Transmigrated as the Crown Prince

Churchill was speechless, with only one eye showing anger. Yannick kept talking to himself for a long time but found it boring, so he stood up and left.

Leaving Churchill Manor, the convoy headed to its next destination, the Bank of England.

The Bank of England is the central bank of the United Kingdom. Before the establishment of the Bank of England, the British royal family found ways to borrow money from the wealthy and aristocratic feudal lords in London. At that time, the Wang family had a treasury and mint, where rich people would store gold and silver. One of the royal family's misdeeds was that they refused to redeem gold coins that people kept there, which was actually embezzling customer deposits.

During the "Nine Years' War" between England and France, the King's Privy Seal printed government bonds and sold them directly to businessmen, promising to pay interest and allowing businessmen to use such financial bonds to pay taxes. But the terms of these loans were short, and after the Lord Privy Seal defaulted on his promise to pay interest several times, merchants were no longer willing to pay for fiscal notes. In this way, the king, who has lost the freedom to raise taxes, is at the end of his rope.

By the end of the seventeenth century, merchants were planning to establish a bank similar to the Dutch institution. The government's predicament provided them with an excellent opportunity. They were unwilling to lend money separately to the royal family, but wanted to bank the government's direct lending function. The Bank of England's proposal was quickly approved by Parliament, and the King granted a charter, allowing the bank to break the legal provisions of the time as long as it lent money to the government for a long period of time.

The founding of the Bank of England was hardly groundbreaking. Its main imitation object is the joint-stock Bank of Amsterdam established in the Netherlands in 1609. However, the Bank of Amsterdam was not established for the royal family or for war. Its service target is the emerging international commerce.

Although imitated in terms of institutional structure and operations, the Bank of England surpassed its predecessors and became a milestone in banking history. This is first of all because it has developed a powerful new customer-the British royal family and government, and it will never go bankrupt.

The predecessor of the currency issued by the Bank of England (the British Pound) was bank notes. These bank notes were actually receipts for gold coins deposited by depositors at the goldsmith. Since it was very inconvenient to carry large amounts of gold coins, people began to trade with receipts of gold coins, and then exchanged them for corresponding gold coins from goldsmiths. Over time, people felt it was not necessary to always go to the goldsmith to deposit and withdraw gold coins, and later these receipts gradually became pounds.

The convoy arrived at the Bank of England, which had already been controlled by the Guards. They were greeted by a Guards colonel.

Yannick asked as he walked up the stairs. "Colonel, is there anything good in there?"

The Colonel of the Guards said with some chagrin. "Your Highness, the bank vault was already empty when we came. Not even a gram of gold, not a single security or anything like that."

This was expected. Yannick turned to look at Deputy Prime Minister Clement who was accompanying him. "Sir Clement, as far as I know your country has Operation Torpedo, right? How much gold and securities are shipped to Canada?"

Do you even know about this top-secret plan? Deputy Prime Minister Clement broke into a cold sweat and could only answer truthfully. "About $2.5 billion in gold and $4.5 billion in securities."

When the German army swept across Europe and was eyeing the British mainland, faced with such a severe situation, Prime Minister Churchill made a decision: after Germany invaded Britain, once Britain could no longer resist it, the royal family members and government leaders would be immediately transferred to Canada. A new resistance government was established there to continue leading the war in Britain itself.

It is impossible to continue fighting overseas without national reserves. The British moved gold worth approximately US$2.5 billion and securities worth US$4.5 billion to Canada by ship.

This batch of gold reserves is guarded by 120 full-time personnel of the Bank of Canada, while the cash and securities stored in the "Sunshine Life Building" are protected by the Royal Mounted Police of Canada. Due to the excellent confidentiality work, even the 5,000 people in the building had no idea about this wealth.

In addition to personnel protection, they also used some high technology. Inside the building, workers constructed a vault specifically for the storage facility out of railroad steel. Microphones were also installed in the ceiling to detect any possible intruders. The vault door requires two different operators to enter two passwords at the same time, and also ensures that each person only knows one password.

The most amazing thing is that hundreds of people were involved in this operation, but no information was leaked, and no gold or securities were lost until the end of the war.

"Not bad." Yannick nodded. "When will I get it back?"

Clement wiped the sweat from his face. "We are actively communicating with Canada."

"Communicate?" Yannick raised his eyebrows slightly. "That's an interesting word. Isn't it because Canada refuses to return this batch of gold?" Seeing the expression on Clement's face becoming more embarrassed, Yannick had already guessed that it was close to ten. "Then your fleet in Canada was also impounded?"

This damn tiger is like a real tiger being bullied by a dog.

In many people's minds, Canada's presence in World War II was almost negligible. Only in some important battles that Britain participated in, Maple Leaf soldiers can occasionally be seen fighting.

Despite this, Canada has served as an absolute backbone in the field of military logistics. Throughout World War II, Canada produced more than 800,000 trucks alone, more than the total number of trucks produced by Germany, Japan, and Italy. In terms of combat weapons, Canada produced approximately 40,000 land combat, ship and anti-aircraft artillery pieces, 50,000 tanks and nearly 1.7 million various firearms. In terms of ships, Canada has built 348 cargo ships of more than 10,000 tons, and also built many additional small combat ships for North Atlantic convoy warfare.

The revitalization of the Royal Air Force cannot be separated from the support of Canada. By the end of the war, Canadian aviation manufacturing was producing 4,000 military aircraft of various types per year. But when the Allies were building a sea of ​​aircraft that overwhelmed German and Japanese elite pilots, Canada also contributed 16,000 aircraft and provided 8,000 pilots for the Royal Air Force. Using aviation training institutions in Canada, allies trained more than 50,000 aviation personnel at a cost to the Canadian government of $1.5 billion. This plan laid a strong manpower foundation for victory in the air battlefield of World War II.

While fully assisting its allies, Canada has not delayed the development and growth of its own armed forces at all. In Canada, which has only 11 million people, 10% eventually joined the military, bringing the total number to more than 1.1 million. The Canadian Army has grown to 500,000 men, the Navy has grown to 92,000 men, and the Air Force has 48 squadrons.

The Army is equipped with 80,000 vehicles of various types, and almost three people own one motor vehicle. This ratio has surpassed that of the U.S. Army, making it the most mechanized field army in the world at that time. The navy has more than 900 ships, including 2 aircraft carriers alone.

But to say that Canada turned its back on others so quickly and disobeyed its motherland, Yannick found it a bit strange.

Is it a miserable drama directed and performed by these guys, or is the United States playing tricks on it?