However, Sebastian and Pinto never expected that this conversation with Mr. Zhao would have to wait until a year later.

It was already the twelfth lunar month, and Zhao Hao was so busy before the New Year that he had no time to take care of him.

Young Master Zhao must make proper arrangements to resume production after the New Year, urge the Governor-General's Office to catch up on the lagging immigration work, and plan an operation to eliminate the Spaniards entrenched in Cebu and Brunei.

After the decisive battle with Spain, the countries in Southeast Asia, which had been struggling under the clutches of the Westerners for many years, were unlikely to lose sight of the situation. Keeping the Spaniards around to attract hatred was no longer useful. Moreover, within a few years, the sailing trade would definitely fail, and keeping them around would be too obvious as a way of "nurturing the enemy for their own benefit."

Fortunately, he made a fortune from the captured Invincible Armada, so he didn't care even if the galleon trade was interrupted for seven or eight years!

~~

In early December of the twelfth lunar month, the tugboat fleet sent by the war zone finally towed back 120 captured Spanish ships.

Of course, these ships are also mobile germ reservoirs, and the ships and people must first undergo the most stringent disinfection and isolation.

However, the isolation camp for prisoners was not on Chenmei Island, but on a small island with a circumference of 3.2 kilometers next to it. The Spanish called it Cavallo Island, but the island was uninhabited, so it was used by the group to build an isolation camp.

Drake and his crew were quarantined on this island for two months and then collectively executed for piracy.

This time, the Spanish Invincible Armada had more than 7,000 sailors and 25,000 soldiers, totaling nearly 33,000 people.

More than 1,000 people died due to disease and accidents during the voyage, and a total of 32,000 people participated in the Battle of Leyte Gulf.

As a result, after the battle, more than 9,000 sailors and soldiers were killed or lost in the water. More than 2,000 wounded died during the long escort after being captured. In addition, there were nearly 2,000 people on the nine ships that escaped.

In fact, 19,000 people finally arrived at the quarantine camp. But according to past experience, during the two-month quarantine, about 10% of the prisoners would disappear due to infectious diseases, wound complications, or being executed for being too troublesome.

So the Luzon Daily News reported 17,000 prisoners directly, which neither undermined the great victory nor made the public see the quarantine camp as hell on earth. Sister Ma has mastered the art of news reporting...

When the prisoners disembarked, they were not allowed to take anything with them. They had to strip naked and all their clothes had to be thrown into the fire and burned.

Then they were driven into several passages made of barbed wire by epidemic prevention personnel wearing full protective suits and wielding barbed wooden sticks. They were then driven in batches into a large pool filled with a strong smell of sulfur for preliminary disinfection.

The captives thought the Ming people were going to drown them, and there was a riot. However, the isolation camp had been running for several years and could easily deal with various emergencies.

Rebellion also requires strength, how could the weak prisoners have the strength to rebel? The quarantine personnel closed the doors at both ends of the passage, and several Gatmu guns on the high walls on both sides opened fire at the same time, killing more than a dozen people indiscriminately. Looking at the miserable state of the bodies hanging on the barbed wire, the prisoners were all obedient.

And they found that the people in the pool were driven to the shaving place on the other side, and finally realized that it was a false alarm...

~~

After the prisoners disembarked, the tugboats towed the Spanish ships to the quarantine dock on Chenmei Island.

Chenmei Island is shaped like a big tadpole, with its round head facing outside Yongxia Bay and its slender and curved tail pointing into the bay. It is a natural deep-water port.

Because there were 120 Spanish ships coming to dock, the war zone designated the entire Tadpole Tail as a quarantine zone with no outsiders allowed to enter.

There is also a one-mile long isolation zone between the quarantine area and the camp to prevent people from sneaking into the quarantine area out of greed. Losing the property on the ship is the second most troublesome thing, the most troublesome thing is that they may bring the germs back to the camp.

Although there were no people on the ship, there were still living things on it! There were probably hundreds of rats, thousands or tens of thousands of fleas, lice, bedbugs, and cockroaches on each ship.

The quarantine area is on red alert, and only people wearing full protective equipment and quarantine stamps are allowed to enter for disinfection.

The biggest enemy of overseas immigrants is not the natives, the red-haired devils, or the hot climate, but these pests that spread diseases. Therefore, the history of the group's immigration is a history of fighting pests. Over the years, the group has accumulated a wealth of experience in pest control, and we can confidently say that no one knows pest control better than us.

The theater's epidemic prevention department has a full set of procedures for thoroughly disinfecting ships and cargoes, among which sulfur fumigation is still the most effective.

The epidemic prevention personnel first closed the doors and windows of the ship to be disinfected from the outside, sealed the gaps, and then put a sufficient number of fumigators into the cabin according to the volume, ignited the sulfur in the fumigators and withdrew. The burning of sulfur produces a large amount of toxic sulfur dioxide gas, which will suffocate mice to death after inhaling it, and eliminating pests is even easier.

With the help of spraying lime water and burning pyrethrum ointment, if the disinfection is repeated for seven days, there will basically be no living things. To be on the safe side, the epidemic prevention department used the maximum dose of insecticide and sealed the cabin for a month... Well, it was also because it was the New Year and no one was in the mood to work.

After resuming work at the beginning of the new year, you can count the spoils with confidence.

You won’t know the result until you see it. You’ll be shocked when you count it.

Everyone has heard that almost every Spanish galleon is a mobile treasure trove, but no one expected that the harvest this time would be so great...

In general, the property on the 120 Spanish ships can be divided into five parts.

Part of it was military expenses, according to the accounting books found on the San Felipe. For this expedition, the Invincible Fleet carried a total of 5 million ducats as military expenses through royal grants and colonial grants. Moreover, several treasure ships responsible for transporting military expenses did not escape or sink...

The Ducat is a pure gold coin minted in Venice, weighing 3.56 grams. According to the Ming Dynasty's gold-silver exchange rate of 1:8, it is equivalent to 0.91 taels of silver.

Ducat is the hard currency of continental Europe. Unlike the Ming Dynasty, Europeans are more accustomed to using gold coins than silver.

An army on a transoceanic expedition may face all kinds of arduous difficulties, and there is no better way to stabilize the morale of the army than to spend a lot of gold coins.

Because the Spanish Empire was thriving and labor was expensive, the average monthly salary of soldiers at war had risen to 5 ducats, or 4.55 taels of silver, which was an absolutely high salary in the Ming Dynasty.

According to the account books, the expeditionary force of the Invincible Fleet received a monthly ocean subsidy of 3 ducats. This was normal, otherwise who would be willing to go to war thousands of miles away?

Fortunately, soldiers recruited from New Spain only need to be paid half the salary, which is why there are more New Spanish soldiers than Spanish soldiers in the Invincible Armada.

As for the salaries of officers and mid- and senior-level sailors, they were even higher. So of the 5 million ducats, 3 million were the annual salaries of 33,000 officers and men.

The remaining 2 million ducats were used by the fleet to purchase supplies and resupply. In addition, according to the plan, a large number of mercenaries had to be recruited in Southeast Asia and Japan, which required a lot of money. Therefore, although the Spanish military expenditure seemed to be high, it was not sufficient.

5 million ducats is equivalent to 4.55 million ounces of silver, which is barely enough to cover the annual expenses of the Invincible Fleet. This is why Philip II, who had the American treasury, was often bankrupt.

It is too expensive for a regular army to fight a war!!

Zhao Hao could only say, "You only spent a few dollars. The military expenses of this war, plus the immigration of 2 million people, directly caused the group to have an unprecedented annual deficit..."

Fortunately, the military expenditure of 5 million ducats is not the bulk.

Spanish noble officers and captains also loaded a large amount of contraband on their ships - mainly silver and a small amount of gold. Who doesn't know that any goods shipped back from the Far East will make a tenfold profit in New Spain, and if shipped back to the mainland, it will make a profit of more than five times?

Who wouldn't want to make a fortune on this trip to the Far East?

Unfortunately, the Ming people were not interested in any goods from America and Europe, but only in American silver. So almost everyone sold all their property, and even raised money from relatives and friends, and exchanged all of it for silver, preparing to go to the Ming Dynasty for a large-scale purchase.

As a result, they were seized before they even reached the shore, giving the Ming people a free ride. A total of 20 million pesos, or 15 million taels of silver, were seized from the warehouses of 120 ships.

The noble officers also carried a large amount of gold coins, gold and silver utensils, pearls and gems, which are conservatively estimated to be equivalent to about 4 million taels of silver.

Ordinary soldiers and sailors also heard that they could easily make a profit by taking advantage of the huge difference in the gold-silver exchange rate between the East and the West, so they also invested all their belongings in the hope of making a small fortune. Although each person did not have much money, there were many people, and as a result, another 10 million taels of silver were looted from their belongings.

In addition, the various military supplies on the ship, such as large amounts of canvas, alpaca skins, magenta, tobacco, muskets, gunpowder, swords, armor... were worth about 5 million taels of silver.

And the most valuable ones, 3,000 bronze cannons - 2,700 of which were placed in gun positions, and 300 were kept in warehouses as spares.

It would take nearly 5,000 tons of bronze to melt these 3,000 cannons. However, since the group successfully made steel, the coast guard has planned to replace its cannons with steel, and the demand for bronze has dropped sharply, so there is no need to spend that effort.

Moreover, Spanish bronze cannons were in great demand in Southeast Asia, India, and even the Ottoman Empire, so the right thing to do was to be an arms dealer who sold the cannons to the highest bidder. Therefore, the price of 3,000 cannons was roughly estimated to be 4 million taels of silver.

At this time, the Spanish Empire was at its peak, and the materials used for shipbuilding were very particular. The wood alone for each warship cost more than 100,000 pesos.

Because all the warships were made of century-old oak, the value of the wood that could be dismantled from 120 warships was at least 6 million taels of silver.

The final calculated spoils of war totaled about 48.55 million taels of silver...

As a result, not only did they recoup their costs, but they also made a huge profit, which was equivalent to eight years of sailing ship trade!

At that time, Zhao Hao had already left Luzon and was on his way north. He could hardly believe his eyes when he saw the report, and after ordering someone to confirm with Jinke, he told Secretary Ma: "Notify Xueying to adjust the profit and loss of previous years and record this income in the group's income last year!"

Well, this way the group’s record of profitability can be maintained year after year, which is very important.

Mr. Zhao is very concerned about his transcript...