The Rise of the European Emperor

It is the golden autumn and October of another year. From the middle to late September, the autumn harvest begins in East Frisian territory. Because of the use of potash fertilizers, phosphate fertilizers, etc., the rye in East Frisian counties is a little earlier than other countries.

This year, due to the addition of the 18,000 young men and their families that the Duchy of Saxony paid to Marin, the harvesting staff is very sufficient. Therefore, the progress of the autumn harvest is still good.

Moreover, these 18,000 young people, through last year's labor, helped Marin to reclaim 35,000 Eugram's arable land from the swamp, and planted rye in the spring. In addition, after the spring ploughing, 10,000 Ugrams of arable land were newly reclaimed. However, because there was no time to catch up with the spring ploughing, this autumn harvest is naturally nothing.

Today, there are 120,000 Eugrams cultivated for grain in the entire country of East Friesland (not counting the 10,000 Eugrams newly reclaimed from the swamps this year). Among them, Marin's nobles and soldiers have a total of 35,000 Ugram arable land. And Marin himself owns 85,000 Eugram's arable land...

This is the benefit of Marin's elimination of most of the former aristocrats of East Frisian counties. In that massacre, Marin killed most of the original East Frisian aristocrats, and their land was naturally reclaimed by Marin. . The land of hundreds of noble families was concentrated in Marin's hands. Now is the age of serfs, and the land is basically in the hands of the nobles. Therefore, Marin suddenly owns most of the arable land in this small country. Although a lot of land was encapsulated out, but by transforming the swamp, Marin made up the number of fields that were encapsulated out...

And because compound fertilizers, which are mixed with manure, grass ash and fish meal, are produced in fertilizer plants and applied to the fields, East Frisian rye yields are very high, reaching the level of 500 pounds per mu. Even the low-yield oats reached 200 pounds per mu.

Among them, in order to raise horses, Malin specially allocated 5,000 Eugram arable land to grow oats. This autumn harvest, 5,000 Ugrams (equivalent to 60,000 mu), a total of 12 million pounds of oats were harvested, allowing thousands of horses in the territory to open their stomachs to eat oats...

And the 80,000 Ugram (960,000 mu) of rye, needless to say, has an average yield of more than 500 pounds per mu, with a total output of 480 million pounds. The subordinates' 35,000 Eugram arable land also produced a total of 210 million pounds of rye. As usual, they took out half of it and asked Marin's Chamber of Commerce to help sell it...

This time, Marin didn't have to take the food abroad. Because of the drought in southern Germany this year, food production plummeted. Marin directly took the 100 million pounds of grain they bought, all through the Ames and Rhine rivers, into the inland area, and then transported to the south...

Because of the famine, the price of rye in Germany increased from 1 pfennig per pound to 1.5 pfennig per pound, and it was also very profitable to transport it to the south. At least, Marin's nobles can earn 1 penny per pound. So, they earned a total of 100 million Finneys, equivalent to 1.666 million gold coins...

Among them, Marin's brother Adler earned 100,000 Gulden gold coins. The rest of the subordinates who were divided into 1,000 Eugrams also earned about 50,000 gold coins...

Now, every autumn harvest, the nobility of East Friesland and the soldiers who have been rewarded with ploughing land will fall into a rich carnival...

Because too much wealth was obtained from the cultivated land, the living standards of these nobles and local soldiers were directly improved by several grades.

Even if they are both barons, and their fiefs are far less than those of foreign barons. However, the barons under Marin's command were extremely rich.

So, the nobles of East Frisian Country did one thing collectively - that is, to expand the castle...

Yes, the nobles of this era, the castle is their face. If you have money, you will naturally have to clean up your face. The castle that Marin gave to Adler for free before, sister-in-law Liv now doesn't like it.

As a result, Liv, who is usually stingy, directly stated that she wanted to expand a new castle that was five times the size of the old castle, and the total budget reached a huge amount of 50,000 gold coins...

The other nobles, with their own virtue, kept expanding their castles. This also led to the fact that after the autumn harvest, the price of stone materials in East Friesland directly doubled...

Marin wanted to recommend cheap and practical reinforced concrete to them, but none of his subordinates trusted this unseen building material. So, they would rather go to Hamburg and Bremen to buy finished stone at a high price than use cement...

In desperation, Marin had to use reinforced concrete for his new palace. In addition, the expanded Aurich city wall also used cement and steel bars...

Because the anti-shelling ability of reinforced concrete is stronger than that of stone fortresses, Marin did not build a bastion structure, and built the palace walls and Aurich city walls directly according to the old style...

Then, the shock-absorbing carriage has also become the standard configuration of the nobles in the territory...

It's just that because of improper protection or forgetting to oil, the shock-absorbing carriages of these little nobles often need to replace the springs...

Without waterproof paint, the spring is still not durable...

Suddenly, Marin thought of his own backlog of tin blocks imported from the UK... It seems that the spring can be hot-dipped tin liquid to form a tin protective film. In this way, the spring is not easy to rust. And hot-dip tinned steel, also known as "tinplate"...

However, Marin thought that although the tinplate is rust-proof, there is a chance that the tin protective film will be rubbed off. Once the tin protective film is broken, the iron inside will quickly oxidize and rust...

Therefore, the best solution is actually to give the spring hot dip galvanizing solution to make it a white iron sheet (galvanized iron sheet), not afraid of rust and corrosion, not afraid of rubbing...

But the problem is that zinc has not yet been discovered by Europeans. Even the people of the Ming Dynasty have not yet discovered zinc. It seems that the existence of zinc will not be discovered until the late Ming Dynasty. It seems to be during the Jiajing period, there are still several decades from now...

In fact, zinc is well-obtained. In general, zinc and lead, often coexist. Therefore, lead ore often contains zinc.

However, when smelting, it is always in a high temperature environment of thousands of degrees. Zinc has a bad property, and that is - the boiling point is only 907 degrees. If it exceeds 907 degrees, zinc will turn into zinc vapor and volatilize...

However, as long as a curved condenser tube is added to the top of the reduction furnace, the zinc vapor will condense down to form coarse zinc. Then, it is melted and purified to form refined zinc ingots...

That is, just add a condensing pipe to the top of the stove. However, for thousands of years, people have often smelted lead, but they have not found zinc...

As long as you find a lead ore, most of the lead ore contains zinc. At that time, if you improve the reduction furnace, you can get zinc...

...

Digressing, the subordinates sold 100 million pounds of rye, and Marin himself harvested 480 million pounds of rye. Also, none of this year's rye has to be consumed. Because the grain harvested last year and the grain harvested the year before have not been eaten yet...

So Marin thought again and again and decided to take out 200 million pounds of rye and sell it to southern Europe...

Needless to say, in Spain, the price of grain has always been high, and the price of rye has been stable at the level of 2 pfennig per pound for a long time. The Italian region was originally a fertile region rich in grain.

However, because of the Italian war, the French and Naples were killed last year, which seriously affected the food production in Italy, and many local farmlands were abandoned.

Therefore, this year, there is a serious shortage of food in the Italian region. If large quantities of food are not brought in from outside, many refugees will inevitably starve to death.

So, Marin decided to send or charter ships to ship the grain to Spain and Italy for sale. 200 million pounds of grain can be sold for more than 3 million ducats at the high price of grain in southern Europe.

It's just that Spain is okay, and the Italian region, after being looted and destroyed by the French, may not be able to spend so much money to buy it...

So, Marin came up with a brilliant idea - food for women...

Italy has a large population and many women. As for Marin's subordinates, there are more than ten thousand bachelors. These bastards, their eyes are green when they see women... If it weren't for the strict laws of East Frisian counties, these women would have dared to drag women into the grass at will... Publicly chopped up a dozen messes in Marin Behind the head of the guy who came, this group of talents is honest...

However, it is not a solution to just push it like this. After all, people are also normal young people, and they also need women. As a ruler, it is indeed a bit inhumane to kill people if you don't think of ways for others. But Marin can't do anything about it, society always needs order. Just because you understand these bachelors, you can't let them mess around...

As a responsible ruler, in order to solve the problem of too many bachelors in the country, Marin still thought of a way...

Before, I first saw that the Crimeans were selling Eastern European hair girls, so I planned to buy more. However, at the moment, Marin suddenly discovered that because of the war and famine, there are also many Italian girls...

Although it is said that it is unfair to Italian men for Marin to engage Italian girls for young men in his country. However, Marin is the leader of the counties of East Friesland, and he does not collect taxes from the Italians. So, an Italian (foreign) man, let me die? They don't pay me any taxes... All leaders with internationalism are big Sabies...

So, Marin decided to start the "food for women" program. Exchanging surplus food for beautiful Italian girls...

What? You said that food can't be exchanged for beautiful women? I want to tell you that in those years...three years—during the disaster...a bag of rice could properly be exchanged for a beautiful village girl as a wife...

Not to mention rice, even miscellaneous grains such as sweet potatoes and carrots can also be exchanged for beautiful wives...

Moreover, the rice at that time had to be handed in. Even if people have leftover grains, they are sweet potatoes, carrots and other miscellaneous grains...

If, you save a lot of grains. Well, congratulations, in that era, you will never be a bachelor. As long as you can pick up a load of miscellaneous grains to come to your door to propose a marriage (to pick those families who are short of food), no matter how beautiful you are, you can also be a wife in exchange...

The same is true during the famine in Italy. As long as Marin's men offered a sack of rye, those poor families would be willing to send their daughters...

Don't think this is cruel, in fact, it's a win-win situation. Families who send their daughters (the girl and perhaps younger siblings) will survive the disaster because of this sack of rye. And when the daughter comes to a family where she can afford food for women, although her husband may not be outstanding, at least she will not starve to death and will survive...

Your daughter is brilliant and beautiful? No problem, one sack of rye isn't enough, so two sacks...

In short, there is no problem that a sack of rye cannot solve in a year of famine. If so, two sacks...

A sack weighs only 100 pounds. Even if the price of food in the disaster area is expensive, there are 2 pfennig a pound, and 100 pounds of rye is only worth 200 pfennig, which is equivalent to 3.33 gold coins. Even two sacks of rye are worth 6.66 gp. What's so special, 6.66 gold coins can be exchanged for a beautiful village girl, or a good family, which is much more cost-effective than buying it from the Crimean Khanate.

200 million pounds of rye, with 2 million sacks. If you exchange all of them for women, even a beautiful girl who exchanges two sacks of rye for one, can exchange for 1 million...

Of course, even if Marin wanted to do it, there weren't that many girls for him...

So, Marin's plan was to sell most of the grain to the wealthy Spaniards and Italians. Then, take out a small amount of food and go to the disaster-stricken areas in Italy (especially the war-torn Naples Kingdom), in exchange for 20,000 Italian girls to come back. The total amount of grain needed, probably between 2 million and 4 million pounds, is only a fraction of the 200 million pounds of grain.

The reason why thousands of girls have to be exchanged is actually to attract immigrants. In the German interior, in those serf families with many boys, it is normal for men to not be able to marry wives.

With these extra thousands of girls, Marin can use it as bait to attract those who want to marry but have no money, and tempt them to work for themselves. As for myself, I decided to reward the beautiful Italian village girl...

But thinking about it, Marin suddenly slapped his head - he forgot about the 10,000 recruits in the Teutonic Kingdom. Those people are basically bachelors...

So Marin immediately changed his plans. The number of beautiful Italian village girls who exchanged food for food has increased from 20,000 to 30,000...

As for the problem of gender imbalance in the Italian region, is it a matter of Marin P? He only cares about the soldiers and people who help him with their lives, what does the foreigner have to do with him? Want a wife? All right, join us and serve me first...

At the same time, in East Frisland, Marin issued the decree "It is forbidden for women in this country to marry outside." In order to balance the male-female ratio in the country, Marin strictly prohibited any family from marrying their daughters outside of East Frisian until the balance of males and females in the country. If violated, the woman's parents, brothers and sisters will be directly imprisoned and demoted to slaves (a lower-level existence than serfs, with no human rights at all). Even if the nobles want to marry foreign nobles or marry their daughters, they need special approval from Marin. Otherwise, noble titles and fiefs will also be stripped, and the whole family will be expelled from the country. The decree takes effect immediately, and the official will announce the termination of the effect after the domestic bachelor disappears...