He asked the eunuchs he brought with him to teach him Chinese characters, and prepared to use him as a guide for his future unification of Chang State.

Octo never thought that he would become a eunuch, but what gave him a headache were those complicated Chinese characters. He didn't want to learn them, but the cruel whipping forced him to learn them. He naturally hated Oriental people like Zhu Zaijie, but he had no conditions or qualifications for revenge. He also had to be careful about the chance of being killed by eunuchs of the same kind. In the end, he had to get used to the lifestyle of flattering Zhu Zaijie in order to obtain more survival rights.

Zhu Zaijie did not immediately occupy other territories or build other cities at the beginning, but started his own journey of building a country and farming in New Texas.

On the first day of the first lunar month in the 47th year of Zhengde, he officially ascended the throne and proclaimed himself king, and established the reign title of Chengguang. The 47th year of Zhengde was the first year of Chengguang in Changguo, and Xindezhou was temporarily established as the capital.

Soon after Zhu Zaijie ascended the throne, he began to build arms processing plants, cement plants, textile workshops, and other types of factories in Xindezhou. He also reclaimed arable land and stored grain. In addition, he selected good Han family sons from the soldier class as new recruits for training in order to expand the army.

Three years later, Zhu Zaijie had 20,000 elite soldiers, three cities, and more than 30,000 hectares of fertile land.

Twenty years later, the first batch of newborns of Zhu Zaijie's Dachang Kingdom grew up one after another, and Zhu Zaijie began to establish the imperial examination system for selecting officials, but only allowed the children of farmers and scholars, that is, the children of Indians and Han people to participate in the imperial examination.

From this time on, Zhu Zaijie's Great Chang Kingdom began to enter a period of expansion. The increasingly powerful army completely drove the Spanish colonists out of the North American continent, and drove nomadic peoples such as the Tatars to the colder regions further north. It completely unified the entire area south of the Great Lakes and north of Florida, and established a very powerful agricultural empire. However, due to the excessive population expansion, the phenomenon of land annexation intensified, and too many royal family members, the kingdom's financial system collapsed, and eventually a peasant uprising occurred.

Although the uprising was suppressed with the help of the Ming Empire, the situation in the kingdom did not improve. It eventually fell into a state of division due to internal rebellion within the ruling class, and was reunited after a long period of division.

Of course, this is a later story. The Chang Kingdom has just been established, and no one knows its fate hundreds of years later.

Back to the topic.

Zhu Houcong also brought his people to Xinhanyang, located in today's Brazil area, and prepared to establish his Great Han County here.

Zhu Houcong recently liked reading "Han Shu" because he wanted to turn his Hanyang County into the Han Empire.

Looking at the row of small huts and stone houses along the coast and the dilapidated simple port in front of him, Zhu Houcong did not feel despair. Instead, he felt a sense of excitement and could not help but tell his childhood friend Lu Bing:

"Lu Bing, go and see if there are any people living here. If there are, arrest them all. Except for infants and young children, execute the rest. We have brought the entire Xingwang Mansion with us this time. We don't need these savages. Infants and young children have no memories, so we can teach them Chinese characters and the Ming official language to make them our own. We will first establish this place as the royal city, Xinhanyang."

After receiving the order, Lu Bing led the Ming Dynasty's New Han Army ashore first.

At this time, Huang Jin, the eunuch who had been with Zhu Houcong since childhood, could not help but say: "Outsiders only know that Your Highness is good at alchemy, but they don't know that Your Highness is not an ordinary person. Your Highness is a royal family with the blood of Taizu flowing in his body. How could it be possible for you to fall into mediocrity? Now that you have come to this wild land to establish a country, Your Highness should be happy. It is a good opportunity to turn this place into our Xingwang Palace."

Zhu Houcong smiled and said, "I will not only turn this place into the Prince's Palace, I will also become a true emperor! The world is so big, it is not just China. It's a pity that I am only your Majesty's cousin, not as good as his own son, who can share the more habitable North America!"

……

Zhu Houzhao made the entire overseas situation a bit chaotic. For a time, princes established kingdoms everywhere, and finally even nobles were appointed by Zhu Houzhao to these places to establish kingdoms.

For a time, various kingdoms, duchies, and marquisates established by the Han people were established one after another.

Zhu Houzhao also implemented the system of enfeoffment and feudalization, which resulted in the number of Han Chinese countries increasing exponentially every once in a while.

But Zhu Houzhao is not worried about the lack of these Han Chinese countries, but rather that there are not enough Han Chinese, or even not enough population.

Because, as far as he knew, these royal relatives and nobles of the Ming Dynasty implemented the most primitive extermination policy against the local indigenous people in the early days of the establishment of the country, because this was the most effective policy to establish the ruling order, and they would only stop killing when the population dropped to the most reasonable level.

This also led to a decrease in the global population, the disappearance of a large number of primitive tribes, and the disappearance of a large number of primitive civilizations. They were no different from Western colonists, and were even more cruel, because the weapons in their hands were more advanced, and the civilizations sent out by the Ming Dynasty were more advanced.

The disappearance of other ethnic groups around the world has led to a large number of Han people migrating from China to become local rulers.

These Han Chinese countries treated Han immigrants from the Ming Dynasty very well. Basically, as long as you were willing to go, you could become an official directly, even if you were a farmer in your own country.

If they were technical personnel or officials, they would be more welcome and would be directly granted titles and land.

The Ming Dynasty central government had to, on the one hand, improve the treatment of Han people in the country, and on the other hand, find ways to formulate some policies to encourage childbirth to stimulate the increase in the Han population.

It was particularly important to increase the Han population. The court not only provided child subsidies to those who gave birth to children, but also strictly prohibited cases of abandoned babies. It even began to prohibit Han women from selling silver and improved the status of Han women. Chastity arches were no longer awarded, but instead mothers who gave birth to five or more children, regardless of gender, were awarded virtue arches, and corresponding taxes were reduced or exempted and welfare subsidies were provided.

The Ming court naturally did not need to worry about why women who gave birth to many children were called virtuous, as the official media had their own explanation.

then.

The Han people entered a period of population explosion.

However, even if the population of other ethnic groups decreased or was assimilated, in order to increase subsidies and income, the slightly wealthier men in Han families took wives and concubines. This also caused a sharp increase in the price of female slaves of other ethnic groups. More and more women of other ethnic groups were sold into the Ming Dynasty and became concubines of major Han families.

This has also caused a serious imbalance in the gender ratio among other ethnic groups, a serious decline in fertility rates, and a further drastic reduction in numbers.

The new bride, Zhang, was originally the daughter of a French duke, but because of the evil slave trade, she was abducted by human traffickers and sold to the Ming Dynasty to become the third wife of the locksmith Zhou Jun.

Zhou Jun's back has never been well since he married Zhang, and Zhang had to go out every day to buy medicine for him. After all, she has no children yet, unlike the first and second wives, so she has to do all the housework. On this day, Zhang, a white woman who had just been fucked by Zhou Jun, was woken up by Zhou Jun not long after:
"You stinky bitch, I spent so much money to buy you, so that you can have big breasts to feed children, but my waist is broken and you still can't get pregnant with our Zhou family's child! Go buy me some medicine, and don't even think about having a rest tonight!"

Zhang had no choice but to swallow her anger and go out. As soon as she went out, she saw that the entire area of ​​Damingmen Qipan Street was full of people. She followed curiously. Suddenly, she saw a young and beautiful Hu woman sitting in a carriage. Just as she was about to ask who it was, she heard someone next to her say, "So this is the British princess that your majesty is going to marry. She looks pretty!"

"British princess? Was she bought too?" Zhang asked herself suspiciously when she felt nauseous and then vomited. She had to go to the clinic and finally found out that she was pregnant. She fainted with joy.

The so-called British princess was naturally Elizabeth, but she was not bought by Zhu Houzhao. Instead, she was sent by King Henry VIII of England who voluntarily agreed to Zhu Houzhao's request.

This was actually not difficult for the King of England, because in fact Western European countries already had a tradition of intermarriage, and even the royal families of the various Western European countries were relatives.

Looking at Elizabeth's shy and timid appearance...

Sleeping with Elizabeth was just a political benefit for Zhu Houzhao as the emperor of the Ming Dynasty. In this era, no one could say that this was a wrong way.

But after sleeping with Elizabeth, Zhu Houzhao simply kept Elizabeth in the deep palace and continued to focus on state affairs. In this era, Elizabeth was just an ordinary British royal lady, not the British queen in history, so naturally she would not attract too much attention.

Henry VIII finally won the opportunity to send students to the Ming Dynasty at the cost of millions of silver dollars a year and his own daughter's life. Because of this, Britain and the Ming Dynasty were temporarily in a state of cooperation. Britain also sent a fleet to attack Spain as promised, nominally to help the Ming Dynasty, but in fact it also wanted to challenge Spain's dominant position in Western Europe.

Of course, Zhu Houzhao believed that with Britain's current strength, it would be impossible to provide much help to the Ming garrison in Ceuta. He could only hope that the Ming army in Ceuta could use its weapon advantages and rich military struggle experience to resist the attack of the Spanish Invincible Armada.

Zhu Houzhao admitted that even though his Ming Empire already had the most powerful army and navy in the world, it was still difficult to form an absolute crushing force in all regions of the world, because it was difficult for him to quickly deploy tens of thousands or even hundreds of thousands of troops tens of thousands of miles away.

Otherwise, he would not have agreed to Xia Yan's suggestion. To enfeoff kings overseas is to delegate power again. By delegating land interests and ruling power, he would encourage the Han people to settle in these places, thereby strengthening the control of the Ming Dynasty or the Han people over these places.

Affected by the harsh blow dealt by the Ming Dynasty to Portugal, Portugal and Spain have now merged. Therefore, in today's world, it is mainly the Ming Dynasty and Spain that are competing for hegemony. Although Spain aggressively led the Invincible Fleet to attack Ceuta, the Ming Dynasty's colony closest to the Mediterranean, the Ming Dynasty was also gradually encroaching on Spain's colonies in the Americas.

The looting of Tatar nomadic cavalry made it difficult for the Spanish colonists to gain a foothold in the northern part of North America, and the Indians, with the help of the Ming army, set fires everywhere in Central America, which also caused the Spanish colonists to abandon their cities and lands. Now that Zhu Zaijie was ordered to land in southern North America, it was natural that he wanted to drive out the Spanish colonists completely.

Therefore, Zhu Houzhao believed that even if the Ming Dynasty might suffer losses in some local areas, overall, Spain could not be a match for the Ming Dynasty because the Ming Dynasty's civilization was more advanced.

The problem that Zhu Houzhao could not avoid now was the issue of determining the successor. The memorial from the third prince also reminded him that some princes who were not interested in being the emperor of the central court had been exiled, while the few princes who remained in the country all wanted to be emperor. Zhu Houzhao considered for a long time how to choose the most suitable successor.

In the end, Zhu Houzhao decided to let these princes go to the grassroots to gain experience, starting from being a county magistrate or a prefectural magistrate. In short, like the new scholars or those who had just graduated from the Imperial University, they had to start from the grassroots level and then slowly consider the situation.

What Zhu Houzhao did not expect was that after these princes were demoted to local areas to serve as people-friendly officials, they performed quite well. Because they were heirs to the throne, they were particularly active and fair in governing a county. They did not do it for the sake of making money or getting promoted, but to win the support of the people and the favor of the emperor. Therefore, they were more pure, honest and pragmatic. However, this made civil and military officials very uncomfortable, because they often did not dare to use the power of their superiors to oppress others.

Thanks to my book friend Yi Jin Bai Tang for his reward of 100 Qidian coins. Thank you to my book friend Meng Bao Bao dr for his reward of 100 Qidian coins.



(End of this chapter)