Chapter 241 Black Death

Sophia originally planned to follow her uncle to Venice and other Mediterranean countries to broaden her horizons and increase her knowledge. By chance, her uncle heard the news that the Ming Dynasty had reopened the sea.

Since the Tang Dynasty, Europeans have had many legends about Middle-earth, and for this reason many people have been yearning for this magical land.

After consulting his niece, the uncle took Sophia on a merchant ship to Southeast Asia.

The consequences are predictable. Chen Zuyi took a fancy to this merchant ship from Europe and even attacked it.

This led to the subsequent development of events.

Sophia was captured by Manazhe Wuli’s men and was finally given to Chen Zuyi. As luck would have it, Chen Zuyi had drunk poisonous blood wine the day before and got a lung infection and poisoning. He died before he could even taste the Western food.

Now she is in Yang Chen’s hands again. Compared to Chen Zuyi, who is rude, ugly and rude, Sophia, under the influence of her uncle, has a much better impression of Yang Chen and Zhu Biao.

According to legend, they are the descendants of the dragon, a fighting nation that came to the ancient Chinese nation.

How could Sophia not feel secretly delighted?

“Brother Yang, it seems that the other party is not the Windsor family you mentioned. Do you know what happened to the Carrington family she belongs to?” Zhu Biao looked at Yang Chen and asked casually.

“I don’t know. The surname Carrington will be a very large surname in the future Western world. As for the family strength, I’m not sure.” Yang Chen touched his chin.

“Not to mention that she called her kingdom Astoria. I have never heard of such a small country. I think it probably didn’t exist for long.”

After receiving this news, Zhu Biao’s original plan to use Sophia as a bridge to attack Europe was officially shattered.

Unexpectedly, Yang Chen changed the subject and said bluntly:

“But this small country of Astoria is located in Scotland, which is a pretty good place. To the south is England, and to the left is Ireland. When we enter this territory, she can act as a translator and lead the way for us. There are also kingdoms from Mediterranean countries. They can show us what the current situation is like in most of Europe.

Let Yongle speed up the military movement and start the attack from the north all the way to the west. When this passage is completely opened, the Ming Dynasty will be able to march straight into the heart of Europe. Combined with the attack from the sea, we will be able to attack from both sides and take over the whole of Europe.

Besides, Ah Biao, have you forgotten what the purpose of our voyage is?”

Yang Chen looked at Zhu Biao suspiciously and reminded him.

Upon hearing this, Zhu Biao was dazed for a moment, but he quickly came to his senses and realized that he seemed to have fallen into a misunderstanding.

That is, he was not here to establish hostile exchanges at all, but had two purposes.

One of the goals was to inquire about Europe, and the other was to enter the American continent through the Atlantic Ocean.

As the Crown Prince of the Ming Dynasty and the heir to the throne, once he officially sets foot on the territory of the American continent, from now on, America will only have one voice.

Ming dynasty!

Before the mission was completed, Zhu Biao would never have a head-on conflict with anyone in Europe.

“That’s true. If you hadn’t reminded me in time, Brother Yang, I would have really forgotten about this matter.” Zhu Biao raised the corners of his mouth and said calmly.

“Answer me, do you want to go home or fend for yourself?” Yang Chen didn’t say anything more and asked Sophia directly.

Faced with this sudden change of attitude, Sophia was obviously a little confused.

She answered subconsciously: “I want to go home to see my father.”

“Very good. In that case, from today on, you will follow me and learn Chinese.” Yang Chen politely stretched out his hand and showed it to Sophia.

Looking at the white hand in front of her, Sophia’s heart was pounding. She seemed to have seen that her future destiny would be dominated by the handsome man in front of her.

He raised his hand and placed it on Yang Chen’s palm, and was suddenly grabbed by Yang Chen and dragged up from the stool.

“From today on, you must learn Chinese from me. I will give you one month. From today on, wherever I point my finger, the next word I say will mean the meaning of your Scottish language. Do you understand?” Yang Chen was very overbearing and did not give Sophia any time to hesitate, which made her even more obsessed.

“Xiaochun, take her back to my room.” Xuefei, take her back to my room.

“I understand, Master.” Lu Xuefei, who was standing not far away, took Sophia away from here as Yang Chen said.

Soon, their eyes fell on Blake.

The nervousness that Sophia had felt was transferred to him in the blink of an eye. Originally thinking that Yang Chen was a kind person, Blake now realized that the Lord Yang’s right to speak seemed to carry more weight than that of the crown prince.

“Blake, you are from the Kingdom of Asloria in the northern Mediterranean. Your country should be similar to the Kingdom of Astoria where Sophia is from, right?” Yang Chen’s half-smile made Blake feel extremely nervous. Fortunately, he was relatively calm. After all, he was a child of nobility, and he was a man who was well-read. His composure was far beyond that of Sophia, a princess of a small country.

“That’s right, your Excellency. But I still want to say that in Asloria, we have a total of 30,000 warriors! Astoria can’t compare to that. My father used to be a brave warrior, but when he was old, he chose not to participate in the war, but chose to use the gold coins won from the war to run his business. Now our king still remembers my father’s fighting courage and let him join the Great Council to become a elder who assists the kingdom.” Blake introduced the basic information of his kingdom in as much detail as possible.

After understanding all this, Zhu Biao asked Yang Chen:
“What was this parliament he was talking about?”

“This thing is actually a bit similar to the cabinet founded by Yongle in later generations. It is a group of elderly and powerful people gathered together to form a place to discuss national affairs. In addition to a few parliamentarians, there are also some wealthy businessmen, armored warriors who command the powerful, and some church members. Anyway, the entire parliament is basically composed of some old elders. Only when the king has great power can these people be suppressed. Once the king’s power is weak, the elders of the parliament will replace the king.” Yang Chen briefly introduced the existence of the parliament, which made Zhu Biao feel extremely terrified.

If such an organization appeared in the Ming Dynasty, the court would be in danger within one or two imperial successors.

Except for the first emperor who established this organization, he was able to suppress those old ministers. No matter who the other emperors were when they took office, they would not be able to get the support of these elders.

This is why, when Yang Chen introduced Yongle’s establishment of the cabinet, he said that the existence of the cabinet in the later period would be more harmful than the prime minister.

Why did the Ming Dynasty fall?

It was because the gap was so huge at the end of the Ming Dynasty that 0.2 percent of the people owned 99.8 percent of the wealth of the entire Ming Dynasty.

Everyone believes that the Ming Dynasty was brought down by the support structure promulgated by Zhu Yuanzhang, and indeed some members of the Ming royal family endangered the country in the late Ming Dynasty.

However, the degree of these harms is not worth mentioning compared with the wealth accumulated by the cabinet over the years. Except for a small number of people like Zhang Juzheng who are incorruptible, the rest of the families involved in the cabinet are all rich and wealthy.

In particular, Shen Yishi, a Zhejiang businessman during the Jiajing period of the Ming Dynasty, used capitalism to win over the officials in Zhejiang and produced a lot of exquisite cloth to sell all over the world. One can imagine how much wealth he gained.

Even with such a person, he still couldn’t beat those old guys in the cabinet.

His family originally wanted to confiscate his property and use his wealth, which was said to be as much as a mountain of silver, to make up for the deficit and debt of the national treasury.

Unexpectedly, apart from a part of Shen Yishi’s collection whose total value was barely 10,000 taels of silver, the rest of the money in his house magically disappeared without a trace.

The Jinyiwei interrogated him about where the money had gone, but Shen Yishi said that the money was in the Ming Dynasty.

When Jiajing learned the news, he flew into a rage. Instigated by cabinet members, he actually ordered the killing of Shen Yishi.

When he came to his senses, he realized that what Shen Yishi said was indeed correct.

His family’s money was indeed in the Ming Dynasty, but it had long been divided up by the entire court.

Of course, the dynasty Yang Chen was talking about was the end of the Ming Dynasty, but in fact the same was true for the end of the Qing Dynasty.

This led to the Ming Dynasty’s elite class colluding with each other to plunder the people’s wealth in the name of the Ming royal family, and then turning around and joining Nurhaci’s group of Jurchens.

Originally, this group of elites wanted Nurhaci to put pressure on the Ming royal family to let them know that without them, the Ming Dynasty would have perished long ago.

Unexpectedly, this group of stupid elites got into trouble.

Not only did it cause uprisings all over the Ming Dynasty, but it also allowed Nurhaci to gather 200,000 Han Chinese rebels in a short period of time.

You should know that the Eight Banners are divided into three types: the Manchu Eight Banners, the Ancient Eight Banners, and the Han Eight Banners. All of these armies were members of the Ming army who were oppressed and could not get money and had no choice but to surrender.

This is what happens when a group of people are able to influence the fate of a country. They will suck the blood of a country with the instinct of maggots.

Ever since Zhu Biao learned about this situation, he understood that the only solution to this problem was to enlighten the people!
Only when the people know how their identities came about, how a country exists, and on whom it relies to survive, will they not feel like they have been fooled without even knowing it.

Of course, Zhu Biao is the heir to the crown prince of the Ming Dynasty. He would certainly hope that the people of the Ming Dynasty would still love their country. This is a matter of principle.

“Blake, since you yearn for the Ming Dynasty, how about we make an exchange?” Zhu Biao took the initiative to step forward and spoke to Blake in a negotiating tone.

This surprised Blake a little.

He tried his best to maintain his composure and nodded in agreement:

“I wonder what kind of deal the prince wants to make with me?”

Zhu Biao smiled faintly, looked him straight in the eye and said:
“It’s not a big problem, actually. I just want you to tell us which countries there are in the Roman Land, what language each country speaks, and all the local information and customs. Because Brother Yang and I plan to pass through the Indian Ocean. If we pass by your area, it would be wrong if we don’t understand some of your customs and habits, which would lead to bad misunderstandings.

As long as you can give us more and more detailed information, I promise you that when you arrive in Ming Dynasty, someone will arrange for you to go to the capital, which is the capital of Ming Dynasty, Nanjing City.

I believe you will get what you want there, but I don’t know if you are willing to complete this transaction.”

Although Zhu Biao knew that it was Westerners who used cannons to open up the land of China in later generations, he did not have such deep hatred for these Westerners, because the people the West was fighting against were the regime established by the Manchus. The Manchus could be said to have ascended the throne by stepping on the corpses of his Ming Dynasty. In a sense, the Westerners even helped them to avenge themselves.

Before leaving, Zhu Biao asked Yang Chen whether he should treat these white people like enemies when he occupied the whole of Europe in the future.

The result was an answer that surprised everyone in the Zhu family.

Yang Chen believes that there is no need to exterminate all Westerners.

When he asked the other party the reason, Yang Chen said that there were saints similar to those in China in the Western world.

These saints have quite flexible brains. If there is only one voice in the world in the future, it would be too monotonous.

Therefore, Yang Chen’s opinion is that some Westerners should be retained, but of course the sovereignty should definitely be in the hands of the Ming Dynasty.

The seeds of the future Ming Dynasty will be spread all over the world. As time goes by, the differences will gradually disappear, and eventually a completely new culture and civilization will emerge.

This made Zhu Biao feel extremely impressed.

Since Yang Chen could be so magnanimous, Zhu Biao also expressed his opinions and views.

It would be an opportunity to take advantage of Blake’s presence now to obtain more detailed information about the Western world in advance.

Blake swallowed, nodded without any hesitation, and agreed to Zhu Biao’s request and conditions.

“I am willing! I am very willing! I am very lucky that His Excellency the Crown Prince can reach such a deal with me!”

Seeing this, a smile appeared on Yang Chen’s face. Everything was going according to his and Zhu Biao’s plan.

What happened next naturally went smoothly.

Blake lives in the Riau Islands and was mainly responsible for drawing these maps. It took almost ten days before the maps began to appear in front of them.

The map is divided into three parts. One part is the whole of Europe, that is, the Holy Roman Empire, and there are some Mediterranean countries, such as Spain, Barcelona, ​​Monaco, Italy, Athens, Bulgaria, these cities and countries are very close to the Mediterranean Sea. Going up, there are France, Sweden, Norway, Finland and other places close to the Arctic. Even Scotland, England and Ireland where Sophia is located are included.

If you think the content of the map is just that simple, you are wrong. In addition to these broad city-states, there are many kingdom names, some of which Yang Chen has never heard of.

After asking him, I learned that these countries were basically the result of some people who survived the Black Death (plague) in Europe a few years ago starting to establish themselves as kings.

Yang Chen remembers very clearly the exact time when the Black Death broke out, which was in 1338.

This bacterial virus began to spread from France, Spain, and England to the whole of Europe, with the most serious period being from 1338 to 1350.

It is now the 1382th year of Hongwu, , more than years after the most severe period of the Black Death.

(End of this chapter)