In the Ganqing Palace, Yan Siqi, dressed in a literati, knelt on the ground: "The grass man Yan Siqi bowed to Your Majesty!"

Seeing that Yan Siqi was handsome and majestic, she loved her very much, the little carpenter quickly made a gesture of asking for her: "Aiqing Yan, please get up quickly."

"Thank you, Your Majesty!" Yan Siqi kowtowed and stood up.

"Come, give me a seat!" the carpenter emperor shouted.

Before entering the palace, a eunuch had already explained to Yan Siqi the precautions and etiquettes to pay attention to when entering the palace. A eunuch brought a stool to Yan Siqi. He immediately knelt down and thanked him, then stood up, walked to the stool, and sat down carefully. When he sat down, he didn't dare to sit on his butt at all, but he turned forward, just weighed his butt a little.

The carpenter emperor asked enthusiastically: "Yan Aiqing, how many people and how many ships do you have?"

Yan Siqi replied: "Your Majesty, the grass people have 25,000 naval troops, 15,000 land troops, more than 3,000 ships of all sizes, more than 500 red barbarian cannons, and more than 5,000 small cannons. There are also 20,000 other brother naval troops, and more than 2,000 ships of all sizes."

"Can the others in your brothers' alliance convince you?" asked the carpenter emperor again.

"When you go back to Your Majesty, Yang Tiansheng, Zheng Zhilong, Shi Daxuan, Li Guozhu and others are more obedient and are willing to accept the court's envoy, but there are also Liu Xiang and others who are unwilling to accept the court's envoy." Yan Siqi replied.

"Liu Xiang? I have heard of this person, active in the coastal areas of Guangdong, and have colluded with the Red and Maowen Yi." The little carpenter brought out what he heard from Gao Shixin.

"Your Majesty forgive me! I'm just blaming the grass people for not being strict in discipline!" Yan Siqi quickly knelt down and apologized.

The little carpenter laughed: "Yan Qing is up quickly, why are you guilty? I ask you, Liu Xiang is not convinced by Wang Hua, should he continue to recruit him or send troops to chase him?"

Yan Siqi replied: "As long as your Majesty issues an order, the people of Cao will be willing to lead their troops to chase and suppress the straitors."

"What if I don't issue an order?" the little carpenter asked again.

"Then as long as he does not collude with the Red Mavericks and Yi to harass my southeastern coast, he will let him go; if he commits a crime, the Caomin will definitely lead his troops to wipe him out!" Yan Siqi replied respectfully.

"Hahaha!" the little carpenter laughed, "Yan Qing, I will appoint you as the general of my Ming Navy and obey the dispatch of the Jinyiwei and the East Factory. As long as you share a portion of the money you earned from doing maritime trade to me."

"Thank you, Your Majesty!" Yan Siqi stood up from the stool again and knelt on the ground to thank him.

Although part of the maritime trade income is to be handed over to the court, it is recognized by the court. The benefits are much more than the little money given every year. First of all, they are no longer bandits, but officials and soldiers of the court. From then on, they no longer need to worry about being caught and beheaded. The second benefit is that after they have legal identities, it is much more convenient to purchase and sell imported goods. When purchasing goods, there is no need to worry about being raised by profiteers. When selling goods, there is no need to worry about being suppressed by profiteers. They can buy and sell at fair and reasonable prices. What's more, with the official status, they can also obtain official kiln porcelain or high-quality silk that originally required more than ten times or even dozens of times the price. As for the third benefit, they can use the resources of the official family to build ships.

Official kiln porcelain was originally a tribute, but since the mid-Ming Dynasty, it was no secret that it had private ownership of official kiln porcelain and tribute silk. Many tributes were intercepted by local officials, either collected by themselves, or sold to gentry at high prices.

Yan Siqi's brothers can also get official kiln porcelain and tribute silk, but they need to spend a high price to get these things, but once they are shipped to Europe, they are almost equivalent to gold! However, Chinese maritime merchant ships naturally cannot drive to Europe. Most of these goods are shipped to Japan for a large amount of silver; the rest of the goods are sent to Mojim or Manila for silver from the Thais.

There were two ways to obtain silver in the Ming Dynasty. One was the silver mines, porcelain, silk, tea and copper coins from Japan to exchange for ships of silver; the other was to send silk and porcelain to Manila for ships of silver. The Spanish sailing ship transported a large amount of silver from the Americas, and most of these silver was purchased by the Spanish and then transported back to Europe for sale.

Therefore, most of the silver dug out by the Spanish colonization of America flowed into the Ming Dynasty.

However, so much silver flowed into the Ming Dynasty, and the Ming Dynasty court was still very poor, because the silver ended up in the hands of civil servants and gentry, and was kept in the cellar and in double walls. The silver became private collectibles, and without flowing into the market, the silver lost its circulation value as currency. It was not until the Qing Dynasty entered the pass and dug out the silver from the gentry's house with a butcher knife, which allowed the silver to return to the market and become circulating currency.

Now that Emperor Tianqi has recruited Yan Siqi and controlled the sea trade, the gentry must have suffered the losses. However, Emperor Tianqi opened a golden mouth and gave Yan Siqi the position of general of the Jinyiwei Navy. The gentry had no way to deal with Yan Siqi.

What can it be done? At the sea, unless the Spaniards and the Dutch traveled thousands of miles to dispatch battleships from the West to the East, there would be no fleet on the Asian sea that year that could defeat Yan Siqi's brother alliance.

From Europe, dispatching battleships to the East? Stop dreaming, how much does it cost? This is the seventeenth century, not the later nineteenth century. The first-class battleships of this era were obtained from the nineteenth century, which is the tonnage of a third-class battleship. The first-class battleships are basically mascots and almost never participate in naval battles. Although the first-class battleships are very large and have fierce firepower, once they are surrounded by enemies and sunk or captured, they will seriously damage morale and lose all their face.

Therefore, the main forces of the naval battle back then were level 3 battleships, level 4 and level 5 cruise ships. As for Asian waters, Westerners came to armed merchant ships and the British sixth privateers.

After having the official position of the Ming Dynasty court, Yan Siqi was able to use the resources of the Ming Dynasty officials to build ships.

The Eighteen Brothers Alliance is not a waste of money to build ships, nor is it a lack of technology to build ships. What is lacking is manpower and raw materials. Excellent shipbuilders are rare, and high-quality raw materials are not numerous. Once they have an official position and receive the support of the Ming Dynasty, all this will no longer be a problem.

Zhang Yong smiled and said, "General Yan, let alone privateers, we can build battleships!"

"Battleship?" Yan Siqi was stunned for a moment, "Eunuch Zhang, the lower official has also heard of the battleships of the Thais. It only requires good oak to build such a warship. But our Ming Dynasty lacks oak."

Zhang Yongdao: "We in the Ming Dynasty lack oak, but there are ironwoods that are not inferior to oak, so we can use them to build ships."

Who knew that the little carpenter made a sentence: "Tielimu? There is no tall Tilimu anymore. During the Chengzu period, in order to support the eunuch of Sanbao to voyage to the West, Tilimu had already been cut off."

Zhang Yong quickly knelt down: "The emperor is more knowledgeable than me."

The carpenter emperor laughed: "Yongwazi, you are no worse than me in this carpenter work, but it is worth it that I will beat you once today. You can't know much more than me, right?"

"There is no iron wood and the Ming Dynasty has no oak, so how can we build a battleship?" Yan Siqi asked.

The little carpenter laughed and said, "This is not simple. There is teak. The Ming Dynasty has no shortage of high-quality teak. Although it is not as hard as iron wood, teak is not easy to get moldy, rot, and is very hard. Building the battleship you mentioned is excellent material." As he said, the little carpenter turned his head and said, "Wei Daban, bring the battleship I made."

Wei Zhongxian quickly turned around and went behind, and soon walked out with a model of a battleship.
Chapter completed!