Seeing Ye Zongliu actually bowing to him, Shen Yichen hurried over to lift him up and said, "Chief Ye, Mr. Bian helped me once before, and now you have saved me once too, so I already owe you two favors."
"So there is no need for a big gift. This is my duty to repay the favor. And as for a way out, I am not completely sure. I can only do my best and leave the rest to fate."
Shen Yichen didn't dare to say too confidently. His so-called way out was just a prototype of a plan, and no one knew how effective it would be.
"It doesn't matter. I believe in Mr. Shen's judgment!"
For Ye Zongliu and others, they had no other choice but to raise the flag of rebellion.
Shen Yichen's prophetic performance today, coupled with Bian He's appreciation of him, was enough to make Ye Zongliu like a drowning man who found a life-saving straw and wanted to desperately grasp this chance to survive.
"I wonder if Chief Ye knows about Japan?"
"Of course I know that Fujian and Zhejiang have been invaded by the Japanese since the reign of Emperor Taizu. Last year, they also attacked eastern Zhejiang, burning, killing and looting all the way to Songjiang Prefecture. It can be said that the people in the two places have suffered greatly from the Japanese."
"The way out I offer is to cooperate with the Japanese."
"What?"
When Ye Zongliu heard Shen Yichen say that he wanted to cooperate with the Japanese invaders, he was shocked.
Not to mention him, even the faces of the few miners who stayed on the ship immediately became extremely ugly.
You should know that Fujian and Zhejiang have been invaded by Japanese pirates for a hundred years. In order to prevent the coastal people from colluding with the Japanese pirates, Ming Taizu Zhu Yuanzhang once ordered that "no piece of wood is allowed to go to sea". This is the prototype of the Ming Dynasty's maritime ban.
Ye Zongliu and others were miners in Zhejiang, and they also opened private mines in Fujian for many years. How could they not know the cruelty of the Japanese pirates? Even many of the relatives and families of these miners had been robbed or even killed by the Japanese pirates.
For them, the Japanese pirates were their sworn enemies. This hatred passed down from generation to generation had been deeply engraved into the bones of the people in Fujian and Zhejiang, and was almost the same as the attitude of the Chinese people towards the Japanese in later generations.
Now you are asking Ye Zongliu and the others to cooperate with the Japanese pirates. Isn't that equivalent to being a "traitor" and acting as a guide?
Ye Zongliu and others would rather die than accept this kind of life.
"Captain Shen, many of our brothers have relatives who died tragically at the hands of the Japanese invaders. It can be said that we have a deep blood feud with the Japanese invaders."
"Let me cooperate with them. I would rather die in battle than live in disgrace ."
"Thank you for your kindness, Mr. Shen. Goodbye!"
After saying this, Ye Zongliu bowed and prepared to leave. Even when he spoke the last words, his tone was much colder.
I thought Shen Yichen was a scholar with great integrity, but I never expected that he would come up with such a method. This is more humiliating than letting them die!
"Chief Ye, you misunderstood. The cooperation I mentioned does not mean colluding with the Japanese pirates to burn, kill and plunder, but doing business with them!"
"Japan is rich in silver. We can solve the current crisis by earning money through trade ."
The dead end of Ye Zongliu was the shortage of silver currency in the Ming Dynasty. Relying solely on local production, even if the mountains were dug down, it would not be able to keep up with the social and economic development in the middle and late Ming Dynasty.
Since there is a shortage of local precious metal currency, we should take a long-term view and look at other parts of the world, such as Japan!
Compared to the Ming Dynasty, which was short of precious metal currency, Japan was rich in silver mines and was even known as the "Silver Island". In particular, the exchange rate between silver and copper coins was much lower than that of the Ming Dynasty. The same Ming copper coin could be exchanged for two or three times more silver in Japan.
It can even be understood that even if there is a Ming Dynasty merchant who does not sell anything at this time, and only transports copper coins to earn the exchange rate difference, he can still make a fortune!
In addition, the root cause of the century-long Japanese invasion on the southeast coast was also the contradiction between productivity and materials, which is very similar to the Mongolian invasion in the north of the Ming Dynasty.
Japan was very eager to obtain money and materials from the Ming Dynasty through tribute, trade, etc., and there was even a fight between the various forces over the issue of tribute qualifications.
However, the Ming Dynasty had little interest in overseas trade, which led to most transactions being based on smuggling.
Once the trade gap could not be met, and Japan was in the turmoil of the "Northern and Southern Dynasties" period, with many defeated samurai and bankrupt farmers, it was easy for them to be coerced into doing evil things when they could not survive.
As a result, many people were recruited by merchants from Kyushu and became bandits who cooperated to plunder the coastal areas of Ming and Korea. This was the root cause of the Japanese invasion in the Ming Dynasty.
Shen Yichen hoped that Ye Zongliu and others would open up channels by cooperating with Japanese merchants to earn Japanese silver to fill the currency gap of the Ming Dynasty.
This method is not the so-called being a traitor. On the contrary, it is a financial plunder of a country with advanced productivity against a country with primary productivity, or in more popular terms, it is dumping and currency looting.
Of course, Shen Yichen, Ye Zongliu and others could not explain the financial things clearly, so they could only simply and roughly summarize it as letting them cooperate with the Japanese.
"Captain Shen, you may not know that the Japanese slaves are so poor that they can't even afford to wear pants. How can they do business with us?"
Ye Zongliu had seen the Japanese pirates before. They were short, poor, and in rags. Does the Celestial Empire need to do business with a barbaric place like Japan?
It has to be said that Ye Zongliu's way of thinking was the mainstream cognition in the Ming Dynasty.
It is precisely because of this that in the early and middle except for a very small number of coastal fishermen who could not survive and were forced to engage in smuggling with Japan, other people had no concept of trading with Japan.
"It doesn't matter whether they have pants or not, the most important thing is that they have money."
Shen Yichen smiled and replied, "What's the key to the status of the Japanese slaves?" In later generations, the British Empire established the East India Company to colonize Southeast Asia. Most of the natives were probably not as good as the current Japanese pirates, but they could still exploit them for the primitive accumulation of capitalism.
As long as we can get silver from Japan, we can solve the heavy taxes imposed on miners like Ye Zongliu and alleviate the currency shortage in the Ming Dynasty.
It also opened up a trade route with Japan, which, in a sense, also enabled us to grasp the dynamics of the Japanese pirates.
The ancients said that knowing yourself and the enemy will ensure victory in every battle. Only by understanding the Japanese pirates' routes and logistics bases in detail can we completely wipe them out.
All these advantages indicate that launching a financial plunder against Japan now will bring only benefits and no harm, whether it is to save Ye Zongliu and others, or to lay the foundation for quelling the Japanese rebellion a hundred years in advance!
"Chief Shen, is this really feasible?"
Ye Zongliu had also heard about the Japanese silver production, but he never took it to heart.
Today, Shen Yichen's reminder seemed to make some sense. If he could earn silver from Japan, he would be able to make up for the heavy taxes of the court, and there would be no need for his brothers and others to take the risk of raising the flag of rebellion.
"Whether it is feasible or not, we have to try it to know. Chief Ye, you dare to raise the flag of rebellion, so why don't you dare to try the smuggling business?"
Although the Ming Dynasty issued a maritime ban during the Hongwu period, smuggling in Fujian and Zhejiang continued unabated. Shen Yichen believed that with Ye Zongliu's ability and connections, it should not be a problem to find a smuggling route.
"Mr. Shen's words are like enlightenment. Now that things have come to this, is there anything else that I dare not do?"
It is indeed as Shen Yichen said, if they are not afraid of even rebellion, then what is smuggling?
"Then I wish Chief Ye a successful start in advance."
"Thank you for your kind words, Mr. Shen. If you can really find a way to survive in the future, I will repay you with my services!"
"Chief Ye is very polite. I may need your help in the future."
"When the time comes, all you need is a word from Case Master Shen, and I won't even blink an eye at the mountains of swords and the sea of ​​fire!"
After a few polite words, Ye Zongliu and others bowed and said goodbye and returned to their speedboat, while Shen Yichen continued to head north along the canal.
However, Shen Yichen's words that he would need help in the future were not just a polite remark, and there was a high probability that it would become a reality.
If the historical Battle of Tumu could not be changed, the elite troops of the Ming Dynasty would have been completely lost in this battle, and would have been on the defensive facing the Mongolian tribes in the north.
At the same time, the situation on the southwest and northwest borders will continue to deteriorate, with various small-scale peasant uprisings continuing in the core areas. Even after the overseas Japan completed its unification during the Warring States Period, it was sharpening its knives and preparing for a westward invasion.
Judging from the situation alone, the Ming Dynasty was in crisis after the Tumu Incident and turned from offense to defense. In order to change this situation, in addition to clean government, reorganizing the military is also a necessary condition.
After the collapse of the Northwest Frontier Defense System, the quality of the soldiers from the old Qin people in the Central Plains dropped significantly, and the Ming Dynasty in history turned its attention to the south. The Guangxi wolf soldiers and the Xiangxi native soldiers were drawn up to fill the missing vacancies.
To be honest, these southern chieftains' soldiers were not bad at fighting, but their biggest problem was their poor military discipline. Many times, their ability to wreak havoc on the local area was not much different from that of bandits.
Ming Dynasty historical records even record: "Wherever they went, they caused disturbances, and everyone was in a state of panic. When they heard that the Wa family's troops were coming, they all closed their doors and fled, which was no different from the mistakes of the Japanese pirates."
They are both a scourge, but at least the bandits don't have to pay any military pay. You guys are even more ruthless than the Japanese pirates in that you take money to do things!
Therefore, rebuilding the elite troops of the Ming Dynasty naturally cannot rely on this group of chieftain soldiers. If one wants to have combat effectiveness and a certain degree of discipline, what better source of soldiers can there be than the predecessor of the Qi Family Army?
Shen Yichen chose to be a civil servant because this was determined by the political system after the Song Dynasty. Only civil servants could hold the pinnacle of power. Even if you want to change, you must at least have power to have the basis for changing the entire system. Otherwise, it is just empty talk.
But this does not mean that Shen Yichen values ​​literature over military power and will give up the pursuit of military power. As long as conditions permit, he will try his best to personally control an elite force as his own military support.
Ye Zongliu's group of miners was a foreshadowing laid by Shen Yichen. If the day really came when they were in danger of facing the foreign cavalry, perhaps the "Qi Family Army" would have come into being in advance.