Chapter III: The State of the Navy In order to prevent piracy, but also to develop the navy so that the future of the Tang Dynasty can go further, the imperial court spared no effort in the construction of the navy, and spent endless wealth, not only stationed a large number of fleets in the local fleet, but also arranged fleets of different sizes in major overseas territories.
For example, the Spice Islands are now the most important spice supply base in Datang, and the spice tax revenue alone exceeds 3 million yuan every year, which is comparable to a Quanzhou.
It's just that the profits of spices are too big, and they can be called another cash cow of Datang's finances, and they are also the one that is endless and inexhaustible.
As a result, the area was regularly raided by pirates, and over the course of five years, the Spice Islands experienced more than ten large-scale lootings alone.
Plus the Spice Islands are too big – not in size, but in a wide area.
Although the Spice Islands are said to be an archipelago, they are actually divided into two parts, north and south, with a maximum distance of more than five hundred nautical miles, especially in the Banda Islands in the south of the Spice Islands, which is also divided into the Spice Islands by Li Zhen, which makes it even more difficult for the Spice Islands patrol fleet, often the enemy attacks the coast after the fleet does not react, causing great losses to the Spice Islands, and this is one of the reasons why some people are reluctant to settle in the Spice Islands - although it makes money, it is too unsafe.
Therefore, one fleet is no longer enough to protect this place, and Li Zhen has also written to the imperial court, planning to add another fleet to the Spice Islands.
However, although there was a fleet, there was no naval district - because there were so few people here, except for the merchants who planted spice gardens here and some of the workers who settled here, only the natives remained.
After all, the Spice Islands are too far away from the mainland of the Tang Dynasty, and it takes more than half a month to travel just by boat, unless they are people who really can't live and have nowhere to go, no one will come to live here - but now there is a lot of spare land in Nanyang or Tianzhu and Borneo and even those small big islands in the middle of the ocean, and it is better to live anywhere than here, especially now that it is the early stage of colonization, as long as you work hard enough, you can make money by doing anything, since you can make money anywhere, then why do they have to run so far?
As a result, even though there is endless profit here, few people come to settle here.
The people who really live here are more for the sake of profit, after all, the price of spices is there, even if Li Zhen gives various preferential policies, the people of the Tang Dynasty here do not exceed 200,000, which brings great difficulties to the development of the spice islands, Li Zhen has no choice but to send some prisoners up, but the Tang Dynasty has been ruling Qingming all these years, and it seems that it is a prosperous era coming, and there are too few people who commit crimes - last year, there were only more than 20 death row prisoners in the country, which is simply a miracle, it is incredible.
Later, in order to increase the population, Li Zhen even exiled some petty thieves, but even the number of thieves is too small, and there is still no power to develop here, and in the end Li Zhen can only let it go, let them develop slowly on their own, with the important specialty of spices, one day they will be able to develop after all.
However, after giving up the construction of the Spice Islands, Li Zhen dropped Zhang Cambodia back - less than 200,000 people, making Zhang Cambodia's management a waste of resources, he is a person with the qualifications of a prime minister, and should be placed in a more important position.
In addition, a Nanyang Naval Region has also been established in Nanyang, which is also the largest naval region in the entire Tang Dynasty, with three fleets, all of which are Class A.
But this is not all the naval forces in the Nanyang Seas, because in addition to the Nanyang Naval Region, the Governor of Sriwijaya served by Pei Xingjian also has a fleet in his hands, mainly used to defend the Strait of Malacca, and it is also the only military force that can take the initiative to attack, and the rest are coastal defense forces, and the Governor of Gundam Prefecture in Duhe also has a Gundam fleet in his hands, which plays the same role as Pei Xingjian.
Then there's Tianzhu, which actually had the most fleets in the first place—six fleets three years ago.
Because Tianzhu had just been conquered at that time, the big cannibals didn't know where to get the news, so they actually launched a large-scale invasion here, sending an army of 100,000 on land to snatch a piece of meat from the Tang Dynasty.
But unfortunately, Datang is not easy to mess with, in the face of Datang's defensive troops, the 100,000 army did not take advantage, on the contrary, it was ruthlessly cleaned up by Datang, although the whole army was not annihilated, but also left half of the talent and retreated back in embarrassment.
It's just that after being defeated this time, Da Shi was obviously not convinced, so he sent his own navy to harass Datang at sea, and Datang was defenseless at first, and within a month, they actually let them sink and capture more than a dozen large and small merchant fleets.
This completely angered Li Zhen, and after reporting to the imperial court, he quickly mobilized the naval forces of Lingnan and other southern, gathered six fleets, and after finding the traces of the enemy, he caught the Great Food Navy and beat them all up, leaving them all behind - under the siege of artillery, the Great Food Navy, which is still fighting with the gang as the main combat method, cannot get close to the ships of the Tang Dynasty at all.
The final result was very tragic, Da Shi sent a total of more than 100 warships, but after the fact, these more than 100 warships were all turned into fragments, and there was not even a single plank more than a zhang long and wide on the sea.
The battle of the Tang Dynasty hurt the cannibals, so much so that even the caliph hurriedly sent envoys to the Tang Dynasty to communicate and exchange, and after signing a series of commercial and trade agreements, the matter was revealed.
But everyone on both sides understands that this feud is settled, even if Dashi will not retaliate in the future, Datang will definitely get it back.
Of course, that was a long time later, and later, when it was certain that the Great Cannibal would not come again, Li Zhen sent those fleets back, leaving only Duhe's Gundam State fleet to temporarily take charge of the defense of the Tianzhu Sea.
This situation lasted until last year, when two more fleets were launched, and Tianzhu ended the embarrassing history of not having a fleet, and at present these two fleets are under the jurisdiction of the Tianzhu Naval Region, and their main role is also to be responsible for the security of the sea area.
Fortunately, however, someone later discovered the Maldives, and Li Chengqian brought the Maldives Islands in the center of the Indian Ocean under his command, which can be regarded as an excuse for the Tianzhu Naval Region to go out to sea, so that they can have time to go for a ride on the sea.