Chapter 170 Pinch your nose

All these situations are not what Blanco originally imagined. This group of sea wolves is completely different from his impression of Chinese pirates. This group of sea wolves has completely escaped from the category of ordinary pirates and is more like a well-trained army, even compared with the navy fleet of this sea wolf. It is also far from the level of the Shanghai Wolf Flotilla.

Although these ships are basically some small-sized Keron ships, they are expensive because of their large number. With the current number of ships in Manila, they can't compare with them at all. Even if their fleet is strong, they can't withstand the siege of so many warships by sea wolves.

Now he understands why the fleet led by Anthony was defeated by the sea wolf in Chicken Cage Bay. Even if he went to another person, even if he asked the Governor himself to command the battle, the result would not be much better.

Suddenly, he saw a Western-style sailboat docked beside a relatively remote wharf. He recognized at a glance that the sailboat was a gunboat they were stationed in Manila, a gunboat led by Anthony to Taiwan at that time.

Before he came, he knew that two ships in Anthony's fleet were captured by sea wolves. Unexpectedly, he saw one of them here today.

Although the distance is very far and a little unclear, he still sees that the gunboat they were captured has been completely repaired by the sea wolf at this time, and all the sails have been suspended again. From afar, the hull is much cleaner and tidy than the ship he has seen before, and the hull has been There is no sign of damage, including all the ship boards, which have been repolished and gracefully docked on the edge of the dock in the distance.

So he proposed to go and have a look, but the escort shook his head and said, "That's our military restricted area. No miscellaneous people are allowed to come near. I don't have the right to take you there, so you can only look here from afar, otherwise you will be punished, including me!"

Looking at the captured ship, Blanco's heart was mixed, and the loser's emotions enveloped him. Now he knows their strength that the sea wolf is no longer easy to deal with. With the current domestic situation and the situation in Europe, even if they make a request, I'm afraid that at home Nor can they send a large number of warships to deal with this group of sea wolves.

And somehow, Yu Xiaotian was also very clear about this, so that all their cards were in the hands of the other party, giving them no room for negotiation at all.

The escort seemed to be intentional and took Blanco around along the coast. When they traveled to the east of Nanri Island, Blanco suddenly heard a rumble of gunfire from the sea, so he quickly looked at the sea and saw a sea wolf fleet training on the sea.

This fleet with a sea wolf flag is not his common Kron ships at all. These boats are obviously their Western-style boats. The hull is narrow and elegant, the hull is low, and the displacement is not large, which is about 100 tons. The ship is just a samaran, which belongs to a kind of sumat fast ship.

At present, there are not many such ships in Europe, mainly operating along the coast, but they also have the ability to sail, and the speed is very fast, especially in their enemy British fleet, but with this kind of sea wolf sloop sloop still have it in ship type and sail. Some differences.

As a businessman who often goes to sea by boat, Blanco has a deep understanding of ships. Although it is not true, he immediately feels that this kind of Western-style sloop fast ships should be fast and flexible. Although these ships do not carry a large number of artillery, they can load six or seven at most. Artillery, but this kind of ship is very suitable for moving along the coast. With their flexibility and rapid maneuvering in narrow seas, it is a very suitable ship for coastal warfare.

Compared with those Chinese Kerong ships, this kind of ship is much faster, much more flexible and has strong firepower. It is simply a tailor-made special coastal combat ship.

And he roughly counted that there were at least ten such sloud fast ships in the sea that were being trained.

Such a fleet of fast and flexible shamot fast ships is a rather terrible combat force offshore. Once entangled by them, even the Grand Galen ship they now have in Spain may be difficult to get out and make sure that they retreat. At this time, Blanco understands why that Yu Xiao God doesn't pay attention to the officers and soldiers at all.

If they have so many ships, no matter how many warships the official sailors come, they are not the opponents of the sea wolf. No wonder Yu Xiaotian is not worried about the attack of the officers and army.

A few days later, Blanco saw many unexpected things on Nanri Island, and generally knew the strength of the sea wolf.

He is very clear about the strength of these sea wolves he sees now, but it is just the tip of their iceberg. Deeper, they must have more strength hidden. It is impossible for the Ming official to expel the sea wolf from this Nanri Island.

Even if the Dutch send a fleet to help the Ming official, I'm afraid they won't get any advantage. In this way, the idea of using the Dutch as the bargaining weight can only be vacanted.

Next, Yu Xiaotian summoned Blanco again and began negotiations. This time Blanco's attitude became much more honest. He only pinched his nose and did not dare to make conditions with Yu Xiaotian.

He just proposed that he hoped that the two sides could lift the state of hostility, and the sea wolf withdrew the blockade of ships going to Manila at sea, and lifted the blockade of Daming's route to Manila, so that Daming sea merchants could continue to freely go to Manila for trade activities.

For this reason, the Spaniards are willing to apologize to the sea wolf and make some compensation to the sea wolf for the last conflict between the two sides in Chicken Lang Bay.

As for the amount of compensation, the two sides held repeated negotiations, and finally Blanco said that they could pay up to 15,000 pesos of silver coins to the sea wolf.

Blanco's explanation is that when Anthony led the fleet to Chicken Cage Bay last time, they had brought 20,000 pesos, but in the naval battle, most of them had sunk into the sea and some of them were captured by sea wolves. At present, Manila does not have enough silver coins to pay the sea wolves as war compensation.

In fact, at that time, the Spaniards proposed to buy Chicken Cage Bay for 20,000 taels of silver, which was already generous to the Spaniards.

Because in this era, the Spaniards have few things to export to Daming, but they need a large number of goods produced by Daming, so they can only find ways to bring silver coins from the American colonies as funds to buy Daming goods.

In this era, Daming is completely in a trade surplus. Except for a small amount of European luxury goods, Daming hardly needs to buy many goods from Europeans, so Daming has also become a terrible silver black hole, constantly absorbing silver from Europeans, so that Daming has There is a large amount of silver, and even inflation has occurred.

Because the monetary policy of the Ming Dynasty was so bad, although the Daming government also issued a large number of *, they did not pay attention to maintaining the value of *. They only used the Daming treasure banknotes they issued as a tool to accumulate wealth, so that in the end, the Ming treasure banknotes lost their credit and were completely abandoned by the Ming people. As a last resort, they had to Return to the state of using silver as currency.

Fortunately, these Europeans have imported a large number of silver into Daming, so that Daming can have relatively sufficient silver as a circulating currency. Otherwise, what Daming uses as currency is really a headache. However, a large number of imports of silver also caused the depreciation of silver and inflation. This situation continued until after the war, because the Qing Dynasty gave a large number of silver as war compensation to the great powers, which made China return to the situation of silver scarcity.

The Spaniards now occupied many parts of the Americas, where they obtained enough silver and continuously transported them to the Philippines every year. As funds for the purchase of Chinese goods, these silver are mostly minted into silver coins, called peso. This kind of silver coin is exquisitely minted and easy to circulate because of their uniform weight. Moreover, the silver content is relatively high. It is said that the silver content of more than 70% or even the highest can reach 90%, which is very popular with Chinese people and is an absolute hard currency in the coastal area.

However, the silver plundered by the Spaniards was continuously sucked into the Ming Dynasty, which was not a good thing for the Spaniards, so later the Spanish king had to limit the amount of silver shipped to Manila every year and stipulated that it could not exceed the quota.

Now the amount of peso in the hands of the governor of Manila is not much, so it is impossible to compensate the sea wolf for enough silver, up to 15,000 pesos.

Yu Xiaotian finally accepted this. As long as the Spanish delivered the 15,000 pesos, he would withdraw the plundering ship sent to China on the route to Manila and give the Chinese merchant ships to Manila a free passage.

The greatest manifestation of the value of the Spanish in the Philippines is their trade with Daming. If this trade is cut off, the existence of Spaniards in the Philippines will not have much significance. However, unlike the Dutch over the years, the Spaniards have rarely personally sailed to Daming. Trade, but wait for Daming merchants to send the goods to Manila, and then make acquisitions and re-export them to Europe or the Americas, so they have stronger requirements for the stability of trade routes.

This is also the reason why they are willing to pay some money this time to make the sea wolf give up continuing to block merchant ships trading in Manila. 15,000 pesos seems to be a lot, but as long as they can still buy Daming goods, they can soon earn back the money.

(Continue to scream hysterically, "Call the monthly ticket!" It will be updated twice a day this month, and I will never break my promise!)