In addition to planning to set up multiple furniture factories and wooden craft workshops in the Netherlands, Marin suddenly remembered that he seemed to be short of oak barrels...
Europe in this era was an era when wooden barrels dominated. In today's Europe, everything was filled with barrels. It was fine if you used oak barrels to put wine and beer, but gunpowder was also made in barrels, otherwise what about it? Bacon was also made in barrels, sugar was also made in barrels, and flour was also made in barrels. Even salt and stinky salted fish were made in barrels... This was really a barrel era...
This is actually a matter of no choice. In this era, European linen was very lacking. Not to mention weaving sacks, even clothes were not enough. As for animal skin pockets, it was even more expensive. Marin's behavior of using oil paper bags to pack sugar cane, which is completely unusable in other European countries. Because now, European artificial paper still uses rags and fishing nets. European cloth is expensive, and the poor people are reluctant to throw cloth around and always sew and repair it. Therefore, the raw materials are difficult to find, which leads to the expensive European paper. In other European countries, it is definitely a luxury to use oil paper as packaging. Not to mention, the oil used for oil paper is also very scarce...
Therefore, in this era, the demand for wooden barrels in Europe was very large, even greater than furniture. When Marin realized this, he immediately made up his mind - to invest in building multiple wooden barrel manufacturing plants in the Netherlands to specialize in the manufacturing of oak barrels. In the first place, it consumed the limited oak resources in the Netherlands; and it could also meet the huge market demand...
Therefore, the Netherlands, whose talent was pointed out by Marin, was later known as the "Home Kingdom", but also the "Bottle Kingdom", supplying high-quality oak barrels to Europe... The barrel manufacturing industry has also become one of the pillar industries of the Netherlands... Then, when you walk on the streets of Amsterdam, throw a brick at the crowd during rush hour, you can easily hit a cooper...
But relying solely on the little wood in the Netherlands is obviously not enough to create furniture and hoop oak barrels. Therefore, Marin eventually organized the transport of oak purchased from forests in Norway and southern Sweden to the Netherlands for furniture factories to create furniture and coopers. But in order to prevent the Dutch from using oak for shipbuilding, Marin stipulated that all wood transported into the Netherlands must be short wood. Long wood that can be used for shipbuilding is not allowed to flow into the Netherlands...
...
This is not enough. In order to completely cut off the Dutch sailing prospects, the great devil Marin also sent fishing boats to fish in the waters near the Netherlands and competed with Dutch fishermen for herring resources.
Moreover, Marin also introduced a fish-cutting knife that the Dutch proudly scraped off the herring intestines, processed the caught herring, and applied salt to market it to Europe, and compete with Dutch fishermen.
Although everyone's fish are the same, they are fished from the North Sea. However, the salt is different...
The Netherlands does not produce salt, mainly because it lacks firewood for boiling salt. Dutch fishermen want to pickle herring, they have to import sea salt from the UK or inferior mineral salt from Germany.
Marin himself is a salt-producing tycoon, and he has a lot of salt in his hands. In order to defeat Dutch fishermen in the competition, Marin did not hesitate to lower the salt price so that his own Friesian fishermen could sell salted fish to the outside world at a lower price to achieve the purpose of dumping.
Marin's move was very ruthless. The quality of salted fish on both sides was similar, while the price of salted fish by Friesian fishers in the North Sea was lower, and fools knew who to buy. However, Dutch fishermen could not reduce prices at will because they had a high cost to buy salt. If the price was reduced, the cost might be difficult to recover. Then, the Dutch fishing industry gradually began to decline. More Dutch fishermen gave up fishing, entered cities, worked in wool mills, furniture factories and hoop workshops, and became workers... And with the decrease of fishermen, the Dutch sailors also had fewer sources, and the large sailing was even more ineffective...
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Marin spent too much time calculating the unlucky Dutch. The Dutch did not know that Marin, the great devil, used all kinds of means to wipe out the signs of the Netherlands becoming a great sailing empire. This made the Netherlands very mediocre in the European history of the next few hundred years, and its presence was as weak as that of the declining Denmark...
If the Dutch knew that it was all Marin's fault, they might attack Marin angrily, hoping to use a fish-cutting knife to scrape Marin's intestines out...
...
As time goes by, it is mid-to-late September. Due to the application of phosphorus fertilizer, crops from several areas such as Friesland, West Friesland, Oldenburg, etc. that used new agricultural technologies and "three fertilizers" have matured and autumn harvests have begun early.
However, in the face of the golden autumn of harvest, Marin could not take care of the autumn harvest. Because he wanted to go south to Italy and prepare for the attack on the Republic of Siena in advance.
The old saying goes, "Know yourself and your enemy, and you will never be defeated in a hundred battles." In order to successfully defeat Siena, Marin naturally needs to go through early and make sufficient preparations, so as not to fail after the implementation of the work due to insufficient preparations.
Failure is a trivial matter, the key is that we cannot cause too much loss to the army. Most of the soldiers under Marin are now experienced veterans, very precious, and they are incomparable to the temporary recruits used as cannon fodder. If there are a large number of professional veterans, Marin will probably faint in the toilet.
Therefore, Marin planned to take advantage of the autumn harvest season to go south early and quietly go to the Siena area to observe the terrain. After the battle officially starts, he will be more confident.
In addition, in order to prevent the desperate situation of ammunition and food exhaustion, Marin also planned to buy some houses outside Siena and hide some food in the house. In this way, even if the mountain infantry in the Beihai Kingdom was rushing to eat up all the food, they could use the food they had hidden in advance for a while, and wait until the Fourth Legion arrived with baggage and food...
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Just as Marin was about to leave, Gustavo, the head instructor of the young officer crash course, suddenly found Marin and asked to take his students south to Italy to participate in the war...
This chapter is not finished yet, please click on the next page to continue reading the exciting content behind! Speaking of which, over the past few years, Marin almost forgot the young officer crash course he established. Because, in order to train those young men who participated in the young officer crash course, Marin specially placed the location of this officer squad in Denburg, the capital of Texel Island, the "Land of Dragons" where he started.
Where is Texel Island? It is located at the westernmost point of the West Friesian Islands, and it is almost connected to the northern end of the Netherlands Province of the Netherlands, which belongs to the Habsburg family.
Because he is too far from the local area and this guy Gustavo is not very good at engaging in the camp, Marin almost forgot that he has a crash course in the teenage officers on Texel Island...
This crash course of young officers was established in 1502 and has been around for about 6 years now. When the squad was established, Marin specially selected 200 smart and brave 16-year-old boys, and also wrote a simplified infantry training outline for them, compressing the vocabulary to 800 professional military-specific terms (mainly, those teenagers were illiterate. In that era, it was difficult to find someone who was not illiterate).
Originally, Marin planned to let the cadets of the young officer crash course quickly and then be incorporated into the army. But later, Marin changed his mind. While teaching the cadets of the young officer crash course, he also taught them literacy and mathematics seriously, intending to train them as regular officers.
The learning cycle of cultural knowledge is long, and then Marin spent a long time almost forgot the teenagers in the teenage officer squad.
Until now, Gustavo and the teenagers in the officer class felt that they had learned almost all of their cultural knowledge and could almost reach the level of elementary school graduation, so they came to Marin. At this time, the students in the teenage class were already twenty-two or three years old after 6 years, which was a good time to go to the battlefield.
Just so happened that Gustavo heard that Marin was quietly dispatching troops recently. So he began to inquire about the news...
Gustavo was also an officer who followed Marin very early, and his military literacy was good. Otherwise, Marin would not have been arranged to manage the crash course of young officers. Even Gustavo had a relatively high status in the East Friesian army, with many relatives and friends in the army.
However, this guy was not good at engaging in the camp and buried his head in cultivating the 200 teenagers, which almost made Marin forget him. Fortunately, his old relationship was still there. After inquiring, he learned that the Beihai Kingdom was transporting troops to Italy and obviously had to make big moves. So he simply found Marin and asked his teenage preparation officers to join the war...
"Is it reliable to let those teenagers participate in the war?" Marin hesitated. This was a cruel war. It seemed too risky to let those children who had never been to the battlefield...
"Duke, please allow me to correct your opinion. They are no longer children, but young people aged 22 or 23. After all, the students of the 'Young Officer Crash Class' have been studying for 6 years!"
"It's been 6 years!" Ma Lin sighed infinitely. The teenagers he selected at the time have all grown into young people.
Originally, Marin still planned to reject Gustavo's request. However, he suddenly remembered the "Whampoa Student Army" in his previous life. It seemed that the student army of the Whampoa Military Academy performed very well in the war to quell the merchant regiment and Chen Jiongming's rebellion for the first time. I just don't know if his 200 young reserve officers can grow up and shine like the Whampoa Student Army?
Marin was full of expectations for this. You should know that these young reserve officers are different from those in the army. Now, the officers in the Marin army stand out from the cruel battles on the battlefield. However, these people are generally vulgar. Many officers cannot even understand military orders, and they still need to send orders to convey military orders orally, which makes Marin very helpless. Moreover, they can't read and read.
Chapter completed!