The Rise of the European Emperor

Of course, it will take many years for "Master Hans" to lose his reputation. Now is not the Internet age, when a certain brand has an accident, the people who eat melons can know it immediately. Right now, because of the serious lag in news transmission, even if something goes wrong, it will take a few years for the news to spread.

Even, in some places with inconvenient transportation, the news of those accidents may never be known. Even if it is an area with convenient transportation, only the nearby areas will know it quickly. Then, in foreign countries, the propagation time is in years. Even in this country, the delivery speed is based on months, and it must be in an area with convenient transportation.

Therefore, a few months or a few years ago, Marin could arbitrarily produce matchlock guns with the inscription of "Master Hans" to entrap opponents. Among them, those who were targeted by Marin included France and the princes of Germany who were hostile to Marin. Among the princes who are hostile to Marin, the Duke of Lorraine is one of the representatives. Well, it is very reasonable to sell the arquebus made of low-quality steel produced by the Lorraine iron mine to the Duchy of Lorraine.

But in the future, Marin may not be willing to buy Lorraine's garbage iron ore. Because the high-quality iron ore in Kirkenes in northern Norway is already under development. When the development there is completed, it can be transported back to the North Sea country in large quantities by ship, thus getting rid of the dependence on Lorraine iron ore.

However, there is no shortage of buyers for Lorraine Iron Mine. After all, this was an era when pig iron ingots were rare, and iron ore was naturally a popular material.

In Western Europe, there is a lack of iron ore, and the famous ones are the Lorraine iron mine and some iron mines in the UK. On the continent of Western Europe, there are very few iron mines. Of course, there are the iron mines in Luxembourg, and the iron mines in Liege in the southern Netherlands. However, no one had noticed these two iron mines before.

Under the guidance of Marin, the Luxembourg iron mine was developed in advance, but the scale is not large. Also, transportation is inconvenient. After all, the Luxembourg iron mine is deep in the inland mountains, and transportation is too troublesome, far less convenient than Kirkenes, which is just by the sea.

The Liege iron mine has not yet been developed. Moreover, Liege is located in the southern part of the Netherlands, but it is not currently under the rule of the Habsburg family, but is under the rule of an independent vassal state - the Bishop of Liege. Marin didn't want to provoke the princes of the church, so he didn't remind the Bishop of Liege.

The Southern Netherlands, where Liege is located, later belonged to Belgium. Liege is also the most important industrial area after Belgium's independence, and its arms industry is extremely developed. In the 19th century, Tsarist Russia also ordered standard rifles in Liege. Later, FN, a world-renowned military enterprise, appeared in Liege. Its rich FN assault rifles are well-known.

In addition, there are also coal mines in the Liege area, including coal and iron, which made the foundation for the rise of Liege's industry. Even, not only in Liege, but also in the southern part of the Limburg region, that is, the long strip area south of Limburg Province in the Netherlands, there are also coal mines, and it is also the only coal mining area in the Netherlands.

Of course, these are small mines. By the 21st century, whether it is Belgium or the Netherlands, coal and iron mines have been dug out, and they have begun to rely on imports. But then again, the demand for steel in this era is so small, if these small coal mines and iron mines are well utilized, there is still a lot to do.

However, because of Marin's strict secrecy of technology, other European countries have not yet obtained good steel smelting technology. Even the artillery is generally copper cannon. Only England has partially begun to cast artillery, but it is not mainstream. The main reason is that England's current iron-smelting technology is not very good. Cast iron cannons are easier to explode than copper cannons. But England can't help it. The main reason is that England lacks copper mines, and copper is very expensive. In desperation, they had to try to use iron instead of cast cannons.

At the beginning of the 16th century, because England used cast iron cannons, the quality was very poor and the toughness was very poor. It was probably not until the middle and late 16th century, when iron smelting technology improved, that wrought iron cannons were used, and the quality would be much better.

What I’m talking about here is what happened in the original history. Marin, the time traveler, went straight to the horse. The British invented the reverberatory furnace in the 18th century and kept it secret from France for many years.

Get steel cannons directly, the quality is not known how much better. That is to say, the shortage of saltpeter before limited the use of artillery. But now that the soil nitrate extraction technology has made great progress, the artillery of Beihai will be further unsealed, releasing powerful power...

...

On this day, Marin was ordering Kohler to send someone to southern Germany to sell the "Master Hans" matchlock gun, but after the order was over, Kohler did not leave, but hesitated to speak.

"What's the matter, Kohler, tell me something!"

"It's like this, Your Majesty, you ordered to use the drying method to build ships, and urgently manufacture a large number of ships... Well, there is a little problem..." Kohler thought for a while and said.

"Small problem? What's the problem? Could it be a wood problem? Didn't I arrange for a batch of wood to be sent back from North America? Moreover, the shipyard in New York can also use this method to produce a batch of 250B ships."

"It's not about timber. On the contrary, timber is the least of the problems. Even if it is inconvenient to transport timber from North America, there is still timber from Norway and southern Sweden from the Danes. If not, we can still go to France and the Netherlands to buy timber."

"What's the problem?" Marin was puzzled.

"It's the problem of sailors. Our domestic sailors are not enough. There are hundreds of ships, one needs 40 sailors, and 100 ships are 4,000 people. We can quickly build ships, but sailors, there is no way to find 4,000 people at once! "

Marin was stunned for a moment. He only considered that he could build a ship quickly, but he didn't expect that so many ships would require a lot of sailors. As for drawing from other ships? Do not make jokes. Once a war breaks out, all ships are operating at full capacity, and there are no idle ships. Therefore, 4000 new sailors need to be recruited. But the newly recruited sailors are not so quick to get started. If there are hundreds of people, it will be easy to deal with, and other ships can be squeezed, and some people can be spared. 4,000 people... It's difficult... Especially, this newly built ship has to run at full capacity when it comes up, and there is no time for novice sailors to adapt. If the novice makes a mistake and the ship hits the rocks and sinks, hundreds of people will die if it sinks...

"How about we go to England to recruit sailors? With a high price, we should be able to recruit 4,000 sailors!"

England is a great seafaring country, with a total of tens of thousands of sailors. And these sailors are not working at full capacity, and have a lot of free time. Because of their limited income, these sailors often acted as pirates and robbed French merchant ships.

Of course, the last few months have been rough for the English merchant fleet. Because the French created the Calais ship, which was a great threat to the English Channel. Many English merchant ships are afraid to take the English Channel route. As a result, many sailors had nothing to do for the time being, and often caused trouble by drinking in taverns on the pier.

If you go to recruit at this time, you can recruit enough people. Big deal, pay a high price to hire. Right now, there is no price revolution, and the prices in England are not high, and the daily wages of sailors are only two or three pence. Marin's daily salary of 4 pence, plus some drinks, will definitely attract many sailors.

"It's just...our wheel technology..." Kohler reminded. The ships of the North Sea country have been fully replaced with easy-to-operate rudder wheels, while the ships of other countries still use crowbars to drive the stern rudder. Moreover, these English sailors have all adapted to crowbar operation, not necessarily to the steering wheel.

"Then inform the shipyard to replace all the steering wheels with old-fashioned crowbar stern rudders!" Anyway, they are expendable ships with a short lifespan, so it doesn't matter whether they are advanced or not. Perhaps, after this round of transportation is completed, these ships can be dismantled and burned as firewood.

"Okay, I'll send someone to England to recruit skilled sailors!"

Please remember the first domain name of this book: . Mobile version reading URL: