Chapter 166
Chapter 166
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Translator: MadScientist
Chapter: 166
Chapter Title: Hidden Blades in Multiplicity (10)
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Kim Dae-bung had launched a small band—no, a small horde of Japanese pirates armed to the teeth with steel—and they had properly wreaked havoc in Ming territory.
Having received reports of those pirates' exploits, Emperor Xuande exploded in rage that made his blood boil backward, unleashing it on his ministers right then and there.
"What in the world are the Fujian Defense Commander and Provincial Military Commander doing? Are those men truly officials of Ming?!"
"Your Majesty, please calm yourself!"
"Calm myself? Did you just say 'calm yourself'? Minister of War, after hearing this horrific report, that's the best you can say?"
From the pirates' perspective, Ming was far easier to invade than Joseon.
There was more wealth to plunder, and plenty of people to kidnap and sell as slaves, so a single raid yielded far greater profits...
Joseon observed the sea ban, but it only prohibited people from living on tiny islands; coastal villages still had residents, and the navy was maintained.
Ming, however, had reinstated the ban even more strictly the year after Emperor Yongle's death, disbanding even the existing navy...
They had outlawed living in coastal cities, leaving not even minimal troops in those areas, so there was no military force capable of quickly responding to pirate incursions.
Knowing this situation all too well, Minister of War Yang Shiqi inwardly cursed the emperor.
'If you're going to do this, then at least revive the navy.'
But since his opponent was the emperor, the Minister of War offered no rebuttal whatsoever.
"My deepest apologies, Your Majesty."
"Do apologies solve every problem?!"
Emperor Xuande flung the report he was holding to the floor.
Unbefitting an emperor of Great Ming, but no one stepped forward to restrain him.
In other times, perhaps, but trying to check the emperor now might just make one the target of his wrath, turning them into a headless ghost by the next day.
Besides, with Ming suffering such a thrashing from the pirates, it would be utterly strange if the emperor stayed calm.
"Fine, without a navy in Fujian, you couldn't block the pirate ships from coming ashore. I'll grant you that. But didn't those clowns—the Provincial Military Commander and Defense Commander—have over a hundred thousand elite troops in Fujian? And yet they couldn't even fight the pirates once, just letting them slip away over and over?!"
"My deepest apologies, Your Majesty."
"The pirates moved with blinding speed, first plundering coastal villages before pushing inland to strip every little town bare. And the Ming army couldn't respond or intercept them at all... Does that make any sense?!"
The pirates of this era were weaker than those from Japan's Warring States period.
Even so, they were experts in plunder, guerrilla tactics, and evasion, doing it as naturally as breathing.
True to their expertise, they calculated in advance how fast the Ming army moved and from which directions they would come, acting accordingly.
As a result, not a single pirate was captured by Fujian's garrison troops.
"Dozens of coastal villages were plundered, and no fewer than two county seats fell. The villains even dared to murder a Ming county magistrate in cold blood. And the number of civilians killed or taken captive by them is beyond counting. My heart aches beyond words, and this surging fury—I know not how to quell it; it burns my chest to cinders."
"Your Majesty, your servant, Minister of Rites Yi Sang-chong, has a remonstration. Is this not all the fault of the pirates? Thus, sternly rebuke and chastise the King of Japan—that is, the shogun—and ban the tribute trade."
If Kim Dae-bung had heard this, he would have doubled over laughing.
The Muromachi shogunate might hold all power in Japan in name, but that was merely nominal.
In reality, they were already struggling to control major daimyo like Ouchi and Shoni in Kyushu and Chugoku regions of Honshu.
Indeed, a few years later, when Shoni rebelled against the shogunate, the powerless bakufu had to lend legitimacy to the Ouchi clan and have them handle the suppression instead...
What power, then, did such a shogunate have to control pirate bands outside its direct forces?
But the Minister of Rites was ignorant of this.
Just as previous Joseon kings had deluded themselves that Tsushima's lord controlled all pirates.
"The King of Japan knows no righteousness and is utterly consumed by greed—a barbarian through and through. He must be tamed like a beast. When pirates like these defy Ming by failing to control them, strip away the tribute trade entirely. Only when they show effort in reining in the pirates should it be restored."
"As the Minister of Rites says, the Japanese know no righteousness. They feign adherence to the Middle Kingdom's order while busily plundering Great Ming—their conduct is utterly depraved. In that sense, they are beasts in human form. We cannot expect them to be civilized by treating them with human benevolence and righteousness."
In actual history, Ming upheld the sea ban straight through the reign of Jiajing—that is, until the late 1560s.
As a result, from its founding until the late 1560s, Ming was incessantly tormented by pirates.
There was the issue of not properly building a navy, and the environment that forced them into piracy to obtain Ming's precious goods.
Yet Ming deluded itself that this was the best policy.
Just as Emperor Xuande did now.
"Henceforth, the Defense Commanders and Provincial Military Commanders of Fujian and the Jiangnan region must vigilantly watch for pirates and other sea bandits. Prepare so that the moment they set foot on Ming soil, they can be exterminated immediately."
The pirates invading Ming were deviously cunning, utterly faithless villains who honored no gods.
Moreover, they knew their place all too well beyond their piratical expertise.
Thus, they avoided clashes with the 'Ming garrison troops' at all costs.
Without a navy, eradicating the pirates was practically impossible for Ming.
"Furthermore, with so many people still crowding the coasts and merchants flouting the law to enrich themselves through trade, that's why the pirates swarm. With all the world's goods within Ming, how can there still be those coveting barbarian wares? Henceforth, strictly crack down on merchants and commoners alike to give the pirates no pretext."
"Yes, Your Majesty."
Emperor Xuande had been about to wrap up all matters thus, but a fine idea suddenly occurred to him.
"On second thought, though Great Ming currently has no navy... did not the Great Emperor Yongle leave behind an expeditionary fleet?"
The emperor himself had shut down the shipyards, but he had not opposed Yongle's assembling expeditionary fleets to awe all nations under Heaven with Great Ming's might.
Thus, while enforcing the sea ban rigorously, the treasure ships used by those expeditions had been well preserved.
And the eunuch Zheng He, who had personally led those voyages from the vanguard, was still alive.
"Summon Zheng He from Nanjing and have him prepare to suppress Tsushima and the pirates' other strongholds."
***
I hate Ming more than anything in the world.
So I unleashed the pirates to screw those Ming bastards.
And the effect seems even better than I'd hoped.
"Right Prime Minister, they say Ming is suffering devastating damage from the pirates and their emperor is deeply troubled."
"Indeed. Why else would His Imperial Majesty send an edict through the Yodong Governor to us in Joseon, saying 'Aid in suppressing the pirates and always be wary of them'?"
The Ming fools don't realize it.
Sealing off the seas and fully banning trade has zero effect on suppressing pirates.
On the contrary, like Joseon now, you need to open trade routes and build up a navy to become a nation the Japanese pirates can't touch recklessly.
Well, thinking about it, that's how those Ming bastards were even when Westerners first came calling.
They told the Westerners, 'We have everything in the world, so get lost.'
The Westerners then committed atrocities that even made the Japanese stick out their tongues in shock.
They crushed Ming's utterly feeble navy, then unleashed pirates to kidnap Ming children and women, selling them as slaves for massive 'profits.'
Shocked by those atrocities, Ming's first opened port was the famously enduring Macau of the 21st century.
"On this occasion, we should train even more naval forces. Have them patrol diligently, pretending to sweep the pirates—while actually drilling the navy."
"No intention of actually suppressing the pirates?"
"Pirates?"
I smirked at those words.
"They won't touch a single Joseon citizen. They only plunder Ming. So the pirate problem is Ming's alone—Joseon has nothing to do with it."
Before King Danjong's humiliation at Ming's hands, Jo Mal-saeng might have mildly scolded me for such talk.
But after that tremendous humiliation from the Ming emperor, his view of Ming had changed.
So Jo Mal-saeng didn't scold me but instead changed the subject.
"They're only hitting Ming for now, but who knows what the future holds."
"Tsushima's lord, once a pirate chieftain, is studying Korean on his own to curry favor with Joseon. And you know well that since trade with Japan began at Jeju's Jeongui County, there's never been a single incident of pirate damage."
Of course, the occasional livelihood pirates—those desperate Japanese fishermen starving at home, paddling over in their tiny boats with toothless katanas and farm tools—do pop up...
But those puny ones get utterly crushed before the 'pyeongon' I've newly supplied to the fishing villages.
"And from Tsushima's silver mine, they report that using the smoke-separation method I devised, they extracted a whopping fifty geun (thirty kilograms) of silver in just one week."
Iwami Silver Mine at its peak yielded up to thirty-eight tons a year, so it's still far short of that...
But for Joseon, which used to scramble without even three hundred nyang of silver, thirty kilos a week means about one-and-a-half tons a year.
This is something Joseon could never have dreamed of.
"If we sell that silver to Ming for rice, we won't have to worry even in famine years."
"If that silver floods into Joseon's eight provinces, it would shake our commerce to its core."
"I quite agree."
That's why I plan to sell every ounce of silver from Tsushima straight to Ming.
Those bastards are silver-devouring ghosts anyway.
Stuff them with silver till their bellies burst, and in exchange, import all sorts of luxuries to develop Joseon's commerce—that's pure profit for us.
"We'll pass it off to Ming merchants as silver shipped from Japan and have them handle the sales."