Chongzhen's domineering

Chapter 235 Collaborative Development Fails, So We Fight (Part 1)
It was getting quite hot in Liaodong in July, and on the south bank of the Taizi River, more than 100,000 soldiers of the Beijing Garrison were working with great enthusiasm.

These days, it seems the soldiers of the Beijing garrison have all become professional bricklayers.

When they were in the capital, they spent their days building all sorts of factories, shops, and houses. Little did they know that after coming to Liaodong, they would go back to their old ways.

Or rather, they've taken up a side job again; being a bricklayer isn't their original profession, their original profession is fighting.

However, it seems that building cities during wartime is not bad, at least you don't have to rush up and fight the Jurchens to the death.

This is not to say that they were not brave enough; the key point is that it was unnecessary.

There was no need for them to rush up and fight the Jurchens to the death; why would they seek their own demise?
As for military merit, once they have built the city, the Jurchens will charge over, and that will be their military achievement.

Even if the Jurchens dared not charge over, the fact that they built cities along the way and recovered the entire Liaodong region was a tremendous military achievement.

The soldiers of the Beijing garrison were working with incredible enthusiasm, as if they were risking their lives.

The three massive city walls on the east, west, and south sides of Liaoyang were taking shape at a speed visible to the naked eye.

Sun Chuanting even considered whether to build a city upstream of the Taizi River and block the mountain road from Shenyang to Dingliao Youwei from the Jurchens!
In that case, Dingliao Right Guard would become an isolated city, and they only needed to keep besieging it until the Jurchens inside would surrender.

However, building a city on the upper reaches of the Taizi River was still quite dangerous, because small merchant ships could not navigate there, and the area was covered with mountains, with no road leading to the plains. They would have to carve out a road through the mountains.

They don't have enough manpower to clear roads yet, let alone build a city.

Furthermore, the Jurchens were particularly adept at mountain warfare, and to fight them in the mountains, one needed an overwhelming numerical advantage.

They still don't have enough troops right now.

He could only bear with it for now.

If Huang Taiji knew that Sun Chuanting felt that the 400,000-plus troops were still a bit insufficient, I wonder what he would think.

Right now, their entire tribe only numbered a little over 400,000!
He was doomed to meet his nemesis, Sun Chuanting, a commander as steady as a mountain. Sun Chuanting didn't even dare to take risks and advance. What could he do?
Zhu Jue had complete confidence in Sun Chuanting; he didn't need to worry about Liaodong at all, leaving it to Sun Chuanting.

He was waiting for the Spanish envoy to arrive.

Valdes was quite enthusiastic; he set off from Manila on the first day of July.

Unfortunately, he wasn't very lucky. Before he even left Luzon, news came that a storm was raging between Dongfan and Luzon, and many ships had been blown back, or even disappeared altogether.

He had no choice but to hide in the harbor north of Luzon Island for a few days to avoid the sea storm before continuing his journey.

Therefore, it took him more than ten miles in July to reach the inner sea of ​​the Ming Dynasty.

He was in a hurry to get to the capital of the Ming Dynasty, so he didn't have the mind to look around.

Originally, there wasn't much to see in the Great Ming Inland Sea, because it was so large and there weren't many ships, so it looked no different from the open sea.

Who would have thought that along the way he would see many ships, not only fleets of merchant ships, but also fleets of pure warships!

At the mouth of the Haihe River, hundreds of warships were circling around a huge warship.

These hundreds of warships weren't just circling around; each time they circled, each warship would fire a volley of shots at a fixed buoy in the distance.

That guy, the sound of cannon fire never stopped, and the huge buoy was almost submerged by the towering water column!
When Valdes saw this, his eyes almost popped out of their sockets.

That's all the warships they have right now. The Ming Empire has actually deployed such a huge fleet for exercises in the inland sea!

He did not doubt that the Ming Empire had such a small number of warships, because the Ming Empire also had a fleet that was operating on the American route. He had heard that the fleet also had dozens of warships.

In other words, the fleet alone, plus the ones he saw, numbered far more than all of their fleets combined. Moreover, the Ming Empire's southeastern seas were also numerous; he saw patrol fleets every time he passed through the southeastern empire's waters.

How many warships did the Ming Dynasty actually have?
As he crossed the Haihe River and entered the North Canal with a shocked expression, he was taken aback once again.

This was because there were simply too many ships on the North Canal; the waterway, which was over a hundred feet wide, was almost completely filled with convoys of ships.

This time, he was again taken to the newly built courtyard at the Tongzhou Canal Wharf to rest for the night.

On a ship, it was a little better on such a hot day, at least there was a breeze. But once on land, it was unbearable; the sweltering heat was enough to keep anyone awake.

Who would have thought that there would be a lot of ice blocks piled up in the courtyard where he was staying, and someone was even fanning him from behind the ice blocks. It was so cool, it was just like early spring in his hometown.

He had never experienced such a cool feeling in all the years he had lived in the Far East.

That’s nothing.

The next morning, as soon as the navy's fast boat pulled him into the Tonghui River, his eyes nearly popped out of their sockets.

The north bank of the Tonghui River is entirely composed of docks and waterways, stretching for dozens of miles!
Moreover, these docks and waterways are still under construction, and each ship is packed with people.

The shipbuilding capabilities of the Ming Dynasty were terrifying!
The Dutch only had a little over a hundred docks and waterways, and they were scattered in various places, while the Ming Empire built hundreds of docks and waterways on the north bank of a river!

How many ships can be built this year?
Zhu Jue originally did not want the Spanish envoy to see the shipyard, because he was afraid of exposing the secret of the ship.

However, things are different now.

This is because they have so many ships operating overseas that everyone can see them. Just the ships they operate on the Americas route alone number in the hundreds.

There were countless steamships in the North Canal and even the moat of the capital. He even arranged for steamships and warships to conduct drills in the inner sea. Anyone who wasn't blind could see the external structure of the steamships.

Since the external structure can no longer be concealed, it's better to let the Spanish envoys see it properly. After all, they can only see the waterwheel, not the internal structure, so they won't know how the steam engine drives the waterwheel.

Valdes was truly taken aback by the scale of the capital's shipyard. As the naval fast ships passed through the northeastern outer city, the northern outer city, and the northwestern outer city, he was so shocked that he couldn't close his mouth.

He remembered that the last time he came here, these places were farmland.

Nowadays, these places are densely packed with factories, stretching as far as the eye can see.

The Ming Dynasty's ability to build factories was equally terrifying.

With so many factories, it would probably take them decades to build, but they completed them all in just over a year!

How powerful was the Ming Dynasty?

Although he didn't see a single soldier this time, he was far more shocked than he had been before.

It's all because having too many people is useless these days. The combined population of the indigenous countries they wiped out was at least ten times their own, but so what? They still wiped them all out.

Therefore, in those days, the key to war was not the number of people, but the number of muskets, cannons, warships, and battleships.

With the Ming Empire's terrifying construction capabilities, how could it not have produced a large number of firearms, cannons, and warships?
He didn't need to see it to know; the Ming Empire must have an enormous number of firearms, cannons, and warships. Besides, he had seen the Ming Empire's fleet in its inland waters yesterday.

The Ming Dynasty was truly terrifying.

This time, he finally saw it for himself.

(End of this chapter)