When the Swedish messenger called for help arrived in Lübeck and Hamburg, the official attitudes of the two Hanseatic cities seemed ambiguous. After all, they had been bribed by Denmark. Moreover, Marin also greeted them.

However, they still made hints to the Swedish envoy--the key to the resolution of this matter was Marin...

The problem is obvious. The reason why Denmark dared to attack the newly established Swedish Kingdom with confidence was that the nobles of the Swedish Kingdom were crazy and confiscated half of Marin's shares in the Failun copper mine, which had a high profit.

This directly led to the relationship between the Kingdom of Sweden and Marin to a freezing point. Originally, Marin's North Sea Kingdom was an ally of Sweden. Even if the military alliance was temporarily terminated, if there was a war, Sweden would be able to ask for help from the North Sea Kingdom. After all, everyone has such a good relationship, and Marin still has major interests in Sweden...

However, because the Swedish nobles were greedy for the huge interests of the Faylon Copper Mine, they made an unwise decision to kick Marin out of the game under the utmost interest. It is precisely because of this that the Danish people dared to attack Sweden with confidence.

In fact, the Swedes, including the Lübecks and the Hamburgers, did not know that even if the Swedish nobles did not deprive Marin of half of their copper mine shares, Marin would plot against them. After all, Sweden was too powerful and would not benefit Marin.

However, if the Swedish nobles did not deprive half of the shares of the Marinfailun copper mine, Marin might be in a difficult situation - because he would not find an excuse to turn against the Swedes, nor would he not send troops to aid Sweden...

But the huge benefits of the super large copper mine of Ferylón made the Swedish nobles red. In addition, they happened to learn that the German princes joined forces to suppress Marin, so they bravely prepared to deprive Marin of shares. After all, half of the shares of Ferylón copper mine had a high annual income. Previously, Marin alone monopolized half of the mine's income, while more than a dozen Swedish nobles could only divide the other half. This made them extremely dissatisfied, and finally made an unwise decision to swallow Marin's shares. This also gave Marin sufficient reason to not support them. Moreover, the Swedes also knew that they were in the wrong. Therefore, this time they asked for help, they did not ask Marin for help...

But in fact, Marin had long been prepared to act as a mediator to mediate the war. Because if each person mediated, Denmark would really defeat the Swedish Kingdom and eliminate Sweden. Sweden had been ruled by Denmark before, and if the war situation was too unfavorable, Sweden might not have surrendered to Denmark.

Therefore, at this time, a powerful mediator is needed to mediate the military conflict between the two countries and persuade the two countries to re-dividate their territory and interests... and Marin is obviously more suitable. After all, he is very capable of silence...

Moreover, Nordic does not belong to Germany. Marin just vowed not to cause trouble in Germany, and sent troops to Nordic to cause trouble, which is not within the scope of the promise. If Marin spoke, both sides would not dare to ignore it. Otherwise, it would anger Marin and send an army of 10,000 or 20,000 troops out...

...

Of course, mediation is not a waste of mediation. In fact, Marin had already made plans - it is okay to help Sweden mediate, but half of his shares in the French copper mine must be taken back. Otherwise, why should he help Sweden mediate? Let Denmark destroy the Kingdom of Sweden...

This move was shameless. It was learned by Marin and the Russians. In the Second Opium War, in the name of "meeting mediation", they shamelessly asked for 400,000 square kilometers of land in northeast China. Compared with the Russians, Marin felt that he was simply a super good person...

At that time, Marin can also learn from the Russians and shamelessly said that he had helped to protect the Kingdom of Sweden. For such great contributions, should you pay back half of my copper mine shares?

...

Lübeck and Hamburg officials also made hints to the Swedish envoy, telling them that the key to solving the problem was Marin. However, the envoys sent to the two cities did not have the right to make their own decisions. Therefore, they secretly returned to Sweden and asked the Swedish king and the bosses of the noble house to make a decision - whether to ask Marin for help...

...

And Marin is also very busy now. What are you busy with? Naturally, he is busy receiving the newly obtained land in the Ruhr River area. After all, Marin needs to send garrisons to these newly obtained lands and need to re-appoint officials to manage them. These are very heavy work for Marin. After all, the appointment of officials, the dispatch of garrisons, and the allocation of large quantities of materials all require Marin to personally review and sign.

Some government affairs can be delegated to the Prime Minister to handle them by themselves. However, the appointment of important officials, the dispatch of the army, and the allocation of large quantities of materials, Marin will never deal with others. Especially the first two affairs are the most core affairs in state affairs. The appointment of senior officials and the dispatch of the army are not rights that can be delegated casually. Once these rights are lost, they are equivalent to being undermined...

As for the allocation of a large number of materials, Marin also needed to sign himself, because most of the wealth of the Great Duchy of the North Sea is in Marin's personal name, so his signature is naturally needed.

In Europe in this era, there was not much distinction between the king and the government's public and private. In Europe in this era, the government's finances were the finances of the kings and princes. Because in this era, Europe did not have taxes for the whole nation, and the fiscal revenue of the kings and princes mainly relies on the output and commercial taxes of the kings and princes' manors. Even the prime minister's salary was borne by the king or princes themselves. A king or princes had only one treasury - the king's treasury... Unlike China in the same era, the treasury belonging to the government's treasury has been separated from the emperor's treasury...

But signing the documents to allocate materials is really tiring. After all, there are too many documents...

And in the process of allocating money and grain, Marin was embarrassed to find that it seemed that the treasury had no funds...

Because of changing territory, Marin paid a large amount of coins to the Principality of Cliff. This directly led to the fact that Marin's treasury had no cash currency, and only a large amount of food in the cement warehouse remained.

Now, Prime Minister Jeffrey said sadly that the treasury can no longer provide much cash. If you want to maintain the normal development of the domestic economy, you must have enough coins as a means of circulation and payment... Marin can already figure out the terrible scene of serious lack of currency in the Beihai market...

Just when Marin was having a headache and lack of money to stimulate the development of the market economy, Cuba suddenly sent a lot of nickel blocks...

After a long period of research, Haider's younger brother, Wiltz, the governor of Cuba Moa, finally led his craftsmen to master the mature nickel metal smelting method. At the same time, while obtaining nickel metal, a large amount of sulfuric acid can be obtained. Because the laterite nickel ore of Cuba Moa is nickel sulfide. During the process of the nickel metal being extracted, a large amount of sulfur dioxide or sulfur trioxide will be produced to produce sulfuric acid and sulfurite...

Of course, Marin is not interested in sulfuric acid, but nickel blocks now...

After the nickel block is remelted, it can be mixed with copper liquid to create copper on the surface of silver. The copper on the surface is very similar to silver and is also not easy to oxidize. The only problem is probably that compared with real silver, copper is a bit harder...

But Marin still plans to use white copper to mint coins... Why? Although white copper is hard, pure silver is very soft. However, in today's Europe, silver coins are generally severely adulterated, which has long lost the soft physical properties of silver.

Generally speaking, because pure silver is very soft, when mints silver coins, the mint will deliberately add some copper to the silver to enhance the hardness of the silver coins. For example, the famous Spanish silver dollars contain basically 90%, that is, 90%. The remaining 10% is copper.

This is because after adding copper, the hardness of silver will increase greatly. In fact, the classic Spanish American silver dollars are a mixed metal containing 90% silver and 10% copper.

However, that refers to the Spanish silver dollars after the discovery of a large number of silver mines in the Americas. In this time and space, due to Marin's travel, Spain has basically abandoned the colonial development of the Americas. Therefore, naturally, there was no American silver dollars with a silver content of 90%.

Now, the whole of Europe lacks gold and silver. Therefore, the silver coins in Europe are not high now. For many countries like France and Italy, the silver content of silver coins has generally dropped below 25%, which is less than one-quarter.

In this way, the silver coins in France and Italy are actually "copper coins" containing most of the copper and a small amount of silver, and the hardness is also very high.

With nickel metal blocks, Marin can completely make nickel-white copper. Then, use nickel-white copper to cast counterfeit silver coins - silver coins without silver...

The physical properties of nickel-white copper are very close to the physical properties of the so-called "silver coins" of which are mostly copper and a small part of silver. They are all silver shiny and corrosion-resistant, which is very difficult to distinguish...

Just so happened that Marin now lacks currency in China. So he decided to let the mint use a spiral coin press to imitate the "French silver coins" with very low silver content in large quantities.

Then, use these "French silver coins" to exchange gold coins in the European market. Then, use gold coins to exchange for real silver coins and come back... In this way, the problem of currency shortage in Beihai was immediately solved...

Moreover, through large-scale private minting of "French silver coins", Marin secretly obtained a large amount of "sin tax" (monitor profit) that should have belonged to France. While making money, it also hit the French finance...

In fact, nickel metal is now more rare than silver. If Marin sells nickel metal, the price may be no less than silver.

However, the mining costs of the two are completely different. Generally, silver ore has a very low silver content. For example, the largest silver ore in later generations, the ore contains only 200 grams per ton. In other words, the ore contains only 0.02% silver. While the Cuban nickel ore generally contains about 2%.

In other words, the metal content of Cuba nickel ore is a hundred times that of ordinary silver ore. In this way, the cost is also a hundred times different when mining and smelting.

After all, smelting 2 kilograms of silver requires mining and processing 10 tons of silver ore. smelting 2 kilograms of nickel metal only requires mining and processing 0.1 tons of nickel ore... The cost and efficiency are too different...

Moreover, the inferior "French silver coins" or "Italian silver coins" made of nickel and white copper are almost the same as those of the original ones, and are very difficult to distinguish.

Because there was no white copper in Europe. Until the Qing Dynasty, that is, in the 18th century, Europe still imported a large amount of white copper produced in China and called it "Chinese silver". It was not until the 19th century that Germans understood the nickel-white copper components and began to produce white copper, and replaced white copper produced in China and occupied the European market (see White Copper Baidu Encyclopedia).

In other words, when Marin used nickel and white copper to produce silver coins, Europeans could not distinguish them, and even more so they could not figure out the ingredients. Even if they knew that it was not silver, because white copper was rare in Europe, they would use it as a treasure.

However, the cost of mining and smelting silver and nickel is completely different, and the gap can reach a hundred times. Therefore, Marin used nickel and copper to cast counterfeit silver coins, and the profit was also a hundred times. Such a high profit was faster than robbing money...
Chapter completed!